Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Bladestone docks, ORH bridge fort, grandfathered high-level outposts, and it could be argued (albeit not very strongly) that Uruk Lurra's occupation of Fort Prominence counts as an outpost. The reason I'm iffy on this last one is that the orcish PCs are neither numerous nor coherent enough to constitute an active guild, to my knowledge.

DaloLorn wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 3:34 pm Bladestone docks, ORH bridge fort, grandfathered high-level outposts, and it could be argued (albeit not very strongly) that Uruk Lurra's occupation of Fort Prominence counts as an outpost. The reason I'm iffy on this last one is that the orcish PCs are neither numerous nor coherent enough to constitute an active guild, to my knowledge.

Interesting.

Can we agree on 2 and a half then maybe?

Giving my two cents here as someone who has been casually playing.

I am out of the loop on a lot of guilds and other factors mentioned on this thread, my experience here has been a positive one.
What I find that others may think to be a problem may be the engagement, I often find myself getting the most out of chit chatting about the weather or some bandits that stole my boots, and funnily enough sometimes people have asked me in private message if I am talking about a DM event, I believe I was part of a couple of DM events in the past but I had no clue how to follow up on those.

Character development has been the main motivation I have to log in as I already made it to the max level but as someone who is not online for long periods of time or very often I have found that many people simply forgot who my character is, or funnily enough treat my character like a newbie while still being max level.

Perhaps my expectation of what I can do here are tempered by how old this game is and how small the community is, I am happy with chatting by the campfire and maybe going to loot some dungeon casually.

Being frank, if I wanted the most epic and immersive adventure I would play one of the newer AAA games, I see Baldurs Gate more as a social game to cool off after a long day of work, but I fear that this casual playstyle simply leaves me out of the loop and DM events, which is fine to me, if someone is spending hours online and posting on the forums about it then they should have the DMs attention.

Rain wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 2:17 pm Ok but are there any other instances of the Outpost system being utilized aside from the OHR moving to the bridge? Because if not that proves my point that it’s a system that underutilized which might be because guilds/factions never are able to grow enough to use it. Although yes I understand your point you made about strategic value of outpost locations. Yes that might also be a possibility of it’s lack of use however, I believe it is a small possibility and more due to a lack of available access to the mechanic.

Also I just want to reiterate that the Outpost system is one of many features that I think fall into the “cob web mechanic” category. It’s not my main argument.

To my recollection, it was ruled that the Rocky Creek Caravan Stops were grandfathered in as Outposts when the system was implemented. This imposed a fairly hard mechanical limit and contributed greatly to the lack of expansion in the caravan network, despite being repeated inquiries due to their status a mobility function for the server population.
Also of note - the guild is not currently active that I know of.

Night shader wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 5:53 pm Giving my two cents here as someone who has been casually playing.

I am out of the loop on a lot of guilds and other factors mentioned on this thread, my experience here has been a positive one.
What I find that others may think to be a problem may be the engagement, I often find myself getting the most out of chit chatting about the weather or some bandits that stole my boots, and funnily enough sometimes people have asked me in private message if I am talking about a DM event, I believe I was part of a couple of DM events in the past but I had no clue how to follow up on those.

Character development has been the main motivation I have to log in as I already made it to the max level but as someone who is not online for long periods of time or very often I have found that many people simply forgot who my character is, or funnily enough treat my character like a newbie while still being max level.

Perhaps my expectation of what I can do here are tempered by how old this game is and how small the community is, I am happy with chatting by the campfire and maybe going to loot some dungeon casually.

Being frank, if I wanted the most epic and immersive adventure I would play one of the newer AAA games, I see Baldurs Gate more as a social game to cool off after a long day of work, but I fear that this casual playstyle simply leaves me out of the loop and DM events, which is fine to me, if someone is spending hours online and posting on the forums about it then they should have the DMs attention.

Not at all! Having a casual playstyle on the server doesn’t really make you out of the loop or a ‘minority’ in this regard. There are plenty of players just like you who enjoy the small aspects of RP the server has to offer.

Some of us bickering in here are really talking about aspects that are far far past idly chatting. Often times I actually think the people fighting the ‘server power-struggle’ battle are the minority actually. We just want more careful consideration for what we look to bring to the server considering our motivations are set to grand-scales and take a ton of effort and time between the fourms and IG. Not small scale like yours.

It kind of makes since though when your running a guild that has a large % of the player-base as members/involved.

