Increased Transparency from Admin Team

Echo

I've deleted my equally as snarky post.

Acemvi

I'm just going to leave this here:

The current server design is not working. This is not up for debate. If it were the case that low player numbers are simply due to NWN being a 20 year old game server populations should be low across the board and yet they are clearly not.

If you want the server to succeed, you need to start providing updates on a more frequent basis so when I do try to reach out to people and say "hey, this is what's changing," I can say more specific things other than "Zool's back."

It would also be useful if the Admin Team was more transparent about why they're insisting on doubling down on design choices that are clearly unpopular. Time and time again the same suggestions are made and yet nothing really changes. The current iteration of CoA has great factions, interesting plots, and motivated Storytellers but they're hamstrung by poor game design.

Give me a reason to believe that Suggestions posts regarding the server's so-called "vision" aren't just ignored and pushed aside because of a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that unpopular ideas are, in fact, unpopular.

Ethika

@Acemvi

I share your concerns and applaud you for stepping up and tackling the issues head on. I think a good way to improve things would be to give the players more power in their feedback, such as a voting system for certain issues like rules, content, player voting for new DMs etc. The server as you can see by our population is failing.

While unprecedented, drastic measures are needed to salvage things before it’s too late. The DM team being open with the player base and finding a common ground on what changes to make and how to move forward would be a good start.

Another thing to consider would be holding an election for one person or a group who would be responsible for the server, while the DM team all coming to a consensus has worked in the past it might be time for a more clear chain of command. Another server I played on had roles from host, managers, admins and then moderators. There was a clear code of conduct for staff and each level of management was responsible for certain team members. It was very efficient.

gDarDog

I see often there are very common suggestions that are brought up in Discord a lot over the past 4 months that often get brushed to the side.

Topics that include:
Low hp
Low loot
Low consumables
No DM in EU
Continual nerfing of existing gear
Massive areas in server that are empty
Wanting to have old fun quests back

It happens so often that if/when a DM responds to the suggestion its with a "The hp discussion again?" or "The loot chat again?". The reason why its brought up so consistently is because its commonly felt amongst the community of active, recently retired, and inactive players that all want the same thing. Its brought up consistently for a reason.

StrawMan

Just for the sake of illumination.

The screenshot of player populations above, is misleading.

Those account primarily for console players, for which only a limited number of Persistent Worlds is available.
By all accounts there is a particular approval process that worlds must follow in order to be available to console players.
I'm going to look into it...

See the following comment by Julius Borisov (Beamdog developer), and the surrounding thread for further details:

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1150654/#Comment_1150654

Acemvi

Certainly possible, but the 0/55 can't really be explained away. We have enough of a community built over the years that numbers should be much, much higher, and asking why those people aren't logging in is a valid question. Some we've lost to time, simply a matter of people getting older and having other priorities, but there are a fair few who just aren't logging in or left for greener pastures.

Echo

@gDarDog said in Increased Transparency from Admin Team:

Massive areas in server that are empty

This is being discussed by the Team. We want to keep maps credible and represent distance, but not be a chore to go from one town to another.

How do you recommend representing the 30 miles from Arabel to Eveningstar, for example?

Zool

https://nodebb.cityofarabel.com/topic/54720/zools-journal

This the kind of thing you mean?

Acemvi

@Zool Love it, that's great. Didn't even need to be this detailed tbh b/c that'd be a PITA to update more frequently. I suppose if anything gets added there a simple "+1" reply would be enough.

Acemvi

@Echo Through a sign that states "Eveningstar, West - 30 miles" along the road. Perhaps another sign in one of the transitory areas that states "Eveningstar, West - 15 miles."

Realism is already not a thing given 30 miles is only two transitions anyway, there's no harm compressng things a bit further.

Zool

I think the eveningstar road is actually fine. There;s other that... need a look though. (off topic sorry)

Echo

There is a sign... or at least there used to be signs. I put them there.

This used to say "Arabel, 30 miles" or something like that.
It got changed.

Acemvi

@Zool Storm. Horns. Ascent. Stonecliffs is the Eveningstar area I would personally shrink a bit. Two transitions isn't a big deal, really, it's just the size of each.

Acemvi

@Echo Yes, that's the point. The signs are already the only real indication of distance anyway since two transitions are nowhere near 30 actual miles even in NWN. Therefore, it's okay if areas are a little smaller for the sake of reducing sprawl. True to scale realism will never be achievable without it being an utter pain in the ass (or adding mounts, which is... fraught with peril and I do not recommend this in the slightest).

gDarDog

The maps going from Eveningstar to the Stormhorns is the biggest standout. The most interesting quests on the server are out there Irondrake, Dwarf Rescue, Frozen war. If you don't run up, it can take 30 mins to get out there and another 30 mins back.

The map where the NPC for warm waterfall is for example, its just massive empty paths that you have to run through with an occasional care spawn.

As for the Zool's journal, I think its a great addition. Shows very clearly what is being worked on

gDarDog

The server was at 20/55 some nights when the factions were released. For a variety of different reasons, players have left to a point where you often see 0/55. Many of those complaints were voiced.

