New Advertising Strategy

[X_Cavator]

Hello,

Recently there have been many new hardcore factions servers that have been coming out. Most of these servers have been seeing a tremendous amount of success because people are tired of the standard pay2win factions. Many servers such as Dawn and Badlion have been getting 300-500 players on their hardcore factions servers at a time. Now I believe Loka can piggy-back off of this success by advertising as a somewhat hardcore factions servers.

Similarities between Loka and HCF:
No grief
No betrayal
No kits
Easy-access raiding
Big world and map that tells where the towns are
Tough to get started without a town

Differences:
Death Ban
God apples
HCF plugin

Now if you look at this list, Loka does have many things in common with the main things that make up HCF. I think that the only thing that would upset former HCF players would be the god apples. Many of these players are potion pvpers and would not enjoy having to deal with god apples in their pvp. I think that the main aspects of the gameplay are similar enough for players to feel the same way on Loka as they would feel on standard HCF.

However there are a few things that Loka has to improve a players experience than on HCF. Examples include battlegrounds, pvp arenas, and territory fights which they have never seen before. These aspects would keep players interested and in less of a "grind until you die" mood.

Bottom line, I think that if we started to advertise as a "HCF with a twist and extra pvp games!" We could bring a bigger population to Loka and strengthen our already amazing community.

I would love to hear feedback.

 

[X_Cavator]

I forgot to mention the Pros and Cons....

Pros:
More players
That means more donators and new friends for all the current members. Also Loka has been a bit boring lately as far as world pvp and this will definitely change that.
Cons: Some of these players will not abide by the language rules that are in place and behave in other "bad" ways.
When people come to Loka and do not see the HCF plugin they could just leave before getting started.

 

[turtlemaster01]

I think its a some what good idea but it is technically false advertizing if we just added a small HC pvp game where you can play once a day or once a week they may keep them online for a longer time period and when they are killed they may just get set up and play the slow basic game for a while

 

[MasterAegon]

Could be nice but turtle is right. If we do this then it would have to be more like HCT 'Hardcore Towns'. It's also only a little more misleading because we have not implemented a viable raiding alternative yet, so that niche (and a rather large one) is still dead at the moment.

I like the idea though.

 

[Ronshaud]

Could be nice but turtle is right. If we do this then it would have to be more like HCT 'Hardcore Towns'. It's also only a little more misleading because we have not implemented a viable raiding alternative yet, so that niche (and a rather large one) is still dead at the moment.

I like the idea though.

 

[Cryptite]

I too am on the fence about this. It sounds likes a good idea to bring players here, but it does seem like we're misleading people quite a bit. X_Cavator, If you'd like, you're welcome to try to advertise Loka in a few places if you'd like with this strategy and see what kind of attention it grabs. I may hold on pushing this advertising strategy officially for the immediate future. We already have a "different approach" to advertising coming soon in the form of our upcoming PvP Hub. Take a look.

 

[mopb3]

I'm for this I think, whatever brings us success, be that a little deception or not, who cares.

 

[X_Cavator]

Well as I said before, we aren't really misleading anyone by advertising as a semi HCF. As listed above, we share most of the similarities that give players the core 'feel' of that HCF. I think that the territory fights and such will be unique and fun enough for players as a replacement for koths. Since koth fights do take a lot of time and people, the territory fights wouldn't be too different and I would say tgen raiding is more fun than a koth. As for the pvp hub, we could still go for this idea because it is something that will make Loka stand out from other HCF servers and could let players pvp without sacrificing gear. The only thing I'd say we would need to change about the current server would be the ban on god apples.

I just looked at the pvp hub idea and I would say we could give either one of these ideas a try, they both sound good. If you do end up choosing the hub idea, keep this thread and idea in mind if it doesn't work out.

 

[EastBowmen]

The only thing I'd say we would need to change about the current server would be the ban on god apples.

What about all of the people that have loads of god apples stocked up in their enderchest? I personally have around twenty just waiting for use and a loss like that wouldn't make me particularly happy

 

[EastBowmen]

Other than the god apple idea, I think Cav might have what we really need to increase the rate of player activity. The majority of high populated servers are mainly PvP or faction based and all though Loka is not a Faction server, it is quite similar. I myself used to only play Factions/PvP servers and when I searched for a new server to play on I always looked for the servers that advertised themselves as being a pvp server with no kits. I also looked for world pvp rather than arena pvp, but, you see, Loka has them both and that's what those HCF players don't know. All though we may not have Factions or ban god apples, we still are very similar to a HCF server (except better, but that's a gimme). Infact, I infer that the more active players Loka has, the similar we will be to a HCF server. I personally don't see a downside in advertising Loka as a Semi-HCF server because we are not lying nor leading them on and having more players would dramatically increase the action on Loka (I am sure this is true because when Porpoise and his fans joined the server, Loka suddenly got more exciting and it was doing way better in terms of player count and pvp/raid action). In order to increase the player count we need to give the players what they want. As I mentioned before, many active players play HCF/Factions or PvP based servers and Loka has aspects of both the HCF and PvP servers, but they don't know that and it's our job to tell them.

 

[X_Cavator]

Other than the god apple idea, I think Cav might have what we really need to increase the rate of player activity. The majority of high populated servers are mainly PvP or faction based and all though Loka is not a Faction server, it is quite similar. I myself used to only play Factions/PvP servers and when I searched for a new server to play on I always looked for the servers that advertised themselves as being a pvp server with no kits. I also looked for world pvp rather than arena pvp, but, you see, Loka has them both and that's what those HCF players don't know. All though we may not have Factions or ban god apples, we still are very similar to a HCF server (except better, but that's a gimme). Infact, I infer that the more active players Loka has, the similar we will be to a HCF server. I personally don't see a downside in advertising Loka as a Semi-HCF server because we are not lying nor leading them on and having more players would dramatically increase the action on Loka (I am sure this is true because when Porpoise and his fans joined the server, Loka suddenly got more exciting and it was doing way better in terms of player count and pvp/raid action). In order to increase the player count we need to give the players what they want. As I mentioned before, many active players play HCF/Factions or PvP based servers and Loka has aspects of both the HCF and PvP servers, but they don't know that and it's our job to tell them.

This is summed up exactly as I am trying to say it. The reason the god apples would have to be banned is because these players are all potion pvpers. Many of them would view god apples as "cheap" and with this type of community raging is likely going to occur more than usual. As I think about this more I would say it's probably not as big a deal as I thought it was originally, we would have to see first.

 

[MasterAegon]

I think our point is that you can't label it 'factions' in any way, only to have them join and it's not factions at all. Still a good approach to compare it so people get the idea.

As for God apples, they're really expensive and only worth using when you're outnumbered imo. Takes a lot of focused on hold to stock up on these and going to a fight with a lot in your inventory puts you at risk of losing a ton of gold. I can see why people would want them removed but it's a core game feature. We have many features but most don't affect core gameplay or world PvP.

 

[X_Cavator]

Well I have provided my arguments, it's up to crypt if we do this or not. The pvp hub idea is good for bringing players in general and the HCF idea would bring players to the actual loka server. We could do both but crypt, do what you think is best for loka.

 

[DoktorDuck]

It's a nice approach to get more people on the server, but I agree with @Cryptite that it would be misleading.