Charter Revisions

[hollyfant]

Discussion is good, but actual proposals will be drowned out in threads like this. If anyone has a clear, straightforward yes/no proposal, start a new thread. Write up the idea in a clear and readily implementable manner, and see who salutes it.

[Rotku]

Cut backs, while they may be logical, are not pragmatic. All I know is that I'd hate to be the one to tell Castano/Crum/whoever that "No sorry, we don't want your server here any more - go work on this one instead". I know my reply, if someone told me that, would be somewhere along the lines of Fuck You. It's not the way forward to making a healthy environment - seriously, how many players, builders and DMs do you think we'll loose over that? The one time in the past I can remember Admin trying to shut a server down we lost a great deal.

We are no dealing with a simple black and white business, where the end goal is profit. Here we have people who are giving time to their hobby out of love and enjoyment - we cannot suddenly do a 180 and tell them that while we still do want their work, they can only do it where we choose and furthermore, we are going to shut down all the stuff they've worked on already.

Maybe a compromise would be put a cap on new servers?

[NickD]

I remember arguing a lot before NWN2 even came out that we need to start with a very small number of servers and only grow as the population could support it. I said we should only have 4 servers in ALFA's first year and grow slowly from there. I was working off an assumption that a server would take about 6 months to put together.

Everyone else came up with the same basic argument as Rotku above that you can't force people to work on servers they have no interest in, and if we did, no servers would ever get finished. So people should just start working on whatever server they wanted to. It wouldn't matter if we got 10 groups working on their own servers, because most people wouldn't finish them anyway. Of course, out of that came the server proposal system, but pretty much everyone except for Murky's team - who were competeing with indio's team for TSM - were accepted. Everyone else was working off Grand Fromage's assumption that a server would take 3-4 months to put together.

My suggestion was that we have a single ALFA module that every new builder works on first to get a grounding ALFA building standards. We'd get that up and running before any other servers would get started on, and it would be used as a foundation for all other servers, so new servers wouldn't have to keep reinventing the wheel with merchants, spawns, etc.

I think it was 18 months before we even had 1 server. And that's only because indio never gave up.

I said I told you so a couple of times and people ignored me even more.

And then Ayergo came along, built his own server (BG) without submitting a proposal and basically said "if you don't like it, don't include it with ALFA". He later got elected DMA and then approved his own server.

All the above is completely useless information now of course. I was just feeling a bit nostalgic. Ah, nostalgia!

[mr duncan]

And then Ayergo came along, built his own server (BG) without submitting a proposal and basically said "if you don't like it, don't include it with ALFA". He later got elected DMA and then approved his own server.

Glad he did too, as must you be glad for his initiative since you seem to be enjoying his server quite a bit now. Thanks Ayergo


Really tired of hearing this worn out fallacy that we are thinning the player base. Back when there was one server we still split up in groups and played with those characters who fit in with ours. The evil crew did not invite Helmites along just because they were on the same server, nor did the elves become more open with outsiders because there was only one place to play. The occasional forced bumping in to people outside a characters social circle generally ended up only promoting two people ignoring each other while they went about their business, or occasional CvC

No one has any problem finding players to play with as long as their characters are compatible with one of the groups already in game. If you are finding that you can not get involved it is because of your character, not because we have more choices of places to play

Choices are always good. You can make a naughty nautical type and play on Skuag, or a goody and get in on Clouds game on The Moonshaes or do the same with thinkpig on TSM. On Baldurs Gate paazin DMs a mixed bag adventure of mercenaries once a week and Kseil has a game there too along the same lines of mixed mercenaries. There is also the somewhat famous dwarf game that is certainly not limited to dwarves but also those characters who have some reason to interact with their culture

Plenty of places to fit in and the player density will be as strong as the players intrest in those themes, no matter how many servers we have ever

There is a place where all the players are concentrated on one server, with roughly the same rules as we have in ALFA now. That place is called Exodus, skilled builders consistent DM times and almost all the rules we have in place here. You want to play on a singular server? Play in Exodus. Want to have a second character? Make one on Exodus. Want DMs to be able to play on their own server? Yes, again... go enjoy that on our sister project Exodus

I for one think that the Charter serves us well.

