A Land Far Away

I have been back in ALFA for about a year now.
Gone from just playing, to building to HDM of MS where I build and DM while still playing elsewhere.

In that time I have seen the player base [meaning people actually in the game] almost double, but it now has dwindled away to almost nothing. Not having been around for many years, I am not sure if this is a normal state for the time of year or just a symptom of a much deeper issue.

ALFA has in just the last year, gone from being able to field 5-10 players on a server, mid year, to scraping to get 2-4 on a server at the same time in the last couple of months. This is very disheartening to all I am sure.

My Questions to the members are thus:

1 - Why do you think ALFA is slowly failing while similar NWN 2 servers seem to still be thriving [ Sigil, Dalelands]

2 - Does ALFA lack static content to keep players busy?

3 - Does ALFA have too many internal issues between members? [not wanting to play/dm with/by certain people, DM conflicts, fear of reprisals from Admin etc]

4 - Are the active members in ALFA just too spread out to conveniently log in together to play? [whats your playing days/ time zone]

5 - Is the ruleset for ALFA too restricting? If you think so . . in what way do you think it could be enhanced without undermining what ALFA stands for.

6 - Do you think ALFA just lacks active DMs to keep players occupied? Considering we have several DMs offering games but have no players, I can't see this as being a issue unless it boils down to either number 3 or 4 above.

7 - Something else? Advertising both internal and external? Poor Website? or??


Please give me your thoughts on the subject either here on the forum or PM them to me if you feel someone else might take it the wrong way and start a flame war.

I feel like ALFA is trying to treat symptoms of a disease without addressing the core cause, which has yet to be diagnosed. We can't just wait for a new engine/ game to come to us if we hope to survive.

If I was to chime in here ( and it appears that I am) I'd say that your questions have isolated the issues:
Number one, being question 7; I believe if we started making a few more play-dates in which to meet up that would help a fair bit; we all have other responsibilities and this helps bring up the enthusiasm to keep logging in even after the planned times.
Number two which is your question 4; We do tend to get rather spread out; which is great for campaign style play but it does make it tougher for a PW to flourish.
I believe that more static content would be welcomed, but as I dont help in that department Id never ask anyone to build that for me to romp through. I personally loved Zelk's longer statics which kept me interested and logging in for days and days while evading death and cursing my inability to find those little breadcrumbs scattered across the server.
While we do have internal conflicts, with a little mutual respect that can be pushed to the wayside for us to continue to enjoy this game and strict ruleset that brought us all together in the first place.
My two cents...

Some of the core issues that have always existed.

1) Too big. ALFA doesn't need four servers and it doesn't need 20 different lovingly crafted towns per server. All that does is make it hard for people to get together and interact. Successful PWs tend to focus around one main city with its surrounding wilderness. Perhaps with a secondary hub relatively near the main one (a few minutes away at most).

2) The leveling ruleset in general. ALFA is slow progression, with a high level spread. In practise this has a number of negative effects. It makes forming a group much harder. If you want the ability to group with the higher levels on ALFA and contribute in a meaningful way that isn't "the challenge in this is how effectively you can be babysat" then you're looking at 4+ years of playing. There's less extreme examples but it works the same way for level 10+ groups too. It also has the problem of making people very reluctant to risk their characters because death means losing months or even years of progression.

The problem with this is compounded by the restrictive rules on alt characters. If people had the ability to play as many PCs as they wanted on the same server then there'd be less barriers to making a new group of low levels to play together whenever they wanted.

Ideally ALFA would pick a level range to focus on (I suggest 8ish) and then let people level to meet that cap relatively quickly. Exact details like whether it's a hard or soft cap, how long it takes to get there, and so on could be discussed.

3) The dedication to the 3.5e ruleset. It's not an asset, it's a liability. It's notoriously badly designed and more importantly it's not suited to a playing environment where you have actual physical areas instead of imagination. Catering to the enormous toolbag mid to high level casters can pull out makes DMing much harder. And if you don't cater to it you're being a bad DM because you're cutting off abilities that characters should have without an IC explanation for it, which leaves people in limbo.

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Beyond all that there are other issues that could be addressed, but those seem to be the main structural ones.

