Kq head

Vive la France!

Infiltrated their clan like it was the wilderness. =D 

You can ban us or you can mute us but you still can't KILL US LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. 

TY for 10b+ in a week make sure to hit those ;;raids so you can keep filling our banks

Weight watchers causing more bloodshed than the entire French Revolution.

First of all, Kq head, thanks for this topic. It's a great topic and good read.

 

I used to like Alora, really put a lot of hours in it, but the flame just burnt out eventually. Shit happens. One of the reasons for this is that updates are being promised for sooo long but never come out. For example the CoX rework. When they come out, they're full of bugs / not fully coded. That's just sad to see from my point of view. It really demotivates the players in this way.

Also it's maybe an idea to stop prioritizing small updates over the more important, bigger ones.

I mean 2010 mode is cool and stuff, but literally noone ever asked about that. Why are there dev hours spent on that update anyway?

 

Two updates ago (17/08/2020) there were changes made to LMS. Which means time has been spent on this minigame. It's still in the old format, which is (sorry for my words) trash as fuck. The new LMS went live the 29th of August 2019. Which is over a year ago. Want to revive the minigame? Start by reworking that part. The differences shouldn't be too complex; give everybody an option to pick / change starting gear & let the chests open only if someone has a key in their invent.

 

The lack of communication is a bummer which kills the server eventually. Like others have said before, communicate with the community, let us know what's up.

Another donator rank Alora is eh.. Pretty sus.. I remember when immortal came out, the vast majority of the server wasn't happy at all.

I just enabled Ome Duo (thats how we call it in The Netherlands), i might be able to go for the eternal rank in a few years.

 

Well, i'll go back to my cave and lurk the forums every now and then, cya around boys!

Last year I made a suggestion on these transferrable donator ranks. This suggestion was left to be ignored for half a year. Then silently declined. For what reason would it be possible with a 20.000 dollar rank and not 10.000 dollar? And where does this end? Will we have 100K donator ranks in 4 years? And at what cost?

 

We know that there's no way for you to know that we're working on all of this, which leads me to my next point: communication. With that being said, hopefully you can also sympathize with us and understand that sometimes things happen in our lives that we cannot control.

So, something that could be done to easily avoid this "lack of communication" here ..is to have someone make up "news papers" or teasers of things to come - while it's not a full form of communication, players will at least know what to expect - I'm aware that estimated time frame for these things are quite hard to keep to but this at least gives players some idea of what's going on rather than not knowing anything. I believe you did this a bit with the introduction of runelite client. With this you can see how the players feel about the updates to come and you can learn what to prioritize over what and so on.. 

 

Continuing on with the "lack of communication" bit, one thing I've noticed when coming to this server, maybe it's just me.. but I find it oddly frustrating not knowing what the hell is going on with the staff team. I see random promotions, random demotions and people randomly quitting and all without any announcement and or explanation as to why - sure those members that resign or get demoted aren't required and have no obligation to say anything as to why and or what happened but I definitely feel the community should be and needs to be updated on when these things happen instead of randomly seeing someone that was a staff member no longer being a staff member and it not being addressed to the community until someone decides to finally make a staff update.. a tip for the future, if you do monthly updates on this is to add additional change posts to that main post if there so happens to be changes in the staffing team within the month. I apologize if this is something that already happens in the discord, but, not everyone uses the discord like that. Forums are just as vital in a concurrent player base as discord is..

 

 

 

Communication has been an issue for awhile now, as Chad and I scramble to rush updates out (as a 2-person development team) we do sometimes lose sight of the big picture and neglect the communication aspect. It isn't something we intend to do, it simply makes more sense to us to put our time and energy into developing these updates to have a healthy, constant flow of new content and bug fixes, as well as responding to all the PMs that we receive daily and keeping in touch with the higher up staff team to make sure that things are running smoothly.

