24 Hour Cool Down between Servers

[oldgrayrogue]

OK this rule is completely idiotic IMO.

I have played like the last 2 years on BG, never portalled between servers except for once I think.

So I wanted to go from WHL to TSM with my alt. Can't go through BG because I have another PC there. Can't go direct WHL to TSM, have to go through MS.

Portal to MS. Try to hop a ship straight away to TSM. Get stuck on said ship for RL 24 hours.

I am pretty sure ALFA is the ONLY PW that enforces a rule against players logging in to play.

This is beyond idiotic.

I understand meta and PGing and what not but lets punish players who actually cheat, not those simply trying to use one of the coolest and most unique features of ALFA -- cross server travel.

We comic book time constantly. Why this is an issue is beyond me. Its like forcing my PC to RP sleeping, eating and crapping. Yay, fun.

With the new CvC rules the only real issue for concern with cross server travel -- calling people over to help you CvC someone -- should be gone. DMs can police people who server hop to farm DM events.

Please change this rule. Forcing players NOT to play is just dumb.

[Stormseeker]

I am with you on this one, lol nothing like the clock messing up and giving you 3,000 hrs.

[Ithildur]

We comic book time constantly

[Xanthea]

It's not like ALFA takes time seriously in the first place. People pretty much always ignore the distance between areas, even during DM events.

[CloudDancing]

I'd like to see the PC per server rule removed instead.

We can see exactly when people self-loot in the logger. So we can also see when PC1 drops loot and PC2 logs in ten seconds later and picks up the loot.

I trust the players not to loot their own corpses. I certainly trust them not to mule items to their second PC as much as I trust them not to twink out their friends low-level PCs or powerlevel them.

[maxcell]

Admin take note:

And now you see that when you give in to whining. It does not satisfy the whiner. The whiner simply finds something else to focus on, never being satisfied, always wanting their way.

(not directed at op as I can see his frustration, but in the old days, yes I said it, we knew about a trip like that and planned accordingly)

ps I was going to say kids instead of whiners, but edited to be nicer.

[oldgrayrogue]

I'll explain the trip. TSM was down a few days back, could not log in. Logged directly to WHL and got DM validated. Unfinished business on TSM that is IC to complete. Whole trip to WHL "comic book" timed IMO.

I'm not whining or looking to end all server restrictions. What I am saying is having a rule in place that forces players not to log in and play is simply stupid if the goal is to have players logged on and actually playing.

In all my time in ALFA I have played it IC because that is how I want to play it, not because a script forced me to. I'd say that applies to the majority. It's just a stupid rule, purists be damned.

[Regas]

As far as I'm concerned this should have never been an issue.

The 24 hour cool down is for ic playing. If you are simply changing servers just go directly to your server and ask a dm for validation. (Understanding that that might take a while until you find the right person). I wasn't aware we hard coded cool down periods, not to say it isn't posted somewhere though. Maybe the code can be amended to allow ooc transitions between servers? Understand too we have two distinct schools of thoughts on this, the comic book time, PnP style crowd and the immersive, simulation crowd. I'm not saying one is better than the other (more of a comic book time person myself).

As for the 30 day rule, you're allowed to cross a server to get to another ic, and a dm of the server can make exceptions for dm events. So you should not run afoul of either rule as long as you aren't playing both pcs on the same server. The rule is there to prevent abuses. We can use common sense though in how we apply the rule.

Yes, too many rules. We have rules because we have folks that abuse and game our systems with out them (and then game the rules we do make ). When we try and make exceptions for these rules for individuals members cry favoritism, when we make allowances within the rules (e.g. DM exceptions for alts on the same server) members cry our rules are a joke and why bother.

It's not a perfect system, to be sure. Feel free to suggest how me make it better, if you can everyone to agree, we can change it .

Regas

[Zelknolf]

hard coded

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I wasn't aware we hard coded cool down periods, not to say it isn't posted somewhere though.

We've had this since 2009. Acadius wrote that, with the post about it being here.

