experience Public servers: let’s share our experiences

[Z6B3R]

Hi everyone!

I have some experience playing Vintage Story over LAN with friends, and I’m now considering creating my own community server.

Love to hear about your experience playing on public community servers.

• What aspects of cooperative or multiplayer gameplay do you enjoy the most when playing online?
• Were there any server events you particularly enjoyed, or events that helped bring the community together?
• Are there any mods that you found especially enjoyable or that made the time spent on public servers more fun or engaging?

Also really appreciate hearing about any negative experiences you may have had, if any whether related to gameplay balance, server rules or community interaction and etc.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts and experiences and sorry for my pour english

Edited yesterday at 08:41 AM by Z6B3R

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums! I don't play on public servers as I prefer to play with people I know at least fairly well, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

15 hours ago, Z6B3R said:

• What aspects of cooperative or multiplayer gameplay do you enjoy the most when playing online?
• Were there any server events you particularly enjoyed, or events that helped bring the community together?
• Are there any mods that you found especially enjoyable or that made the time spent on public servers more fun or engaging?

When it comes to running a public server, I think the most important thing to do is figure out what kind of experience you wish to curate, and then set up a framework of rules, game settings, and mods to support that kind of experience. It helps to be specific on what kind of server you want to run; a roleplaying server will need a different set of rules than a standard server, and a PvP-focused server different rules than a PvE server, etc. You can mix these qualities, but it's very difficult to offer some of everything and still have a high quality experience given that casting your net too wide is a fast way to achieve mediocrity. It's much better to pick one area to focus on and make that experience as high quality as possible.

When it comes to rules, you will want to make sure that they're not only clear, but fairly enforced. One complaint I often see about bad multiplayer experiences is that the server rules weren't clearly advertised, so players will join the server expecting one kind of experience and get something else instead. Likewise, it's unfortunately not uncommon to read horror stories about server admins abusing their power to reward their friends/favored players and mess with players that they don't like/don't care about. 

When it comes to mods, do keep in mind that just because a mod is popular does not necessarily mean you absolutely have to install it. Like I said before, it depends on what kind of experience you wish to curate. Additionally, the more mods you have, the more likely you are to run into issues with performance(especially with players who have weaker hardware) and mods playing nicely with each other.

[Z6B3R]

Thanks for your thoughts!

6 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

When it comes to running a public server, I think the most important thing to do is figure out what kind of experience you wish to curate, and then set up a framework of rules, game settings, and mods to support that kind of experience. It helps to be specific on what kind of server you want to run; a roleplaying server will need a different set of rules than a standard server, and a PvP-focused server different rules than a PvE server, etc. You can mix these qualities, but it's very difficult to offer some of everything and still have a high quality experience given that casting your net too wide is a fast way to achieve mediocrity. It's much better to pick one area to focus on and make that experience as high quality as possible.

As for creating the gaming experience, that's what I'm working on right now, because it's fundamental to the future comfort of players. It's been difficult so far
When it comes to mixing gaming experiences, I agree with your thoughts. Because at the starting point, it's better to focus on one direction and do it well. After all, you can always add new features later.

6 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

When it comes to rules, you will want to make sure that they're not only clear, but fairly enforced. One complaint I often see about bad multiplayer experiences is that the server rules weren't clearly advertised, so players will join the server expecting one kind of experience and get something else instead. Likewise, it's unfortunately not uncommon to read horror stories about server admins abusing their power to reward their friends/favored players and mess with players that they don't like/don't care about. 

When it comes to rules, their implementation, and compliance, this is probably always a minor problem for community servers. I've heard stories about administrators abusing their power in other games, and I think there's no escaping it. Sooner or later, you'll come across such an administrator or even a group of them.
Formulating, correctly communicating, and monitoring compliance is also a rather interesting and difficult task that awaits me after implementing the game experience section. I hope my friends will agree to this adventure and we will be able to think everything through properly.

6 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

When it comes to mods, do keep in mind that just because a mod is popular does not necessarily mean you absolutely have to install it. Like I said before, it depends on what kind of experience you wish to curate. Additionally, the more mods you have, the more likely you are to run into issues with performance(especially with players who have weaker hardware) and mods playing nicely with each other.

Thinking about modifications, I still come to the conclusion that there will be a small number of them to add some variety to the vanilla life of players. But again, this is just my opinion for now. I will test the larger modifications and maybe my opinion will change.

Thank you again for your thoughts and time. All the best!