I'll keep my answer short. I pretty much agree with Xan's points. I'd also add that, for me personally, not being able to play where you DM is an issue. Our rules are just extremely prohibitive, but I still play in spite of them.

Difficult to say that the things aren't problems, of course; it's not that we haven't tried to respond to them either. Problem is that the simple/obvious things to try almost all immediately blow up in our faces, and it tends to be damning of the various ideas when we can't even get isolated one-off testbeds of them to work right. Something of the promise of a new platform in there-- it's much easier to apply lessons learned when everyone assumes that there will be a vault wipe and fresh canon; nothing gets violated in the process of trying again and trying to make it better this time.

I do note that I can only say that "almost" all of our hotfix policies blow up. We've had a few iterations of giving players the ability to play more PCs that didn't seem to hurt anything. I wouldn't know offhand how much support there would be for carrying that further; mostly would need Heero's support and the absence of a veto from shad0wfax, or an overturning of the domain decision that gave us two PCs.

I've consistently tried to DM since I started on WHL, and I can say for sure that I'm sick of my DM times being ignored, or my requests for time suggestions being ignored if I don't get people. I get that RL interferes, but with our current low population even one less PC can ruin an experience.

As it is, I see the only server having stability as TSM right now. I've tried to get a player group going on BG and MS on and off for half a year and no DM took me up on that offer to my satisfaction, which basically ruined any desire for me to play Zyrus beyond the rare one shots. I also seem to be the only one viably really interested in DMing on WHL. I've had one offer, but it would have required me to let go of one of my campaign PCs to do so, and I was not prepared to do that.

All in all, I see community participation as the main problem.

As for SIgil and Dalelands, they're geared towards casuals, no surprise they're thriving. Those people hate risk and have instant gratification complexes.

1) Not keeping up with the jones's?
Lets be a bit more glass half full. Why is ALFA still running after a decade over two platforms where so many servers are now mere memories? Now we have that rush of 'how awesome are we!' over, lets get to 'Why aren't we the best of what's still going?'

To that I would say:
a) I've tried some of the other servers and I think ALFA is the 'best' experience when you log in and there are always people to play with
b) What I think is the best (eg permadeath and so on) is not what most gamers think is the best
c) Unfortunately often when we log on there are not always people to play with

Permadeath sets us apart i think. So lets do it well and make it less of a kill-joy while keeping it. ((PS - i'd prefer low levels stay brutal..but that's just me and probably no way to secure a long term playerbase))

2) Not enough content?
No ALFA has bucket loads of content. Our TAs and builders have been amazing for a long time. More than most of the other servers I've had a go on and then returned. Recent stuff like infestations are even better. And i think if we re-promoted some of the stuff like random spawning dungeons (if i got that right) i've heard Zelk talk about..the tools are even better!

3) Issues between people?
No. There are some, but there are on other servers to. It's just peeps being peeps...especially online. Back in ALFA1 with what 8 servers and bucket loads of people there was some genuine hate going on. But that's not there anymore, just peeps who don't want to be friends...which is fine as there's certainly enough room and it's been very easily managed before.

4 and 5) Too spread out? Too restrictive?
Yes. If we are going to continue to ride, I think we're going to have to do so on some dead horses.

Where we are: Treating ourselves as a large ~100person multi-server PW where we cant know what everyones doing (eg ALFA1 at it's heyday).
- very hard to watch so many DMs on many servers for the 1 in 20 who cheat
- fairly regular CvC
- very rules based in terms of progression, items etc to manage activity by exception
- changes can only be made within a portfolio rather than as part of a strategic shift (see below)
- providing real estate for 100 people

Where we need to be: Managing ourselves as a small <30person PW where most people get wind of things pretty quickly.
- recognition that there are very few DMs and players to 'keep an eye on' through logs allowing greater flexibility about DMing where you play or having two PCs on the same server with low risk
- recognition that we have a level ~20 who runs a city-state and so someone has already 'won' ALFA2, that CvC is very rare and well overseen/managed, and that some PCs only play once a week by definition ----- so so even if someone DOES level faster than others due to some relaxed rules - it wont break the game for all
- recognition that ALFA is at a scale where it's self regulating with people getting the gist of issues quickly and raising them on forums allowing the HDMs to look into
- making a call on being utterly risk-averse (eg not allowing any change from the status quo) vs surviving (having a game to play, even if sometimes you're slightly uneasy)
- acceptance that we have less people than other single server PWs and that if we are to provide a good chance of RP when new/existing people log in we need to get over not offending anyone who had contributed to a server by closing it or we wont have a game to play at all.

