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Trying to rebuild a community (not a plug)


Tobias Solem

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I've been involved with running a small ARMA-based community since the launch of Epoch for ARMA3 and we have gone from having two full servers all the time (in our first few weeks) to having one full server for a few months, and then a half server for the better part of half a year, and then having to try running different servers (ARK, Rust, etc.) to have any activity at all. Running a community is a lot of work, it requires you to not only both keep one or several servers up to date, but also invest a lot of time to keep the community website active AND interacting with the players. Now, we set out to be pretty small, our intent was to have maybe one populated server, but with the popularity of the mod, supply overcame demand times a thousand... AND on top of that we (I) made a couple of mistakes that pissed off a part of our player base.

I know there are others like us out there, so what I would want is to try and have a discussion about how you/we can rebuild, because we are an essential part of a mod like Epoch, our hard work not only gets attention for our respective communities, it also helps create exposure for the mod, which brings attention from more script writers and so on and so on. 

So what I'm trying to do with this post is to seek advice from other server-hosts, players, community members, modders, etc. asking for contributions and ideas on how we can get the communities alive again. 

Thank you for your time.

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Tobias, I played on your server in the white listing of the mod and had a great time and only left as the community I was an admin for opened its own Epoch server on public release.  I remember your server as smooth running with a decent website. I chose it partly because of your presence and contributions on the Epoch forums and the fact that some of the other servers i had tried were not controlled in any manner.

I have since found that i continue to choose servers due the positive presence of the host in Epoch forums, or from the list of Epoch servers in forums because of map or mod packs i would like to try.

I am only a player, as a player I want a smooth running server running all Epoch features, (nothing switched off) and a good AI mission system running, preferably not just random AI patrols. I often play solo, but have formed in game alliances which is helped if a TS server is available. For me that is enough to play the rest is down to me to make something of the play experience. I doubt that there is anything i have said that is startlingly original to you, but I think the simplicity of a streamlined offering can be appealing.

There are also so many options out there at present in terms of games to play. It is hard to shine a light on Epoch mod and get it to sparkle so bright that it blinds players to those alternatives. On Twitter, a recent addition to my life, @Arma3Official often highlight content by modders and community members. Maybe Epoch needs a social networking component, that is weekly pushing information and content from sever hosts or players. Twitch is a fantastic platform too and unfortunately there is no one streaming Epoch at present. 

I feel like I am rambling so will stop, I feel I should also disclose that presently I cannot play anything and I miss Epoch very much because of the fun community I meet as I play! I hope some of what I have said is helpful or at least gets the ball rolling.

 

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I think there is not much you can do Tobias, most people are still waiting for the major Epoch updates to come, so when they do finally come, then hopefully you should see players come back, also what map are you playing ? I still don't think Epoch on Atlis is a good idea, it is just way to large and open, unless Epoch actually implemented building bikes as standard 

Have you thought about hosting Cherno ? there seems to be a lack of them atm ! 

but put it short once 0.4.0 comes out hopefully people will come back :) 

 

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Sorry to interrupt but Altis is just the right size compared to other maps. Yeah, for PVP players it may look too big, but for survival it is the best, many places to discover, many places to get loot and not see anybody and a handful of hotspots too (main one is Airport).

As for the topic, I doubt the players will come back even with 0.4 patch, probably new one's will rather find Epoch and will stay. Since the release of Exile, many players switched to that mod but it won't last either as people get easily bored, and those looking not just for PVP but survival and scavenging for supplies will find Epoch more appealing. I find I more appealing myself, despite its constant bugs but it is mostly Arma 3 bugs, Epoch itself has very few of those and that's what made me switch from DayZ for example.

To build a community is a waste of time unless you have at least 5-10 people who are die hard Epoch fans and play it all the time and there are very little such people as I noticed. Most of them are located in random different servers so gathering all of them in one place is, in my opinion, an impossible task. I've been wanting to find such no lifers as myself to play, but then again, most have steady jobs and families unlike myself and playing just 1-2 hours a day (at best) not gonna do it for me. That's why I always play alone and try to help new guys coming to a server.

Just a useless opinion :)

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I'm a player and have been an Epoch follower since before we could build wooden walls in DayZ Epoch. 

I guess we all realize that Epoch will run in cycles of popularity along with other mods releases, and at the moment its a bit lower than we would like.

However as vbawol stated on the 20th August "In the next patches leading up to 0.4 large framework changes will be made so we can prep the open world Epoch sandbox gamemode code for public release. This also means that Epoch Mod will soon become more compatible with other mods because the Epoch sandbox gamemode code will then run purely from the server/mission file".

I'm sure this will allow for some pretty cool combinations of mods and spark a increase in popularity.

At the moment i'm probably the only one out of our group of about 10 that is still active in Epoch, the rest are watching and waiting for updates. i'm sure this is representative of alot of gaming groups out there.

I think that at the moment Tobias, that the community as such is still there, but looking for something like Epoch until Epoch is further along the development path. if that makes sense.

As The StainlessSteelRat said, Twitch is great for getting exposure of the game and hopefully some of those guys will stream Epoch channels in the future.

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  • 5 months later...

I have played arma2 epoch for a couple of years and when i finally managed to upgrade to arma3 epoch i was stunned to find zero zombies in game i really thought epoch was a zombie based mod from arma2 dayz, no zombies almost no point in playing unless your happy doing ai missions and building bases the zombies really gave you a feel for survival when looting in city's and even help you find other players when they get zombies running after them doing ai mission were that little bit tougher when you have zombies around while trying to shoot the ai in my opinion we need ArmA3 DayZ Epoch you should not need to add another mod just for zombies.

I think there were many players expecting to play ArmA3 DayZ Epoch coming from ArmA2 DayZ Epoch (I WAS 1 OF THEM LOL)

That being said im still running arma2 and arma3 servers, im only 3 weeks into arma3 Epoch I have found installing mods/addons/scripts is very easy compared to alot of the arma2 custom stuff.

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Thing with zombies is... even if Epoch had zombies, admins would just disable them because they are apparently "too hard" :) Personally I played on a server that has increased sapper and drone spawns so it is much harder to loot town and be invisible to other players as it takes many shots to kill a sapper and drones can be annoying too at times. So 90 percent of a blame is on server owners/admins, not devs, in my opinion. Also some popular servers have even stamina disabled. And most of them have easy super markets where you can get gear 24/7 for cheap. Why even loot? Devs are hardly responsible for that. It's dumbed down gamer kids who want easy mode.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On ‎22‎.‎02‎.‎2016 at 0:02 AM, KPABATOK said:

Also some popular servers have even stamina disabled. And most of them have easy super markets where you can get gear 24/7 for cheap. Why even loot? Devs are hardly responsible for that. It's dumbed down gamer kids who want easy mode.

i agree completely. You need to filter these guys out from the server. Everything is up to the admins. If you have a blackmarket dont spread 12 blackmarkets all over the map and make low prices for items. Rare and balanced. Players get bored if you as admin cant keep them busy e.g looting, killing drones, whatever.

my personal opinion:

i hated arma in the beginning (2 years ago) because i came from cod uo and csgo. And i didnt understand the physics and all the stuff around arma. But my personal luck was, that i played on a nice mature wasteland and epoch server whete players and admins took care on each other. And exactly that made me to stay in arma. Now i love the game and spend every free minute there. So everything is up to the admins to filter out players who insult other players and can crash a server really fast and keep players busy. Its a ton of work. But also the mature behavior here on epoch keeps me away from exile. Just make your epoch server a nice home where players like to stay.

 

cheers rvg?!

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