Sad State of affairs - Player retention

[FoamBats4All]

What, exactly, was the consequence of all this? If I recall correctly, in at least one instance it was the DM in question quitting even though the charges were never sufficiently proven. Did anyone actually lose a PC?

We lost PCs and players, yes. [...] "assassinating a character" means they died right there, by the DM's unkillable superspawns. Players in such a situation are understandably unimpressed by the ALFA experience.

I just want to make sure the above text gets read more than once.

We've tried DMing where you play. It failed. Horrendously. We lost at least 1 player because we tried it.

Who did we lose and when did that happen?

My bad. The player has logged in a few dozen times this year, for about 30 minutes on average. This happened a couple of years ago and the DM was banned from the server for 7 days because of it. The DM in question metagamed and used his DM plots to lure the player into CvC on the temp-DM's terms by dangling his DM quest reward as provided by his player-side character.

[shad0wfax]

Why don't respond constructively on the topic of retaining players? I believe that more than one person responding in this thread has accepted that as a volunteer role.

We could go into great detail about how one of our former DM where you play folks used the promise of DM Greengrass event reward loot to lure an unsuspecting player to the DM player's castle, murder the player, dissolve the body in acid, and then go on to become an Admin, but that wouldn't really be constructive, would it?

[Arianna]

Why don't respond constructively on the topic of retaining players? I believe that more than one person responding in this thread has accepted that as a volunteer role.

We could go into great detail about how one of our former DM where you play folks used the promise of DM Greengrass event reward loot to lure an unsuspecting player to the DM player's castle, murder the player, dissolve the body in acid, and then go on to become an Admin, but that wouldn't really be constructive, would it?

No it would not . . . ALFA is very good at remembering bad things,

I am really looking for constructive thoughts on the original subject to get an overall view of what our members think on the Original questions

[shad0wfax]

• Sigil and Dalelands offer a free ferment kind of role play environment than ALFA and both have a faster level progression than ALFA does. Some players prefer what they perceive as a less restrictive environment in terms of game rules. ALFA may be able to present itself in a better light, without straying from its pillars and charter, regarding the perception of ALFA being too heavily regulated. I think that ALFA would benefit from positive publicity regarding a welcoming attitude toward character development and a heavy role play environment that is not ruled with an iron fist. We may be able to attract more players with a positive portrayal of our rules.
  
  I do not believe that drastic changes to the leveling rate would be a sacrifice worth making to attract more players, or Raheem, the type of player who prefers that.
• Static content is probably our greatest driver of player participation.
• All servers have internal conflict. Some of our most vicious conflicts were when our population was highest. Any conflict now gives the appearance of bring a root cause of players leaving due to our smaller population. BG population took a nosedive during some of the less than savory behavior that absolutely had to be addressed, but other ALFA severs gained that population.
• I believe that some of our players are spread out by choice. As for me, I primarily DM on Saturdays 11AM PST. I play on Friday evenings PST.
• I touched on rules earlier. I believe that our rules are necessary and good, are enforced much less vigorously and maliciously than they used to be, and that we need to portray ourselves accordingly, and correct any perception that our rules are stifling or capriciously enforced.
• DM population isn't the primary issue. You, yourself, mentioned that it's hard to get players and I'm experiencing a similar issue at times.
• Publicity is one of the LAs roles. I've not been successful at it. I did appoint some aides who volunteered, but we haven't seen a rise in population as a result. It's on me, but I hope that everyone interested in our population and player base will be proactive in recruiting. I can't honestly solve the problem alone.
  
  Regarding the website, there is room for improvement. I signed us up for a vastly improved system almost a year ago. It needs to be implemented and I'm not the best person to implement it. I also can't force volunteers to do drudge work that is time consuming, thankless, and frustrating. I hope that we can launch a better website interface soon.

[Analogkid]

Why don't respond constructively on the topic of retaining players? I believe that more than one person responding in this thread has accepted that as a volunteer role.

We could go into great detail about how one of our former DM where you play folks used the promise of DM Greengrass event reward loot to lure an unsuspecting player to the DM player's castle, murder the player, dissolve the body in acid, and then go on to become an Admin, but that wouldn't really be constructive, would it?

very mature and also an example of the things that slowly killing ALFA....oops I better be quiet.

[Analogkid]

Why don't respond constructively on the topic of retaining players? I believe that more than one person responding in this thread has accepted that as a volunteer role.

