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“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…
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.
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