A persistent problem

[Zelknolf]

Regardless of whether it applies to Mick, it has to me, and you’d be hard pressed to say that it’s never come up with anyone else. You’re saying that nobody has ever had to choose between being a player or being a DM, and that restriction has had zero impact on DM/player groupings? Every ALFA participant that even considers picking up a wand has to weigh that consideration. Large or small, it has a non-zero impact.

It would be fine if that was your discussion, but that's not what you said. You picked a specific DM and implied that the specific, recent, still emotionally-impactful event was related. Which you're apparently not even sorry for.

So, the claim is now nonzero. Nonzero is a pretty low bar, and can apply to basically anything. So, yes, nonzero. Probably everyone agrees with nonzero. Now to the question that matters-- would changing it make ALFA better overall? I'm betting that the fallout of such a change would be too severe to keep our servers running.

I thought we covered this, but we can cover it again. My post was not, as you contend, about "population and activity"; i.e. a volume of play. My post was about getting players together, density, the likelihood that players and DM’s can and do form gaming groups; i.e. how those players are playing together. This is a quality of the game play, not a quantity of it. You didn’t share your data, methods, assumptions, derivatives, models, controls, qualifications, normalizations, etc., but somehow based upon volumetric quantitative analysis you could conclude that these policies have no qualitative impact. I am sorry if I can't concur with the symmetry of that logic.

I have more issues with word choice, but probably a distraction to pursue them.

It sounds like your claim is that a group of people can have a difference in the same direction in their feelings/attitudes/mood toward a game while having no noticeable impact on their behavior as observable by that game?

The work itself is open source, as is everything I do for ALFA. Of course, the open sourcedness is useless if the claim is that mood changes which don't alter behavior are more important than mood changes which do.

How about this, instead. I'll work on getting a Ventrilo server up and running, and you can join along with whomever else would like, and we can have a mature conversation about it.

So all of those times when I've said that not everyone has a voice that can record, I meant me. This is also why there's threads of me asking people to be my voice in educational materials for my tools. This is also why no one in ALFA has heard what I sound like (and probably why I feel compelled to write a paragraph about what each of my characters sound like). Please stop trying to get me in voice chat. The very best that can happen from repeated requests is that I'll not quite get irritated enough to stop the conversation.

[Duck One]

Regardless of whether it applies to Mick, it has to me, and you’d be hard pressed to say that it’s never come up with anyone else. You’re saying that nobody has ever had to choose between being a player or being a DM, and that restriction has had zero impact on DM/player groupings? Every ALFA participant that even considers picking up a wand has to weigh that consideration. Large or small, it has a non-zero impact.

It would be fine if that was your discussion, but that's not what you said. You picked a specific DM and implied that the specific, recent, still emotionally-impactful event was related. Which you're apparently not even sorry for.

So, the claim is now nonzero. Nonzero is a pretty low bar, and can apply to basically anything. So, yes, nonzero. Probably everyone agrees with nonzero. Now to the question that matters-- would changing it make ALFA better overall? I'm betting that the fallout of such a change would be too severe to keep our servers running.

I thought we covered this, but we can cover it again. My post was not, as you contend, about "population and activity"; i.e. a volume of play. My post was about getting players together, density, the likelihood that players and DM’s can and do form gaming groups; i.e. how those players are playing together. This is a quality of the game play, not a quantity of it. You didn’t share your data, methods, assumptions, derivatives, models, controls, qualifications, normalizations, etc., but somehow based upon volumetric quantitative analysis you could conclude that these policies have no qualitative impact. I am sorry if I can't concur with the symmetry of that logic.

I have more issues with word choice, but probably a distraction to pursue them.

It sounds like your claim is that a group of people can have a difference in the same direction in their feelings/attitudes/mood toward a game while having no noticeable impact on their behavior as observable by that game?

The work itself is open source, as is everything I do for ALFA. Of course, the open sourcedness is useless if the claim is that mood changes which don't alter behavior are more important than mood changes which do.

How about this, instead. I'll work on getting a Ventrilo server up and running, and you can join along with whomever else would like, and we can have a mature conversation about it.

