My Unholy Nation Experience

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

I see a lot of serious claims about how time was invested in that post without any sort of evidence to support them.

[Mark Sir Link]

60% of players focused on sparring? I seriously doubt that. I doubt that even 30% of players were focused on that.

[ff7chocoboknight]

I remember finishing all the "quests" on UN in '07 in 1hr~1hr30min. I don't even have 100 hours on it. I'm usually only on it for at most 15 minutes and then bail. UN has never appealed to me. Make it happen.

[jacob_bald6225]

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

I remember finishing all the "quests" on UN in '07 in 1hr~1hr30min. I don't even have 100 hours on it. I'm usually only on it for at most 15 minutes and then bail. UN has never appealed to me. Make it happen.

Make what happen?

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by jacob_bald6225

Make what happen?

Therein lies the issue. If we simply develop more random things, it wont really help the server long-term. But if we take on huge projects, our Development staff grow bored and quit mid-project. Especially scripters. Once that happens, the next scripter to take on the job has to rewrite the entire thing because "it would be easier that way", and then they quit mid-project as well. That has been the story of UN's large projects over the passed few years in all honesty.

To Hiro, I was always very interested and supportive of CW, as Mystic says I asked him about it pretty regularly. The real issue was the Development Manager did not focus on CW at all. Mystic had to find his own scripters, with the exception of Ben Rain, who approached me about it before he became PWA. This lack of support from his higher admins on the Dev side probably led to a good portion of Mystic's lack of enthusiasm. When I spoke to Luca about it, I was told the scripting would be replaced with another project's framework (the same type of thing I was talking about above), but that never came to fruition either.

Anyhow, Unholy Nation's focus was never on 'Events' or 'Sparring', the only focus the server has ever had was to create things players want, whether it be things such as the rings, or things such as the Rare Items. The real issue is both that either players no long want these items, or cannot get them because of the old playerbase no longer playing and trading actively. From what I recall, trading was more the focus than anything else if we tried to pinpoint something accurately. With the economy in the poor shape that it is in, related to ep duplication largely, players dont want to buy things for the inflated prices. EP and item trading were probably the worst ideas to hit UN, because you no longer had to play events to win event items. That being said, most people loved the item trading and auction houses, so it's a double edged sword.

The conundrum we are in, is that if we focus on large, meaningful projects, they will likely never come to fruition, and if we focus on small, meaningless projects, nobody will be happy, including me. We have to work on a mix of these things in order to prosper is the conclusion I have reached, and is what I am working on implementing now. The remaining issue is getting people who are willing to work on anything for the server nowadays. UN doesnt have the draw of 'most popular' server by numbers like it used to, so we have far less developers interested in it than we used to.

[fowlplay4]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

stuff

You've got a 'Dev Manager' who can't finish a damn Newbie Course, fix that.

[LordSquirt]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

=
Anyhow, Unholy Nation's focus was never on 'Events' or 'Sparring', the only focus the server has ever had was to create things players want, whether it be things such as the rings, or things such as the Rare Items.

UN's focus has never been rings or rare items. Most players find the NPCs annoying and lame

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by LordSquirt

UN's focus has never been rings or rare items. Most players find the NPCs annoying and lame

That's highly inaccurate. I have played UN fairly consistently for over 6 years, and I can assure you Manta's Rare Items and projects were the focus for a good half of that time at least.

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

60% of players focused on sparring? I seriously doubt that. I doubt that even 30% of players were focused on that.

you didn't play UN back then - how would you know?

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

To Hiro, I was always very interested and supportive of CW, as Mystic says I asked him about it pretty regularly. The real issue was the Development Manager did not focus on CW at all. Mystic had to find his own scripters, with the exception of Ben Rain, who approached me about it before he became PWA. This lack of support from his higher admins on the Dev side probably led to a good portion of Mystic's lack of enthusiasm. When I spoke to Luca about it, I was told the scripting would be replaced with another project's framework (the same type of thing I was talking about above), but that never came to fruition either.

Anyhow, Unholy Nation's focus was never on 'Events' or 'Sparring', the only focus the server has ever had was to create things players want, whether it be things such as the rings, or things such as the Rare Items. The real issue is both that either players no long want these items, or cannot get them because of the old playerbase no longer playing and trading actively. From what I recall, trading was more the focus than anything else if we tried to pinpoint something accurately. With the economy in the poor shape that it is in, related to ep duplication largely, players dont want to buy things for the inflated prices. EP and item trading were probably the worst ideas to hit UN, because you no longer had to play events to win event items. That being said, most people loved the item trading and auction houses, so it's a double edged sword.

you were never a part of the sparring community, much less the sparring community within UN, so you have no idea how much influence the sparring had (or has) on UN. you just don't realize how potent the sparring community is, and your focus on events, useless "rare" manta NPCs, and whatever else only diminish the only other active "event" taking place on UN that has a good portion of player's attention. if you add more systems that allow players to swing swords at one another in a ranked atmosphere (like sparring, or teaming up in CW) then more players will start to appreciate what a classic server is all about, and participate in these events

if UN had more focus on global guilds specifically, you could have an abundant source of competition and incentive that can lead to economic stability

[Mark Sir Link]

Originally Posted by Hiro

you didn't play UN back then - how would you know?

