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

[Emdash]

So it appears the patch hype has already worn off. 925 players at EU primetime. NA primetime 7 hours away.

I will remind the community that a second character slot was one of the most requested updates. Despite this the results were lackluster. The community is clearly detached from the actual changes the market wants to see. They are trying to solve a puzzle that has already been solved before, the answer is in clear view but they can't see it for some reason. A unit of one must be able to be successful and competitive in the game for it to grow.

Lets start small, add a cleave on melee basic attacks and put it on the PTR as well as one disengage/reset mechanic. Let people try it out and see how it feels.

On a side note does anyone know the actual date that combat abilities are coming in?

goot timingu.

Come to Reddit. We fightin' for the future of the game.

Edit: oops, btw. Tomorrow is Wed so they could deploy an update. I HOPE they are gonna update the skill gain formula and make it so haven tutors teach people higher level skills and more skills. Make it so the MAGIC GUY TEACHES VITALISM. WEW. Make the taming guy teach CC. Make the wep guy teach more (maybe 2h) weps, y'know? What the heckyo.

Okbye.

 

[MolagAmur]

Its not because the melee combat sucks. Its not because we need more features such as new magic, weapons, weapon abilities, etc. Its because it takes so damn long to do anything in the game. It's just simply not fun after awhile. When I get home from work, the last thing I want to do is log into MO and spend my night traveling around an empty map hoping to find some enjoyment.

I liked MO1 when I was younger and jobless. The game just doesn't respect your time. Which I understand some people like that part about the game, but its not going to grow this way. You can add in all the "cool" new features you want to...won't matter.

 

[fartbox]

Its not because the melee combat sucks. Its not because we need more features such as new magic, weapons, weapon abilities, etc. Its because it takes so damn long to do anything in the game. It's just simply not fun after awhile. When I get home from work, the last thing I want to do is log into MO and spend my night traveling around an empty map hoping to find some enjoyment.

I liked MO1 when I was younger and jobless. The game just doesn't respect your time. Which I understand some people like that part about the game, but its not going to grow this way. You can add in all the "cool" new features you want to...won't matter.

The map is dead because the requirements to play the game are too high. You not only need all the logistics, farming, but you also need a group to contest anything meaningful. That means if your shot caller is offline, or if too many people are offline in general the rest of the players in that group cannot play the game. Mortal is built from the top down, which is an alienating approach. Lets start building from the bottom up.

 

[Emdash]

^yep @ bottom up.

Gotta start with cities, though, and basic player interaction. Stop limiting player interaction and stop limiting activities so harshly around cities.

There will always be certain things that you need groups for, and they will be more valuable. Just like holding GK is valuable. It shouldn't be necessary, though. The idea of building from the bottom up also requires tiers.

As said in other thread, the map needs to be fleshed. There needs to be less consolidation of players. Let the groups fight over dungeons, make the overworld interesting for solo. Let people DO something.

 

[nikalas23]

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.

never hear about that games from ppsl who play MO2. only mordhau or Myth. mb i listen to not much ppls.
And u see there is no game like mortal in that pool. only some mobile games that can be played from my phone lol. KEK.
numbers drop cos new ppls come and cant get the mortal, at any case. Streamers have a life to live so they cant live in mortal to get it. Ppls to soft for mortal. For me to get here take 10 years of disappointment on big MMOs. every time i open some MMO game some how manage to piss me off. by invisible wall, restricktions, level caps, daylis, weekly and on and on and on. all shit maded for papagamers and carebears. and here is HARSH and hard world where u dont know players is u freinds or enemy cos they can change u pass from forward to "nearest preist". and trying to compare that games to mortal is a fcking meme. they do not even 3rd demensional. Albion on my taste is a garbage cos game dev is playing LoL, u want a LoL but MMO? i dont

 

[fartbox]

3rd demensional.

