Lets talk...

[Veni]

Yes, I also wan't to clarify that "not life changing" is meant for a big team. If you only share it with 1-2 people then it's definietly more life changing than if you had 3 devs, 2 admins and maybe people you pay for maps or whatever. When I was 16 I had a server with damona that made 12k in the first MONTH and if I ever would have seen a penny of these 12k it would of course changed my life as a 16 y/o with no money. But of course you then have to make sure that you somehow pay your taxes on all of this or literally commit tax fraud on top of the other stuff you've been doing due to lc. And I ain't messing with the german tax office for money that I can literally get by working a normal job with way less stress and way less expectations from some players.



Also regarding the "story line" in lc, I think really no one except perhaps a handful of people read these things. You don't want to know why you have to kill a certain monster, but what the monster is, where it is and that's about it. You also don't care that Border Guard Boro lost his Lunchbox and you need to bring it to him. That's not just the reality with LC but with many games in this category of games. The only game where I have actually followed the story of in the past 3 years are probably Genshin Impact and Zelda ToTK, but I also didn't care for all the random quests and why this random guy needs you to get 5 eggs asap.



 

[RGT]

Your rant is very much justified, no need to worry about pouring your heart into it here /index.php?/profile/394-sickness/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="394" href="/index.php?/profile/394-sickness/" rel="">@Sickness! It really sucks to see that most people just don't get the work you're putting in. It's a damn shame, and nobody deserves that.

I think we're getting close to a common problem here—the current players and community. It seems like they're the ones causing a lot of the issues. It kinda pisses me off because I truly believe this can be fixed over time. Imagine if a server could reach out to a whole new player base and get a solid number of players who aren't just whining about 100% cast and hasty content. Instead, we'd have players who want to explore Iris for the very first time and really enjoy a challenging yet rewarding grind. I know you're skeptical, and with good reason, but how fucking awesome would it be if I am right?

Oh, and a quick correction: There are plenty of cases where copyrighted material has been used "illegally" and won counter-notice battles with big platforms like the ones you mentioned. If official LC took legal action, they could, but it doesn't mean you automatically lose. In fact, if you build a strong case, there's a pretty good chance you could come out unscathed. Sure, things could also go to shit, but it's not fair to say you can't change the outcome no matter what.

By the way, I just wanted to say it's great to hear all the thoughts shared here. You can really see the wealth of experience and passion that this topic brings out. Thanks to all of you who take the time to post here ?

[RGT]

I've met a lot of people that cares for a good story, I would actually dare to say that the story could make og break almost any games. Sure, the lunchbox is a no brainer, but if you have to help close the Gate of Shadows in order to gain a significant boost to your character, you might find it more interesting. There are tons of great story telling MMO's out there, and there are literally awards for this as well. They don't make great stories for no reason ?

Had to edit quickly, I'm not sayin I think LC will win an award for storytelling hahahaha ?

[RGT]

A bunch of MMO's are celebrated for great storytelling, like WoW, Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Guild wars... There is a lot of them and the studies shows that in general, people do value and appreciate storytelling in their gaming experiences. While not every player may prioritize storytelling in MMOs, research indicates that a significant portion of the player base values narrative elements and appreciates games with well-crafted stories. But I see your point, LC is by far not designed for storytelling. 

I see that you keep comparing LC to other games though, and this hardly seems fair does it? We all know LC won't stand a chance to modern games. However, in my, and a lot of others opinion, LC is not a visually repulsive game. LC does have it's charm for sure, and this is something that can be capitalized. I don't think it's fair to compare this old beauty to the new beasts haha. We all know that LC has it's graphic issues, and yeah its based off of some old ass engine, but the game fucking works. There is no denying that. It does what it needs to do, and then some. I wish I had the budget to create LC2, that would truly be something! I don't disagree with you, but I also think it's irrelevant to bring this up. We know what we have, and we have to make do with it. 

And lastly, I really hope you understand that I don't think I would be able to make the next Diablo game here? I'm not pursuiting an insane amount of players, or a brand new game. I am humoring the fact that there is a down-to-earth approach to make a LC private server that could actually perform good. Sustainable. Over time. We are not shooting for thousands of players, but there could be hundreds? 

I'll put it as Aerosmith did so many years ago "I'm no fool", I know LC has a whole lot of limits, and it's not perfect by any means. It's an old ass game, and it would be hard to do anything with it. But that doesn't change the fact that the game has what it needs to actually bring something to the table. I am picturing a close to official server, with a brand new storyline and intrecate quests, where no 100% cast exists and people may cry as much as they want. A new-player friendly place that has a constant stream of new players due to clever marketing. A server that would grow outside of the community, because it allows new members to actually be a part of the community. 

