mudkipzjm

I think instead of having a penalty for playing with people(Solo is still more efficient and will be favored for hardcore hunts, some of which will be coming up in a couple months), get rid of the penalty or even add bonuses for playing with others. Another thing that could happen is something to encourage playing outside of events. Happy hour is nice, but only encourages playing for 3 hours out of the day, whenever someone decides to activate it. Ultima's high-population time is during events by far, but after easter and after summer event is when the population dwindles so much that you almost can't play anything with other people. Adding something to encourage playing during these large gaps in events would help a lot I think. Ephinea accomplishes this with their HBR system, although given Ultima's meta, I'm not sure if that'd accomplish much on this server.

In my opinion, if nothing is done then Ultima probably will stay around the same population if not get less populated. PSO is best played with other people and when there's like 2-3 rooms open at any time, it's going to drive off any new players to other servers that are larger.

I've been saying this exact thing for years now. Having one of the most important Ultima items only be available a month out of year, with that month being the busiest month of the year, is just a bad idea. It's a large reason why I made the switch to Ephinea myself. Being able to pay directly for hit/end game items probably killed the game as well. It was always slightly annoying to see somehow who joined 2 weeks ago decked out as much as someone who'd been playing for 2 years. PGF/Dark Weapon prices got so ridiculous around mid 2016 and stayed that way, to the point where if you weren't rich, you'd have to spend many, many hours just to get 1. Then assuming you didn't get all the Dark Weapons you wanted, you'd have to wait another year just to spend a lot more hours doing the same hunt during the busiest time of the year. Same thing applies to STA, which has about the same time sink required. I think everyone can kinda guess that DTs won't go away, since without donations this server would've probably died out a long time ago, but it totally needs a rework. PSO in general has a retention problem, probably do to the fact that the end game is just doing the same areas you've been doing but harder for gear. There's definitely things that can be done to increase the longevity of the player, though. I do have to agree with this. Hucast having access to something like STARs Needle or DM Storm would be absolutely game breaking, Why play ranger when you can sit in the corner on hucast and 1 combo mobs with DM spam, while also having access still to DF.

I've been playing this game for almost 6 years semi-consistently and I'm still bad at the game lol

Compared to others, especially a certain large-foreheaded individual, I don't think he's done much to get banned. Definitely not fit to be moderator, though, for reasons that have already already been stated in this thread.

Buffs arent terrible as long as it's not EVP buff. Needing hit gear just to hunt event items is dumb.

You can find a GM in-game and they'll exchange a s-rank of your choosing for 3 nakas. IIRC you need another nakas if you want a special on that s-rank.

Honestly I don't think anyone would complain if it was against the rules to log 4 accounts for drops, since it's an unfair advantage not everyone can do(it requires 4 devices that can run PSO as far as I know, since if you quad-log on a single device only the first account will get drops).

I feel like with the declining population of Ultima (and PSO in general), there should be more incentive to play with others. As it stands on Ultima, there's not much of an incentive to play with others, since there's DAR reduction as well as DMC. I think to incentivize people to play together more, either get rid of DAR reduction or have a positive gain with multiple people. That or implement a system similar to HBR where you can do certain quests to improve your DAR and also promote playing outside of events as well.