Sure Is Quiet!

[*Mr_Otyugh]

I'm just going to say it, because I think it needs to be addressed. It sure is quiet in the server lately. And I don't mean "spring break" quiet, if you look at the nwnlist.com, you'll notice a huge difference in player numbers. Where SCoD used to be among the top three, we're now contesting of the 4th position. This has been relatively recent change, and I'm sure it's in parts fatigue, but for a larger part I think it's about a rift between the people of SCoD.

I don't have some super good answers as to how to solve this, but I think it's a thing that should probably get some more attention on. And with that I mean, looking for things that unite us, not things that divide us. Before I get to that point, I'd like to take a moment to talk about my vision of SCoD, or rather what I perceived my role to be in SCoD once.

When I was an administer in SCoD, I could for a large extent do whatever I pleased, there was like one person that could've stopped me, and they tended to agree with me most of the times. I however didn't. Players aren't tied to SCoD by strings, they make their own choice to stay here. Sure I did demand respect, but I also worked hard to give respect for the people. However the most important part for me was to try to be worthy of the respect I demanded. The first two are very easy, the third part requires doing some work to earn it. That role to me was more about being a teacher, and trying to learn how to most effectively say what I wanted to, so as to decrease the misunderstandings to a minimum.

I'm not an easy person to get close to, that far is intentional, because as an admin my general policy was "I have no luxury for friendships", though friendly, definitely. And it has kind of stuck since then. It was a simple message to players who wanted something out of me via asskissing, and that I'd give them no special treatment, even those few who did manage to become my friends generally were to deal with other DMs instead. Often I am given two choices to pick from, I generally refuse to be confined by choices and instead think of a third alternative if neither appeal to me. To me it was important to remain impartial, think for myself and represent the SCoD as objectively as possible, for it always would have players that didn't share my interests, but that should be alright, as long as some core values would not be tampered with. Those core values to me are:

- Things should be possible to be communicated respectfully. Even in matters of dissent. - SCoD is a hop on, hop off gaming server, people come here to relax, not to deal with drama. As such public displays of drama should be minimized by handling things in private. And things should be reflected as stable and to some extent predictable. - People should feel welcome. I did try to foster as open environment as possible, make sure people felt like they could talk to me, and other players. - Don't look for trouble, or you'll find it. Identify the string of events that lead to the problem, and determine whether or not it requires attention, and to what extent. - When people are to be deemed guilty inevitably, try to teach them to a point where they should be able to avoid further incursions of similar kind. A misbehaving player at first is a failure to explain how things function. Doing so may just make them the assets of later date. After they've been sufficiently told how, and still misbehave, it becomes the problem of the player. [/li]

The reason why I wanted to mention that, was to try to bring transparency of how I view things, and how I think they should be. Perhaps mend some differing views. It might sound or seem simple, it's not, it's a dedication that can consume hours upon hours. But it's not something I've ceased to believe, so when I say "I'm on SCoD's side", that's what I stand for, and what I still try to ensure, though in a diminished extent.


Now then! Lets talk about trying to revive the server a bit! Events! I think we should try to get more events and get involved in more events. Maybe we don't usually feel like it, but hey! Might as well give it a shot, might end up liking it. I'll even open up myself as a free think-tank for people that might want to bounce off ideas, and might be able to shove in one of my characters to help out in some way or another. I should even have some expendable characters that can literally die for your ideas. So bring it on! I can try to enable activity to the limits of my time.

[*LeonDuguit]

I'm very new here, and thought I would throw my two cents in. While I may be wrong about many things, you might find my observations valuable in that they are the impressions I have been given over a short period.

At very low levels, I just wandered around exploring, until I realised that I needed to grind a bit in order not to die immediately on entering certain areas. Fair enough, I think there is something to be said for a little bit of a learning curve, so that people get comfortable in the setting.

Around the low 'teens I grouped up with people whom I met randomly, and we visited higher-level areas. This was nice, and a decent mix of RP with casual play.

I'm now in the low 20s. I mostly have the gear that I had at level 5, although that is probably my fault - I have been advised to seek out PC merchants. From my perspective, almost nothing of significant value drops in the loot table, and those which do are truly random (and often unusable by my character). This is only really a problem because they cannot really be sold in a convenient way to NPCs, but again I accept that PC merchants may be the remedy.

