Amn PC's

[I-KP]

Zelk there seems to be a bit of a disconnect then. I think everyone agrees that a straight import from their vault is out because of tech problems. I think what people are saying is just let them rebuild the player from scratch here under our system. Would that cause a tech nightmare and lots of work for you? if so then i agree that it should not be done. Just not sure if that is the case.

We know that this sort has problems, too-- and that the problems are sneaky cusses that take months (and one time, years) to crop up, with widely variable quantities of work required to patch up the messes we find: and these aren't things that can be neatly handled ahead of time. We could add a bunch onto our logging systems (because we at least know in advance that one breaks), but that's a poor indicator of what will actually go wrong overall (I just cite it because it's more fragile than everything else, and tends to be the thing that we point to after fixing the breakage that prompted us looking in and say "Yup, that's broken too, but we can't fix that one. Just going to have to awkwardly tell the DMs that their tools are wrong and hope they make good decisions anyway.").

Being mindful of potential problems cropping up later on is of course the only diligent thing to do; however, locking down any and all action based only on the fear of problems doesn't come across as being a particularly robust concern. Could you point out some specific problems that levelling up a PC from start here on ALFA could generate?

Thus far the only potential issue we have to work with here is with the logging system. This is hardly a game-breaker, and may even be addressed with the one-off manual entry of a '-23,000' row.

I've had a character with a broken reference for nearly two years, and this has been indirectly referenced several times now. I had the numbers ran for the last 12 months of my activity and here are the ratios:-

Combat XP - 6.8%
RPXP - 32.2%
NPC Quest - 1.1%
DM Quest - 48.3%
DM RPXP - 10.5%
DM Bonus - 1.1%
XP/RL Hr - 45.43

They look a bit odd don't they. At least, they might look a bit odd to anyone's eyes but mine because the above reflect how I've been playing ALFA accurately. In this case at least, and with regard to the above numbers only, the logging is returning representative numbers. I realise that this doesn't prove anything beyond that the logging system is robust enough to at least not collapse in on itself when working with a mismatched character name between tables, but it is a practical example that we can look at.

To reiterate, if we had another example of how a one-off 20,000XP DM Brucie Bonus will knacker the game we might be able to suggest a work-around.

[t-ice]

Assuming we're reaching an import "deal", and anyone takes it, we're not looking to import exact character sheets, but stories. I find it hard to see how starting a PC with N xp, and slap appropriate gear on him from the ALFA pallette, would break ALFA infra systems? You can't rebuild ALFA PCs from scratch if something goes fubar with the bic and/or database? Sounds amazing if the vaunted ALFA systems really don't have this safeguard? (And by extension, then building such would probably benefit ALFA beyond just Amn imports?)

At the end of the day the purpose of any PC transfer is to improve the Amn server for live day. NPCs are always only skin-deep compared to PCs, and having PCs who ICly experienced Amn's history, telling it to new and visiting PCs from their perspectives, would to me seem an attractive prospect for ALFA:Amn on its day 1. I will give I have no small personal interest in the continuity, in that I've had my hand in shaping it.

If the fact that some player got a couple "free" xp points creates a bitter acrimony towards the new Amn server, then we're totally beating the purpose. I would hope people see there's a lot more than xp points to this game - if there wasn't no-one would be DMing to create stories, mind you. But due to that fear I suggested the ultimately conservative offer that no xp gets "imported", an ALFA PC a player wishes to (temp-)retire can rebuild to match the story of the old Amnian PC.

For what it's worth, it seems to me both Adanu and Greasemang, the ones to say they're considering an import, would have XP levels within the range to make such a "conservative" retire-rebuild work. (But I haven't actually pulled their xp numbers)

I would remind that Amn's DM team need be fully on-board as well, which means MaxBogs, who will be leading that team, should have a weighty say here.

[Adanu]

But due to that fear I suggested the ultimately conservative offer that no xp gets "imported", an ALFA PC a player wishes to (temp-)retire can rebuild to match the story of the old Amnian PC.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Basically take away their XP and have them 'level up' all over again from scratch? Or something else?

