Regarding : Another suggestion: why not introduce a PvE activity ranking on the website? There are challenging dungeons like The Eternal Bastion and Infinity Shard. You could create a website ranking similar to the arena and Kamar rankings. The top positions would go to groups that successfully completed these dungeons the fastest. This would give players an incentive to improve their equipment, try to deal better damage, and complete dungeons more quickly.
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You could look at this PvE Awakened - DPS Ranking Project - QUESTIONS/SUGGESTIONS - Perfect quality European private server of Aion - EuroAion.com
Imo problem with this patch is that there is no challenging PvE. Not the ranking, its just boring. The only challenge in PvE is yourself. How much are you gonna handicap yourself to make it challenging. 4 man Runa/DR for example, 5 ppl Kata/IS, solo Sauro 1k, duo sauro 2key. Etc.
The patch 4.6 never took this long to be able to maximize all the possible gears, therefore PvE back in the days were a bit harder because of the limitation of the gears, we used to do Kata with AP50 or AP60 and Kahruns, simply because it took too long to farm the gear that you needed for PvE. You had like 1 year something if i remember correct, correct me if i am wrong. In theory you could probably then hit like 3000+ ceras if you played everyday. Considering the player base was 8 times more than on Euroaion it took months to be able to get *2.
You always had to have a crazy amount of AP and ceras to be able to get the good stuff. Also farming kahruns took forever. Long story short it took a long time to get the necessary gear, and the moment you got it they already patched to the makarna. So you had little time to be able to gear up. With a private server thats already standing for 5 years+ it is easier. Because characters are easy to gear up to the point of "i can play with this" Either you pay for it, or you play it still takes slightly weeks instead of half a year.
I think it has been suggested many times before, to bring back pve-joy you gotta bring back Makarna.You actually needed top stats for Makarna in 4.7.5/4.8, hardest part is communication. But that brings the challenge back in PvE for sure.
Regarding everything else. It's just private servers are opening, people are looking for something else. People come and people go, especially now since it is summer. Pretty normal that its not as active as it used to be . But still. Dont forget this is a private server. Gotta take what you get
Siege is kinda mehh because of the amount of people playing both factions and 75% of server are pvp players who dont need ceras or AP anylonger. Once they hit *2 all they gotta do is do SWB daily + 6v6s and IWW weekly. And they keep their 2* on several characters. I am not saying it is forbidden or i dislike people that do. But people who play both factions are part of the consequences of the low-activity on sieges.
Like i said before. It's a private server. You take what you get.
Could do a GP reset, so the pvp players have to get on their ass again to get GP in siege though :3