Lets talk about Haven

[Matrim]

So i was feeling nostalgic about regnum and watching my old videos seeing some old screen shots. Then i remembered what I loved about Raven and Piranha. They were both extremely low population servers with immensely fun hunting. War was meh at best since a zerg was just about 10 people. It got me thinking now that haven is extremely low population why isn't it revered just as much as the old low population servers that were merged?

Raven was dead against wanting to be merged with Horus and Piranha against merging with Ra. So why are things so dire on Haven, is it a case of community attitude? Or has hunting become stale/boring. I play Ra exclusively now but would old players returning fix the issues?

I want to discuss why in haven a low population = doom of the server, where as in piranha and raven it was actually the great thing about the server and why the two are drastically different in the current players eyes.

[Piroca]

Main problem of haven atm is it community and desbalance between realms...

[Hollow-Ichigo]

Mainly because hunting doesn't let players gain anything. People would rather just go to a fort and farm rather than grab a few friends and run around ganking.

Even when there is a large amount of people online, the last thing you will see them do is hunt. Even I've gotten bored of it, rp does nothing and WMC is the only reason to even play.

[Matrim]

Originally Posted by Piroca

Main problem of haven atm is it community and desbalance between realms...

Care to elaborate? What's the issue with the community you find? Also i've always known an imbalance between realms, the times of efrendi's nightly invasions with the ghosts clan, the ridiculous size of the syrtis zerg at peak times and then when alsius actually got its shit together for a while. This didn't really stop us enjoying the game.

Originally Posted by Hollow-Ichigo

Mainly because hunting doesn't let players gain anything. People would rather just go to a fort and farm rather than grab a few friends and run around ganking.

Even when there is a large amount of people online, the last thing you will see them do is hunt. Even I've gotten bored of it, rp does nothing and WMC is the only reason to even play.

Do you think gaining wmc for hunting in opposite realms (so not defense of your own realm e.g. camping their own CS and killing people who come to it wouldn't give WMC) would improve interest in hunting?

Maybe not gaining credit toward quests but just earning WMC like you would in a fort war

[Hollow-Ichigo]

Originally Posted by Matrim

Do you think gaining wmc for hunting in opposite realms (so not defense of your own realm e.g. camping their own CS and killing people who come to it wouldn't give WMC) would improve interest in hunting?

Maybe not gaining credit toward quests but just earning WMC like you would in a fort war

IMO, on haven at least, you should be able to get WMC at bridges and anywhere else fights happen a lot. At least enough to motivate players to move

[Vadhir]

Maybe boredoom. Raven was low populated as well, but as you mentioned, it was fun; however, think about it: Raven had a short life, from april 2011 to march 2012, or 2013, can´t remember exactly. One or two years of watching the same people playing, some new ones came and stayed... others left. Two years, not 6, which is the time since Raven saw light till today. I cannot say anything about Piranha because I did not play there, but that at least is my thought.

[TheBarbarianAlsius]

Raven never got an rps ranking rip my 180k in 2011.
70% of haven old players leave us to play on Ra , and u can't hunt when there is literally 3 active players on syrtis and maybe 10 on ignis.

[Matrim]

Originally Posted by Vadhir

Maybe boredoom. Raven was low populated as well, but as you mentioned, it was fun; however, think about it: Raven had a short life, from april 2011 to march 2012, or 2013, can´t remember exactly. One or two years of watching the same people playing, some new ones came and stayed... others left. Two years, not 6, which is the time since Raven saw light till today. I cannot say anything about Piranha because I did not play there, but that at least is my thought.

So you believe that the boredom would have gotten to Raven as well too? Personally the reason i quit about 2 years ago was a mix of boredom and literally nothing to work toward after achieving warmaster, also it has to be said some of the community is pretty damn toxic to each other (this is probably because of the war nature of the game) like elva could post a 1 v 5 video with him destroying everyone and we'd all collectively take a dump on it, because we are as a community douchebags. Look at the crap some people gave NGD for making their version of a raidboss.

Originally Posted by TheBarbarianAlsius

Raven never got an rps ranking rip my 180k in 2011.
70% of haven old players leave us to play on Ra , and u can't hunt when there is literally 3 active players on syrtis and maybe 10 on ignis.

So again low population think back to our raven days when alsius would try to invade and CAPSLOCK would stop you from taking shaana on his own. It's not really any different, why did the old players leave what changed to cause them to go to Ra rather than play haven what was so bad about it?

[Zas_]

Originally Posted by Hollow-Ichigo

IMO, on haven at least, you should be able to get WMC at bridges and anywhere else fights happen a lot. At least enough to motivate players to move

Totally second that, fighting should always be encouraged.

When i compare Haven today to Haven few years ago, it has much less fights, i see various reasons:
- low population
- population imbalance
- heavy fort camping (seriously when 15 are in a fort vs 5 outside ... no fight)
- no grinders, while grinder killing wasn't fun for the grinder, it was usually a good start to a bigger fight (grinder called help, more came, etc...). When was you last orc camp big fight ?
- dying with low population = only few conjs to resurrect = res at cs = long way back alone = high probability to die again = log off
- wmc at forts = people stay away to not give wmc to enemies...
- TDM / dragon / bosses / events killing the war action (with low population)

[ieti]

As me and other mentioned i will try to summarize most critical things that need to be done to boost and keep population on Haven:

- return mob spawn to early Horus days. this will make grinding possible again. remove mob regeneration when they run back. grind is not so bad if you have mobs to kill - there is nothing more annoying of buying a XP booster and running like mad around for mobs. i have seen so many been furious of wasting a booster because there are no mobs to grind on.

- enable WMC in all territory. this will stimulate wars everywhere. open and bridge wars are fun - make them rewarding again.

- remove WMC redeem block. needing to invade to get WMC well some realms do not have numbers to do so.

- if possible disable invasions temporarily until population stabilizes.

- disable guard captains if possible. this can ease fort farms as killing a guard captain is a pain in the ass with less than 10 allies. i doubt GC makes difference on RA, sooo remove it completely? Most invasions on Haven start with a group taking forts, making them to GC level and after defenders give up and logoff they invade empty realm.

- make war events - old fort war events that giant GM's lead realms was so fun. i do not say find the GM is not fun, but hey we need more focus on war.

- get GM's back on shifts - people seing someone official is there make realm chat more friendly for newcomers and less toxic.

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On a later stage you can start to squash bugs balance and fix spells and rollback some questionable features like needing to stay on place to shoot or cast spells.

I think returning grind back to old days was the most vital part that managed to build the community Horus once have. Grind parties, hunt parties and so on made people become friends, build good clans and take teamwork to the next level.

If you want to get this server back stop thinking of how to make people spend ximerins and start to think how to get teamwork, fun and warmth back in this place.

I'm sure if things start to change for the better many will come back.

P.S. I'm maybe sounding nostalgic for talking about Horus, but this is not because game was better then. It was just more fun despite having bugs, being ugly ans so on. We just need to seek things that made old regnum fun and what was changed to break things up.