Hmm, where to begin...?
You had three questions, so let me start with those.
What's your vision for 4D?- A place where you can relax from the Real World, while both having fun and facing some challenges.
- A fully fledged world to explore, with lots of different choices of what to do.
- A place where each player can choose their own path; to explore in peace or go PK, to Roleplay or just chat, to go questing or just hack'n'slash
- A place where player privacy is respected by the imms, and where players respect both the staff and other players
- A place where the players can solve their own issues, and don't expect the imms to help or meddle every time there is a problem
HOW will your vision impact the playerbase?Frankly, I don't understand the question.
Our player base has always been rather small, possibly because we never targetted the mainstream.
Even at best we very rarely got above 30 at peak. Nowadays we are lucky to reach 15.
Does this worry me? Of course it does. There are times when I ask myself whether it's worth the effort to keep this big place going for so few players. The paradoxical thing is that the staff is a lot more stable than the players. There is at least a small core of staff that is active and present and working on the mud, whereas the players tend to come and go, and sometimes disappear for months at the time.
You have been almost totally inactive yourself for at least a year. Now you come back and wonder where the other players went. My question back is - where were YOU?
I think the dwindling playerbase is something that we share with most Text Muds, although it's most noticeable, and becomes most of a problem for the Muds that were small from th beginning..
The graphic Muds have taken most of the total pbase , and the large commercials take an increasing part of what remains, partly because they have the money to do some heavy advertising.
Sadly enough I think another reason is that a majority of today's players actually like the pay-for-perks system, which I myself find detrimental to any skill game.
We are not a commercial game, so that path is closed to us in any case. Even if we wanted to, the Circle licence forbids it.
Consequently there are no funds for advertising, and even paying for the server each month is a bit of a strain, since that money goes out of our own pocket.
You say:
'We should throw ourselves up on wiki like many of the muds have, get added to the Z(C)MUD, GMUD (and whatever other clients) mud LISTS, and start advertising.'Do you know how much advertising costs? If not, go in on TMC and TMS and have a look at their prices. Do you have that kind of money? I don't.
Still, I've said that I'll pay for a banner on one of the big Mud sites for a couple of months, and I think the artist that made the graphics on our website is working on the banner. But I honestly don't believe it will have much impact. For advertising to really give effect, it needs to be kept up over a long time period, like the commercial Muds do.
And do you even have a clue about how much it would cost to get a special listing on ZMud or the other clients? They auction the spots out every year, and all the big commercials compete for them. we just don't have that kind of money.
As for Wikipedia, they don't even accept entries for singular Text Muds, unless you can prove to them that the mud is 'notable'. You probably missed the very long and heated discussion thread on TMS, which ensued after Threshold got their entry removed by the Wikipedia editors. If you want to have a look, here's the link.
http://www.topmudsites.com/forums/tavern-blue-hand/5287-defense-all-muds-our-genres-noteworthiness-being-questioned.htmlThreshold is a much larger, older and more well known Mud than 4D. How long do you think they'd let OUR entry stay?
I think the Admin already have done all the obvious external things that can be done, except for paid advertising.
4D is listed on all possible lists, and there are 5 different links on our websites where you can vote for us every day, to get higher on the rankings.
Being high on a list does play at least some roll, because most people don't bother to scroll down more than one page at the most. But very few of our players ever bother to click those links, and we don't want to harrass them to do it, like some Muds do. So that's one thing you could do right now - vote once a day on all links. When is the last time you did that yourself?
There ARE some other things that can be done to draw attention to a Mud, for instance taking part in discussions on Mudrelated websites, writing articles, mentioning the Mud's name, and writing player reviews. How many of our players do that? When is the last time you did it yourself?
How you do propose we ATTRACT other players?I think the question is put wrongly.
You should instead ask yourself what YOU and other players can do to attract other players - or maybe rather to KEEP them or at least make them stay longer.
You say that
'we are NOT the most friendly mud out there'.
My question back to you is; Is that the fault of the imms or the player culture?
How friendly are the players in general? How friendly are you yourself?
Is PK and Clan wars the best way to attract new players? Or is it perhaps the best way to lose some of the ones we already got?
As for the code and design issues you mention, you need to be a lot more specific if you want to be constructive.
Statements like
Our PK system sucks. The use of heals is rediculous. And our class/skill/spell system isn't something to be proud about.' are not worth much, unless you have solid and well thought through suggestions of what should be done instead.
Frankly - I am disappointed in you.
Complaining of the efforts - or lack of efforts - of others is easy. Doing something constructive is much harder.
So, where are your own concrete, constructive and realistic suggestions about how to improve the playerbase?