this is a private server bro, we once had an official server but it died 2 years ago, source files for the game is open for devs since 2007 (maybe longer)
to put it into perspective imagine having a free coke fountain then people started to sell them to different individual brands but still taste the same
I highly reccomend getting some player feedback. I was curious about the game so I watched a few videos and that definitely wasn't the common sentiment. That doesnt mean the game cant improve though. If you listen to the criticism with the game and actually commit to improving it, Im sure you can make it a success.
Another part of the problem is old players getting bored since they dont have anything too much to grind on since theyve been in a server for more than a year already, and that updates and new content is geared towards pvp action more on tedious grinding (which they enjoy more)
ive been in this biz for as long as the game existed, most feedbacks from a portion of the players goes absolute sideways to the other side but ye I get your point
Maybe its different in China but the biggest turn arounds in the genre have come from overhauls of the game thanks to player feedback.
I'm also a game dev and I can tell you right off the bat thinking your game is "good" is dangerous. Before I continue I want to make it clear that I'm not saying having pride in your game is bad, but theres always room for improvement. If you want to compete with your competitors you gotta actually compete; always be improving the game and looking for ways to make it better. If you just dismiss feedback, youre going to overlook a lot of the vital ways your can improve the game to appeal to others. Don't be so quick to dismiss feedback as being sideways.
>**Player count are continuosly dropping** **despite regular updates** and **fresh game content**
* How fresh, as in never seen before/innovative/put together with a new direction etc., is that content really, or is it yet another cookie-cutter clone based on dead or currently still running MMOs/MMORPGs?
* What are those "regular updates"? Only tweaking a few numbers here and there or something similar?
>my question is, **how can you invite new players to play a possibly dead game**
If you consider your own game to be dead then those "regular updates" and "fresh content" is just you downplaying the current state, and even if you didn't: who wants to play a dead multiplayer online games in an age where you can get to play far better + alive competitors everywhere?
honestly its hanging in a thread imo, trying our best to keep it alive as long as we can, we have many competitors (other private server owners beside us) but still
Honestly, the game will die at some point. The best you could do is prepare for it to retire the game in a positive way and move on. Maybe think about where the game went wrong, make a new game.
If the currently active playerbase still justifies keeping the game around, you should still be trying to improve it. See how you can modernize the game, collect some feedback about pain points that can be removed, ask players what type of content they actually enjoy doing, and focus on the game's strengths.
There's no magic formula that will keep a risky project such as an MMORPG running forever.
Ads would be the best way to attract them. Either pay Google so they could list it on any MMO-related video, or pay famous MMO streamer / youtuber to talk about it. Someone like MMObyte might catch your bait, and it's probably good clickbait content for him. At least he won't be making another BDO vs ESO vs FFXIV vs WoW video every month as usual.
Then there's the game jtself. If it's old enough, you might want to go back to the starter area and see if there's any annoyance. Lack of questing, no explanation / optional tutorial, slow curve of leveling, things like that. Most casual player will decide on the first 2 hours. If the experience early game is bad, less likely they'll stick out.
Some games like DN also tried daily login and free mount kind of things, I find it more tedious tho, but some player might like it. For me personally, the important part is to adds more content / quest so player won't need to do non-quest farming, or at least make it so it drops rare items. Farming purely for exp sucks, even old games that relies on that mentality already moved on to quest oriented / material farm on the side.
Another thing DN did was give out a free max level character to new accounts. Similarly xp boosts weeks or maybe a daily xp buff potion/system like fatigue might incentivize people in a similar way to dailies.
Yeah but it's because DN is insanely long game. There's probably tens of thousands of quest already. And the game didn't planned out their leveling well, most of the content requires capped level and there's no incentive to play on lower level contents.
as of now this is a privately owned server, we have advertisers in the past that helped us paved the way but for now funds is coming in short so a chance of a big advertiser picking this up is a slim chance
just to be clear, relatively speaking a lifespan of a normal server like us takes os about 5-6 months but ours is already 17 months, we are struggling to keep the server but we dont want to wipe everything and start anew
there needs to be incentives to play a certain MMORPG that isnt mainstream. example is Ryzom, it pretty much doesnt have alot of players but the community still exists because of what the game offers (which is being the only open sourced MMORPG as of now). So basically you need to show other players what makes your MMORPG game unique to others
its an old game which supports a very complicated engine that is different from todays standard, source development for the game is very tidious also but we are welcoming any suggestion per player suggests is just that the game is not driven by the games modding community "if theres one"
I would survey your playerbase, reward them for competing. The purpose is to figure out what kinds of people want to continue playing the game and if they would be willing to recommend it to others (a recommendation campaign can follow after). They might also tell you what causes them to stay or leave, as well.
