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Nyte

Add player counts to Hosted Phases.

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As of the current state of public RP, there's no longer well populated phases.

People want to join the place that has the most people. Let them do so. The argument I heard was that then all the smaller phases would become overshadowed, but in the last months I've barely seen the majority of phases exceed five, let alone ten players.

 

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All that not having a phase counter does is make it so that every phase is difficult to find RP in.

It just makes it incredibly annoying to find RP in phases that are actually active in that moment. It doesn't help how the phase hoster lists phases that only advertised once hours ago, so you just end up with a bloated list of phases with nobody in them.

Regardless of whether you have a player counter or not people are going to try to shuffle into a phase with the most players in it using /who on the zone the phase is in. A player counter just makes it easier for players to find RP.

Edited by Sindbad

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On 10/19/2022 at 3:03 PM, Sindbad said:

All that not having a phase counter does is make it so that every phase is difficult to find RP in.

It just makes it incredibly annoying to find RP in phases that are actually active in that moment. It doesn't help how the phase hoster lists phases that only advertised once hours ago, so you just end up with a bloated list of phases with nobody in them.

Regardless of whether you have a player counter or not people are going to try to shuffle into a phase with the most players in it using /who on the zone the phase is in. A player counter just makes it easier for players to find RP.

I disagree. Adding a player counter to hosted phases will help people find RP a lot more.
Imagine typing ".ph o" and seeing beside each of these phases, the current amount of players in them. You'd straight away know which phase is the most and least active without needing to join each individual phase to then check, run around, /who, scan for RP or track humanoids to get a remote idea of how active the phase is.

 

The argument I heard against this is that one or two phases will just dominate then, because people attract people. I'd say that's not really a bad thing, as the current state of RP has lots of empty phases cluttering the search, and the most active among those rarely see more than 10 players.

 

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On 10/21/2022 at 9:30 AM, Nyte said:

I disagree. Adding a player counter to hosted phases will help people find RP a lot more.
Imagine typing ".ph o" and seeing beside each of these phases, the current amount of players in them. You'd straight away know which phase is the most and least active without needing to join each individual phase to then check, run around, /who, scan for RP or track humanoids to get a remote idea of how active the phase is.

 

The argument I heard against this is that one or two phases will just dominate then, because people attract people. I'd say that's not really a bad thing, as the current state of RP has lots of empty phases cluttering the search, and the most active among those rarely see more than 10 players.

 

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
 

I agreed that adding a phase counter would be a good thing and it'd improve roleplay for everyone.

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On 12/5/2022 at 11:33 AM, Sindbad said:

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
 

I agreed that adding a phase counter would be a good thing and it'd improve roleplay for everyone.

My apologies. Thank you for explaining.

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I have been against this back when it was actually an issue, but at the moment, where public RP is basically nonexistent... might be needed.

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This addition can only be a good thing given the state of public RP.

Sindbad hits the nail on the head here. If anything, a lack of this feature makes finding populated areas for RP more tiresome and arduous for players and doesn't actually seem to be helping smaller phases find a footing, as currently no one is really finding a footing because players just join phases to look for players, find barely any players and then proceed to leave.

I've recently helped introduce a few old friends who were into WoWRP back in the day onto epsilon and they haven't all stuck around for one reason or another, but the thing I think stopped them from getting the best experience, and they thing that they all seemed to agree on that the server needed was this. It makes it much easier to actually engage with the server on a public level when you know where the players are and when they can engage with people rather than hit a brick wall.

As it stands the only real way to find RP is to somehow find your way into an established, active group of roleplayers either by simply asking around or checking ads on the Discord which is great, those definitely have a place but currently public RP with randoms doesn't seem to, unfortunately. There is really no easy way to engage with people in a public space In-character.

Adding a Player Counter to phases could help fix that problem.

Edited by Jordy

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I think the issue should be resolved by unlisting phases that have no population, or even less than 2 or 3 to avoid phases that have an AFK guy parked in it just to keep it hosted. A population counter will just give an unfair edge to the flavour of the week. I'm sure some of you remember servers that did have this counter and how low quality the top phases were while new and how in some extreme cases it enabled certain people in the community to exact undeserved influence over the server just by having the luck of being the phase with the highest number of people long enough, innovative ideas had no chance in hell to compete. 

I am however, still in favour of having the .ph pop command available to anyone once they're in the phase.

Edited by Miles

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This won't solve anything that people think it'll fix. The command did no good back on RPH or Divinity-X.


