Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha
Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 6:40 am
sounds like we have a consensus to move to it
Faerun Lives
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http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=52126
FoamBats4All wrote:So how moddable has this game become? Can you really swap out rulesets to make it play more like D&D or something?
Tihr 'a Lahn wrote:It is that moddable We've had a class based system for over a year prior to alpha 2
And there is a server working on a DnD ruleset right now, a couple of them actually.
So, I continue to be optimistic that this is viable enough to at least start hacking away at it and trying to see what we can do.DarkLotus wrote:Sure. There is some stuff that is limited by the client, but things like the ruleset are not. Client side limitations are more along the lines of the camera angle/zoom as opposed to any actual game logic
Good question.Cast_No_Shadow wrote:At the risk of opening a can of worms, is there anything else in the ALFA setup we'd want to tweak ahead of a new move? We've all grown up a bit and are different people these days.
It's not "running" anything. The cluster determines the ruleset. Shards Online/Legends of Aria is sort of an Ultimate Online 2.0 with a heavy emphasis on building your own servers, game systems, and rules. Almost a way to roll your own MMO that is system-agnostic. This means that we'd need to implement all the D&D-ness of the system. Classes, feats, dice rolling, saving throws, all that. The good news is we can do it, with SO/LoA. The bad news is that it's some work. But, as far as what edition to use, I imagine most people want 5e. None of you mooks will let me convince you to move to 2e -- though that's probably for the best.Rick7475 wrote:What version of DnD are those other Shard servers running? I have DM'd 5e and I like it. If those other DnD servers are good, maybe they have an open source we can build on.
This isn't the first time we've had this conversation. A few games have come and went already. Neverwinter ended up being an MMO. Sword Coast Legends or whatever was a co-op hack and slash. The unfortunate fact is that these sorts of games just don't come around often. If you can find another offering, please let it be known. I've looked, and SO/LoA is the only viable contender in the last decade.dergon darkhelm wrote:1) NWN1 and NWN2 are not viable in the long term. But that doesn't mean that the community is best served by a jump in the short term. Is there any other platform that may be on the horizon that might be even better than the Shards option?
Gotta say, that all sounds pretty promising, and cuts down greatly on the work we need to do. We'd certainly not be alone doing this.[1:52 AM] Phaernun: Did you do a lot of NWN 2 scripting / programming stuff?
[7:36 AM] FoamBats4All: Yeah. Made NWNX4 extensions, contributed to the Client Extension, scripted for a few servers, etc.
[7:40 AM] Phaernun: Awesome!
[7:40 AM] Phaernun: We are currently working on a D&D Next ruleset (all OGL Liscence to avoid legal issues) for Legends of Aria.
[7:41 AM] Phaernun: Team of the Palanai and the Darkhaven servers. DjOli who is the lead programmer on it is a professional programmer who also studied game design.
[7:42 AM] Phaernun: We basically overhauled the base ruleset. New character generation, round based combat, action que, etc.
[7:42 AM] FoamBats4All: That's awesome. Licence? Open source project?
[7:43 AM] Phaernun: The OGL mod will be released to the community as a whole, yeah.
[7:43 AM] Phaernun: Right now it is not yet open source, because we want to demo it with Stimwalt (who got 56k views on his review of LoA) to promote the game among the NWN community.
[7:44 AM] Phaernun: So we want to keep it down low until we can really show it off.
[7:45 AM] Phaernun: DjOli also wrote a mod manager, that checks compatability among mods, and enables plug and play like content. So that adding and sharing content will be easier.
[7:45 AM] FoamBats4All: Happy to help with it if we can use an early copy too, so our builders can get started on world building. I've got experience working on game engines professionally.
[7:46 AM] FoamBats4All: Plenty of room for d&d servers, our permadeath servers don't appeal to all.
[7:46 AM] Phaernun: I could add you to my admin account per request. CS provides that to us admins, so that we can recruit people to help our projects.
[7:47 AM] Phaernun: So you would get access to the admin forums, discord and the admins tools that you usally get via the 200$ pledge
[7:47 AM] Phaernun: And yeah. While we are also working on our own server, we want to provide the tools and mod so we can get a lot of cool NWN-esque persistent worlds going. Palanai wont be everyones cup of tea either. : D
[7:48 AM] FoamBats4All: Would really appreciate that. Want to see how truly viable this is for our next platform before spending an extra $125.
