Public Statement in regards to a Full on Spawn Town/Sneak peak at X-Roads Build Contest:
Greetings, Players and Builders alike. This is your In-Game Tech Coordinator here to inform you on the progress of the Spawn Town players have vied for {Here} and {Here}. The process of a Spawn Town has long been discussed between everyone- Staff and players alike for months now. You're probably wondering "What’s going on?” Well, when deciding what to do up in Staff-zone after players request something big done, we have to figure out the idea of the project, the reason for that project, what the end-game and purpose is, find people to pedal it to move forward and process if it's a fairly large project. The next part is who ends up heading it- as Spawn Town ranges from Events/Builds/Generally anyone who wants to head it up here. When you have a lot of people with different opinions of what the end result/process/purpose should be, it tends to slow that process down.
What are the differing opinions? Some of us believed having a full on new Spawn Town is what this server needs- despite having Port Silver, our last large spawn town, destroyed in order to spread out roleplay to player-run towns. Condensing roleplay to one place, even if there were different factions, different characters, potentially high peaks of reports- Giving players reason to roleplay together in one area, easily reachable, seemed to trump those concerns. This brings in the spread out playerbase together to advance storylines and more.
Another idea was to create a faction favoring town hub. As players needed a ripe place to recruit new players that join in for their own towns, a faction town hub would be a good place to figure out where new players wished to settle, leaning more into new player retention instead of current player retention. In light of immersion, it would have to be done carefully.
Then there was always the advocate of leaving things as they are, as we’ve already gone through a Port Silver destruction due to players seeing it as deriving attraction away from their town. As we full well know, spreading out players to every which direction has not been a grand way for moving players together for roleplay. Roleplay is a very big deal here.
HollowWorld has always had a unique feature where we allow the players, you!, to create and purchase their own regions for kingdoms, towns, hubs, villages, islands, and more. The best thing about this feature is you work together with friends and players all over the world to advance your organizations, kingdoms and towns. You gain experience in building, creating towns, roleplay, making events, and you make a few friends along the way. This feature is something even new players praise as they join in, fresh off their sea legs, and older players favor for personal workings. This is one of the main reasons we’ve not pursued creating a new Spawn Town as our decision was to leave it to the players to grow and enhance. It still is a very good reason.
We’ve noticed over the last several months that Spawn Town wants to be on the agenda. We hear you, folks. After sorting it out with the Coordinators at the time, Lannis,Antilogy, Niek Morenta, (Somnastra guiding to a contest), and myself with a few focused comments by other notable Staff Members -have decided to pursue a Crossroads Build Contest. The main purpose of this is to retain new players, give current players reason to come together to roleplay, and to create a visibly appealing place where people cross roads and more. With Staff focus on running this server (In-Game Tech alone has a lot of mechanics that have to be worked on with different jobs, along with helping Dungeons be built in time for Aeon Events), we’ve had to figure out a way to pursue this. Leaving it to the players was the solution, however, a contest was more fair to spread the work /and/ give chance to spread leadership and people to work together.
What we won’t have will be market places nor homes where people can rent and stay. This is because it requires a lot of dedication and attention to add people into regions, have them set things up, moderate the region for griefing- and basically Staff attention doesn’t need to focus there but towards more Staff related work. (Trust me, I help run Grafjell and mayor business of purchasing houses and moderating it in-character is a tough job.) I personally vied for letting players take care of housing for others on their own regions so that we don’t take away too much with this agenda. The focus was to let players and new players stick around the place as long as they needed in a bustling, usually violent, Inn before finding a place to settle.
The benefits of having a contest included mechanics where working together was more beneficial than working and building alone. Until the Staff can focus on a Spawn Town or if we wish the server to pursue it more, we wanted to see how well a more focused Crossroads would fair with our playerbase. The contest requests a few notable and important builds be created by players themselves in which you folks organize yourselves together. At the end of the contest, the builds that have the most favor from the playerbase and Staff will have their builds WE’ed into choice spots near the Crossroads and around it, possibly a pier as well, with rewards in place. In a while, I’m having the final write up of a formal format of the Contest with details discussed by Staff. Please continue to be patient with us as we do have other projects to take care of, myself having to build for the server and others keeping up with their work. Thank you.
