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Hi, I don't want to mock you or anything, after all, you do have a server, and I don't, I just noticed something you might want to know. Do you remember the time when dayz mod was at it's prime? If you don't, go watch some videos. If you do, what do you think is missing now? Here's my opinion: TENSION.
 
Let me explain that. First, there was a time when people were afraid of engaging, because they would lose days' worth of work. Then, there was the base aspect, with most bases breach-able, in a way or another. Then there was the constant need of supplies, in order to survive. Medical supplies weren't that common, and bases were often used to stash away resources, because dieing was easy, but getting your things back, not so much. So, to put it simply, if a server wishes to thrive, here's my to-do list for it to stay relevant for a long time:
 
0. Hard or hardcore. Make the server either of those. Hardcore = no weapon, no map, no backpack, maybe a bandage. Hard = 2x bandage, no map, weakest meele weapon (machete? or bat?), smallest backpack. Heroes should have +1 painkillers, bandits +1 smoke grenade (to trap players inside buildings filled with zombies). Oh, and NO PVE, since it takes away the risk of killing your teammates. Less risk = less fun = less awesome of a feeling when you do win.
 
1. Weapons. Have the map mostly spawn meele weapons, and rarely a pistol. I'll get back to the other weapons soon enough. This will make it a lot more difficult to kill somebody, and make the risk of being the one killed a lot higher. Making the fights more evened out, you effectively make it so people are thinking more about whether or not to engage in combat.
 
2. Bases. Let people build without a plot pole, but have things stay like only for 24 hours (so people ca maintain them, if playing daily). And only cinder and metal should be indestructible, but it shouldn't be cheap, in fact, it should be one of the most expensive things on the server, alongside tanks and rocket launchers. let people build wooden (camouflaged) bases, and let others be able to break into those. Also, locks should be buyable from the traders, so as to not make it impossible for people to have bases, but safes should only be on hard&hardcore missions, and lockboxes should be on medium, hard and hardcore missions, as well as drop from zombies.
 
3. Vehicles. Only spawn 5 vehicles on the map, (old) bikes (the most frequent one), (old) motorbikes, towing tractors (slow and leaving you exposed, but allowing you to tow other vehicles), traktor (slow and noisy, but also good for towing, and offroad), and a slow boat (for one player only). The rest should be bought, and get unlocked after the maintainance period (i.e. 14 days. on most servers nowadays).
 
4. Missions. There should be a broken vehicle for each mission, with the number of AIs be the number of seats those vehicles have. 4 difficulties, all with wicked AI:
- easy: motorbike or atv, 2 people with pistols, a chance for one to have a crossbow (which can have a CCO attacked to it, for use against more difficult missions). One vehicle not working
- medium: 1-3 vehicles, some things (like boxes, crates and walls) for AI to hide behind, AI with shotguns, and in one of the boxes&crates to be a chance for a CZ for the next mission difficulty. One vehicle working.
- hard: at least one important vehicle (like the ural, SUV, helicopter or armored vehicles), a few small buildings and even more cover (walls, crates, boxes, buildings), AIs with CZs, and rarely a better sniper in the loot box. One vehicle working (not the important vehicle. This could be an old motorcycle that's working for every mission)
- hardcore: same as hard, but with machine guns and rocket launcher, none on AI, a chance of either one in the loot. One vehicle working. Also, an armed vehicle that can't move, and will be empty (of ammo) when not used by AI.
 
5. Trading. Now, the catch here is to have trading routes, and the gains should not be big, but enable a lot more gameplay options. Aside from the trader cities (the buy-sell price ratio should be 4:1), with normal prices, and special loot (like weapon attachments). Each of that trader should be in a different location from the trader cities. You could have 3m safezone around them, and have them spawn in the middle of nowhere, in a building of their own. They should also be relatively close to roads, so that those roads can be camped/ambushed. The whole point of this is to enable a small profit for those doing trading routes. There should also be at least 5 of those on the map.
 
6. Map. The map should NOT be Chernarus, because everyone knows every bit of it. There's also the deal with the open buildings I would suggest either Lingor Island (still kind of fresh) or Panthera 2 (overused), with 4 trader cities (2 for everybody and 1 for hero and 1 for bandit), and none of them have all the traders inside (again, so that the people have to visit more than one trader city), and there should be more buildings on the map than by default, so as to make the map unique to the server. You could block some entrances and add other entrances to buildings, wall around things, add buildings, add unmarked cities, and so on, so long as they're not obviously laid down on the map.  Also, have a day+night cycle, but not those bitch black nights.
 
