ImprovingNumbers:AbigThing
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@O'louth:
My best answer, would be to slowly, but surely, begin moving key npcs out of the citadel, because they can no longer pay their taxes.
This is happening already.
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@RedGallant:
Let me just point out here that CoA is practically a rotating door of character concepts. I highly suspect I know which character(s) you are referring to, and let me just go out on a limb and say that after a player plot 'fails', a few things immediately happen. One of those things is that, your character (not you) has failed. They have a choice to make. How do I go on?
If you refer to the Plot Triforce(tm!) you can pretty easily see solutions to give you some ooc ideas of the sorts of plots/ic stuff that's going to pick your butt off the ground and help you keep going. For instance, Dagon's Cale originally failed at wrestling a giant. He gained some friends, did some adventures, helped some other peoples' plots for a while - even did a stint as a Thayan mercenary - and then he climbed that damn mountain and wrestled that stupid giant and made his weapon of awesomeness. (Friends > DM NPCs.) Without really recognizing that he was doing what he was doing, just simply pursuing his own fun, it was a plot that was involved a lot of people, and included an initial failure - and ended in 'success'. However, the real fun was the fun he was having pursuing it. . . with friends.
However, often the answer is; you sometimes don't recover from failure. You stop having fun on the character. And then, you concept up another one and jump right back into the mix (though I usually space my serious characters a month or two apart and sometimes more). There are plenty of good stories on Arabel, and though there's less people that seem to be telling them now, they're still there. For every character I like, I usually run through a few that I don't before I get to them. From what I've seen that is pretty common throughout the current server populace.
Losing is part of the game. This is not World of Warcraft. You will make characters, and those characters will fail; but some of my most spectacular failures was also the most fun I've ever had on City of Arabel. Malik Goldaron, a Clar Bandan sorcerer, lasted a week. And he pissed off literally the entire server and died at level 5 with no loot or gear, and got all of oldtown to madly pray to Clar Banda for salvation from the undead he and Huorn his crazy partner summoned.
My point here is… hm. There might be a 'trifecta' to a 'successful' plot which I detailed earlier - that is to say, forcing the damn thing - but that's just the game breaking mechanics I brought up to showcase the way that the system itself tended to work, in order to display HOW it worked. Perhaps I somehow didn't stress or neglected to mention that Actual winning comes from enjoying the game. Actual value comes from seeing the plot you're pushing as a connected story that you are telling for other players, with other players. The DMs themselves are like this, almost every single one of them. They want to tell (and facilitate) a good story.
But people sometimes seem to expect the DMs to make this game fun and cater to every idea and whim. To a certain extent, I think that's a wrong way to view the situation. Most of the people I find who are well adjusted on CoA have accustomed themselves to loss; levels, plots, and characters. 'Loss' and 'Failure' are only bad things if you let them be bad things. I had a boss of mine tell me once, "Aha, I see you figured out how not to do that." The meaning, I think, being that simply participating in these plots can often be the fun part; Arabel is like a book that you read and interact with.
You are, more or less, expected to both find your own fun, and to make fun for others. I think I notated that earlier too. The strength of this server is in the people who carefully conflict with and provide entertainment for other characters. Help others, and you rise yourself.
Sometimes you don't 'win'. Honestly, the most frustrating players to interact with are the ones that are always going for the win, or expect 'the win' just by existing. Those kinds of players are insufferable. Remember that on CoA you only control 50% of your character interactions. The other 50% might involve some setbacks, another character dominating your story, or even getting killed prematurely. It's important to roll with the punches, because that's how you truly get recognized as a player on here I think.
I've had some villians killed rather ignominiously before they achieved their goals. (in fact, all of my villians have had 'shitty' deaths.) It's why I find evil, or the antagonist in CoA tends to get held to a higher standard.
Failure of concept, It's something I still struggle with on occasion, like when I was legioned on my Paladin.
In the end, he still got what he 'wanted' in a way, but the character was a failure for what I intended originally. But the fact that failure was a possibility added so much validation to my time on this server. -
Costing gold to simply exist would be very bad for me, pretty sure everyone else would survive.
there was one other server i was trying as well in the past, and they instituted something similar, i quit that server in short order, not exactly what you are wanting to hear..unless you want to be shed of me
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@Darlene:
Costing gold to simply exist would be very bad for me, pretty sure everyone else would survive.
there was one other server i was trying as well in the past, and they instituted something similar, i quit that server in short order, not exactly what you are wanting to hear..unless you want to be shed of me
not neccessarily "costing gold". That was just a off-to-of-head simplistic example. The point is, there should be ramifications to being aligned with one "side" or another as opposed to simply it being a choice of which gank squad you join.
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I have to say, I agree with Thune and Verk on a specific thing here.
Carrot, not stick.
Making Old Town (or wherever) better/more fun to use instead of the Citadel is a vastly, vastly better idea than making the Citadel suck. What your trying to do is allow choice, for anyone, based on just what they want to play, and nothing else. If people are thinking of a cool outlaw concept, then throwing it away because they feel they can't do much using the things availabe in the area they have to exist in, then something needs to be adjusted.
Key is, it should be a choice based on actual choice, not a forced decision based on some arbitrary difficulty issue.
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Loads of content is getting added to Old Town soon. Quests, merchants, whores and blackjack, etcetera.
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YES! Bringing back the Whores! Praaaaaaaaaise Spiffy!