How to bring back the people?

[rorax]

Well...

I guess it's no longer a secret that ALFA numbers has been declining during the recent months.


The purpose of the the thread is to try and come up with creative ways how to bring back lost players who played in the past but retired and also(and not less important) how to be more
appealing to the masses to attract new people. Please try to avoid stories about how and what made X and Y retired and never come back, we all had our disagreements about in and out of gaming
decisions in the past and those debates are rarely contributing, so please try to focus on general ideas and leave the personal scope out.

I think to attract more new players ALFA would need to do the following:

1. Consolidate servers - force players to be on the same physical machine and never too far from each other. (areas are pretty much useless if there are no players on using them)
2. Create MANY more adventuring areas for low and medium level characters to allow players to regularly do something when there are no DMs online.
3. To be less restrictive about "farming" during lower and medium levels, let players safely level their toons to level 5-7 where they feel safer with their toons and tend to naturally focus more on RP.


Thoughts?

[Heero]

I am creating more adventuring areas, but I am only 1 person. Maybe some other people want to step up and help build new stuff?

[Heero]

Also, I dislike #3 immensely. And I am only so-so on #1.

[Adanu]

Yes, because 'build it and they will come' is really working out.

I can't see bringing back a lot of our players without some radical changes in both admin mindset and the so called 'spirit of ALFA'. Until people are willing to discuss this and not just blow smoke about like on previous polls, nothing is going to turn around in this.

One of the best ways to help incentivize people to come back without too much change, in my opinion, is ridding ourselves of the level one starting point. Make it two or three and people will stop being too afraid of losing shit.

[Heero]

If we are genuinely brainstorming here, I would suggest that the solution is as easy as increasing the frequency of DM time. Unfortunately, the solution being easy to assess does not in this case make its path to achievement easy.

While I (and many others) will tell you that advancement via static, oftentimes riskless, content is the fastest and easiest it has ever been, Id like to think we are all here in the hopes of finding an engaging story rife with adventure, character development, and on-going, in-game relationships for the characters we create rather than being here to level-up on safe content in order to achieve our fantasies of omnipotence. There are far better alternatives out there for play styles revolving around killing the same monsters in the same areas over-and-over. Creating new and exciting places to adventure is beneficial, but we simply cannot create enough content fast enough to keep our game fresh if all that is available is 'farming' of the same areas full of the same static spawns; however, I will say that what we have isn’t enough, especially without steady DM time, as most of what we have has been used time-after-time for various DM sessions and for static questing/adventuring w/ a group of friends (oftentimes over multiple PC lifespans). If we are going for 'immersive', it simply is not immersive for the same tribe of kobolds to repopulate the same cave every day after being wiped out by the same group of adventurers. Our game just cant survive without DMs to push the story along, develop our characters, and help our players to save, or at least leave a mark on, our world.

[Xanthea]

I assume that adventuring areas are supposed to be representative than literal due to restrictions on how many kobold filled caves a server can actually accommodate.

[Heero]

Yeah, sure, all Im saying is that itd be nice if it wasnt always the same one.

[Swift]

One of the best ways to help incentivize people to come back without too much change, in my opinion, is ridding ourselves of the level one starting point. Make it two or three and people will stop being too afraid of losing sh*t.

I find that his idea is shared among more than a few people, which I personally find really interesting considering the growing popularity or Roguelike indie games over the last 12 to 18 months which are all about dying often and trying again to see if you can get further. Dark Souls was praised despite its brutal difficulty that punished players for even the slightest error.

If we basically just do away with the early levels where death is actually something to be feared, we would need to ensure that death remains a constant threat when a DMis not about which, in many cases, is not the case these days.

Starting new characters is supposed to be fun, though I can understand how it may not be if there are not regular players in your time slots and as someone who has had only very sporadic, once a week time slots for the entirety of my time in ALFA, I am acutely aware of how little fun it can be.

[FoamBats4All]

I think the #1 biggest thing ALFA needs is more people DMing. Right now we have a very, very small amount of active DMs, most of which whom cater to a particular play style/level group. Kind of meh, but perhaps we need some sort of incentive for people to step up?

One of the best ways to help incentivize people to come back without too much change, in my opinion, is ridding ourselves of the level one starting point. Make it two or three and people will stop being too afraid of losing sh*t.

I find that his idea is shared among more than a few people, which I personally find really interesting considering the growing popularity or Roguelike indie games over the last 12 to 18 months which are all about dying often and trying again to see if you can get further. Dark Souls was praised despite its brutal difficulty that punished players for even the slightest error.

If we basically just do away with the early levels where death is actually something to be feared, we would need to ensure that death remains a constant threat when a DMis not about which, in many cases, is not the case these days.

Starting new characters is supposed to be fun, though I can understand how it may not be if there are not regular players in your time slots and as someone who has had only very sporadic, once a week time slots for the entirety of my time in ALFA, I am acutely aware of how little fun it can be.

ALFA isn't a rogue-like. Thanks for playing though.