I wouldn't know for fact but I would assume it's a very safe bet (like 100% safe) to say that only a fraction of players can compete in highly competitive sparring. I can't imagine competitive sparring being the prime focus of 20% of the players.

you were never a part of the sparring community, much less the sparring community within UN, so you have no idea how much influence the sparring had (or has) on UN. you just don't realize how potent the sparring community is, and your focus on events, useless "rare" manta NPCs, and whatever else only diminish the only other active "event" taking place on UN that has a good portion of player's attention. if you add more systems that allow players to swing swords at one another in a ranked atmosphere (like sparring, or teaming up in CW) then more players will start to appreciate what a classic server is all about, and participate in these events

if UN had more focus on global guilds specifically, you could have an abundant source of competition and incentive that can lead to economic stability

Your first two sentences don't even make sense, he was never part of the sparring community despite it being highly influential/"potent"?

Clearly it couldn't have been that influential if he had nothing to do with it.


I am not sure why you are pandering your personal opinions as if they were somehow facts. Just because you liked to do something doesn't mean a majority of players did.

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

I wouldn't know for fact but I would assume it's a very safe bet (like 100% safe) to say that only a fraction of players can compete in highly competitive sparring. I can't imagine competitive sparring being the prime focus of 20% of the players.


Your first two sentences don't even make sense, he was never part of the sparring community despite it being highly influential/"potent"?

Clearly it couldn't have been that influential if he had nothing to do with it.


I am not sure why you are pandering your personal opinions as if they were somehow facts. Just because you liked to do something doesn't mean a majority of players did.

Originally Posted by MysticX2X

I wouldn't say 60 percent of the population focused on sparring, although 25-30 percent probably is a good estimate.

UN, in my opinion, has been a server where you can do whatever, and interact with whoever. (We have guns and cars people...) It was never really only sparring-focused, and I wouldn't suspect that to be LiquidIces intent either. I enjoyed collecting the rare items, back when they were actually rare. I also enjoyed the events when more people played instead of teaming with 10 other friends. These among many other things.

Hiro is right in the regards that UN really needs to focus on improving the competitive elements of the server that it used to have. Sadly, that is not the current development focus.

stop thinking about the current staff - back then, Absolut_Crono was not staff, and did not even play or if he did he never sparred. but, a large majority of the staff of UN did (like 50%) and my percentage of sparrers on UN includes those players who used to be able to hop from server to server sparring in different tournaments - aside from perhaps delteria, UN was always the center of where sparring happened. clearly just because our current manager doesn't seem to enjoy or appreciate what sparring does on UN (and you can say that for the past 5 managers now) it's influence on the players and past players who have quit seeing the dwindling state of what servers offer for sparrers, is quite real

and besides, i'm talking very generally when i say UN needs more competitive focus - i said we need to be able to swing swords at one another, because that's what a classic server is pretty much all about. sparring has just always been the best form of this competition

i mean seriously, what the hell else are you going to update that exemplifies the classic server style? something is going wrong when the focus of a classic server moves away from the sword

[ff7chocoboknight]

Make UN appeal to me. A whole server focused on events and sparring is all fine, but what I can't stand is the unorganized mess of a server it is.

I hate UN. I hate Enigma. I hate Bravo. I hate N-Pulse. I hate Delteria. I hate Zodiac. Why? Everything is cramped into the smallest spaces possible. Fix it.

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

Make UN appeal to me. A whole server focused on events and sparring is all fine, but what I can't stand is the unorganized mess of a server it is.

I hate UN. I hate Enigma. I hate Bravo. I hate N-Pulse. I hate Delteria. I hate Zodiac. Why? Everything is cramped into the smallest spaces possible. Fix it.

That would be a much larger project than just me saying "ok, will do". Fixing the server completely would probably take longer than creating a whole new server from scratch, because there is little-to-no uniformity in a lot of the old systems. Not to say it isnt something we want to work on, just that it's not something that would happen quickly.

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

That would be a much larger project than just me saying "ok, will do". Fixing the server completely would probably take longer than creating a whole new server from scratch, because there is little-to-no uniformity in a lot of the old systems. Not to say it isnt something we want to work on, just that it's not something that would happen quickly.

Where in that do you see me making an excuse Kia? I said it is something to work on, but it wont happen overnight. In fact, it will take a substantial amount of time. Most of UN's base scripts are either in GS1 or patched GS1 for functionality purposes. We would have to redo the entire server to make it efficient, otherwise it wouldnt be worth working on at all. It'll just break when V7 comes out.

No, that's not a typo. V7, as in the next upgrade after this one.

[xXziroXx]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

It'll just break when V7 comes out.

No, that's not a typo. V7, as in the next upgrade after this one.

You made two errors with that post. One, no client in itself has ever broken a lot of scripts -- GS2 in itself did however, but GS2 is far superior than it's successor anyways so who cares.

Second of all, v7 is not the next client no, as v6 isn't even out yet. We're currently in v5 and v5.3.


I'd also like to point out that PWA has done an extremely ****ty job with something they said after the release of GS2; that all Classic servers were to fully convert to GS2 within x amount of time or be taken off the list. It's been 5 years now, wtf.