7. Donations & Microtransactions. Those who pay for it, should be able to have a bit of advantage over the others, but not too much of it. Something like a VIP Hero with a desert camo (or snow, they're both good in a city) and VIP Bandit with a forest camo. Also, maybe let them buy bikes and motorbikes for two thirds the price (so 3:2 buy-sell ratio), from a VIP trader in each trader city. If you want new players to get something free, give them money for a lock, so they can have a locked house. And a lockbox to the VIPs...

So, tell me, how will it help you to have your server (more or less) exactly the same as every other server? What makes YOUR server so special? Is it any fun? For anybody?
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Sorry to say but most people don't  want this. 

There is good reason why the hardcore servers have 2 or 3 players and the fully mil, 50 million start, get given everything under the sun are always full. 

Like it or not, that's the way it is. 

I had a server much like you describe. It was empty bar the same two people every night who loved it.  It's just not viable to keep running long term sadly. 

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Try the server in my signature and tell me if it´s what you looking for. We looking for players like you.

NO free vehicles, NO startmoney, NO base kit, NO tanks, jets or stuff like this.

And sry, no MISSIONS with markers on the map and AI as a shooting range targets. Not you hunt the AI, the AI hunt you.

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I would play, but it's PVE. I forgot to mention that in the post, thanks for reminding me!
I will check it out, but I'm not going to play on it for long, due to the small, but important, detail of it being PVE... It just takes the risk away from the game...

 

Edit: You need more videos on youtube... and on twitch...

Edit2: On PVP you can assault other people's bases, you can kill other people and you can have clan battles. On PVE, not much of that is left. There's another thing when people make genuine mistakes, and someone is able to profit from that. Also, that's what's mostly shared on youtube and twitch... 

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3 hours ago, SapioiT said:

 detail of it being PVE... It just takes the risk away from the game...

You get a free vehicle of your choice if you stay longer than 15 minutes alive as freshspawn :wink:

The risk is the AI can spawn EVERYWHERE on EVERYTIME WITHOUT warning (they hunt you on a very high level) ........ trust me, the threatment is fircer as on a "normal" PVP server .......... I have seen so many "PVP Pro´s" give up after 30 minutes and 3 deaths every day ...........

 

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22 minutes ago, Anhor said:

You get a free vehicle of your choice if you stay longer than 15 minutes alive as freshspawn :wink:

The risk is the AI can spawn EVERYWHERE on EVERYTIME WITHOUT warning ........ trust me, the threatment is fircer as on a "normal" PVP server ..........

 

Even more so! I've stayed alive for about an hour... how do I get the vehicle?

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Is it a one-time thing, or one can get a vehicle after each respawn? Because I would rather not have it until the moment I have a few more people in my group... it would make more use if I manage to convince people to join me, than if I'd be playing solo...
Suicider, is the name i usually use nowadays...

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Here's my take on why servers are dying....... Players just aren't playing a2 anymore.

It's an old game on an old engine, look how popular a3 is or other games, player unknowns battlegrounds all take away from every servers player numbers.

I agree with @oldmatechoc, players want to play the game without grinding. It seems like you want a dayzmod vanilla server instead of epoch.

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3 hours ago, oldmatechoc said:

Its fairly easy to find servers matching that description. @SapioiT

Just sort by players. servers with 0 players or very low numbers.

 

Not many players don't want to grind anymore. They want to spawn in and start killing.

This is just what I've noticed on the servers I've run and server owners I speak with.
Not saying I prefer this game style (I dont, I hate it.) It just what I've noticed (since overpoch took over).

eg.

Spoiler

At the same time I ran 3 servers.

Chernarus, Semi Hardcore, No banks, Coastal spawn select, no military vehicles.

Namalsk Hardcore, No bank, No Traders, No Spawn Select, Had to scroll on players for group option, No locked Vehicles or storage devices, Tents and Wooden Storage only.

then

Lingor Island. Spawn Select all over the map with lots of humanity based custom loadouts, All in one Traders (Survivor and Humanity Based), Banking, Easy loot, Semi military, and lots of other op crap.

Result.

f0a771489f.png

and the other 2 were dead 24/7

And I hated the server lol, it was just put together from players requests for the server.

 

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I think there is also a great deal of private LAN servers that are unlisted. I get PMs on Youtube from people just setting up servers for their own use or for a group of friends. Also, some of the view counts on the mod threads on here are in the thousands. Surely not all of the views are from public server owners.

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i love the hardcore server.. with customs maps and some of fantasy... but totally agree with iwbuk .. players dont.  Remember a bunch of players told me sometime... "adm por que no sacas los zombies son molestos".. "adm why you dont remove the zed.. they are a bother"--  ¬¬

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I agree with @salival, @oldmatechoc and @juandayz .......... players don´t understand the intention of a SURVIVAL game, they wanna play GTA5CoDBFCS:GOPUBG.

As I read somewhere month ago in a game magazin ....... "Overwatch, Overpoch and others are a perversion of Epoch.......". And I agree with the author of this article.

