Messages

1

General Discussion / Re: Community Building

« on: August 12, 2012, 09:51:47 pm »

It's funny (well, not funny exactly, but.. bear with me.)

I've had two run ins with Layonara. The first time, I really enjoyed it, but when the MMO was announced a lot of my friends at the time declared the NWN version of Layonara dead and moved on to other servers, and I followed and didn't look back. The loss of my beloved Hlint also kind of stole some of the magic away. Just my experience for reference sake, not saying you guys should have handled anything different, I know we're all just doing the best we can. But, well, when you announced the MMO it did basically sound like the NWN version of Layo was over.

The second time I tried Layo was maybe 2? years ago and this exact discussion was going on in the forum. I've been thinking about checking it out again, and I probably will, but I can also see that what drove me away from the server the second time- the feeling of futility at being low level, primarily- remains.

So just from my limited experience of generally fond but not entirely positive memories (i.e. I like the potential here more than the experience, and I definitely appreciate the community's existence even as I saw that it was really difficult to actually become an accepted member) I'd say I have a couple of.. not suggestions exactly, but maybe things that come to MY mind, at least...

One, I think the people you could court would be from outside NWN. NWN is on its last legs, it has a reprieve in that GOG is selling it dirty cheap (with messed up online codes of course) but you're hardly going to see an influx of new players in numbers that matter.

But if you court people from on-line RP forums, primarily from the world of PNP- as in, conventions, hobby shops, etc... I think Layo's advantage is that it is very much the PnP experience, or at least has the capability to give you that, and I could certainly see where a certain crowd who doesn't generally go for online gaming would really be into it. Maybe arrange quests out of the game, and court outsiders to join that way at appointed times, and run it all like a weekly game of PnP with friends old-school style.

As far as character approvals go (which I personally think are a giant crocodile filled moat around this castle), here's a suggestion: allow DMs running a quest to approve PC characters for that quest. Perhaps an interested player could give a bio or a rough idea of what they want to play and the DM could give them a character they can use, who will fit into the quest as part of his backstory so a giant application isn't needed. And make this character only playable during this quest, until that series is complete.

This seems like win-win to me for new players.. I can say I want to play a human rogue, the DM gives me a quickly drawn up human rogue to play who makes sense in the quest, no three day waiting period to find out you spelled a place name wrong. Yes, I exaggerate, but honestly, you're asking people who don't know this server, who just found it randomly from who knows where, to spend a few hours writing an application with a bio that has to make sense in your world, and then you grade them on it and often demand corrections! Think of it from an outsider's point of view- if you stumbled on a community like that you'd never heard of and they asked that of you, how many of you would really bother? Maybe that made sense when this was a popular game as a way to keep the riffraff out but honestly, in 2012?

And hell, let DMs start at a level appropriate to the quest too, assuming it's not over, I don't know, level 10 or so. Yes, really. Which bridges to--

Two, the level thing is a problem. You do need to make it feel POSSIBLE. You don't need time sinks in 2012 to slow people down. You need people to be of roughly the same levels to have a vibrant world where people can group up for quests and to explore, not sit on the bench because they're 10 levels too low and they know it will take 6 months at this pace to even get halfway there.

Yes, I'm saying it... It DOES just plain suck to be low level here, or at least it did a while ago. It doesn't seem possible at all to level up when you're at level 8 and you have to solo almost all the time because there's no one else at level 8 around, ever. You're asking for an insane time commitment from people that again, made sense in 2006, but in 2012? Meanwhile for low level players there's no sense of community, no sense of camaraderie, just as I said in a post when I gave up the second time, the sense that you've arrived at what was an amazing party after the cops came and busted it up and sent everybody home.

So why not just make it super-quick to level up to a point, or even start people higher? Why not give people a level every time they finish a quest up to a point as well? Does that mean you can rocket to level 20 much, much faster now than the current epics had to? Sure. But that person rocketing who'd be 20 doesn't have nearly the opportunity to have fun along the way that a current epic born in 2006 would have. (And if changing the XP tables throws everyone off- do it another way besides solely through killing monsters! More side quests or things to touch to give you XP to keep you on scavenger hunts way past level 5 if nothing else!)

I think there's a lot of great people trying their best here and I definitely applaud you guys and hope for the best. I've not often wanted to cheer on a community that I had no real involvement in, as much as this one. So take my rant in the spirit it was intended, please, and I'll pop in with an old character soon to look around if nothing else.