Mortal has 1k players today during one its best timeslots that favors both EU/NA after one of its most highly anticipated and requested patches. I want the game to be relevant and I want the game to still be here in 5 years. Right now, as soon as the next risk vs reward MMO that drops and is even partially good will obliterate this game. I watched the same thing happen with DFUW, it was crawling along for the longest time with a population very similar to Mortals population right now. Then Archeage dropped and the game died overnight, the servers were shutdown within 90days of Archeages release.

People like you can't see very far ahead, it's hard for you to even make sense of the present, I can tell. Change is necessary for Mortals survival and if it cannot adapt then it will not survive. It will be pushed out of the market by superior products. Right now it is borderline being pushed out of the market by inferior products. The genre is dominated by 20+ year old games, most of which are 2d side scrollers.

I care about the game, i'll keep fighting on behalf for its survival, not necessarily what's best for me. In order for Mortal to survive it must build a proper ecosystem. In order to do that it must incorporate the largest demographic into its game, which is solo players. duos and trios. If you scroll through the MO2 video section in discord how long will it take you find a video of a solo perspective? How many pages of videos until you find one?

 

[Bref]

Dead economy, terrible melee combat, hacking and RMT running rampant, no relevant content for solo players (pvp and pve both), terrible looking player-made favelas all over an otherwise beautiful map, entire gameplay loop is farming gold and getting 1 decent fight a month, extremely high barrier to entry with box price + monthly sub and system requirements.

Gee, I wonder why the hardcore pvp sandbox mmorpg game isn't in a healthy state. It's almost like every major system (Except Tasks, but needs a ton of work still) that has been implemented so far is counterproductive to the mission statement of the game and incentivizes player behaviour that directly harms the game's health.

 

[fartbox]

terrible looking player-made favelas all over an otherwise beautiful map,

lel

 

[Gnidex]

lel

True, it looks so horribly thrown all over the place it makes one almost wish for static town plots. At least then towns would look like towns instead of hobo villages.

 

[fartbox]

True, it looks so horribly thrown all over the place it makes one almost wish for static town plots. At least then towns would look like towns instead of hobo villages.

I suggested removing housing in favor of NPC banking and crafting options before and relegating all territorial conflicts to the castle system, but I think it's going to be too much dev time and it wont affect the population more then focusing in other areas. A focused strategy on what will yield the most results is the best approach right now. It won't be a dragon, it won't be a dungeon and it won't be TC changes, i'll tell you that much.

 

[Emdash]

yea @ static plots. We were talking about that awhile ago.

The one thing that must be said is that people enjoy shitting up the map with their TC. It's like buckets of piss. It makes people feel powerful and ties them to the game. That's why making multifunctional buildings or things that go into a template will probably not be accepted by the community.

This community is toxic to change on so many levels.

Oh well, I'll leave you guys to talk to these new members and enjoy their insight haha. Bref is mostly on the right track though, imo.

I'll be around! Got a month-sub thing for BDO off the marketplace, so time for widgets and blowing people up in non full loot pvp. Hopefully dudes listen to all the shit we already said, cuz it's sadlife the way things are going.

 

[DarkWizz]

Hello mortals! As a player who has played in several guilds, and now I mostly play solo (out of lack of time), I would like to be able to select a group of solo players for a dungeon raid. It doesn't make much sense to go solo in the dungeon right now...
Otherwise, solo play is possible

 

[Gnidex]

I suggested removing housing in favor of NPC banking and crafting options before and relegating all territorial conflicts to the castle system, but I think it's going to be too much dev time and it wont affect the population more then focusing in other areas. A focused strategy on what will yield the most results is the best approach right now. It won't be a dragon, it won't be a dungeon and it won't be TC changes, i'll tell you that much.

They can't even re-hue the only existing wearable flag we have (it'd take like 1 day to copy the existing item and just change the color of the flag) to make pvp fights even watchable on youtube as marketing material or tactical tools like marking the anchor points with flags or whatever. It makes all pvp fights look chaotic AF even to someone who knows the game let alone new potential players.
But nope, the "vision" demands you need to look up a dude's helmet visor to figure out who it is. In the meantime everyone runs the exact same looking armor. No wonder there's no playerbase. More than 2 years of this retardation already and they STILL don't do even the easy shit.

 

[CherryKush]

They can't even re-hue the only existing wearable flag we have (it'd take like 1 day to copy the existing item and just change the color of the flag) to make pvp fights even watchable on youtube as marketing material or tactical tools like marking the anchor points with flags or whatever. It makes all pvp fights look chaotic AF even to someone who knows the game let alone new potential players.
But nope, the "vision" demands you need to look up a dude's helmet visor to figure out who it is. In the meantime everyone runs the exact same looking armor. No wonder there's no playerbase. More than 2 years of this retardation already and they STILL don't do even the easy shit.

In a game that prides itself on having large TC battles, guild tabards should have been in, wearable, and customizable on day one. For anyone that watches a fight involving more than 10 people it comes across as a giant WTF is going on here cluster F. How could not being able to recognize friend or foe make it this far???

And this system could also address the crap looking plain buildings as well. It would look way less drab and worlds better if there were large banners and flags associated with buildings that displayed their owners guild logo. There would then be some variety of difference amongst the buildings so one could discern between them...

But I don't know, after over a decade of seeing poor choice after poor choice you eventually just throw your hands up and realize it'll probably never be, they just don't have the capacity to properly prioritize things, or don't have the skills to properly build it.

At this point, name plates with different colored text for guildies and non guildies would even be leaps and bounds better than the current chaos of everyone looking the same.

 

[fartbox]

In a game that prides itself on having large TC battles, guild tabards should have been in, wearable, and customizable on day one. For anyone that watches a fight involving more than 10 people it comes across as a giant WTF is going on here cluster F. How could not being able to recognize friend or foe make it this far???

And this system could also address the crap looking plain buildings as well. It would look way less drab and worlds better if there were large banners and flags associated with buildings that displayed their owners guild logo. There would then be some variety of difference amongst the buildings so one could discern between them...

But I don't know, after over a decade of seeing poor choice after poor choice you eventually just throw your hands up and realize it'll probably never be, they just don't have the capacity to properly prioritize things, or don't have the skills to properly build it.

At this point, name plates with different colored text for guildies and non guildies would even be leaps and bounds better than the current chaos of everyone looking the same.

While these issues are annoying they are in my opinion trivial. No game is perfect and they will each have their annoyances. People will be more willing to look the other way on trivial annoyances if they are having fun. The less people there are in Mortal, the less people there are having fun. It's a negative feedback loop and we need to get it under control now, before a big title drops.

Now we need to quantify and define fun. What is fun in this genre(SandboxMMO PVEXPVP with risk/reward mechanics) specifically? How do we measure it?

Fun can be defined in these games:

Social interaction: Mortal does a great job of this, but it does too good of a job because the end and mid-game gameplay loops force you to guild up and be social. Just like drinking one glass of milk is pleasurable, drinking too much will make most people sick.

Rare drops from PVE encounters that are challenging: Mortal does a satisfactory job of this. I've said before that I think outlaws and trinkets were one of their best updates and is one of the reasons the game has as many players as it does today.

Winning a PVP fight or having a very close fight and almost winning. It's possible to lose and have fun for most players. What is not fun is when the balance of power is tipped too far in one way. It's often not fun for the winner or the loser.

There are other ways to have fun in this genre but I feel these are the biggest 3 factors in a PVEXPVP risk vs reward MMO. The bar to have fun is too high right now. You often need a large group, tons of experience, tons of gear, tons of trinkets, tons of people willing to spend hours on logistics.

Lets bring that bar down a bit. We can do so by first addressing group size disparity and adding combat mechanics in the game that are unfavorable for large groups, allowing inclusivity to solo players and groups of two or three, the largest gaming demographic. Right now there is no risk for a large group to kill one player, there is no danger of them ever loosing someone, but there should be. Adding disengage or intel mechanics to allow people to better pick their fights and avoid fights that are impossible to win. Making logistics easier and faster. A faction matchmade system to allow solo players with no social connections a way to form them. More objectives that occur randomly around the map to give value to all parts of the map and not have player density be unbalanced in any particular region.

I've listed a few of what I believe are the most important factors to increasing fun for most players in Mortal 2 and i've listed them in order of importance.

 

[MolagAmur]

yea @ static plots. We were talking about that awhile ago.

The one thing that must be said is that people enjoy shitting up the map with their TC. It's like buckets of piss. It makes people feel powerful and ties them to the game. That's why making multifunctional buildings or things that go into a template will probably not be accepted by the community.

This community is toxic to change on so many levels.

Oh well, I'll leave you guys to talk to these new members and enjoy their insight haha. Bref is mostly on the right track though, imo.

I'll be around! Got a month-sub thing for BDO off the marketplace, so time for widgets and blowing people up in non full loot pvp. Hopefully dudes listen to all the shit we already said, cuz it's sadlife the way things are going.

We had that in MO1 of course. People loved the idea of free placement houses, because on paper in sounds like a really good idea. But as we all know, it just led to exploits and a junky ass looking map. Looking back, I much preferred static house placement. Having said that, they needed more house spots in MO1. There were a lot of areas that were perfect for houses, but they just take the time to create them.

Capturable static towns would have been so much more fun. Towns the size of the little bandit outposts scattered around the map. Once captured, we have it for a week or so before someone else can fight for ownership. Would give a better gameplay loop and allow smaller guilds who don't have any interest in keeps their own plot to fight over instead of some disgusting jumble of buildings.

Remember Myrmopolis in MO1? The tiny walled in village south of Toxai? Something like that would be perfect.

 

[Bref]

The bar to have fun is too high right now. You often need a large group, tons of experience, tons of gear, tons of trinkets, tons of people willing to spend hours on logistics.

Fully agreed, however for whatever reason this game's playerbase (Although not unique to MO2) takes pride in having their time wasted doing unncessary garbage that nobody in their right mind has any fun doing nor incentivizes player interaction of any form, often doing the opposite. Worse of all, Henrik shares the same mindset so it's no wonder he's held the course for so long and is slowly sapping the game of all life until nobody except three dozen people remain, just like he did in MO1.

There's a time when sticking to your ideals and your playerbase is good... And then there's MO2. Henrik needs to stop circlejerking with the four dozen remaining players and ditch all the garbage systems that were outdated 20 years ago and have a 20 years long track record of failing each time they're implemented in every game and try to attract wider audiences, or literally *ANY* audience at this point. Unfortunately I doubt this will happen, one just has to look at how long it took them to improve on something as simple as how to level up heavy armor training to know there is absolutely 0 hope of any meaningful changes that affect core systems.

 

[fartbox]

Fully agreed, however for whatever reason this game's playerbase (Although not unique to MO2) takes pride in having their time wasted doing unncessary garbage that nobody in their right mind has any fun doing nor incentivizes player interaction of any form, often doing the opposite. Worse of all, Henrik shares the same mindset so it's no wonder he's held the course for so long and is slowly sapping the game of all life until nobody except three dozen people remain, just like he did in MO1.

There's a time when sticking to your ideals and your playerbase is good... And then there's MO2. Henrik needs to stop circlejerking with the four dozen remaining players and ditch all the garbage systems that were outdated 20 years ago and have a 20 years long track record of failing each time they're implemented in every game and try to attract wider audiences, or literally *ANY* audience at this point. Unfortunately I doubt this will happen, one just has to look at how long it took them to improve on something as simple as how to level up heavy armor training to know there is absolutely 0 hope of any meaningful changes that affect core systems.

Surely the team at Starvault is aware that their efforts have been focused in the wrong areas. They've thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the game and the market is still unenthusiastic about the game despite tons of content updates, engine updates and even the much anticipated second character slot. Surely they are aware that there are core issues in play preventing progress and no amount of slapping content or visuals over it will convince all but the most diehard fans to stay in the game.

They never engage here and share their thoughts though, so this is pure speculation.

Even if they make changes now it might be too little too late. AOC is slotted to be playable Q3 2024 and the end of Q3 is 4 months from now. So anytime between the next 30-120 days the game should be playable and judging by the playthrough community streams they seem to be on track. Even if Mortal starts changing now, it will take time for momentum to build. I believe Mortals fate may be all but sealed at this point. Even in the best case scenario that AOC flops somehow there are other large projects that will be direct competitors releasing within the next 6months and plenty of smaller projects running under the radar.

AOC will very likely kill MO the same as Archeage killed Darkfall.

 

[Emdash]

We had that in MO1 of course. People loved the idea of free placement houses, because on paper in sounds like a really good idea. But as we all know, it just led to exploits and a junky ass looking map. Looking back, I much preferred static house placement. Having said that, they needed more house spots in MO1. There were a lot of areas that were perfect for houses, but they just take the time to create them.

Capturable static towns would have been so much more fun. Towns the size of the little bandit outposts scattered around the map. Once captured, we have it for a week or so before someone else can fight for ownership. Would give a better gameplay loop and allow smaller guilds who don't have any interest in keeps their own plot to fight over instead of some disgusting jumble of buildings.

Remember Myrmopolis in MO1? The tiny walled in village south of Toxai? Something like that would be perfect.

They have to step backwards in order to fix this, but I don't think they will. The fact that the pop dropped off so fast after 2nd character slot was surprising even to me. This has to be defcon level at SV HQ. The game caters to the same 500 people who never log off, who enjoy just playing house and farming.

The problem is, nothing can grow from there.

Someone posted on a steam review (and I probably said this?) that Epic gave them a mega grant to port to UE5 and test node architecture (dunno if I'm saying that right, but the idea I got was that they wanted a game with people playing to 'see it in action' and stabilize it,) and maybe that's what they are doing. Beyond that, I have no idea.

IMO a lot of us saw all of these things coming and have been talking about it since beta, so haha. I guess it seemed like once their way failed, I thought they would listen.

It's not impossible to fix now, but it would require drastic change that would shock the lifers, and I dunno if they are wiling to do that.

'rip'

 

[ElPerro]

While these issues are annoying they are in my opinion trivial. No game is perfect and they will each have their annoyances. People will be more willing to look the other way on trivial annoyances if they are having fun. The less people there are in Mortal, the less people there are having fun. It's a negative feedback loop and we need to get it under control now, before a big title drops.

Now we need to quantify and define fun. What is fun in this genre(SandboxMMO PVEXPVP with risk/reward mechanics) specifically? How do we measure it?

Fun can be defined in these games:

Social interaction: Mortal does a great job of this, but it does too good of a job because the end and mid-game gameplay loops force you to guild up and be social. Just like drinking one glass of milk is pleasurable, drinking too much will make most people sick.

Rare drops from PVE encounters that are challenging: Mortal does a satisfactory job of this. I've said before that I think outlaws and trinkets were one of their best updates and is one of the reasons the game has as many players as it does today.

Winning a PVP fight or having a very close fight and almost winning. It's possible to lose and have fun for most players. What is not fun is when the balance of power is tipped too far in one way. It's often not fun for the winner or the loser.

There are other ways to have fun in this genre but I feel these are the biggest 3 factors in a PVEXPVP risk vs reward MMO. The bar to have fun is too high right now. You often need a large group, tons of experience, tons of gear, tons of trinkets, tons of people willing to spend hours on logistics.

Lets bring that bar down a bit. We can do so by first addressing group size disparity and adding combat mechanics in the game that are unfavorable for large groups, allowing inclusivity to solo players and groups of two or three, the largest gaming demographic. Right now there is no risk for a large group to kill one player, there is no danger of them ever loosing someone, but there should be. Adding disengage or intel mechanics to allow people to better pick their fights and avoid fights that are impossible to win. Making logistics easier and faster. A faction matchmade system to allow solo players with no social connections a way to form them. More objectives that occur randomly around the map to give value to all parts of the map and not have player density be unbalanced in any particular region.

I've listed a few of what I believe are the most important factors to increasing fun for most players in Mortal 2 and i've listed them in order of importance.

As long as pets can chase down even the fastest race with clades on, there wont be any disengage mechanic possible