[t-ice]

But due to that fear I suggested the ultimately conservative offer that no xp gets "imported", an ALFA PC a player wishes to (temp-)retire can rebuild to match the story of the old Amnian PC.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Basically take away their XP and have them 'level up' all over again from scratch? Or something else?

Meaning that you start at Amn with the same XP you had on your ALFA char, but with the character and story from Exodus. So no net xp gets imported to the world of ALFA, you just switch stories.

So you would (temp-)retire Zyrus, and take up Damien with Zyrus's XP (or lower if Zyrus was too high lvl to fit Damien's story). If Damien dies, you'd probably have to start with a new PC, but if you want to later retire Damien, you can take Zyrus from temp retirement like any other.

[kid]

Not how temp retirement works really.

However I would not limit toons to the XP they managed to acumilate on ALFA.
If there are old Amn players that never played ALFA (I have no info) I would not mind them joining now with thier old toons either.

Infact I would want them more than I would want current ALFA players just switching toons, that's the much least attractive option (Though still allright). Old Amn players, if there are any, that want thier toons back and never played ALFA and can get thier old-new canvas here are very welcomed imm.

[t-ice]

If there are old Amn players that never played ALFA (I have no info) I would not mind them joining now with thier old toons either.

Well that would be great, but as I said earlier in the thread, I can think of maybe one player who'd fall to that category. Exodus has been shut for a year now, and what potential players there where to migrate to ALFA pretty much have already.

At least I as a Amn DM am not looking forward to reviving PCs that haven't been played at Exo for years. These PCs don't have the story continuity that could help the Amn server up from the ground. Getting these players back would be great, but I doubt we would even that much want players who would need such xp candy to respond. Just letting them know we're back alive under ALFA (with a mass email) is what we can do to attract those who are proud of RP and not XP. (They might restart old favorite PC concepts once played at Exo and since forgotten, though)

[Adanu]

I would think Damien works as an NPC or a PC. NPC Damien would be a good druid and Chauntean church interface and PC would be a good guide to the land, among other things. Both Zyrus and Damien are both more or less the same level.

[Zelknolf]

You can't rebuild ALFA PCs from scratch if something goes fubar with the bic and/or database? Sounds amazing if the vaunted ALFA systems really don't have this safeguard? (And by extension, then building such would probably benefit ALFA beyond just Amn imports?)

It's not that we don't try; it's that PCs are the most complicated objects in play, and that we have a few chumps who, say, post a biased sample from one tool and declare everything fine based on that (severely lacking) evidence, which itself perpetuates a relatively-careless handling of our PCs (which results in my having to work to clean up after the chumps and those who believe their chumpery).

The fact is that when people do things like rebuild PCs from scratch; completely delevel / relevel PCs; change PC names; change PC feats, stats, or spells; or abruptly increase/ decrease XP totals, bugs happen. They come from the many points of integration involved in keeping a PC in game in a multi-server persistent world with our level of access to the game's data and functionality from outside the game. They "hide" simply by the speed of new development and the sprawling girth of our game world, which makes a given PC only exposed to a small portion of functional code at any one given time. That's just the reality of trying to do something significant enough to be dubbed "vaunted" in any circles.

It is work to have these PCs around, because I have to monitor them, am far more likely to get complaints of malfunctions from their players, and we'll never have an ironclad system to handle everything that can be done with them on account of that complexity. It'll get better, sure, and we always try to make it better, but that doesn't make overtly-risky strategies a good idea, and trying to bring PCs from another world over, by any rebranding of the term, is constructing PCs in ways which are unexpected by our ruleset and which we have no handling for, only a rough idea of what it would mean to add that handling, and parallel demands from the DM team for pretty massive projects.

[I-KP]

Chumps, failures, biased... I find it interesting that as the tech lead, in answer to what in essence is a technical issue, you choose to bandy around thinly veiled insults and insinuations about the character of those who post in this thread rather than provide any technical enlightenment.

