Consider this something of a micro-review...
For those of those who are new to the series, this is the third installment of a series of games. The first of the series and the most popular of the three was called Dragonball Finale, but it's popularity died out due to poor decisions related to being able to purchase power and skills with real money. The second of the series was called Dragonball Phoenix, though this got rid of many of the problems Finale had, the newer owner had an incredibly abrasive personality and did a lot to drive away a lot of the playerbase, and coupled with a lack of consistency in both servers and admins, the playerbase began to fade away.
Anyway...Onto Sundered Earth. The first thing to note is that the game is undergoing to the process of removing all references to Dragonball and slowly is moving to original content, which I believe is one of the best things to happen to the series of games. For the most-part it plays a great deal like DBPhoenix did at the beginning-middle of it's life, which was the last time I played it, which gives at least a sense of familiarity for those who have played it.
One problem with the game I simply cannot ignore is that it just doesn't have the players it needs. I don't think this has any negative reflection on the quality of the game however, as a lot of BYOND's roleplayers refuse to accept change and are still clinging onto Dragonball Phoenix, however regardless of the reason for the problem, the problem still exists. We generally have around 40 players on a server, 20 of which that are, on average, active at any given time -- Quite the change from Finale and Phoenix where it was not uncommon to see over one hundred. The solution I'd suggest for this for now, would be a single server. The servers combining would give us roughly the level of players we need for a single server.
One of the major improvements I feel came with this game, is not actually a coded feature. Though we lost many of our old players, we've gained some new ones. It's been a welcome breath of freshair to see some new faces -- good roleplayers too -- as opposed to roleplaying with the same few people. New people has meant new ideas, and the storylines feel much more fresh and inspired than they have for a long time.
In summary, Phoenix: Sundered Earth is in terms of gameplay, superior to it's predecessors, and the only problem standing before it, is a lack of players and in a roleplaying game such as this, a lack of players is a major problem. Anyone who's looked at the hub page for the first time, and is debating whether or not to give it a shot, go for it, we need players like you.
Nevets_DBM wrote:
We generally have around 40 players on a server, 20 of which that are, on average, active at any given time -- Quite the change from Finale and Phoenix where it was not uncommon to see over one hundred. The solution I'd suggest for this for now, would be a single server. The servers combining would give us roughly the level of players we need for a single server. There are three servers up, and one is maintaining above 100 at its peak hour. Just thought this needed to be mentioned as an update. | |
How often is this being updated, as of late? Just curious.
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Uzumakijoe wrote:
How often is this being updated, as of late? Just curious. Fairly often. Most of the next big "projects" are fairly large in scope (Map returfing. Spawn diversification. Local map completion. World map implementation. PVE. ETC, ETC.) so obviously updates are coming a bit slower then before. However, I do try and add in little updates to keep people having fun, and to make sure that noone quite knows "all" of the features of the game at any given time. I'm also working on re-implementing two racial transes, which will be in the next patch, and will most likely be adding a new toggleable trans/state for Beastmen before the release of the local map, which is the next big content arc. On top of that, thanks to alot of player suggestion (Read: Lots of people asking me to do it both in public, and in private.), i'm re-adding an old race from the DBZ project, under a new title. Makyo's will be making a come-back soon, and will have a familiar minor pre-programmed world event assigned to them. I also have something like 70 icons there were recently made by our iconners. All of them are brand new hairs, clothes, armors, and weaponry, that I need to add in. Obviously, to add all this in at once would be incredibly tedious. So instead, i'm slowly filtering the content out so that folks have something to look forward too. The next patch (Which is about 90 percent done.) should have the first new hairs and clothing icons, in fact. Some of these icons have been earmarked to be assigned as "rare drops", too. These are items that can be found in the game world, either through PVE, or through other means, and have special stats assigned to them. There are also new turfs to add in. One of our iconners was kind enough to fast-track the "modern urban" turfs to completion. So the new human spawn should be getting renovations soon, hopefully. | |
Yeah, I completely retract this as things have changed massively. There's an extremely populated server meaning my only real "Flaw" I could see is gone. Would very much recommend this game to roleplayers now.
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Sawp dawgs?
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Trying joining all servers 3 diffrent ways, tryed updating and reinstalling byond, tried clearing my cache and still cant join x.x
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Wolf_Demon214 wrote:
Trying joining all servers 3 diffrent ways, tryed updating and reinstalling byond, tried clearing my cache and still cant join x.x That's odd. What sort of message do you get while trying to join? I might be able to help you out. All of the files needed to play should automatically download to your computer on trying to join, and we haven't had an issue like that since forever, actually. Edit: If this was recent, it might be a Byond issue. I've noticed i'm currently unable to log in to Byond at the moment. I suppose their verification servers are down. | |
The lovecraftian elements is an amazing idea, but this still feels like an old project I'd rather not mention right now.
