Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

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Aria/Shards?

Yes, I'd be interested in moving to that.
20
69%
Yes, and I'd be interested in building and/or developing for it.
7
24%
No
2
7%
 
Total votes: 29

Analogkid
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by Analogkid »

sounds like we have a consensus to move to it
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Ithildur
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by Ithildur »

Less familiar settings would be refreshing for a lot of FR vets, agreed (though I miss some classic locales like the dales).

I think it's also a good idea to keep in mind a big reason for attempting to start from scratch with a new platform is to hopefully draw in new people. I'm sure at least a part of the reason we'd keep FR (which it sounds like won't change) is the familiarity draw/accessibility of FR. If we're keeping targeting new players in mind there needs to be a balance of a locale not being too weird/unfamiliar - i.e. it needs to retain the feel of 'oh yeah, this is the same world as the one in BG/NWN games, Drizzt/Elminster, etc' and probably be fairly accessible to most of the popular races/classes/etc. (there's reasons why FR crpgs/mmo's as well as tabletop products at the start of new edition launches keep focusing on neverwinter, sword coast, dales, etc)

So Kara Tur, Chult, places like that might be a fun change of pace for some of us, but it might not be the best choice if getting new blood is a high priority, at least not for an initial starting point/server. Some of the less settled regions (named by SF) are intriguing though in that they're places where PC's can more readily establish their own little turf/tower/stronghold/kingdoms, stuff that sounds like might be a strength of the game engine AND something that's probably a draw more so these days vs 15 years ago (though really places like the Dales, Silver Marches, and Sword Coast are tailor made for this... unfortunate that only a very small handful of ALFAns have had success with such with nwn2 - perhaps the new engine will change that).
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by FoamBats4All »

I did some more checking yesterdaywith the Shards Online/Legends of Aria community. Thought I'd share a couple of responses.
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 :stuck_out_tongue: 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.
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
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.

Also, I agree with Ith. We want to strike a balance between recognizable draw and something that won't bore others. We also need to consider builders. Builders are fickle, and X might not have the passion to build A, but does have the passion to build B, while builder Y wants the opposite. Specifically, I'd like to hear what the 5 builds who responded would be passionate to build, and see if we can get a consensus going there, that also matches the concerns Ith mentioned.
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by Cast_No_Shadow »

I'd recommend a big town\v. small city surrounded by interesting wilds. Gives most opportunity for adventure and easier building, at least in my experience. Exactly where doesn't bother me, it'll all look different and new anyway.

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.
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dergon darkhelm
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by dergon darkhelm »

Don't know enough to vote but.



Here is my $0.02.

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?


2) I know people feel that the Sword Coast and the Dalelands are overdone. But if our hope is to grab a player base I think we would be well served by at least having *some* areas of the most popular part of Faerun. (I'd love Luskan, 10 towns, the Spine and Ironmaster as a winter server :) )

3) I don't build but I will second the "don't do it half a$$ed" recommendation. We've been slowing dying by attrition for 7 years. Another 18 months won't matter either way.
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by Rick7475 »

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.
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by FoamBats4All »

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.
Good question.
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.
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.

In ACR2 tradition, all of its work will be open source, and I hope we can collaborate with the other communities.
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?
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.
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by FoamBats4All »

Had a conversation with a guy from another NWN2->LoA server whose team has already done a lot of work on bringing D&D 5e's OGL to Legends of Aria.
[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: :grinning: 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: Image
[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. :grinning:
[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. :wink:
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.

I'm also especially interested to hear from the two people who voted no. What are your concerns?
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by Grand Fromage »

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.
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.
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by Ithildur »

Grand Fromage wrote:
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.
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.

There's a whole lot less legalese these days GF; drop in on a server near you either nwn1 or 2, or better yet drop in on Discord so you can know when/where to drop ingame.

Back on topic, that sounds... very promising. :)
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by FoamBats4All »

Grand Fromage wrote:
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.
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.
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.
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by Cast_No_Shadow »

For one we have come a long way in technical ability. We have a tonne of rules about powergaming, how many of these can we just eliminate through good design and scripting and have a simple easy to understand bullet point that says "don't exploit the engine/bugs".

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.

Can we smooth the application process too? It's 2017. Long applications don't really fly anymore.

Just throwing provocations out there.
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by Ithildur »

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.
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?

We could also have e6,e10 like elements, etc.

But that's a whole another can of wyrms
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Current main: Ky - something

It’s not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who actually is in the arena, who strives violently, who errs and comes up short again and again...who if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement, but who if he fails, fails while daring greatly.-T. Roosevelt
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by FoamBats4All »

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?
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:We could also have e6,e10 like elements, etc.
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).
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Re: Legends of Aria/Shards Online Post-Alpha

Post by Heero »

I am kindve interested in world building. Kindve.
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