We could go into great detail about how one of our former DM where you play folks used the promise of DM Greengrass event reward loot to lure an unsuspecting player to the DM player's castle, murder the player, dissolve the body in acid, and then go on to become an Admin, but that wouldn't really be constructive, would it?

No it would not . . . ALFA is very good at remembering bad things,

I am really looking for constructive thoughts on the original subject to get an overall view of what our members think on the Original questions

Then we have to look at the problem that we tend to scare away people plain and simple, or cause old time players to finally have enough of the crap that goes on here and leave. A big issue is that we have some admin who seem to do their damned best in helping push away people but for some reason, are blind to their own issues, which does tend to get noticed by people. We have a dwindling base of players, so people with "issues" who remain get an even more powerful role, just by simply sticking around and gaining leverage through one way or another. Sadly, others then get afraid to say too much given the roles certain people in power wield, and because of a certain amount of laziness as well. How is that solved? Probably can't be at this point, eventually ALFA will just serve as a playground for a handful of people and that will be that and they can have their perfect little world.

Some things can help on the margins and delay its eventual death, a change in leadership, and a more open ALFA in regards to some of its current policies and rules should help.

[Rumple C]

Well, I was writing a big long post about the ills of the ALFA, but those seem pretty well discussed already.

I was going to follow that up with helpful suggestions, but honestly... I couldn't come up with anything new.

As friend to some of you, i'd suggest taking a break from the bickering, sniping, loveless marriage you guys seem to find yourself stuck in. Fold the losing hand. Mothball the place. Get outside. Watch a sunset. Roadtrip. Read a book. Play a new game. Kiss a loved one.

A new platform will turn up eventually. Then the phoenix can rise again.

[Swift]

and none of those people were punished.

So in other words, because we love to make rules but hate enforcing them, we can't DM where we play, but we can have multiple PCs and server hop pretty much on a whim?

Add this to my list of why. If the things on my personal list were changed/fixed, I would probably come back on a more regular basis.

Edit:

1 - Why do you think ALFA is slowly failing while similar NWN 2 servers seem to still be thriving [ Sigil, Dalelands]

I don't feel we offer an attractive product and even if we did, promoting ourselves has been an eternal weakness.

2 - Does ALFA lack static content to keep players busy?

Probably not? I hear there is a lot of static content, but considering what we call static content is what other games call 'the game', it is hardly a way to keep people entertained for very long in increasingly limited leisure time that must be shared across an increasingly larger variety of options.

3 - Does ALFA have too many internal issues between members? [not wanting to play/dm with/by certain people, DM conflicts, fear of reprisals from Admin etc]

No. Most of that seems to have died away. Some here will never see eye to eye on certain issues, but the knives never come out.

4 - Are the active members in ALFA just too spread out to conveniently log in together to play? [whats your playing days/ time zone]

Can't really answer. I have always been in a difficult timezone to find...pretty much anything. My best ALFA2 experiences were when I worked less and could thus play more during American times, which I can't do any longer.

5 - Is the ruleset for ALFA too restricting? If you think so . . in what way do you think it could be enhanced without undermining what ALFA stands for.

Yes. Has anyone seriously looked at our rules lately? For a community as small as we are, the rules are huge (even if they aren't properly enforced). If I was a new player joining a community of this size and was told to read the rules first, I would probably nope the fuck right out of here. Audit them, if they aren't used or are too hard to enforce, completely remove them. A new player doesn't know the difference between a rule that will get them banned and a rule that won't through lack of enforcement.

Edit: What do we stand for, anyway? This place long ceased to be the place I fell in love with over a decade ago. I can't even answer that these days.

6 - Do you think ALFA just lacks active DMs to keep players occupied? Considering we have several DMs offering games but have no players, I can't see this as being a issue unless it boils down to either number 3 or 4 above.

More DMs never hurt as the turnover rate never seems to lessen that much.

7 - Something else? Advertising both internal and external? Poor Website? or??

Insert my previous gripes here.

[Dorn]

Why don't respond constructively on the topic of retaining players?

Again...
Thought starters for you to add to and/or subtract from - maybe once you've got your full list you could group into tech implementation easy, tech implementation hard to allow priority of debate/effort. I suggest this as it seems "tech hard" is unlikely to be actioned going on recent long-serving/suffering/supporting TAs platform and absence of alternative.

