Compilation: Suggestions & Feedback for Improving Server Engagement

[Aethereal]

These suggestions focus on improving the new player and low-level experience & rounding out and improving overall engagement with the server across all levels. The premise is that if there is more reason to be logged in, there will be more players actively playing at any given point in time, and by adding or adjusting content to encourage this (of benefit to the inevitable times one will be relegated to solo play) it also improves the overall experience of players regardless of their timezone constraints.

A lot of these ideas originated back when I was finding it very difficult to progress on TER, and this thread will as such also remain a work in progress, that I intend to refine, both with new findings of my own as I continue to experience the server as well as the input of the rest of the community.


Categories of Improvement

1. Increase Activity (give players more things to do in-game)
   • Update the @Work System
     • Increase pay from 1cp/30 mins to 6cp/15 mins (i.e. enough to afford a rest in as much time as it takes to for resting in an establishment to be off cooldown) whilst keeping the daily limit for cp earned (so you still need to put in the hours into the work system to get more than 30cp/day)
     • Add XP ticks as a result of special events such as the pre-existing attribute checks (which admittedly happen quite rarely) that can offer a one-off bonus to income if the PC passes them.
   • Reduce Dungeon Reset Timers
     • Ideally reduce to 3-4 hours (long enough so a player is not going to be repeating it in a single play session, but not so long as to prevent others from being able to give it a go after they’ve cleared/abandoned it).
   • Crafting/Tradeskill systems such as fishing/gardening/gathering/harvesting (ore/metals/minerals/stone/coal, wood/flowers/herbs/fruit/vegetables/fungi, skins/pelts/meat/venom glands/reagents, and other special/rare materials) and smithing/fletching/herbalism/alchemy/etc in specific workshops which require membership, payment of fees to access facilities, or otherwise require travelling to certain locations some of which may be hidden or hard to reach even. Further design considerations & ideas:
     • Maybe make all tradeskill/crafting items in this system have no sell price, so that it is a purely player-based economy that surrounds it.
     • Items should not be very powerful but offer nice little conveniences and roleplay benefits.
     • Some gathered goods may be vendored, specifically fish/furs etc as to allow civilian/profession-based roleplay.
     • Dwarves may get bonuses to mining and possibly a dwarf/gnome only NPC to turn them into for favour/benefits of contributing to the clan etc.
     • Druid coven may offer benefits to nature-based PCs for turning in certain produce of nature, possibly adding progression option for wilderness PCs with minor cp/XP rewards for this sort of play.
2. More Options for Low Level Play
   Add more low level dungeons - especially in areas currently lacking them to improve diversity of experience and give newbies/low level characters a chance to test out their class mechanics and playstyles in a relatively safe (though scaling perhaps) way. These can also be the sort of dungeon that has multiple transitions, with each one leading to a more dangerous area similar to the Badgers, Stirges, & Myconids dungeon.
   
   Specific location ideas identified include:
   • Songhall (under construction apartments remain so for a reason, scholars have specific requests/tasks) and surrounds (Pilgrim's Rest)
   • A job available to clear out the construction site in Sarshel: Old District - Elf's Choice Confectionary
   • Royal Road: Crossroads (perhaps requiring some extra digging around to uncover it)
   • A quest to test new adventurers accessed by boat off the shore where the Swordhall is in Sarshel: North Coast – could involve rowing boat to new areas.
   • A clean up job for a ship (possibly broken or not seaworthy) in the Dockyards
   • More ideas to come...
3. Improved Coordination / optional opt-in list for currently active players
   This is an idea to replace/revamp the old system where players would state their timezones and titbits about their active characters and what they might be interested in, as was previously managed through something like the 'Notable People' list on the wiki (https://easting.fandom.com/wiki/Notable_People) except strictly for currently active PCs.
   
   Perhaps implemented as a dedicated Discord channel which helps provide more direct information about player availability than the Royal Census (only useful if person is already logged in but says nothing of their availability or interest in playing especially if they don't feel like they have a reason to log in until others are online) or through IC-Rumours (best suited to specifically scheduled events that occur at a future date or time people can plan around).
   
   Update: It is possible (though not necessarily intended) for the Register of the Office of Public Affairs to function as an in-character version of this... let's see how it all evolves in-game.
4. Clear documentation of how dungeon timers work in the OOC Starting Area.
   This will help new players avoid confusion with the dungeoneering experience.
   
   The final point was one I came up with much earlier in my experience of TER, however I believe it is still worth considering at the very least. Even if I feel less strongly about it and see some shortfalls in the idea.
5. Improve the Solo Experience
   The primary outcome sought here is to help make it feel like progress is possible even when nobody is around or accessible which is an inevitable part of playing on a low population server. Though there are things such as setting up IC-RP's via Discord, writing up messages on the Noticeboards, spreading IC-Rumours, etc, such a severe limitation as not being able to do much of anything in-game when alone due to inordinate risks/cooldowns/unavoidable content due to timers and the like should be reduced to a minimum.
   
