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| Sure Is Quiet! | |
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| Topic Started: Apr 15 2017, 10:28 PM (3,994 Views) | |
| edmaster44 | Apr 16 2017, 08:58 PM Post #16 |
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I try to Run Events in the Main hub and unfortunately, i always crash due to some weird technical phenomenon in this game where having an Uber PC makes it crash harder than my Ex Girlfriend after a heroin binge. I kinda agree with Niryain here, can't really rock the boat too hard in Sigil with out the lady going "Nah son, this is MY Turf". Factions are the only way to "Advance" in Society in a way, and well ...it's left more to the players to create their own stories more or less with people willing too support it. Most of the Events I've ran was through Player Request, while i kicked something off, and hope it grows bigger through the use of In Game Forums and my fellow players spitting the mad gospel. Injecting some new Life? In how people can Advance levels and XP could also go a long way. The Setting is cool, but a bit ...alien and hard to get into for the Average NWN Player Imo while Everyone knows FR and Eliminster, aka he who twiddly diddly do Mystra for the millionth time. |
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| Mr_Otyugh | Apr 16 2017, 09:03 PM Post #17 |
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I think Her Serenity should be left as "they don't intervene" in just about all events. And if people ask why not, simple. You don't know, nobody does. Her Serenity does her own decisions. Unless players are boring and go all "Well I guess her serenity will fix it" then let them die to whatever impending threat they left for her Serenity to fix that'll teach people for trying to trust an enigma. And yes, she is an enigma, you aren't supposed to know how she operates, if you think you do, wrong!
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| MimiFearthegn | Apr 16 2017, 09:28 PM Post #18 |
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Mistress of the Toolset / Player-Side Admin
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Yeah, from an OOC perspective, the vast vast majority of plot points are never going to bother Her Serenity, so its not particularly an issue. If it WOULD bother her, someone will let you know. . . |
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Do not hesitate to send me a PM if you: - Have questions about building, or joining the Dev Team - Want to join or start an event for the Mercykillers, Fated, or Signers - You have been waiting more than 2 days for me to post in an IC forum thread | |
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| D0rtyPTr | Apr 16 2017, 09:51 PM Post #19 |
Clueless
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As another newcomer (well, been here a while now but I don't get much play time) I'll say that I echo much of what LeonDuguit has said. In regards to the idea of an overarching plot, much needed. One of my struggles has been finding a way to legitimately get involved or rather to feel like my characters could get involved and a larger running plot would certainly help. However, I feel it worth mentioning that I haven't seen much evidence of players having affected major change on the server at all. Can characters affect the server setting or is it just that few if any characters have ever been able to actually achieve it and my forum lurking hasn't led me to the appropriate topics? If not then that could easily be a major contributing factor to declining player retention levels. Keep in mind that every player is taking on the role of the main character in a story. If that character has no goals to achieve the character will grow stagnant and the player will move on to a new character or server or game. Every character needs some goal, whether its overcoming an evil god's schemes or becoming a god themselves, or opening an alchemy stand. In any story-driven game, character motivation is strongly linked to player motivation. If it is an impossibility for a character to achieve a goal that would have a large impact on the server setting (such as becoming a deity or a faction leader or killing a deity or whatever) then this limits the number of potential character goals that directly translate to player motivation and it becomes more important to maintain another source of goals for those characters; external plots. Personally I always felt the best thing was to let people push their characters towards whatever goals they want, in the end they'll ruin each other's plans or their own the vast majority of the time. Servers are more interesting when guilds and groups are actively working against each other, trying to get a leg up on the competition or stop them from getting it. If you want factions to be engines of interaction rather than exclusive clubs, they need to be pitted against each other more. There should be a load of background politics and intrigue going on here with information brokers and assassinations and things but I've seen nothing like that (maybe I've just missed it though, as i said i don't get a ton of play time). 