[Adanu]

I would DM, but I was rejected on TSM more or less, and WHL is the only other place I might seriously DM in. Maybe BG... but one of the only people I stay here for has BG as their main place, so I'd need one hell of a good reason to do it.

That being said, if DMs would actually reward well based on the amount of crap PCs go through instead of wearing them down all the time, that'd be awesome too.

The last DM I played with (I think it was rorax? It was that giant cave in TSM) was pretty decent about loot. If that trend continues, we'd see more players not worried about death. As it is, our progression is incredibly slow compared to most other places. Low DM loot+Characters scrapping the barrel for consumables and gear=not very fun. But, as I said... I'm starting to see that risk/reward problem balance out.

Multiple PCs is also a great idea for those who just won't play until something good comes along DM wise. The 'one PC' rule has always held ALFA back in my opinion.

(you could always relax the 'DM can't play on server' rule too... but ha, good luck with the admins even considering that)

[CloudDancing]

Twice a month, Scheduled Campaign nights required from each DM.

Invite your real life friends just like a PnP game.

Two nights a month.

Honoring your appointment with the players.

AND allowing a looser interpretation of time so people can attend up to four sessions a month w/ attention to the roleplay viability

OR

have a second character on that other server they can participate with thus dealing with worries of too fast leveling.

Alfa needs to leave this persistent world crap behind them and function as an interface for playing dungeonmastered games of D&D online.

Persistent worlds are a joke now:
*you can't fly, jump, or climb
*Enviroments have walkmesh cutters that prevent any effortless movement and often logical escapes
*ATs are in one tiny often hidden spots thus preventing natural travel along the grid
*The UI connection with the server is as slow or fast as your computer and the servers. Thus making lag kill players
*Un-dmd survival is based on how good a player is at pushing buttons and how fast their internet relay is back and forth
*Creative canon options for dealing with life-threatening issues are NULL in solo play
*And due to people farming the hells out of mobs the return on combat/farming of "monsters" is so lowered to so little it simply is insane that anyone would waste so much solo time pounding away at 1xp trash mobs in an environment made for ROLEPLAYING and playing campaign D&D.

[Rotku]

I find that his idea is shared among more than a few people, which I personally find really interesting considering the growing popularity or Roguelike indie games over the last 12 to 18 months which are all about dying often and trying again to see if you can get further. Dark Souls was praised despite its brutal difficulty that punished players for even the slightest error.

Yeah, the problem with that comparison is that in those games you just hit the Try Again button and it starts fresh again. ALFA doesn't have a Try Again button.

[I-KP]

Starting new characters is supposed to be fun, though I can understand how it may not be if there are not regular players in your time slots and as someone who has had only very sporadic, once a week time slots for the entirety of my time in ALFA, I am acutely aware of how little fun it can be.

It's not much fun even if you do have people in your timeslot. I will not speak for others but I can say that I will not be starting again when that fateful moment arrives. Yup, I would much rather not play at all than start again at level 1; it's too much of an uphill grind through a broken system and I've not got the time (or the patience) for that sort of thing these days. Not exactly a sparkling endorsement, I know, but there you have it.

[Adanu]

I find that his idea is shared among more than a few people, which I personally find really interesting considering the growing popularity or Roguelike indie games over the last 12 to 18 months which are all about dying often and trying again to see if you can get further. Dark Souls was praised despite its brutal difficulty that punished players for even the slightest error.

Yeah, the problem with that comparison is that in those games you just hit the Try Again button and it starts fresh again. ALFA doesn't have a Try Again button.

This.

[Blindhamsterman]

Twice a month, Scheduled Campaign nights required from each DM.

Invite your real life friends just like a PnP game.

Two nights a month.

Honoring your appointment with the players.

AND allowing a looser interpretation of time so people can attend up to four sessions a month w/ attention to the roleplay viability

OR

have a second character on that other server they can participate with thus dealing with worries of too fast leveling.

Alfa needs to leave this persistent world crap behind them and function as an interface for playing dungeonmastered games of D&D online.

Persistent worlds are a joke now:
*you can't fly, jump, or climb
*Enviroments have walkmesh cutters that prevent any effortless movement and often logical escapes
*ATs are in one tiny often hidden spots thus preventing natural travel along the grid
*The UI connection with the server is as slow or fast as your computer and the servers. Thus making lag kill players
*Un-dmd survival is based on how good a player is at pushing buttons and how fast their internet relay is back and forth
*Creative canon options for dealing with life-threatening issues are NULL in solo play
*And due to people farming the hells out of mobs the return on combat/farming of "monsters" is so lowered to so little it simply is insane that anyone would waste so much solo time pounding away at 1xp trash mobs in an environment made for ROLEPLAYING and playing campaign D&D.

Maybe we should consider moving over to something like:

http://roll20.net/

and then focusing on campaigns as Cloud suggests? anyone that fancies DMing can create a campaign, we just setup forums and go from there?

Rather than outright replacing NWN2, it might not be a terrible option as an addition that we could officially support?