I like the referral idea.

To prevent cheating I thought about adding different levels or stages of referrals.

Stage 1:
Refer a friend x1
Refer a friend x2
Refer a friend x5
Refer a friend x10

Stage 2:
Referred friend reaches a total experience of 10,000,000 or a total level of 500 x1
Referred friend reaches a total experience of 10,000,000 or a total level of 500 x2
Referred friend reaches a total experience of 10,000,000 or a total level of 500 x5
Referred friend reaches a total experience of 10,000,000 or a total level of 500 x10

Stage 3:
Referred friend reaches a total experience of 50,000,000 or a total level of 1,000 x1
Referred friend reaches a total experience of 50,000,000 or a total level of 1,000 x2
Referred friend reaches a total experience of 50,000,000 or a total level of 1,000 x5
Referred friend reaches a total experience of 50,000,000 or a total level of 1,000 x10


At first I thought about total levels as well. But then I rememberd that Emps-Scape used to have alot of pures and pkers in general. If OSES is as promising as Emps-Scape was, then there should be many pkers as well. With this suggestion it does not matter whether you train a pure or a main. You will reach your goal, either by hitting the required total level or the required total experience.

The rewards will be based on stages as well. Stage 1 rewards will be low because of how easy it is to cheat your way through. Stage 2 rewards will be better and stage 3 will be the best obviously.

Should work nicely since arab PCs couldnt handle 10 clients afking in Abyss :LUL:

It's pretty nice of you that you've shown me the referral test page. However, the problem currently is, that I don't have an effective anti-cheat mechanism. And I can promise you that people will try to get these rewards by cheating. So we need a proper mechanism for automated rewards.

My suggestion would be that if the new player reaches a special total level (500?), the referrer will be rewarded with member days. Thoughts on that? Or we go the hard way and confirm all referrals manually to ensure nobody is cheating.

That's why I suggested that we start off with a reward that would only be useful if the person is not cheating. You can consider it an initial version that can't be abused and then we can think of ways to add other rewards without people abusing the system to get those. I figured that instead of trying to stop cheating, we make it more costly than using it correctly.

Because if the referrer receives 6 member days when the referred uses a member ticket then the memberships would be active on both accounts at the same time, which means that the person would technically be getting 36 days of membership, but after 6 days there would only be 24 days of membership left on one account, because in those 6 days the membership was running out on 2 accounts at the same time.
If the person creates 2 accounts both referred by the same account and uses a member ticket on each of the alt-accounts, then after 12 days there would be 2 accounts with 18 days of membership left (only the ones that used the member tickets) and after 30 days all accounts would've run out of membership.
If someone creates 3 alt-accounts and uses 3 member tickets, then after 18 days there would be 3 accounts with 12 member days left and after 30 days all would have run out of membership. The cheating just gets more and more costly as more and more member tickets need to be used and requires the person to play with more and more accounts at the same time.
Even if someone creates 10 alt-accounts and uses 10 member tickets, then after 30 days the person would've used 10 member tickets to only have 1 account with 30 days of membership left. Can someone play with a main account and 10 alt-accounts at the same time? I highly doubt it, so that person would be wasting a lot of money on member tickets, without being able to play as a member on all of those accounts.

Whereas let's imagine that someone invites a friend and that friend buys a member ticket, the person who invited someone would receive 6 free member days every 30 days that can be enjoyed, without having to worry about membership running out on multiple accounts.
Someone invites 2 friends, who remain members? 12 free member days every 30 days that can be enjoyed without having to worry.
Someone invites 5 friends, who remain members? 30 free member days every 30 days, free membership for as long as the 5 new people continue to play and remain members. If any of them quit, then the person has a reason to invite more people and even if none of them do then having 6 friends playing the game and getting 36 free member days as that person's friends use 6 member tickets every 30 days would allow to save up member days in case someone does quit.

My approach is pretty much this: Let them cheat but make it useless as they use more money to buy more member tickets and still run out of membership at the same time that they would've if they hadn't cheated.

Quote from: Thomy on August 21, 2017, 01:21:45 pm

It's pretty nice of you that you've shown me the referral test page. However, the problem currently is, that I don't have an effective anti-cheat mechanism. And I can promise you that people will try to get these rewards by cheating. So we need a proper mechanism for automated rewards.