So, don't think I'm reaching for the stars here. All I want is to take a leisurely stroll on the French promenade, soaking up the good vibes and enjoying the damn journey ?✌️

[Sickness]

I think you are speaking to people who aren't really hardcore MMO players. It's just a fact that the vast majority of players do not pay attention to that stuff in MMOs. No MMO is out here being celebrated for its wonderful storytelling except for games that buck tradition and are essentially single player RPGs with MMO elements like Star Wars: The Old Republic.



However we aren't at those levels, nor will we ever be. LC is a game that at its peak had maybe 10-15k players if even. It's a small game and always will be by its nature. I feel like you are reaching for the clouds as if we aren't starting at the earths core. Your dreams are better realized making your own game. LC is not a good base to create a successful base with, you would legitimately be better off making your own project with your personal aspirations. I say this as someone who played LC religiously, It has been a part of my life for more than half of my life at this point. I have dreams of the game too, what it could be in my head. But I recognize these things are only possible by starting fresh. An LC2 is the solution, but that requires an actual development team among many other resources that private servers never have had nor will. You are wanting the world with the efforts of people overworking themselves for tablescraps at the end of the day.



Anyways, off topic again. The point is LC is never going to have good story telling and even if it did, it wont reach the appeal of general audiences. A good story needs a good vessel through which to be told. And the 2004 Serious Sam engine isn't the vessel to show off story telling on the levels to captivate audiences. 



I just want to remind you that multi-billion dollar corporations are chasing the same dreams of you, and they fall short. Many MMOs have died off in the time that LC has been chugging along with sub 1k players. Many MMOs with million dollar budgets. You really gotta clip your wings before you melt in the sun. Be realistic. You want to make a great private server? Sure! Go for it, you may be able to do it, just understand the limitations the small community gives you. You want to make LC a MMO you'll see on twitch? Look into making your own original product not held back by decades of technical debt and terrible design decisions.

[Veni]

About the story telling, the dream about telling some amazing story in lc is just far fetched. How do you even want to do it? Have great quest dialogues or even some voice acting with some cinematic stuff? All of this would cost you hundreds of hours of work probably.

Even if you decide to just have a great story in english, then you are neglecting like the entirety of the community that is not fluent in english and any potential "new" players you want to get onto your server. You'd then have to literally hire people to make good translations that will actually do all of this.

If you want a cutscene, then you'd have to find someone that even knows how you could trigger such cutscenes in the first place and rig them all to make sense or even train someone to even learn it. This will of course also cost you a ton of hours and money. And honestly, if you don't just want a still image of your character next to some mob doing an animation then you probably also need someone to modify the entirety of the implemented code and make something that even allows you to do more than that efficiently.



You said it yourself, you don't have the budget for a LC 2.0.



Just as a reminder, these are some of the things you'd have to pay for/account for if you actually want to do something with the current game:

 


Hosting your server


Developers that actually know what they are doing, as a reference: In germany the average software developer that just finished the most "basic" education gets around 45k a year (gross, not net.), which is like 2.3k-2.5k a month. These aren't numbers for people who did their masters or whatever. People with work experience, no matter the education level, can cost up to or if not more than double than this.

And now you gotta think about just how much stuff you want this person to literally do for you. If you actually want to make the best out of this game then you'd need dev(s) for Web Development, Tool/API Development, Engine/Server Development and whatever else. 

Getting all of this in one person is not really something you'd find and even if you did, it would take idk how many years for him to do all of the required things that you might need.

I'm not quoting these numbers just to say "oh this is how much they will charge you!" but these are the numbers that they currently work fulltime with or can work with if they want to. It's money that does not have an asterisk (*) behind it when you get payed out. You'd somehow have to not only meet these peoples standards but also make them feel comfortable to work on something that has no real future.



You can of course get less skilled individuals onboard, but your vision will become much more unrealistic and it will also never turn out how you want it to be.

 


Your general team, that isn't just devs. Finding people you can trust is already hard enough but now you gotta find people that either do this for free and not backstab you or you gotta pay up. And even then you'd have to find people that you can trust in this community.


Advertisements like the one you've been talking about


Potentially lawyers that have a get out of jail card for everything.




