New Players / Player Retention and "getting the word out" about BGTSCC

[Steve]

Why not start all PC level 5 ?

There will still the level phase, but you avoid the first levels which must be very difficult for some classes. I don't speak for myself I play fighting classes and have no dificulties at start, but I suppose it must be very difficult for a low HD class with only level 1 spells.

Or if keeping the level 1 start, multiply by 2 or 3 the reward for the low level quests. A multiplier only available until a level to be determined.

I’d add that allow the Player to choose to Level-in at 1, up to 3 (or 5). That way, you don’t take away the actual lowest starting point.

[blazerules]

Honestly a level 5 start isn't that bad. It doesnt take all that long to hit level 5 can do so in less than an hour, but it can be an incredibly painful journey for some classes and builds. Especially so for newer players.

A really good idea really.

[DaloLorn]

Minor nitpick: You don't need silvered weapons for the graveyard. You need a mixture of slashing (for the zombies) and bludgeoning (for the skeletons).

Otherwise, yes, we need a tutorial quest... but some people who must not be named are barking up the wrong tree. There's hardly any NWScript involved in this kind of quest, it's almost entirely toolset stuff. That means the most I can do is offer logistical support, plugging holes in our existing assortment of scripts (e.g. I'm pretty sure we don't have a script to "level up to X regardless of ECL") as they become apparent.

[Ashenie]

Hello there,

In my opinion, there are several aspects that could help new and more ancient players. I have read the conversation. It is sad to see that many points brought are often the same, over the years. Yet as someone who also dedicated a lot of recent time working for the server, I can say that getting anything implemented is far from easy, even when it seems so very easy on paper. Sometimes it's a true nightmare, that only leave disappointed people behind.

---

I - Ancient Game
Like many mentioned, we have an ancient game, with old mechanics. Game wise, there are many better options. No matter how we try, even with some people who design game as a living among the community, we will never ever reach the level of professional companies. However, we can have many options not present anywhere else.

I believe the focus should be diversity, character creation options, races, classes, prestige classes, deities, roleplay tools, language tools. Anything that can support some of these points :
- Character specific design and character development
- Roleplay management and story creation
- Lore and immersion

Playing monstrous races is an example. A lot of content can simply be downloaded as other people made them throughout the years. So it just need to be added, not actually developped.
Playing in actual netherese ruins will get some people very excited.
Playing with so many spells, feats and classes that absolutely no character is alike is a way to favor interactions. Instead of having a "better" way to design a character, this would shift to having many specialities.
Playing a character who can fly could be great to some.

Anything that will add to immersion may help counter the old mechanics of the game. Because even with poor mechanics, having the possibility to play your character as designed in your head, and not by the very limited options of the server, is a way to keep people going, and sticking, in my opinion.

II - Contradictory Leads
A recurring issue I have, and had, is how some expectations are contradictory. It easily leads people to feel disheartened.
I can give an easy example. Divine characters are told to stick to their deity or they fall. Yet deities and what they allow, disallow, are changed. Some have domains they should not have, or don't have domains they should. Some support classes they should not support.
Another example is to be narratively level 15 and mechanically level 30. A narrative level 15 can't cast epic spells. This leads to confusion, sadness, or frustration in my option.
Often, all this feels like in one hand people should respect the lore and the rules, on the other hand the lore and the rules are changed or reinterpreted at whim when it feels convenient to other people.

To solve this, I believe it's necessary to observe a consistent position. Lore is written, you either respect it or not. But if you don't respect it on some points, you can't use it as an argument to implement something or deny something else, based on lore. So either lore is the reference, or the leader's word is the reference. But not both. Picking a leading motto, making it clear, and having clear leading and development lines based on this might give a lot of needed clarification.

III- Complexity of rules and systems
Some rules and systems are too complex. You need to dig through many posts to understand what is going on. The guild, faction, public faction, lore guild system is one example. Telling which faction is a guild, which is public, which is not, and how they can pretend to different things is just too complicated. It leads to perception of unfairness more than often, which ultimately lead people to leave.

Simplifying the systems, revisiting the rules can help(and I mean player versus player rules too, the mature content too perhaps as many evil players feel limited by this. The question is not for me if they are right or wrong. It's how to find middle ground to allow more options while limiting it for people who feel nauseous when it comes to mature content) . I believe the focus of those should be roleplay, how to sustain stories, first and foremost. There have been a lot of attempts, yet nothing is ever fruitful. Every project to revise this ends up halted by what feels to be whims.