I had a good bit of experience in this myself, not in development, but managing a server and the staffing team/community and I can tell you that it's really important to keep people up to date with what's going on regardless, otherwise people will start to believe that you're in it for the money and or starting to abandon the server - which.. is what you have with this post. The only visible thing that's been shown in any sort of update progression is a new donator rank, you probably should of waited to roll it out and or hint it at all until the bigger update/s happen and or after them even.. 

 

You have a community manager, event/advert manager and 4 or so other admins that can fulfil the holes creating problems in your communication - use them.. if they can't do it, find someone that can.. simple as that.

 

This is one of the things that I will never understand the logic behind... Let's look at the most recent, and probably best example of this. The Chambers of Xeric rework is probably one of the best content updates Alora has seen in a long time; not only is it a good advertisement point, but it is also the cause of many old players returning. While I don’t agree with people saying “cOx iS iMpoSsible” I must admit I don’t see any logic behind delaying crucial bug-fixes, like the scaling of the top floor or the chests randomly disappearing for an entire month.    Another good example of this would be a very long time ago, when the skilling interfaces were updated to match OSRS. This update brought a crafting bug, that made the skill impossible to level early on, pretty much rendering the skill unusable for an entire week. Whether the reason is that a server restart would “annoy” players, or rather it was better to simply delay it a week so that the update would look bigger and better. It makes absolutely no logical sense. 

It's pretty obvious that these delays are there so that there's more content to be added to a single update, this is how most things go in terms of development of a game - in this case an rsps. Some games have regular downtime for maintenance weekly, but unfortunately that isn't an rsps works. I do believe that critical bug fixes shouldn't be held back in any regard and should be pushed out ASAP but the problem here is that they probably backup all the files having it sitting ready to be updated so attempting to try to update the server would implement everything they've been working on which would bring a plethora of new exciting bugs for everyone to deal with as they're not finished yet.. it's not exactly the smartest way of handling the files for the updates, I could be wrong.. but I'd assume it'd have to be the case or something similar otherwise there shouldn't be any problem with pushing out the critical bug fixes and the problem with it is, if they've done this with all the files it can take a long time to transfer.. which I can't really blame them for trying to avoid but maybe in the future better management of the files and so on can be considered.

 

I guess I'm fairly newer here.. so I don't really know the owner or the staffing team to any regard very well - so I don't know for sure if this is a continuing problem for a long time. I'd assume that it isn't that bad if the server has managed to stay up for 4 years with a decent playerbase but it's good someone has voiced their opinion/s for the community but in the future I don't think anyone should be afraid to voice their opinions on things so long as they're not just toxic gibberish because something bothers you a little bit and you for some reason can't seem to get over it and it's not really that big of a deal such as the below example 

 

I’ve contacted you a month or two ago regarding the Scythe of vitur’s wrong angle.

this is such an irrelevant thing to be bothering about and has absolutely no impact on the players gameplay and 90% of people probably didn't even know. Anyway.. voicing opinions is how you get things to change, staying quiet then there's no feedback etc to refer to when continuing on with updates and so on.. but being annoying and toxic about it you may as well just get booted into orbit.

 

 

 

Aside from that, the Eternal rank is simply a prestige rank -- yes, there are a few new perks (such as being able to transfer your rank more regularly) but at the end of the day it isn't anything that threatens the integrity of the game, and ultimately the addition of this rank will do more good than bad as it will allow us to keep providing the best support and content that we possibly can.

Most people won't even achieve this rank, so it's weird that they're even complaining about it. I think there should of definitely been a post made about it as soon as it was visible to the public or as said previously not made visible to the public until update/s roll out as an addition to the update posts explaining the rank in more detail and why it's been implemented to avoid such a harsh backlash.

 

Nice post, relax a little bit Alorians 

 

“The main piece of content CoX has been left in this atrocious state for over a month, so we are adding a new donator rank??!”

