Answer the question; What is the number 1. reason the Mortal population is declining? A homework assignment for all Mortal enjoyers.

[fartbox]

Hello community, I see you are struggling to come to terms with a dwindling population and why it is dwindling. No one seems to be able to identify the largest factor, though there are multiple factors. I have seen prominent members in the community raise their own ideas but they are always wrong. I haven't seen nearly any community member raise the same argument I have or present the same evidence I have. Or they answer with multiple reasons when the question is. "What is the single most pressing factor" "The number 1 reason".

When solving complex problems we attack the biggest contributors first and continue methodically working down rather then a haphazard approach. The goal of this assignment is to clearly identify demographic trends in each game, what is the most popular video perspective, why is it popular? Does popularity matter?

Popularity matters, popularity is a direct representation of population. They even share the same root word.



So I have a short homework assignment you to clear up any confusion. We will be searching for PVP videos of other MMO's and looking at the perspectives.
1. Go to youtube
2. Search *** PVP
3. Sort by view count
4. Find the top 10 videos for each game, that are not from the developers themselves or someone affiliated with the developers doing a marketing video. Make sure the video is not a review video, tutorial, or any other type of video then pure Player vs Player genuine game-flow.
5. Identify the type of perspective in each video. Is it a solo perspective or is it a group perspective?

Games in the genre that would qualify for this assignment that share enough commonality with Mortal and could share player demographic pools:
OSRS, Albion, EVE, Ultima.

I've only included games that could meet the criteria of. 1. At least 1000 players per server world 2. Persistence 3. Currently running and active. 4. Loot on death to player. Though it is worth mentioning that many extractors and survival type games would share demographic pools. However they benefit in this assignment from having small player cap servers and it is not objective or fair to this assignment to include them.


Tally up the 40 videos and identify how much of each perspective is represented.

 

[Jackdstripper]

Game feels like a job.

The economy of the game has spiralled so much out of control that every time i log in i feel that i have to make gold. To afford gear i need a ton of gold. To afford trinkets i need gold. To afford weapons and reagents i need gold. To afford pets i need gold. To afford potions i need gold. And if i cant buy that stuff, im always at a disadvantage. Always handicapped. Always fighting dudes that seem to have endless gold to buy all the best shit. Dudes that spend 50k on rings like its nothing.

It feels like a job. The fun parts are very few and far between. The rest is all spent travelling the long, empty distances to try and make some gold.

 

[fartbox]

Game feels like a job.

The economy of the game has spiralled so much out of control that every time i log in i feel that i have to make gold. To afford gear i need a ton of gold. To afford trinkets i need gold. To afford weapons and reagents i need gold. To afford pets i need gold. To afford potions i need gold. And if i cant buy that stuff, im always at a disadvantage. Always handicapped. Always fighting dudes that seem to have endless gold to buy all the best shit.

It feels like a job. The fun parts are very few and far between. The rest is all spent travelling the long, empty distances to try and make some gold.

The economy is bad because there are not enough players playing the game to support a non-volatile economy. You can't fix the economy without first adding more players to the game.

 

[MaDeuce]

Hello community, I see you are struggling to come to terms with a dwindling population and why it is dwindling. No one seems to be able to identify the largest factor, though there are multiple factors. I have seen prominent members in the community raise their own ideas but they are always wrong. I haven't seen nearly any community member raise the same argument I have or present the same evidence I have. Or they answer with multiple reasons when the question is. "What is the single most pressing factor" "The number 1 reason".

When solving complex problems we attack the biggest contributors first and continue methodically working down rather then a haphazard approach. The goal of this assignment is to clearly identify demographic trends in each game, what is the most popular video perspective, why is it popular? Does popularity matter?

Popularity matters, popularity is a direct representation of population. They even share the same root word.



So I have a short homework assignment you to clear up any confusion. We will be searching for PVP videos of other MMO's and looking at the perspectives.
1. Go to youtube
2. Search *** PVP
3. Sort by view count
4. Find the top 10 videos for each game, that are not from the developers themselves or someone affiliated with the developers doing a marketing video. Make sure the video is not a review video, tutorial, or any other type of video then pure Player vs Player genuine game-flow.
5. Identify the type of perspective in each video. Is it a solo perspective or is it a group perspective?