One thing I have noticed an acute lack of is a feeling of a broader story. Maybe it is the lack of a goal, or well-defined groups, but nobody that I have met has spoken about ongoing conflicts, or issues, or current events. That may be a play-style, but based on the forums I suspect that there may not be an overarching plot event in play at any given time to give the characters something to choose sides of and RP around.

So now some suggestions, again apologising in advance for my ignorance of this community at large. This is all based on an extremely small sample space.

I used to be the main DM for an NWN server with over 200 players and probably a dozen DMs in its hey-day. I generally didn't play a character, but would hop on, and if I found a small group of players, would run a quick event. NPC with fair thin plot hook, send them to a level-appropriate area, set up "checkpoints" with plot-advancing enemies or exposition PCs, and let them battle through the area to those points, so that I wasn't constantly trying to keep up. It was especially easy to do so if there was a broad plot going on, as those little adventures (30-60 mins tops, maybe 15 mins of active work on my part, and another 15 or so rolling up plot NPCs). I'm not experienced with the NWN2 DM client, so this may be more difficult than in NWN, but would love to see things like this. Maybe they are happening, and I haven't heard about them!

If there are too many factions/groups as a poster above suggests, an overarching conflict would allow them to be grouped up a bit more around positions on that conflict.

If you opened up the loot tables a little more, it might be more common for groups to form regardless of the xp penalties for grouping up with a level 30. If someone used the Shout channel to spread word of a spontaneous skirmish in the Blood Wars (let's just assume that this doesn't get abused), or to visit a challenging area, that might encourage newer players to join with established groups and be carried along, meeting those characters.

Just some thoughts. I hope they are of interest.

[*Mr_Otyugh]

There is currently accidentally reduced loot rate, but it's getting fixed, so the current loot drop ratio isn't really representative as to what it normally is. But it is unfortunately kind of tedious.

[*MimiFearthegn]

We are currently working on both the equipment / loot issue, and the story issue.

And of course, we're always accepting new EM applications if anyone feels like running quick quests now and again! :)

[*Tomekk]

Kinda agree with Nerull here, too many player groups kind of siphon away what little players we have in factions... which are still an unresolved issue. Ignoring cannon and giving each faction a designated role or two in the city would make them much easier to grasp for new characters and players alike, in my opinion.

But on the other hand, a server wipe will see nothing but a mass of players not bothering to play again. Grinding to level 30 is not fun at all, getting the equipment needed to do so is even less.

[*Niryain]

Haven basically overtook you guys in the 'creative classes' department (and they're OP as hell and the PvE content plays even more like Diablo than NWN2 usually does) and they offer the same type of mostly-sexual RP that a portion of the playerbase here was largely interested in. There's even a growing kind of serious RP scene going on outside of the main Social Hub. Sigil's always billed itself as an action/rp/social mix and there's just another server that's doing the same thing but with slightly different sliders on those three values these days. That might account for how it got above? As for BG they've been under new management for a year+ now and seem to have reformed well and offer a 'harder' leveling experience and a more traditional FR setting which a lot of people like.

So what does Sigil offer as its draw? The setting, mostly. Which is woefully underused. But enough people in this thread have bemoaned the state of factions already, and for years at that. I have no actual idea how a player is supposed to advance without using/abusing PC merchants, as in my time playing here I've never been able to kit a character reasonably out through drops. Alts are kind of the saving grace and draw of things, especially with the setting as there's like infinite ideas but.. Doing the rats > Undersigil > Brux > Ice/Fire > Swamp > Abyss progression for the tenth time (Sub Gith in there if you're smarter than I was) gets really dull really fast. And there's no high level PvE either these days. I've legitimately never been on a Carc run. The few times I've tried to organize it in the bazaar, none were interested. So PvE's kind of out. No PvP or player tension plots, look at what happend with the Doomguard a couple years back. Dramatic llamas.

The event thing, well.. Sigil is kind of an immutable setting by design. The Lady of Pain is going to shut down anyoen that tries to rock the boat too hard, and for the planes, uh. Congrats, you're ruler of Prime 3415, enjoy I guess? So I don't know how to solve that issue, but more DM/EM events and involvement might help. I know though that in the past, the few events I was in, I felt kind of like the supporting cast for an 'OG' player as Nerull put it, which kind of soured me to it. Small wonder some players retreat into the depths of an inn when sexually charged races are offered and they don't feel like they have an impact elsewhere.

[*edmaster44]

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.

[*Mr_Otyugh]

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 :P 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!

[*MimiFearthegn]

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. . .

[*D0rtyPTr]

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.