Inactivity’s Roots & the Issue with Loka

[NerdieBirdieYT]

Don’t question the title Idek man

One of the issues many of Towns throughout Loka face is simple: inactivity.

Players move on. Town level 25 is achieved. Sometimes, strict Town rules prevent players from building freely in the Town. Time goes on.

Let’s get this out of the way first: we can’t force people to be active. Interests change. People move on, and that’s natural. What we can focus on, however, is sparking enough interest to provide activities for the players who are interested in being an active Town member.

In my experience, playing Loka as a non-PvP-oriented player is a very strange experience. I love the server, I really do. If I were better at building and/or PvP, I think I’d enjoy it a lot more. NerdNation has never been and will likely never be focused on PvP, so one of the issues my Town has is finding things for members to do.

The Town Jobs are essentially the core of what we push our players to do right now. That’s all well and good; it sends players across many continents to gather resources of various difficulties, but it can get extremely repetitive.* Builds are encouraged inside our cave (which, again, is more than some Towns allow), but not on the surface, limiting build variety/creativity greatly. Mob farms are not allowed, so redstone folks don’t have much to work with (especially considering the hopper limit).

So, seriously, if you’re not here for the Conquest, what else is there to do besides gather resources? Is it a big surprise so many Towns struggle to keep players interested, especially after they’ve hit level 25?

What we’re left with is large Towns that specialize in one aspect, with members that only log on for one purpose. Silverhand does PvP/Conquest. Why are they not super active? They have done the PvP they came to do for this month. Elrohir does building/RP. Why has their big boom from a while back dwindled down? They’ve done the building their players came to do. Of course, both these Towns are simply opinionated examples, and I love both of them.

Loka is in desperate need of fresh and fundamental PvE content. This relates back to a previous suggestion regarding new, replayable PvE functions. Like the idea or not, the point remains that those who come to Loka for any reason other than PvP and building do not have much to play with. The Job system is great, but repetitive. As we prepare for Jobs 2.0, it’s important to keep replayability in mind. How can we use Jobs to spark interest and create missions, not just simple fetch quests?

Aside from Jobs, how can the PvE team develop something that PvE players want to return to over and over again? Perhaps a weekly dungeon with a dangerous boss that drops special treasure? Maybe a custom End dimension that is fun to raid/loot, as the vanilla End Islands are? New crops? A way for Towns to compete in something aside from just Conquest?

I don’t have the answers, but as a player who wholeheartedly loves the server,** I want to address this issue, because as I keep playing, the PvE content, or lack thereof, becomes more and more visible of a problem.

What are your thoughts? What do you want to see in terms of new content? How does your Town encourage activity?

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* This, in my opinion, is a repeated issue across Loka. Even server-wide event Jobs are, for the most part, fetch quests. There’s only so many times you can do a “fetch quest”-type Job and have fun with it. I know many of the long-term Lokans find the event Jobs to be repetitive and more chore-like than fun. I’m looking forward to the promised Jobs 2.0 as well as future updates from the PvE team.

** This post is probably the harshest I’ve been towards the server in general. I want to be perfectly clear that I love this server. I have played many hours here. My community of NerdNation is centered around this server. I have made over 35 videos regarding the server, and have no plans to stop. I would not do any of that if I thought this server was boring or low-quality. The staff team is great, and it’s not like Loka is a full-time job for anyone. What we have is amazing, and these criticisms are solely to improve upon the Loka experience.

 

[SilentStormSix]

Incentive for conquest
Also some people have lives outside of Minecraft, unlike me. lmao

 

[Obstinance]

Loka is a server where the main objective is centered around PvP. No matter what you add for PvE everything is going to come back to conquest which is PvP oriented. Accommodating players who don't like to PvP is good. However Loka is a conquest server and to conquer you have to fight. Adding side things like PvE updates and new quests will only stall you a little bit longer from the main aspect of the server. It's not normal towny.


Again, obviously accommodating people who would prefer not to engage in conquest (even though it's the main gamemode) or PvP is good and adding extra things to do would be fun for everyone, but I don't think it's going to solve the player count issue.

Elrohirs big boom went down because people left and their main rp/owner is deployed in the army. Silverhands leader is now big daddy P and doesn't have time to craft.