Improve player’s enjoyment –
1) Advancement – triple RP exp rate increase until level 6
2) Advancement – optional bonus 1000xp at char creation
3)Dynamic - encourage set and forgets – use ‘token for turning in to DM’ reward approach to monitor who’s going to them
4) Dynamic - Wandering monsters: establish easily droppable wandering monster spawns
5) Survivability - Drop price of cure light wounds healing potions from 50 to 30
6) Survivability - Provide 1 potion of ‘raise dead’ to all new PCs

Improve the dynamics of the setting -
7) Improve the ‘story’ of our world – create a 2 year story all servers sign up to
Variety – ALFA wide non-combat missions set (Fedex style – LA to write)
9) Variety – ask all capable builders (or a few together) to create one adventure instance (old castle, caverns, deep forest canon f possible). Employ as ‘droppable instances’ (eg HDM loads it and created an AT, DM sets set and forget in it, post message on boards)
10) Variety – Encourage periodic ‘war’ events (eg “call to defend Rauvinwatch Keep – two waves of assault expected (one US time, one Euro timed – all invited comic book time for server hoping) – multiple DMs”
11) Concentration – identify TSM as the low level server. It has good low level content from Silverymoon to Rivermoot) so let’s max that and try and create player numbers. Concentrate efforts in BG on mid-high level challenges.
12) Concentration – slowly convert MS and WHL into campaign servers once current DM/group support ends (campaign = no active support) encouraging ptoential DMs towards TSM and BG
13) Variety – create multiple areas of very high level static content in WHL and Moonshaes (set and forget etc) related to the story

Encourage extra support –
14) Reward key staff – a panel determine reasonable rewards if requested (perhaps in terms of other than exp/gold? – eg titles, property, etc)
15) Reward DMs – 3xRPEXP rate for live DMing, and 50exp for each set and forget, to be allocated to one of their PCs
16) Allow DMing where you play – HDMs/DMAs able to show judgement (obviously cant do own set and forgets)
17) Allow both players PCs to be on the same server (note: for this and the above, with the small player base, if the HDM checks one players logs per fortnight, we’ll pick up any cheating over time
18) Create a ‘static DM’ class (if necessary) to allow people to set and forget without needing to sign themselves up for full DM status

Improve governance -
19) Lead admins charter change - the charter description of Lead Admin should be expanded to establishing (in consultation) a vision and a strategy to achieve it or amending the existing strategy to reflect the best interests of the ALFA community
20) All strikes = lose a level as well as normal penalties
21) Cheating after being allowed to DMing where play, or being allowed to have 2 players in the same area = ban

PR

Totes agree with actually enforcing rules properly, and therefore being able to relax some rules.

One very key thing needed IMO is less servers and the corollary increase in concentration. From the discussions over the last year it seems many support this.
However one principle reason given for keeping them open is partly to allow DMs a place to play there main and alt PCs.

It would be great to hear from the people who don't support DM where you play, which would get past this barrier, how they would suggest we concentrate people without losing DMs because they want to play (and was still IC - so no personal teleporters!). An alternative that didn;t cause friction would be awesome.

[Zelknolf]

It would be great to hear from the people who don't support DM where you play, which would get past this barrier, how they would suggest we concentrate people without losing DMs because they want to play (and was still IC - so no personal teleporters!). An alternative that didn;t cause friction would be awesome.

Well, the obvious thing to say is to close a couple servers-- but the servers we'd close don't have any static play on them, and we go back to being mostly divided between BG and TSM, so it's something of a cheap shot to take. A hub and spokes model of player movement would probably be best (everyone do your regular play on one place and then travel out to other places to get DMed). Trying to make sure that everyone's characters are reasonably compatible with one another would go a long way toward that. The ability to roll more newbies might help a tiny bit, I guess; if I was allowed to play an itty bitty Ruqelian to join the groups who like the risk in the combat content of my quests, I'd probably do that and retire it once it outleveled the content, but I'm a weird case (mostly motivated by the desire to make things and then get those things in front of an audience). Most people want to "play" the "game" or some silly business, and that would probably wash out the effects of singular examples like me.

The in-character details of travel to the spokes would be a problem, though a solvable one. The real problem ends up being that this costs us players unless it's voluntary, and everyone wants their favorite place to be the hub and everywhere else to be the spokes. We would need to convince enough people to go to a place voluntarily that others go there because it's where everyone is, and we seem to collectively agree that we're bad at persuading people to play in a specific place (because the last time we did that with any kind of success was four years ago, and it was mostly people staring with horrified fascination at a server and ruleset overhaul).

