Hi folks,
I started a server on 12/30 and I was wondering if you guys have any tips on how to draw people in.
I won't advertise here, of course, but we have a friendly friendly duo of admins and we have not abused admin privileges once. No item spawning, no manipulation, no increased airdrops. We've been killed several times (even targetted), and we dust ourselves off and move on. The people on the server see this and (I hope) appreciate it.
That said, it feels like the #1 thing that scares most players off from the server is the 2-3 groups of "established" folks that raid constantly. I feel like disabling the ability to raid would kill the "vanilla" state that I'm trying to achieve with my server. It would retain a lot of new players, sure, but I feel like there would be an exodus of anyone with any sort of experience.
The chat cycles are always the same. Player joins. "I love this server! Great server! You guys are great!". Fast-forward a few hours or days. "Raided again. This sucks. Peace."
I understand that raiding is a part of the game and I love it, but I feel like my server will never pick up steam. I feel like a wipe could do some good, but that is likely to make the established players leave and further damage the population.
Anyone else suffering from this problem? Anything you've done to get through it? It seems like a Catch-22 in the truest sense.
I feel like adding some sort of "care package" console command to give new players a foothold would be a big help, but like I said before, I don't want to damage the integrity of the vanilla game.
Thanks.
Keep in mind, it's on every pvp server, so it's not just on yours.
Like you said raiding is a part of the game and taking this way would kinda kill the point of the game as it's a survival game.
I can't think of anything you can do tbh, however some startpackets wouldn't be too bad, would help newfriends too, but that is up to you.
Make a noob town and have the 1 rule they can't raid noob town, and for noobs their rule is once they have a shack and furnace etc bag, they have to build a house and complete it. It may help alittle.. but still if they new guy doesn't build some crazy legit house with band up with his other noobies then it'll end up the same. So try the noob town idea but let them know they'll need to work together once out of there.
Hopefully steel houses will be a thing in the future which will be almost raid proof. But basic wood and metal houses should be able to be raided, c4 really is still expensive if you build your house right it cost like 15 to take over even a simple base.
All good posts and ideas. The "newb town" sounds good, but it would be hard to enforce (especially since I am trying to be an active player as well).
Its hard to establish some way for newer players to get a foothold when there are already established groups on your server.
What you might consider is working with these groups instead working on your own as administrator. Try to talk to these groups and find a way together to give new players a better chance. Perhaps they give new players a day of a start without attacking their homes and just kill them when they run around the countryside, or maybe a good way for your group is to have 1 day a week of pve?
In the end a single player will always have a hard time against established groups, especially if he/she is the only target. For most situations the map is too small for more than a few players to really hide at the moment. It will get a lot easier once there are ressource nodes everywhere on the map and not just on the currenly inhabitet area near the road.
The server that I'm on has disabled air drops indefinitely, and if im not mistaken, its not possible to research explosives, so the only way to get c4 is via zed drops or crates. Raiding still happens but its far less frequent and they have to be a lot more tactful and thought out. It works pretty well so far.
I was thinking about that. I feel like disabling airdrops would make C4 *attainable* but not craftable, thus Zombies / Crates would need to be farmed which is a natural time-sink. The flow of C4 would be greatly reduced, causing new players to get more adjusted more easily.
Time and time again, I see new spawns building bases on roads, in the middle of resource fields, or right next the the biggest base of the server. Then they wonder why they get raided.
Right now, the best strategy for someone new to get started in this would be to find either a basically empty server or a dedicated PvE server, and learn the basics of PvE survival, and get some basic map knowledge. Then they can think about joining a busier server, with some hope of survival.
So, I think that maybe you should not be trying to attract players new to the game, but more intermediate ones who are looking to get established on a more dangerous server after having got a clue about the game elsewhere.
If the 2-3 established groups are busy worrying about each other, they are going to have less time, resources, and inclination to blow the metal door off of a 1x1 building. A good thing for you to do to build your server population would therefore be to take the fight to the established groups, and keep them busy.
As for the airdrop / explosive thing, it might be an option, but consider that the main source for C4 is zombies anyways, as crafting them takes just an insane amount of materials and gathering them is normally not worth it because killing zombies is faster in 90% of the situations.
Airdrops are a really fun part of the game giving players something to do too. If you manage to get your groups busy fighting each other for airdrops that too gives the newbies a chance to build a little longer in peace, as long as they don't try to get them for themselves (a mistake many newbs make and then loose their stuff over and over again)
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