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Great read. I have ran multiple servers and have gone through my fair cycles of not loosing motivation and unhappy players etc. I've also gone through my fair share of successes too. I believe it all comes from experience, each new server i would run or work for would be better than the last one. One thing I learned was I was always a big advocate of of top management communication with players (admin, owners) and the reactions were almost always the same. Multiple times a week I would engage with the community asking players questions on things I can improve on server wise and management wise, the feedback I was given was almost always implemented and players loved that aspect.
Good read Nick, My respect to you and the whole Os-scape team for making this possible
I hope Os-scape will be able to stay enhanced with new worlds and ideas for a long time
Also, I know I can be a troll and I made my mistakes but I am really glad that I can experience the whole Os-scape thing from a closer perspective than the average player
I've seen Bart doing what he does without seeking any profit for a while and now it paid off
Keep doing what you love and I really enjoyed playing Os-scape from the beginning till this moment like many others
This guy is a genius.
My ex-players on my servers (World 901, Rome, Athens, Turmoil) are now my good, nostalgic friends. Building a bond with your players is not only beneficial but cumulative. The players I had in World 901 followed me to Rome because they liked me as an owner. The players I had in Rome followed me to Athens because they liked me as an owner. The players I had in Athens followed me to Turmoil because they liked me as an owner. And I, to this date, have the confidence to say that if I were to make a new server, they'd follow me every step of the way. Albeit I never owned a big name server, my reputation built from these beautiful artworks. Each server I owned got more and more players. I learned the definition of community. I even recall in Turmoil having fun with my players so much so that every Friday we would teleport to random places in the RuneScape map with the most random coordinates and just mess around. We even made it into a forums series called "Plebs on a Journey." That, to this date, is still one of the best feelings I ever had in an RSPS. Making random gifs of us doing random emotes at random places. Exploring new things inaccessible to us in the regular RuneScape world. Jumping back, I even recall enjoying time with my players as a content developer at the server called "2006Remade" by jumping in on their streams and entering their TeamSpeak chats answering their community questions. To engage with your players is the memories you make, both etched in you and them.
Thank you for this beautiful thread. I found faults within myself on some of these points too, as I'm sure the majority of the populace will too.
Yeah, I think having a trustworthy staff team is extremely important as well. Something good to remember about this though, is that trust is forged in a furnace of mutual respect, communication, and hard work. It's not something that just happens. Velocity & I didn't necessarily trust each other when we started working together. In fact, I didn't even know him. All I knew was that he was a reputable developer who hasn't had his time to shine. After working together for awhile, always being there for each other when times were tough, never blaming for mistakes that happen, and taking the time to get to know each other on a personal level, we became undetachable. There isn't any other person I'd rather work with. I believe this exact thing plays into your staff team. They're all volunteers.. you have to remember that. If you're unwilling to give them the respect they deserve, communicate with them on a level-ground and acknowledge the hard work they put in - you're damn right they're going to cross you in the long run. Recognition is a need we all crave, there is no exception. One of the greatest challenges that we continue to face is helping our staff team fill that need. Another thing we noticed is that the jobs that get acknowledged get done. There's a ton of dynamics that go into managing your staff team effectively, but I don't want to give advice on something I struggle tremendously with. Also, programming "perfect crap" inevitably results in longevity of your business, don't you think? If you're willing to take shortcuts on content what else are you going to be willing to take shortcuts on? Also, there's a strong policy we like to go by - if you do something 80% of the way, you'll be left with an 80% finished product at the end of the trail. It's best to take your time and feel proud of it. Besides, it is your community who's going to be the ones.. enjoying (or not so much) the content you push into the game. Best to make it as good as possible!
All I can say to this is YES. For some odd reason, people get the impression that overtime you're being lazy when actually, you're working harder than before.. you just have a lot more responsibility/tasks and a lot less motivation to get them done. Working for the 380'th day in a row.. all day.. gets a little tiring. I can say from experience that making my way from my bed -> computer to deal with the same shit I thought I dealt with last week gets a little harder to do after awhile. Routine really starts to set in and mental exhaustion seems to come so much quicker. Thankfully we have a big enough player base and amazing staff team to keep things exciting and engaging. Not really sure what I'd do without them.
It really just comes down to how passionate and emotionally attached you are to your project. Speaking from experience, and where Jord is coming from, I'd rather kill myself than watch all our players slowly disappear due to the feeling of neglect and anger. When you work on something so fucking hard.. and have those huge ups and huge downs.. the thought of losing it is heart breaking. I would rather give up everything I have.. everything I made.. everything in my life just to keep some of those people. When the player count goes down by 15% last week, that's when the red bulls come in. That's when the 40 hour "days" come in. That's when you want to keep what you have and worked so hard to create more than you want anything else. There's nothing that makes me more sad than the realization that eventually OS-Scape will become irrelevant. That's also a big reason why I want to share everything I can now, while I'm in the moment, so that I can help people feel and experience what I am right now. It has nothing to do with structure or the system you put in place for your server to run itself.. it's about the raw emotion. Ikov was Jord's baby for what, 4 years? I can't even begin to imagine the emotional ties he had to that server and how unbelievably hard it was to close the doors.
For everyone else who took the time to read/respond to your thread, thank you so much for you opinion. Sorry I couldn't respond to everyone - overall thanks for the kind replies and amazing, thought out additions to the thread.
From my experience, running a big RSPS is blood, sweat, tears and adrenalin, when the playercount hits a new high, adrenalin really takes it kick.
It's long hours and many hours, it's absolute focus and the distance you would go to protect not only your stream of income but also your community is unbelievable.
Excellent read, short but extremely impactful knowledge.
damn I love this.... thanks for this
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