9kTXiSH.png

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On 1/25/2023 at 3:45 PM, Miles said:

I think the issue should be resolved by unlisting phases that have no population, or even less than 2 or 3 to avoid phases that have an AFK guy parked in it just to keep it hosted. A population counter will just give an unfair edge to the flavour of the week. I'm sure some of you remember servers that did have this counter and how low quality the top phases were while new and how in some extreme cases it enabled certain people in the community to exact undeserved influence over the server just by having the luck of being the phase with the highest number of people long enough, innovative ideas had no chance in hell to compete. 

I am however, still in favour of having the .ph pop command available to anyone once they're in the phase.

A population counter would just remove a few steps what players do anyway. Enter a phase. /who. Track humanoids. Scan for RP. The idea that we need to withhold this information to prevent anything getting an 'edge' is unfounded in my opinion.

Edited by Nyte

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On 2/4/2023 at 11:41 AM, Nyte said:

A population counter would just remove a few steps what players do anyway. Enter a phase. /who. Track humanoids. Scan for RP. The idea that we need to withhold this information to prevent anything getting an 'edge' is unfounded in my opinion.

I know it looks like a good idea, but having played on Divinity back in the day I know what it turns into once implemented. The highest population phase gets players. The current method requires phase owners to put effort into advertising their phase and providing a degree of quality. I've suggested implementing some kind of server-run IC hub in the past, With my idea of a solution being that phases in turn can focus more on niches and more story-driven content while this hub can serve as a nice little place for casual vibes and meeting new characters.

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22 hours ago, Miles said:

I know it looks like a good idea, but having played on Divinity back in the day I know what it turns into once implemented. The highest population phase gets players. The current method requires phase owners to put effort into advertising their phase and providing a degree of quality. I've suggested implementing some kind of server-run IC hub in the past, With my idea of a solution being that phases in turn can focus more on niches and more story-driven content while this hub can serve as a nice little place for casual vibes and meeting new characters.

I personally don't think a 255 character limit phase advert is what sets any phase aside from the other. What effort is there one could put in to that? Nor do I think even the quality of a phase should matter when player interactions should be top priority. More so, when given the option, people will still choose a higher quality of DM/Staff/Builds over low effort. And finally, what you describe happening, I do not see as a negative. Highest population gets the players? Good, lots of players to interact with. As opposed to being scattered around 10 hosted phases that each hold a fraction population.

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The server should not have to cater to those who think more about numbers than 'does this make sense for my character to be here?'

Edited by Mithaniel

9kTXiSH.png

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On 2/7/2023 at 12:38 PM, Mithaniel said:

The server should not have to cater to those who think more about numbers than 'does this make sense for my character to be here?'

Nothing about the suggestion would prevent characters from asking themselves this.

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Pretty much agree with what Nyte is saying here.

I was on both RPH and Divinity-X while these suggested changes were running, and at the very least it was much easier to find RP on those servers whatever you think of the quality. I would much rather have a server with any level of quality public RP open than one without, because at the very least RP would be happening where I could see it, and where I could join it easily.

Divinity-X has a phase list system that ranked phases based on population, that's how you knew where all the RP was.
RPH (I believe) had a similar system to Epsilon, but both showed the population and removed inactive phases from the list. As far as I'm aware, once you toggle the advert on, it doesn't leave until the server restarts, which is a problem.

Literally how would this change the current situation for people who didn't like large scale public RP because of a percieved low quality? Just don't go to these phases. We already don't, because they're all empty, because it's so hard to find people RPing, we spend most of our time looking.

On 2/7/2023 at 11:38 AM, Mithaniel said:

The server should not have to cater to those who think more about numbers than 'does this make sense for my character to be here?'

 

On 2/5/2023 at 5:11 PM, Miles said:

The highest population phase gets players.

The problem with this is that you guys are coming at this through the perceptions of smaller time phase owners alone without considering how the lack of this effects people who are just looking for RP.

The phase overview system is currently a bit of a mess, with phases on the list that currently have no one advertising for them, all while including things like object malls, and spell malls which I'm never going to RP in. These building phases shouldn't be advertising in the same places as RP phases for a start, and empty phases that haven't advertised in the past [X] Minutes (Ten half an hour, your milage varies) should be removed from that overview list automatically. The fact that we can't see the population of any given phase is only one thing that's a kink in the works right now, but I think it's still a valid one.

Even if this doesn't have the outcome people are hoping for, with the current state of public RP, it's not gonna do any harm.

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Adding my +1 here.

Seriously tired of seeing dead phases still on the hosted list and not knowing that they are. This would just be an overall better QoL for the server imo.

Edited by Malvolio

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It's not a bad idea. We had this really early on with Echeloned-WoW and then Divinity (the servers that predate Epsilon). It was removed on Divinity because people would only go to the most populated phase..and therefore any other phase that was active/being hosted weren't getting anyone else within them.

 

And then the same situation kinda happens. This time you'd have a majorly populated phase..and any other phase won't have an entirely large amount of players.

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