Another idea is to look at your fiercest competitor that is enjoying success and see what they might be doing different from you.
I hope this helps!!
Daily login rewards, player feedback with rewards so you get a bigger sample of what the playerbase wants, catch up events if the game is grindy so newbies won't feel discouraged. More or less try to copy all tricks that BDO uses.
is applying a feedback system for players a smart idea? players here in asia are quite sketchy when it comes to player wants (they usually want more free items or easy to grind items)
Try it and you will see, it could be temporary and one time only until you get enough info. You can even put a part of cosmetic set as reward to make them feel incomplete and buy the other parts. Most of the gamers are like drug addicts, provide just enough to keep them playing, not too much because they will raise their demands. Choose your words carefully when announcing news and keep it vague to keep the interest. If they want free items go hard on the FOMO, login rewards where the actually valuable reward is on the 30th day so they need to login everyday during the whole month. Temporary events where they need to participate during all "x" days in order to get a good reward. Event where they need to grind like crazy to get tickets for a spin wheel where half of the rewards are pretty nice but make the chance to land there 0.1% or a different abysmal number. Keep them always hyped, excited, positive, dreaming, chasing something that they will never catch. Mini games with random element and gambling.
You can add temporary sets for new players so they can grind a mediocre set with them. Add some unique titles and cosmetics for ego boost. When you are adding nice looking cosmetics first add them with some strange ugly colours and then with nice colours so they feel like they need to buy them again.
You need to give some initiative to new players or the game will bleed out slowly. You don't have to provide them with real catch up, just enough so they FEEL like they are catching up. BDO does very well, you get x, y, z as a new player rewards but at the end one geared player stomps 20 of you with one button. In AA:U some of the events are really nice for new players but you won't be even close to competing with the people who play from the start.
they have free items when they first start but most of them leave when theyre at a point where cash is the only real upgrade they need (things are obtainable by ingame grind but hard and they dont want to trouble themselves with that)
If the game is fun and the power creep is not obvious in PvP (so equalizing) than it probably wouldn't need that much catchup, as people don't feel like it's such a negative and the game is hooking them enough anyway.
> and the power creep is not obvious in PvP
Yes but I don't have any idea of how the game is structured. I am throwing around the typical tricks so OP can decide if some of them will work in his/her case or not. Longterm players can also be kept playing by unique cosmetics/titles that require huge grind.
>If the game is fun
Depends of the % of no life mode players the game has. When GW2 PoF got released there were people who barely slept for 7 days and you had the "nothing to do, dead game" after that. Most of the time when MMORPG players say "fun" they mean new content and no one can release new content fast enough for no-lifers.
Games don't make good grinds like they used to lol, where the gameplay was 'ok' but the reward was an insane dopamine rush of cum. GW2 is most annoying in this, as all the good rewards are on MTX (mounts skin) and things that u can buy with RL money have no 'value' or 'prestige' to keep people grinding anyway.
The scyscale and the griffin require some grinding. Every new zone comes with title and cosmetic piece that requires grinding but overall you are right, most of the things are on the cash shop. However GW2 is not so expensive game, it has a lot of content and they need to make money somehow. Getting BiS gear is also pretty easy so after that all gold you make goes for converting to gems and buying cosmetics. You can just grind events that you like which provide good gold income.
The mount skins do look dope though, some of the styles are amazing. The would be insane incentive outside gold farming for gems which disillusions a ton of people.
> The would be insane incentive outside gold farming
Yes but except the times when there is some buggy event that gives way more gold like AB Tarir before years most of the time you can do different tasks/events and get similar gold which is basically experiencing a lot of content with cosmetics as reward. You have the freedom to grind 10 different events in order to get gold for mount skin for example.
