Request from the Portuguese Community- Spawn Locations

[Voltenion]

After many discussions, the members of the Portuguese forum have concluded that for the good of our own language zone we need spawn locations to be activated in our homeland; The proposal is that several locations should be chosen to receive spawns in a way that at least 60% or 70% of the spawns will be delivered to the Portuguese homeland.

We came to such conclusion due to the serious situation in which our characters are in. Unfortunately, because of unknown problems in the spawning system, our community faces a great problem of population unbalance. There are currently a very small amount of towns in our home area due to depopulation as the spawning system seems to favour locations outside the island. These places are all too far away from any relevant Portuguese locations and have near zero communication to each other or to the Portuguese lands; There is no trade, no pacts or even any physical connection between them. Some characters actually don't know about the existence of other towns because of the amount of distance and isolation that segregates them. This is ridiculous and mostly harmful to our community. And some these cities have simply no structure to maintain such large populations and most of them have no resources that may give these populations the possibility to advance technologically, leaving the population to just sleep to death. Most of the population in those areas is composed simply of sleepers. On the other hand, the dying towns in our mainland have all the quality and possibility to give a fair gaming experience to their spawned characters.

Under the current spawning system I tried to create some characters. Of six Portuguese charries only one of them was spawned in our main island. My last was born in a place with only two guys. Those two guys have not said a word yet, which is very ridiculous and annoying. I wonder how new players feel when this happens to them (this could happen with their third character).

I had a character who was spawned because of a group who was traveling to explore a certain resource and leave back to our main island later on. They were three. Characters then started spawning there and it might have reached up to ten people in a place where no town was supposed to be born at first. And from now on there will always be a town there, as the sleeping characters will stay there forever, unbalancing the system and draining our newspawns.
These are just some examples of how desperate our situation currently is, I'm sure there are plenty more but these two are the ones that happened to me.

We discussed and agreed that this is, at present, the better solution to this problem. Towns will be better manned and closer to each other. Interaction will grow, interesting events will happen, new players will be welcomed to the game in better and more developed environment. This can only benefit the Portuguese community.

Dearly,
The Portuguese Forum Players.

[Josephpowers]

maybe they should make it so you only spawn places where there are 10+ people... instead of where there are... for instance 2.

It cant be that hard to change I would think..
but I also have no clue what Im talking about.

[Dudel]

This is not only effecting this language group.

There is an issue with English and Polish as well as English and Dutch (Although I've not seen the Dutch get to bad).

It is an issue, in general, with the spawning system as a whole.

[Voltenion]

This is not only effecting this language group.

There is an issue with English and Polish as well as English and Dutch (Although I've not seen the Dutch get to bad).

It is an issue, in general, with the spawning system as a whole.

We know of this, Dudel. So we discussed a way to fix this in our land.

EDIT: Since the current spawning system didn't help us we proposed something that we know had once been a part of the game.

[Rebma]

Are you saying you wish to make all spawnpoints static, and take away the idea of spawning whereever there may be two from your language group?


..I know this has been talked about, many times before(for all language groups, not just one), and is the simplest of solutions, but we've not had much feedback from staff, though players generally tend to support it.

[Doug R.]

Voltenion - heard you loud and clear.

I'll forward your post to Jos, and make a case for an overhaul.

Rebma - Spawn points used to be fixed.

[catpurr]

After many discussions, the members of the Portuguese forum have concluded that for the good of our own language zone we need spawn locations to be activated in our homeland; The proposal is that several locations should be chosen to receive spawns in a way that at least 60% or 70% of the spawns will be delivered to the Portuguese homeland.

We came to such conclusion due to the serious situation in which our characters are in. Unfortunately, because of unknown problems in the spawning system, our community faces a great problem of population unbalance. There are currently a very small amount of towns in our home area due to depopulation as the spawning system seems to favour locations outside the island. These places are all too far away from any relevant Portuguese locations and have near zero communication to each other or to the Portuguese lands; There is no trade, no pacts or even any physical connection between them. Some characters actually don't know about the existence of other towns because of the amount of distance and isolation that segregates them. This is ridiculous and mostly harmful to our community. And some these cities have simply no structure to maintain such large populations and most of them have no resources that may give these populations the possibility to advance technologically, leaving the population to just sleep to death. Most of the population in those areas is composed simply of sleepers. On the other hand, the dying towns in our mainland have all the quality and possibility to give a fair gaming experience to their spawned characters.

Under the current spawning system I tried to create some characters. Of six Portuguese charries only one of them was spawned in our main island. My last was born in a place with only two guys. Those two guys have not said a word yet, which is very ridiculous and annoying. I wonder how new players feel when this happens to them (this could happen with their third character).