My suggestion would be that if the new player reaches a special total level (500?), the referrer will be rewarded with member days. Thoughts on that? Or we go the hard way and confirm all referrals manually to ensure nobody is cheating.

That's why I suggested that we start off with a reward that would only be useful if the person is not cheating. You can consider it an initial version that can't be abused and then we can think of ways to add other rewards without people abusing the system to get those. I figured that instead of trying to stop cheating, we make it more costly than using it correctly.

Because if the referrer receives 6 member days when the referred uses a member ticket then the memberships would be active on both accounts at the same time, which means that the person would technically be getting 36 days of membership, but after 6 days there would only be 24 days of membership left on one account, because in those 6 days the membership was running out on 2 accounts at the same time.
If the person creates 2 accounts both referred by the same account and uses a member ticket on each of the alt-accounts, then after 12 days there would be 2 accounts with 18 days of membership left (only the ones that used the member tickets) and after 30 days all accounts would've run out of membership.
If someone creates 3 alt-accounts and uses 3 member tickets, then after 18 days there would be 3 accounts with 12 member days left and after 30 days all would have run out of membership. The cheating just gets more and more costly as more and more member tickets need to be used and requires the person to play with more and more accounts at the same time.
Even if someone creates 10 alt-accounts and uses 10 member tickets, then after 30 days the person would've used 10 member tickets to only have 1 account with 30 days of membership left. Can someone play with a main account and 10 alt-accounts at the same time? I highly doubt it, so that person would be wasting a lot of money on member tickets, without being able to play as a member on all of those accounts.

Whereas let's imagine that someone invites a friend and that friend buys a member ticket, the person who invited someone would receive 6 free member days every 30 days that can be enjoyed, without having to worry about membership running out on multiple accounts.
Someone invites 2 friends, who remain members? 12 free member days every 30 days that can be enjoyed without having to worry.
Someone invites 5 friends, who remain members? 30 free member days every 30 days, free membership for as long as the 5 new people continue to play and remain members. If any of them quit, then the person has a reason to invite more people and even if none of them do then having 6 friends playing the game and getting 36 free member days as that person's friends use 6 member tickets every 30 days would allow to save up member days in case someone does quit.

My approach is pretty much this: Let them cheat but make it useless as they use more money to buy more member tickets and still run out of membership at the same time that they would've if they hadn't cheated.

What if you combined your idea of getting free member as a passive income and the stages i suggested?

Stage 1: 1 member day
Stage 2: 3 member days
Stage 3: 5 member days

But is there even room for other rewards when you already get free member?

---

Another suggestion would be making a point system with a reward shop. Players could buy the items they want from the shop instead of something they are forced to take.

Stage 1: 1 point (total level 200 or total experience 1,000,000)
Stage 2: 10 points (total level 500 or total experience 10,000,000)
Stage 3: 20 points (total level 1,000 or total experience 50,000,000)

You would also get points, if these players used a member ticket (stage dependant).

Stage 1: 1 point
Stage 2: 5 points
Stage 3: 10 points

To keep track of it, there could be a hidden hiscore list for staff members based on the total points you collected. This way cheaters will stand out and "everyone" can see it once they do.

As for rewards, I have cosmetics, skilling brawlers, pets and membership in mind. Everything would be untradable.

Guardian angels shouldn't exist in old school emps

Yes add in the donator ranks lol, I'd love to have one hahaha

Hello Emps-World Community!

I wonder when we can finally play/test the oldschool world alpha?

Hello Emps-World Community!

I wonder when we can finally play/test the oldschool world alpha?

Might want to check out the latest patch notes thread at News section.
https://emps-world.net/forum/index.php?topic=19906.0

In shorts words, old emps has a biggest of players without all these things you listed above, so simple the answer is oldschool , including: old npcs, old items, and maps.

In shorts words, old emps has a biggest of players without all these things you listed above, so simple the answer is oldschool , including: old npcs, old items, and maps.

Except you're not taking a few things into account that are of actual importance to understanding why the playercount changed.

• A lot of people converted to private servers because it was essentially RS with membership, since then RS has gotten bonds removing that whole issue.
• Private servers as a whole have become less popular due to the release of oldschool runescape, which is essentially a private server run by jagex.
• The average age of people playing these games has gone up. That usually means they're a tad more picky when it comes to what they want to do in a game. In scape people were fine with killing moss giants for weeks on end, you don't really see people do that now.

