Stick Online Forums

A couple of members have mentioned the idea of opening up V2 donor server registration to the public again. Generally speaking, this is not something I would want to do as a permanent thing. V2 has been officially out of development for quite some time, and even if not many new players joined it would still add a number of new moderation concerns that I simply do not have time to deal with (any time I do devote to Stick Online, I generally want to be devoted to V3 development).

That being said, I would not be completely opposed to temporarily opening up the registration to the public again for a few days. Just long enough so people could make an extra account for themselves, invite a friend to play, or acquire an account when you were otherwise unable to donate, etc.

My main concern with doing this is whether or not current donors would somehow feel cheated at the idea of people suddenly being able to get accounts without donating. I would not imagine that many of you should, seeing as it is a donation and not a purchase (donor access is more of a thank you), but I would still like to leave it up to a vote.

Keep in mind, that even if I did end up doing this, it would be done under the assumption that people would limit themselves and not abuse the registration. In other words, if you wanted to make an extra account or two for yourself, feel free. But I would not want players "stocking up" on dozens of accounts, or in any other way abusing the process. If things became an issue, I would reserve the rights to delete excess account, and or turn off registration at will. I also reserve the right to decline the results of the poll if some unforeseen reason came up that would make opening up registration unusually troublesome (not likely).

I think(assuming its not to time intensive) it would be cool to see registration open up every couple of months. This would cut down on people wanting to stock up on tons of accounts(hopefully) but not allow the population to suddenly explode.  This might still be a bit ambitious and could still create to much of a need for moderation, but just a thought.


Anyways, as I personally would not feel cheated at all and would welcome the idea. I think it could(at least temporarily) get a fair number of people on. Like 7-10 instead of 2.

Being the only one on every time you log on gives a greater sense of being cheated imo since you can't fully enjoy the game without others around you messing about (not saying I feel cheated at all though, just saying).

I'm all for it!

I'm still around and would quite happily keep as much of an eye on things as I can. With that said activity is nearly always a plus, personally I support anything that keeps people interested.

Quote from: Danimal on October 09, 2013, 10:48:49 PM
I'm still around and would quite happily keep as much of an eye on things as I can. With that said activity is nearly always a plus, personally I support anything that keeps people interested.

Igu for mod 2013.

If this were to result in a significant population increase like the good ole' days I could easily see myself playing again. I seriously doubt many donors would be in opposition to have people online to actually play the game with! I would also like to add  that while I am still a broke college student, if you had to move over to an official server host again to support a larger number of players, I would totally be down to help you cover those costs.

So, out of curiosity, will SO be getting a newer flux of mods in the future (cause it seems like Dan, Venuse [who I haven't seen play the game in years] and you- Meiun- are the only mods left). Will the ex-mods like Jake, Lingus, Scotty, Chaos, DT, etc be getting back into their previous glory? Or will the future mod status cater to newer, respected, intelligent people like igufed, Lucifer, t-rok, etc?

I for one would love to see registration open for a couple of days, even if its only a one-off.

If registration was to open, it would mostly only be used by the current players due to the donation pool. So things you can take from this:

-Old players could possibly increase their activity levels, leveling a new account to try a new build
-New player registrations would be next to zilch
-My bank account would not decrease as much as it normally does

I'm all for this idea. Its a shame to see such a great an fun game going to waste.

But I can totally see why Meiun has concerns. I hope one day the game will be back to the good old days and this amazing community of people are brought back together.

Being a long time player like most people here, I feel I'm well known within the community by most players and would love to become more involved with everyone. If the game is opened up I'd be on most days for as long as possible and try my best to keep new players informed about the game and help out with anything I can within the game itself. (Like levelling/Boss spawns etc).

I was thinking, if its not to much effort on Meiun's part to maybe make a few select/trusted people temporary Mods. Maybe with limited abilities to keep some order and to take some strain off other Mods like Danimal. 

Very nice idea, thank you for reading my post.
I activated 6 Accounts here through donating, nethertheless i wouldn't feel cheated if this game would get open for public since it could bring fun back

Greets

This sounds like a good idea overall, as it would allow the current individuals who simply visit the forum every few days to check for updates to have a chance at playing. I could see a bit of a problem though if people start asking again in a few months and then being given the reason that it was 'open' for a week or so, and then that individual being disappointed at missing the opportunity. People always find a thing to be a mad at though anyways.

I definitely wouldn't feel cheated if this were to happen. 

I wouldn't expect it to pull in too many newcomers, if any.  I'd see most of the activity it generates being people who already have access trying something new out since they would be able to freely do so..

