A Land Far Away

I suggest in ALFA 2, that characters created in the OAS who are accepted into ALFA, that their characters, levels and equipments pass over to the live servers with the same level limit on the oas that we have now.

If the OAS maintains ALFA standards, this shouldn't be a problem.

Might be nice to give them the opton to carry over.
Would you then want to cap xp in the OAS?

XP is already capped in the OAS at level3.

Yes but you want people rolling out of the OAS environment at lvl2 or 3?

darrenhfx wrote:Yes but you want people rolling out of the OAS environment at lvl2 or 3?

not sure if this was his meaning but, Vendrin, do you mean the PC's roll over to NWN2 as playable PC's or NPC's like all survivors or alive retiree's (ALFA-AARP, anyone?) for live servers?

think hes meaning player pcs.

A part of me likes the fact a person could join alfa through the OAS and keep that character and then go through a portal (OOC) to whatever server they choose (one way only). Only way the character would be acessible is if they downloaded the haks (for Live) and they wouldnt have to start over again building a character/history, etc.

Only thing I feel is if we would do this that the OAS DMs would have more onus on themselves to make sure they are following the rules, standards, etc for Dming.

If this was the case the OAS could be set up almost like the EQ island or D&D online island where new characters come before their allowed into the real world. They could learn basics about the world, interract with other Pcs, get a few lvls under them, and then join Live if approved.

I've thought that more interaction between the OAS and the live ALFA servers would be a good thing. Just a bit of novelty added to the OAS making it feel more complete and a part of ALFA.

I'm not sure I see this as a too good idea.. The OAS should in my opinion be a "relaxed" environment, where ALFA applicants can both be checked out thoroughly, but also learn a lot. Some players who join the OAS have no idea about roleplaying whatsoever, but are able to learn without getting too scared of it all. I haven't been an OAS DM for long, but I have already seen some players that just would be straight out banned from Live servers. Yet we allow them here, give them a chance to improve, have OOC talks with them, and so forth, all in a nice relaxed tone. I don't think we need to be too strict about keeping standards and yadda yadda here, in fact, it would annoy me to have to worry about that too. The current OAS DMs thats been around much longer than me have put up with a lot of silly things and still remain in good spirits, friendly and helpful towards even the worst applicants. No reason to give them more to worry about. Also, do bear in mind that a lot of silly players/PKs log on the OAS (seeing as it is an OPEN server), and a lot of corpses sometimes pile up. Some players/characters, even the suitable applicants keeping strickly IC, definetely end up with more loot on the OAS than they would in Live ALFA..

People getting accepted to Live should start as level 1, from scratch, just like it is now. That is my belief. No reason to change something thats working well.

*raises a thumb*

Ascendo wrote:People getting accepted to Live should start as level 1, from scratch, just like it is now. That is my belief. No reason to change something thats working well.

2 thumbs up for that.

i advocate for a fresh start for live servers.

however if alfa allows pcs to go over from the oas to live then i think the pcs should get put through a filter to make sure they arent over wealth and so forth.

just an FYI --- although level is currently capped at 3 on the OAS, the PCs continue to gain exp --

Brokenbone's guy is prolly the equivalent of 5th lvl by now

If one were to take today's OAS, as is, and propose making it a springboard for today's Live servers, I wouldn't support the proposal.

Today's OAS has a risk/reward ratio that does not seem to be duplicated in any Live server. It's still fun, but it's nothing like the challenges of levels 1 to 3 in Live... probably since Live has enough "bad guys in the woods" to discourage much more resilient / better equipped PCs from having a cakewalk out in the wilderness.

Maybe if that was altered for an NWN2 OAS, you'd have a first step towards having a viable proposal on this point. It'd make for some weird backstories though no matter where NWN2 OAS was set, if everyone and their brother was saying "oh, I adventured in (insert location) for two months before travelling here too, how odd!"

Considering OAS being hakless now, and presumably hakless in NWN2, one would potentially have an off-spec list of skills (or maybe even feats) for their first few levels, there's probably other odd points from going "hakless" to a "hak'd" environment that would be hard to predict without knowing what NWN2 will be like out of the box.

*collapses from weight of crossbow bolts and gold when transitioning to Live*

...

Re Dergon's point - there's a script on OAS these days that seems to kick in to drain "excess" XP from time to time if you're already playing a level 3... Don't know why, maybe it stops some sort of weird behaviours despite the server having a level cap.

The OAS is supposed to be a kind of a training/tutorial server, right? Meant to teach the people to rp good and well and according to ALFA´s standards and hone them to be good players in general anyway. And as such, as Ascendo said, be a more relaxed environment. As such the challenges for starting lvl1 player in Live and in OAS would be very different as would be the playing experience and if fresh players from OAS could start in Live with 3 levels under their belt in best/worse situation, it´d create a kind of an unbalance and they´d miss the "fun" of being lvl1 with their first char in Live.

One very bad situation that could possibly happen would be people already members going continually to earn their first levels in OAS and then coming to Live with those characters.

Sure there could be rules like forbidding members to play on OAS then, but propably there´d be some disgruntled people about that and it would rip applicants of possible mentors. And it wouldn´t mend the problem with unbalance of fresh lvl3 PC´s appearing with no Live experience. Or there could be a rule to make the OAS equal with HAKs and rules and difficulty of Live Servers. I really doubt this would be a working solution, either.

So, long story short: I´m strongly in favor of making everyone start at lvl1 in Live.

Not to mention your more than welcome to roll up your OAS PC as a lvl 1 on LIVE.