Improving player numbers.
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How to improve player numbers? Stop with so many stupid / "funny" (they aren't funny) OOC DM shouts and stop pausing the damn server so much!
Absolutely shatters the RP vibe, so pack it in.
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How to improve player numbers? Stop with so many stupid / "funny" (they aren't funny) OOC DM shouts and stop pausing the damn server so much!
Absolutely shatters the RP vibe, so pack it in.
Might bother some, but not all. Just as tells bothers some people but not others. Different personality types - some people like to focus, some people like to multitask.
I would like some way for opposing conflict sides to be more about larger numbers of somewhat equal individuals - such as 3-5 lvl 5-8's being opposed .. as opposed to what happens too often, which is 6-10 lvl 4-7s being against a single lvl 10 geared-up uber subrace. Hope to see this happen with as DMs have stated, more support for team anti-establishment, (aka team Chaos) as long as that support is of appropriate amount.
That could go a ways towards reducing the feel, mentioned by others, that the individual "Win" is whats important. Screw the Win, in my opinion. I'm there to experience the journey.
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That's a player mentality issue I think Games. A lot of players aren't willing to overly risk their characters, but then they will see an opportunity to smash the villian/antagonist of the server with minimal backlash and they do it.
I've found that when I was playing server villians (Jacques, Huorn) only about 25% of the people present at my character's death actually knew my p.c, or had interacted with them before. The rest were ganking opportunists. People just need to stop doing that, and they'll find that changes.
My response to that sort of behavior (As well as a few other player's I know in the same position) was to just kill anyone who involved themselves if I survived, so that I could simulate real risk for such actions.
The DM response to this sort of thing was to often power up the villian/antagonist so they could survive this sort of mentality. Check Gallant's flow chart. It's an accurate analysis of that sort of thing in a tongue and cheek way.
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ACoG gank squads ftw!
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In TT PnP you're going to run into OOC more than IC because you know, you're trying to have fun playing a game talking to people and IC is only though OOC consent. The idea of "pure immersion being broken" is silly, considering you are trying to take yourself too seriously as a D&D character. Its just as bad as its opposite in treating RP systems as a battle for the best mechanically. Don't hate on the DMs for needing a humor break, the server needs them to let out some steam or you'll get tiredgry DMs making bad decisions.
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@TRASH:
In TT PnP you're going to run into OOC more than IC because you know, you're trying to have fun playing a game talking to people and IC is only though OOC consent. The idea of "pure immersion being broken" is silly, considering you are trying to take yourself too seriously as a D&D character. Its just as bad as its opposite in treating RP systems as a battle for the best mechanically. Don't hate on the DMs for needing a humor break, the server needs them to let out some steam or you'll get tiredgry DMs making bad decisions.
An RP server is quite different than LoL, WoW or whatever the kids are playing these days. The occasional OOC shout is fun. But I am with CB, it breaks immersion if done too often.
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Completely disagree. If you want to chat and blow off steam OOCly with the CoA player base do it on IRC. In game keep everything IC and try to interrupt the flow as little as possible. DM Shouts should be used to emote a hook to alert the player base of an event unfolding, or to inform of a reset and to log out. Little else, and certainly not habitual jokes.
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I honestly don't think the problem is the shouts, more-so how a portion of our player base reacts to them. They take it as an invitation to go OOC trying to come up with the best one liner and that literally will break immersion cause you're having to scroll up cause You have:
Sally Sandy: Yes we will move on Team Evil here and…
Troll 1: //Insert Bad Joke here
Troll 2: //Insert Bad Meme here
Troll 3: //Insert Bad Pun here
Troll 4: //Insert Funny Insult here
Troll 1: //Insert Bad Joke here
Sally Sandy: When we Get there we split into two teams...
Troll 4: //Insert Bad Meme here
Troll 3: //Insert Self Highfive here
Troll 1: //Insert Bad Pun here
Troll 2: //Insert Bad Joke here
Troll 1: //Insert Sexual Innuendo here
Troll 2: //Insert Your Mama Joke here
Troll 3: //Insert Overused Chainmail Bikini Joke here
Side-Person: //Back In IC
Troll 4: //You're talking in OOC right now
Sally Sandy: That's when you come in and blow the whole place up.SOOOOOOO freaking annoying. It's like RPing in the spire and someone comes to start Nada's, Gilmors, or Kelpie's
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As far as getting people interested, it might be a good idea to make a list of various things that CoA has- things it does well, things it focuses on, and maybe things that other servers don't have. For example, this Spell Alteration thing I recently learned about seems pretty cool. You know?
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I honestly don't think the problem is the shouts, more-so how a portion of our player base reacts to them. They take it as an invitation to go OOC trying to come up with the best one liner and that literally will break immersion cause you're having to scroll up cause You have:
Sally Sandy: Yes we will move on Team Evil here and…
Troll 1: //Insert Bad Joke here
Troll 2: //Insert Bad Meme here
Troll 3: //Insert Bad Pun here
Troll 4: //Insert Funny Insult here
Troll 1: //Insert Bad Joke here
Sally Sandy: When we Get there we split into two teams...
Troll 4: //Insert Bad Meme here
Troll 3: //Insert Self Highfive here
Troll 1: //Insert Bad Pun here
Troll 2: //Insert Bad Joke here
Troll 1: //Insert Sexual Innuendo here
Troll 2: //Insert Your Mama Joke here
Troll 3: //Insert Overused Chainmail Bikini Joke here
Side-Person: //Back In IC
Troll 4: //You're talking in OOC right now
Sally Sandy: That's when you come in and blow the whole place up.SOOOOOOO freaking annoying. It's like RPing in the spire and someone comes to start Nada's, Gilmors, or Kelpie's
Well then the problem IS the shouts then, as it leads people to think it's Ok to try and be funny OOC. You can't say it's ok for DMs to do it and then get pissy when players do it.