The pillars of ALFA are indeed an ingredient of our success. Our two thirds requirement for changes are to prevent loud squeaky wheels from greasing a change that is not actually good for us


J

[Swift]

Glad he did too, as must you be glad for his initiative since you seem to be enjoying his server quite a bit now. Thanks Ayergo

You are totally forgetting the fact that for the better part of ALFAs NWN2 live time, BG was a total basket case that was, at best, an unfinished mess that was not even close to Live standard. Its taken alot of work by recent HDMs to get it out of "Live beta".

BG should never have gone live when it did.

[Rotku]

Everyone else came up with the same basic argument as Rotku above that you can't force people to work on servers they have no interest in, and if we did, no servers would ever get finished. So people should just start working on whatever server they wanted to.

No. My argument is I don't want to be the one to tell people all the hard work that they have done (note the past tense) should go to scrap. I think a better method would be to restrict what can be done in future.

[NickD]

Glad he did too, as must you be glad for his initiative since you seem to be enjoying his server quite a bit now. Thanks Ayergo

You are totally forgetting the fact that for the better part of ALFAs NWN2 live time, BG was a total basket case that was, at best, an unfinished mess that was not even close to Live standard. Its taken alot of work by recent HDMs to get it out of "Live beta".

BG should never have gone live when it did.

I thought it was a tad small for a PW server myself, but overall I did really enjoy BG as soon as it went up. And then it went through a phase where I wasn't such a huge fan. And now the content has been expanded a lot, I like it heaps.

At the time, however, I felt it was a tad inappropriate that the DMA should be forcing through approval of his own server.

[NickD]

No. My argument is I don't want to be the one to tell people all the hard work that they have done (note the past tense) should go to scrap. I think a better method would be to restrict what can be done in future.

The basic argument I was referring to was more the argument that you can't dictate what servers builders get to work on. Which is true to a point - you can't force a volunteer to work on something they have no interest in.

However, I believe we would have found that if the options we limited, plenty of builders would have still come on board.

[zicada]

As a reply to the admin password-removal thread:

From a scientific pov, you want data.

I recommend opening up all of alfa to players (no password) for 3 days, with no disruption in the regular goings on, but agreeing on times most Dms are able to be around.

Then just see who comes, how many, what they're like, and so on,

basically, collecting data. That data can then be used in figuring out where to go from here, wether another 3-day thing is warranted, an OAS, a weekly open-server thing, whatever you all think is a good idea. Just.. let's do this one thing first without changing anything else, to see if there's even any group of people who will come, how many, at what rp-level, how players and DMs will interract with them etc etc.

[Rotku]

As a reply to the admin password-removal thread:

From a scientific pov, you want data.

I recommend opening up all of alfa to players (no password) for 3 days, with no disruption in the regular goings on, but agreeing on times most Dms are able to be around.

Then just see who comes, how many, what they're like, and so on,

basically, collecting data. That data can then be used in figuring out where to go from here, wether another 3-day thing is warranted, an OAS, a weekly open-server thing, whatever you all think is a good idea. Just.. let's do this one thing first without changing anything else, to see if there's even any group of people who will come, how many, at what rp-level, how players and DMs will interract with them etc etc.

He makes sense! List to him.

[Blindhamsterman]

As a reply to the admin password-removal thread:

From a scientific pov, you want data.

I recommend opening up all of alfa to players (no password) for 3 days, with no disruption in the regular goings on, but agreeing on times most Dms are able to be around.

Then just see who comes, how many, what they're like, and so on,

basically, collecting data. That data can then be used in figuring out where to go from here, wether another 3-day thing is warranted, an OAS, a weekly open-server thing, whatever you all think is a good idea. Just.. let's do this one thing first without changing anything else, to see if there's even any group of people who will come, how many, at what rp-level, how players and DMs will interract with them etc etc.

He makes sense! List to him.

It's true, the man speaks words of wisdom!

[Veilan]

Yeah, if only someone would start thinking along the lines of collecting actual data to analyse!

[Blindhamsterman]

set a date for the three day test run. get some adverts out, and then someone just needs to get the stats off the server(s) that are made open. Plus forum stats and we're off to a good start. Infact, despite my lack of time, if you could get me that raw data, I could do some stuff with it quite happily (but either way, need to set a date and advertise a three day (or better yet a 1 week) ALFA unlocks its server(s)).

[Ksiel]

3 day test run will not be useful. It is such a small window that any data collected would be skewed. You need a 1-3 month test run.

[hollyfant]

You need a 1-3 month test run.

Hear hear.