Discussion of Our Current Spawn

[Rygan]

I'd like to open a discussion here about our current spawn, and why I believe it isn't the greatest for the current state of our server.

We're all aware that our server is not currently the most active it has been, compared to even a few months ago. We had a boost in activity directly before and after the first event of the campaign, but it would seem as though that's died down for now until the next bastion is found. There are few places to roleplay if your character is not one who travels to random regions or who isn't politically neutral. We simply don't have the population to keep more than one or two cities half-alive with roleplay at a time. As I type this it is 1:30PM EST and we have thirteen players online, on a Sunday. Our current spawn is, I believe, crippled by our current ports system.

We receive a healthy amount of whitelists but very few stay, and I think this is due to how unfriendly our current spawn is, partially due to there being absolutely no organic way to explore. There is no docks or ports and no ships or carriages to use to randomly explore, easily having a way to justify sending your character about. The first roleplays (which are likely to be the deciding factor in their staying or not) these new players experience is purely sitting and drinking ale, next to what I personally find to be a very off-putting destroyed nicer spawn. Spawn will always be our most active 'region', and that's not really a bad thing. What is bad, however, is having a bad spawn.

Many of our current active players avoid spawn because it's cramped, there's little to do, and you're extremely likely to run into rivals and enemy factions. Compare this to the old spawn, which was an entire city filled with various roleplays around it and plenty of places to avoid people while still experiencing the activity of spawn. After a few days of the former experience, many of these newly whitelisted players get bored and leave for more 'exciting, active servers'. I put my air-finger quotes around that as we're obviously not mind-numbingly boring the majority of the time, but our spawn does not give a new player a proper trial of the server.

EDIT: I spoke of the current system of ports being unfavourable, but I did not elaborate on the alternative. Way back when, before this plugin, you had to take boats that went to one region and one region only. To get to where you wanted to go you may have had to even hop on multiple ships crossing multiple regions.

 

[Elz]

We were talking about it over Skype, so I'mm ajust copy paste that snippet. It pretty much repeats parts of your post, but essentially I fully agree with you.
I'm a little concerned on the lack of new players actually staying, and I think its allll about 'first impressions'.

"What do you think of Spawn"
It's been there for too long, we need a change of scenery, and something bigger/more in depth might attract newbies more. Have warp points on bigger docks to go to 2(or more) warp highlights so people dont get isolated at spawn and dont need to hunt for IC reasons to go to active RP hubs. (Newbies will not have IC reasons)
Can make spawn more of a town in itself. Would be interesting.

 

[Cap]

The issue I brought up in our Skype discussion is that there's no reason to leave spawn. Rygan partially addressed this by mentioning that there's no way to randomly explore from spawn, but there's also the issue that spawn provides everything you need. Active population, facilities (prayer area, bank, APS, food), and 'interesting' (although often annoying) RP. As more people find that spawn is the best spot to RP, they avoid going to new towns or leave new towns that they're part of, giving other players even less drive to leave spawn.

My personal proposal would be replace the spawn tavern with a dock and a few buildings. Ships on the dock, perhaps paid for by region owners, would act as warps to random RP hubs, my suggestions being Tambry, Breakwater, Arget Isles, Grafjell, and Heaven's Reach.

 

[Rygan]

I'd like to bring up another point - The argument brought up the most is that our current spawn prevents new players from being caught in an endless wave of violence. I would argue it does the opposite. Filling a single inn with factions from the entire server results in daily brawls and killing in the only place available for roleplay.

 

[NIAH]

http://hollowworld.co.uk/threads/suggestion-new-spawn-location-rp-hub.34035/

I'm going to drop this here, as I think the discussion brought up there could be good here, and vice-versa.

 

[Rygan]

My personal proposal would be replace the spawn tavern with a dock and a few buildings. Ships on the dock, perhaps paid for by region owners, would act as warps to random RP hubs, my suggestions being Tambry, Breakwater, Arget Isles, Grafjell, and Heaven's Reach.

I agree that large, active cities should receive ports directly to their region. However, our options from there are either creating a boat that leads to another dock for smaller regions or forcing these large active cities to have a large active dock leading to all nearby regions.

http://hollowworld.co.uk/threads/suggestion-new-spawn-location-rp-hub.34035/

I'm going to drop this here, as I think the discussion brought up there could be good here, and vice-versa.

Thank you for linking to the previous discussion.

 

[Elz]

... Just a thought. Might also want to edit tutorial island itself. If its that place that puts off new players from staying then maybe have the location where new people spawn in and the 'spawn' of roleplay be the same place?
A lot of people get confused in OOC chat when they're on that island. To me it serves no real purpose, no one is there when you first appear and its.. Its just bad, I feel. A dock with warps to places and a tavern where actual players /are/ might be of more use.
Thoooughts.

 

[Mitch]

Rygan mentioned the declining player activity we’ve suffered this last little while. While this does not address, attack or accuse the reasons as to why that may be, I firmly believe that the spawn location itself can have a pretty significant impact on steadying it.

It’s been brought up many times before, now. As far as I remember, the answer has always been the same: “we don’t want a spawn ‘hub’ because it takes away from player regions.” That’s all fine and well, I understand entirely what it has been trying to accomplish. Promoting RP activity in regions that players make themselves is a solid goal and a great way to encourage the involvement of players having an impact on our world as a whole.