All recent suggestions about DMing and playing have met with rampant distrust. I think we need to agree that given we've been playing together for a decade, we need to get past it. That's what BGTSSCCSCSCSCSC etc do..and there' no more drama than hear.

6) Insufficient DMs?
Perhaps we could do with one or two more, but not critical. As you say we have unfilled games.

I feel part of the problem is that we have DMs offering weekly games in areas where players dont want to spend the 6 other days when they aren't being DMed, and were a generally IC community so people dont want to travel too and from servers in the interim.

If we had:
- our 5-6 DMs offering games across only one or two servers at different times of the week (because they were allowed to play where they DMed - becasue the HDM/DMA only had 2-3 DMs to check log wise....less than we used to have in the old days)); and
- people knew that it was likely there would be players on in the between times; and
- we had bolted on content rich parts of "decommissioned servers" to improve content for all DMed and non-DMed stuff on the remaining 1 or 2
...there would be more uptake of offered sessions and fun in between.

Re suggested changes?
Some time ago I nominated for Lead Admin with the platform of investigating a raft of small to large changes to reinvigorate ALFA.
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/vie ... 46#p613746
Ari, if you want to discuss what was behind some of these thoughts happy to do so. One key one was the consolidation of servers/people. Some of the proposals i put forward i dont like personally, but i think should be considered to save the game.

I was happy with a bunch of support I got for exploring the changes (even from folk who didn't agree with particular aspects of the outline proposal)

I was disappointed that the majority of the criticism was about:
- the charter not giving the lead admin the explicit right to discuss changes across alfa - rather than discussing if changes was needed for the future of ALFA
- suggesting that if i didn;t have a team ready to take the places of the current admin/HDMs it wouldnt be done - rather than entertaining the concept that the existing ones could work through proposals to find ones we could live wiht, if not prefer, for the continuation of our game

I don't raise this as sour grapes, I am just pointing out that the issues your raise are not new, and people have suggested changes. Yet we have a governance system (designed by a lawyer for a post-ALFA1quake world) that makes change difficult. Our game (ALFA) has drastically changed around us and we need to be able to adapt, and not incrementally if we're to gewt ahead of the curve.

Best of luck with whatever your proposing. Happy to chat.

HEEGZ wrote:I'd also add that, for me personally, not being able to play where you DM is an issue. Our rules are just extremely prohibitive.

This is certainly one of the things for me. The fact most seem to be alright with the idea of even more PCs per player while at the same time being fine with everyone (if they want to) downloading all our modules to look at in the toolset whenever they like, yet are so hardcore against playing where you DM continues to utterly boggle my mind.

The other two being that a) almost everyone I used to play with has long since left the project and b) my desire for the RP this sort of environment still provides has lessened greatly over the years, which means I have little interest in a new character with new people.

I agree with most of Xanthea's comments.

The reason other PWs thrive is they don't have permadeath. Most people still playing NWN2 don't like PD. Those that do play on ALFA. Its a small community. I have played on ALL of these other servers and have tried to recruit some of the better RPers to ALFA and the consistent response I have received is that they are not interested in permadeath. What they are interested in is fast leveling to uber levels with the availability to take multiple PrCs so they can fight armies of dragons and demons. No thanks. I think we all love Permadeath, but there are ways to keep the PW as hardcore as possible while relaxing some of the rules.

