A Serious Need For Players

Joined: Posts: -19

Dreamscapes is dying.

Seriously, when was the last time anybody was in a huge group? Or saw over 6 people on at once? I've been on during the day, during a weekend night, and the who list is maybe 3 people, at the most.

Not even 4 years ago, you could log on any time, day or night, and find at LEAST a few people.

Sapphar is on in the mornings, Briggs, and Jiann are on (for me) late night, to late morning, Oberon during the day, Astrof, Averon, Crosis, Bellamin, and Froldorf early to late evenings. That's it. All the rest kind of scattered here and there.

I know we were supposed to wait until play test was over to advertise, but I seriously don't think we'll make it to then. The player base is already suffering. Anybody who wants to get ANYWHERE roles up a melee class, which can solo. There is one active Druid, Oberon. And various little mages running around. A handful of Priests. One semi active Light Paladin, NO Grey Paladins, and the Assassins and Dark Paladins used to have tons of members, now it's hard to find anybody but the Guild Masters

Now, my suggestion is this: We start advertising NOW, quickly, as soon as possible. Get our name going on The Mud Slide, The Mud Connector, and any other Mud Database. We seriously need players. Badly.

Immortals: Please make this a priorty. I know you guys are short handed right now, and busy with code changes, and the like, but please consider a request from a long time player, who's been to other MUDS and been bored. Please advertise.

Players: Recruit if you can. If you know people who want to play, tell them about Dreamscapes, and let em try it out. Take time to show them the ropes of this MUD and help them out. Also, if a new player has any questions, please answer them honestly and help them as best you can. Even if it's a "lol n00b wtf lrn 2 ply ur class" kind of player, suggest they lose the leet spelling, and conform to the style of the MUD. Also, the occasional Power Rank, and gear grabbing favors do wonders for making new players into regulars.

I know we've made a LOT of steps to make the MUD more newbie friendly. One thing I need to add is we lose our sense of elitism. This community is quick to make new players feel very silly when they don't know the lingo, or where to hunt, or what to get, a few short OOC nicely written tells will help this greatly. I can't tell you how much easier it would have been for me and my first character if somebody said

so-and-so tells you, Please ask "What is your rank" and not "What is your level"

Instead of "What's a level?"

Guild Masters And Mistresses: Your patience will be tested. As of now, all of our playing community has been on DS for a few years. We all know what to do, where to go, how to RP. You're going to meet players who don't have a damned clue how to do what with who, or why. Take time to show, teach, and listen.

I miss the days when the MUD was much more lively. Let's get some of that back.

Joined: Posts: -19

*shrugs*
We're still here, just can't be online all the time; eh?
The weekends normally have a good number of people, you should have seen what it was like when I first started playing.

Joined: Posts: -19

Astrof wrote:

you should have seen what it was like when I first started playing.

That's exactly my point. I've been playing since 2000, and I can remember the who list always being huge. I remember when I had a Druid seeing at least 3 Druids online at any given time. I remember seeing a good number of people online at 5AM Eastern Time. Those were the days.

Our community has dwindled down into almost nothing, yeah, we're here, but not really. We might seriously be one of the lowest volume MUDS online right now. Only personal server MUDS see less numbers than us.

We really need to pump some life back into thise community.

Joined: Posts: -19

Go in and vote for DS on the links at the main page (as Ciroth mentioned). Mudmagic lets you vote once per day for instance. If we can get the site high enough there, might attract new players (even experienced ones).

Joined: Posts: -19

Ciroth wrote:

I remember when I had a Druid seeing at least 3 Druids online at any given time..

Hm. Whenever I'm online I always see at least one druid.

All jokes aside, I think voting on the various mudsites and conscripting our friends are probably the most effective ways of raising the playerbase.

However with that in mind, we ARE still in P-testing and we can't really expect a huge ammount of players. I'd say the player base has been better, but it's also been significantly worse. Probably just on a cycle, something like scientists say about ice ages. So we have to keep doing our part and stick with it. If we get tired because there aren't any players, what are the new folks going to think when they get here and read this post and don't see any of the people mentioned? *laugh* that would be ironic.

~Oberon Skye, LifeKeeper

Joined: Posts: -19

Well, here's a state of the server update...

It's Friday night, 8:15PM Eastern time.

I am the ONLY person online right now.

It's 5:15 on the west coast, it's 1AM in the UK.

This is prime time, and I'm the ONLY person online? That used to be unheard of.

I suggest a serious, guerellia campain. We vote our asses off. We post postive reviews, we ask for other players to check us out.

I really do think if things keep going this way, we'll never see the end of p-test.

