If you want new players don't PK them, instead help them
And PK them later, when they grow up. That's how it should be like in a perfect world. Satisfaction from smashing someone's 70 HP character equipped with shovel and 30 caps is close to none. Wait until a player shows up fully geared with maxed out char and smash him then.
It's how I stood, a little help from a few players made me stay.
Similar story here.
It's the people, the crew, mates, goodfellas, niggers to hang around with etc. that make this or that server playable in a long term.
Everywhere you can get the same features - controll the location, grab the loot from container.
Right about time to change this path then, introduce something different from others, attract not by spamming the shit out of Facebook but by setting own high standards. Running yet another clone of FO2/2238/TLA with slightly changed crit table won't work.
You wan't to help them? It doesn't matter because they will leave this game anyway, so it's only wasting of time.
So are we interested in new players to come or not? I'm confused.
It feels like a time waste when you see the results, just a few percent out of total number stays for more than three days. It's really discouraging. But is this purely these newcomers fault they don't want to stay?
The main question is: Why they (old and fresh players) are leaving the game?
Hmmmm... Let's see what we have here... PvP activities like Town Controll or Reno. Sounds good but it's boring after few years of the same. Another thing - solo players can do nothing here. Oh, there is something - Ares (naaah), Gun Runners Quest (two or three times per day, but after week - fuck it), caravan runs (hour after hour, day by day, week - forget), crafting (what they should do with the shitloads of crafted stuff?), chatting in the Hub (not forever), trying to gather some other players and build the team ([player not found]). What else you can do here? DocAN showed some "70%" and who knows that he can even explain what it means. In the better way some from the "70%" could be applyed gradually to the actual game and after some time all server could be wiped. But hell no - "30% undone" sounds better. And add now no events past few months, last adjustment 8 months ago, no new features past two years, some players are cheatting with impunity. It seems the only reason to stay here is nothing else to do in life.
I'm hoping to see more and more of possible activities after wipe. I'm also aware that making an indie game in your non-paid time off does not allow me to raise my demands and expectations very high. It's done when it's done. That's why in current state attracting newcomers is pointless, they will go the same "fonline? meh, booooring" way as many went before.
All these carebear discussions for random noobs disappoint me. Most of the fun of fonline is from figuring things out and having adventures with buddies. At first you die a lot but who cares its part of the game. Even if you cut down on ability to pk it won't make even one noob stay because if people die once or twice and get so buttflustered they quit then they wouldn't have stayed anyways.
That's why we keep having threads like this and that's why something has to be done. Unless what we've got now fits everyone interested perfectly fine - a niche for stubborn masochists with autism at insane levels.
I've helped many noobs and maybe 1% of those I helped stay longer than a day even though I'm teaching them and they aren't being pkd. Most of these noobs don't even deserve help because they are total morons with their heads up their asses. Say what you like about "dumb pvp apes" and "retarded pkers driving away players" but these guys take the time to learn wtf they are doing and know how to play. Most of the shitty noobs don't actually play the game and just erotic roleplay in the hub and cry about mean nasty people who won't let them erp other places too.
People quit because they aren't interested in playing the game. Many just want some retarded Facebook thing where they can type idiocy to other noobs all day and maybe get a skin or 2 to show off. That's literally all they want from the game. We don't need those kinds of people. IMO there needs to be more outreach to players that have never heard of fonline so more real players have a chance to join. Because I'd guess that for every person interested in playing the game there are 10 idiots who want to be retarded in hub. And nothing will make these people want to do anything other than sit in hub.
It takes a certain kind of person to play and enjoy fonline and you can't change that or it won't be fonline anymore.
Staying in a city with a fancy clothes/skin on and typing random shit is not a roleplay, but some retarded abomination I cannot even name. Yeah, in some simple minds, both doing and observing this, such activities may seem to be the roleplay, but no, that's just bad.
However if this or that individual decides to keep his character in the city and chat all day long, why not let them? It doesn't bother anyone or stop anyone from doing something else, does it?
unlike you and 90% of the current playerbase, actual oldfags remember that 2238 was a lot harder (and much more fun tbh) and still it was popular and at a point it had more people than reloaded ever had. pussies who ragequit after first death do not belong here, it shows that they would only wank at hub instead of going out and meet players anyway, because guess what, an online game is about meeting and interacting with people. if someone wants to play safely and farm stuff until eternity, he can just go play fallout 2 or fucking download the client and make a server at home.
I remember 2238 being a lot of easier from what it became later on. No cooldowns, no limits, no pointless actions a lobotomized chimpanzee could do for hours to actually play for 15 minutes, no crawling through worldmap like a crippled pregnant snail. These were the times with player count reaching 500 in peak hours. Nothing to do with safety or non-PvP zones bullshit, wherever this idea came from. My character used to die quite often but hell, I was having so much fun.
the problem with the game is that there are no main goals and there is almost no challenge in getting stuff or leveling up (remember after wipe people had implants and lvl 60+ chars), and as mentioned before, you dont have to interact players to get any of those. secondly the game is not even close to be normie-friendly, just look at it. even the shittiest indie games have ingame options menu and easy-to-understand controls and game mechanics, and even ingame tutorials, while reloaded lacks all of these. hell, even 2238 had a god damn installer and launcher which made the game look somewhat more user friendly. character building is hella complicated, it should be made in a way that you dont have to check wiki every second to what to do after registering your already failed character. maybe solution is better ingame descriptions and simplified character building, which would need total overhaul in the game balance e.g harder leveling so someone would actually chose more than 1 intelligence.
as for the wipe, it will probably never happen, and even if it will then its gonna be shitty or its gonna be a copy of FO2 since they have already implemented a lot of good ideas regarding balance and variety (they still failed to keep anyone else than pvp apes).
Daft interface, mysterious SPECIAL and perks system, no wiki at all, guessing and testing rather than planning and calculating, exploration instead of following well-known familiar path - it all didn't make players to leave 2238 back in 2009. But then shit hit the fan.
Wipe itself won't change anything if there's still the same old story over and over offered, and all the oldfags know it all top to bottom, so they will get bored after a month and gathering all the pixels with nothing else to do.
So I can wait as long as it's needed to get fancy three dishes meal on a golden plates served by a waiter than eat shitty kebap right here right now served in a piece of old newspaper by Ahmed the former terrorist.
if you use search you can easily find almost identical threads to this because complaining about a broken game for 2,5 years without results will only result more complaining and always ends up by some troll post by kilgore: cry more pvp apes minority fonline:locker etc etc (see johny's post) so dont think it will end up in something else. better move on to other games
PvP apes are minority and that's plain truth, not trolling. But for some reason this type of players cry the most over unbelievable crap.
Dont waste your time responding some people, all they do is blaming, insulting and showing personal traumas on forum.
Man, it seems like you are having some serious ego problems.