- Location
- The Marmite Pit
Fair warning, my post is fucking long  but please stick with me if you can, I'd like to get as many thoughts and opinions from those that still play Altis as I can. Also for reference, all of my stats and graphs in this post come from Battlemetrics. (https://www.battlemetrics.com/servers/arma3/253087).
On the 7th December the maximum player count (highest number the server hit on that day) was 73. From this point, it has continued deteriorating to where we are currently hitting no more than 50 players at any given time. This unfortunately seems to be the new norm. During November we had a surge, likely influenced partly by lockdown, that saw us hitting a minimum of 90 players most nights, though during the weekends it was usually around 110. But the high player count during November is the anomaly. Before that surge, it was as it currently is: hardly ever hitting more than 50 players. Thatâs the way it was for months.
Dark blue is lowest player count, bright yellow is highest. The darker the green (or if the count reaches above 120 it begins to turn yellow), the higher the player count. Source = Battlemetrics.
If we want to keep the Altis server alive, something needs to change. Arma 3 is clearly not the whole problem, and nor is Altis Life. We know this because if we look at two other Altis Life servers, both British themed just like ours, we can see that they are performing fine.
These are the player counts of GTA and Reborn. GTA has 180 player slots, and Reborn has 130. At the time of writing (10pm Saturday), GTA has 128 players online and Reborn is completely full up. We have 42. (Not sure if I'm allowed to name them or if we still treat them like Voldemort, but either way everyone here knows about these servers and what they are called, so who cares)
Itâs clear to see then that the issue is not with this gamemode, nor the game itself. We specifically are doing something wrong. These other servers are thriving. Why arenât we?
The highest point of the November surge was the final weekend of that month. Between Thursday 27th November and Tuesday 1st December, we had 578 first-time players join the server. Of course we canât expect every first-time player to turn into regulars, but you would hope to retain a portion of them at least. We donât seem to have done that. As I have mentioned, we are currently unable to get more than 50 players online at any time. So how did we lose those players? And more importantly, what can we do to keep them?
1. The map needs to be unbalanced. Where does almost every new player spawn? Kavala. These days, what will the new player find in Kavala the first time they spawn in? Fuck all. Even during the busy November nights, that key spawn location- the capital city- was pretty dead. At present, things are spread out all over the map to utilise the space available to us. Donât get me wrong, I understand the thinking behind that, but itâs sacrificing the amount of interactions players are having with each other- and the interactions are the whole point of the game, after all. When a player spawns in for the first time, we need to surround them with activity. They need to be thrown into a busy atmosphere. The main cities need to be stuffed with important locations: move the sellers, the taxi place, the ARAC place, the drug dealers all into a compacted space. Create highstreets. Fuck the rest of Kavala, put as much as possible into the square. Make it a hotspot, where you know that youâre going to find someone to talk to if you go there. And while youâre at it, put the drug dealer back at the church in Kavala. Iâve felt for years that moving it out of the city sucked the soul away. There needs to be a balance of course: Iâm not suggesting everything goes into the cities. But we need to be attracting lots of players to them, especially Kavala.