But your vision of it being this game that feels fresh and newbie friendly and everything is just not a reality that you can afford or achieve in these next years. I'm like 99% sure that you won't find any skilled individuals that can bring your idea to life without either charging you a bunch or leaving you midway through for this never ending idea for this game engine from almost 20 years ago that you shouldn't even have access to like this in the first place.



You can find these kinds of people outside of this section, making games with Unity, Unreal, Godot etc. but not here.

[Revenge]

the only valid reason some ''devs'' stay is simply money.

I started to learn LC in 2017, I dev SecretDesire with dethunter and I did it for free I loved LastChaos.



Then I helped Infinity, we made 3 Lc Infinity 1.0 2.0 is NewAge.

however I didn't do it for money, infinity 2.0 I got 0 money back, NewAge also, 1.0 I was paid 20 eu per week but I didn't care because I loved LC

that's 3 lc have raised over 100,000 euros let's talk numbers because many admin make me laugh

then i decided to create my own lc with alucard, we used infinity's source and invested over 3500 euros again on it, new system, new character ect

the server had over 700 online players (I'm talking about multi-clients), maybe 300 real players or more, I don't know.

the server made 25-35k the 1st month, so when I hear many say you invested a lot of money many don't know how much lc pays.

the only 2 people I've trusted since 2017 were rrbkmz and RomeosT as dev.       and Alucard is one best  friend i meet on LC

believe me, trusting people in LC is really hard, and with the amount of money an LC can have, it can betray you. ( and also they can steal source ect and use it for it's own lc or sell it at other ) many devs have do it 

I would never do another lc except for 1 person in the remaining LC community 

by the way before opening a LastChaos make sure you have time, or leave your own job '' like Goofy does ''. 

I opened my server when 2-3 months later I had  exam I made a big mistake 

and be sure your devs have enough time to take care of the lc

 

PS: it's not hard to get 200-500 online even if there are multi client fake online or whatever, but leaving it open for more than 6 months only very few admins can do it 

is if we're talking about a year  only 5-10 people maybe

 

[RGT]

I might not have made it too clear, but what I was picturing /index.php?/profile/20534-veni/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="20534" href="/index.php?/profile/20534-veni/" rel="">@Veni is to make the best of what you got with LC. So no fancy cutscenes or voice actors. Yeah it will be dry as hell, but it would be a pretty big improvement from where it's at now. You don't have to create a brand new game to make LC more new-player friendly. I get that you and many others don't look at LC as a game that could be interesting enough for this but don't you think that your view of the game is a bit tainted from all those years spent on it? A new set of eyes could definitly think different! ? If you ask me, LC actually have a lot of good things going for it. It's not a life changing game by any means, but it's most certainly something the common man can sink some good hours into.

I do agree with the developer issue though. There might be someone that could afford to have a developer working for them but I for one couldn't. So I think that if this scenario was to ever happen there would have to be someone with extensive knowledge that wants to have this as a project. I do realize that might not be very easy to come by. However, we have established that it's actually possible to have this as a sole income, and who knows, if the server could reach new players, it could be even more lucrative. 

 

[anonguy]

I rarely have interest in these topics, but it's an interesting view into the minds of the greats in the last chaos private server space, although it's sad many others haven't come forward yet and given their thoughts yet on the current state of LC.



 LC is in its current state is due to negligence from gamigo, all the money and time, they could have created Last Chaos 2 and the non-stop milking the cow done prior while in the private server's scene, There's no reason to sink in hours in a server that will close in 3 months or in a server they keep adding shit that don't make sense and the obvious elephant in the room, corrupted staff teams. There are servers with so much custom shit done, you don't know what to do. They add gimmicks from mobile games like what the fuck. It's sad the sorry state LC is, and it won't get better, this dumb inbred retarded player base [CeNsOrEd] ride all upcoming servers leaving the good ones with good devs behind in the dust, while I understand why some do. Usually because in the current server they are playing they can't have a siege, so they go to a server they can have siege others because admin is corrupt.



Sickness,  nicolasg and Veni have written very good points to the things you have asked and would be redundancy for me to write the same things, but they have not yet called out Devs/Admins for the current state of private servers currently. Yes they are part of the problem as well and here's why:



Content made for some hours,



Way too many pots,



The idea of every char to be similar,



Clear increasing cash grabs by some, such as to max out affinity either put in the hours or max all out for 100-110 eu instantly,



The ideas of the never ending buffs, why does a player need to have 5 rows or more of buffs to go level up or PVP ?



The idea of faking player count



The idea of new affinity,c2, p2 and pots is content. It isn't.



