Level 1 Start - The Poll

[Mick]

Just proving the point I made to you earlier:

This is what I took away from this thread.

Veilan has never been wrong.

Ever.

You might agree or even be right, but you will never be as right as Veilan.

Resistance is futile. Submit.

[Veilan]

I accept your surrender.

[Electryc]

I voted yes. Of course I can understand some grumbling from a few PC's who had to do it the old fashion way. A simple statue to click at start area would get current level ones and new pc's to said level, instead of a poor DM answering the level-me-hotline.

several ways to do it if done. I like the bio option as well.

Nothing sadder in my DM days of hearing some PC put time and effort in character concept then die to a random spawn sewer rat dealing out 1-2 damage, or a lost PC who get's ganked in the wrong side of town.

Then again for the masochistic builder.. a new PC trial grounds to make it to level two(three) even w/ a chance of death.

[Veilan]

a new PC trial grounds to make it to level two(three) even w/ a chance of death.

Two level 1s enter, one level 2 leaves!

[oldgrayrogue]

I've been remiss from posting here for a reason....

My question is...

How did we get from Starting at level 1 being optimal to weather ALFA should be ad-hoc or campaign? Seems a bit off coarse to me. *uses the prybar to put the tracks back on track*

Level 1 simply is considered a drag disabling them to roleplay by some because our numbers are low. With more DMs (and players), almost all of ALFAs ills would be resolved, and this would not be much of an issue.

This is why the thread got off track Dan, because some people think that the only possible reason you could want a start over Level 1 is so you can play a WOW style game where you solo static spawns all day for phat loot and quick levels. So its a short leap for those who decry ANY change in ALFA to say that the REAL CHANGE we need is to turn ALFA into a group of empty campaign servers (the toppling of a Pillar btw and quite ironic) so that they can get their weekly PnP fix online.

Moving to a purely campaign style of play will NOT bring more players and DMs IMO. It will have the opposite effect entirely. Look at the most popular and populated NWN2 servers out there, they are not campaign servers. And yes, there are WOW type players there, but there are also good roleplayers there who likely would be interested in ALFA and our RP based style of play if we simply showed a bit of flexibility to respond to community wants and desires, when warranted. "Build and they will come" has not "failed" by any measure. We have an active player base that is growing. The key, in my view, is to get them hooked and playing the first time they log on, and we have the content available to do that. It gets hard though when they die to a rat bite in the first 5 minutes, realize they have to spend the first few weeks in tavern RP to survive, or roll up a PC concept who improves their chance of survival with or without a group and say "Screw this", and leave. This was the point of the original "brainstorming" post and the subsequent poll. Is a Level 1 start essential for ALFA, or might a higher starting level be better for ALFA? The membership is split on the issue, but after 10 pages of discussion and debate it is also clear that more people would like to see a change than not. If our goal is to attract more players and DMs, and that will solve all of our ills, I don't think we can afford to ignore that.

[Veilan]

because some people think [...] we need is to turn ALFA into a group of empty campaign servers

Who are "some people", and why do I get quoted in context with that absurd accusation... with the quote saying I believe more DMs and players would be good no less? Huh?

[CloudDancing]

What he says above is right, and this is from a DM that intimately works with players and has raised up four generations now of PCs on TSM. Out of a generation of 5-10 players, one survives insofar.

As per the mention of generations, people who started in Alfa in their 20's are now in thier 30s and 30's in their 40s and so forth up to venerable 60 year old holdouts from the first D&D PnP modules. ANNND in my recent discussions with new players, we have at least two people whos PARENTS played in Alfa1 and they play here now.

Thus with the rise of MMOs being the standard first experience for young players with D&D online, Age of Conan, and WoW, they come here with a inherent expectation of ease of play. They are excited. They have momentum. Heck they want to build.

And I have been unable to keep up that momentum for these excited new players alone. I have people that want to create and now I just tell them, "I know you are excited, but this is the process I have to go through as a DM, you will see your content, but in two or three months IF you follow the rules and do it perfectly." And that hurts me to disappoint them.

As per their gameplay excitement, two things diffuse that momentum. And the most important one is other players to play with. New players want to meet and play with people. Some get desperately upset when they miss out on DM time and miss people they want to play with.

The second thing is rampant player death. People can't make interesting RP characters because outside of cleric and ranger and the tougher races, because there just is no survivability factor. Heavy fighters are too poor to get proper armor. Spellcasters are too low to cast protections. DPS classes like rogue have no HP and have to stealth around. Thus I see good players with long term knowledge of Alfa walking about with 8 CHA just to survive. Or melee classes with 9 WIS or 9 INT.

And again my knowledge her comes from the fact I talk to real players that play on Alfa now. I get to know my players and spend time finding out who they are and what they can offer. Without playing as a player or dming, you loose touch with who is playing now and what their needs are for this great vision of "hardcore" that is obviously no longer applicable to this period in time.