Games in the genre that would qualify for this assignment that share enough commonality with Mortal and could share player demographic pools:
OSRS, Albion, EVE, Ultima.

I've only included games that could meet the criteria of. 1. At least 1000 players per server world 2. Persistence 3. Currently running and active. 4. Loot on death to player. Though it is worth mentioning that many extractors and survival type games would share demographic pools. However they benefit in this assignment from having small player cap servers and it is not objective or fair to this assignment to include them.


Tally up the 40 videos and identify how much of each perspective is represented.

I took this challenge a while back simply by boasting about my favorite game MO2 on every platform I could find. Population went through the roof. I fail to see where showing appreciation doesn’t start even a flower to bloom. Being ”Proactive” is better than reactive and has the word “Pro” in it. Simply MO2 #BIGFAN

 

[CherryKush]

Not really much for the solo player to do. Anything of worth is camped by large groups. There has to be named mobs or random nodes a solo can come across that will give them a chance or a hope of finding something rare and worthwhile. Thievery in MO1 was also one of the most fun things I've ever got to do solo in all the games I've played and its still not here. If a game is solo friendly first, groups and guilds will then naturally form thereafter from those solo players.

 

[fartbox]

Not really much for the solo player to do. Anything of worth is camped by large groups. There has to be named mobs or random nodes a solo can come across that will give them a chance or a hope of finding something rare and worthwhile. Thievery in MO1 was also one of the most fun things I've ever got to do solo in all the games I've played and its still not here. If a game is solo friendly first, groups and guilds will then naturally form thereafter from those solo players.

Exactly right, you build from the bottom up in PVP MMO's because it creates a ecosystem. But thievery is not going to be enough. I've said in the past it has a place in mortal but we need to make solo players competitive in the primary objective of PVP MMO's and that is combat/conflict. I expect thievery to be an expensive update in dev time. There isn't time to spare right now IMO, the game has been out for 2 years, it's already dangerously close to fading into obscurity.

I've suggested ways to approach this before; Either through combat mechanics/abilities that hinder groups, disengage/intel mechanics that allow you to pick/choose fights, hard restricted areas or a combination of all 3 is how Mortals competitors have decided to approach this in most cases.

It's not important to me on how they approach the issue, only that they start approaching it and immediately. Making some progress would go along way. The community needs to come together and start pressuring Henrik on this topic weekly. I watch the stream VOD back weekly and no one ever presents the argument I have presented here, or if they do it is not clearly and with defined objectives/solutions in mind.

Group content is important and there's a place for it in every MMO, it is fundamental just like solo play, however you must first build from the bottom-up.

 

[Amelia]

To bring back population need periodically pve and pvp SV staff events.
Roaming big boss, pvp arena events, etc. all linked to a good storyline or something.
Introduce a dungeon Is not enough.

 

[Xenom]

The 3 biggest things holding mortal back as I see it.

1. Mortal has still a lackluster PK system with a bad distribution of areas from safe to dangerous. It should follow more to eve's empire-lowsec-0.0 approach.
Every successful full loot sandbox game has a large portion of more pve oriented ppl that run the eco in safer areas or are guarded by other pvp ppl... eve mostly had like 80% not playing for pvp primary and it works as it's a sandbox first and has a place for all. they also add to the pvp inderectly with selling stuff, fueling the eco a lot, do transports into dangerous places where they are targets to be hunted, do pvp here and there.
MO players mindset is sadly always only pvp matters and if you influence the devs enough to listen to those a low player count is what you get and when there is no sheep the wolves die also.

2. Besides dungeons farming pve is balanced like a single player game in a bad way. What I mean by this is that if another player is farming outlaws no other one can as the mob density is like in a single player game but it's an mmo. same for bandits, sartors whatever over world mob there is... spawns are tiny, you ride around for a few mobs here and there and if just another players has the same idea you are fucked. There should be bigger spawns where you can also farm with a few friends for an hour or 2...like big bandit camps or whatever, would make a decent pvpve Hotspot also and there should be enough around every area.

Why not also just make a copy of the new dungeons in like more places when you know you don't have the manpower to distribute enough to all the map currently. Some areas are just way worse than others and you can't have an big alliance game when the areas that you can hold do not sustain the ppl living there.