If you want some OOC banter hop on IRC.
I'm not saying it's the reason people aren't playing on CoA, I just find it really annoying.
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I personally limit shouts to the bare minimum: Alerting a big event, asking people to gtfo before a reset or warning people on the server about some nefarious behavior.
Problem is that sometimes DMs use shouts during quests to telk the story because players often blaze through the event and give DMs zero chance to use voices.
This is often why I pause: So I can get my IC point across via a voice(To avoid shouts) or rebalance something on the spot so it wont kill people. I dont have a problem to stop rebalancing if people have no problem dying.
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It should be possible to have both server-wide and area-wide shouts through scripting. I'm not sure if that's with the client extender's trickery or not.
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Completely disagree. If you want to chat and blow off steam OOCly with the CoA player base do it on IRC. In game keep everything IC and try to interrupt the flow as little as possible. DM Shouts should be used to emote a hook to alert the player base of an event unfolding, or to inform of a reset and to log out. Little else, and certainly not habitual jokes.
Yep… Sort it out guys.
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@Strife:
Problem is that sometimes DMs use shouts during quests to telk the story because players often blaze through the event and give DMs zero chance to use voices.
This is often why I pause: So I can get my IC point across via a voice(To avoid shouts) or rebalance something on the spot so it wont kill people. I dont have a problem to stop rebalancing if people have no problem dying.
If people rush ahead on events I run they will probably die, so that tends to resolve itself.
But yeah, just tell people to slow down. Simple enough.
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@Strife:
Problem is that sometimes DMs use shouts during quests to telk the story because players often blaze through the event and give DMs zero chance to use voices.
This is often why I pause: So I can get my IC point across via a voice(To avoid shouts) or rebalance something on the spot so it wont kill people. I dont have a problem to stop rebalancing if people have no problem dying.
If people rush ahead on events I run they will probably die, so that tends to resolve itself.
But yeah, just tell people to slow down. Simple enough.
This, I've seen dm's that communicate freely to their players oocly and some that try to talk to the players out of character as little as possible and noticed there are ups and downs in both, one might be a bit immersion breaking if done too much and the other makes the dm feel a bit alien and cold, you need to be able to establish a rapport with players and communication is key. If we're running along too much let us know, if you need a minute to prepare something neat let us know. A quick "hey guys hold up a second I gotta make something" won't break immersion where an audio commentary might. But if a dm doesn't talk at all you start wondering if it's even ok to talk to the dm at all even when the situation calls for it, the thought that maybe they don't talk with the players because they find it annoying kicks in and this makes it so that a player might not share some idea or information they otherwise would have that could've made the event better or just their character more interesting.
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I don't think it's a player or DM mindset that's our problem with playercount, to be honest. I don't think it's a problem with the sort of server we want to have, either.
I think we need to look outside for inspiration and comparison, in order to look inward and see what we lack. Arelith for example has 33 people on one server, and 44 on another. What do they have that we don't? What keeps them playing? That's a genuine question, because I'm pretty sure it's not sexual content. Also I'd very much like if this doesn't get shut down with a "don't compare", because comparison is absolutely valuable. We do not exist in a vacuum, because like as not most new players we get will be people on those other servers right now - unless we figure out a way to advertise elsewhere.
Regardless, I'm going to investigate when I'm less tired. I'll report back soon.
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Well Arelith has a much more carebear mindset when it comes to PvP which may cater to some people, PvP there is almost meanigless because you can't really kill a charatcer there in any meanigful way unless they accept it.
A good place to advertise the server would be here
https://www.facebook.com/groups/nwncp/
Someone needs to write a good advertisement though
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Hmm, that could be it, I suppose. It allows for longer-term characters (I imagine there are years-old characters there,) which means people can get attached easier and remain attached. So they stay there.
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Syrus, verkosh, as you know, we have had many, many, many years-old characters here. Including low-mechanical actively evil ones.
And it was during times when PvP did not need DM permission/oversight. Just a good reason to be mentioned later if it was asked. PvP does not lead to short-lived characters.
People made characters that took time to be established, made allies, formed longer alliances, generally around existing groups, both good and evil, instead of coming up with a concept group that would flash and be considered long-term if it lasted 3 months.
I believe a large part of that is because in the last few (3-5?) years people have focused on "Telling their story and trying to 'change' the server (aka "win") " as opposed to "Being part of the overall story that is Arabel"It was certainly easier to be of a larger story, because I'd guess there were 500+ active players. So there were many many stories to intertwine, and stories that would just develop un-imagined from that intertwining. Now, it is damn hard to try and shift people's focus from their "goal". Not always, but often.
How that affects increasing player count I don't know. Perhaps a discussion on what type of long-term flow of stories (short vs long, individual vs major group,proactive vs reactive,? vs ?, some of all?) and how they affect the overall feel of the server, and what type of mix is desirable might be warranted. Maybe even in its own thread.
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Yes, the change from "long-term, overall-story of Arabel" to "always be pushing" was around where I stopped playing, way back when. Constant upheaval did get dull after a while. I don't know, maybe if CoA catered more to both playstyles? I'm not sure how you'd do that, really, other than reaffirming that it's totally okay to not really want to change the server, that winning is relative, and that enjoyable roleplay is the important thing. But I haven't exactly seen anyone complaining about CoA Sims in recent times, so I'm not sure that'd even be necessary. Still, that should be something that features heavily in any advertisements we wrangle up.