Out of curiosity, (this one's to everyone-- poll time, maybe? c:), if the registration were to be brought back permanently, what would be your personal opinion on the possible outcome resulting in the game being taken down for periods of time? Would it matter to you how frequently or how long these stretches of time occurred? Would it be worth it if a registration were more accessible? Would the best outcome (tons of people fill up the game and populate the maps) be worth the risk over the worst outcome (the game is taken down for a long amount of time, possibly preventing new accounts to be made)?
Ah I will clarify some things here, whilst I agree with Lucius but I want to add some things from my point of view, if I may.
A short Disclaimer, I'd like to apologize in regard of my typos and spelling errors: Enlgish is not my main language and sometimes I don't realize I make the mistakes until I re-view the comment for a few times. Also this is not an attack, just my personal opinion to the matter. Please don't take it to heart or see it as an offensive threat as I am trying to find a logical explanation that can be seen as legit, thank you.
I understand that Ferah-Heart is an old game and the source code being unexistant is making things difficult for all of you yet so far it doesn't seem to be a huge impact on the game's flow since there are so many changes that have been made without it, you're already making so much progress, however the game will obviously crash eventually but every game faces that sooner or later and as long as the lack of having access to source code is on the table it makes the FH more vulnerable.
But in the old times the whole 'crashing' thing happened when the game was first attacked by bugs(assuiming they weren't noticed or weren't fixed in time to prevent more and more to pile up) in 2012, most of them were kept under control eventually, the second huge server crash was literally when the hackers begun hacking accounts, causing another solution (/login page) to be born and the third crashing that had appeared into the game(the most frequent one) was when bugs violated the code, overloading the game, forcing the server to shut down, thankfully Raz fixed the issue but if, according to what you say, the bugs sum up with anything new added to the game, these things are to be seen -- it can happen to any game especially the ones with an older coding system like FH's.
But I don't really think the member limit would be a cause of crashing otherwise when everyone is chilling into The Grounds, the game could just crash since 90% of the game's community settles there as it's the only solution when it comes to roleplay seeking. Yet most of groups move into a private map so there's nothing really to over-load the maps anymore so it can hardly even overload.
I think we need to take a few things to consideration, I might miss some due to having all of these in my brain and more ideas come up or forgotten since I don't have them written anywhere.
|> The game used to have 700-800 members daily and due to having large maps in the past it was harder to produce lag in a single area - since the members were scattered around and we rarely had any crashes from bugs as I remember and I've been around ever since 2012.
|| I think it makes alot of sense that the game can crash easier now that the main default map is a medium sized square-ish ball of cereal(not saying it's your fault, you've been pressured more than enough to pop out the update and kudos for acctually making it but it has 0 space for people to roleplay while seeking for a rp in the meantime) and if too many people will gather around it will cause the game to over-load in a single area. But we didn't have problems in the past even after the new maps were in the way, except the times where there were too many people in fluorite and the place was capped and we had to do something about it, but other than that the game was satisfyingly neat to play so why would it be a problem now that we have less maps to be worried of? ||
Since the old maps were deleted and now the new maps have less space, it would also make sense that the game won't crash as much it has less things to load, as long as the members are using the rest of the maps, of course. Measuring the old FH with the updated version 200-300 members daily isn't a tiny bit satisfying especially when 15% of these are usually double-tabbed accounts, either for rectuitment or multi-rping and it is considered a huge loss to the community but according to your statement it's still enough to overload the server and the new update can make it even worse at this rate so is it a dead end and we just discuss over a loaf of bread?
i) You've seen that, despite with the bugs and the lack of source code, there was always a way to prevent problems, either if it was limiting the over-population, restarting the server but it was always kept under control even when the update of South pole, Atlantis and misc. appeared which could threaten more bugs to spawn to the game but it never happened, instead it expanded the roaming of characters and places like fluorite plains and Bonfire island were less laggy and easier to access.