[t-ice]

Chumps, failures, biased... I find it interesting that as the tech lead, in answer to what in essence is a technical issue, you choose to bandy around thinly veiled insults and insinuations about the character of those who post in this thread rather than provide any technical enlightenment.

Regardless I doubt it'll be fruitful to decend this thread to thinly veiled insult exchanges.

[Zelknolf]

The correct term for data which is collected in restricted fashion such that it skews or misrepresents the results is a "biased sample." It is a technical term which carries no insult beyond any felt over having made a fallacious argument. No offense is meant by the use of the term; I am simply attempting to use the standard means of identifying the reason that the argument cannot stand.

Trying to rebrand Exodus' current status as some sort of attack on its membership seems similarly flawed. Exodus was a derivative project; it did not survive. That's the reality of games-- not all of them make it. Not once did I claim that Exodus was somehow "bad" for closing its doors or for using the early ACR to support its growth (though I have griped about bugs on ALFA's side because of Exodus' implementation), or that its contribution to ALFA or to the NWN2 community as a whole was somehow tainted by simple failure. The reality is that NWN2-- and NWN1 for that matter-- survives and thrives on derivative work, and their eventual failures. These things run through their own natural life cycles, from which we can draw out content and innovations. I only assert that Exodus was no more special than any other world. I fully expect people to take the loss of characters with loss of a world in stride, and fully expect that when ALFA2 finally closes its last server, that I will give up whatever character I have and start a new one in whatever game I play next. That's all it is-- Exodus was a similar game, but a distinct game, and I want to treat it thusly.

I willy apologize for the use of the word "chump," though. I could have said "person/ people" and been just as effective, though I personally find the word innocuous but owning of a sound denotation (namely, a person who is easily deceived) and connotation (namely, a quaint and mostly-antiquated term) for my purposes. Usually, "mostly-antiquated" holds the curious property of being inoffensive-- like calling a false claim "humbug"-- and I'd hoped to harvest that sense to blunt the harsh reality behind the message.




To the question of "enlightenment," I simply can't explain the whole ACR to every curious person. The fact is that we would not be able to do anything even remotely like what we do with our game if it was simple enough to be described to everyone, and there is no software documentation which can actually enumerate all bugs. In the case of curiously-built PCs, the greatest concern is in how PC-centric the ACR is, in that almost everything that happens in game does so after hooking an event set in motion by a PC, gathering data from and about that PC, and then orchestrating a response. The capacities for missing and incongruous data to cause significant functional problems are endless, because we've always taken as a given that all PCs in ALFA servers will be ALFA PCs and that they will be made in a certain way. If that's not enough, the best I can say is that you'll get the best understanding of what's going on by reading the ACR. We do make the ACR public, mind you, with the notion that people who wanted to read it could do so (and in general mimicing of the concepts of the Copyleft movement-- which you might've picked up some hint of above). That's all there is to the request-- I can't provide what you ask in the format you ask because it doesn't (and can't) exist that way.

To the question of previously-bugged PCs, I can't provide that information because those are other peoples' PCs, and bugs aren't usually something as undangerous as a trailing space on a surname. If the affected players wish to provide information about their PCs, they're welcome to do so, but I have no way of knowing what information about a given PC is private and am aware of ways which almost everything on a character sheet can "out" a PC in a sensitive circumstance.

[Sidhe]

The sheer hate/bile/superiority being put forward is shameful.

So there are plenty of misconceptions floating around here...

1. Ian et al have long since vanished - 4? years ago. Get over it and the bias that comes with it.

2. ALFA approached me about bridging Amn and ALFA. Not the other way around. Trid and a few other active ALFA DM's pitched the idea to me and I approached Curm and Rotku. From here I/we encountered heavy resistance from both sides and even after "no server bridge will be needed - too hard" was decided upon, I continued to push for further integration. In a nutshell, Java and aspects of ALFA could not get over their egos - achieving nothing but pushing us back two years from what is happening right now.

