fadin wrote:It seems some people are assuming people are leaving in droves and tend to post that all over the place. I see the numbers every day, and I don't see the people leaving in droves. People stay, people leave and new people show up... daily... So, I can say, I took a look at the database and have no idea what you are talking about.
The problem is this, everyone who plays an MMO affects other players by their presence. These players all form complex social structures among themselves in everything from trade to hunting and simple socialization chit chat type stuff. Some of these players have very strong interactions with a great many players, as an example on the NA servers... we had fuzz for armor and haddo for jewelrey. Fuzz made a crapload of pretty decent armor, did a pretty good job of stocking the vendors with it, and sold it for reasonable prices. Haddo still does the same with jewelrey last I checked. The same can be said of some harvesters who churn out tons of mats or very good mats, or various guild members who are great at organizing parties to go out and do stuff. Every time one of these folks leave, those strong bonds yank on the other players who they touched in their day to day interactions with the community.
Once you start pulling away more and more folks, from these complex social webs, people start to leave faster than those newbies you talked about can fill in the gaps and you have what results in a community falling apart. You can say that the high levels, the crafters, the always on types, and the guild coordinators will eventually be replaced... but that takes time to happen, during that time the community shrivels up and becomes lifeless. It might come back if it gets enough time and care, but odds are good that it will be a shadow of what it once was.
The numbers may show that population levels are rather steady, but at the same time the players see a different version of the situation. They see guilds merging and swallowing other guilds that were going dead due to too many members leaving. The players see guilds exploding and leaving for other games with very common complaints about treadmills and boredom coming from the folks on their way out. They see guild members talking more and more about other games and other beta or about how they dislike so many things about this game and how bored they are.
I apologize for the novel. I am just at home and looking through the forums. I thought I would at least try to get some responses on this one. I hope I haven't disturbed the wasp nest.
I felt that that last quote of yours was the best thing that could go before the rest of this post... so I moved it
When it's all said and done, and the anxiously awaited patch day comes depite all of the merges, all of the explosions, all of the complains, all of the boredom... players get a patch that very often leaves them bewildered as to what the heck Nevrax was thinking. Players bicker about things like changing the DP time down to 20 days instead of the "too fast" 3 days as being pointlessly slow, and folks play devils advocate saying that 20 days is better than nothing because the already existing 3 days was too slow for them to even notice. Players see these patches quite litterally attacking their enjoyment of the game, everything from selfmagic changes/removal, AOE reflect heals, and herbavore loot drop nerfings, all the way to PR changes and mob "tweaking"... and they are reminded of something that has happened in many table top roleplaying games as well as a good chunk of early everquest.
They are met with a system that seems to be shaped and grown out of a desire to win and beat the players. As players level higher and higher, they start to see horrible cracks growing in the foundation of the game as a result of what seems to be a beat the players desire. Without useful AOE heals to cut the effectiveness of heals, healers are left with a system where they wonder why they should buy new heals long before 250. Without AOE reflects, the predicted "well duh... you just need two, three, four, twentyseven healers to do.. well... anything" situation comes true. Without AOE heal reflect off mektoubs, healers are left utterly helpless without leveling another tree. With all of the above changes to healing combined along with the late FBT changes to exp, the old "grab some folks and get someone willing to heal then go have fun" becomes "grab some folks, find some healers, make sure everyone is a compatible level, and then go find some mobs that the group has enough healing power to kill and try not to kill the exp ratio... you are left with situations where three healers wander about with wildly different levels in melee and magic trying to find someone compatible with their levels, but eventually give up and go watch tv. With PR changes that seem designed to slow down leveling, and make good equipment more [strike]frustrating...difficult[/strike] "rewarding", players are left frustrated and annoyed about how their skills gained by leveling PR foraging is being attacked by the devs. With "tweaking" done to mobs, players are left with GM's confirming that they are unable to even damage some boss mobs even after killing all of their minions due to excessive and silly regen. With "tweaking" done to mobs, the "high level" game is reduced to "grab tank then pile on more healers capable of casting CH style heals".. gone is any thought involved with using self magic to balance hp/sap or help yourself regen, gone is the excitement of watching people's HP bars slowly trickle down and having the group wonder if they will die or the mob will die... it's been replaced with dominos and watching still buggy and often broken HP bars fluctuating between -50% to 25% and 75% to 100% each time a player is attacked and a heal lands.
With all of these problems and more, the playerers come to the forums and yell at a wall. The players say things about X Y and Z in these forums, but don't see even a hint of sanity in many of the changes that effect X Y and Z. When they comment about the apparent randomness in changes to X Y and Z, they are given more silence, or worse they are given a jig about how someone will report it to the devs or file it in their report.... but when it's all said and done, it doesn't seem that Nevrax is listening to these reports either. A wall of silence does not create or mend those earlier mentioned bonds. A wall of silence does not make folks say "well gee, maybe I should just wait for those other shiny things they have been talking with us with", instead it makes folks say "well that settles it, they screwed up/forgot about X agaiin and don't even appear to be listening at all".
It only serves to further discourage when someone gets the wardrums spun up for their pet subject, and start to visibly see a lack of faith from their only source of communication with Nevrax. People know that having more tickets and reports filed about their pet gripe for the Nth month, is not going to have any more effect than the ones before. People see frustration in their only lines of communication to Nevrax, and they put 2+2 together. They take the person that they have socialized with or goofed off with in the past, and assume the silence and stonewalling is thanks Nevrax.... it's not a hard conclusion to jump to when they step back and look at seemingly random us vrs them changes that do a great deal of harm to the game or are just downright silly. After all, it's very easy to blame a faceless wall of silence compared to someone you have chatted with about movies or seen testing stuff.