For years I have advocated faster leveling at low levels and then much higher risk and lethality at higher levels. This tends to keep the PW fresh and new with new PCs being introduced all the time, yet gives folks the time to develop a PC and a story along the way. Every time I mention this it is taken as an attack by the players of high levels. It's not. It is a response to the question why don't more people play. PC turnover is simply good for the health of the server. I don't think most high levels are going to ditch their PCs, so that is why I agree with Xan that we should be allowed to play as many PCs as we want, wherever we want. And I agree with Swift and Heegz that given the size of our base, and the fact that at some point most of us still here have been a DM or Admin, the "fear of meta" is kind of silly and we should allow play where you DM. I really don't care that Boom twinked

We have plenty of static content, we don't need more, unless its more spawns in the dangerous areas and even on the travel roads. The biggest gripe you hear from most new players is that ALFA is "empty" -- empty of players and empty of spawns to fight when no players are on. This is an area where I think we can "bend" without breaking our mission statement. I think the popularity of the "infestations" and the player activity they bring shows that folks want more adventure that is less predictable. Most folks like me who have played here for years know every single spawn point on most servers by heart. It gets boring after a while. Randomness, like PC turnover, keeps things fresh and new. While on the subject of static content, one way it could be changed is to increase the risk to reward ratio. At level 1 I can easily be killed by a single goblin. Fighting and killing that monster should net me lots of XP. Fighting 3 of them all hurling darts at me that seem to never miss should net me lots more. Loot as well is upside down. On BG for example it is much more lucrative to pick herbs and turn them in for gold and XP than to receive the usual negative returns from adventuring. In faerun, PCs adventure because the high risk yields high rewards. In ALFA you are taught that as long as you have a lot of time it is more profitable to be a farmer than an adventurer. That should change. We are a server built for longevity of PCs through "safe play" when we should focus more on an exciting and rewarding play style that still provides for real risk, including the risk of death, right up front. Lets face it, most of us here are getting older, with jobs and families and other obligations. We don't have hours and hours to play and I think our players are wanting more "bang for their buck" when they log in.

That is how changes to static content can help. Obviously, the number 1 thing that brings players on is DMd content. The way to get more people to DM is to relax the criticism of DMs and the stringent regulations on DMs who do decide to take up the wand. DMing in ALFA is harder than most anywhere else. We should make it easier. I don't mean we should allow twinking and favoritism and abuses, but relax the dreaded guidelines for the sake of more DM content and story.

Multiple servers are fine as long as we try to center the player base on one or two and then use the others for story based travel. If DMs could DM on ALL servers the issue of multiple servers vanishes and becomes a very cool and attractive feature of ALFA instead of a detriment.

Adanu -- I would play in your games if they were not held on WHL. I am sorry but I simply cannot immerse in that setting which is mostly travel map.

It is probably worth noting that the primary opposition to dropping DM-player restrictions is not metagame information. In a perfect world, that would also be well-controlled, and we're certainly not keen on our rare secret-evil PCs being outed -- though, really, Loulabelle was the only one who was any good at keeping such things secret; everyone else gives us a Boombrakhan "Hey guys it's great about that TV show you're talking about, but you know what else is great? Having a good-aligned PC like the one I have!" -- so yeah, anyone who's dealt with a toddler sees through it, and we lose some, but not much to the extra information floating around. More like spoilers than ruined games.

The place where things get properly sketchy is when there's power and authority. The ability to make a tiny spider have 50 strength without any plot or RP, to drop items specifically designed to kill other PCs, to lure PCs to a CvC death, have items crafted for your own PCs, and directly assassinate a friend's rival are the problems-- and none of those people were punished. I'm sure we'll argue that we could/ would/ should, but so far there's been no demonstration of good faith on that ground. As it stands, you can just vomit a few thousand XP on your bestest pal for being your bestest pal, and our structure will ask for your help in making excuses instead of canning you.

Swift wrote:

HEEGZ wrote:I'd also add that, for me personally, not being able to play where you DM is an issue. Our rules are just extremely prohibitive.

This is certainly one of the things for me.

Zelknolf wrote:The place where things get properly sketchy is when there's power and authority. The ability to make a tiny spider have 50 strength without any plot or RP, to drop items specifically designed to kill other PCs, to lure PCs to a CvC death, have items crafted for your own PCs, and directly assassinate a friend's rival are the problems-- and none of those people were punished.

To all those who want to DM where you play, read this. If DMs were ever held to a standard of quality and punished for falling drastically short of that (by doing the things above) then I'd be okay with DMing where you play. As it is, however, we've seen evidence of plenty of bullshit over the years, with no HDM/DMA doing anything about it, or doing too little when they did do something. Show you have the responsibility, as a community, to learn from past mistakes and put in serious measures to stop future abuse and maybe you can get more trust.