3. Blocked content. Too much stuff is blocked by big grps as there is just to little of everything. For most things there should be several options be it spiritism skills, fluxes, good metals... the Ressource distribution around the map clearly favour's the north but it's just discouraging for players. In the end you need to be everywhere in mortal and you can't basically live out of on corner of the map like you would claim, defend and live out of one area in eve which hinders a bigger alliance game yet again.


So what do you end up with die hard full loot ppl that are not interested in anything else and stick with what there is but we are too few to fill up a game so it really feels like it's flourishing

 

[manure]

Low population is inversely proportional to the numbers of guards and protections added to the game !

The more guards and guard towers they place on MO2, the less population it gets.
Game gets way too much care bear...people stay safe...so the game becomes tedium and easy mode, therefore, people lose interest.

Easy to fix. Here are the steps :

- Remove 90% of the guards inside all towns
- Guards should have line of sight
- Guards should NOT teleport on you when you go criminal and is hidden
- Guard towers outside towns MUST be eliminated. Erase 100% of them. I feel like roaming in Trammel when I travel between towns.
- Guards should do AT MAXIMUM 30 damage... Elite guard arrows should never hit people for 110 damage
- Guards should be ONLY INSIDE TOWNS... Never outside or at cemeteries.

There is your fix.
Do that and I grant you we will have a boom of players joining in quick time. Plus, the old players will return to MO2 when they realize it has been fixed.

Go back in time if you doubt my word and check the population number in february 2022, when we had no excessive number of guards or safe areas with lame guard towers.
Group of PKs could even raid towns like Fabernum without being idiculously insta killed by guards with god powers.

It was the BEST time of MO2, no doubt.
The only bad thing during that time was the lack of Thieving... Which still lacks

But MO2, even with all the Trammelization, continues to be the best game on the market...by far

 

[fartbox]

Low population is inversely proportional to the numbers of guards and protections added to the game !

The more guards and guard towers they place on MO2, the less population it gets.
Game gets way too much care bear...people stay safe...so the game becomes tedium and easy mode, therefore, people lose interest.

Easy to fix. Here are the steps :

- Remove 90% of the guards inside all towns
- Guards should have line of sight
- Guards should NOT teleport on you when you go criminal and is hidden
- Guard towers outside towns MUST be eliminated. Erase 100% of them. I feel like roaming in Trammel when I travel between towns.
- Guards should do AT MAXIMUM 30 damage... Elite guard arrows should never hit people for 110 damage
- Guards should be ONLY INSIDE TOWNS... Never outside or at cemeteries.

There is your fix.
Do that and I grant you we will have a boom of players joining in quick time. Plus, the old players will return to MO2 when they realize it has been fixed.

Go back in time if you doubt my word and check the population number in february 2022, when we had no excessive number of guards or safe areas with lame guard towers.
Group of PKs could even raid towns like Fabernum without being idiculously insta killed by guards with god powers.

It was the BEST time of MO2, no doubt.
The only bad thing during that time was the lack of Thieving... Which still lacks

But MO2, even with all the Trammelization, continues to be the best game on the market...by far

Feb 2022 was release. MO1 had a lax guard system and was unable to interest more then a handful of players globally. Your system has been trialed and errored already in multiple games before this one. It has failed every time. Contrary to that my suggestions/systems have been trialed and errored in other games and have succeeded.

I wish Henrik would run this update for a month on the condition that if the population lowered you were permanently banned on all accounts and your last name blacklisted from ever purchasing a title again.

I stand behind my ideas. I have over 6 figures of wealth in the game and 2 clade 20s. If the game puts forth solo friendly mechanics and the population still declines then you can permanently ban all my accounts as long as I can go over the changes before they are implemented and give the thumbs up.

 

[manure]

Feb 2022 was release. MO1 had a lax guard system and was unable to interest more then a handful of players globally. Your system has been trialed and errored already in multiple games before this one. It has failed every time. Contrary to that my suggestions/systems have been trialed and errored in other games and have succeeded.

I wish Henrik would run this update for a month on the condition that if the population lowered you were permanently banned on all accounts and your last name blacklisted from ever purchasing a title again.