Regards,
Solus from Staff Team
Note- I'll leave the thread open for Q's and open discussion- but would like to emphasize the write-up will still be occurring. Trying to get quality content out to you folks takes time~
Interested folk/made the public discussion in the first place:
Sankera Tempy_ Rygan Naelwyn Mitch Archbishop Lady Alec
@Everyother builder that wants to take part. Sit tight 'n be prepared.
What are the differing opinions? Some of us believed having a full on new Spawn Town is what this server needs- despite having Port Silver, our last large spawn town, destroyed in order to spread out roleplay to player-run towns. Condensing roleplay to one place, even if there were different factions, different characters, potentially high peaks of reports- Giving players reason to roleplay together in one area, easily reachable, seemed to trump those concerns. This brings in the spread out playerbase together to advance storylines and more.
Another idea was to create a faction favoring town hub. As players needed a ripe place to recruit new players that join in for their own towns, a faction town hub would be a good place to figure out where new players wished to settle, leaning more into new player retention instead of current player retention. In light of immersion, it would have to be done carefully.
Then there was always the advocate of leaving things as they are, as we’ve already gone through a Port Silver destruction due to players seeing it as deriving attraction away from their town. As we full well know, spreading out players to every which direction has not been a grand way for moving players together for roleplay. Roleplay is a very big deal here.
HollowWorld has always had a unique feature where we allow the players, you!, to create and purchase their own regions for kingdoms, towns, hubs, villages, islands, and more. The best thing about this feature is you work together with friends and players all over the world to advance your organizations, kingdoms and towns. You gain experience in building, creating towns, roleplay, making events, and you make a few friends along the way. This feature is something even new players praise as they join in, fresh off their sea legs, and older players favor for personal workings. This is one of the main reasons we’ve not pursued creating a new Spawn Town as our decision was to leave it to the players to grow and enhance. It still is a very good reason.
We’ve noticed over the last several months that Spawn Town wants to be on the agenda. We hear you, folks. After sorting it out with the Coordinators at the time, Lannis,Antilogy, Niek Morenta, (Somnastra guiding to a contest), and myself with a few focused comments by other notable Staff Members -have decided to pursue a Crossroads Build Contest. The main purpose of this is to retain new players, give current players reason to come together to roleplay, and to create a visibly appealing place where people cross roads and more. With Staff focus on running this server (In-Game Tech alone has a lot of mechanics that have to be worked on with different jobs, along with helping Dungeons be built in time for Aeon Events), we’ve had to figure out a way to pursue this. Leaving it to the players was the solution, however, a contest was more fair to spread the work /and/ give chance to spread leadership and people to work together.
What we won’t have will be market places nor homes where people can rent and stay. This is because it requires a lot of dedication and attention to add people into regions, have them set things up, moderate the region for griefing- and basically Staff attention doesn’t need to focus there but towards more Staff related work. (Trust me, I help run Grafjell and mayor business of purchasing houses and moderating it in-character is a tough job.) I personally vied for letting players take care of housing for others on their own regions so that we don’t take away too much with this agenda. The focus was to let players and new players stick around the place as long as they needed in a bustling, usually violent, Inn before finding a place to settle.
The benefits of having a contest included mechanics where working together was more beneficial than working and building alone. Until the Staff can focus on a Spawn Town or if we wish the server to pursue it more, we wanted to see how well a more focused Crossroads would fair with our playerbase. The contest requests a few notable and important builds be created by players themselves in which you folks organize yourselves together. At the end of the contest, the builds that have the most favor from the playerbase and Staff will have their builds WE’ed into choice spots near the Crossroads and around it, possibly a pier as well, with rewards in place. In a while, I’m having the final write up of a formal format of the Contest with details discussed by Staff. Please continue to be patient with us as we do have other projects to take care of, myself having to build for the server and others keeping up with their work. Thank you.
Regards,
Solus from Staff Team
Note- I'll leave the thread open for Q's and open discussion- but would like to emphasize the write-up will still be occurring. Trying to get quality content out to you folks takes time~
Interested folk/made the public discussion in the first place:
Sankera Tempy_ Rygan Naelwyn Mitch Archbishop Lady Alec
@Everyother builder that wants to take part. Sit tight 'n be prepared.
Last edited: