Ogg Activity

[LilBunnyFooFoo]

Hey Guys,

I have noticed a big drop in activity on the server. We are a long standing community and I hope we can rebuild and overcome as we have in the past, so we are looking for ways to get the population back up. Any suggestions any of you have will be appreciated.

Without a population there is a lack of donations which is concerning. We haven't received any donations since November. Currently we have enough money in the paypal account to pay for 2 more months of the server.

I know a lot of us just got burned out playing, new games come out and life happens. I am happy with what ever you guys want for OGG. Some of the things we can change are the map, mod, game play rules or all of the above.

I need to hear from all of you about what you want for the community. If you don't chime in you don't get to complain about any of the changes

-Bunny

[flybynighter]

There has been a few new players popping up here and there, maybe implement a super hero trader again to give players something to strive for beyond 5k humanity?

[Guest NIMDA]

I'll look into that, and thanks for the suggestion. Did OGG used to have a superhero trader?

With this being a pretty critical issue for OGG, I think only one response within 24 hours warrants this being sent out as a notification. I hope it's just a dip due to the holidays, finals, etc. This topic has only been viewed 14 times, though. At least a notification will make sure everyone that checks their email sees it.

[Deadman]

I think that we may want to script out of PVE and into a modified PVP.  Meaning that we can have indestructible bases and indestructabel veh when they are locked.  No other rules really just eliminate base raiding and vehicle harassment.  Allow building and all the rest, maintain the community which will remain mostly non pvp and we will probably be happy with it.  This should reduce the amount of Admins necessary and a lot of the complaints.  Just make the rules:

No voice in side.

No hacking.

No greifing.

I also like cherno for popularity sakes but my favorite maps are Lingor and Panthera.  Also would like to see Overpoch with limited gear so it is not so easy.. Just sayin I like a challenge.  Wouldn't want to see high power guns in every house like most overpochs out there.  Let me know if you agree.  (yes, my pc is fixed and I am back....Mostly) Thanks!

[Guest NIMDA]

I apologize for any duplicate notification emails you all may have received. The forum was giving a pretty serious error when I sent them out, and I was trying different things to work around it. I didn't realize that it was actually sending out the emails to some of the users because I wasn't receiving any of them.

I finally fixed the issue by enabling the forum's mail queue system and limiting the number of emails that can be sent per minute.

[S.M. Fletcher]

As of late my own community has begun a re-invention of itself as well this accounts for my absence from OGG. My members, which do not play DayZ at all, have chosen to consolidate and form a structure of all games that they do play. As the owner of the website and voice server my time has been devoted to my dedicated players and admins with the site additions and edits. I am very sorry to hear about your drop in population and as part of my community I have added OGG as others that we are associated with as well as informing my members that if they do wish to play DayZ then OGG Is the place they want to go.

I hope all goes well and with the beginning of the new year I hope to be able to devote some more Time to DayZ. I hope with the influx of new members I have received from other games that I can perhaps pass some your way.

Fletch

[jaspoe30]

OGG did have a super hero trader prior to Vilayer when we were on DayzST. Once it was moved to Vilayer the super hero trader was not put back in for some reason. Not sure why.

Once I started doing the scripting and such I looked at putting it back in but it was a little over my head at the time. With Nimda I'm sure the 2 of us could get one in and working. We would need to look at each current trader and what they offer and then from there figure out what would need to go on the super hero trader to make it worth while to the player base, however, I'm not sure if that alone will bring the population back.

We need to take a serious look at why we don't have a player base (what are other players playing, what server types are populated and so forth, where did our current players go) if we want OGG to continue. I don't think anyone expects Nimda and Bunny to carry the weight of 2 servers. Once OGG is out of donations there is a very real possibility that we will need to close it down.

A little background history to catch everyone up to speed. Up until we moved to the dedicated server and shortly before the player base had started to dwindle. This was around the time that gamespy stopped hosting the dayz server browser and people were having a hard time getting dayz commander and it's successor dayz launcher to work and get connected to OGG. In addition to these issues we had switched our hosting to Vilayer who was also having issues almost every other day making it extremely frustrating for anyone that was trying to build things or keep weapons/vehicles (items were disappearing, buildings vanishing and so forth). Making matters worse we as admins were not able to fix these issues because in short.....Vilayer's support system blows....

This is what prompted the move to a dedicated server to try and hold on to what player base we had left....unfortunately the damage had already been done and players were faced with once again having to start from scratch....not a prospect most members wanted. It all led up to where we are now. The challenge is how to get back to where we were. We have amazing performance, awesome scripts and for the most part dedicated admins (speaking for myself I am burned out and dealing with all the server issues and players leaving has left me somewhat disheartened. Because of that I apologize I haven't been as active as I used to be).

[flybynighter]

We have a great server now as was said, and for a while there was always at least 5-6 people on after we switched, but the lack of continuity and things to work for (5k humanity isn't hard to get, and there is no shortage of cash on the map)  is a big killer IMO.

Maybe listing all the scripts in the title for the server select screen will help?

I have been asking players on the server and for ideas, and one guy mentioned about groups, apparently you can group up and see each others markers on maps. not sure how that works.

Not sure what else, but I will keep probing for anything that may help

[Guest NIMDA]

Jason, you hit the nail on the head as far as the causes are concerned. The GameSpy shutdown had a terrible effect on the DayZ community as a whole. I think a lot of the bigger communities fared better because they more resources. This includes multiple people to help with the 1.63 upgrades, as well as having higher traffic sites that could make communications more effective. Smaller communities like ours can become islands in the larger DayZ community, with limited info coming in, and limited exposure. Many are also running dedicated servers that allow them to plan for and schedule their updates. Our switching hosting at the time was an unnecessary evil that ultimately paid off in terms of performance, but also hurt our server population even further.

l think adding that trader is a good idea, and I like using group management as well. I am beginning to be concerned about mission file size. I don't know what is "too big" to most people, so we may want to look into that. On the scripting side, it may be possible to move some more things server-side. There are limitations to that, or restrictions rather, that can create a lot of work for the scripter.

We need to keep these ideas and this feedback flowing, and work towards a plan of action so we can save this server.

-NIM

Edit: flybynighter: I wish we could put our scripts in the title. Unfortunately, yet another downside to the Steam integration is that server names are limited to a much shorter string of characters. We currently exceed that length and our server name gets cut off as it is.

[Guest NIMDA]

Hmm, well looky here  8) : http://www.reddit.com/r/dayzservers

Anyone here with a Reddit account willing to make an announcement post? We don't violate Reddit's TOS, unlike the epochmod forum. Any volunteers will need to make sure the post includes a brief summary (including how long we have been around), mentions the SSD's on dedicated hardware (even though it's virtualized, our resources are guaranteed, so dedicated is accurate enough to distinguish from shared servers like vilayer), and contains a formatted list of the mods and scripts we have.

[jasonf]

hi guys hope every one has a great xmas  ;D

OK in my opinion could we tone down the ai/missions a little i and a couple of Friends who play have found it very difficult to do missions solo as they all seem to have multiple 50K's and a lot of infantry.

could we introduce a mission scale system as i seen on other servers easy medium hard for ex sample .

that way new players are not over whelmed when they first come in.

if you introduce a super hero can you lower the humanity needed maybe 25-30000 instead of 50000

and i found when i finally got there ( all those servers ago  ) that the gear avail was disappointing

that's all i can think of for now lol

hope to see you all on soon thanks

[Jason]

I definitely agree, especially with going to Cherno, in my opinion he map we currently have now is to large, for some reason it gets boring rather quickly.

[flybynighter]

Here's my thoughts on this,

Right now we have a fairly small but regular player base of 5-6 people, if we swap to PVP, will they stick around or will we be starting over fresh, again? Personally I'm not a fan of PVP and joined here because it was PVE. if I were new to a PVE server and they swapped, I would be gone.

I like the idea of going back to Cherno, as the mountains in Napf make missions very difficult. I have no experience with other maps, so I can't comment on them wither way. I think we would have to offer some form of compensation for those on the server now with bases built.

That's just my opinion thus far. I am sticking with the server either way so whatever you guys choose is fine with me

[flybynighter]

I was just talking to a new player on teamspeak named knuckles, he made a lot of good point about little things that could be changed.for example the gun trader in Tims triage is messed up,(pistols listed twice, only ammo for pistols and single shot rifles available). and there is no overpoch dealer. so the nearest one is deltas, half way up the map.

Also at Heinrick's trader, there is a cop trader outside the epoch gun traders tent that's the same as the one in tims, and serves no real purpose.

When looking at the trader marker colors, you would think that they would both be the same (Heinrichs and Tims) being green and deltas and troublesims being red would be different.

Maybe get an overpoch trader and a normal gun and seperate ammo trader like at Hiens for Tims place. Also change the map marker for deltas to green, troublesims could stay red, because he sells helicopters there.

knuckles even said himself, alot of it could be considered nitpicky, but for a new player coming to the server, or dayz for that matter this could cause frustration and to just walk away and find another server.

And jasonf, we do have the red crosshatch missions same as the old server which are pretty easy, no mounted guns, and 6-15 AI depending on the mission.

[Guest NIMDA]

Redundant topics merged.

Deadman, You just described BHoP on Cherno with indestructible bases/locked cars. 

Some suggestions I have heard are below.

1. Change OGG back to Chernarus (suggestion most commonly heard by me)

2. Take out medical missions and replace them with jewel heist.

3. Hero Missions to lose humanity (for those trying to be a bandit)

4. Superhero trader (To extend the gameplay for hero players)

There is at least one bug (jewel heist spawning inaccessible crates) that needs to be addressed on both server, and now the OGG traders have been called into question. Are they too confusing? These are more things that will need to be discussed sooner, rather than later.

This topic is stickied for a reason. Currently, it really is the most important topic regarding the future of this community. All discussion regarding server population, gripes, opinions of the OGG server, and ideas need to be funneled into this topic. Hopefully someday we'll be able to look at it as the discussion that led to the turning point of the OGG community.

-NIM

[Capt. Tobias Secht]

    I haven't read any of the posts on here. I'm not much of a forum guy, but here's what I saw several months ago when people first started going to the Hospital and how I feel about it.

    We started up a great PvE server and it was a success with all of our people on it and just roaming around making bases and getting set up again, but then the need for PvP came up, and everyone started playing on the Hospital and having a blast. I never joined you guys, and I didn't mean to sound like a jerk about it, but I would say, "I'll never play there."

    There was reasoning behind it. I don't think that we should be playing on another server that isn't ours when we have a PvP server to fill and get moving. I'm glad we found what we seem to want to play, and if we want that, we should change our PvP server over to it. We all want to have fun playing our favorite servers, I just want our favorite servers to be our servers.

    It doesn't make sense to me to have all of our players on other peoples servers. We're not paying for their servers to be up, we're paying for ours. So lets find what suits our community best, and run that. Even if we made a complete copy of The Hospital, that would be better than playing at The Hospital.

    Again, I haven't read any of the comments on here, I'm just putting in my two cents, and I think I have a couple of valid points. Lets get our community back together. We're the OGG/BHOP community, not Hospital community.

-Capt. Tobias Secht.

[jaspoe30]

You do have some good points Bishop and I do agree that we need to take some steps towards change on our end. As far as the Hospital server goes, I play the game to have fun and I refuse to feel guilty for having fun on someone else's server. Currently I'm not going to play on Hospital but that's another issue. If there is a server that has good performance, good game play and a high population then it's only natural that people gravitate towards that server. Playing on a server with a population of 0 isn't fun. We can work to get the population up but it's up to the player community to make that happen. We as admins will work our butts off to make sure we do our part....but we can only do so much. Also we have a great Teamspeak community for those that aren't aware that is available regardless of what server or game your playing. As long as we keep active on that then OGG/BHOP will never die.

The bottom line with the server is that we aren't going to please every one, that's not to say we can't try however. We can fix the little things but there will always be things people don't like or think they can do better. We can change the server to the flavor of the week but that still doesn't address the underlying issue of needing a player base to keep the server running. Just because we change these things doesn't mean we get players back. Sure we might, but we also stand the chance of being stuck in the same situation we have right now.