Regardless of that, content updates are necessary. If a game only has a set amount of content then it'll only be a matter of time before there's nothing to do anymore. Since nowadays the average player is competent enough to actually train it really wouldn't take very long for people to get bored and leave. Hell, with all the content that's been released over the years there have still been a lot of people that got bored and left. If people wanted to do the same thing over and over for months on end then they'd be playing the game and we wouldn't have such a low playercount.

If you'd looked at the playercount recently, you'd notice it's gone up since the release of Nex. Wake up sheeple.

Without a team of coders there's no futuer for emps.

Without a team of coders there's no futuer for emps.

Regardless of the funds or time necessary to get this, we don't need a team. So long as whatever Thomy develops is alright we'll have plenty of content. If the community wants content catered towards them then they should consider putting some time and effort into writing suggestions and feedback.

Certain things that "need help" within the server (such as pking) can be fixed by the community.

Quote from: Land Rover 1 on September 13, 2017, 06:29:36 pm

Without a team of coders there's no futuer for emps.

Regardless of the funds or time necessary to get this, we don't need a team. So long as whatever Thomy develops is alright we'll have plenty of content. If the community wants content catered towards them then they should consider putting some time and effort into writing suggestions and feedback.

Certain things that "need help" within the server (such as pking) can be fixed by the community.

You're just trying to make EW a small project game, we all know that Thomy being the only coder isn't enough.
A team of coders can make a lot of difference, building a bigger community, daily updates, even financial grow.

If this situation continues, maybe one-day Emps will be only for you charr.

You're just trying to make EW a small project game, we all know that Thomy being the only coder isn't enough.

You have yet to explain why he isn't enough. Looking at the last two updates Thomy is definitely capable of releasing good content. "We all know" isn't an argument here.

A team of coders can make a lot of difference, building a bigger community, daily updates, even financial grow.

The community itself has way more influence on the community than coders. Updates don't need to be daily, people already have trouble reading update notes every month or so; it would be hard to keep up with for some. More frequent updates means more downtime, as the server needs to be restarted. Development would speed up, that's obvious. More programmers would also mean we'd need a ton more donations. If Thomy was looking to get more developers I think he would've by now.

If this situation continues, maybe one-day Emps will be only for you charr.

What is 'this situation'? If the game no longer appeals to you consider writing suggestions & feedback instead of spouting this nonsense.

Char, I'm glad you're investing in every comment here, but you have to learn and/or know it's what everyone think about the future of emps, like I said above about emps old school ( It's my opinion ) I had a server and I know what I'm saying.. Anyway, "THOMY: Try the old school graphic, and you'll see ur players back " Make an BETA World, just test it.

Char, I'm glad you're investing in every comment here, but you have to learn and/or know it's what everyone think about the future of emps

It's not what everyone thinks. There is definitely a large group of people that want oldschool, but that doesn't guarrantee anything. Graphics don't get a playerbase to stay, gameplay and content does that. A lot of the people that want oldschool are players that haven't played the game in ages, what guarantee do you have they'll be active?

It's spelled with two r's, btw.

like I said above about emps old school ( It's my opinion ) I had a server and I know what I'm saying.. Anyway, "THOMY: Try the old school graphic, and you'll see ur players back " Make an BETA World, just test it.

Owning a server doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're saying. Anyone with the ability to google a few things can start a server. Plenty of private servers are really bad. You will definitely see players on release, nostalgia sure as hell will get them to try it out. But given that it'd be a game with ultimately less content than world, how would you go about preventing people from quitting out of sheer boredom? That's already a problem in world, it would be one in an oldschool version of the game. It would happen a lot quicker as literally all the content is stuff everyone has done before.

A beta world would not give you an example of long term results, it would show you what happens on release.

Let's take the most successful private server in recorded history as an example. Oldschool runescape. It got huge amounts of attention on release in febuary 2013, but recieved no udpates until october that year when the god wars dungeon was released. Let's take a look at a graph for the playercount then.


You see the playercount going down pretty much until the release of god wars. You can see this happening again late march and april when wilderness rejuvenation and slayer bosses were released. Content is what gets your playerbase to keep playing the game, not the graphics.

Sources:
Graph - http://www.misplaceditems.com/rs_tools/graph/?display=avg&interval=qtr_yr&total=0
Osrs updates - https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/wiki/updates