[7:48 AM] Phaernun: Yeah, makes absolute sense. DjOli also uses my account. And honestly, if you put in the hours to help make D&D Next something real for LoA, Citadel Studios benefits anyway.
[7:48 AM] FoamBats4All: This is all really really encouraging to hear. Not all modding communities have that mindset.(edited)
[7:49 AM] Phaernun: I loved NeverwinterVault and the CCC team. What, im my opinion made NWN so great, was the modding community. The sharing and support.
[7:50 AM] Phaernun: I myself (not a programmer) am converting a community tileset currently. Which we will also release once I got it all set up. : D
[7:50 AM] Phaernun:
[7:50 AM] FoamBats4All: Agreed. Why all our modules and core scripting (C# scripts, cross server vaults, etc) are open source.
[7:50 AM] FoamBats4All: Awesome.
[7:51 AM] FoamBats4All: I plan on all our LoA stuff to be open source too.
[7:51 AM] Phaernun: Let me get you in contact with DjOli, as he knows all the modding side. If you two think this will be a good fit, I'll request to add you to my account.
[7:51 AM] FoamBats4All: Thanks man. Really appreciate it.
[7:52 AM] FoamBats4All: Mind if I share this conversation with our community? We're all deciding if LoA will be our next home.
[7:53 AM] Phaernun: Yeah, that is fine. As long as the Legends of Aria forums are not plastered with the info about what we will demo.
That'd be a good idea. When I drop back in to look around and see page long posts of legalese about playing Dungeons and Dragons on the internet my eyes roll back out of my skull and I remember a lot of why I stopped playing.Cast_No_Shadow wrote:At the risk of opening a can of worms, is there anything else in the ALFA setup we'd want to tweak ahead of a new move? We've all grown up a bit and are different people these days.
Grand Fromage wrote:That'd be a good idea. When I drop back in to look around and see page long posts of legalese about playing Dungeons and Dragons on the internet my eyes roll back out of my skull and I remember a lot of why I stopped playing.Cast_No_Shadow wrote:At the risk of opening a can of worms, is there anything else in the ALFA setup we'd want to tweak ahead of a new move? We've all grown up a bit and are different people these days.
Can you expand on what you mean? It's hard to design a game system without rules, and I don't think ALFA's Charter/Pillars/Rulebook are as bad as you remember.Grand Fromage wrote:That'd be a good idea. When I drop back in to look around and see page long posts of legalese about playing Dungeons and Dragons on the internet my eyes roll back out of my skull and I remember a lot of why I stopped playing.Cast_No_Shadow wrote:At the risk of opening a can of worms, is there anything else in the ALFA setup we'd want to tweak ahead of a new move? We've all grown up a bit and are different people these days.
This is one of the weaker points of 3xe imo (can't remember if PF improved things); it's progression is a little too even and steady across every tier (low, mid, midhigh, high lvls). Might not be bad to double the xp required to lvl past say 10, maybe triple past 15. Maybe half the xp required for low lvls even (500 to lvl 2, 1000 to lvl 3), etc. That's one way to get a nicer bell curve of lvls on the lower side; heck it's DnD, bell curves are iconic right?Cast_No_Shadow wrote: As a dm my pet peeve has always been the level disparity across the playerbase. It makes the job harder. The DMG even has a paragraph saying it's a bad idea. Obviously a persistent world raises problems for that. Can we have a desired level, I don't care what it is, and make it easier to get closer to it and harder to fly past it. Examples of how might include starting at 2 or 3. Accelerated rewards to the target. Say 6. Slowed rewards and no static xp to 8 or 10 then bonus feats rather than levels. I've seen all work well elsewhere.
Not that we'll use 2e (though it's far more popular here than I thought -- I blame the limited sample size), but 2e fixes this by having far less linear XP progression. It worked well, and we could tweak things like that.Ithildur wrote:This is one of the weaker points of 3xe imo (can't remember if PF improved things); it's progression is a little too even and steady across every tier (low, mid, midhigh, high lvls). Might not be bad to double the xp required to lvl past say 10, maybe triple past 15. Maybe half the xp required for low lvls even (500 to lvl 2, 1000 to lvl 3), etc. That's one way to get a nicer bell curve of lvls on the lower side; heck it's DnD, bell curves are iconic right?
Ugh. I really hate EX. I'm hoping this is more a problem with a small player base, and if we grow on a new platform, it won't be an issue (at least, not for another decade).Ithildur wrote:We could also have e6,e10 like elements, etc.