I stand behind my ideas. I have over 6 figures of wealth in the game and 2 clade 20s. If the game puts forth solo friendly mechanics and the population still declines then you can permanently ban all my accounts as long as I can go over the changes before they are implemented and give the thumbs up.

The high population didnt happen because of "release "... People came to this game because it was promised it was hardcore, full loot and danger in every corner.
THAT is what brought people.
And MO2 was like that !! It was EXCITING...

Once they realized the dev team was catering to newbies and raising protection they started disbanding.

If you announce a game that promises it will have no safe area and full loot, the server is gonna be filled with players in no time. That is a fact !

 

[azezal]

My opinion. The reasons for declining population below.

Some streamers get free subs! This is unfair on those who supported the game by buying multiple accounts in the past and now either restricted to juggling accounts or spending more money on multiple subs.

Subs themselves were a bad idea. Not only does it harm those with multiple accounts and casual players, SV could have got more money from a cash shop like most other games and keeping model FTP.

Game is too carebear for large guilds. They is no punishment for acting like jerks because sieging is too expensive for solo and and even small guilds. Can't ninja siege. So only way to punish some jerks in a big guild who never leave town apart from being in a large group is to kill their pets in town. Since too many complained about thievery, so its not getting added any time soon.

SV alienating the older players, by listening too much to streamers. Older people like me don't watch twitch or thicktok mostly. Also time being limited, don't have time to watch others playing games. Bad enough that some streamers get free subs, they also get interviews with SV staff as well. It's just rewarding attention seekers.

Why should I have to watch twitch to get the short white cape for example?

Zoomers may actually worship online influenzas and streamers, but non zoomers just view them as someone who has to update their social media every time they let off a trump, just to farm likes.

Only young players care about what streamers say about games. Most like me just read reviews. Yes Read!!! Not watch videos or livestream. Actually read.

Many solo players are put off by the game only suiting large groups. In other games I play not only can a solo defeat a large group alone if the situation is right, but they can also blow up their base if they are determined enough.

Make the game more solo friendly and stop listening just to streamers who always see this game as a social event with some pvp thrown in.

Also other game I play, devs are often on the forum, getting feedback and discussing ideas with everyone, not just streamers. Someone with only 5hrs in game wrote a short rant and a dev wrote a page in reply addressing things they did not like about game. They are not just on discord.

 

[Xenom]

Low population is inversely proportional to the numbers of guards and protections added to the game !

The more guards and guard towers they place on MO2, the less population it gets.
Game gets way too much care bear...people stay safe...so the game becomes tedium and easy mode, therefore, people lose interest.

Easy to fix. Here are the steps :

- Remove 90% of the guards inside all towns
- Guards should have line of sight
- Guards should NOT teleport on you when you go criminal and is hidden
- Guard towers outside towns MUST be eliminated. Erase 100% of them. I feel like roaming in Trammel when I travel between towns.
- Guards should do AT MAXIMUM 30 damage... Elite guard arrows should never hit people for 110 damage
- Guards should be ONLY INSIDE TOWNS... Never outside or at cemeteries.

There is your fix.
Do that and I grant you we will have a boom of players joining in quick time. Plus, the old players will return to MO2 when they realize it has been fixed.

Go back in time if you doubt my word and check the population number in february 2022, when we had no excessive number of guards or safe areas with lame guard towers.
Group of PKs could even raid towns like Fabernum without being idiculously insta killed by guards with god powers.

It was the BEST time of MO2, no doubt.
The only bad thing during that time was the lack of Thieving... Which still lacks

But MO2, even with all the Trammelization, continues to be the best game on the market...by far

Wrong, if it would have been at release what it is now MO2 would have retained way more tho it's still lacking in the form of a solid system. Always this nonsense of carebear when you have no clue.

 

[azezal]

Game has a hole in it. But its not Guard towers Still plenty of places to gank. Camping all day outside towns like fab and reporting Newbs for PVP callouts in helpchat was never about actual pvp. Though they call themselves PVPers, they are in the same league as those who only log in to elemental bomb some horses in town and then run tasks for rep. In my view they are scrubs who avoid battle royale games because they would not have an advantage there. They also avoid dungeons because there they would get owned by actual pvpers.