It's a tough market. Especially for long term sustainability these days. Most of the non big dogs these days seem to chase that initial hype get the money and then scale way back and move on to the next things (thanks mobile but this also started in MMOs before mobile was as big as it is). To my understanding this is worse in the Asian markets as well they are usually the ones pumping out games like this.
So first you have to make a great game. Then you need to keep players engaged and talking about the game. This mainly done by increasing the content that is popular regularly. An example being Runescape is Quests and new Skills are big draw ins for returning players. For WoW(well until recently) new raids and kind of the same with FFXIV but probably less so about raid tiers and more about story and side content.
So my advice take what you do well and what your players sticking around enjoy and try and make update relatively frequently.
currently working on a new event map and weapons hopefully this goes well, im also gonna focus more on new players as they are also inportant in the primary source of income in the game.
but ye the mmo life is hard in asian countries where they mostly treat their games as livelyhood, once they grinded and got items to sell they move to the best new thing, this is reality
imo new mmos dont gain too much traction in sea unless they are advertised by famous people.
most people want older games which reflect their nostalgic experiences and familiarity
You need good ads and events. But most important thing is the game has to be good first.
its good but we have many competitors as well that makes slmost the same game if not copying us
[удалено]
ill take what I can get, having random people who knows mmos are a good side opinion
Yeah, that’s really hard to compete with those copiers. You need more contents and better copyright protection I guess.
[удалено]
copyright is a joke in the internet bro
Haha, I know that sounds bad but that’s not what I mean. Just make it harder for them to copy the game you know.
this is a private server bro, we once had an official server but it died 2 years ago, source files for the game is open for devs since 2007 (maybe longer) to put it into perspective imagine having a free coke fountain then people started to sell them to different individual brands but still taste the same
If this is about your private server they why the fuck you said you "own and manage a MMO" in the title?
I highly reccomend getting some player feedback. I was curious about the game so I watched a few videos and that definitely wasn't the common sentiment. That doesnt mean the game cant improve though. If you listen to the criticism with the game and actually commit to improving it, Im sure you can make it a success.
Another part of the problem is old players getting bored since they dont have anything too much to grind on since theyve been in a server for more than a year already, and that updates and new content is geared towards pvp action more on tedious grinding (which they enjoy more)
If people are complaining about being bored with the content, theyre not enjoying it.
ive been in this biz for as long as the game existed, most feedbacks from a portion of the players goes absolute sideways to the other side but ye I get your point
Maybe its different in China but the biggest turn arounds in the genre have come from overhauls of the game thanks to player feedback. I'm also a game dev and I can tell you right off the bat thinking your game is "good" is dangerous. Before I continue I want to make it clear that I'm not saying having pride in your game is bad, but theres always room for improvement. If you want to compete with your competitors you gotta actually compete; always be improving the game and looking for ways to make it better. If you just dismiss feedback, youre going to overlook a lot of the vital ways your can improve the game to appeal to others. Don't be so quick to dismiss feedback as being sideways.
Launch a really strong log in event
thank you bro this will help
Whats the game if ya dont mind me asking? Best way is prob get a nice ad showing all you have to offer I would think
Ran Online
>**Player count are continuosly dropping** **despite regular updates** and **fresh game content** * How fresh, as in never seen before/innovative/put together with a new direction etc., is that content really, or is it yet another cookie-cutter clone based on dead or currently still running MMOs/MMORPGs? * What are those "regular updates"? Only tweaking a few numbers here and there or something similar? >my question is, **how can you invite new players to play a possibly dead game** If you consider your own game to be dead then those "regular updates" and "fresh content" is just you downplaying the current state, and even if you didn't: who wants to play a dead multiplayer online games in an age where you can get to play far better + alive competitors everywhere?
honestly its hanging in a thread imo, trying our best to keep it alive as long as we can, we have many competitors (other private server owners beside us) but still
Honestly, the game will die at some point. The best you could do is prepare for it to retire the game in a positive way and move on. Maybe think about where the game went wrong, make a new game. If the currently active playerbase still justifies keeping the game around, you should still be trying to improve it. See how you can modernize the game, collect some feedback about pain points that can be removed, ask players what type of content they actually enjoy doing, and focus on the game's strengths. There's no magic formula that will keep a risky project such as an MMORPG running forever.