15 factions that maintain a highly complex, tentative and delicate web of alliances and oppositions to one another that bring some semblance of balance despite their constant vying for power and the results I've seen in game are people standing in separate little groups during events and not a word about faction politics being spoken, seems odd. There are times I've felt like I'm looking at a group of Islamic extremists and KKK standing 10 feet from each other at an event and they're just ignoring each other. Stir up shit between the factions and the larger guilds and back alley dealings will follow, the only real requirement is that the consequences and benefits must be real, if a faction gets hit hard enough there should be changes to reflect their weakened position. You may not be able to rock the boat too hard in sigil, but that's because the boat's pretty rocky already. Faction tension and blood war is a lot of space for interesting things to happen, never mind all the other planes' hijinks. And with so much going on the occasional mad wizard isn't going to struggle too much to go unnoticed while he slowly amasses more power in his effort to achieve godhood or whatever, maybe he'll make it, maybe he'll hang about sigil til he gets the lady's attention or maybe he'll step on some toes and get killed, who knows. The challenge in the sigil setting isn't to rock the boat, it's to steal all the rum while everyone else is trying to rock it because they're too silly to notice the boat is already swaying wildly from side to side. |
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| Tomekk | Apr 16 2017, 09:59 PM Post #20 |
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Dark Soul
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I see player-versus-player conflict is being mentioned a lot as a solution to stagnation... but its simply not, in my opinion. At the end of a conflict, which is a usually a short time of flaring emotions and tempers, someone is going to win big and someone else is going to lose a lot of hours and effort, with their character most likely crippled beyond repair or killed off. That's a good way of making someone quit the game for good, as this isn't exactly a typical multiplayer game where you just start another game as if nothing happened. Besides, the majority of players here are in for a more casual, care free experience, and no one is really keen on logging on to hear their group/character got defeated at X and now they can no longer do Y. Now conflict against NPCs on the other hand... that's actually what this whole thing called D&D is about, after all.
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"From the realms below we ride, And in terror they run and hide, From the shadows of old we rise, Awakened, from the dark! Over the ancient ruins we fly, Where the old kings go to die, And the new kingdoms rising high, Awakened, from the dark, dark slumber!" | |
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| Theodoreick | Apr 16 2017, 10:09 PM Post #21 |
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Well, the bazaar had been torn asunder during an event some three months ago, I'd hardly say there is stagnation and immutability. What I found a bit odd, on the other hand, was that even hanging in the destroyed bazaar for a good while I hardly ever heard anybody discussing why it had been turned into that state apart for a few extremely vague allusions. So even for events and plots I suppose it is the same story of player numbers: advertising is crucial. |
| PnP, Pencil-and-paper: the term refers to the ancient tools that were available to early roleplaying humankind. The pencil was a long piece of wood that contained a soft, staining, carbon-based material called graphite encased inside. Early roleplaying humans would scrape the pencil across the surface of paper. Paper was the term used to describe an early form of random access memory, consisting of pressed tree pulp that was smooth and designed to easily absorb the scrapings of pencil graphite. | |
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| Summer Wind | Apr 16 2017, 10:18 PM Post #22 |
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Your Fickle Friend
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We've been through all of this a dozen times in the past, haven't we? We know SCoD's major flaws: -Leveling is crazy fast to level 20, normal to level 29, and then takes ten years to achieve level 30 -Gear is broken. Just broken. It's never worked on SCoD. Ever. Drops are too rare, broad and random, every single player outfits themselves at the whim of PC merchants, which means grinding for ways to make cash. And no one likes grinding. -Gear is still broken. It's either laughably overpowered and therefore the default thing everyone is trying to get, or it's not that one laughably overpowered thing and is thus relegated to Electrifier fodder. -Gear yet remains broken. SCoD is that server you play on where your character's power is determined in minor part by build and in most part by the gear you have. -The setting and plots. We don't use the setting to flavor our plots. At all. This is the server set in Sigil by happenstance, where we run save-the-world plots more appropriate to a Forgotten Realms server, than something Planescape oriented. Like I said, we know these problems, we've been complaining about them for years, and... never fixed them. Every time we do this we agree almost unanimously on what the problems are and then... never fix them. So, what are we talking about here? Are we having our semi-annual moan and groan about problems that we'll... never fix? Or are we actually going to do something about it this time? Let's face facts. NWN and NWN2 are dying. Together there are perhaps 400 people left on the planet who play these two games, and yeah, we're competing for those numbers. 