FoamBats4All wrote:

Swift wrote:

HEEGZ wrote:I'd also add that, for me personally, not being able to play where you DM is an issue. Our rules are just extremely prohibitive.

This is certainly one of the things for me.

Zelknolf wrote:The place where things get properly sketchy is when there's power and authority. The ability to make a tiny spider have 50 strength without any plot or RP, to drop items specifically designed to kill other PCs, to lure PCs to a CvC death, have items crafted for your own PCs, and directly assassinate a friend's rival are the problems-- and none of those people were punished.

To all those who want to DM where you play, read this. If DMs were ever held to a standard of quality and punished for falling drastically short of that (by doing the things above) then I'd be okay with DMing where you play. As it is, however, we've seen evidence of plenty of bullshit over the years, with no HDM/DMA doing anything about it, or doing too little when they did do something. Show you have the responsibility, as a community, to learn from past mistakes and put in serious measures to stop future abuse and maybe you can get more trust.

What, exactly, was the consequence of all this? If I recall correctly, in at least one instance it was the DM in question quitting even though the charges were never sufficiently proven. Did anyone actually lose a PC? In a shrinking community where more DMs are sorely needed we should focus on being more welcoming and accommodating to DMs and not worry so much about punishing and ousting those we find reason to disagree with. Add this to your list of issues to address Arianna -- letting the DMs actually control the gameworld without fear of being second guessed or criticized at every turn. It is the main reason I stopped DMing.

oldgrayrogue wrote:What, exactly, was the consequence of all this? If I recall correctly, in at least one instance it was the DM in question quitting even though the charges were never sufficiently proven. Did anyone actually lose a PC? In a shrinking community where more DMs are sorely needed we should focus on being more welcoming and accommodating to DMs and not worry so much about punishing and ousting those we find reason to disagree with. Add this to your list of issues to address Arianna -- letting the DMs actually control the gameworld without fear of being second guessed or criticized at every turn. It is the main reason I stopped DMing.

We lost PCs and players, yes. I know you don't read things carefully, but "assassinating a character" means they died right there, by the DM's unkillable superspawns. Players in such a situation are understandably unimpressed by the ALFA experience.

Let's remember that the default was trusting people; that's the default for everything. Nobody wants rules because they're super rulesey; rules exist because we have problems to solve. In this case, because DMs lost trust through a combination of misbehavior/poor performance, insular refusal to acknowledge or correct the misbehavior/poor performance, and complaining when reminded of that misbehavior/poor performance. As a rule, if you have to ask for trust or respect, you shouldn't get either.

And let's also remember that you're very fond of criticizing DMs yourself-- having had some unwholesome words about my time as a DM, and the actions of all of our HDMs, and having flooded me with unwanted tells about it repeatedly. Of course, everyone sees their own complaining as different (because it's totally justified, obviously). I don't list that as the cause of our destruction, of course; I argue that criticism is necessary for anything to improve. Without those floods of tells, I can't weigh their value or use them in decisions or try to improve based on the content; we'd have a much happier world if our DM teams thought the same way and viewed this as a collaboration with the community instead of a demand to for unquestioned power over the community.

Zelknolf wrote:

oldgrayrogue wrote:What, exactly, was the consequence of all this? If I recall correctly, in at least one instance it was the DM in question quitting even though the charges were never sufficiently proven. Did anyone actually lose a PC?

We lost PCs and players, yes. [...] "assassinating a character" means they died right there, by the DM's unkillable superspawns. Players in such a situation are understandably unimpressed by the ALFA experience.

I just want to make sure the above text gets read more than once.

We've tried DMing where you play. It failed. Horrendously. We lost at least 1 player because we tried it.

FoamBats4All wrote:

Zelknolf wrote:

oldgrayrogue wrote:What, exactly, was the consequence of all this? If I recall correctly, in at least one instance it was the DM in question quitting even though the charges were never sufficiently proven. Did anyone actually lose a PC?

We lost PCs and players, yes. [...] "assassinating a character" means they died right there, by the DM's unkillable superspawns. Players in such a situation are understandably unimpressed by the ALFA experience.

I just want to make sure the above text gets read more than once.

We've tried DMing where you play. It failed. Horrendously. We lost at least 1 player because we tried it.

Who did we lose and when did that happen?