In my opinion, one of the biggest problems in Temuair is how unfriendly the world can be at lower insights, and how this affects an already dwindling population. Although I am always convinced that any new face is one of my enemies in disguise I still try to assist anybody who is stuck and asking for help, it's in those times that I wonder if we have all but been abandoned by our creators.
((Darkages is unique in so many ways. From the graphic and art styles that have recently made a huge comeback, the rarely seen isometric 2.5D top-down view, the endless character progression, the way aislings and monsters can physically collide with each other makes movement fun and interesting in both PvE and PVP settings, the way skills and spells can be projected from your character without requiring you to be "locked on" to a target, the way skills and spells can interact with each other, the slowly evolving meta of arena wars and hosted matches, the somewhat hidden lore and story that is just waiting to be uncovered if you read through the right dialogues during a quest, to the vast amount of dress-up that has inadvertently become the true endgame.))
I'm sure we all have fond memories in these lands; I remember scribbling stat plans on a napkin so I could save up to learn stiletto trap, I remember making my very first friend, I remember the first time I saw an archer and asking him to guide me as he desperately tried to escape, my first death and not knowing that my items lay there on the floor, the insane amounts of gold I could make if I just ((leveled monks to level 22 all day)), my first dark belt, my first master, my first subclass, the first time I was scammed, my first guild, my first arena nemesis, even the frustration from the first time I was murdered in shinewood and couldn't retrieve my pile has become a treasured memory over time.
But in addition to all the happy memories we'll have a couple of not so happy ones too, and whilst most problems are resolvable in-game there will be ones that simply aren't, like the time my priest-rogue lost their holy Diana when they somehow died for real in a castle battle, or the time my plamit quest ((bugged out)), and it's often in those moments where we realize we alone in this world.
I would love to see an improved level of ((customer service)), even just a couple of hours a week would be a vast improvement, and something as simple as sorting through the mass amount of ((tickets)) and ordering them based on simplicity or importance would not go unnoticed.
It's become a bad joke these days that unless there are some coins in the envelope you could be waiting a long time to be seen, and even then you might see no further action for a long time. I don't think this is entirely anyone's fault, the higher powers that created us are probably way too busy creating other worlds to be bothered by our trivial peasant issues.
Some problems are straightforward; an item was mysteriously lost, a quest you were on appears to be unfinishable no matter what you try, you accidentally got too strong and now you're not smart enough to master. If these cries for help could reach the right ear it could only take a couple of seconds to help an Aisling happily move on with their day, and sleep peacefully that evening reassured that we have not been abandoned.
I feel like these quick-fix problems would easily be distinguishable from some of the more complex suggestions, such as the classic (("Could you add in this entirely new, never before seen system to solve a problem that doesn't exist and benefits me and the way I play")), and whilst I don't think these should be fully ignored, they would require a lot more work and the sender is less likely to be desperately waiting for a reply or a solution.
Whoever was to scan through the suggestions and pick out the genuine problems needs to talk the talk (or at least read the talk). They would likely need to have spent time amongst us in these lands to be able to understand some of our problems, as sometimes they are quite literally written in a different language, or unique to a certain pocket of the community. But they would also need to be trustworthy, and with these two requirements, we already have our first problem, because I don't think there is anybody who fits the bill.
What about our knights and rangers? They may have proven themselves through politics but do they understand the ((mechanics and systems)) that questers, hunters, and arena-goers use daily?
What about other volunteers? Who better than the devoted fanatics who have managed to stick it out all this time? Unfortunately, it has been proven again and again that they are not to be trusted. Few have tried but none manage to resist the temptation forever, before long they would succumb to the darkness and accumulate powers and riches beyond comprehension, before eventually being permanently removed from the lands.
Whilst we all speculate, nobody truly knows what is going on in the realm of the gods. We never know what any of them are doing, how much they care (if they care), what the overall plan for our world is, any of it. Whilst I won't entertain any of the theories directly, there seem to be two general directions we could head in;
*The world is ending.
It's scary to think that this could be the case. But imagine if they just didn't care at all about how many of us play, what we're doing, or what the heap of ((tickets)) says, and that one day we will just not wake up and there will be only darkness. It would be sad to think that something we poured so much of our hearts into meant so little to them and that there was no reason at all for them to keep our world afloat any longer. The lack of support *is* demotivating and can drive away a lot of interest but many of us have come to terms with that and we're still around because we enjoy our time here despite the inconveniences.
*The world will go on forever but with little intervention.
At first this direction seems much less scary, but the thought of the same day just repeating over and over until the end of time is just as bleak. If our world goes on forever then what we do makes little to no impact. It becomes harder to differentiate from day to day as we repeat the same activities forever and ever. We can make friends that can join us in our activities but we are still trapped in that loop until it eventually becomes repetitive and boring. Any common problems just become common knowledge and we find ways to work around them.
I think we exist somewhere between these two possibilities. A lot of us play day-to-day expecting that one day the world will be gone but we are also trapped in the loop of repeating the same activities over and over with little outside intervention. I think that the majority of us are content because we are having fun in one way or another.
Whatever the goals of our creators I hope that our world will continue to exist for whatever reason so that we may continue our existences also. And I hope that one day somebody who cares will listen to our problems and help make this a world we can be proud to live in. I have heard a lot of great ideas over the years and I often wonder if these ideas are just being ignored or simply not reaching the right people. Perhaps if they spent more time amongst us they would notice things for themselves too.
In the meantime, all we can do is go about our business, make the best of what we have, and try to enjoy ourselves.