 

[NerdieBirdieYT]

Loka is a server where the main objective is centered around PvP. No matter what you add for PvE everything is going to come back to conquest which is PvP oriented. Accommodating players who don't like to PvP is good. However Loka is a conquest server and to conquer you have to fight. Adding side things like PvE updates and new quests will only stall you a little bit longer from the main aspect of the server. It's not normal towny.


Again, obviously accommodating people who would prefer not to engage in conquest (even though it's the main gamemode) or PvP is good and adding extra things to do would be fun for everyone, but I don't think it's going to solve the player count issue.

Elrohirs big boom went down because people left and their main rp/owner is deployed in the army. Silverhands leader is now big daddy P and doesn't have time to craft.

Absolutely agree that Loka’s main focus in Conquest, and I by no means am trying to change that. I do however think that other aspects can be greatly improved upon while staying true to the Conquest base. Conquest is arguably well enough developed already, excusing some minor changes, that other areas of the server can be developed and focused on more.

Again, Conquest is and should remain the central point of the server, but there should be more to do when a battle isn’t going on. Loads of players only log in when there is a battle. Obviously online players will increase in war time, but there just isn’t enough content outside Conquest to give those players a big incentive to return to Loka before the next fight.

 

[Sparky___]

Good points thus far, though Silverhand isn't exactly a good example since the core members of that town are deployed on Ascalon, but I still think that situation is true about smaller towns who struggle to get any sort of Conquest (perhaps as a result of everyone lumping into alliances for Balak or some of the stuff being discussed in the Rivina thread or maybe even other stuffs). Pesonally, pretty happy that a thread like this has been brought up, because it could very easily be a launching point for discussion about various other issues/lack of features that are limiting player activity, so please do share your own thoughts!

 

[Skuhoo]

Lots of PvE content is actively being worked on, including a new, much more feature-rich job system designed explicitly to allow for much more in depth quests than the basic "gather x item" stuff we have now. It's not a distant future update either; it's far into development.

 

[ReformedPheonix]

To be honest, the pvp community on loka is much larger and so conquest is a far bigger pritority. I think before we worry about PvE we need to address the fundamental conquest issues.

 

[koi0001]

Lots of PvE content is actively being worked on,

Honestly I'd appreciate if the community was more in the loop with where some projects stand. I don't really have any problem with being patient for new content for Loka as I can appreciate it takes time for things to update that are outside of the admins control but it feels sometimes as if things have been forgotten as there's just no immediate discussion.

An example of this is the ocean overhaul. I'll admit I'm hardly able to be as active on Loka as I'd like but I still like to watch it from a distance when possible; and from a distance it was difficult to deduce what exactly ever happened with this overhaul without messaging staff. I'm sure most players were still wondering about this and to be able to have a central forum post which had minor updates like where they stand with certain plans would be useful. Even if there is no change with the situation it's still nice to know what's going on

Tl;Dr - I know there's a lot of stuff in the works but minor updates are appreciated even if it's just saying they're waiting for external factors

 

[Grubul]

It's not just loka that is at fault.

Minecraft as a game requires dedication. A server like this requires even more dedication of our time.

People just look for quicker fun to jump in and out without any responsibilities or chores. Like minigames.
Real life does take quite a toll on most of us that have left.

 

[Grubul]

Honestly I'd appreciate if the community was more in the loop with where some projects stand.

RuneScape became more respected when the monthly behind the scenes articles came back. Knowing what's coming, Even for a title and how close it is to release can cheer people up.

 

[Magpieman]

Like Skuhoo said we have been working on jobs 2.0, which blows the current job system out of the water. This should allow both the server and players to create all kinds of cool content and stories for others. There are other smaller PvE features in the pipeline too, which should add some more cool content for peeps.

While we haven't started development on it yet, one of the major things we want to tackle once jobs 2.0 is out is town progression. The aim is to provide goals to work towards once a town reaches level 25 as well as improving the experience on the way to level 25.

The other way we will be tackling progression is a full revamp of our achievements. We're talking in the region of 1000 achievements with some rewards sprinkled in there too.

We had wanted to have a bunch of this out by now, but 1.13 breaking/changing so much has knocked development back a good number of months.

The only thing you bring up that I don't have answers for is the building issue. I know many people take great pride in their town and don't trust those who are sub-par builders to create things in town. It's almost as if we need some kind of instanced area for individual player housing or islands that towns could claim and build on. Would be good to hear if others have ideas about this.

