Nightmist is a totally grindfest. Maybe if the cap was back at 30 and people could actually reach max level and enjoy it would be different. Or even totally boost exp gaining and drops for level up so it's as quick as getting to 40 got. People need rewards and new content to stay simulated. Not being on the same level for months after mindless clicking of the same npc. If getting to 40 was as easy as getting to 30, everyone would already have every class at 40 and then whats the goal? To get better equipment for your character? But then everyone would just say there isn't good enough equipment or that it's too hard t get that equipment and that there's too many 40's for that equipment to go around. It's been well shown that new content does not stimulate the current game base as Nightmist as seen some of the heaviest developement it has ever seen.
For some reason this game has become more and more built around the vet player and what do you get for that? No new players and it's even hard for returning players to come back. When lower level stuff goes in, it's largely unused by new players and old alike. The only way something like this would work would be for the lower level areas to allow easy power training. Swamps gets some use on 1-alt but it's pretty rare, sdg sees potion farming but not much outside of that. The barrier forest, Spider caves, nightmist rooftops, and desecrated church all fall to the way of under/no use as well. Low level areas just plainly won't be used unless it's op. We also have Kayla's Quest which is geared towards lower player's.
Hey staff the player base isn't happy and you just blame it on jlh not able to update code? Any problem the game has could be fixed by builders you just don't want to change things because it might upset the vets? Well whatever you guys are doing is not working numbers have been going down for about 10 years. Blame it on less code updates and more 3d games but it's a lie it all comes down to horrible game content design. You guys killed this game and it's really sad nm used to be a lot of fun. There used to be chaotic things that added a fun element. Everything now is just stale, safe and "balanced". Take a good look at what used to make nightmist fun and try to see what's left. Not much just a endless grind you hope will keep the players you have but its not working so why not try something different? what is there to loose by actually making some changes and taking some chances? You guys have the tools to make crazy weapons or armors to make all classes fun idk why you don't use them. Most problems can't be fixed by staff. Things have been changed rather then thinking just about vets and staff didn't care if it upset them or not, see "change to cobalt". You can't blame the downfall of the game for the last 10 years on a staff member who has only been around for about 4 years. 1a had one of the largest spikes in playerbase numbers I had seen in awhile last year and it lasted for awhile, but even though staff kept doing to same stuff that one could assume brought them back to the game/kept them playing the game, they en mass approximately a year later. This points at something that isn't staff related when the game goes from 24 to 8 people in a couple of months, especially since winter time is normally the peak season for players returning not leaving. Not everything is balanced in the exact sense, i.e. lionesses give huge xp and mutant craps give large gold. However if certain places were completely out of context with the rest of the game what would happen is everyone would train there, and then if a single clan controlled the area(s) it would create an impropriety. What's the point of having the entire world if only a couple places are used.
What use to make Nightmist fun? I believe what made Nightmist fun was bettering your characters, having friends in game, meeting new people, some pking, exploring new areas. With the dwindling playerbase, making new friends is pretty much a no-go now (not completely though) as people already have feelings towards other people. meeting new people is in general a no-go as well, what new people? Pk'ing, well thats a hard thing, before there were a large number of people and you didnt have to go after the same couple people over and over again. It certainly is not fun for people when they leave town and within 5 minutes their killed, however at the same time there isn't a whole lot of people you can pk either though which makes this aspect rough also. Why not try something different? You mean like the training weapons that were put in, or the new equipment that have crazy stat mods, or allowing zerks to get stat mods, or trying easily accessible bombs, etc etc. Yes we've tried some new things, none worked. You don't know why we don't use them as apparently you don't know we do?
You have a 1alt server that has pretty much 0 solo content. Teamwork is great but a little heads up there's only about 8 people ever on at once. New players wont know anyone so how do they get around playing? Ohh they check it out then quit because they can't do anything. You say well play multi? Yea a new player wants to roll 10 crits and then attempt to use/learn all the classes at once right? You guys must play other games you see how those are designed right?The server does have solo content, but yes, the server is greatly lacking on solo content at this time. However it's also been stated numerous times, if you want to play alone multi-alt server is for that not 1a. 1a encourages people to play friendly with other people. we've said this over and over again. Some new players recently did start up, and players did pick them up to help them start playing. I don't think it's a problem with new players not knowing what to do. I think one of the recently new players even said recently it had a large part to with pking for some of them. Why cant they do anything? Because veteran players want to pk them off of the game for quick thrills. I wouldn't say a new player should play multi, they should play 1a due to how the game is designed, however due to 1a player mentalities thinking 1a should mean 1 character can kill everything in game, the stymie growth and progress.
Sounds to me like this post says, "It staffs fault we can't have level 40s in a week and have OP gear that kills everything in 1 hit". Have you ever played a game with cheat codes or where the game is over super quick? It gets boring extremely quickly. Some of the fixes directly need to come from players. This includes players staying active (bosses) to minimize the grind and not knocking people out of the game because they can. The player base is very important to a game like Nightmist in staying alive. Just for example, Nicole got bored with playing Nightmist because every time she left town she got pk'd. Because Nicole played less I played less. Because me and Nicole played less someone we got to start playing again left. Because that person left the 2 people they got to start playing again left. Because I stopped playing I stopped getting a specific person to log on and they haven't logged on since. Now because 1 person there's a ripple effect of 6 regular/semi-regular players not logging on. I'm not saying the dip in player base is speficially because we stopped playing, but when you have 4-5 people who quit who also create ripple effects like that you start seeing a sagging player base. Less people = less cool boss runs which = more grinding which = more bored players which also = less players as there's definitely some people who in general just want to boss the majority of the time. The game for a decent amount of time had 20+ people logging on at a time and I would guess there were around 40 or so regular/semi-regular players. Once again, just pointing the finger at staff won't work with this issue.