[FoamBats4All]

Totes agree with actually enforcing rules properly, and therefore being able to relax some rules.

I would certainly change my mind if we had more data supporting fair DMing where you play. Right now it's a 100% failure, looking at past attempts, as well as previous shady behavior by now-blacklisted DMs like Sidhe AKA Bogs. This assumes that server resets are still needed between flips from DM/player side, and that PCs are never treated as DM NPCs (so, like, I can't DM TSM and go "Oh hey now Aislinn is important, and I'll use her to give quests to people!").

One very key thing needed IMO is less servers and the corollary increase in concentration. From the discussions over the last year it seems many support this.
However one principle reason given for keeping them open is partly to allow DMs a place to play there main and alt PCs.

I'd be for closing down WHL. Get people who are active like Adanu to focus their attentions on servers with players and content to work off of, as WHL itself is pretty empty and remains our least updated module. That still leaves us with 3 servers -- you can play on two and DM on one.

The wilderness and unlinked areas from WHL can maybe be pulled into BG.

1) Advancement – triple RP exp rate increase until level 6

I'd say level 3 (or the equivalent for level adjusting races). Something like this has actually been in practice on BG from DMs (put in place by HEEGZ I think?), and seems to have gone well.

2) Advancement – optional bonus 1000xp at char creation

We already do 250xp for bios. I think this is sufficient.

3)Dynamic - encourage set and forgets – use ‘token for turning in to DM’ reward approach to monitor who’s going to them

Eeeeh. We used to have a lot of those on TSM. They're horrible, mostly because the tokens never actually get turned into loot. I think my TSM PC still has puny tokens that are ancient and dusty.

4) Dynamic - Wandering monsters: establish easily droppable wandering monster spawns

Can you drop waypoints in the DM client? May totally be possible to do this already. What do you mean by wandering spawns though? It's definitely trickier (for a lot of reasons) to get them to move between areas. Have you looked at our infestation mechanics? It's not the same thing, but can let you overwrite an area's spawns with your own theme until it's cleared out by PCs.

5) Survivability - Drop price of cure light wounds healing potions from 50 to 30

I think if we had more DMs follow the wealth guidelines and provide loot/consumables this wouldn't be an issue. As it is many DMs (myself included) don't, so players end up at a net loss.

6) Survivability - Provide 1 potion of ‘raise dead’ to all new PCs

I think we're fine on the permadeath front and don't need rezz potions.

7) Improve the ‘story’ of our world – create a 2 year story all servers sign up to

That seems a bit ambitious. But I'd like to see global plots in play. There have been past efforts for this that have fallen on their face. I think this is mostly because DMs want to do their own plots and not follow an established one.

Variety – ALFA wide non-combat missions set (Fedex style – LA to write)

Cross-server quests do make an issue for people who have 2 PCs and also DM. I hear this complaint from others from time to time.

9) Variety – ask all capable builders (or a few together) to create one adventure instance (old castle, caverns, deep forest canon f possible). Employ as ‘droppable instances’ (eg HDM loads it and created an AT, DM sets set and forget in it, post message on boards)

We already have random dungeon generation that DMs can fill with their own aesthetics as well as some hilariously named instanced dungeon tools.

10) Variety – Encourage periodic ‘war’ events (eg “call to defend Rauvinwatch Keep – two waves of assault expected (one US time, one Euro timed – all invited comic book time for server hoping) – multiple DMs”

We have assault style quest types already coded. There are at least two for example in Ruqel. Just need a builder to add them and put them on a timer/trigger for players.

11) Concentration – identify TSM as the low level server. It has good low level content from Silverymoon to Rivermoot) so let’s max that and try and create player numbers. Concentrate efforts in BG on mid-high level challenges.

I dislike this viewpoint. Servers may naturally become harder/easier, but all should have a curve of content (as makes appropriate depending on setting) and be viable to play on no matter what your level.

12) Concentration – slowly convert MS and WHL into campaign servers once current DM/group support ends (campaign = no active support) encouraging ptoential DMs towards TSM and BG

I think having TSM/MS/BG would make sense, but agree on merging WHL content into other servers. BG and MS are the servers with active developers, while TSM mostly has/had Wynna and WHL is WHL.