Joined: Posts: -19

The best way to attract new players is to vote on MudMagic, I can see the statistics and this is showing clearly as the best way to get new people at least looking at the games web site.

That said we are in a dip at the moment as it is obvious we are close to leaving our 10 year long test phase and finally leaving 'ptest' Razz

So, not many new people will join us knowing that in a few months their character will be deleted.

The aim of DS2 was to improve server uptimes, and this has been achieved (5 days instead of 5 hours), it was in fact a code rewrite from the circle 3.1 codebase up. During the process of reaching this goal we also decided to redo quite a lot of other stuff, as you are all aware. We are still one major change outstanding (rewriting the character creation process) and that is a big one. We are working on this at the moment but it takes more then just me and people have lives, as do I !

Hang on in there, attract hardy new players if you can, even click a few banner adds to give us revenue to advertise big style, but rest assured DreamScapes is moving forward and is likely to spawn an even bigger project in 2007, once DS2 is 'completed' Wink

Joined: Posts: -19

Bigger projects...
Excellent Mr. Green

Joined: Posts: -19

I read that part about a "bigger project" and I got all tingly on the back on my neck Very Happy

Lets all vote on any mud site we can find! I am going to go write a review or two on a few different mud sites right now. I'd love to see DS back to the point where, at any time, you can find 10-15 people online.

God, I'd love to see guild wars, roleplaying, and a working player economy!!!

Joined: Posts: -19

I have just done a quick sum of all the listed members of each guild on the main webpage, and this gives a grand total of 52 players!

Where is everyone? At the moment, there is a huge surge in online roleplaying gaming, so why are there not more members of this realm?

Joined: Posts: -19

DS has known better times. It's funny: the game is improving but the players are leaving/not showing up.

I don't know if there's a general decline in interest for MUDs, what with WoW and games like that, but DS has suffered a lack of players for years now.

There's usually a dedicated group of players who do show up (and if I may be so arrogant I count myself as one of them) for long times but even they sometimes stop playing temporarily (like me, right now) or quit completely. I know a lot of players stopped because the game isn't developing quickly enough and at times can really lack RP.

Then again, DS is the most beautiful MUD I've ever seen and I wouldn't think of playing a different one. =P It has very interesting zones and mechanics, and even the hack n' slash types have plenty of cool things to look out for. It's really the players and the developers that make/break the game though. It goes in phases, and currently it seems to be breaking.

Joined: Posts: -19

The reason I'M not around, is because my HD got damaged, and the computer can no longer read the OS. I don't have the money to afford to fix it, replace it, or get a new computer.

However, when I WAS around, there was barely anybody else. I have plently of 1-player console games to get through, and those are more fun than solo grinding on DS.

While it IS true, there is WoW, and games like it, MUDS are not dying by any means. There are plently of other MUDS that see a lot of players, some of them are even based on popular anime shows like Dragon Ball Z, and Naruto. Even classic style Fantasy setting MUDS can see tons of players. They just aren't as detailed as DS.

Besides that, the consoles are also a big factor. BioShock is out, A new Naurto game is out. Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is due out in less than a month, so is Guitar Hero III. This December, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is coming out. This Febuary Unreal Tournament III is due out.
Both the Wii and the 360 have weekly classic games available for download.

Online games aren't dying, but DS sure is. It's a kind of sad to see.

Joined: Posts: -19

I recently showed a real life friend around DS. While not entirely new to muds, he wasn't the most experienced, and he was certainly new to DS.

He had an absolutely horrible time starting out. He tried to start out his first character on his own and the second with me. Here are his observations... please be objective when reading them; we're all pretty slanted towards DS but feedback time isn't the time for bias.

1. "The character creation process is really tedious and vague." I know a lot of work went into this, but it's created from a veteran DS player's standpoint rather than a rookie or experienced players new to DS. This process can certainly be streamlined and clarified quite a bit, from the first registration all the way to the stat selection. It's the first impression, and this process ideally should be an easy and quick one.

2. "Once I was in, I wasn't sure what they wanted me to do." DS is very ethos-based, so much so that you need a specific ethos to join at least half of the guilds. Someone new to DS may not grasp the importance of this right away, and instead prefer to wander around getting a feel for the mud and what it has to offer before selecting an ethos. If an ethos must be selected right away, wouldn't it be easier to just go ahead and make it part of the character creation?

