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Topic: Is the community dead? (Read 387 times) |
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TheArchaic
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Ive noticed that that in recent weeks there have been less and less open / application games. The past week has been good for games in that aspect however I noticed there are quite a few long running invie only games.
I appreciate these have been running a long time, and people have found their games (I.e the purpose the site" however with the dwindling number of players would it not be better to drop these games and create new ones to attract more players?
I know its a selfish notion but I believe its the only true way this place will survive until nwn2.
Your opinions? ... Feel free to delete/lock this thread as the other has been pointed out to me.
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| « Last Edit: on: Jun 2, 2006, 12:17PM » |
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Lazybones
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Heh, actually J'dai locked that other thread due to it being over a year old, but I think it's fine to talk about this issue in this thread, since it is so central to the NWC mission and experience. Even if some of us "old timers" have seen it come up about 15 times since NWC's inception (yes, even in the "busy" days of NWC's first year there were concerns about not enough open games).
Some of these comments will be repetitive, so if you've read this before, you can skip ahead to the end now!
Let's face it, with NWN1 almost four years old, it's amazing that we can still support a matchmaking community like this one. It is true that most games are (and always have been) "invite only"; a main objective of the player base here has been to find recurring, moderate- to long-term games. It is here, IMO, that the DM-ed game of NWN truly shines.
But one-shots play a vital role as well, to bring new players into the community and to allow people to build up a reputation as reliable and fun companions. Many of my current players started with me in one-shots, before finding their way into one of my campaign games.
Part of the problem as well that always comes up in these threads is the shortage of DMs. Not everyone wants to take on that role, but with Carlo's DM-training module, and the other supporting material (including my guide to DMing on the Vault), there are lots of options for folks who want to get started. There are a lot of modules very suited to starting DMs (step over here: http://www.neverwinterconnections.com/forums/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewmessages/id/5770/guildid/0.htm for a list)
Another option, of course, is to just host a scripted module. You'll find a list here: http://www.neverwinterconnections.com/forums/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewmessages/id/18724/guildid/0.htm with many excellent "classics" that are well-suited to multiplayer play.
Finally, I'll offer the other bit of common advice, which is that "invite only" doesn't necessarily mean "no luck". Many ongoing campaigns have frequent openings and a polite PM to the DM can at least get you on the waiting list. I recently added three new players to one of my games, for example, two of whom had contacted me earlier asking for consideration if a slot opened up. The worst that you'll get is a "sorry, nothing available right now."
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| « Last Edit: on: Jun 2, 2006, 2:23PM » |
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J'Dai Voisin
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on Jun 2, 2006, 2:21 PM, Lazybones wrote:| Heh, actually J'dai locked that other thread due to it being over a year old... [-snip-] |
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To clarify, the poster made the comment about "the other thread" in regards to Rofelli's link. I hadn't locked the other thread when the original poster made the edits to his comments. 
Still, this issue IS worthy of discussion, even if the topic seems to come up all-too-regularly. What most of us will struggle with (and may be the cause of the "deadness" around here) is that we just don't know what NWN2 holds for us. We see trailers, we view screenshots and we get news bits that vary from terrific to "Oh, no!". In many ways, I suspect, people are just standing still and waiting for either validation or the other shoe to drop.
The other thing - which is pointed out to me again and again these days, is that the sun is out and it's been a long, cold winter. The site ALWAYS slows down at this time of year no matter how old NWN is. 
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Lazybones
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on Jun 2, 2006, 2:32 PM, J'Dai Voisin wrote:| The other thing - which is pointed out to me again and again these days, is that the sun is out and it's been a long, cold winter. The site ALWAYS slows down at this time of year no matter how old NWN is. |
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The big yellow ball? It BURNS usss!
RE NWN2, I see one of three things happening.
a) Obsidian, rushed to release the game early, drops the ball big-time, and NWN2 is a disaster, with game-stopping bugs and tons of problems. The DM Client is stillborn, with a bug that causes 50% of all games to crash within the first ten minutes of play, and while people are playing the SP campaign despite the hurdles, the MP community never really gets going. A lot of MP games are listed at NWC over the first month, but fully 2/3rds of those are utter failures due to crashes and other fundamental problems. After the first month, more and more people start gravitating back to NWN1. NWC continues, although it never fully recovers from the impact of NWN2's release. Atari goes bankrupt, and across the universe a billion souls let out a gentle sigh of freedom.
(okay, maybe the last one's a bit of a stretch)
b) NWN2 is a decent, if flawed, release. People are screaming up the flaws on the forums, perhaps not remembering the initial problems that plagued NWN1's release. There's a ton of initial games scheduled here at NWC, mostly the official campaign at first, and then a cluster of about six mods released on the Vault about three months after release by some of the biggest names in the NWN custom-content community. Four months after release, a big patch is issued that resolves some (but not all) of the problems. Many folks continue their NWN1 campaigns, especially when CEP2 and a few other big-name custom content projects are finally released, but within six months, 90% of the community (and NWC) have switched over to NWN2. After an initial surge, NWC's membership and activity settle to what it was in the busy year after NWN1's release.
c) NWN2 is the second coming of Christ, and sets records for a PC RPG title release. Atari reigns supreme, and takes credit for the "tough decisions" that led to the game's success. Obsidian immediately begins work on the first expansion pack, which will include horses and bump the level cap to 30. The custom content community, with the notable exception of a still-seething DLA, comes on board to the new game with a resounding enthusiasm. Within two months of release, 85% of NWC's games are NWN2-oriented; within four months, as the mods start appearing in numbers on the Vault, the number is 95%. By that point, NWC's membership has tripled, and Rizzen is finding it difficult to keep the server up to handle the strain of all the new activity.
