Official Servers for Consoles - Remodeled

[1LLManners 7]

Continuity among the playerbase is still a main focus for the game, with player interactions, (be it friendly, violent, or both) at the forefront of goals. However, this has been hindered since community servers became available and only worsens.

• With official + community servers numbering into the daily average of 2-3k different servers for players to use, there is far too many avenues to go down and multiplies the odds against interactions happening. Sure, it does happen, but not like how it was when we all only had 1 map, and a few hundred servers to play on.

Official servers have seen an increase of activity, not only from the Livonia and 1.06 update and patches that followed drawing in an influx of new players and old returning to see what has improved... but because people are sick and tired of either:
1. Paying for a server rental that they cannot have custom control of to play how they wish to play.

2. They're tired of being kicked or banned from a server for whichever reason, justified or otherwise.

3. They don't like the massive rules applied against the server by owners and admin, etc. They can't be bothered.. so they either... Go buy their own server and do the same thing the other guys are but the difference is now they have the say so in who does what and how. or. they return to officials, -- that is IF they do not decide to 'take a break' or quit playing all together.

My proposal with the collected input of my peers is that Official servers recieve a remodel of their structure. I always have wondered why Legacy builds were abandoned, but I get it, things were impossible due to engines or whatever. Maintaince.. whatever. We NEED options, and want them to be available. Break the servers down into categories: ▪︎ High Pop PVP ▪︎ Hardcore Survival/Immersion ▪︎ Vanilla + Entry Level

High Pop PVP: consists of maybe a combined total of 5-8 servers across all 3 regions.

• These servers are set with persistence OFF • No night cycle (people server hop due to night)

• and an increased nominal on the top tier weapon/gear class, or at least remove the "count_in_hoarder" from working against the economy

HC Survival/Immersion: perhaps maybe 15 or so servers across all 3 regions; on these servers have it set to:

▪︎ night cycles on (as normal on current officials)

▪︎ full status indicator impact from environment, and used to test out newly implemented adjustments to sickness, diesease, weather, comfort, etc. (not everyone, i'd say 70% of players, want to deal with the quirky ideas for "what if we adjust this and take away these and.." changes like we seen lately)

▪︎ persistence ON for base building, stashes, etc. (everything done in-game effects economy and playability) Sounds like current officials, in a nut shell. Easy, not much to change there.

▪︎ Make a 5-7 of those 15 be in 1PP mode only.

 

"Vanilla"/Entry Level: these would consist of the majority of official servers, commonly outnumbering amount of however many servers are remaining after those abovementioned are delegated for specific playstyles mentioned. On these servers:

▪︎ You keep it basic

▪︎ Persistence ON. -- people WANT to build, stash, etc. and learn how to do so, but it is vital for these servers to have a economy not hindered by "count_in_hoarder" on the sought after weapons and gear. Or else we continue to risk losing new players who enter, don't find any loot naturally, along with the

 

Oh, and last thing I sware. Sorry. But Server Hop Mitigation is probably THE biggest killer of continuity among the population of public server players. I would say, let people ghost in if you have to, rid the relocation & timer for penalties, and let people spawn in with their friends who they spend a good hour out of the 2 they have to play with eachother that week. No ones able to function on the way this is all set up currently... I know, it's been a on the fly type deal, but we gotta reorganize this a bit for it to work optimally, I think.

Worse come to worse.. what, we end up in the same position as we're in currently.. only potential gains, ones that would.. if you think bout it.. would bring the entire console community closer towards the goals of player interaction while also satisfying those of us who play. Think about how difficult it is to even meet up on a public server now days... it's a counterproductive design. People fill a server, high pop.. play for a hour or so... it gets dark out, everyone leaves save about 10 people who just joined and just so happen to be closer to their friends than wanting to risk jumping into a daylight server to play and winding up relocated somewhere clear across the map. So, then 60 people fill another server and repeat process. Now, you can say "people should play through the night thats the point," but let's be real.. if someone doesn't wanna do something. They most likely won't.. if there is no point or incentive involved then they definitely won't hesitate to do what they please. It could be prevented. A overwhelming percentage of players have quit playing because of the guns not being available.. which is due to the "count_in_hoarder" attributes hindering them from spawning cuz people buried them. New players are baffled and very disappointed by it, and most likely won't be retained.. it's a mess. Server owners have failed endlessly daily because of it.. For officials, It makes since to remove it from a handful of servers, make it persistence off.. and let the PVP playerbase play how they wish to play on those designated type of servers. Same goes for the other two categories, if you will, which represent the common division of playstyles, yeah? That's a big deal. Big proposal. Big results. Big positive results.