[Swift]

Unless Castano has made a ruling I have not heard of, DMs have always been allowed to walk across the server they DM on if their sole purpose is travel to another server, so long as they have minimal interaction while they are on.

This was put in place when MS went live (before you could portal directly from MS to TSM) so that BG DMs would not have their characters stuck on one server.

I am pretty sure ALFA is the ONLY PW that enforces a rule against players logging in to play.

Hyperbole FTW!

I still remember the days of ALFA where travel actually meant something to characters, rather than being an OOC annoyance and our servers were vastly bigger than what they are now.

[Castano]

no matter what after being validated onto WHL OGR would have to move through a third server (BG or MS) to get to TSM. This would have been the case w/o 2PCs, whether he was a DM or not etc. The fact he couldn't go to BG is not relevant right? But it is because WHL/BG have a special dispensation from Admin avoiding the 24 hr cooldown because they are "adjacent" *cackles*. Of course walking from Soubar to Baldur's Gate or riding a horse may take as long as a 10 day sea voyage from MS to BG...but we maintain realism here for the simulation crowd right?

Anyway the cool down has been here since 2009 and I have hated it since it was put in place. It does zero to deter people who chain farm statics by queuing multiple trips based on the timers set to those statics. It does cause mess ups when people have set times they can play and something happens like a validation, or they forget their PC is on server X and needs to move back to attend its regularly scheduled campaign.

And yes ALFA is the only PW that crazily has rules to keep people from playing.

The solution for now is liberal use of DM validations. DMs can tell when you really need to get someplace you should be ICly and when you are going there to be bad... I trust our DMs to make the distinction.

I will raise the portal cool down issue with admin.

[Ithildur]

It's not like ALFA takes time seriously in the first place. People pretty much always ignore the distance between areas, even during DM events.

I'd like to see the PC per server rule removed instead.

I'd like a gold dragon mount for my PC and an item that lets him teleport from server to server without impunity.

I'd also like to play my PC on MS (or did at one time) where I DM.

I also would like to cvc several deserving PCs and take their uber lootz without impunity.

... a few times I have, at least; 98% of the time I prefer to exercise self control and am completely happy with how ALFA works and why. I'm here for ALFA, for hardcore RP, not for BGTSC or whatever else is out there.

I love the 'person A raises what might be a valid suggestion for change A' posts inspiring completely unrelated 'alfa is stupid we need B, C, Z that I/ME/MY likes' threads we've been seeing the past few months; it's usually the same two or three folks too.

Back to the topic, while I understand there are some reasonable RL vs IC limits (and think our current 24 hour restriction is a rather unrefined/simplistic way to enforce IC distances), in ALFA we're supposed to at least make some attempt to RP EVERYTHING IN CHARACTER, including time and distance as much as can be managed reasonably. I personally hate comic book time, both as player and DM. I hate people being able to zip around vast distances (without Teleport) without batting an eyelash; if I see someone zipping back and forth from Rivermoot to Silverymoon several times in one session I conclude that they are not RPing. Sure, some things can be taken with a grain of salt, and a DM can override most things with an IC way to justify something (imagination ftw!) as they can always control the narrative flow of things like time/distance, but in general we've always believed in striving for immersion in ALFA.

Travel from region to region in alfa IS indeed a cool feature of the project, perhaps one of the coolest, but it is NOT cool to make travel trivial; one of the reasons why the trip for the Ducklings from SD to WD was epic was because, well, it was an epic trip that took a lot of thought, planning, and took days/multiple sessions to reach the destination.

[Swift]

And yes ALFA is the only PW that crazily has rules to keep people from playing.

The portal cooldown does not stop people from playing. It stops people travelling the entire length of Faerun in 20 minutes. That was considered a good thing when it was put in.

How much more do we want to water down ALFA?

[danielmn]

[Wild Wombat]

I maintain that the argument about inter-server travel has gone on in ALFA since March 2003, when I joined. I doubt that it started when I joined and that leads me to believe that ALFA may have been created in a watered down form! Yes, ALFA was born as a mere shadow of itself.