So all of those times when I've said that not everyone has a voice that can record, I meant me. This is also why there's threads of me asking people to be my voice in educational materials for my tools. This is also why no one in ALFA has heard what I sound like (and probably why I feel compelled to write a paragraph about what each of my characters sound like). Please stop trying to get me in voice chat. The very best that can happen from repeated requests is that I'll not quite get irritated enough to stop the conversation.

I'm not sure why being curious if Mick was conflicted as to being a DM or player is in some way hurtful, but if it is, then I am sorry to Mick. I wasn't aware of your limitations with regard to voice communication, and no offense was intended, so I am sorry if I brought up a touchy subject. I have found that dialogues like this are best managed with more direct communication; it seems to take the edge off. You are still welcome to join Vent and at least listen and respond in text (it supports that too).

As to the rest of that, I'll hold off, and look forward to positive resolution.

[shad0wfax]

This thread is less constructive than I hoped and has more hyperbole than I had hoped as well


Can we please be more clear, more concise, more objective, and more constructive than we have on last posts? Thank you.

DuckOne:

The no DM where you play rule is a good and necessary rule and indeed, every time leeway has been given we have had legitimate ethical concerns arise due to improper behavior. DMA discipline of DMs is currently rare and I'd like very much to see it remain rare and would prefer that it be completely unnecessary. I strongly believe that if we allowed playing where one DMs that we would have far more necessary DMA discipline occurring.

The two PC rule is nice and is certainly appreciated by many but it does not seem to have had a statistically significant impact on player time.

The 30 day rule is almost a non-issue. I've waived it a few times myself.

Travel times are minimal on any server. If honestly like to see greater travel times and more immersion in the game world. I'd like to see more breadth and depth to all of our servers, rather than reducing times.

Passworded servers are currently a non-issue. All ALFA members have access. TSM is passworded. BG is not passworded. Those two servers are currently the midst populated servers. MS is an open server with a low population. WHL has many issues affecting its population and the password isn't the issue.

I do not believe that any of these policies truly prevent players and DMs from coming together. I've been involved in ALFA NWN2 for several years and I've seen the ebb and flow of populations. I do not believe that you've been involved in ALFA2 long enough to have an informed opinion about ALFA NWN2 population, unless you query our database for objective historical evidence with proper correlation.

[Duck One]

Shadow,

I will gladly join the sentiment you offer to elevate the conversation to focus upon the ideas. You are correct that my experience with the current ALFA is considerably shorter than yours and most others here, which puts me at a disadvantage in some regards in knowing the full evolution of the state of things. However I did quietly watch over the years by dropping by the forums and exchanging private messages with those who remained, so I wouldn’t characterize my knowledge as entirely without foundation. And by the same token, I am also not nearly as vested in some of the decisions taken, which frees me to be somewhat more objective. I also have the benefit of contrasting ALFA as it is today to a time when ALFA was quite different. What that in mind, I hope you and the community view my remarks and suggestion in the vein I hope to offer them: one that is sincerely trying to help. Regardless of who speaks, the focus should not be on the messenger but the message.

I understand that the policies I cited were not specifically put in place to try to make it more difficult for players to come together, and they were created to address other elements, and the effect on players getting together was a side effect of the policies. But any policy should be weighed by putting the benefits and the offsets on the opposing sides of the scale not just in view of the policy in isolation, but also in totality with all the other policies which affect the same attributes. I would hope this sort of holistic evaluation applies to the approach used here.

To comment specifically on some of the items you bring forward, let me focus upon the numerical analysis you and Zelk have cited, player minute volumes. Although I personally have not seen the numbers and methods used, I’ll presume that is factually and statistically correct, but I would urge the sharing of more specific information to increase value of such statements. That aside, I would argue this particular citation could be a case of trying to apply a correct answer to the wrong question. Let me illustrate:

If ALFA was a fast food restaurant and examining the impact of its policies regarding order processing, and looked to weigh the investment of computerized equipment in lieu of the manual system as a way to impact wait times, weighing the costs in equipment and training as their deciding offsets. Some sample equipment is obtained, and some test runs are done to see the impacts. The analysis shows that wait times decreased from 5 minutes to 3 minutes, but no additional food was ordered on average. The conclusion is that the full investment is not worth it as the change in consumption patterns were immaterial.