In terms of communicating everything, it is something we do try to do, but it isn't easy. It takes a surprising amount of time to get large amounts of information out to the community regularly. Even the update posts/patch notes can be a big time sink. That time is then not spent on development, so it's a tough balance to get right. Then there is the issue of getting people hyped for things that we have to either delay or scrap entirely. So we prefer to tell people once a feature is far enough in development that we are confident it will make it to the live server. I do like the idea of a blog/article where we can give people a rough idea of what we have been working on in the background. I am wary of committing to something like that, but perhaps if it's every other month we could keep up with it. We are planning to do a State of the Server very soon, so hopefully, that will help keep everyone in the loop.

 

[koi0001]

We are planning to do a State of the Server very soon, so hopefully, that will help keep everyone in the loop.

Was actually going to mention state of the servers, I was going to say that even a monthly or every other month scheduled update which followed podcast template would be worthwhile.

 

[NerdieBirdieYT]

Like Skuhoo said we have been working on jobs 2.0, which blows the current job system out of the water. This should allow both the server and players to create all kinds of cool content and stories for others. There are other smaller PvE features in the pipeline too, which should add some more cool content for peeps.

While we haven't started development on it yet, one of the major things we want to tackle once jobs 2.0 is out is town progression. The aim is to provide goals to work towards once a town reaches level 25 as well as improving the experience on the way to level 25.

The other way we will be tackling progression is a full revamp of our achievements. We're talking in the region of 1000 achievements with some rewards sprinkled in there too.

We had wanted to have a bunch of this out by now, but 1.13 breaking/changing so much has knocked development back a good number of months.

Very excited for all of this!

The only thing you bring up that I don't have answers for is the building issue. I know many people take great pride in their town and don't trust those who are sub-par builders to create things in town. It's almost as if we need some kind of instanced area for individual player housing or islands that towns could claim and build on. Would be good to hear if others have ideas about this.

I ran into the same issue while thinking of solutions. We can't exactly just allow free building wherever, or easily fix the "problem" of Town owners who don't allow regular building. The broken, partial solution I could think up quickly was some sort of "other world" where Townspeople can build in a realm entirely dedicated to their Town, but would perhaps be unable to store any items there? I don't know, really, it's a rough issue. Honestly I feel it can be waited on addressing, as PvE and Conquest patches should come before worrying about creative building.

In terms of communicating everything, it is something we do try to do, but it isn't easy. It takes a surprising amount of time to get large amounts of information out to the community regularly. Even the update posts/patch notes can be a big time sink. That time is then not spent on development, so it's a tough balance to get right. Then there is the issue of getting people hyped for things that we have to either delay or scrap entirely. So we prefer to tell people once a feature is far enough in development that we are confident it will make it to the live server. I do like the idea of a blog/article where we can give people a rough idea of what we have been working on in the background. I am wary of committing to something like that, but perhaps if it's every other month we could keep up with it. We are planning to do a State of the Server very soon, so hopefully, that will help keep everyone in the loop.

Echoing Mag here, we (the Web-Art team) are certainly looking into better ways to keep y'all in the loop. Blog posts and articles should start coming out after we revamp the website. As Mag said, announcing features TOO far in advance is problematic, but I do feel staff could do better in terms of expressing what's being actively worked on. I've often heard rumors of updates that I didn't know were coming, even as someone who pays very close attention to the forums and the Discord. Again, we are working on this and hope to clear some things up in the form of articles and whatever else staff has planned.

Another part of this - in my opinion - is that staff can have so many ideas that we as players aren't sure what to expect next. Things like the Market update, the Jobs update, the 1.14 update, the 1.13 feature update, the Town progression update - all these updates have been confirmed by staff, but we don't have a solid knowledge or guess of in what order these will arrive, or how far off they are. Personally, I hear things from individuals during random conversations that give me clues, but to the average player, this is all lost in a mess of "Coming Soon".

I would like to see a State of the Server, for sure, and I hope we of the Web-Art team can help to better organize all the fantastic plans that staff puts out there and give the community a better understanding of what's going on. Be sure to leave us some tips and suggestions for how exactly to do that!

 

[NerdieBirdieYT]

The only thing you bring up that I don't have answers for is the building issue. I know many people take great pride in their town and don't trust those who are sub-par builders to create things in town. It's almost as if we need some kind of instanced area for individual player housing or islands that towns could claim and build on. Would be good to hear if others have ideas about this.