3. Exodus was slower in leveling (3 years for lvl 8+), lower in magic (most powerful, non DM player weapon was ALFA effective +2), Had no static content, and, had deeper richer stories per player (people here bang on about special, cool, long PrC quests -- Together with T, I personally DM'ed Amn PC's through PrC and other storied quests lasting some 3+ years...this was not an exception - it was the norm.)

4. We are talking about 4-5 players I think. I know of 4 who have expressed interest in this. Most of them (from memory) started at 0 XP. Highest being lvl 11.

So, having said all of that I am not against transferring over. However I have a few concerns:

1. I would hate to see the players of Amn reinstate high level PC's only so the player can have an advantage on another server. For instance, and only as an example and not to single you out Adanu, Damien would have a much easier time in anywhere but Amn. I would hate to see him spend a token few days in Amn and 'RP' his way to another server. The point of the transfer in this regard becomes moot.

2. All items would have to conform to ALFA rules. For most this would mean pricing, for a few this would mean they couldn’t come over and would have to be replaced with ALFA OK items.

3. Amn is going to be a lot different than the paladin state it was in the last few years of Exo. This means some high level PC's may feel disjointed, a disconnect between what they experienced/expect and what new reality is. Amn will be as it is meant to be in LoI.

At the end of the day what does it really matter? Is it really that big of an issue one way or another?

[Adanu]

Damien would have a much easier time in anywhere but Amn. I would hate to see him spend a token few days in Amn and 'RP' his way to another server. The point of the transfer in this regard becomes moot.

I've always wanted Damien to travel, but agreed on that point.

That being said, my intention has always been for Damien to 'distance' himself from Amn proper over time once his druidy plans had been started on. They never were started on since Exodus closed down before he could start working on building a circle in the area. He'd probably have kept up with the Chauntean church... but would not have bothered with high society like other PCs did.

[I-KP]

I would hate to see the players of Amn reinstate high level PC's only so the player can have an advantage on another server. I would hate to see him [Damien] spend a token few days in Amn and 'RP' his way to another server. The point of the transfer in this regard becomes moot.

Fair point. If an Exo:Amn PC is rebuilt then the least that player can then do in return is remain loyal to their home server (cf. 'loyal' doesn't necessarily mean 'chained to'), even if this requires a slight IC motivation retcon. Fair is fair, give and take, etc.

Four or five players, eh. That sounds rather encouraging.

[I-KP]

To the question of "enlightenment," I simply can't explain the whole ACR to every curious person.
...
If the affected players wish to provide information about their PCs, they're welcome to do so, but I have no way of knowing what information about a given PC is private and am aware of ways which almost everything on a character sheet can "out" a PC in a sensitive circumstance.
...
The correct term for data which is collected in restricted fashion such that it skews or misrepresents the results is a "biased sample." It is a technical term which carries no insult beyond any felt over having made a fallacious argument.

I wasn't asking for a full explanation of the ACR system but I was interested in understanding which areas of the system might be put at risk by doing this, in your expert opinion. I'm just a player, you are under no obligation to explain anything to me, but such disclosure may prompt others with working knowledge of ACR to offer a solution that otherwise may not have been considered. If this does go ahead then such information might also be handy to enable the involved players, DMs and admins to keep an eye on certain areas, to watch for anomalies; forewarned is forearmed, etc.

You do not need to disclose the innermost IC motivations of a PC to say something like: “I helped I-KP rebuild his level 6 character after a problem but since then his RPXP has been a little flaky.” This does not give my character away as being a Blightbeast. (Although I may just have done. Super.)

I do hope that you understand why I referred to the XP logging and white space issue. It was indirectly referred to several times and it at least stood as being one referential example of a potential rebuild pitfall where no other example was being provided. In your expert position you were able to quickly dismiss this from being relevant; fine, and I’m glad about that. Let’s not turn this into something it isn’t.