The unfortunate reality of it is that it just isn’t succeeding, at least in this recent state. We have too many regions without a purpose. On the other end, we have – at most – a handful of regions that do see some activity. Tambry, Grafjell and the Arget Isles are the first to come to mind. On the average day, without any event or special occasion going on, I think it’s generous to say that totaling six players RP’ing inside them is about what I typically see. If we had more players and increased activity, this would be great. Again, the reality of it is that we currently don’t have enough to support these numbers scattered loosely around the world. When we tend to have less than 15 players on at a time anymore, this ends up leaving, more often than not, five or less players RP’ing at what should be one of the most active spots of a roleplay server.

It’s already been said that this doesn’t leave a good first impression on new players coming on to our server for the first few times. Naturally, they’re going to be led to spawn and they’re going to wander around in search of exploration and RP. At the current one, we find little of either. Three, four, five people RP’ing in what’s comparatively a very small, lackluster inn to the rest of the world doesn’t give a particularly good light of the environment and atmosphere of our server when people enter in. Port Silver, while some might somehow argue it to be “intimidating and confusing,” was generally a very alluring, intriguing place to the new player. They had a lot of interesting searching around to do to get accustomed to the server before jumping into any RP, and once they set on the search for the latter, there was a wide range of people to get involved with and plenty of RPs to join in – of varying types (drinking, combat, traveling, etc.) and different groups of folk. It made it easier to find a friend “clique” to settle into, and the extent of RP drew many players back and back again.

The Crossroads? I can’t see anyone exploring for more than fifteen minutes, and on a lucky day they’ll find some form of gripping RP that is different from the typical casual conversation over drink with two or three other people.

I’m not trying to do anything extreme like suggest we begin restricting player regions, or removing them beyond the current “ruins” rule. Like many of the others who have posted here, I think there needs to be a productive, beneficial discussion about how to reconstruct or reform spawn into a place that gathers RP for our dwindling numbers and inspires new players to stay. As long as we can do one, the other will likely easily follow suit.

 

[TheDeester]

Ditto.

 

[FrostGuardian]

There is very little IC incentive for nobility to ever visit the Crossroads. It is a humble little place. As with Port Silver, it was a bustling city, filled with trade and diplomatic affairs. It also possessed a noble district, segregated from the common rabble. Thus, not only was there an abundance of activities to partake in, there was somewhat of an IC necessity to visit it.

The Crossroads are pretty, but with a mere ship and an underwhelming dockmaster to represent what lies outside the tavern, it is quite shy of being an impressive sight to behold for newcomers. If we were to once again to have docks with personal ships, I'd imagine much more exploring would happen. This would compensate for the argument that having a too impressive of a spawn would drain individual regions of their players. As of now, there are no players in the spawn, let alone to be divided amongst our personal regions.

 

[Elz]

thats a pretty good post, mitch

 

[Arken]

Yeah, what they said. Stuff's getting old.

 

[Arken]

Yeah, what they said. Stuff's getting old.

Shit, didn't mean to swear in my last post.

 

[FrostGuardian]

Time consuming as it may be, the construction of a new spawn, to me, seems quite feasible. There are many good builders on the server, some of whom are staff themselves (solus Tempy_ ). A project of such a grand scale would surely bring us together more. I recall when the second incarnation of Port Silver was being constructed in 2012, players could donate materials and be paid for their contributions, and even build a few edifices hither and thither. Surely, this would be a much needed boost to our "economy". I understand that our staff members entertain a delicately balanced schedule and thus may find it difficult to find adequate time for such an undertaking. But, as I perceive it, it is one that is necessary for the sake of the server.

 

[LiraKitty]

Being fairly new here myself. I can agree that the spawn hub is a bit off-putting. The only way I personally knew that there was so much more to offer was by extensively searching through the forums here and researching the different cities and factions the server had to offer. A small town style hub could probably help to alleviate that issue by giving the existing player base a more IC location to meet and recruit new players on the servers to our various circles. Possibly a place where people agree that house disputes and struggles are put to the side in favor of diplomacy and commerce. This would allow people who may be nervous or timid the chance to get to know each other without walking in on a bar brawl.

 

[TheDeester]

Frost's suggestion is something that'd be very feasible, from my perspective. With the disgusting eyesore that is Port Silver nearby, however, it may be best to relocate spawn to a new area altogether, and leave the weird Crossroads/Great Shrine combination as is, initiating a new area with zones for old players to explore, too.

 

[Sankera]

New world new world new world. Get rid of the bad water system that we call rivers

 

[Elz]

Frost's suggestion is something that'd be very feasible, from my perspective. With the disgusting eyesore that is Port Silver nearby, however, it may be best to relocate spawn to a new area altogether, and leave the weird Crossroads/Great Shrine combination as is, initiating a new area with zones for old players to explore, too.

Brings up the topic of something being done with Port Silver, too. Its been there for an awfully long time, and as far as I know, we can't really... Do much with it. I know there was something said about clearing the corruption, but Im unclear. :c

Personally I'd remove the crossroads area entirely, through an event of some sort. Make IC reasons for it no longer being a hub, and then relocate to a new place.

 

[Rygan]

Brings up the topic of something being done with Port Silver, too. Its been there for an awfully long time, and as far as I know, we can't really... Do much with it. I know there was something said about clearing the corruption, but Im unclear. :c

Personally I'd remove the crossroads area entirely, through an event of some sort. Make IC reasons for it no longer being a hub, and then relocate to a new place.

What bothers me the most is that Port Silver was our largest city, yet when it died those that lived there didn't naturally pool together in a new area.

 

[TheDeester]

Personally I'd remove the crossroads area entirely, through an event of some sort. Make IC reasons for it no longer being a hub, and then relocate to a new place.

let me have this one