2. Points of interest. So our new player has spent two hours being dazzled by our busy and bustling Kavala, and heâs now ready to set out into the wild. He drives away in his hobo hatchback and finds⌠fuck all of any real interest. Now, I know at this point youâre saying, âbut Dan, you just told us to move everything into Kavala, no wonder youâre not a developer and only known around here as Georgeâs inferior sidekickâ and to that I say, youâre right, I did say to stuff Kavala like a turkey at Christmas. So whatâs something that historically was relatively busy, very interesting, and too big to fit into a city?My penis Custom gang bases! Bases that gangs with a high enough player count and good enough reputation have submitted to the devs and then been ejaculated onto the map. The custom bases gave the map a uniqueness and character. Our new player can see immediately that weâve got loads of good gangs for him to choose from just by looking at the map and seeing the gang bases. He can go and visit them, and learn about the gangs and their cultures just by looking around the bases that they designed themselves. It gives the server character, something that itâs really lacking right now. And why stop there? Let's throw in a Covid testing checkpoint for the NHS to use, or a courtroom for the police- there doesn't have to be an official court system, just have it there to be used if they want to. There's loads of stuff you could do. Just give people tools to roleplay.Â
3. Bring back the Mentors. So youâre new, youâre confused, and youâve just arrived at our sparkling new and overpopulated capital city. You glance at the map and you see all these gang bases marked and all these weird markers like âtree farmâ and âcider factory.â Youâre more nervous and confused than Drex and Samantha at a wedding. Where do you go, who do you call? You wander down Kavala high street and find the Tour Guide booth, conveniently located in a very easy-to-find spot and call for a Mentor! The Mentors were experienced players designated to helping newbies find their feet, with no in-game powers. I think they were underutilised back in the day and used more as TS moderators than anything else. This time, the new player will be able to call for one directly in game (similar to police dispatches or admin messages) and a Mentor will promptly make their way to them. Bring them back and focus them towards helping new players, and thereâs no doubt that it will help convince a few newbies to stick around. And as a bonus point, staff members should only be chosen from an existing pool of Mentors. Ease staff into power, otherwise they turn out powermad and egotistical, just like Gordon (just joking Big G, love you hahahaunblacklistmehahahah).Â
The problem is that the server just doesnât feel as alive as it once did, even on the rare occasions when we are getting 120 players on. As the server has evolved and things have become more⌠professional? (i.e. buying ready-made gang bases instead of having custom ones manually placed), the character of the server has been sacrificed. Itâs the difference between getting a mass produced jumper from a big brand, one thatâs a clone of hundreds of thousands of others; and getting a hand-knitted jumper with your initials on that your gran made specially for you.
Iâm not saying the suggestions Iâve made will make everything hunky dory, but I do believe they will help, and in the meantime we need to start trying shit. We need to spray and pray, like Armed Response at a bank robbery. Something needs to happen man or this serverâs gonna die, which would be a mighty shame seen as I donât think itâs done yet. I still think itâs got plenty of life left. I just hope that this doesnât turn into one of those things that gets completed ignored and forgotten by the powers-that-be. We all want the same thing, after all. So please, agree and disagree with me, make counter arguments, come up with your own ideas- the point is that we all need to pull together and find a way of bringing it back to its best, otherwise it will die.
EDIT:Â Just to be safe, all the little jibes I make at people and groups is just banter to lighten the somber topic. Love you all xx
On the 7th December the maximum player count (highest number the server hit on that day) was 73. From this point, it has continued deteriorating to where we are currently hitting no more than 50 players at any given time. This unfortunately seems to be the new norm. During November we had a surge, likely influenced partly by lockdown, that saw us hitting a minimum of 90 players most nights, though during the weekends it was usually around 110. But the high player count during November is the anomaly. Before that surge, it was as it currently is: hardly ever hitting more than 50 players. Thatâs the way it was for months.
Dark blue is lowest player count, bright yellow is highest. The darker the green (or if the count reaches above 120 it begins to turn yellow), the higher the player count. Source = Battlemetrics.
If we want to keep the Altis server alive, something needs to change. Arma 3 is clearly not the whole problem, and nor is Altis Life. We know this because if we look at two other Altis Life servers, both British themed just like ours, we can see that they are performing fine.
These are the player counts of GTA and Reborn. GTA has 180 player slots, and Reborn has 130. At the time of writing (10pm Saturday), GTA has 128 players online and Reborn is completely full up. We have 42. (Not sure if I'm allowed to name them or if we still treat them like Voldemort, but either way everyone here knows about these servers and what they are called, so who cares)
Itâs clear to see then that the issue is not with this gamemode, nor the game itself. We specifically are doing something wrong. These other servers are thriving. Why arenât we?
