Death Shouldn't Feel like a Punishment

[Ronan]

HEEGZ, I understand your proposal is a compromise, but it only adds additional complexity to our reward rules. Its much simpler just to start at level 3, or tweak our XP scripts so they speed up progression until 3 or something like that.

If ALFA did lower its level cap I'm sure existing PCs > level 12 would not be affected, save for an inability to level further.

[Xanthea]

Risk/reward really should scale more than it currently does in general, not just for low levels. But that's not really the focus of this topic I guess.

[Regas]

I'd be ok with an optional level 3 start- not sure i'd want an outright cap on levels over 12th, but then again I've never managed to get a pc past 12th anyway. The thought of the possibility is sort of cool though- I doubt there'd be much dmage at higher levels if I did.

[Galadorn]

It's fun to gain levels when they do happen - there's just no rush. Any levels in fact, even high ones, especially higher ones since they come very slowly, and the really interesting, rare, and cool abilities are gained later on for some classes. Most of which add very much to the RP i think. 3-12 ALFA would be terrible i think.

There still are people, even in our small community, that play ALFA like a PW. These are the most dedicated ALFAns (i think), and hope ALFA stays an open PW forever. I hope ALFA never becomes a "Campain" server completely.



((Where is the list of ALFA Pillars? can someone PM me the link to them please?))

[FoamBats4All]

((Where is the list of ALFA Pillars? can someone PM me the link to them please?))

http://www.alandfaraway.org/wiki/Pillars

[Rumple C]

I feel everyone is missing the real point of this.

Gwylla is dead.

Details plz

*Edit - I bet she swung a fist, missing a seated mind flayer and got her brains sucked out by the drunk slob who was on a greasy food binge. No self respecting flayer would have touched that otherwise.

[Ronan]

Gwylla is dead.

Details plz

Gwylla is dead because Ronan > Rumple. Details will be provided upon the conclusion of the King of the Ring.

[Brokenbone]

I guess it is hard to say what "having fun with a group, dead and not planning to return, back to low-fun" can be cured by. Even if starting with an additional level or more, whether wanting to establish a personality etc. WITHOUT your former campaign group but hoping to work way back in when it feels fresh again... I don't know what can elevate the fun level so it is not so bad. Certainly advertised "other lowbie campaigns" is one thing, but you never know if timezones etc. are going to work out. Maybe a bit of a buddy system type thing? LFG posts saying "new PC, want to find a groove and long walks in dungeons", and maybe some handy people (not even former campaigners) make an effort? It takes coordination and times matching up in a "low density world."

If you just roll something up, login to 0 population servers and say "now what?", of course it is going to be a crappier experience than being 6 months into a weekly installments story. Even finding one buddy to accompany through various statics and RPing along the way is plenty better a starting place. No, not like "caddying" for a level 10 walking you through "kill a rat" statics, but even a second level 1-2 PC is a huge boon in terms of "someone to talk to, and survive with" in some basic wandering around.

Of course DMs are pretty good for that too, "here is a personalized intro quest to put a smile on your face" is a bit unrealistic though sometimes people may be able to match up on that kind of thing.

A goal should be "get having fun again, sooner rather than later" as opposed to "oh it'll be fun again, in as little as TWO MONTHS!" (which granted is a lower figure than maybe it used to be... but what were we thinking, p*ssing time down the drain on meaningless herb/mail things?)

[kid]

All I can say is that no matter how you slice it, there's no way in hell i'm ever going to go through them stupid statics again.
They were reasonably amusing the first five times but seriously, I've got better things to do with my time.

And that need to pay a "toll" of an X number of hours of unenjoyable playing in order to be able to play with friends seems ludicrous.

Again, this is all based on my assumption that ALFA is not a PW.
if someone thinks it is and wants to preserve that then I wish them lots of luck.

Personally I no longer have the time (nor will I have the time) to play in a PW (that is till i'm like 70 or so, and by then I assume it won't be nwn2).

[oldgrayrogue]

A sort of sub-theme to this thread has been that 1) our static quests are boring and 2) empty servers with not a lot to do if you are not playing with a DM or in a campaign are boring.

I believe the only reason why the statics are boring is because most ALFAns who have been here a long while have done all or most of them before. I remember when I first did the mail runs on BG and I loved them because they sent you all over the server and each new area you entered had a sense of discovery to it. Same for the TSM supply runs, and the MS mail runs. It is a good design for new players who join. Not so much for players who have been here a while and played a few PCs (or one longstanding high level PC) for a long time. This contributes to empty servers and people not playing unless a DM is on IMO. When the content gets stale for players it becomes boring to do the same things over again. The less players who log in to play the static content, the more empty and boring the world becomes and the more it becomes a pure "campaign style" world.

I think there is a simple solution to all of this and to get more players logging in regularly to play ALFA like a PW. The world needs to become more dynamic, more random and less predictable. This is why DMd content is so awesome. It is more realistic. When you know every area and every static etc etc, it can get real boring real fast -- especially if you are alone. It does start to feel like a grind, as Xan describes, which I am sure is not why any of us play on ALFA as opposed to a lot of other NWN2 servers that cater to that play style.