13) Variety – create multiple areas of very high level static content in WHL and Moonshaes (set and forget etc) related to the story

Sure. Get to it!

14) Reward key staff – a panel determine reasonable rewards if requested (perhaps in terms of other than exp/gold? – eg titles, property, etc)

We've talked about rewarding DMs, tech members, etc. in the past a few times. Nothing has ever come from it. If it does happen I'd like to see it not happen with xp/gold.

15) Reward DMs – 3xRPEXP rate for live DMing, and 50exp for each set and forget, to be allocated to one of their PCs

I still dislike being rewarded IC for OOC actions. Maybe some reward point system that can be applied towards some special things? What those would be I'm not sure.

16) Allow DMing where you play – HDMs/DMAs able to show judgement (obviously cant do own set and forgets)

See my previous statements on this.

17) Allow both players PCs to be on the same server (note: for this and the above, with the small player base, if the HDM checks one players logs per fortnight, we’ll pick up any cheating over time

This also has the possibility of cheating. This should require that you wait for a server reset before switching. Which I think is the current policy?

18) Create a ‘static DM’ class (if necessary) to allow people to set and forget without needing to sign themselves up for full DM status

How would this work?

19) Lead admins charter change - the charter description of Lead Admin should be expanded to establishing (in consultation) a vision and a strategy to achieve it or amending the existing strategy to reflect the best interests of the ALFA community

No opinion.

20) All strikes = lose a level as well as normal penalties

You shouldn't be rewarded IC for OOC actions, and shouldn't be punished (unless in cases of cheating or the like) IC for OOC actions. Maybe you mean all PA strikes and not all IA strikes? Like, if you hurt my feelings on IRC I shouldn't be able to delevel your character.

21) Cheating after being allowed to DMing where play, or being allowed to have 2 players in the same area = ban

Banning feels right for this, but we'll just get more kickback. People who do wrong apparently spend a significant amount of time convincing people that they were innocent and us admins are teh worst. See also: IRC the other day with thinkpig defending Duncan, who we banned for sexually harassing multiple female players over the years. What other things can we do to stop people from doing this sort of stuff? Have a "blacklist" status that marks someone as "that guy you like to play with and have in the community, but who does not handle authority well and so will never be trusted to DM/build/whatnot for a year or two"?

[Duck One]

ALFA approaches most questions like this: let's sample the 0.01% of the gaming community who call this place home, rather than the 99.99% who do not, then take pride in the harmony of the echo chamber.

[FoamBats4All]

ALFA approaches most questions like this: let's sample the 0.01% of the gaming community who call this place home, rather than the 99.99% who do not, then take pride in the harmony of the echo chamber.

... yes? We're not a general roleplaying community, we're a permadeath Forgotten Realms/D&D roleplaying community. We are purposefully filling a niche. What do you think would help us expand and flush out that niche?

[rorax]

As someone who spent few years around, as player, DM and builder and now trying to make an unsuccessful comeback....

1. Plainly speaking, the game is boring. There is nothing to do as higher level character unless you are being fed by a DM. (relevant for old players)

2. That leaves the option of retiring and making a new character, just to make the same statics alone by myself again, which is not really interesting. (relevant for old players)

3. Low quality DMs who know very little about the FR realms lore, there is really no sense of the realms. (relevant for all players)

4. Too many rules and regulations, too much drama. The game has very few player remaining and even they hate each other. (relevant for all players)

5. As said before, too many servers for such tiny playerbase. (relevant for all players)

6. It's interesting to know how other game servers are doing, especially those who were popular in the past. If they are less crowded too, perhaps it's a trend that NWN2 worlds and FRs setting are not alluring as they were 10 years ago. (relevant for all players)

[oldgrayrogue]

We can go back and forth all we want. The single most effective way to address the "sad state of affairs" (and it is) is to log in group up and play. This goes for players of PCs and DMs. There is tons of new static content on BG, TSM and Ms thanks to Zelk, Wynna and Arianna. There are easy to use new tools for DMs (thanks to Zelk) to set up infestations and random dungeons or other adventures. The main issue with ALFA of late is that more people are playing Game B than Game A. Folks logging in is the remedy. A month or so ago we were seeing two servers with folks regularly on and playing. Why? JLM and Heegz and Mick were actively DMing and you had two or three new groups of players formed on BG and TSM. Some of the suggestions we have seen here would clearly incentivize more people to log in and play but at core that is what ALFA needs.