 

[Amelia]

Not to mention the fail launch release ( do you remember the 10k players tryed to login and the big boss queqe?) also the many bugs that afflicted the game. Many new players leaved the game because the first impression and that was not a good one .
But now? We need something epic that attract again new and old players. Where Is the dragon that Henrik showed us? I.e.

 

[Rahz]

There are numerous problems as to why new/solo players leave.
1. Constant ganking :
Start as a new player: Pushed in the water while fishing, killed while mining, killed while cutting wood, killed while leveling your skills at the GY. Then the new player goes outside and sees that EVERYTHING is camped by the same RPK guilds, who first and foremost prey on unarmed noobs. Then the newbie quits and leaves a bad review.
2. TC :
TC has made the world unimmersive and ugly. Theres so many villages on the map, that its actually impossible to not ride through at least 2 of them when travelling from town to town (mind you, you are completely f'ed if they try to gank you in their village). Also its so expensive and time consuming to siege people. WTF is a siege window supposed to be good for? "No, i walled off ALL the content in the area and if you wanna change it, you need to get an appointment." lol Makes it impossible to take revenge on large guilds, especially for smaller groups. Ninja sieges can be bad, yes. But they cant be as bad as walling off every bit of content and giving you a different place to gear/revive every five minutes travel time.
3. Exploiting/ SV not enforcing basic rules:
You're using a 3.8kg Towershield while knowing they should not be in the game anymore? No problem. You're exploiting trolls? Okay. You're exploiting mob-pathing in dungeons? Good. Logging in Necro Dungeon? Be my guest. None of this behaviour is punished at all in a PERSISTENT world without wipes.

4. Lack of systems tying into each other:
Tasks are a useless game of running back and forth. Just hand in the trophies/heads and get your reward, would in my mind be more fitting to a "full loot sandbox".
Reputation means NOTHING. Reds can still go to towns, if youre part of the local zerg, noone will attack you anyway. Guilds arent affected by reputation, so the murdering zerg can just freely buy houses and build them in the region of an Empire that hates them without any downsides, makes a lot of sense.
5. Basic Balance:
Im not talking mage vs footie vs hybrid but basic item balance. A few examples: The different types of bladeheads arent special enough in my mind. The weakspot chance with daggerheads should be looked at (lighter/weaker= more weakspot maybe?). The lightest shieldframe is ALWAYS the best, since the frametype has no influence on defensive stats and only affects weight. Some armor materials are absolutely useless. Placoid scales are made from rays (rare) and you can make a glorious 27 pierce res armor with it lol.
6. Map/ Ressource Balance: Most items have very, very specific spawnpoints which makes it much too easy to just build a stronghold on top of it. Also the "endgame" area, is no "endgame" area at all. Its just the most convenient place to be and its therefore filled with zerglings, thats the whole difficulty. No harder mobs, no roaming risars ready to kill you, no, nothing. So to fix this maybe put in a worldboss like a roaming risar general with a regiment of warriors thats roaming around the Tephra area and some more spawns of different stuff all over the world. A little salvia in the khurite forest mountains, a little gabore or tephra somewhere, nymph herb, thymus a little further south in the colored forest, a little more calx around rivers... not just around A LAKE(!!!).

 

[fartbox]

Not to mention the fail launch release ( do you remember the 10k players tryed to login and the big boss queqe?) also the many bugs that afflicted the game. Many new players leaved the game because the first impression and that was not a good one .
But now? We need something epic that attract again new and old players. Where Is the dragon that Henrik showed us? I.e.

A dragon that no one will be able to experience except for top guilds will probably not increase the population other then a short novel patch day boost that slowly fades. I said before these dungeon type patches are only good for a short temporary boost in population and their accessibility to the general population is low.

I remember watching Rivurs on both patch releases and it looked miserable, he even grouped up for most of it. Rivurs is a masochist and has a high tolerance for pain but most players are not to engage in a game where game loop is; 1. gear up, 2.travel to content 3. die to insurmountable odds(zerg) over and over, day after day. Players that feel they can not be competitive in a game will just play another game.