Your perspective is importante too broski.

sweetlikesplenda wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 11:51 am Yes, the Outpost system was used for this. And this was done to react to Server Lore and RP. DMs had been posting in the Rumors thread about the the City's economy going down the tubes due to a lack of merchants wanting to make the trek into the City. Between the previous years Devil and later Demon invasions in the region, bandits and wildlife in the region, and other threats, trade was not coming in to the City as it used to and the people were suffering for the loss. Given many of the Lord's Alliance towns would filter along roads leading towards the Chionthar (And is one of the few roads heading East towards those Lord's Alliance towns that is represented in our server), and given that you to cross the River Chionthar there, you had to literally walk through the actual river to cross, the Guild decided it a good spot to help RP improving the roads for trade. We were informed that Elturel, Scornubel, Berdusk, Asbravyn, and others would use this road to move trade towards the City. Before saying something was ill used or a waste, might be better to actually engage in RP around it and discover if it was or not.

To start, the points I made are in scope of where player vs player involvement, reinforcing that the ORH outpost serves no purpose to waste resources toward because it offers no tangible boon to the would-be occupiers. This point doesn't change because only you have an investment in it. What incentivization does it offer to fulfill the broad scope of the Outpost system in the opposition's mind? If you wanted to keep minimalist banditry, sure, but you're more effective as an evil estate-baron within the city itself, merging in with the TG, etc.

Regarding your RP reasons, I was very much a part of the RP that surrounded that space despite your IC and OOC attempts to snub us, the latter seeming to occur when Dhelt acknowledged that a river crossing would have more effectual support at Fort Morninglord. I invite you to check your receipts. Just because Aaron begged for the flag removal doesn't mean we weren't still at the dinner table.

Kitunenotsume wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 8:44 pm Also of note - the guild is not currently active that I know of.

Not completely dead, at least.

Rather than focus on all of what is and has been wrong, or is wrong with the outpost system, it would behoove everyone interested to suggest and hammer out some rough consensus on how to make things better moving forward. What changes could be made to make it better? Looking backward or side eyeing how things have gone previously (especially from any that haven't or cant play here) isn't really productive.

Personally I think all of the guild rules need a massive overhaul based on the limited amount of players we have engaged these days. In some time zones there is zero chance at putting together any sort of new guild, which means very little chance of sustained change to the world.

I understand there has to be some barriers or thresholds for things, but if player-count is one of them we have to look at what that means in our off-hours.

Planehopper wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 9:58 pm [...]

In my opinion Outposts is best placed on the back-burner in favor of sorting out core issues with direct gameplay, such as shifter crashes that has caused several people to just outright quit the PW, if not entirely shelved until the population can support Outpost systems.

While I have no issue with new guild creation, existing guilds still need additional mechanical support to enable their small slices of existence to breathe and interact with the life around them, especially life after 30.

DMs need their tools updated to better support them and their endeavors. DaBEST needs updates that the DM can work with to create immortal / unkillable objects that other players don't interrupt while the setup process is underway - and if possible to help guide players around that setup space until the DM has finished their prep work. A timeline tool is feasibly writable to allow triggering events along a DM plot so that the DM is less interrupted by staging another set of parameters in the middle of the venue. Better tooling too for those DMs to supply XP / Gold distribution to the people in the event rather than duplicating the same commands individually in larger scale event end summaries. Storage should have some of its restrictions lifted, QoL for auto-stack on input for the players that also lessens the 1qty duplicates. Shared Guild storage, which is a one or two line modification, tack in a deposit and withdrawal audit message for guild leaders. The cross server problems that have never been ironed out need resolved, among all the other predictable crash events of the zones we have. It took someone six years to fix KH's interior, we still need Gray and Cloud peaks both corrected for those transitional crash events.

We need better support of that foundation, what we do have; the cracks are no longer ignorable and throwing more bodies without change at it isn't a resolvable option anymore.

Night shader wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 5:53 pm Giving my two cents here as someone who has been casually playing.
I am out of the loop on a lot of guilds and other factors mentioned on this thread, my experience here has been a positive one.

I think even though he didn't actually vote, I would put him in the status quo category. Reading through the replies on this thread, I was totally prejudiced in favor of the Restructure side of the debate. But this guy won the debate in my opinion. I think I have been playing here since about 2013. My first character was a hin warlock also named Tekill- played her for years. And for almost all those years I was happy as a clam just to: enjoy random events, go grinding, campfire RP, meet other players in game, you know, just hang out.

