Guild Stagnation

[Rinzler]

Or, hear me out…

We don’t put another mechanical change on the Dev team’s plate and just change a minor rule….

[Lambe]

Or, hear me out…

We don’t put another mechanical change on the Dev team’s plate and just change a minor rule….

A sound suggestion, but I beg to disagree about the mechanical changes. By all means people, keep suggesting whatever mechanical changes you can think of. I'm sure people here have tons of ideas they want to bring forward and one of them is bound to be of much help for improvement. The staff will decide what is fit to be implemented or not. Let's keep the discussion flowing, shall we?

[Rinzler]

I was being a bit facetious - apologies. I’m always in favor of suggestions to improve the community, I just sometimes think the answer is not always programming something new. The devs have a million things on their plate, and what is the opportunity cost of asking them to put down a different project to work on something that can be fixed by a rule change? Albeit not a perfect solution but definitely an improvement on the current situation.

[blazerules]

The answer to this isn't really one thing but multiple if you want to approach it in the most effective way I feel.

Easing up a rule to let people do the alt thing is easy and would certainly help. The power downing/self level draining to help players and be on a somewhat equal playing field with them would also tackle the problem from the side of people who dont want to make alts but still want to help.

One solution would help, two would help a bit more.

Honestly though the dev teams wonderful and I'm sure they know what would be a good use of their time or not.

As for self level drain I can see that being an issue if people use it to cancel out level drains applied to them by other means.

[Shadowspinner70]

+1 to Rinzler.

Sometimes rules change if they no longer suit the needs of the community. There's a need to support new and returning players. It's always been the case, but this is especially important now.

We can probably still word the new rule to ward off abuse of the rule. Someone wants to make alts in the guild to help others out, it's what it is! The rule could probably be limited to "while these alts are permitted, they do not count towards player count for the purposes of purchasing a guild hall, etc." Just leave it at that, let people do as they do. Folks helping out newbies aren't really hurting anyone.

I don't know how I'd work out the information rule yet, though. I see why it's there but I also see the problems with it when it comes to this stuff.

[mastajabba]

We need to nuke the group XP lvl restrictions. We don’t have enough players for that to be a problem and we loose more by having players get bored of grinding by themselves and dying alone and leaving.

Make it so anyone can group with anyone and get cheats and exp. I mean we have probably about 60-75 active players. Why not disable things that don’t make sense anymore.

[Seifer2]

As a returning-newish player, it would be nice if it was easier to be "trusted" by those who seem to be established players.

It's an issue that I run into when trying to interact with others, especially higher level characters who seem to be always too busy.

[NCrawler]

We need to nuke the group XP lvl restrictions. We don’t have enough players for that to be a problem and we loose more by having players get bored of grinding by themselves and dying alone and leaving.

Make it so anyone can group with anyone and get cheats and exp. I mean we have probably about 60-75 active players. Why not disable things that don’t make sense anymore.

+1 to this. It's a chore trying to get one of my characters leveled up because when she groups to go to the FGK fortress, she's only getting 6 xp per giant killed. She has to go alone to the ogre areas just to make decent xp.

[Ithilan]

Do the "No damage" attribute on weapons actually work? If so selling sparring swords for those supervised low level runs could be a neat addition and wouldnt require much work at all.

But I also second removing the level restriction aspect of partying, we have been here for so many years now, is it really a problem? Our player base is dwindling a bit on and off, im all for convenience and promotion of RP over OOC restrictions.

Those of us who want to power level will do so any ways, I went from level 1 to 11 in one day last month. And those who struggle are the ones punished usually.

A few twinking of rules could be an option, but I dont even think thats necessary, I think the rules Planehopper refered to basically outlines the approach to having multiple characters in a guild, for the same reasons shadowspinner lists.

And with exception of sharing IC knowledge between your own PCs, I think its reasonable to only gloss over this. You should only count as 1 player towards a minimum requirement for guilds, despite how many PCs you have in said guild. And as I see it, any sharing of IC knowledge between your own PCs should be documented and rather limited, if people are just sensible and reasonable I see no issues with current ruling, its more of a guideline anyways

But another bigger issue perhaps is the vast amount of guilds we have and how some are greatly involved in storelines and plots and some have no involvement at all. It makes players gravitate towards a few select guilds, rather than say something that might fit their characters identity better. And I will absolutely blame the DM team for making it like this over the past many years.

Spread the love and stop going to the same 3 hubs and guilds on the server.

[Ghost]

Do the "No damage" attribute on weapons actually work? If so selling sparring swords for those supervised low level runs could be a neat addition and wouldnt require much work at all.

It works only so far as not doing the standard damage roll of the weapon, but it still does strength, sneak attack and other bonus damage.

[Ithilan]

Do the "No damage" attribute on weapons actually work? If so selling sparring swords for those supervised low level runs could be a neat addition and wouldnt require much work at all.

It works only so far as not doing the standard damage roll of the weapon, but it still does strength, sneak attack and other bonus damage.

Yeah thats what I thought, so it wont really work as intended, unless it was littered with negative attributes. Perhaps just parry moding or the like is the only way to do it then.

[Almarea90]

But another bigger issue perhaps is the vast amount of guilds we have and how some are greatly involved in storelines and plots and some have no involvement at all. It makes players gravitate towards a few select guilds, rather than say something that might fit their characters identity better. And I will absolutely blame the DM team for making it like this over the past many years.