I don't think there is any simple solution to help rebuild what there once was, but there are a few things we could do to try to salvage something. It would be nice if our world was suddenly more populated but I think we would need to do some repairs before we welcomed any new crowds. A lot of our systems are old and from a time when you could easily find a group of five to set out on a day-long adventure, but as times move forward this is no longer realistic. I would feel much more comfortable inviting people to our world if it was possible to get by alone, or by teaming up with another person.
I think that early on the systems are too unfriendly towards what would be any genuine new Aislings. Nothing is really explained and people would quickly lose interest. Those who do stick around will quickly notice that there is nobody to team up with and the only way to advance is by spending gold, which in the quantities required is difficult to obtain.
It's not great that the best piece of advice you can give a new player is to sell a life potion and buy their way through the game, but how else are you supposed to advance when nobody else is hunting? how do you find 25 Talos fragments, 10 ard ioc deums, your master set, creant sets, and skill/spell items when you are unable to kill anything? You could ask others for help but that isn't always a guarantee, and how long before they get sick of building your character for you? Without the gold incentive, what reason do the stronger members of the community have to help the weaker or less motivated ones?
I would love to see these things happen more organically but it's very unlikely to happen. If things aren't doable yourself and it's quicker to farm gold than it would be to complete the task it will always be more efficient to just skip through.
My solution would be to pseudo-instance some of the multi-purpose areas in the game.
With true instancing there would be unlimited numbers of each map only accessible by the owner and their group, but as I mentioned earlier this would be a lot to ask and I would never expect it, as amazing as it would be. However, you could achieve a simpler form of this with much less effort if you were to ((duplicate a map a couple of times and swap some of the door warps for dialogue warps instead. You could then go into each map individually and tweak it as required.))
For example; this would allow there to be weaker versions of areas such as Mount Giragan & the Ice Caves, Oren Ruins, Shinewood Forest, and the Shamensyth Maze. Both regular and easy versions would contain all the same quest-related ((popups)) and internal doors but would contain much weaker versions of all the monsters, allowing a group of fresh masters to do their creants without needing any outside help.
As you go to leave Nobis Village and head into the ruins instead of hitting the door to 1-1 you would hit a ((popup)), giving you the choice of "1-1 Normal" or "1-1 Easy" and ((pressing one of those would act as the door to the appropriate room.))
The normal versions would continue to be great for hunting as they are packed with monsters and can give large amounts of experience if you are strong and can kill them quick enough, and the easy version could have reduced densities with lower health and experience, but would still drop the appropriate quest items.
This would allow any fresh master to tackle what used to be a huge rite of passage either alone or in a small group. They wouldn't have to wait around for stronger players to carry them through the full quest, and they wouldn't have to save up gold to skip past the whole thing. They would be able to walk around the areas and experience the whole thing for themselves and feel accomplished as they earn their marks for themselves.
To a stronger player, this makes no difference at all. When I do my creants I hide from objective to objective one-shotting anything that needs to die along the way. Even when I help others I insist we walk there invisible and I kill it for them when we arrive. I can't think of any reason why I would not let that player experience this for themselves if the fight was reasonable.
Anyone who argues that creant quests should be tough because that's how they've always been is likely as irrelevant as the creants themselves. As we got stronger and everything got easier the pool of aislings unable to do them has shrunk to way less than the required group size. When these quests first arrived and required a whole group there was no ridiculously strong summoner to come and carry everybody.
I don't think we can just magically increase the population overnight, but I do think that with a little bit of effort we could make some changes that would greatly improve the quality of the early ((game)) experience. I would feel a lot more comfortable inviting people to play if I knew they were going to have fun and not just be stuck asking for help all of the time.
Making things a little easier for everybody hurts nobody and allowing weaker aislings to progress more naturally would help emulate the way things used to be. There will always be people who will want to skip to the end using their gold and that's fine, but I always feel bad telling people the old-fashioned way is no longer a thing, and that they should just skip to the end like everybody else.
And as a bonus; using this kind of system would easily allow for more areas to be added in the future. Each could be individually balanced to allow for solo versions, hard versions, or even simply exact copies of the existing version. Just imagine if there were multiple copies of Mount Giragan 13 or Tavaly 1...
There could even be a version that allows people to hunt in larger groups without losing a lot of experience. Medenia was always interesting to me because group size no longer mattered. People weren't bothered about keeping the group as small as possible and could fill an entire group to increase their rates. Although a lot of group decimation ((mechanics)) such as cup, ao sith, and dion piercing howls were annoying, they were easier to deal with when you had multiple people performing the same roles, and if you tried to hunt with a smaller group you would have a much harder time.
The possibilities are endless.
All my best hunting memories are when large groups were viable. There was nothing more fun than hanging out with people all day. There were plenty of opportunities to make new friends or catch up with old ones, all whilst pursuing the same goals. It's a shame that over time the experience and our friends slowly faded away, and the most efficient hunting slowly devolved to a lonely 1-2 person group.
Sometimes it feels like we're nearing the end, and there's nothing we can do as we're slowly pushed towards it but look back at the hand of doom that is slowly crushing everything as it tries to grab us.
But the fact that these lands still exist and that we still inhabit them proves that there has and always will be hope for our future, regardless of the intervention of any higher powers.
We have all created our own unique story and not just through history but through the interactions we've had with others. Your friends may have been my enemies, that event you hated may have been the most fun I've ever had, and that quest you said was dumb may have been incredibly interesting to me.
We should take time to talk to others whilst we are all still here, we could maybe rebuild bridges, learn each other's stories, and perhaps temporarily relive that feeling of the way things used to be.