30 on SCoD are 30 who aren't on Baldur's Gate or Haven. But why should they be on SCoD? This question has been asked in this thread already, and even I'm pressed to come up with a good answer. I love SCoD. I really do. I'm planning on sticking around, hoping that it revitalizes, but it's not going to happen in a big way without some real changes. Changes that will require work, and changes that some people just won't like. Changes like seriously overhauling the server's approach to equipment. And no, it's not a matter of the drop tables being bugged. In all my years here I've never been able to remotely outfit my characters based on drops. It's bigger than that. For example: SCoD completely gimps a prestige class because of how powerful certain longbows are. One more time: An item makes a prestige class obsolete. Yep. That's just one example. Gear drops too rarely, when it does drop it's too powerful, and with the crafting system those things can become even more powerful. This creates a vicious cycle of gear requirement and difficulty and what we end up with is a world in which every single adventurer laughs if those boots aren't Sun Soul +5. Maybe it's time to revisit the concept of SCoD and Planescape, and get back to its roots. Maybe it's time to acknowledge that the solution isn't to diversify, but to take several steps back and try again with new wisdom in hand. No, I'm not talking about a vault wipe. But I am talking about reworked equipment, I am talking about new loot tables, I am talking about re-balancing the scales. It will take a lot of work and it will cause a ruckus. But what's left? We're in the last stretches of the NWN/NWN2 era now. We can either accept that SCoD is flawed and ride it out as is, with a few band-aids slapped on to help it along, but a few new events and plots aren't going to solve the actual problems. The problems are bone deep here. They always have been. |
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| Niryain | Apr 16 2017, 10:26 PM Post #23 |
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Anarch at Heart
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Organized my thoughts on gear better than I managed, and I agree. My gearing path is scrounge up enough gear to be able to do the Baator swamp reasonably then pawn off devil bloods at about 300 a pop to pay my way to the +5/best/set gear in each slot whenever I'm lucky enough to see a PC merchant on. That system is really not good, and prone to failure after a point. Know why? Because gold has an end point of use. Once a merchant has their house they stop merchanting. And I don't blame them, as it's a boring and tedious task to set up your stalls then basically AFK while people window shop and sometimes buy. I have better things to do with my time and so do most people. So yes, the gear system is fundamentally what hurts alts and new players because it's impossible to advance save for the whims of someone else who might not have a long term investment into being there. And that's a kind of systemic problem that needs deep changes. My only worry about the suggestion is the Grandfathering Thing. Wouldn't do to rework loot tables to not obsolete a PrC if old PCs still keep that bow. And so forth. |
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Level 30 Forum Warrior Also I sometimes play on the server I guess. “I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” | |
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| MimiFearthegn | Apr 16 2017, 10:37 PM Post #24 |
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I don't think you're going to find too many arguments on gear being an issue, and it not just having to do with the current drops. Its been widely bandied about that we needed an economic overhaul for years now, and hopefully this is the year! In the short term, the plan is to add in more quests to get gear at low levels. The reworked bazaar quests are kind of the first taste of that (though yes, those are all gold). |
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Do not hesitate to send me a PM if you: - Have questions about building, or joining the Dev Team - Want to join or start an event for the Mercykillers, Fated, or Signers - You have been waiting more than 2 days for me to post in an IC forum thread | |
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| Whitefly | Apr 16 2017, 10:55 PM Post #25 |
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;)
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*Points at Summer Wind* *Gives a thumbs up* |