3. "There's too much insider info." I had to sit down and explain to my friend about Sehaelas, Keltrath, Diabolus and Tyr and how they were either evil, good or neutral, that he shouldn't go into Sehaelas if he was evil, that Mad Mervin would give him a bunch of stuff if he said gimmee, that a lot of his skills would be guild-level based "What do you mean guild level based? How's that different from my regular level?" so he should probably join a guild asap instead of going 5 levels or whatever in adventurer, that killing too much evil would stray him and he'd stop regenerating hp, mv and mp ("Ok... how can I tell what's good and evil? You can't tell just by looking." Telling him to kill it to find out felt a little ridiculous.), explaining the complexities of factions, etc etc etc. We really need some sort of newbie guide to help players of ALL sorts before they go into the game, because he's right. There's a lot that we veterans take for granted as far as knowledge goes, which can make or break the experience for someone new. I wouldn't take any of this AWAY... I would just make the information readily available on the website, or in a helpfile.

4. "I suck at riddles!" lol I like this quest. I just think it's funny how everyone who does this for the first time says the same thing Wink

That's as far as he's gotten so far. I don't know if he'll keep playing, to be honest. He was doing his best, but I think that DS was probably operating on too intuitive a level and/or making too many assumptions about the depth and breadth of new players' knowledge for him to really enjoy the game the way he otherwise would have. Remember too, a lot of us joined DS back when things were a whole lot simpler... the most complicated part of DS was rolling stats, and that was more tedious than anything else, and you got to pick your guild and ethos right away instead of having to wander around trying to figure out what everything was before you were able to do much with your character.

DS is great and gorgeous and everything else, but despite the staff's best efforts, it still has a long way to go before it can be considered anything close to newbie friendly. Until this is changed, the playerbase will have to keep relying on the same group of veteran players with maybe one or two new additions every once in a blue moon. And this change must be done within the game itself... we cannot rely on veteran players to make the transition easier, even though I know we all do our best. The game itself must support new players, whether it's in the form of website guides, heavily expanded help files, a revamping of the character generation process, going back to the old enroll-when-you-roll guild system or whatever.

I'm happy to do whatever is needed to help with this, such as putting together help files or web pages. I'm sure everyone else here would be too.

T.

Joined: Posts: -19

I think I can help point out one of the major problems with Dreamscapes. It has no history. No history that any new player knows about, anyway.

All of the great features that Dreamscapes has are worth nothing if nobody is motivated to learn what they are. People want to be part of something. They want to be the next chapter of the story. But unless you have played Dreamscapes for years and were a part of what went on when there was an active playerbase, there is nothing to be a part of.

New players have to decide what guild to join. Who are the Fighters? What have they done? Why would I want to be a part of them?

Tarris explained the difficulty of learning how the faction system works. If there were tales and legends and histories of events, battles, and politics on the website, then people would have an idea when they create their own character.

People also want to play a game where they can make an impact. This isn't like a video game, you can't beat the final boss, high five yourself and try another one. Great characters should be rewarded with the greatest stories. That way someone is working for something. They are becoming a part of the history of the game with every decision they make.

As it is, there is little motivation for a new character to fight through the early frustrations of learning the ins and outs of a new world. There is nothing to become a part of.

I don't want to take away from the great world that Dreamscapes is. Many people have mentioned on these boards how much they like the world, the detail, the aesthetics but there needs to be more.

Tarach'Knor. That's a cool name, what's happened there?

Diabolus. That sounds pretty sinister. Who built it? Who has lived there?

Tyr. What's that? Who has fought and died there?

These are the next steps in building Dreamscapes into the place it can be.

Joined: Posts: -19

I too am relatively new to DS. I started for the first time in mid-April, so a lot of the memories are fresh. I'd certainly never as gotten as far as I have if I didn't have have a friend I knew here before trying it.

I had to wipe one character immediately because I liked my first set of rolled stats, and thought I'd saved them. That part confused me. I didn't have a major issue with the ethos system, since a lot of the guilds were fairly intuitive on what ethos they should be. I wasted a lot of time with that first character gaining levels in adventurer, because I thought I had to be a certain level in adventurer before I could join a 'real' guild. The biggest problem I had was later with the second incarnation of this character in trying to join a guild.

On the rogue quest, I couldn't find the third npc I needed for almost a week. I'd seen him initially, but the guild npc didn't register it, and when I tried to go back to see what I was missing the initial message it had given me was gone. So I couldn't redo that portion of the quest, and it became incredibly frustrating. I tried to go into assassins at that point, but again the game wouldn't let me. I almost quit, but luckily, I caught Athanar online one day and he helped me out.

I think more detailed explanations of things would help out majorly in the character creation process. But that's kind of moot if more players aren't introduced... almost every 'new' character I've seen has either played before, or like me, been friends with someone who already played. And that unfortunately, is a far tougher fix.