What sense makes game mechanics like hunger, thirst, temperatur, the ability to craft things and so much other stuff in a shooter? Absolutly nothing. But all these things are in Epoch ..........

The goal of the game is to stay alive with ONE (1) character as long as possible.

So, this means for me: If I run to a mission and die during it, I FAIL! Death = FAIL

In my opinion the player must think about every step bevor he take action. And thats the reason why my server has one goal ...... to f*** you and take everything you own! Thats SURVIVAL.

And BTW I forgot ...... I give a sh** how much players on my server :wink:

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While I agree that there are not many good servers left, many people left BECAUSE there are no good servers that are easy to find.
If you want to grab their attention, you've got a better chance than the other servers, but that doesn't means that you shouldn't advertise at all.

There is more at work than just having the server good. People are more inclined to join servers with more players, and because of the nature of run-with-guns servers, those are the fullest (because people want more fast-paced action). But those servers need the least amount of advertising needed, and are one of the easiest ways for a multi-server group to have both a run-with-guns (easy to get top-tier content) server and use that to advertise the hardcore server.

Another way to advertise a hardcore server would be to have an active youtube, twitch, facebook, snapchat, instagram and google plus accounts, where to publish in-game content, such as screenshots from the game, short videos with some action, and (on the sites that allow) longer videos, and even streaming of events, like filling a box with a few useful things and marking it on the map, then having an admin be shadowing players (not from start to finish, but switch from one to another, for variety and not letting everyone else know only one's location) to record/livestream some of the action.

Every of those action should have mentioned somewhere (in the video/livestream or in the description, the details of the server, such as name -most importantly-, it being hardcore, it's ip, some of the mods enabled, and the other social media -including twitch and youtube- of the server. The content should be at least weekly for a 30+ minutes video, preferably daily for short around-30-seconds videos.

 

4 hours ago, Shak said:

The mod died the minute that script cheaters / server hosting providers decided to make a profit from it. (2013).

That was a long time ago, time to move on.

No, that's just when the business model of those sites focused heavily on making money quick, instead of having a long-running business... which, pf course, led to the servers failing miserably, in the medium to long run...
 

Edit: Oh, and since this forum doesn't have a Videos section for Arma 2 Epoch (anymore), I think one could use the Arma 3 Epoch Videos section, or the Arma 2 Epoch General Discussion section, for the same thing... 

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3 hours ago, SapioiT said:

Of what?

Good question :biggrin:

And BTW, I´m 50 and the manager of an DiY market with multi million volume of sales ........... I realy have no time to make videos or something to entertain gamers. Gaming is not my life. First comes my family, second my job, third social life (no, not facebook, twitter or equal shit) and then ........ after some other things, comes gaming.

I made my server for ME and not for others ,,,,,,,,, but it is free for anyone to enter it.

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Sapioit,  your list could have been true for an older type of players who understood what is all about, sadly it is not the case these days (your last remark to donations is wrong, you should never give donors advantage, only cosmetical such as skins and so on, but never advantage whitch leeds to comercial thinking in the end and unballanced gameplay).

18 hours ago, Shak said:

The mod died the minute that script cheaters / server hosting providers decided to make a profit from it. (2013).

That was a long time ago, time to move on.

Spot on Shak.

After comercial scipting took over, they focus on making money and servers competing with other to bring as much players for profit, profit in so many forms as "donations" (pay to win) or main website sponsors etc etc.

 And how to attract more players? Make their life easy : starting full gear, slow zed, buy a base, easy loot, easy missions with big loot, cheap prices, "speacial" traders, 10000 vehicles, 300 helis and so on.

And when that was not enough, lets make it total irelevant to survival: tanks, jets, huge bases, teleport, deathmatch etc.

 

These type of servers with high advertising killed all the other survival ones by brainwashing players and sometimes sending hakers to spam them until they closed. 

 

Players who liked the survival part moved on, who is left on the full servers is much of the above which has nothing to do with survival and realism.

But if you do make a server like that, or you know one like that count me in, maybe i will make one one day. Good Luck!

 

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On 14/06/2017 at 4:23 AM, juandayz said:

i love the hardcore server.. with customs maps and some of fantasy... but totally agree with iwbuk .. players dont.  Remember a bunch of players told me sometime... "adm por que no sacas los zombies son molestos".. "adm why you dont remove the zed.. they are a bother"--  ¬¬

I have also heard this so many times in the past 3 years. along with - "why are some traders so far away" - "why dont I spawn with a main weapon" - "how am I supposed to do missions when they can shoot me before I shoot them" - "I dont like playing with a green screen (night-time))" - "you should add the MLRS & Apache" - "can we up the map vehicles to 500?" - "why do I have to spawn so far away from my body?" - "the loot spawn is sh*t" - "get rid of the weather and fog"  - "no night time or I'm leaving!" - "gps scan so I can tell how many players/AI are near me!" - "WALKING ZOMBIES!!!!!!!11!!"  and on and on and on..... 