It's just sad how people don't use the default maps to roleplay anymore as it's not fun and whenever something is about to happen, people immediately judge it and it ends up in a local chat war, they refuse to help new members and are occasionally rude -- always people complaining about how bad the game is but own atleast 5 accounts of their own. And this is why we need new members, to show 0 care of the old community and get some possitivity and new ideas for new roleplays.
With the loss of fluorite and south pole we lost the casual roleplays of Hyenas vs Lions, sabertooth, wyverns and dragons, deer and horse roleplay versus wolves, warrior cats meeting up with random lions and making the game simple and fun and there were plenty of mapless roleplays for people who can't download maps for plenty of reasons so it maintained some balance. Now we lost that since there is a little to no interest on roleplaying in mapless areas and it's not appealing nor has the space to explore and members lack of motivation and it decreases the game's population so it loses more than it gains.
I understand you're tyring your best and nobody blames you on that but I think we need to see that the game is slowly losing its shape and it will eventually be forced to open its registraction back because of so many upcomming games threatening its reputation. We just want to make sure this drastic measure won't happen too late to see the game dying in front of our eyes. Hence why we're here.
We understand why you're denying opening the registraction and why we must retreat to this problem but please hear us out and atleast consider giving this option another chance;
|> At this rate, as lucious calculated, alot of accounts have been set-up whenever the registraction has opened, average-speaking to 200-300 accounts per person, meaning this would be enough to over-load the server's database since the numbers increase drastically. But no problem had occured yet and alot of people had double accounts before the registraction limit, sharing it with new people so there were even more active members when the registraction had closed and the game was still steady.
|> Each time a crashing happened was when a bug appeared. This bug could be anything. From code violation to direct attack and the game's server was being shut down, which was proved to be the case most of the times.
Correct me if I'm wrong but If the game crashed due to overload of members it was probably because there was something bypassing the protection of the server and attacking, abusing a bug or due to time of not fixing one bug or finding a solution to it -- or even knowing of its existence -- to avoid it being manipulated, another glitch appeared then another one after it and it slowly corrupted the server's code and it begun crashing. Assuming you mean more members = bugs will happen more frequently and will pile up until there will be enough work undone to get the server overloaded and unable to work.
|| I don't think 300 members can be the cause of this nor 700, since crashes did happen but rarely enough for everyone to enjoy a good piece of gaming. And yes, this might cause a few bugs to pile up but since private maps are more of use now, it is way harder to face a glitch since it will get harder to load another member in.
i) It's safe to say that we're far from having the game crashing as it's average member population used to be 700 and anything below it will be difficult to cause crashes.
ii) The game won't grow overnight so we can allow some space for new members to explore the game and if we don't have new members the updates will pretty much be in vain since the community grew old and not enough will change other than probably finding a new map to recruit these typical 3 roleplays that exist in the game nowdays. No new members = harder to bring motivation and population to new concept as the old community might get bored of the update and leave a few months after the hype is gone.
|> Opening the registraction in the process of an update will make the game attractive and it will grow a bit. The statistics of the site when showing members is calculating an average number of how many are on. It doesn't mean they are precisely 200-300 members on, it might be a bit more or a lot less and we prefer to avoid the latter.
I think a good solution to this is to open the registraction every second/third Satuday for 3-5 hours or for a whole day. Even if it will get a mouthful of members, I don't think the process will increase rapidly and the members will take a long while until it reaches 700 again.
My thought can imagine that if this happen the game will eventually end up with 500 capped members online daily which is a good cap and not as far from the current one yet it's close enough to the previous one. As Lucius, again, stated we could open the registraction on a specific time and once we reach cap we can close it again.
I think this is an average desicion to, atleast, be taken into consideration assuming that it will ease the frustration and will make things more simple and pople won't be so tense to have a 'good looking' character to be accepted in roleplays etc. (which makes no sense to me but somehow this appeals in the community).
I am sorry if something didn't make sense. I haven't gotten sleep and I was quite exhausted while typing this. Feel more than free to heckle me if I said something already answered or out of line and thank you for taking your time reading this, I appreciate it.
Poll