   Specifically to counteract the above I think a reduction of the timer for receiving XP from dungeons from one month to a fortnight should be considered; this should be for the low-levels (after level 1) only: levels 2-4. And for the low level dungeons (fine for it to be scaling) only. This could of course result in low level dungeons growing in demand, but this could be mitigated by the increase in options and the reduction of the dungeon reset timer to 3-4 hours as proposed above.
   

   That was my main suggestion. I was going to go so far as suggest reducing it to 1 week. But as I continue to play, the more I realise there's an issue with having people repeat dungeons messing up timers for other people due to how they seem to reset so slowly. So the suggestion comes with making at least those starter dungeons reset more frequently.
   
   I do not think I would espouse getting rid of dungeon XP/loot timers. That is part of TER's charm. It's not about making TER into other servers. It's about maintaining TER's unique sell points whilst helping make the player experience the best that it can be with game design that is considerate of 'quality of life.' Though in my mind that also involves some level of catering to replayability from a solo standpoint at least at lower levels.
   
   I also don't want to make the high level experience impacted by changes made for the low level experience. I.e. timer changes etc should be only for lower level characters/lower level dungeons, with lower level dungeons maintaining their diminishing returns so that high level characters are not doing them to harvest XP/loot etc (which seems to impact dungeon reset timers). Of course if dungeon reset timers for these lower level dungeons could be made much shorter that would also help.

[Aethereal]

Some constructive feedback and discussion on related concerns did occur recently on Discord, I have preserved some more relevant parts below:

It is true that small pop and large pop servers RP operates differently. I have played on both types for over 13 years now.

Large pop servers tend to factionalize, which may be part of the cliquey characterization they get. The drow houses, the banite church, the druid grove, ect. Or even just the group you leveled with if they gel well will form its own bubble. The factions can be a lot of fun sometimes as they lead to conflict RP and a shared structure of RP with, but they can also isolate. This became very obvious to me when Amia introduced player housing and seemingly overnight the majority of the RP left public spaces and was hidden behind locked private doors. All the public RP hubs were reduced to just one area per server. You can find role-players more easily on large server but it is also true that quantity isn't quality. On larger servers where there's so many to mix with most of the RP becomes surficial until two or more characters and their players 'click' in a way to unlock something more. But you may be searching a while for that connection.

On small pop servers RP seems immediately more intimate. There's less opportunity to find another role-player/character, so people seem to generally give each other more attention and time which can sometimes lead to greater depths of RP more quickly than it can on a larger pop server. There is also very little if any factionalization that divides the player base. Characters might have shared bonds, but they don't isolate themselves away with them.

TER could always use a few more faces, but it does regularly enough hit double digits throughout the year. You're mew here so you haven't seen the full ebb and flow of the active population. It does have slow moments, like yes now.. during the holiday season, and then springs up more in the Summer. I think a stable core of players would be necessary to keep longterm high numbers, and we seem to be slowly collecting players that stick around for longer.

I don't think really one is better than the other (large pop vs slow pop). They have different offerings. Sometimes I want to play in a faction, so I'd seek a larger server for that. Other times I like the general intimacy of low population servers.

Some quotes that were too good to not preserve...

That's how my elves usually end up if I'm not careful. First all the non-elves disappoint you with their inferiority, then the half-elves overreach pretending they're as good as a pureblood, then the other elves fraternize with these other races as if they're worth your time, and before you know it you're all alone as the one elf who understands how not to waste their time...

Aye. You're welcome to enjoy the game the way you like, for sure. And as mentioned above, it wouldn't be the first time a character of mine leaned away from interactions.

Most PCs are mentally damaged in one way or another, living the non-standard monster slaying lives that they do, so avoiding them is often the healthy and rational response; it can be hard work to come up with reasons to interact regardless.

[Aethereal]

Read through your list of suggestions, the one thing that I have a concern about which may be more on the technical side but could still be player base is the separation of timers based on levels. An increase in alt leveling (not necessarily a bad thing but loot would be a problem there) and how it works for a party with varying levels. As it is right now, the timer is tied to a character. Hypothetically, that could mean each character has their own "values/properties" that can be altered. For example, Meshin was able to set a value that placed a character's death below -10 to be permanent. If it is as easy as changing a few values, it may be worthwhile for solo. Group wise I cannot say due to lack of significant experience on the matter, only that early "powerleveling" could become more common place and it could give the wrong impression of TER late game.

I lean toward a logistic growth curve which is where I think it is right now with groups; solo, it is pretty difficult. This is me not going into much detail though.

Very valid point when it comes to concerns around 'powerleveling' through low levels... Although one thing I see as a balancing agent is that if you travel with someone to a dungeon and they've been there too recently even if you haven't ever been there, the loot is reverted to rubbish - i.e. discouraging powerleveling or farming somewhat.

Solo is indeed very difficult and moreover, risky. Sure, it's not 'permadeath' but it's close enough to it for a good long while imo, when a character who no longer has level 1 respawn benefits dies, they're dead and done for a while and IC dead for sure since it would require revival not just respawning (since they were ineligible to respawn due to no friendly player nearby.

I wouldn't mind the option of not calling it a 'death' even if it takes revival, but hey, I'm also still investigating in-character implications of death and revival on a few characters. Like how the Doktor is trying to study the phenomenon of death (as a malady, from which there can be apparent recovery) as well as its consequences