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| « Last Edit: on: Jun 3, 2006, 12:18AM » |
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Lazybones
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on Jun 8, 2006, 7:43 PM, Silvarian wrote:| In terms of the community itself, I personally had a rule of thumb - 60+ games scheduled per week and the community was healthy and thats just how it was for the 2+ years Ive been here. However at the end of last year it seemed the community pretty much heaved one of its last few sighs and the number plummeted to 40 and now a little over 20? |
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What list are you looking at? Just counting the current "Next 7 days" list off the front page, I show 37 games. And that's likely low, since many people don't schedule games a full week in advance. Too bad NWC doesn't have an easily-viewable history of games; still, I would be surprised if fewer than 50 games a week were being played each week.
Or were you only referring to Open/App games? Those have always been fewer, but just a quick glance shows at least some small-party-with-DM classics still being offered. I think that most of us have gravitated to the long-term campaign, and as I noted above there are lots of ways to get into one of those (including starting your own).
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| « Last Edit: on: Jun 9, 2006, 12:04AM » |
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Carlo One
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It seems like the single-player campaign and toolset for NWN2 will be superior, while the multiplayer/DM setup will be significantly poorer, at least out-of-the-box.
Latest developments, including DLA's pending release of some truly incredible content for NWN, have reinvigorated my interest in building/DMing in NWN, while turning me off to NWN2 pending additional patches and content for it.
Linking this back to the original topic, it'll be interesting to see if there's a bump in NWN interest over the summer, due to new content release and the like.
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Lazybones
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on Jun 10, 2006, 8:35 PM, Mulu wrote:
Another problem, not so much for the NWC crowd, but for PWs in general, is if the players has to have a local copy of the module, but there is no way to keep them from opening it up in the toolset and seeing all the "secrets" of the game.
Otherwise I agree with Carlo. Sounds like the MP community will have to pick up a lot of the slack in the first few months after release.
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| « Last Edit: on: Jun 10, 2006, 11:54PM » |
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Virthe
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A local copy of the modules is not needed.
The copy the clients need is the walkmeshes and other structural data of the areas.
Sort of like a HAK but for data related to areas in the module.
Conversations and scripts and other text based data has been confirmed not to be part of what will be needed on the client, so we are not talking about a local copy of the module here.
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Mulu
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Yeah, Obsidian just debunked Papermonk's interpretation, though in a hedgy sort of way.
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Lazybones
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This is part of the problem. Obsidian/Atari seems to have no grasp whatsoever on the concept of PR.
Exhibits:
a) Screenshots released to date appear to have been taken at the lowest possible resolution, with fundamental effects like shadows disabled.
b) Staff members drop huge bombs like, "Ah, no DM Client at launch," with no apparent awareness of the incredible outcry that this will provoke. The worst part is that they seemed to know this well in advance, but it only came out as an apparent slip from one developer as part of an unconnected interview.
c) The whole cutting the DD project fiasco. Maybe necessary, but handled in about the worst possible way that I can conceive of, as if their goal was to piss off the custom content community.
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Silvarian
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Its almost as if they feel that it doesn't matter - that this online community doesn't require anything more that the PR they are givin at present. Which is a rather silly way of looking at things because many people may at some point decide to 'wait and see' before they purchase instead of instantly purchasing as they had planned to do earlier when they had higher expectations. And a low initial sale start is hardly going to be inspire more sales later.
I was initially going to purchase it at release but now Im waiting until that 'guaranteed' DM client releas eis going to be there at all and at a reasonable quality. If not, its a case of waiting on simple principle. Shame they couldnt understand the basic point that delaying the DM client, the core of NWN (regardless of its limited popularity) would cause an outrage in their most devoted of fans.
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Mulu
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You know, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if NWN2 is really the better product for multiplayer. I see this game as essentially being a program that animates our miniatures for us while automating combat. In other words, I don't play Neverwinter Nights, I play D&D (and other games) using Neverwinter Nights as a medium.
Right now, NWN is totally stable. No more bugs worth mentioning, a ton of community content, and the ability to host a game with quite a few players on an outdated desktop. We even have rideable horses in NWN, but not NWN2.
After we all upgrade our hardware for NWN2 (well, those of us who haven't already) we'll be playing on machines that will allow us to do all those things we couldn't do when NWN first came out, and won't be able to do on NWN2 when it first comes out, like have large scale battles with lots of combatants, and crazy amounts of placeables.
Contrast that to the headaches that we all know will be coming with a brand new product. At a minimum it will be the early days of NWN1 all over again, with small mods and tons of lag. Remember the possession bug, where you'd end up in a monster's body? Remember all the times you'd have to stop the game and wait for players to relog, or even relaunch the mod? We'll have that level of bugs *at a minimum* when this sucker comes out. It sounds like other than the SP component everything else was just slapped together ad hoc at the last minute. I wouldn't blame anybody for waiting a year before changing platforms for their multiplayer campaigns. The hardware will be cheaper then too.
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| « Last Edit: on: Jun 11, 2006, 8:59PM » |
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Gulfwulf
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All I do anymore with NWN is play MP, either hosting my own games or participating in others. For that reason, plus I may (or may not) need a computer upgrade, I won't be picking NWN2 when it first comes out until I can guage how it handles in MP games, specificially DMed games. I hope it all comes together and I can buy it with confidence, but I'm not holding my breath.
[edit]:In reference to the original poster's comments about a lack of open/application games, the reason I generally don't ask for players is the lack of interest. I don't see any reason to look for replacement players if nobody asks to join when I do.
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| « Last Edit: on: Jun 11, 2006, 8:15PM » |
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But as my father sometimes reminds me..