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Moxie Anafara Angas, aka Ixsaea; delightful Xaositectiefling Kismet Saljahasa; "really friendly" air elemental sort Ravvi Beaconberry; adorable hin adventuress | |
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| Sinlinara | Apr 16 2017, 11:43 PM Post #26 |
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Player-Support DM
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Factions are nice, but they require people to join them. As it is, too few people do and those that do are spread thin across the 15 factions. As for people not talking about why the Bazaar was destroyed. . . At one point I felt like my character was nothing but an exposition machine telling the entire story from start to finish ad nauseum. I suppose we just never ran into each other. |
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| Whitefly | Apr 17 2017, 12:05 AM Post #27 |
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;)
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Maybe a good way to handle the factions is alliances. We know the lobsters + stabby justice people + judges = triad of douche, and they tend to see a lot of play as a result, so maybe the other factions should have a similar degree of... groupiness. |
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Moxie Anafara Angas, aka Ixsaea; delightful Xaositectiefling Kismet Saljahasa; "really friendly" air elemental sort Ravvi Beaconberry; adorable hin adventuress | |
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| MimiFearthegn | Apr 17 2017, 01:19 AM Post #28 |
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We have thrown around ideas on how to group the factions into multiple triads. The problem is those sticky factions in the middle do not group into 3's very effectively. However! There are a few other notable alliances. They, like the Triad, do enable players in them to be groupy. Of course, alliances are not all sunshine and roses. We have multiple times run into situations where the players in factions didn't really want to cooperate, or they just weren't remotely on the same page. Even the Triad alliance is rocky most days. But here's a couple of faction alliances off the top of my head - Godsmen + Athar - their factols are buddies, and they are philosophically aligned currently. Go forth and enlighten the city. Sensates + Signers - they unite over individualism, and against those depressing Bleakers. Doomguard + Bleakers + Dustmen - the Triad of Chaos. The DM team has gone out of its way in the past to make this group stick together NPC-wise, so . . . if you're in one of these factions please do be sticky. Of course, in practice, I feel like the vast majority of the "neutral" factions - Ciphers, Signers, Sensates, Godsmen, and to an extent, Indeps - have a really easy time mingling and doing stuff together. Fated are in a bit of a bind because. . they tax people. . but they can hang out with the Guvners and MK. Xaositects can hang out with the Triad of Chaos if they feel very grim, or anyone else who is chaotic leaning if they're more happy-go-lucky. And so on . . . |
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Do not hesitate to send me a PM if you: - Have questions about building, or joining the Dev Team - Want to join or start an event for the Mercykillers, Fated, or Signers - You have been waiting more than 2 days for me to post in an IC forum thread | |
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| orcy11 | Apr 17 2017, 02:03 AM Post #29 |
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Prime
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yes I think we are way too divided I have not been in any sort of ongoing event forever the last time I was in a event that took some time up was when dm slimydoom ran the cormyr one and lately I been feeling I should just give up and go over to BG I feel like its waste of time standing around in character with nothing to contribute when people just do not want to include you because of a b and so on and I think that sort of rp is the reason why the player base dropped of course people are going to leave when they can't do anything for any sort of story driven plot. |
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| rapsam2003 | Apr 17 2017, 03:15 AM Post #30 |
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Well, a lot of folks just needed a break, really. I took one and have been playing the new Mass Effect game. But there's always the opportunity for new plots, just gotta step up and think of one. Edit: By the way, stand by, but I'm gonna think of a plot for some more neutral-ish characters. Probably a group deal, nothing super long, but I'd like to be able to, for instance, stuff some folks like orcy11's Rexxer could have the opportunity to join. So, please stick around. Depends on my work schedule as to when I can actually run it, and I need to run it by Mimi, of course. |
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that'll teach people for trying to trust an enigma. And yes, she is an enigma, you aren't supposed to know how she operates, if you think you do, wrong!




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12:39 AM Jul 11