Before I shpeel for a little bit, as long as you determine that reopening registration for a few days wouldn't cause you any unnecessary stress then by all means go for it, I'm sure there's a good chunk of people who would appreciate opening a couple more accounts & getting their friends to try the game out.

If your goal here is to appease our occasionally needy community, I don't think that this compromise is addressing what DNH and countless others have asked for in the past. They don't want short-lived activity via new accounts for themselves and their friends, that wouldn't solve the problem, they want an active community back, the "MM" of MMO. You designed Stick Online from the ground up with a community in mind; from the use of other players to traverse the pits to a limited local chat system, from the original make friends or die PvP system to a chance-based loot system that ensured some players would be more powerful than others, from a cap-based exp system that discouraged solo play to the gigantic Sand Golem nigh impossible to kill by yourself. You know better than any of us that SOv2 simply doesn't work when you're alone, slowly grinding for incredibly rare items with nobody to show them off to.

However, as you've explained many a time and what the majority of us have accepted is that that there would be no situation in which repoening SOv2 would not involve your time and energy better devoted to SOv3. That's OK! I wouldn't even want you to reopen SOv2 at this point, it's 2013! The majority of this community is in college or beyond and busy as can be by now, on the off chance that there would even be an influx of new players to this 7-8(?) year old game I don't think we'd even have the energy to deal with the inevitable raging teenagers without ruthlessly flaming them.

Anyways, it's always good to know that you're still around, but I don't think you need to worry about SOv2. If you want to keep us happy, all you need to do is show us some art from Venuse & Cero every once in a while, or even better discuss with us some ideas you've had rolling around in your head. We're going to be waiting here impatiently regardless.

Assuming all goes well, I don't expect that opening registration up for a bit should cause me any extra stress. As I mentioned in my initial post, if it did end up doing so too badly I would just close it again. While new players are certainly welcome, I'm not expecting many either (for reasons many of you have already illustrated). This is more targeted to be another very small "thanks" for all the support I've gotten over the years, and a chance for you all to get a tiny bit more out of your donations. Really though, it's also largely just for the heck of it.

          Well I don't remember our exact numerical peak in player base, but I remember a time when the average was 60 people online. How did the game even get that popular to begin with? I am sure there was some advertising involved to get the word out? Upon reopening registrations would you be opposed to some advertising to draw in new people so that we could restore the game to the old population potentially? Like James mentioned in his post, a lot of the bosses (ie the sand golem) are very hard to take down alone or even with a few people and are designed to only realistically be taken down by a large crowd of people...which is honestly the issue right now. That and the fact that also like James said, if you were to get something rare you have nobody to show it off to.
          Obviously if we were to successfully draw in a large number of new players there would be newly added community maintenance as I am sure it would attract some toxic players as every online gaming community does at some point, but I feel that's what would be ultimately necessary if v2 was going to be actually enjoyable again. I mean it sounds like you've said you're doing it as a thanks for donors and also doing it for the heck of it...but with that said does that mean that you would be opposed drawing in a bunch of new players?

@pwnage- I think it being the "best" mmorpg on yoyogames was one of the reasons for its success. It didn't have too much to compete with (except perhaps that Luxor online game which came several years after, slime online, Jakethesnake and lingus's online game, and a few other weaker titles). I don't know how much technical advertising Meiun did, but I'm gonna make a guess and say a handful of the players came from yoyogames or the game maker community. I seriously doubt SO2 would be able to gather a lot of new players, due to it being an old game, it's no longer endourced by yoyogames, word of mouth only goes so far, 60 players online (let alone 5 or even the extreme 1 player online) is a turnoff to modern mmorpg players, and a big advertising campeign would distract Meuiun from v3 (it would be a lot of work and I don't know if Meiun has the "connections"). I seriously doubt there would be many new players playing So3 anytime soon. I saw a phenomenon with another mmorpg, too. It went years without any new content, people lost interest (including myself), there suddenly became only 10 or so main guilds instead of 100, and this game was much more advanced than SO. It lowered in its player count, and there was no stopping it, because it was just an old game. It was still a good game, with good community, but that's just the way it is. Get what I'm saying?

It's actually a bit funny. I really didn't do any advertising aside from posting it on the "GMC" (game maker community), which drew the first wave of players. But beyond that, the majority of its popularity was primarily from word of mouth and other people posting about places that I had little to no knowledge of. It eventually reached a point where the growth of users seemed pretty much self sustainable, and I actually removed the posting for it from the GMC. I also remember a few occosasion where people offered to advertise it on some websites for me and I told them not to, as the player base was already growing faster than we could keep up with. I don't remember the exact stats for its peak, but I definitely remember a stretch of at least a few months in which it was rare to log on and see less than 60-70 people, and at peak hours it was easily up to or over 100. I think the most we ever had online at once was somewhere in the range of 250-300 people (one of the Chaos tournaments), but I may need to double check that for the exact number. I know I have some screenshots from that tournament somewhere.