This analysis would be factually correct, but analytically misaligned. People were not any hungrier as a result of the change, and of course didn’t change their consumption patterns to order more food; so one shouldn’t expect people to order more or less food regardless. Wait time is a customer satisfaction driver; a quality not quantity metric. Better analysis would be customer satisfaction surveys done before and during the pilot test that tries to determine how the wait time impacted their satisfaction, and how significant such as change would be on long term customer loyalty (i.e. reputation, repeat business).

If I understand what you’re saying with the analysis you cite, a parallel logical jump is being made. Causing me to wait during travel to get into a group and/or making it difficult to find someone who is the right level isn’t going to cause me to spend more or less hours in ALFA; I am already spending what free time I have in it. However by waiting for the right people to log in and spending time to travel to get to them, you’re changing the percentage of my time when I am actually in party on an adventure. My play volume (quantity) may not change, but my satisfaction with the experience (quality) will be different. This long term customer satisfaction may have impacts on attracting and retaining players.

Another way to understand the interplay of two variables is to push one to the absurd extremes, minimum and maximum of a given range. By doing that, you can see the whole range of effect and then get an understanding of the impact of incremental change. A good example of this may be one you offered: realistic travel times lending itself to immersion with wait times as the opposing metric. Taken to extremes, the imaginary travel times of days and weeks could be made fully real, with players actually spending real days and weeks to accomplish the task, thereby maximizing the immersive effect. ALFA could then claim to have the most realistic and immersive effect. If that effect truly was a larger consideration of the two variables, then moving towards full realism would be the logical conclusion.

I would very much like to understand your number and methods to reach the conclusions you offered. I might look at the numbers differently. For instance, with respect to the policy changes like the 2 PC rule, what percentage of play time was done in parties before and after the policy change? To me this would more directly correlate the policy and the metric. However without access to the data nor understanding of the methods and assumptions, it will be hard for anyone else to concur with any analysis no matter how empirical you think it to be.

I remain open to new data and/or ideas to change the conclusion, but for now I my present assessment still applies: Significant time is spent either waiting to find suitable pairing with whom to party (level being the largest barrier, with alignment and race being other factors), or traveling to make a connection. Often a potential connection is frustrated by the practical concern of travel risk (risky roads, travel by night), or an administrative limitation (1 pc per server, no pc where DM). The net result is a very significant percentage of time not being able to engage in adventure.

[HEEGZ]

It may be barely worth mentioning, but I find the "no play where you DM" and strict enforcement of "30 day wait timer to play your PC when you quit DMing" to be significant factors that curtail my desire to DM in ALFA. I have requested the 30 day wait timer to be waived the last three times I quit DMing on BG or TSM, and on all three occasions I was pretty much denied and made to wait. So to say they are insignificant does not hold true for some of our recently active DMs such as myself. These have been a major barrier to my enjoyment in playing in ALFA for the past 2-3 years, and are a major reason why I don't play here much anymore.

I don't have much else to add other than Duck One seems to sum up my feelings pretty well in his various posts. What ALFA does now, it does pretty well. But I wish it did things differently.

[kid]

30 days is much less of an issue to me (As in I can live with out it).
I could go with "Don't play where you DM'd till the next restart".

As for actual playing and DMing at the same time... would still ruin my fun.
Even if someone like you did it (Who I trust, if that wasn't clear).

[Xanthea]

I don't see why the ability to DM where you play is so important. It's a terrible terrible idea to have literally four different servers on ALFA defusing the playerbase, but one of the ONLY benefits to it is that it lets people DM in a place that isn't where they're playing while still being part of ALFA.

Why throw that away?