Why is there such apprehension about evening out the playing field in this game? Are you guys not bored yet? You would rather play a dead game where you have every advantage against a rare encounter or play a populated game that is balanced around everyone being a threat. Right now a single player is not a threat a zerg, a group of 3 is not a threat to a zerg. That needs to change or the game need to hard cap most of the map to 1v1s. There's no way around it, the game will not and cannot thrive unless solo players and small groups are represented.

The player demographic that enjoys large group play is just far too small. Even games you might consider grouping games like League of legends are balanced around solo players (match making). The solo player demographic is magnitudes the size of every other demographic combined.

 

[Emdash]

I told you dudes what the game needs is 'society,' as in citizens and a hierarchy of townspeople. They need to give each city MONEY and the money can be allocated for TASKS. Basically all of the nubby stuff they try to do with NPCs but this time with actual players. Pvp won't be fair in an open world game. You gotta win when you can. Towns / regions... regional conflict, being able to pay a force to police a town opposed to relying on guard towers, being able to pay people to fill in holes on broker. People love titles. Gives a whole different level of competition.

Nothing says "Popula" like that.

There could probably be more towns, too. If the end game is TC, though, and TC is only dungeons and resources, it's a fail loop. Time to take the next step.

Also, it is a big mistake to make, to say we need to pull more people (full stop) when the game is designed to support a certain amount of people (not many.) The actual goal should be to allow for the creation of the best content, as it is a sandbox. As you speak about building from the ground up, you also need to build from the ground up for population in terms of a sandbox. You can't just 'pour some people on it.' They will not find places and filter away. There needs to be stuff happening that will make people want to play. This requires there to be LESS inhibition of player activity.

There need to be pushes that don't run into NPCs. Interactions that consistently end in NPC are ineffective gameplay loops.

 

[fartbox]

I told you dudes what the game needs is 'society,' as in citizens and a hierarchy of townspeople. They need to give each city MONEY and the money can be allocated for TASKS. Basically all of the nubby stuff they try to do with NPCs but this time with actual players. Pvp won't be fair in an open world game. You gotta win when you can. Towns / regions... regional conflict, being able to pay a force to police a town opposed to relying on guard towers, being able to pay people to fill in holes on broker. People love titles. Gives a whole different level of competition.

Nothing says "Popula" like that.

There could probably be more towns, too. If the end game is TC, though, and TC is only dungeons and resources, it's a fail loop. Time to take the next step.

Also, it is a big mistake to make, to say we need to pull more people (full stop) when the game is designed to support a certain amount of people (not many.) The actual goal should be to allow for the creation of the best content, as it is a sandbox. As you speak about building from the ground up, you also need to build from the ground up for population in terms of a sandbox. You can't just 'pour some people on it.' They will not find places and filter away. There needs to be stuff happening that will make people want to play. This requires there to be LESS inhibition of player activity.

There need to be pushes that don't run into NPCs. Interactions that consistently end in NPC are ineffective gameplay loops.

I dont really understand what you suggested, but I know it won't increase the population. Im willing to be my account that my conclusion is correct, the game will not grow until a solo player is competitive in the day-to-day gameplay.

Not a single person has responded with how many of their videos from the assignment were solo perspectives in PVP MMO's that are considered MO2's competitiors.

Spoilers: An overwhelming majority of the most popular videos of PVP gameplay from Mortals competitors are all from a solo perspective. With a few small groups and large groups sprinkled in. I think it represents the overall player demographic in the genre excellently. Mortal has excluded the largest player demographic, it cannot possibly succeed under those circumstances.

 

[fartbox]

Mortal Online 2 does not fit these criteria.

The main problem is SV.
They absolutely do not understand and do not know what they are doing. They got lost...

And the second thing.
No matter how much you talk here, suggest, or find a solution to the problem, everything is useless. They can't hear you.

I dont believe that. I know Henrik reads the forums. He's made changes based on community feed back before as well. I just think he doesn't want to come to terms with the fact that solo players or players that primarily play solo and irregularly play with a group make up the largest demographic.

In his mind MMO = multiplayer, grouping = mandatory but in reality MMO's are tailored to solo progression and game flow, while the "multiplayer" part plays a secondary role in economy and occasional grouping around events/objectives on timers.

That is why I present evidence with my arguments. Evidence that people can use to correlate my claim that the solo playing demographic is the largest pool and including them in your game is mandatory.