So how to make the world more dynamic and realistic? I think Heegz did a really good job of this on BG recently with his overarching "Gnoll War" backstory. I would call upon DMA and the DM team for each server to provide this type of story based context for each server -- a backstory affecting the region for all PCs, not just PCs involved in a specific campaign, to RP around. For this to be successful, the world has to change to reflect the backstory. All that is required here is new static spawn placement, not wholesale redesign or new static scripting and building etc. For example, in Heegz recent gnoll war, finding gnoll bands on the roads, traps where you did not expect them, demolished caravans to investigate etc, made me want to log in and play PW style. It makes you talk IC with other PCs about the events you discover, and plan to investigate them further. Whether or not this goes anywhere ICly, I find it fun. it is immersive RP that helps to build relationships and define a character. Without the STORY FOR CONTEXT however, its just boring play doing stuff you have probably done many times before. I think if our servers all had this going on all the time they would be much more populated, even without DMs, and new players would not try us out and then leave because they feel like it is empty with nothing to do.

I don't know how hard it is to place new randomly generating spawns in an area, but my guess is not very. You don't need to write a bunch of new statics or build a bunch of new areas. Playing on TSM the other day, my pally was riding alone from High Hold to Rivermoot and came across a dead traveler surrounded by goblins -- a spawned encounter placed by Heegz. That was all it took for me to go from boring grind to fun. We need more of this. Make the servers alive again. If we do then dying and rerolling won't feel so much like a punishment and great RPers won't feel like logging in without a DM and a group to play with is just not worth the effort.

[Zelknolf]

I think there is a simple solution to all of this and to get more players logging in regularly to play ALFA like a PW. The world needs to become more dynamic, more random and less predictable.

I might note that this is happening anyway. It generally isn't big and flashy when we make huge gains toward this end, especially on account that they've been distributed over years, but peering back over the release notes show us creeping toward it and having cleared out most of the real barriers somewhere between 1.91 and 1.92 (like... we have arbitrary creature generation, area instancing, a generic info provider, automated item generation/pricing-- we get little fringe things out of this that people notice, like zSpawn, caravans, the ACR chooser and creator, the loot generator, and you also see little proof-of-concept projects like SECS-- but the groundwork is also us opening doors for ourselves)

In any case, I point back to my earlier post and still claim that it can be done. Our quests are shallow and grindy because they were written mostly as a way to give XP to people, and not to be fun themselves, but they don't by any means have to be that way. Help would make such things get into play faster, and I continue to refuse to believe that anyone here is too dumb to learn. Maybe don't care enough to learn; maybe not enough time to learn; maybe you don't have that fun internal mechanism that makes finished projects inherently rewarding; but I still assert that anyone could, and if a dynamic ALFA which is accessible without available DMs is important enough, maybe give the idea another look.

[Rumple C]

I had fun rolling a pc with high bluff then getting around all the temples on tsm claiming to be a follower and doing their statics. Laughed my ass off the whole time.

[FoamBats4All]

2) empty servers with not a lot to do if you are not playing with a DM or in a campaign are boring.

If ALFA put as much effort into playing the game as it did on making this a 6 page thread, we'd be well onto solving this problem.

Another problem, as someone else mentioned, is spawns. ALFA is a hugely low-level server, but we don't have low level spawns. Look at Baldur's Gate. You can hit by a CR 2-3 right off the boat as it meta-sneaks to you from across the map. It has masterwork shit, while at level 2-3 you're lucky if you have decent potions on ALFA. So you go to Cloakwood to hunt bounties on goblins, or something, right? Well, normal goblins in D&D are welps with about 5hp each, and tend to come in at groups of 4-9. Our goblins are badasses with actual class levels and huge HP, made worse by being max HP (seriously, when was this thought to be a good idea?).

Unless you powerbuild and farm, or get lucky and have DM time, your only real option of surviving ALFA is to farm mail. How fun is that?

So here are my suggestions for that:

1) Fix mobs to be SRD-complient. This includes fixing HP.
2) Add more static content, especially for low levels. These should be low risk, not "oh yeah there's probably a rat in my cellar. Nope lol, it's a <meta>, you're fucked!" The goal of each server should have a variety of statics that can quickly and interestingly bring you towards level 3, not to Ronan your players over.
3) First impressions are important. Put effort into the start locations on servers. This includes making it so that if you happen to join or make a character on BG, you don't have an X% chance of straight up getting roflstomped by a badass thug that meta-hunts you, and only you, from across the map.
or
4) Up starting level to 3.
or
5) Up all XP rewards by 500% until level 3. Put this into ACR so that when a DM rewards equal XP to both the level 15 and the level 1, the level 1 gets bonus XP while the level 15 does not.

[Xanthea]

If ALFA put as much effort into playing the game as it did on making this a 6 page thread, we'd be well onto solving this problem.

This line is always a laugh. In the time I've spent on this thread I could have gotten maybe 3 RPXP "playing" the game, assuming that I was available to be playing the game at all times instead of being on this thread, which I wasn't.

Going to need a little more.

[FoamBats4All]

If ALFA put as much effort into playing the game as it did on making this a 6 page thread, we'd be well onto solving this problem.

This line is always a laugh. In the time I've spent on this thread I could have gotten maybe 3 RPXP "playing" the game, assuming that I was available to be playing the game at all times instead of being on this thread, which I wasn't.

Going to need a little more.

I meant collectively. People could have built a couple of statics, rebalanced spawns, and adjusted XP rewards in the time it took to fill these 6 pages. And being in-game helps other people come in-game. By being that first person on, maybe someone else will log in. Then, maybe someone else. You get 3-4 people willing to log in, you've got a party going, one capable of getting rewards and attracting DM attention.

This is a game where we expect DMs to come around, and contributors to help build the world around us. Where are the 6 pages of contributions and fixes to ALFA?