I had a character who was spawned because of a group who was traveling to explore a certain resource and leave back to our main island later on. They were three. Characters then started spawning there and it might have reached up to ten people in a place where no town was supposed to be born at first. And from now on there will always be a town there, as the sleeping characters will stay there forever, unbalancing the system and draining our newspawns.
These are just some examples of how desperate our situation currently is, I'm sure there are plenty more but these two are the ones that happened to me.

We discussed and agreed that this is, at present, the better solution to this problem. Towns will be better manned and closer to each other. Interaction will grow, interesting events will happen, new players will be welcomed to the game in better and more developed environment. This can only benefit the Portuguese community.

Dearly,
The Portuguese Forum Players.

IMHO reading this report, the Portuguese are IMHO just too much spread out. When you get closer together ingame, you will receive new spawns also closer together.

Fixed spawnpoints is IMHO no solution, maybe fix the dynamic spawning system, so it favors locations with more characters (towns) or something like that. Or it favors places where many chars have been for a longer time.

[EchoMan]

I have to agree with this suggestion.

Out of my 15 characters 7 of them was spawned in a location outside ther main language area.

8 of my characters are spawned Swedish, and of them only 2 were spawned in the original Swedish language area.

I believe that for new players it is not very likely they stay in the game when spawning is more or less 50% likely to drop you off somewhere where you don't understand the lingo, yes?

Maybe have an option to be an "explorer" when you spawn which uses current system. If you don't choose explorer style you spawn a character in the original spawn locations?

[Gran]

Well, here comes a draft of what we are facing.

Note: / In case another suggestion that "in-games solution should be taken" comes to this thread, let me tell everyone that those were taken in the first place and unfortunately didn't work at all. The Portuguese players aren't much into making requests- this is a drastic measure, which needs to be taken. /

A long time ago, a char of mine spawned at a certain location because of a couple of explorers who had set foot there. He was probably the first to be born outside the Homeland. That was in March 22nd of 2007.

Since that day, people have been spawning at dozens at that place. The population would never drop below five people people there. Also note: By that time, the population in the Homeland was pretty big. But the system completely ignored it in favour of that wasteland. Also notice that as I've said, this place has existed for more than two full years. Two years. Dozens. Two years. Never below five. Two years. Because of two characters. This is, to me, absurd. Though Dudel said it is an understatement (on IRC):

<Gran> This is absurd, really.
<Dudel> Absurd is an understatement.

Also, we are doing some rough statistics at our forum section. As we said there:
- I had nine chars , seven Portuguese. Out of seven, only two were at our Homeland.
- Hfrance, a oldbie who came back, has fifteen chars; two in our homeland.
- Mallu and Jotael, our newest members, have respectively: thirteen chars, one in our homeland. Fifteen characters; One in our homeland.

EDIT: "Absurd" might be an understatement.

[SekoETC]

I could add new spawn locations in the database based on requests (or active population) if this is accepted. It would probably also make sense to apply this to any small language groups that only have a few established towns, and people could request to make new colonies a spawn location once they've certainly decided to settle there. Naturallyit would be better to have a system where the requests could be made ingame instead of having to contact someone outside the game, or having people-centric spawning only take into account characters who have been active within the last few days, but programming notoriously takes a long time.

[Doug R.]

Jos got back to me, and it seems that we'll probably be doing this as a stop-gap until a better system is created. I'll start a thread in the language forums.

[tazer]

Are you saying you wish to make all spawnpoints static, and take away the idea of spawning whereever there may be two from your language group?


..I know this has been talked about, many times before(for all language groups, not just one), and is the simplest of solutions, but we've not had much feedback from staff, though players generally tend to support it.

If you think about that it doesn't make any sense and i beleive it will take alot away from the game. What will end up happening is that those spawn points will become the capital cities of empires changing the game completely

[BZR]

Tazer, I agree completely.

[Doug R.]

If an entire language group says that is what it wants, who are we to dispute that?

Static spawnpoints is how the games used to be. These points still exist but are just deactivated in light of dynamic spawning being implemented. Reactivating them would only be a temporary measure until a better system was developed.

[Voltenion]

Are you saying you wish to make all spawnpoints static, and take away the idea of spawning whereever there may be two from your language group?


..I know this has been talked about, many times before(for all language groups, not just one), and is the simplest of solutions, but we've not had much feedback from staff, though players generally tend to support it.

If you think about that it doesn't make any sense and i beleive it will take alot away from the game. What will end up happening is that those spawn points will become the capital cities of empires changing the game completely

I understand your point of view and we did discuss about that situation. But we concluded that it's better for us to have some towns disfavoured by the fact they have no spawns there (of course that could be seen as a benefit because they wouldn't get all the sleeping people), than to have our towns like they are now, unorganized and away from any other portuguese town. We prefer some empires to no connection at all.

In name of the Portuguese Forum players:
Thank you, Doug.