Brainstorm: The Next Evolution of Alfa

[Heero]

Oh for the record, I think you're all crazy to want to move ALFA to another platform. Its not just NWN2 which has aged, but the organization as well. Remake it with a similar vision, sure. But IMO to move to a new platform and take all of ALFA's baggage and bureaucracy with you is nuts.

Amen.

[Adanu]

3) Employ the Heegz method of an overarching server wide antagonist with set encounters and forum posts to bring the server alive and provide the PCs with a common back story that all characters regardless of alignment or level can RP around. This is not a campaign, it is merely an environmental context for the PCs to center their RP on.

OGR, you may remember that I did this a lot on BG (I would say I DMed plots, not campaigns). This was also done by JLM and you on TSM, and probably countless other DMs. While it is more "open" than a scheduled campaign, I'm not really sure it entertains more people.

As a player, I ultimately find RPing something with no ability to affect it (due to lack of DM support) extremely frustrating. I would much rather be involved in a 1/week campaign than to log in every night, RPing over the same problems and wondering when a DM would come along so you could have a crack at solving them (which might not ever happen).

It did work a lot better on TSM than BG though. Since half the playerbase didn't hate the other half, players could organize and do stuff without drama. I wanted to do this with the war in Felbarr with HEEGZ, but he's quit and no one else logs in anymore anyhow.

I think you're over-thinking this. If we had two or three campaigns as active as mine on a single server, do you really think the PCs would not be interacting, and logging in to RP? There would be cross-over sessions, inter-session mingling, etc. This has been done with the Knights Draconis, and they've not had a game for a while now. There was even some (limited) interaction between DarkHin's freaks and my less-obvious freaks on WHL. I know my players have certainly spent more time logged in between sessions than in sessions, though sadly Icarium never shows up to give them shit

I'm not all that interested on playing on TSM because of the incredibly bad overland map, but I'm willing to DM there.

That being said, I don't think Curm likes me enough to allow it, so I've given up on the idea.

The "logging-in-for-the-heck-of-it types" are not refusing to admit that ALFA's population is lower (it's about half of what it was in 2012; that's plainly visible in black and white, and the pivot point is the death of the authentication server). I am refusing to maintain servers with vastly more overhead than is required for the type of play the "grand campaign" types are advocating. That is actual, tangible, difficult work-- work that the "grand campaign" types do not contribute meaningfully to, and are proposing to complicate further.

If you want persistency, you've got to accept the restrictions of persistency.

If you want instances, you've got to actually put up instances.

Sorry, I think there was a misunderstanding here. When I said grand campaign, I mean limited to me as a DM. Grand storylines and the like. I wasn't asking for a team/global effort.

[kid]

I think it's a natural progression that would be impossible to stop.
I know i'd love to play but just can't, even if there was some scheduled game I could join (and there isn't).
Financial pressure, life, job, kids, etc. This usually only gets worse over the years (until you hit 50/70 and we're not there yet).
With NWN2 being an old platform you won't get any new players (if i'm 18 i'm unlikely to start playing nwn2) which means the player base won't replenish.

I think there's no other choice, assuming you want a buzzing community, but to move to another platform.
The question is not if, but simply when and which one.
At least the way I see it. (not to mean you should not try and get new players, etc, just saying that in the long run you're unlikely to succeed).

And as far as moving to a new platform, I think the trick might be not being married to the idea of DnD.
We should probably just focus on looking for a platform you can create a model yourself and invite people to play with you,
And one that has a wide player base. Regardless of it's actual rules (as long as they are reasonable).

I don't know if such a thing is even available, but imm any such game would work
Then you'd just need to weed out the 99% that only want to hack and slash, and you'd still end up with a large enough community of relatively like minded RPers.
The world itself, the rule system, all that seems secondary to me.
But that's me I suppose.
Anyways, good luck, i've work to do.

[Zelknolf]

Sorry, I think there was a misunderstanding here. When I said grand campaign, I mean limited to me as a DM. Grand storylines and the like. I wasn't asking for a team/global effort.

Yes, that's understood-- but persistency is an effort that does not come from you. If you're not going to use it, as would be the case of trying to arbitrarily define all of the parameters of PC inputs to a given game, then you're asking others to waste their effort providing it to you. Therefore, if you want to do that, you should leave the existing environment of persistency alone and put up an instance. One might even argue it has the potential to increase PW-style activity; after all, the PC they have for your campaign abruptly stops counting against the two PCs allowed here once they're on your instance, and DMing on an instance doesn't affect a "DM where you play" rule.

[HEEGZ]

I really need to get a gaming comp up and running...

After reading the last 5 pages, it looks to me like consolidating servers might help with the current player density issues. As well, some loosening of the play where you DM restrictions. A venture into hosting an alternate server would be interesting.

I'm still recovering financially from my move and remodel, or I'd have bought a new computer by now. May have to see if I clean up my old one and if it will run NWN2 again.

[dergon darkhelm]

I think there's no other choice, assuming you want a buzzing community, but to move to another platform.
The question is not if, but simply when and which one.
At least the way I see it. (not to mean you should not try and get new players, etc, just saying that in the long run you're unlikely to succeed).

I think so too.

From my thinking there is just no way, given the age of NWN2 that we will see anything resembling a signficant influx of new players on this platform, regardless of what we do with content, PR, governance, group culture etc.




At some we're going to have to move to something else.

That may well present an opportunity to change up the structure of the community. Certainly a debate on what the next iteration looks like would be welcomed.

But if we are going to have an ALFA that looks like the vibrant PW of years back it will have to be on another platform.

[Twin Axes]

So apparently the next installation of Dragon Age will have some multiplayer aspect. Maybe down the road it might be possible to support a PW...?

[Castano]

So apparently the next installation of Dragon Age will have some multiplayer aspect. Maybe down the road it might be possible to support a PW...?

Any info on whether it includes a toolset?

I'm rule set agnostic at this point. The minimal criteria are (1) large player base and (2) toolset to mod with. Otherwise it is not worth the build effort of tooling servers.

[Zelknolf]

One might note that the Neverwinter MMO meets those requirements.

Though I suspect the missing bits are "capacity for persistence" (all tooled adventures on the Neverwinter MMO are instanced) and "DM client or comparible" (all actions in the Neverwinter MMO must be constructed ahead of time).



Would be interested to know what becomes of the next Dragon Age still. The big thing preventing a platform jump right now is that we'd have to do all of the work of the transition and then we still have to build a player base for it(which we apparently suck at).

[Castano]

I do not consider NWN MMO to meet the "toolset to mod with" requirement

NWN MMO has a toolset to make areas for the MMO which can be visited by parties in instanced encounters. e.g. they are hosting the areas as a poor cousin part of the MMO PW. I guess the difference is in how you define a "mod". In ALFA-speak a mod is a server or other world environment having some sort of barrier from the base MMO game.

[Zelknolf]

Capacity for persistence, then. We get to manage and persist data specific to our modifications of the game.


Yeah right now, it's the Neverwinters and mechanics-less engines like Unity. Nothing has a player base or anything substantial in terms of official support; we have to build and/or maintain our own.

[Dorn]

I do not consider NWN MMO to meet the "toolset to mod with" requirement

Or DMable which is perhaps more important.

Frankly, if we were allowed to use just the vanilla world and tech, we could still have great fun provided DMing was enabled.