Rusty wrote:
The other area input would be particularly useful on, is population control. Thangs rightly highlighted this: does anyone have anything to add?
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Wynna wrote:
Thangorn's proposal is ready for pure Admin review.
Rusty wrote:
We still need some more ideas on this.
Since my proposal is a proposed beta test of one way of technically and practically adding plane-touched to the ALFA, I dont see that a decision on population needs to be made immediately. I hope to be able to bring some data to the table before an admin decision about plane-touched population is finalised.
What I am saying is that I wish to separate my proposed beta test from being dependant any decision making process regarding PT population. This is because I would want to impartially test some issues related to population.
Now that I've cleared that up, I don't have a strong opinion on plane-touched population controls so I will attempt to discuss the arguments that relate to the issue.
As far as I understand it, if we continue the path of the discussions that have been there are two schools of thought on the matter:
That mechanical, administrative and roleplay limitations: eg. LA, role-playing a social "outcast" or "pariah" and/or bio approvals are going to be population limiting factors enough and no further caps are necessary as player choice will reach a natural population balance as a result.
The other school of thought might be that a numerical limitation of some form be imposed and without this form of imposition we may have ALFA's immersion derailed by excessive plane-touched entities.
The former school's hypothesis are based on how the plane-touched racial type's limitations vs benefits as implemented by ALFA. My beta test can offer a study how these limitations translate and hopefully we can estimate whether they might be a "natural enough" population control mechanism. One of the limitations that might also affect this element of population control is how approvals are managed and how that might affect player choice.
We are much closer to understanding what limitations might affect player choice on this matter than we are to finding out exactly what numerical cap would be best for ALFA.
In the latter hypothesis of essential numerical limitations, we don't yet have constant on exactly what the cap should be. Broadly speaking caps have been discussed on a ALFA wide and per server level and have encompassed hard numerical caps and percentage of population caps. This one seems the most difficult to reach an acceptable standard on.
It seems to defeat the purpose of population control to say for example "We will allow 10 plane-touched per server" and have the first 10 rolled characters on the new server be plane-touched. The argument also starts to get murky when we say "We will allow a plane-touched ratio of 1:10 players on server". After one is made do we then say "no more plane-touched until we get 10 more players", 10 more players when? and at what times? and what if I am Australian and want to play plane-touched? Am I denied because there is never more than 5 players on at my play-times? If it is every 10 active players, what is active enough to constitute active.
I'm not saying that there aren't moderates from both schools of thought or even other completely different permutations for population control. I do however think it is important to examine the extremes and see whether a workable solution can come out of it that will be acceptable or at the very least tolerable for the majority of ALFAns. It seems horribly complex but the nuances are important for immersion in role-play and plane-touched population is one of the most prominent in the morass of issues that surround plane-touched and their implementation in ALFA NWN2.
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