IV - Request system
A lot of character developments rely on request system. I do not believe they are perfect to answer that. Especially as some never get answered. The request system is in addition somehow obscure, and some people will not go through requests to develop their characters, have their own plots going.
In the end, a request system favors those who feel able to make request, remind about them. But it leaves many others aside, who feel forgotten.

To solve this, in the ideal, Dungeon Masters following characters could help. But this is not realistically feasable. Perhaps having more possibilities as player for a certain number of minor evolutions can help this. Having spontaneous events is something many expressed as needed too.
Having an improved request system with more transparency to know when input is needed, how or why, or who is in charge of the request can help too.

V - Gathering, Crafting
While it is a lot to develop, I think the introduction of such system would help a lot, especially to those who don't feel like fighting enemies.

Developing it - and I say it as I have done a part myself - is however more work than people can imagine. The development of herb system took me (with the help of Dalo Lorn) between 500 and 1000 hours. I think, in all honesty, closer to 1000. And the system is quite poor. Yet, a lot of people told me how great they felt being able to pick herbs. It's far from perfect, but it may not have to be perfect for a first step.

VI - Dynamic changes
Whether simply a season system that would change the maps, or the depiction of events and player actions over maps and people, dynamic changes are among the most expected factors of roleplay. Too low, and roleplay feels vain and empty. Too high, and it also feels vain, because what is built is destroyed in a heatbeat.

A lot can be developed regarding this. Having day, and night activities. Having seasons. Having more immersive interactions with non player characters. Factions system with influence as it was brought some time ago could be a way to add to this, for example.

---

With all that said, it is just my opinion. In any of those categories, you could just develop a lot. Systems, or maps, or classes, or rules, or else. Yet, I have come to personaly realise that while I still wish for this to happen, I do not actually believe it ever will. So we, players, and people who wish to continue playing here, have to be creative to do with what we currently have, and weave stories together.

Roleplay is what keep binding us all, in the end.

I don't expect anything to be done with this message, or these ideas.

Thanks for reading if you have! Otherwise, feel free to ignore, I won't be offended!
I must finally say that while it's not perfect, this server has been for me a true blessing to develop my own character. It could be better, but the stories, the quality of other players and characters, the people, and the immersion I found here are what I dearly cherish. And I am really thankful for this.

Cheers everyone,

Ashenie

[Gnomocratic]

I remember onboarding LazyTrain onto the developer team, he was a fairly new player, he knew nothing of NWN2 development, but very quickly became very active.

I remember at the time we had this nonsense about not immediately granting access our version control system to new developers so that they could contribute directly. Something about being a bit guarded, so I pushed for it myself and he was given access, at some point I gained the ability to grant access/make new accounts for new devs myself.

Anyway LazyTrain very quickly became a very active developer and I think sometime after I left around the time of the admin change he was made Lead Builder, I thought it was odd because he was very new and did not seem particularly prepared or accustomed to calling the shots, it became a trend to put the most active developer as the lead, not a good idea. I think he got burnt out fairly quickly, probably a lot of it had to do with dealing with politics and arm chair captains while being fairly alone at doing the actual work, he can speak for himself, but I relate if that was the case.

Again, he was given too much responsibility too quickly and buckled, obviously this was not at all his fault.

Bottom-line, you've got too few developers, people actually doing the work, and too much communication and managers or would-be managers, one of the things good leadership does is minimize communication workload and attrition of actual worker-developers and everything else.

These people are your principal asset to advance BG.
You can't have a non developer admin because developers won't want to join a team led by someone that doesn't develop, developers will join because they want to develop alongside someone they admire or is doing work they want to be a part of. Someone they can learn from.

On the topic of communications, workers and organization structure, I recommend reading this very short article https://www.melconway.com/Home/pdf/committees.pdf from which stems Conway's Law, not really a law, but generally considered true in the least rigorous sense of the word, that "organizations that design systems are limited to producing designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations".
Perfectly applicable to this community.

edit: Re-remembering, I think I had the ability to add/change permissions for developers to the version control system well before LazyTrain was a dev, but my access was removed by the new admins, which was around the time Lazy joined, so I had to actually ask for him to be given access. My memory is hazy but the basic breakdown was, devs having to go through more comms hurdles to just get stuff done, or get more people to do stuff. A lot of the times the hurdles were "dealing with non-doers".

edit2: I remembered some more, he had made this huge change involving a lot of areas, it broke a lot of things, and it went live, the sort of stuff that causes a lot of stress, guilt and insecurity to devs, he had no one to guide him or even to comfort him, that that shit just happens, or to prevent that from going in by catching the problem beforehand, people revising the changes everyone else makes, this was a complete failure of technical leadership.