Anyways, I'd sort of rather not spend any time advertising the open registration in any serious manner. If we get some new players, that'd be great, but I wouldn't want things to get excessive (not that I expect they would). You guys are all more than welcome to spread the word to your friends and such, but you really don't need to go too far out of your way.

I definitely look forward to a day when we can see some strong player counts with V3 though :)

was wondering if its not too much work and people are into it you might re introduce the old pvp system with this so the new noobs can bat each other around and make factions and such, it might spice things up for a while.

Quote from: TANK on October 13, 2013, 02:39:17 PM
was wondering if its not too much work and people are into it you might re introduce the old pvp system with this so the new noobs can bat each other around and make factions and such, it might spice things up for a while.

I made a plea for this a good while back when the donor server was slightly more active, but as I look back at my post I think Meiun was right to ignore it. I thoroughly enjoyed the old PvP system, I hope it returns in some manner for SOv3 like enforced PvP in some of the independent zones Meiun mentioned in his sneak peak, but for the donor server it would just prompt an unnecessary amount of afk killing, spawnkilling, and killing during bosses like it did before - thus requiring an increased level of moderation, more of Meiun's time and energy... etc. 

But if Meiun did want to spend a little time on SOv2 and spice things up a bit, I've always wondered if the donor server would be better off if it abandoned its grinding aspects. The grind used to be secondary, something you just so happened to be doing while chatting with your friends, or if it was primary there was a solid goal in mind; survive longer during spawn parties, find a rare item to show off to your buddies, defeat a rival in PvP, compete in an official tournament, etc. SOv2 never truly had any official "end game content", but for me and many others its PvP was the end game content, especially the official tournaments. I don't think I've ever had more of a rush than I did whilst fighting foG or DaemonClawz in those tournaments, or fighting igufed or Danimal back when we used to practice nearly every day. SOv2's PvP requires an immense amount of skill, and with its weapon & statistical variety the PvP alone could even be its own standalone game. I've always wished there were more fully-geared & skilled players so that we could properly test the the balance of PvP in this game, but too many have abandoned the concept once they realized how long that would take.

So what if we did away with SOv2 holding on to its MMO status and turned it into a fighting game by;

• Making every account max level or if that's inconvenient drastically increasing exp gain.
  
• Putting every item in the store or drastically increasing their drop rates.
  Meiun, I know you'll probably shoot this idea down because I remember your responses to similar ideas in which you've expressed a desire to keep the donor server's memory pure to how the official server was, but think on it. The only barrier to SOv2's PvP content is your level and your equipment, both of which require hours upon hours of grinding of grinding with 1-5 players online in the current state of the donor server. The amazing thing is that people still do that, I still see people online every day grinding out those last few items they never obtained - it is true that some people did and still do play SOv2 for its PvE content alone and would probably find themselves with nothing to do were they to suddenly actually have everything they've worked for years to achieve. I don't really think there's a middle ground here, with the way that the drop system works in SOv2 (something I've never quite agreed with, but understood to varying levels), the rarest weapons are the most effective in PvP. If we were to give everyone equal access to those weapons, there would be nothing to reach for in PvE.
  
  I think the idea is worth discussing at least. I know I'm going slightly off topic, but I feel like a discussion about SOv2's activity is getting at the root of why people like DNH have asked for the registration to be opened. We're never going to reopen registration permanently & regain SOv2's old community completely for the donor server, so what can we do to pass the time whilst we wait for SOv3?
  

 That sounds pretty cool, pvp has always been the main focus of this game to me also. Adding this along with the 99 auto level (you must still grind for the last lvl 100 sounds cool to me) and open registration would lead to a lot of fun for a long while I think.   Thing is a lot of people worked a long time for their items, we could still vote on it though and if it gets all yes's give it a go. ... I can  see 99 agi slasher teams flying at a group of 99 str IS'ers already. The only other problem I can think of is if people ever got bored of it stickonline v2 would have no replay value. (it already seems pretty empty though.)

Quote from: Lucifer on October 13, 2013, 05:11:12 PM
Long deep thought provoking loving message here.