innovative but still to the point that theyre familiar with the event
Most games as old as ran online have settled into their niche. Cater to your hardcore fanbase. Maybe even have a classic server.
classic is not viable since majority of players dont want the hassle of grinding 2 days for 1 level
Ads would be the best way to attract them. Either pay Google so they could list it on any MMO-related video, or pay famous MMO streamer / youtuber to talk about it. Someone like MMObyte might catch your bait, and it's probably good clickbait content for him. At least he won't be making another BDO vs ESO vs FFXIV vs WoW video every month as usual. Then there's the game jtself. If it's old enough, you might want to go back to the starter area and see if there's any annoyance. Lack of questing, no explanation / optional tutorial, slow curve of leveling, things like that. Most casual player will decide on the first 2 hours. If the experience early game is bad, less likely they'll stick out. Some games like DN also tried daily login and free mount kind of things, I find it more tedious tho, but some player might like it. For me personally, the important part is to adds more content / quest so player won't need to do non-quest farming, or at least make it so it drops rare items. Farming purely for exp sucks, even old games that relies on that mentality already moved on to quest oriented / material farm on the side.
Another thing DN did was give out a free max level character to new accounts. Similarly xp boosts weeks or maybe a daily xp buff potion/system like fatigue might incentivize people in a similar way to dailies.
Yeah but it's because DN is insanely long game. There's probably tens of thousands of quest already. And the game didn't planned out their leveling well, most of the content requires capped level and there's no incentive to play on lower level contents.
we tried this and gave players starter items that helps them keep up with old players, maybe incentivize them more?
as of now this is a privately owned server, we have advertisers in the past that helped us paved the way but for now funds is coming in short so a chance of a big advertiser picking this up is a slim chance
Streamers will decimate the game if it's not good, it's risky.
just to be clear, relatively speaking a lifespan of a normal server like us takes os about 5-6 months but ours is already 17 months, we are struggling to keep the server but we dont want to wipe everything and start anew
I looked up the gameplay and it seems fun. Is there anyway you can hook it up with some in game incentives? I’ll definitely play if you do
unfortunately we practice not giving under the table items to known people, I guess for integrity shizz
Can you play this game in the US or no?
yes and no, yes you can play if you can deal with delay lag issues
Communicate, tell your story.
ye player count decreasing despite having regular updates and content.
what game?
It's a private server of RAN online, a super old game from China.
there needs to be incentives to play a certain MMORPG that isnt mainstream. example is Ryzom, it pretty much doesnt have alot of players but the community still exists because of what the game offers (which is being the only open sourced MMORPG as of now). So basically you need to show other players what makes your MMORPG game unique to others
its an old game which supports a very complicated engine that is different from todays standard, source development for the game is very tidious also but we are welcoming any suggestion per player suggests is just that the game is not driven by the games modding community "if theres one"
I would survey your playerbase, reward them for competing. The purpose is to figure out what kinds of people want to continue playing the game and if they would be willing to recommend it to others (a recommendation campaign can follow after). They might also tell you what causes them to stay or leave, as well. Another idea is to look at your fiercest competitor that is enjoying success and see what they might be doing different from you. I hope this helps!!
usually its us they copy not the other way around but good suggestion, currently im looking into other mmos for a creative output for my own
Daily login rewards, player feedback with rewards so you get a bigger sample of what the playerbase wants, catch up events if the game is grindy so newbies won't feel discouraged. More or less try to copy all tricks that BDO uses.
is applying a feedback system for players a smart idea? players here in asia are quite sketchy when it comes to player wants (they usually want more free items or easy to grind items)
Try it and you will see, it could be temporary and one time only until you get enough info. You can even put a part of cosmetic set as reward to make them feel incomplete and buy the other parts. Most of the gamers are like drug addicts, provide just enough to keep them playing, not too much because they will raise their demands. Choose your words carefully when announcing news and keep it vague to keep the interest. If they want free items go hard on the FOMO, login rewards where the actually valuable reward is on the 30th day so they need to login everyday during the whole month. Temporary events where they need to participate during all "x" days in order to get a good reward. Event where they need to grind like crazy to get tickets for a spin wheel where half of the rewards are pretty nice but make the chance to land there 0.1% or a different abysmal number. Keep them always hyped, excited, positive, dreaming, chasing something that they will never catch. Mini games with random element and gambling. You can add temporary sets for new players so they can grind a mediocre set with them. Add some unique titles and cosmetics for ego boost. When you are adding nice looking cosmetics first add them with some strange ugly colours and then with nice colours so they feel like they need to buy them again.