@Zool Said without compromising the "server vision"... Does the vision matter if nobody is playing?

O-louth

Ill add my two cents, since simply “leaving” serves no one. Since I came back, it has seemed as if the DM Admin team have been extremely defensive towards constructive criticism or suggestions for improvement, no matter how well intentioned it was served. And that has been something I have never experienced before, no matter who sat on the team. It has felt like the dm team have put on a mindset of “Everything we have done has been perfect, either shut up or leave”. Which has been extremely off putting, when considering that the server only thrives if the Admin Team and the players work in combination to create the best possible server.
If discussing something about the server, and anyone raised a red flag, the conversation just ends. Period. No explanation, no trying to see it from the player side of things. Just ignoring it until it goes away.

So Ill give my honest feedback, and if it is dismissed as it has been, so be it.

This server feels like it’s only half finished, as if you did just enough to get it launched, but then departed from it. There is no metastory visible to the player base. The EU timezone is dead in the water, despite a new storyteller. The focus seems to be more on developing cool features, rather than making the server come alive.
There is being put huge efforts into a crafting system, with 90% of the items so bland or useless, that the only reason they will ever be crafted, is for someone to advance their craft, and then just throw it out. Why focus so much on that, when there are huge loot gaps for non faction personnel.
The factions have a HUGE potential, but the “content gap” is huge, and there is ZERO help to the many concepts that fall outside of the narrow focus of each faction. The factions ARE awesome, but a lot of concepts have no home. The focus on “go in a faction or go without loot” may sound good on paper, but in practice is kills motivation and creativity. You are severely nerfing yourself if you are not in a faction.
There is zero advancement or support outside the midnight to 6 am EU time zone. It kills motivation when you log on discord or the forum in the morning, see people advance in factions, advance in stories, but you are left in the dark.
Without blowing my own horn, I created a lot of awesome stories, which are rippling across the player base still, and I did it with only a single 10 minute encounter with Ace. As whenever I asked for help, support, guidance, I got a distinct feeling that Cormyr seems like a curse word, and all my efforts were just ignored. I felt seriously ignored. Ace did what he could, but he too ran into a wall for progression. And I was still the “rank” I had after 2 days in game.
You lot told me that progression was a lot easier now. I for one did not see ANY advancement, outside Naresh getting a promotion after his and his groups constant work to push their plots. And that took well over a month.

Honestly, I figured summer was more fun, because beyond LordAce being encouraging, there seemed to be no interest in helping me or help me progress my stories. So why bother trying to make stories that could help entertain or involve the rest of the player base.

Zool

@O-louth I don't wanna go through all of the above post, as it might end up sounding like I'm dismissing things! thanks for the feedback from your perspective though, it's useful to see how it feels.

The one thing I might mention though, is the progression being easier part. I -think- you might be missing that progression is much easier, because some of it is -too- easy, so is dismissed as not progression.

You get into a factions via player recomendations - that's a promotion with no app (in your case there was an app, that's actually been discussed since though and is (has been...?) reviewed.

I think your character also got an entire grove to be the guardian of, with NPC "support" to go with it - that's another pretty chonky step that would have taken potentially most of a characters lifetime in the past - it's pretty simple to get those things now, mostly if it's not claimed, grab it, if all are claimed, challenge for it.

That's two pretty big progressions that in the past would have been major efforts to achieve - but, I think, because they are SO easy now, they aren't seen as progression, just the baseline, so in making them easier, we've essentially removed them (psychologically)

Just wanted to make those points (and also that your own horn deserved a bit of tooting as the stuff you last character did was great)

Oh.. one more thing - we did look into an EU timezone DM, but after watching them a tad longer, they didn' work out which I think is a big shame. Hopefully someone will rise up soon who ticks all the normal boxes (creativity, OOC chill dude, sticks around, generally liked by the community) that particular one is real hard for us to resolve though as it depends on entirely external factors.

O-louth

@Zool said in Increased Transparency from Admin Team:

I think your character also got an entire grove to be the guardian of, with NPC "support" to go with it - that's another pretty chonky step that would have taken potentially most of a characters lifetime in the past - it's pretty simple to get those things now, mostly if it's not claimed, grab it, if all are claimed, challenge for it.

This shall not turn into a "all me" thing, but this is actually a good example to use to explain my point. Spiffy told me I was not a guardian, as I was not really promoted, so I was not a real guardian (yet). And he got super busy right after, so I never even got actual access to the grove that I was supposed to guard.

It is just one of those experiences, where it seems as if stuff behind the veil of admin stuff is not entirely coordinated. I never knew which DMs were active / inactive, got passed on to another dm whenever I wanted to update my plot ticket, ask for advice, had clarification questions about setting, factions etc.

And I know I am not the only one who feels as if the entire admin team are so stressed by the workload, that pinning one down who will give you another answer than a: this is only my own opinion, or b: we will discuss (which leads to no info returning to the player who asked).

Zool

@O-louth Sounds frustrating...

Sounds like a lot of that is, as you say, DM's just not having enough time available to make things work as well as they should. Only so much that can be done about that.

I think most of my points still stand about progression actually being easier though. Even if some things in this particular instance weren't as smooth as we would like.