Spread the love and stop going to the same 3 hubs and guilds on the server.

Although I perceived this a lot more in the past, I believe that rather than with the DM choice the problem lies with the follow up process itself.
As things are now, a DM drops a public event or a rumor in the forum > a player sends a follow up via forum pm > it is either resolved via pm or a follow up event is scheduled > rinse and repeat. Although this is a necessary evil to prevent that only those who happen to be present when the DM is logged on or those who are quicker to pm the DM in game are the only ones joining the events, this might not be very new player friendly.
Like you said there are too many guilds and if someone waits for an event to land on their guild's lap spontaneously this might not happen.

[Ithilan]

But another bigger issue perhaps is the vast amount of guilds we have and how some are greatly involved in storelines and plots and some have no involvement at all. It makes players gravitate towards a few select guilds, rather than say something that might fit their characters identity better. And I will absolutely blame the DM team for making it like this over the past many years.

Spread the love and stop going to the same 3 hubs and guilds on the server.

Although I perceived this a lot more in the past, I believe that rather than with the DM choice the problem lies with the follow up process itself.
As things are now, a DM drops a public event or a rumor in the forum > a player sends a follow up via forum pm > it is either resolved via pm or a follow up event is scheduled > rinse and repeat. Although this is a necessary evil to prevent that only those who happen to be present when the DM is logged on or those who are quicker to pm the DM in game are the only ones joining the events, this might not be very new player friendly.
Like you said there are too many guilds and if someone waits for an event to land on their guild's lap spontaneously this might not happen.

Yeah I think this process is absolutely horrible and not even a necessary evil, its just a further alienation of certain parts of the player base. Drowning DM interactions in beauracracy and forum coordination, it also must be strangling for DMs to some extend, if everything is so supervised. I know I speak for a lot of players when I say we would really really welcome less significant plots, or event series and more spontanious and briefer events.

It is also far more in the D&D spirit of adventuring when you grab a group of mixed alignments and convictions and they have to co-operate to some extend. I think the current format is in fact the death of a lot of RP and divides the player base greatly, cliques are more prevellant at present than ever before and thats a biproduct of this approach.

My own experiences are that ADMs are thrown at certain player requests but it slowly stagnates over time as things gravitate towards the usual suspects, guilds or plots. On my part it means I largely ignore all DM events and plots, cause they never impact my character and I have zero association with them, so like I said, further divide. Where some people get to live in a vaccuum thats entirely different from others experiences and if you map it out, theres a lot of those.

So yeah spread the love, its quite excessive at the moment how things feel restricted to a few people. And its burning out a ton of players on here as they feel little motivation to log on or pursue plots and RP that will end with more frustrations than rewards.

[JIŘÍ]

We need to nuke the group XP lvl restrictions. We don’t have enough players for that to be a problem and we loose more by having players get bored of grinding by themselves and dying alone and leaving.

Make it so anyone can group with anyone and get cheats and exp. I mean we have probably about 60-75 active players. Why not disable things that don’t make sense anymore.

This is outcome of endless free RCRs and people who play here having tens of maxed level pcs on account to draw onto.

They then RCR into new PC right with lvl 30 from start and only IG activity is then collecting chests, skipping all the grinding and leveling. I understand grinding is horrible way. But it is usually time when bond between characters happens. If 4/5 characters never need to go into 3/5 of dungeons in area you will never meet them.

Maybe a solution that could help that would be program to get rid of epic characters. I know that team fears default would drive off old players and it is possible but there is a path to encourage people getting rid of them. Just give people like 10% chance to obtain something custom on delete of lvl 30 character? Something that would not shoot server off but enough to motivate people getting rid of stocks of old pcs to prevent them to rcr into new pcs

[Steve]

It is also far more in the D&D spirit of adventuring when you grab a group of mixed alignments and convictions and they have to co-operate to some extend.

I personally would love to see more players—new and old, together—starting groups from scratch, and experience the Sword Coast on BGTSCC from a new role-play perspective, storybuilding as they go along (and grow and shrink within these groups as PCs die and new PCs "show up").

That PCs seem to inhabit their "roles" and persist for RL years, these PCs by default become ingrained into a "system" or hierarchy. Players also are "trained" into the system and hierarchy of how to "achieve results" because of the DM/player - request/response system, that has played out (pun!) for years, both good and bad.

What keeps BGTSCC fresh and living is the new Characters, the new stories, the new energy...and that isn't just something only possible with new players. Old dogs can also add to the New.

Guilds are great, and I fully believe in them. But guilds—factions as well—they die off, regularly, because this game is a game, not a Life, and those players that often spearhead guilds either from the beginning or sometime after, they "grow up" or fall out or just find the End. It would be to BGTSCCs benefit that after a while guilds and some factions are just "absorbed" into the NPC background of the Server, thus living on but no longer in a state of worry about "keeping the guild going." It would provide a ton of richness to historical fabric of the Server, something weaved together by so many, from the last 12 years or so.

I also do not see it as such a big deal to support low level PCs within a Guild of al Lvl 30s: just roll up a low level PC to adventure with this guild initiate, and don't make it about Guild related stuff all the time. As it seems obvious to me, the issue isn't about guild stagnation related to Role-play, the issue observed here is the difficulty/slowness/complications to level up PCs to their soon-to-reach mechanical end point.

And then everyone can sit around!!!