 

Eternal Donator Rank

 

Anyone else notice this new Eternal Donator rank? As far as myself, and many others in the community that I've talked with are aware, this rank was never proposed, polled, or even mentioned to anyone. Everyone I’ve talked with seems to agree that this is a clear cash grab, and honestly, a slap in the face to most of us. Moving on.. What perks could this new donator rank possibly even offer? Any perks that could possibly be offered to match the cost of the rank would be incredibly overpowered and game breaking. The opinion the community holds on donator ranks is already that the highest rank that is worth the cost is uber, so why would anyone in their right mind pay for a potential $20,000 (potentially higher) rank?

 

For an example, look at the drop rate differences from donator ranks… (While this is a very black and white example, it gets the point across that the rank truly doesn’t provide a benefit worth its price) The Corporeal Beast drops the Elysian Sigil at a 1/2697 rate for non-donors. For uber-donators, that is reduced to 1/2552, and for immortal-donators a 1/2370 chance. Estimating that efficient players can get 30 kills per hour, it would save an immortal-donator 10.9 hours when compared to a non-donator. A $10,000 donator rank is theoretically only saving the player approximately 11 hours, more than $900 per hour saved. Think about what master and immortal donators did to the CoX prices.. How much further can we buff drop rates before it gets to be too much?

 

What’s more realistic is that players (if any even tried) would try and buy the rank with in game gold, buying custom transfers. Considering the on-going rate for $100 custom donations is 3b gold, at a 1:4 rate it would cost a single player 150b gold to obtain the rank from scratch. The benefits that this new rank would have to provide the player to be worth the price would have to be so incredibly overpowered that it would break the game in no time at all. Not to mention… how many players could even afford to buy that, maybe 2? Even so, they would likely have to dump their entire banks to afford it. 

 

Something myself and a few others in the community have discussed as a better alternative would be paying for rank transfers. We understand that there is a cost of running the server, and the players are willing to do that, but a new donator rank isn’t the best way to go about it. Players being able to pay to transfer their donor ranks from account to account is a service that is much higher in demand than a higher tier donor rank. Not only does this accomplish bringing in more income to keep the server going, it also fills a huge need that the community has been asking for. How many players have left Alora because they wanted to play a new account and didn’t have the option to transfer their rank to a new account? Countless players have offered $100 and more to transfer their ranks, and those same players might come back if this was an option. 

 

Lack of communication

 

Take a look at Oldschool Runescape’s method for development and why the current version of OSRS is a much bigger success than its prior Runescape 2 (pre-eoc). They run 30 question content polls at least once a month, and develop content around the results. If something doesn’t pass their threshold of being approved by the community (75%), they don’t bother implementing it unless they further reach out to the community, ask what changes would need to be made to see the content implemented, and then make said changes. While on Alora, the last major content (content that exceeds the “weekly update” time frame) poll took place in September of 2017. It has been over 3 years since one of these polls were posted. Here is the post for those looking… 

 

https://www.alora.io...d-construction/

 

A development focused on what the players would like to see, rather than what content the developers would like to see. This is the style of development that Alora needs to implement. The players keep Alora alive, and players won’t stay when their thoughts and ideas aren’t being listened to. While Omi can, and should, make decisions for the server that he feels are ultimately the best, he should also take into account the ideas that the community has a strong passion for (ex: reworking Olm and ToB, adding nightmare instances and an overall combat system rework). Releasing content like Castle Wars and LMS are not what the players are asking for, yet they get implemented above all else and before fixing what the players are clearly asking for. 

 

Instead of leaving the players, in the dark when it comes to “major” content releases, create development blogs more often. There were 2 back in July and August for the Chambers of Xeric rework, and it was very exciting to see an update like that just around the corner. Knowing what updates are coming and thinking about preparing for those updates always brings back my passion to play because it sets me on a direct path for a cool new piece of content. 

 

Maybe development blogs are something that take up too much of Omi’s time, but there are a ton of dedicated players on the staff team that I am sure would be thrilled to help with the process of testing content and putting together a development blog for the community. 

 

 

Side note. What happened to crack the clue?

