07-15-2023, 06:06 PM
I'd like to share some thoughts on this.
The comment about LC community being discriminative (a.k.a Homophobic, racist etc) is completely true. I am hated by several developers that btw, I have never even spoken to, and I guess you can figure out the reason why. So before we go slamming players, LC devs are to blame for this too.
It's also no help to the LC community as Veni quite clearly and correctly mentioned, when "developers" release 5-10 servers per year as a money grab. Unfortunately the hype of a new server will never prevent LC players from playing it, even with the foreshadowing of the fate of that server. But that is unfair to those people who literally give their life to this game. I quit my real job in order to make my perfect server and bring a server that people could love, and I will never regret that.
I disagree with a lot of points here, yes lets face it, at the end of the day we are producing an illegitimate video game, but when we think of the morality of it, is it really that bad? I've hosted a few servers before, but let me give my examples in my current server now, the feedback, messages and community-ship that the players show me is unfathomable, yes don't get me wrong, a lot of players are extremely toxic, and I will get to that soon, however, the messages that I have received from certain players on my server is enough to make anyone with a decent heart feel good about them selves,
I have players who see me a friend, and they do in-fact tell me their life-stories and things they are going through, and I'm told again and again how grateful they are for my server to give them some escapism from the horrible things happening in their lives. Similar to any other game, we all use gaming and other recreational activities in order to provide some escapism on how shit life can be. So to those players, we do not include them in the toxicity of the overall community.
I have been in LC scene for 4-5 years now and I have dealt with some pretty disgusting people but there is a very very large amount of players here who are indeed wonderful people, I've made some fantastic friends who start out as players, whether they come into my staff team or whether I just chat to them outside the LC scene, as a friend.
Server owners who dedicate their entire lives to make a server, as I proudly would say that I do, for example I can spent somewhat up to 16 hours a day working and helping people to give them the best experience I can are simply discouraged by the problematic ideology of a perfect server, regardless of how many patches, fixes, new content, new fun things, players will still moan and still cry about other problems. Being a LC private server owner you cannot win, and indeed, it is lovely to receive nice messages after bringing a huge update, but the majority of people quite frankly don't give a shit, they are just playing where their friends are. As mentioned before, you cannot break cliques in LC because it removes a substantial amount of your player base.
I don't want to talk too much about financial side because I think that's private, but saying that its not life changing money is in-fact wrong, if you can keep a server active for over a year, as I have done, you gather a very loyal donator base, and I think many developers struggle to do this because they cannot communicate to their community, I have players who donate, not because they need items or cash (in-fact they are totally full in every sense) but do it because they want to support me and keep the server alive, and this I think is the fundamental basics in running a successful LC server, building and communicating with your community is what makes you successful, as much as people may come for me for things I've said here, however, I don't really care what other people have to say about me personally, I don't care for developer drama, or drama between other servers as rivals, I care about my own server and my players and my staff team nothing more. I'm happy to say thank you to the world of LC because it helped me pay of all my debt, stopped me becoming homeless and perhaps even bankrupt, and I owe that to Last Chaos Player donator base.
In contrast, I completely agree with the problematic toxicity environmental behaviour as I know many people who leave my own server because of this clique toxicity, guild rivalry etc. Players expect you to ban everyone who does simple things such as swearing, and this is not a solution as the more people you ban, the more players you loose, in an already small community, and this becomes problematic to server owners. It's a shame that a lot of people also like to brown-nose hackers and dupers, this is the main problem in LC in my opinion, little boys who get their hands on new tools and can speed hack is what is destroying this community also, you can fix it sure, and you can change source code, prevent this, prevent that, but something new will come, as it always has done.
In my opinion I don't think that big companies should come and shut down all private servers, as we are what keep the game alive, they don't want to play P2W corporate companies, and therefore, if private servers shut, I think LC would loose up to 70% of its community, and then we really would be dead as a community.
I think to have a solid view and opinion on this you need someone who actually has experience in withholding a private server that has substantial longevity. Not developers who can open a server for 3-4 weeks and shut it down because they die, what is the point in this? This only harms the LC community more.
Doing this for 4-5 years I notice trends, summer is extremely quiet in all servers, because people don't wanna sit in 30 degree weather sweating their [CeNsOrEd] off playing LC. Christmas time is the busiest as everyone has vacations and wants to play. Did anyone notice how busy LC got in lockdown? Some servers had 700+ people, we should take all this into account too. People are bored of servers opening every week with no though-process on the future of the game, and I'm told this weekly by many of my own community.
In my own experience, we cannot bring people who have never played LC into a private server, developers including myself, yes I know. We create alot, at the demand of players wanting these things, I build 50% of my content from player feedback and suggestions, I do what the majority want to keep them happy, sadly this does mean constant evolution of the game, including new maps, yes, and new content. No new player who doesn't understand Last Chaos could ever begin to understand it all, I think this is a very far-stretched idea and its just not practical in the private server scene, private server population is directly correlated to playing the original game. In 5 years I have never seen a single brand new LC player never played before. However, It is important to mention people do come back to us very often, its a never ending cycle. People quit, people join, its as simple as that.
One player messaged me last week that he came back to LC after 10 years, and was willing to learn everything all over again, so who knows to be honest.
I think to keep it fair, there is no particular desire (at least speaking for myself) to publicly advertise everywhere possible, it just simply wont draw new people in. The fact you mentioned about your streams, I'm sorry but this has nothing to do with it, the difference of people who play MMORPG and people who listen to music cannot be correlated to LC private servers in any way. In my opinion.
I have faith for the future of LC, I think we can continue to develop good servers, but I personally wish servers who make all these amazing and wonderful new things, actually just don't give up... and close after 2 weeks, its simply not fair to the LC community, but players do indeed have a role to play on here, "quit culture" is an awful thing in LC private servers, if one "main" player is banned from a guild, 50 people leave, and follow. That is discouraging to people like me who spend almost all their time trying to develop a good server that people can enjoy.
I agree making a new episode or say to speak and producing a new story line to continue the values of the land of iris would be extremely exciting, but lets face it, how many people play campaign modes on multiplayer games? Would players even read, or care? Who knows, but maybe its worth a shot.
I'm not coming at anyone in this message but I wanted to share my thoughts based on my experience of having 2 private servers that have lasted 2 years and my current one 13 months. I will not give up on the LC community and I will continue working and making the best possible server I can, and although yes maybe I may buy features from other developers, but why would I not share my income back into the LC scene, doesn't that make sense? If no LC dev doesn't get paid, then why would they stick around making all these fantastic features? Surely that's a better practicability than just keeping all the money for myself? I've made some fantastic friends from working with LC devs and indeed why not buy things that people create and share it with the community, I never did LC for the money, that's why my servers you can literally farm everything and cash is free, but I'm not going to lie and say, this is my job and how I pay my rent, so a fair division between p2w and f2p is necessary for a successful LCPS. This is further consolidated by the player feedback I get from my donators, they want some p2w items, and why not? They are the ones who fund this community and keep servers alive, so it is important and extremely fundamental to keep them within the community.
Thanks for reading if you manage to get through it, but I think LC private servers are amazing and it keeps the community alive, and reminds me of playing Aeria LC as a kid, at 12-13 year olds, but as I said, people will always come back, they always have and they always will, its a never ending cycle.
Thanks
Goofy