I would have caught that and prevented the damage.
I remember dealing with a similar episode myself, specifically one time I made some changes to the appearance changer that introduced an item duplication issue and created some very weird illegal items, it's horrible. You need dev process, checks and a proper pipeline to catch problems beforehand, save everyone headaches and safeguard your sacred talent.

[Gnomocratic]

Summerbreeze removing LazyTrain's post without even knowing who they are or like 95 percent of the server history is just a disgrace and a complete lack of respect to people that spent a ton of time actually working to improve the server in meaningful ways.

I hope you lose those forum moderator privileges, SB, your usage of them is actively degrading the conversation and by extension what remains of the community. Let people express themselves. Same goes to you Steve, don't tell people to "STFU", it's infantile.

It's ironic, you want more words out but can't tolerate some words in.

[DaloLorn]

Summerbreeze removing LazyTrain's post without even knowing who they are or like 95 percent of the server history is just a disgrace and a complete lack of respect to people that spent a ton of time actually working to improve the server in meaningful ways. [Emphasis added.]

That's rich, coming from the only other ex-staffer who ever asked for his forum history (including internal staff posts!) to be deleted. I guess it's true what they say about birds of a feather flocking together...

Neither of you play here anymore. Both of you have taken steps to actively degrade the team's ability to work (you probably moreso than LT, considering you've been around longer and probably posted more important things). And still you have the gall to come in here and act like you own the place?

[Gnomocratic]

That's nonsense, I have never done anything to intentionally damage BGTSCC, I gave Zanniej months to change any posts I had made that they wanted to keep, with specific instructions to do so for all the various topics that were of a "public interest" be that public forums or internal, I just didn't want myself associated with the new direction BG was going.

He sat on his hands instead of changing the posts to an admin account, like has been done for many other situations, say for guides and documentation that I had written, or help threads on public forums, and when I reminded him again more forcefully he just deleted everything without thinking of the consequences, much like the actual version control history I'd imagine.

That damage is not my responsibility nor is it my fault. It's just another example of what I'm describing.

Nothing I have ever done has impaired the server or its contributors, quite the contrary, ever since I left, all I've done is recall server history, you're welcome to correct any factual mistakes, I'm just going from memory.

And the whole "like I own the place" sheesh, wut? I'm not responsible for other people's emotional reactions to just my mere presence.

[The Whistler]

Summerbreeze removing LazyTrain's post without even knowing who they are or like 95 percent of the server history is just a disgrace and a complete lack of respect to people that spent a ton of time actually working to improve the server in meaningful ways.

I hope you lose those forum moderator privileges, SB, your usage of them is actively degrading the conversation and by extension what remains of the community. Let people express themselves. Same goes to you Steve, don't tell people to "STFU", it's infantile.

It's ironic, you want more words out but can't tolerate some words in.

[Gnomocratic]

I will concede, asking for my forum account to be deleted was the pettiest thing I ever did in my time on the server, in terms of negative effects.
And it was supposed to be fairly irrelevant, it would have been, had it been done properly, I was upset at the process of degradation of the server and specifically how a lot of stuff I had pushed for was being sabotaged, but that's it.

It was an overreaction at a time where I was feeling upset about what was basically a breakup with a very enriching hobby. And I needed to get shit done in my life, going into uni, started a new job, it was a very time consuming hobby for me and I was very entrenched, I saw burning bridges as a solution, in some sense.

I have never done anything against the server, I challenge you to find a situation where I acted dishonestly against BG's interests, go ahead, I dare you. My record on that account is flawless. Go ask anyone.

I hope that settles that, like about the only meaningful thing some of you hold against me. It's insignificant.

[Ghost]

It seems every time someone wants to have a constructive conversation about the server, people who don't play and who have for years expressed hostility towards the setting and the staff, broken rules and harassed other players, keep coming back to voice only ever destructive criticism and throw insults and disrespect at the people who actually still invest their time in the server.

Locked.