[fluffmonster]

I could not disagree more with the last few posts that say static content should be eliminated and we should move to a pure campaign server style of play.

This is a rather severe and hyperbolic misinterpretation of what I said, but as I have already sinned-by-OT i'll not belabor the point. fwiw, I voted for higher starting level and have consistently supported such for a very long time.

I will say that if we can get players consistently related to a DM and other players from the get-go, their level 1 survivability goes up considerably and this conversation is much less pressing.

[Veilan]

As per their gameplay excitement, two things diffuse that momentum. And the most important one is other players to play with. New players want to meet and play with people. Some get desperately upset when they miss out on DM time and miss people they want to play with.

We're in full agreement here, the more the merrier, players and DMs. The goal is to enable people to play together, neither spread them apart over vast, unpopulated servers nor kill them off because they dared go peek outside the window.

The second thing is rampant player death. People can't make interesting RP characters because outside of cleric and ranger and the tougher races, because there just is no survivability factor. Heavy fighters are too poor to get proper armor. Spellcasters are too low to cast protections. DPS classes like rogue have no HP and have to stealth around. Thus I see good players with long term knowledge of Alfa walking about with 8 CHA just to survive. Or melee classes with 9 WIS or 9 INT.

I strongly disagree. ALFA is a lot less deadly than it used to be. We've done a lot of steps in build design. Noone wants to kill off level 1 characters. My character started at a rogue with 7 hp and a charisma score of 14. And on the first day, I went out with people and hunted goblins. Later even orcs and some lizardmen. We had no fatalities, but we were three or four, and occasionally DMs jetted in and out.

You make it almost sound like there's the grim reaper, level 20 orc fighter/weaponmaster, sitting just outside the inn with his vorpal dual kukris. People don't have to make power builds, people chose to make power builds, people don't have to metagame, people chose to metagame. I don't think giving candy to people like that is not the way to attract and maintain the kind of player we, well, used to want. I'm simply not satisfied with a PGer who's also a qualified RPer - there's a fair deal of those, but they're not why I chose to play in ALFA.

And again my knowledge her comes from the fact I talk to real players that play on Alfa now. I get to know my players and spend time finding out who they are and what they can offer. Without playing as a player or dming, you loose touch with who is playing now and what their needs are for this great vision of "hardcore" that is obviously no longer applicable to this period in time.

Hey, I'm the one playing the game of condescension here! Seriously, I've been an active player in ALFA 2 since live day, it's not that I disagree because I sit in my ivory tower writing Standards documents all day long. Well, which I do, too... but that's not the point here! I know this is probably reactionary, conservative and frustrating to enthusiastic newcomers, but ALFA really is the city on the hill to some of us, and there's some issues that arms might be raised about. I consider myself reasonably open to compromise, and I've always championed player interests, with a stellar record of that dating back to clashing with Sareena over making Standards publically accessible to everyone. It's just that some things make this place what it is, and you can't compromise on being a little pregnant. I value your enthusiasm, effort and opinion very much, Cloud, but you're not losing players because ALFA is an unbearably deadly kill-machine weeding out everyone that's not playing a dwarven barbarian with toughness and constituation 18.

Cheers,

[Mick]

Vorpal dual kukris would be cool.

[Mick]

Correction. Vorpal dual kukris would be SO cool.

[oldgrayrogue]

Veilan and fluff, if I misinterpreted the points of your posts, (which seems to have been the case) I apologize. No offense was intended.

[Mirabai]

Just as an aside, and this may or may not make a darn bit of difference to anyone...

Recall that in the latter days of NWN1, we started people at higher than level one. Some might argue this "doesn't count" because the servers were more or less campaign servers by then, but the DMs from those servers certainly still considered themselves as part of ALFA, and still complied with all the other ALFA guidelines... Additionally, I don't see a whole lot higher numbers happening on the servers here these days than I did back then so it begs the question when does a server become a "campaign server"...but I digress.

The point is, it was done, and nothing broke. No one flipped out, had a jealous fit, nothing got unbalanced and ALFA did not crumble. What it did do was give the DMs much greater flexibility in incorporating new PCs into existing group that were higher level, and it gave people who perhaps would not otherwise have rolled up a PC another reason to do so. It even introduced a couple people to ALFA.

Just sayin.

[dergon darkhelm]

[Rotku]

Recall that in the latter days of NWN1, we started people at higher than level one

Well, the opportunity was there. It was meant to be a 6 month trail on Sembia. At the end of the six months, I spoke to the HDM about it, to see how it went. He laughed and told me that I knew perfectly well how it went, as I was the ONLY person to take that opportunity to start a campaign PC. So to correct that quote, it would be more accurate to say "we started one person at higher than level one once"