Mindblaster007:
“I was thinking about this a bit and I think I found a solution. What if each town had access to a “portal”, like the kind you use to warp around your town with. This portal would teleport a town member to a town-shared “world”. Here the town members can play with Redstone, build new builds, and much more. This would allow the “Builders” to build something, show it to the Owner(s) of their town, and if the Owner(s) like it they can allow the member to build it in the town. Each “world” would allow a player to use GMC and World Edit to build with and no items would be allowed to go in and out of the portals.”

 

[FamilyTuber]

Yes! I'm actually very excited to see how Jobs 2.0 will transform the custom quests we can do as a town as long with the server as a whole! NN will definitely benefit from this as we're always doing custom stuff within our community. I do believe that we don't have a lack of ideas to create more exciting PvE content since the devs already have so much in mind to work on. The true problem is time.

 

[MasonMcBadbat]

This discussion reminds me of a time last year when Pac and I had this big goal to make DD a living breathing city with player shops and tons of job quests and a guild system and everything we could think of to promote activity within the city walls.

What little we completed showed minimal returns and it didn't take us long to realize the effort put in did not match the utility we got out. But I think we were looking at this the wrong way. In some convo with crypt a while back, when we were having issues getting projects finished, he had recommended "build nights" with one or two large bursts of activity in the week instead of spreading out the time with one, maybe two members online at any given time. The advice proved helpful and we had the first day of real progress in a while, finished in record time and had an enjoyable time doing it.

Shorter bursts of activity and good content might be the way to go on a server scale. I think we could implement that strategy best with server events over server quests. I don't jump online to see if Timmy gets out of the well. I come on to see friends, to do stuff and to have a good time as a group. You'll find better, more engaging quests nearly anywhere else, but this is a place I can go where I know the people.

TL;DR Trying to keep activity up all the time isn't worth the effort. Short bursts of community activity via server events could be the better path. The thing that brings people back isn't the mechanics or the lore, its the friends and people they know.


Tagging onto this, some ideas I've had for content that don't require a space bar:

- Prestige Missions: Weekly/Monthly town-wide quests that reward a prestige value. Higher prestige=cooler town-wide benefits like ./g color and differentiated market sales. Prestige decays over time to prevent hard-stop in progression.

- City Exchanges (Banks): Towns have their own ore exchanges that can be upgraded to give a larger return. City banks compete to give players the best value/least risk so they'll come to their bank, which gives them a cut from the exchange. Spawn keeps its ore exchange, which runs at the lowest exchange rate. More details in a previous post of mine.

- Musical Instruments: Play a flute at spawn if that's your deal idk

 

[Evil_X]

Im gonna throw my part in on all this,
Like Nerdie, Conquest is a big side thing for me, spending alot of time focusing on building my town but after everything's levelled and i've built what i want and even just with those 2 things only i wish there was more stuff to do if you werent mad on conquest, especially considering currently conquest on balak at least isnt the most exciting thing in the world.
If anything i'd love if we had more things to explore, i always want to go exploring when im being burnt out of building but all i really have is ruined towns, the dreadfort and resource isles, it'd be great if there was more things to explore and get rewards from, a pretty drastic idea would be a 4th continent and maybe it has a system that every day/week on a restart the dungeon would use a bunch of preset rooms and make custom dungeons to explore, giving cool loot and great chances to replay the dungeon because every dungeon is different, and because of how it'd work it would mean its easy at any time to add more rooms into the pool of things the dungeon could generate with,
or maybe have more puzzle things to find around the map. Like korok seeds in BoTW something you could find everywhere and can you collect them all.
Would be great to have more exploration either way

 

[Thanielle]

focusing on building my town

Yea good one

 

[SilentStormSix]

Like korok seeds in BoTW something you could find everywhere and can you collect them all.

But korok seeds you can trade in for an even bigger korok seed, which serve no purpose at all, besides maybe, bragging rights?

 

[SilentStormSix]

- City Exchanges (Banks): Towns have their own ore exchanges that can be upgraded to give a larger return. City banks compete to give players the best value/least risk so they'll come to their bank, which gives them a cut from the exchange. Spawn keeps its ore exchange, which runs at the lowest exchange rate. More details in a previous post of mine.

Wouldn't this be better for the more experienced towns and richer towns, also this would not really solve inactivity would it? Inactivity is most likely caused by irl stuff, and maybe the player might just not like the people in Loka and decide to leave. And inactivity would be caused by player burnout caused by lack of changes, updates, or conquest.