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That's because it's still in early alpha. However, if you're looking for something completely different right now, you should check out Kitsueki's server. He often does themed wipes that completely replace the map/setting. In fact, I believe he's using a few of the new turfs during his current wipe.
We're currently working on returfing the map at the moment. Doing proper "non sterile" urban environments, ruined or otherwise, is proving to be quite the workload. Once we get that done, i'll be looking at adding in PVE (As we'll have a way to access "dungeons", and add in item drops from there.) encounters. Most likely world bosses/pre-programmed world events will go in first. Also, i'll be taking a harder look at our Friend or Foe system so we can get faction NPC's in, along with zone control and taxation. Part of the slow down is that both Vale and I aren't doing this as an actual job. We make no money off of this. I actually lose money keeping this project going. So we have to focus on other matters for periods of time. We do have a huge icon, turf, and image dump ready to go. Something like 80 icons last I checked. So expect an update soon with that. | |
Yeah, Sundered Earth is in a transitional stage currently. From what I can see what its going to be is great, but changing all the clutter and bringing something good out of what it currently is, well.. thats a job. I don't think we even need to see the code. One of the uglier elements is how much maintenance it requires to run, with all the admin work and what not. Some elements such as training need tweaked, and some new features could be added in.
Overall though, if you have dedicated moderators and admins, and you players open up your creativity and develop some kind of plot, pulling away from the same old idea of DBZ and how DBZ Phoenix work(ed), you may find yourself having a lot of fun. | |
Its a horrible game. Started out good, When people actually Listened. Now people are quitting due to the fact No one listens. You see abuse you report it, they ignore it, Admins and such Only act if it effects them at all.
If your looking for a GOOD game, keep walking, i am sure you can find better with a friendlier playerbase and owner(s) that actually listen and beileve in Fairplay. The Owners of WoW do more for their gaming community than Arch has ever done, He is the type of Guy who sticks something to a piece of toast and throws it at the wall to see if it sticks, if not he'll add something and try again, ignoring any failures. His admin teams and Servers are those failures, since he is "occupied" elsewhere, His team gets away with lies and other crap. So Fuck the game, Go play DBO or something. | |
CromartieHighschoolGorilla wrote:
Its a horrible game. Started out good, When people actually Listened. Now people are quitting due to the fact No one listens. You see abuse you report it, they ignore it, Admins and such Only act if it effects them at all. The owner of WoW has nothing to do with customer support. The admins have always responded to my reports, so I have no idea what your problem is. Your key doesn't even look familiar. What did you do, play for five minutes and then leave? lol. P.S. People are totally quitting, that's why the player count has topped off at 80~ people today, and is even starting to gain towards an average of 90~ at peak times. | |
Thats cause i Predate you, noob. A month ago the main got 125~160 Topped.
So yes people are Quitting, the difference is its the Big names that people actually give a damn about. Give it a month, you won't be here. | |
Actually, if the population of the game was going down it would be because there are competing games in the genre popping up. That leads to a bit of a population split between all of the games involved in that genre. We expected this, actually. Especially given that we have a single, highly populated private server going, which makes the population seem lower then it actually is. However, going off of our actual population at the moment, we have almost 200 people online.
Also, the global population has actually been going up. It is 11AM at the moment, and there are over 100 people online. Also, the reason you don't recognize Cromartie is because he changed his name. He used to be Coldreaper. He does this every few months. Something interpersonal with the administration or another player ticks him off, he blows up spectacularly, declares that the game will be dead in a month/does the whole Dr. Doom "YOU WILL RUE THE DAY YOU CROSSED ME, RICHARDS!" thing, cools down, and then comes back after awhile. It's kind of a ritual here, for the server admins, now, really. It's not so much an issue as to "if" he is going to blow up, so much as "when". This isn't the first time he's flipped out on us this year, by far. We were even thinking of feeding the probationary admins to his wrath as a "trial by fire". The ones who come out with the least amount of psychological scars get taken off of probation. (That last part may or may not have been a joke.) | |
CromartieHighschoolGorilla wrote:
Thats cause i Predate you, noob. A month ago the main got 125~160 Topped. I've been here since the project was called Epic Universe, Finale, etc. Please stop pretending you know everything Mr Nublet. QQ somewhere else. | |
Coldreaper is just a upset troll, ignore him.
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i just want to know can i have a server on here i never had one before
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Why does this game always wipe its annoying
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Otherwise, I can see where you're coming from with the updates. I guess using a pre-existing code file and icons is easire than starting a game from scratch. So I can see it from your point of view.
Now, as for the game not being nearly completed, good for you. I hope this is your chance to fix everything you need and have an awesome RPG with great a nice playersbase that likes to RP.
I'll check on the comments once in a while so you can tell me when the game is finished. Hopefully I'll be blown away from how epic this is, so please tell me when its done, I'd be glad to play. By the way, if you ever need I iconner, I consider myself not too bad. I started as a hobby then got good with creating sheapes and using colors and shading. So I'd be willing to help the game move along.