These are the types of things players have been requesting for around 2-3 years now. And the server hosts had 2 choices....loose the players by not giving them what they want, or give in and change the basic premise of what this survival mod was supposed to be.

The  majority of players (new & old) are to blame for the way the popular servers are setup, not the server hosts. It's what they want as a majority at this point of the Epoch mods life. Going against what the players want is suicide for new servers and old. Those players playing on the popular servers aren't there having a bad time, they are playing how they want to. There are some really good servers still out there that are close to what it is that you want......but they are empty. And that is not because they dont advertise - some of those servers & communities have been online for years with little to no changes! If people aren't interested, then no amount of 24/7 - all platform advertising will make a server popular if its not what players want.

Players like yourself sapioiT and many of us, actually,  are in the minority. Actually I'd guess that a lot of server hosts here would actually NOT choose to play on the kind of server that they host - I am one of them.

And those servers that are popular by giving players what they want, are at least, keeping players playing at this point.

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@Helion4 i think is cuz they never play dayz mod vanilla... where you only have a tent to store your things and a unlockable vehicle... Hide this two between trees and wait 1 or 2 days to be stoled... then Fuck! my things :(    and when you died.. spawns in prigo, kamenka,komarvo and start to run to 2hs to the Berezino or Zelenogorks market places--- to get a fkng map.... or Electro , Cherno firestations.. or balota airfield to get some nice stuff. (nice stuff means a bizzon or Ak),, Remeber when i meet dayz mod.. i just buy War-z..  Play it one time.. and be a pirate of arma2oa dayz for 1 year.. before buy the game :D and still love it.  And still my hand shakes when i see another player... and this only happend me with dayz or epoch. no with others games.

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I miss the grinding days of actually playing... Tents, crappy vehicles, no towing...  Reminds me of 7 days to die.. lol..

But the reality is, things change.  When i started dayz mod, it was grinding and no pvp or pve servers.... you said you were friendly or not.. To me a zombie apocalypse, you work together and save yourself and others from the zombies.  I mean, thats my opinion.  But then players started shooting other players on sight, because they were too lazy to get their own gear or go play some COD... Then the PVP and PVE environments were born... I mean it makes sense to separate the people that want to play a zombie mod for what its meant for, or the players that are COD ish and make PVP servers... I get it...

but there is one thing you need to realize, if every server owner, did it only one way, and that is your way (hardcore survival), your title would not be

Reasons why your servers are failing...
 
it would be

 

Reasons why arma 2 server are no longer available!
 
and i bet, the convo would be something along the lines of "you didnt cater to what the players were asking for". So no matter what, you cant please everyone, and doesnt matter what you do or try, it'll never be 100% to everyones liking.  so in the end, to me its a catch 22, you're damned if you do, and damned if you dont. (just like having a wife LOL)
 
Reality is this, this is a game, a mod, made to be customized by all. Theres no "set" game type for dayz mods...
 
and as far as arma 2 epoch dying off... I doubt it
 
Its just as popular as a3 epoch and even exile.  All you need to do is look at the contributions for the week, month and year... all A2 players..
 
 
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mmm @theduke i think in the being dayz was something like a psychological test that each one make to itself. How do I react to this situation?  This was the beuty of this game. Remember a guy..  i was driving in the south cost.. balota,, kamenka, dsnt matter.. found a guy in the middle of the road.. .pleasee! pleasee my friend is dying .. pick up me... hes in zelenogorks!! pleasee .. pick up him.. When we come to zeleno.. 3 guys waiting for me (his friends.. shoot on me 1millons times and stole my car) .The most elaborate performance I saw to kill and steal.. then i saw.. wtf this game is amazing.. now compare this with a fresh spawn with $2.500.000 in the bank, one as50 in the and and in the back a rpg. Why you need stole, found drink, food? if u spawn with everything in the hand.

But youre right ..."So no matter what, you cant please everyone, and doesnt matter what you do or try, it'll never be 100% to everyones liking"... and yes they are like a wife hahaa here in argentina thers a phrase about it:

"Las mujeres son coma la gata flora , si se la pones gritan y si se la sacas lloran" = "Womans are like flora cat, If you put it she screams, and if you take it out, she cry".. same with players.

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and other thing is arma2 have almost 8 years.. and thers arma3, epoch for arma3,,,  is like battlefield 3 and battlefield4.. everybody plays on bf4.. and also i dont like play anymore dayz, dayz epoch.. found more funny writing that playing.

 

wtf really miss the bf3 jet :sad:Sin_t_tulo.jpg

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