This is actually really interesting. The main reason I don't play anymore is because I'm not max level/don't have the right items to PvP. Its pretty boring to sit there alone and try and grind the last few. Its even more boring to repeatedly kill bosses alone hoping you'll get something decent.

Just my 2 cents.

I don't really care what happens to SO2 at this point. I suppose Luci's idea up there might have a decent outcome, although I think there might be some players who actually do enjoy grinding so it bears further discussion. I'd definitely prefer increased experience rates over insta-leveling.

to go along with Lucifer's idea. there could just be a reset button for the stats so we can experiment with different stats for pvp or against the monster in SO2. or maybe not  :P

Higher EXP and Drop rate - YES
instand max level and All gear in Shop - Better not

im not maxxed on one of my 3 accounts, but i also dont want to...
higher drop rate would be awesome, same to exp increase like 300% more or so
I think i'd play even more active then

Quote from: DNH on October 14, 2013, 10:59:53 AM
Higher EXP and Drop rate - YES
instand max level and All gear in Shop - Better not

im not maxxed on one of my 3 accounts, but i also dont want to...
higher drop rate would be awesome, same to exp increase like 300% more or so
I think i'd play even more active then

Then everyone hits max level and has all the items within a week. Thus nobody will be playing, i mean less than now even... At this point in time, there are still some people that are on and grinding for items. Take that away and you will be bored and left with a dry washed up game.

Higher EXP and Drop rate - YES instand max level and All gear in Shop - Better not im not maxxed on one of my 3 accounts, but i also dont want to... higher drop rate would be awesome, same to exp increase like 300% more or so I think i'd play even more active then Then everyone hits max level and has all the items within a week. Thus nobody will be playing, i mean less than now even... At this point in time, there are still some people that are on and grinding for items. Take that away and you will be bored and left with a dry washed up game.

i wouldnt do it too. But the spawn rate of boss monster sucks. I am online since 9 am just  2 ds the whole day it doesnt make fun im just alone and no ds.

So why not doing it right now?
SO could get some live back and i dont see any reason why to wait with that since noe one would cry.

GG

I miss the good old days when people were actually playing the game.

What makes Stick Online the game it is is the community. I want to see the community regrow. Therefore, I support this decision.

Can't wait to play SO once again... That is... if this' really gonna happen.

Quote from: jackel1994 on October 14, 2013, 05:01:48 PM

Quote from: DNH on October 14, 2013, 10:59:53 AM
Higher EXP and Drop rate - YES
instand max level and All gear in Shop - Better not

im not maxxed on one of my 3 accounts, but i also dont want to...
higher drop rate would be awesome, same to exp increase like 300% more or so
I think i'd play even more active then

Then everyone hits max level and has all the items within a week. Thus nobody will be playing, i mean less than now even... At this point in time, there are still some people that are on and grinding for items. Take that away and you will be bored and left with a dry washed up game.

So then perhaps do something less drastic, make all weapons hit more than one target, drastically lower the wait time  between swings and lower stamina usage on items (though this would have negative effects on PvP). Something like this wouldn't remove the need for grinding but it would speed up the process and certainly feel like you are being more effective. Also increasing the spawn rates of bosses would help as well.
But to be honest I don't play all that much either. I'd like to but I have very limited time and I am not max level nor do I have all the items I want and I just don't have the time to bother getting it done. Mix that with the fact that I'm unable to make most events/tournaments/times when others are on due to my living arrangements and I don't really have much reason to play.

So I guess the decision is petty unanimous :P. Hopefully meiun will reply soon so we know if he's still up for it and if so how long it will take to implement. I'll probably be able to get a few friends to play, I'm sure at least one or two will stick around.

I think this would be great. I think in terms of fairness to donors, we've definitely had our fun with the donor server, but I most likely speak for us all when I say it would be better to have more people online to play with.

Just a heads up, I am planning to open the server sometime this coming week. Glad to see so many people supportive of the idea. I will post more info once I determine an exact start date.

I do appreciate the other ideas to increase activity/further satisfy existing players, but for now I really think open registration is a big enough step. I am not really willing to go making any other big changes to V2 (exp rate/drop rate changes, etc.), though I do recognize a lot of you have some valid points about things being difficult without lots of players.

I told like 10 of my friends about the game and told them that the registration would open for a few days. They all said they would be willing to give it a try, so hopefully at least some of them will stay and make the community bigger.

Well god damn it's been a good while. I'd certainly be interested in revisiting the game I spent countless hours on back in the day. Would a download link be made available or will it just be opening registration?

So many veterans in here lol

cant wait anymore.. Meiun gogo do it now for 2 weeks ;)