The ever-increasing weird textures that don't fit LC.



The never ending idea of newer systems, not all systems have a place in LC, for example legal bot in game. An already dying game, your big brain move is adding bot ?



Almost all servers have the exact same content, nothing original, all buying or creating same things that are making the game more complex while some have very stupid ideas on what to do. All done for the sake of making something newer and shiny for money.



Some devs intentional going to other servers to crash, dupe.



Some think this is some [CeNsOrEd] measuring competition and a clear example is revenge here flexing how many servers they have created along how much money they have made and how much the power of friendship has carried him forward, a true dream opening a big server with your best friend.



To others this is just a side hustle quick money, and they are good at selling a server to players every 6 months or so, it's really smart business, open, do crap, have players leave, close because no players, clean up db, add some fancy stuff and open under a different name, different admin, rinse and repeat



The corruption. Admins know many times who are hacking, but they won't ban, in some cases their friends have access to items no one else has, their staff play the game influencing things for the best outcome for their friends, an array of shady things go down, and then they sit there wondering why their server is having lower player count daily. Some favor the opinion of people from the same community as them and when I say community I mean same country over the opinions of others, some shamelessly go and sell accounts/items on epvpers.



I may have failed to mention other things, but I am human and I have a faulty brain.



That's my 2 cents why devs are to blame just as much as the toxic community we have. I am open to anyone pointing out anything I have said wrong and willing to change my views on the matter.



Now onto RGT fella here, LC is a crippled dying old man. With just as an equal dying community, everyday more people stop playing LC / die. We are very lucky Windows 11 still supports LC.

By all means if you believe in your dream and believe in LC, create a team, take a loan and create a copy with better engine, improved things and different assets, they can try to sue you, but you can just say LC was an inspiration. I am not a lawyer, the last part might be wrong.



Now, if fawks cleans up, stabilize their servers, start a clean server, add game to steam, make changes at  this point a total reset to like lvl 50 cap, with half of the ep3 stuff removed, pays some streamers / YouTubers, get a fresh pair of eyes to make the game feel more modern, there may be hope for a second lifeline like.  2 shows how it feels like to be a brand-new player and watching this video, seeing a ghost town, high level cap, quests that give no exp etc. Why should a new player continue after downloading?



Looking forward to reading what Reza writes and how many times calls people spoon-fed faggots.



TLDR :  Official and Private Servers are a mess, no advertisement, sponsoring and if they do, new players just won't enjoy playing a ghost town ( official ) and Private where content isn't created for new players and many close after 3 months .

[Revenge]

As I said many stay on lc because you can get money very easily.

A lot of people ask sickness or me to make maps ( to be honest I just do it for money now ) it dont interests me more to make maps for fun.

Gustavo russian Romeost and lots of other devs also do it for money, they won't say even if I spend 40 hours on a system I'm going to sell it for 100 euros because I like LastChaos.

Lastchaos is a very simple way to make money and many devs know it and stay on the game just for that.

In term of Big dev there are only some few people like Frezona , veni , val , RomeoST , Rrbkmz the rest have exit LC like wizatek , HateMe  absolut ect 

For other people there are medium/good dev.

 

And for me even if they would work together lc private server have max 700 Real online player ( im not even sure it decrease every years)  + you have too trust them ( people  who work with you ) AT 100% and believe it's so fking hard trust people in LC dev , someone i know since 4 years Betrayed me so ...

 

So AT the end Big devs will Never work together.

 

PS: /index.php?/profile/22269-anonguy/&do=hovercard" data-mentionid="22269" href="/index.php?/profile/22269-anonguy/" rel="">@anonguy i wanted talk about ammount of money lc Can earn because Many people lie about it or dont know how much lc Can earn by month ( just now he know why people rest on LC )

People who told me i do lc for fun it's totaly bullshit , they would never work on lc for free

 

And idk if it's only  me or no but when i open my own server , now you have too deal with drama everyday , if someone die in PvP they will cry hack , you will got 30 ticket everyday for some random thing even if it's write how too fix error 0x007 on discord ect all this take time , or you have too fix some players with anydesk or team wiever.

 

Lastchaos hasn't advanced in terms of new things since many years:  FPS optimization, directx9 from HateMe  , and maybe i forgot few thing from other big devs 

In 2023 there are new characters from arcane and Infinity, and when i see all Time it take only for animations, skills ect 99% of devs are not able too mâke it

 

There will be fewer and fewer people on LastChaos as the years go by, as many of them start to grow up, have families, priorities and jobs.