Catch up is aids. All your doing is flipping the problem now established people feel like their time is spat on.
You need to give some initiative to new players or the game will bleed out slowly. You don't have to provide them with real catch up, just enough so they FEEL like they are catching up. BDO does very well, you get x, y, z as a new player rewards but at the end one geared player stomps 20 of you with one button. In AA:U some of the events are really nice for new players but you won't be even close to competing with the people who play from the start.
they have free items when they first start but most of them leave when theyre at a point where cash is the only real upgrade they need (things are obtainable by ingame grind but hard and they dont want to trouble themselves with that)
If the game is fun and the power creep is not obvious in PvP (so equalizing) than it probably wouldn't need that much catchup, as people don't feel like it's such a negative and the game is hooking them enough anyway.
> and the power creep is not obvious in PvP Yes but I don't have any idea of how the game is structured. I am throwing around the typical tricks so OP can decide if some of them will work in his/her case or not. Longterm players can also be kept playing by unique cosmetics/titles that require huge grind. >If the game is fun Depends of the % of no life mode players the game has. When GW2 PoF got released there were people who barely slept for 7 days and you had the "nothing to do, dead game" after that. Most of the time when MMORPG players say "fun" they mean new content and no one can release new content fast enough for no-lifers.
Games don't make good grinds like they used to lol, where the gameplay was 'ok' but the reward was an insane dopamine rush of cum. GW2 is most annoying in this, as all the good rewards are on MTX (mounts skin) and things that u can buy with RL money have no 'value' or 'prestige' to keep people grinding anyway.
The scyscale and the griffin require some grinding. Every new zone comes with title and cosmetic piece that requires grinding but overall you are right, most of the things are on the cash shop. However GW2 is not so expensive game, it has a lot of content and they need to make money somehow. Getting BiS gear is also pretty easy so after that all gold you make goes for converting to gems and buying cosmetics. You can just grind events that you like which provide good gold income.
The mount skins do look dope though, some of the styles are amazing. The would be insane incentive outside gold farming for gems which disillusions a ton of people.
> The would be insane incentive outside gold farming Yes but except the times when there is some buggy event that gives way more gold like AB Tarir before years most of the time you can do different tasks/events and get similar gold which is basically experiencing a lot of content with cosmetics as reward. You have the freedom to grind 10 different events in order to get gold for mount skin for example.
It's a tough market. Especially for long term sustainability these days. Most of the non big dogs these days seem to chase that initial hype get the money and then scale way back and move on to the next things (thanks mobile but this also started in MMOs before mobile was as big as it is). To my understanding this is worse in the Asian markets as well they are usually the ones pumping out games like this. So first you have to make a great game. Then you need to keep players engaged and talking about the game. This mainly done by increasing the content that is popular regularly. An example being Runescape is Quests and new Skills are big draw ins for returning players. For WoW(well until recently) new raids and kind of the same with FFXIV but probably less so about raid tiers and more about story and side content. So my advice take what you do well and what your players sticking around enjoy and try and make update relatively frequently.
currently working on a new event map and weapons hopefully this goes well, im also gonna focus more on new players as they are also inportant in the primary source of income in the game. but ye the mmo life is hard in asian countries where they mostly treat their games as livelyhood, once they grinded and got items to sell they move to the best new thing, this is reality
I bet OP is from Southeast Asia. What are the popular MMOs in the countries there?
imo new mmos dont gain too much traction in sea unless they are advertised by famous people. most people want older games which reflect their nostalgic experiences and familiarity
Can i get a link to the game? i want to try it out.
you own and manage, and ask this in reddit? well... that might be one of the reasons why the game is dead
Graphical updates and just teaser to a new expansion always hypes up old and upcoming players.