 

 

Stupid update delays

 

This is one of the things that I will never understand the logic behind... Let's look at the most recent, and probably best example of this. The Chambers of Xeric rework is probably one of the best content updates Alora has seen in a long time; not only is it a good advertisement point, but it is also the cause of many old players returning. While I don’t agree with people saying “cOx iS iMpoSsible” I must admit I don’t see any logic behind delaying crucial bug-fixes, like the scaling of the top floor or the chests randomly disappearing for an entire month. 

 

Another good example of this would be a very long time ago, when the skilling interfaces were updated to match OSRS. This update brought a crafting bug, that made the skill impossible to level early on, pretty much rendering the skill unusable for an entire week. Whether the reason is that a server restart would “annoy” players, or rather it was better to simply delay it a week so that the update would look bigger and better. It makes absolutely no logical sense. 

 

As a player, all of this makes me feel so unappreciated on the server. To know that cash grabs and flashy update threads are clearly more important than the player’s experience, it truly saddens me. 

 

 

I anticipate all of the discussions this may start, and I look forward to feedback from everyone within the community. 

 

I agree 100% with this rank. It seems like a pointless update fuelled by greed instead of actually doing updates that players WANT and NEED. (Fixing bugs etc.) There is no way I am going to pay another fortune in GP to get an extra $10,000 added, especially when the current bonuses are not even worth it.

I also agree that having options like transferring ranks between accounts is a much better idea.

 

Omicron - The way things are at the moment, we'd be forced to start cutting advertisements sometime in the next few months to make sure that Alora isn't losing money

 

Well if you hadnt added cosmetic boxes and other items where you could obtain the "custom items" you used to sell, people would still be buying them and it wouldnt be as big of an issue.

 

Anyway thats just my opinion as a long time player.

This thread couldn’t be posted at a better moment. I love this community but frankly I don’t think it will last if it’s going in this direction for any longer. From what I’ve seen people are going elsewhere, lack of forums activity compared to before, etc. There definitely has to be some changes, some points you’ve addressed are valid. Lack of communication, sudden changes like new donator status, veteran color change for this new rank. Personally I don’t mind the new rank and whatsoever. Just the communication is poorly. 

Time to say something ‘unimportant’ here too.....,

First of all @Kq head you’re a champ to express your feelings about this whole problem. I couldn’t agree more than what you have stated above.

Indeed, what noticed me this morning was the horrible ‘Veteran’ rank color imposter and I was like; What the fuck are you even doing Dan? Is this much more important than fixing up your server that has a bunch of bugs? Is this the part where you don’t give a damn about this server anymore and just want more money for your own goods? Whatever you do is up to you, but this is one of the reasons I have chosen OSRS over Alora. I think that if this keeps going on then many people will follow up leaving this server and find another place where their opinion matters.

Try to release more content polls, try to spend more attention on the small things. I’ve contacted you a month or two ago regarding the Scythe of vitur’s wrong angle. I do understand that the game has other priorities which you have said throughout PMS, but those small things only improves the server to the better one. Once again, this is all up to you.

:shrug:

Most important thing to do is listen to the people, what they want! 

I agree on this, and i have much love for Alora we have the best community in the game 

Couldn’t have said it better. I really really really like Alora ALOT.
But everything u stated above is slowly killing my love for Alora and probably for alot of other people.
And i really would hate to see that day, but it’s coming if it keeps going like this.

I also do not enjoy known bugs being fixed, but wont be implemented until we have a big update to roll out, rather than end of the week server reset with bug fixes pushed.

Alora has something better than any other server has...the games best attribute is the community.
It must be preserved and empowered, otherwise the whole thing crashes. If you played other servers you can notice the difference in behavior and attitude on the communities..Alora is by far the best community, period.
With that being said, the polls need to be added, this game doesnt need another donator rank at all.
You can slow down the updates, but don't add a donator rank out of nowhere, and most importantly, keep your community updated on things. Make their opinions matter with polls, discussion threads etc.. 
I am certain players wouldn't mind longer update waits if they had a say in them, and if they were updated about it.

ly all