Although I think she also was the one that wanted to start The Legion of Doom evil faction that united all the other evil factions!

Anyways, now that I am a bitter cynical veteran....why do DM's hate Evil RP!!!!??????
JUST KIDDING!
(Yes I have been drinking bourbon, why do you ask?)

I think the official votes were 4 for restructure and 3 for status quo. But there were way more that argued in favor of one side or the other without indicating one way or another. There were just as many that argued both sides in the same post. But I think the overall trend was that most of us want some changes but not necessarily a big ass Restructure. There were a lot of suggestions over what changes we make, but we have some differing view points as to what each of us want.

It was suggested that there be more instigation of faction vs faction RP.
It was suggested that the DM's pay more attention to the UD.
It was suggested that DM's focus more on random events. But it turned a bit into a back and forth argument between focusing on plot lines or random events. I say both.
Get rid of the PG13 rule ((WOOO!)).
Consequences for our actions. There is support for this based on our players actions and what they are trying to achieve.
A bit of back and forth between not allowing players to have positions of power and positions of power not necessarily automatically meaning, becoming a duke. More likely you will be a bartender with influence than a duke.
A bunch of gnomes inserted themselves into the thread and started talking their weird ass gnome talk about development side and using game mechanics to enhance game play and faction game play experience.
The guild post system was suggested as an overall good idea but a bit of a cart before the horse situation. My words not the posters. There is a lot of interest in this idea, but other changes are required first.

With respect to sticking to the status quo or instituting a server restructure. The thread took a huge turn towards the topic of DM'ing. One area that did seem consistent in this thread was that DM's are needed, more DM's are needed and their job needs to be made easier. But at the same time they need to be more organized and need to be more transparent (such as logging all event activity).

On the basis of Night Shader's opinion,I would say the Status Quo is fine.

My motivation for this thread originally was to get all you smart people to suggest ways to make this server 'The Best of the Best' . My motivation was that a really great server would naturally draw new players. More players = better server overall.
Maybe its a simple matter of letting the RL gnomes loose, to boost the game mechanics.
But based on what I have read so far, I think the path of least resistance in making this server The Best of the Best, is to start by Making the DM's Lives easier. I do not think we have much justification to complain about the status quo if we are not doing enough to make sure our players support system is in a proper possition to provide proper support.
Naturally once they are in that position, we can begin complaining ad nauseam.

I think at this point we need to create yet a new thread a DM support thread. To start drawing connections to ways we can take on voluntary roles that will assist DMs to be freed up to just be DM's.

Tekill wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 1:23 am Get rid of the PG13 rule ((WOOO!)).

What, specifically, is it you want to be able to do that you cannot currently do?

Tekill wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 1:23 amI think at this point we need to create yet a new thread a DM support thread. To start drawing connections to ways we can take on voluntary roles that will assist DMs to be freed up to just be DM's.

This looks like a severe misdiagnosis of the situation, but my explanations thus far haven't been comprehended, there doesn't seem to be much I can do to remedy this.

Rather than the player-base trying to come up with a lot of things they'd like to see changed/improved, maybe it would be better to flip it around, and instead ask:

What is it that staff find difficult to do or impedes them?

Ghost wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 10:22 am …but my explanations thus far …

You’ve been only one it seems from the DM Team. That’s not representative.

A few of us asked for the Team to let us know what they would want from the player base, to better enable them to BE dungeon masters, without any response. Also, it would be interesting to here more Staff talk about their own ideas of “status quo” or restructuring.

Ghost wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 10:22 am

Tekill wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 1:23 am Get rid of the PG13 rule ((WOOO!)).

What, specifically, is it you want to be able to do that you cannot currently do?

For starters maybe allow consentual slavery for PCs? Local paranoia in this matter is honestly beyond me.

Ghost wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 10:22 am
Get rid of the PG13 rule ((WOOO!)).

As taken from the PG rules page itself:

Beyond that, though, this server, the forums, and any interactions within them should be the equivalent of PG-13/Teen at most. No violations of this rule, not even within the privacy of an inn room or guild hall. This includes, but is not limited to, excessive vulgarity, gratuitous violence/torture.

And as mentioned above: Slavery.

These four underlined subjects by themselves ruin Underdark RP when they are banned. Because Underdark lore revolves around a lot of these subjects.

wont work