Really good feedback, a lot does fall on the GMs and how they operate the server.
@Belle see for that, it was poor release timing to be fair (I mean it was 4 months after release I got married), but I knew the rest of my team could cover it, perhaps I should have conveyed that message on Discord / Forums - didn't think it mattered as we still had the primary coder and Chris to hold the server strong; but for future I think if a team member is going to be 'absent' for an extended period of time, it would be good to make it clear to the players.
As for the door fix, not sure on that one - if it is a fix that got overlooked, I am creating a much more streamlined way to submit bugs/reports etc - as in discord it always gets spammed away.
And yeah, this was a biiig drain on me, the problem is I have logs for everything, and tracked everything.
I tell people what i found in the logs (which was nothing) but people made their minds up before i checked the logs, and wouldn't budge afterwards, which kinda gets onto my next point
Favouritism, if it is actually happening, I do get it is pointless playing a server, but when hosting TPR our team got a lot of flack for a good portion of the adjustments we made, as apparently it was favouring one guild or another when making these changes.
* We made changes and responded to things that weren't balanced or needed adjusting (buffs or nerfs) when they are brought to light; sometimes these things only happen when the items / spells etc are obtained and used, if a specific guild has a mythical spell that is dog ****, we aren't just going to leave it, likewise if there is an over-tuned skill for a guild, and another guilds flags it, we will test it and adjust it if necessary.
As for Solo Play, more and more seem to be craving this - due to other life commitments.
It is an area I am really exploring for this server, to get a better balance between solo and group play, I don't want to punish group play so you are forced to solo as its more efficient, but I dont want people who want to just log on, do their own thing and log off to think they can never get to the 'end game'
I quite like the guaranteed item idea, if you farm enough you WILL get something.
Ontop of that having a Soft Cap in stages allows people to hit the cap, but the casuals to not see them continually run ahead.
>This is where I quite like the concept of a Paragon System (Diablo3/OS) when you hit a soft/hard cap, you can start investing in a point system instead until the cap is extended, giving you only small stat boosts, but means you can farm without it meaning jack.
@zedina agreed that hype is a huge factor, the freshness and competitiveness of new servers is alluring.
However, I also think if you make a server good enough, people will come back to the server; You've been online a year+ and you still retain what I would consider a good UC for that period!
> Again it falls back to, if people rejoin, how can they get back to the "Middle of the pack" (as no one wants to play mir and feel useless in PvP/PvE)