[HEEGZ]

I have played in a PW where I could play a PC and DM (Exodus) and it worked fine for me at that time. I really enjoy the areas around BG and TSM, and would enjoy DMing and playing a PC on both servers. I would probably do the same on WHL if other people would play there. There is a pretty big hurdle for me to switch between DMing and playing a PC. Our community is small enough, and well behaved, I don't really see the point in maintaining some of our stricter rules any longer. The game community continues to decline, and IMO a relaxing of the rules wouldn't hurt anything. Any violators could be banned. Anyways, I don't want this to come off as a lobbying effort on my part, but it is definitely a factor for me.

I don't really have the time to play in a PW fashion, logging in almost daily. The only way I can really see myself playing more frequently in ALFA, is if I could play PCs at will (no 1/2 PC rule) and if I could DM on any server at will. Outside of that, I will continue to play and DM when I can work things out. My main draws to ALFA are the quality of the roleplay and the permadeath nature of our setting. The other ALFA features/rules are just hurdles to my enjoying those two things. I would even enjoy doing things as a DM on a server, such as placing encounters, infestations, etc. and then logging in to play a PC with a party in the content I just created as a DM. I am not interested in twinking my PCs, but the actual enjoyment of the game with other people.

[Xanthea]

Anyway, if I can make a suggestion. Instead of dumping a boatload of suggested changes on the forum all at once, try to identify one that most people wouldn't mind changing and then push for that specific one.

Two PCs was a change that definitely made me play more than I would have otherwise. I'd love it if there was another push to open up more than two PCs and I suspect it would increase my play time again. Mostly because I could join in with DMs/groups/levels that don't currently make sense for me.

[HEEGZ]

I was just trying to comment on the discussion. If I were to pick a singular topic for the persistency issue it would be DMs. We have a game that should be DM'd. We need to remove as many hurdles as possible to people DMing, and teach people how to DM that are remotely interested and willing. I think I see the most people logged in and excited to play when we have active DMs logging in somewhat regularly with a game on offer. At various points in time I was able to offer this, but now I find myself with less time and motivation. I would be willing to teach anyone the DM client that was interested, and would make it a point to free up time in my schedule to do so.

[Xanthea]

I meant the original topic.

[HEEGZ]

I think more people DMing would mean more players logging in. This would lead to a more persistent feel, because we would have a larger population logged in more often with more DM coverage. Alternatively we could condense the player base by consolidating servers, but that seems ill timed as we have builders and DMs on all four servers at the moment.

Unless I'm missing some other point from the OP. We already have servers online 24/7, so the servers exist in a PW fashion. What remains is for people to populate our servers 24/7. I think the best way to do that is to have more DMs, which will lead to more people logging in to play. PW DMing is time consuming though, and people seem largely unwilling to DM in the first place.

There have been a lot of great content updates this past year, which helps alleviate the need of DMs for new content. It would be nice to have DMs to supplement the current progress is what I was meaning.

[Zelknolf]

I think more people DMing would mean more players logging in.

If this were true, we'd certainly expect to see the matching correlation-- increases in DMs logging in being associated with increases in players logging in-- but we don't. Correlation isn't causation, of course, but the absence of correlation is the absence of causation, which is what we have.

Though we do have the numbers for how many hours everyone gets DMed, and by who, so we know that DMs typically all DM the same three(ish) people in as many contexts as they can-- and then others get caught up as DMed collaterally to them. This pattern only got worse after we implemented the two PC policy.

So I absolutely believe that the anecdotes about personal benefits are true. I look at the actual measurable results we get, and would hazard a guess from all conversation about ALFA had by people who no longer play here. The fact that we lavish attention on a handful of people and exclude most people is one of the core criticisms (well, they complain that we're elitist assholes, which comes to the tangible bits of excluding people and being rude about it), and more DMs seems to only make that worse.

[Dorn]

Correlation isn't causation, of course, but the absence of correlation is the absence of causation

i reckon you stole that from The Matrix

[Zelknolf]

Correlation isn't causation, of course, but the absence of correlation is the absence of causation

i reckon you stole that from The Matrix

Pretty sure that the study of logic is older than Keanu Reeves.