Honestly it's up to the community to bring the server back, we as admins can make the server attractive but the rest is up to you the players. If you guys want OGG to stay then it's time to man up and help out. Get the word out that OGG is a great place to play. Talk to your friends that play games, get them on the server. Post on forums, post on twitter, facebook....whatever you have to do. How many people here have even been to our Facebook page? Inaction is the ONLY thing that will cause the death of OGG.

[LilBunnyFooFoo]

Hmm, well looky here  8) : http://www.reddit.com/r/dayzservers

Anyone here with a Reddit account willing to make an announcement post? We don't violate Reddit's TOS, unlike the epochmod forum. Any volunteers will need to make sure the post includes a brief summary (including how long we have been around), mentions the SSD's on dedicated hardware (even though it's virtualized, our resources are guaranteed, so dedicated is accurate enough to distinguish from shared servers like vilayer), and contains a formatted list of the mods and scripts we have.

Do we have anyone with a reddit account that can post on this subreddit? I see a lot of recent posts on there and it seems very active.

[KT]

I've noticed that the PVE server of late has shockingly low player figures, while BHOP is doing better. Now granted I've only been back a week or so, but I wanted to make some suggestions to help the community out.

The biggest issue we face is that the gaming industry is currently full of survival games. Tons of the things have been launched on Steam green light, a lot of them are shite might I add. Still you have some that show potential and that's one of the issues.

We need to use our Facebook more. Listing all our Mods and scripts would be a good start. Looking at the list of scripts we have some great ones on both servers. We need to make sure the splash screens on both servers are up to date with regards to the scripts we use.

Its extremely difficult to suggest a good plan to get more players on the servers. If it was easy we would have done it already. When I think of some other ideas, I'll post them.

[Guest NIMDA]

Well for starters, the cleanup took place and the number of objects has been trimmed to an acceptable level. I think that was really what has killed OGG PvE's population the most. Logging in usually took about 4 tries after a restart, nobody wants to deal with that sort of crap.

I have been meaning to redo the OGG splash as well to make it more informative, and I agree, a Youtube channel for OGG linked to our facebook and using the facebook as much as possible will both help a lot.

[HeiNRicH]

If I could upload worth a damn I'd be all over uploading some of our antics......

Come on Google fiber......

[KT]

I've spoken with Nimda (as per his suggestion of a YouTube account in a previous post). So I said I would create a BHOP/OGG YouTube account (much like I did with Facebook) and I'll upload some of the videos I have stashed (NO not those kind..).

Currently the vids are on My own YouTube account but that won't help spread the word. With any luck this will help spread the gospel.

[HeiNRicH]

I have a couple from our shenanigans on my channel. I have more on my pc but I'm having problems with ATT screwing my upload.

[MSG. Travis Powel]

I'm back. Here to answer the bat signal for pro pvers to refill the lonely playerslots. Ill start the install process now and go to bed. It'll be interesting playin dayZ on higher fps than 12 for the first time in my life hopefully see everyone tomorrow.

I missed you guyz!

[Peraslax]

Im very Johnny Come lately on this thread, but I've been gaming online since the Gold Edition Neverwinter Nights D&D was available on AOL back when it was a monthly charge. Heh yea Im an old fart. I noticed that the first post was in Dec. All games take a nose dive in November and if you don't have a large enough community to weather that, it's tough to get peops back. There is a cynical reason why games like WoW and EQ run special events over the holidays with items only available then. Also, so many new games out there now that are similar (and I agree most are shite) that are really hurting Dayz. The server Im an admin on is flat out dead, the owner, scripter and most the other admin are constantly on 7 Days to Die or Arma3. I hop around a lot on different servers and maps and have come to a few conclusions. PVP always more popular than PVE . Better to take out a glitchy script than to put up with occasional glitches. Its just a source of frustration that isn't needed. (I.E. Eyescan, some trader scripts, ATMs). Fix what you can fix FAST. Want to lose that first time player in a hurry? Let him find out no vehicles tow when he was assured they would. And most importantly, there must be a strong Admin presence. Face it, Dayz was never finished. Lots of bugs you cant get around. And some players are asses. New players like to know someone has their backs and just the reassurance that an admin is available goes a long way toward them wanting to stay.