The highest point of the November surge was the final weekend of that month. Between Thursday 27th November and Tuesday 1st December, we had 578 first-time players join the server. Of course we canât expect every first-time player to turn into regulars, but you would hope to retain a portion of them at least. We donât seem to have done that. As I have mentioned, we are currently unable to get more than 50 players online at any time. So how did we lose those players? And more importantly, what can we do to keep them?
1. The map needs to be unbalanced. Where does almost every new player spawn? Kavala. These days, what will the new player find in Kavala the first time they spawn in? Fuck all. Even during the busy November nights, that key spawn location- the capital city- was pretty dead. At present, things are spread out all over the map to utilise the space available to us. Donât get me wrong, I understand the thinking behind that, but itâs sacrificing the amount of interactions players are having with each other- and the interactions are the whole point of the game, after all. When a player spawns in for the first time, we need to surround them with activity. They need to be thrown into a busy atmosphere. The main cities need to be stuffed with important locations: move the sellers, the taxi place, the ARAC place, the drug dealers all into a compacted space. Create highstreets. Fuck the rest of Kavala, put as much as possible into the square. Make it a hotspot, where you know that youâre going to find someone to talk to if you go there. And while youâre at it, put the drug dealer back at the church in Kavala. Iâve felt for years that moving it out of the city sucked the soul away. There needs to be a balance of course: Iâm not suggesting everything goes into the cities. But we need to be attracting lots of players to them, especially Kavala.
2. Points of interest. So our new player has spent two hours being dazzled by our busy and bustling Kavala, and heâs now ready to set out into the wild. He drives away in his hobo hatchback and finds⌠fuck all of any real interest. Now, I know at this point youâre saying, âbut Dan, you just told us to move everything into Kavala, no wonder youâre not a developer and only known around here as Georgeâs inferior sidekickâ and to that I say, youâre right, I did say to stuff Kavala like a turkey at Christmas. So whatâs something that historically was relatively busy, very interesting, and too big to fit into a city?
3. Bring back the Mentors. So youâre new, youâre confused, and youâve just arrived at our sparkling new and overpopulated capital city. You glance at the map and you see all these gang bases marked and all these weird markers like âtree farmâ and âcider factory.â Youâre more nervous and confused than Drex and Samantha at a wedding. Where do you go, who do you call? You wander down Kavala high street and find the Tour Guide booth, conveniently located in a very easy-to-find spot and call for a Mentor! The Mentors were experienced players designated to helping newbies find their feet, with no in-game powers. I think they were underutilised back in the day and used more as TS moderators than anything else. This time, the new player will be able to call for one directly in game (similar to police dispatches or admin messages) and a Mentor will promptly make their way to them. Bring them back and focus them towards helping new players, and thereâs no doubt that it will help convince a few newbies to stick around. And as a bonus point, staff members should only be chosen from an existing pool of Mentors. Ease staff into power, otherwise they turn out powermad and egotistical, just like Gordon (just joking Big G, love you hahahaunblacklistmehahahah).Â
The problem is that the server just doesnât feel as alive as it once did, even on the rare occasions when we are getting 120 players on. As the server has evolved and things have become more⌠professional? (i.e. buying ready-made gang bases instead of having custom ones manually placed), the character of the server has been sacrificed. Itâs the difference between getting a mass produced jumper from a big brand, one thatâs a clone of hundreds of thousands of others; and getting a hand-knitted jumper with your initials on that your gran made specially for you.
Iâm not saying the suggestions Iâve made will make everything hunky dory, but I do believe they will help, and in the meantime we need to start trying shit. We need to spray and pray, like Armed Response at a bank robbery. Something needs to happen man or this serverâs gonna die, which would be a mighty shame seen as I donât think itâs done yet. I still think itâs got plenty of life left. I just hope that this doesnât turn into one of those things that gets completed ignored and forgotten by the powers-that-be. We all want the same thing, after all. So please, agree and disagree with me, make counter arguments, come up with your own ideas- the point is that we all need to pull together and find a way of bringing it back to its best, otherwise it will die.
EDIT:Â Just to be safe, all the little jibes I make at people and groups is just banter to lighten the somber topic. Love you all xx
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