Post by Deleted on Dec 3, 2017 6:37:23 GMT
I decided to make a new thread for this because I didn’t want to post a big suggestion in the middle of a 9-page storm. How EE should be approached is a sensitive topic, and it seems that any chosen path is going to leave many players unhappy. I have an idea which might be an effective compromise and would hopefully keep as many players as possible feeling satisfied. I would politely request that flames are kept to a minimum here - this is a serious thread about HG’s future, and has no room for personal grievances from the past.
EE’s release, particularly on Steam, will cause a one-off increase in NWN interest (the magnitude of which is impossible to predict) that will never be repeated again. The issue here is that the current iteration of HG has proven for years that it is extremely ineffective at holding onto new players, so an increase of NWN interest might not have as large an impact on HG as we would hope.
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I'm not a bleeding heart that cries about "how will newbies catch up to the veterans?"; as I've previously posted I personally think that once a new player reaches Level 60 (and thus access to BURs/Hell) they are not far away from being able to feel relevant and contribute significantly to endgame parties. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of these new players never make it to Level 60 at all. I used to be very active in chatting with newbies to scout out potential talent, and I've lost count of the players whom I exchanged advisory PMs/tells with that ended up quitting in the Level 25-50 region (which is why I don't really bother anymore).
There is a tendancy on these boards for players to say "well, not getting many new players is expected because the game is old", which has truth to it... but the reality is that HG has *always* had a steady trickle of new players joining. HG places very high on the NWNScry server list, and if you ignore the RP/ERP servers then HG is unambiguously #1. If any NWN player is searching for an Action world, HG is currently one of the first places that they'll notice and consider.
Today's new player experience is pretty dry. The 1-40 world is lonely, and while there are a handful of amazing helpers (eg: Madzapp, Tacpilot and a few others) who do a lot to help newbies directly, if they aren't around then newbies are primarily alone or dragged by multi-box armies - not particularly exciting to party with, since their contribution has very little impact. IF they manage to climb to 40+, the road to 60 mostly consists of being dragged by Paragon toons (again, often with multi-box armies), where they similarly make a zero impact contribution. The entire trip from 1-60 has no real items/gold of value. Overall, those first 30-50 hours of gameplay are quite boring, grindy and leechy. I think this is a key factor in why so few players stick around to 60 and beyond, where the 'real game' begins and the fun really picks up.
So the money question is: "If we were able to immediately port HG (as it is now) to EE as it was released, how much would the newbie situation improve?". It's impossible to know for sure, I think that merely having more players entering the server would somewhat reduce the loneliness of the 1-40 road, but overall not significantly impact retention to Level 60 and beyond. I suspect that the road simply involves too much leeching and feeling that your contribution and rewards aren't worth anything.
In short, I believe that a straight port to EE will be a major failure to capitalise on this single opportunity to significantly grow interest in the server. A clean-slate EE obviously removes many of these issues, since everyone is forced to start from scratch. The removal of a 10 year+ inflated economy means items have value, and injects new challenge into the server (many of the LL runs are in fact quite difficult and fun if attempted with a level-appopriate party).
I absolutely understand the perspective of players who don’t want to lose their stuff. I think that removing the vault of a player who doesn’t want it removed is a great way to drive that player away, perhaps forever. And so we have the apparent dilemma of being unlikely to capitalise on EE’s release without losing our own players.
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My suggestion is to try and satisfy both goals at the same time, by hosting TWO sets of EE servers:
HG-Port: an unrestricted data port to EE, with players retaining their character/bank vaults and being able to play the way they currently do
HG-Fresh: a clean-slate version of the module, with multi-boxing limited to dual-boxing (exact method can be discussed later)
(The names are obviously just for discussion's sake)
They would both run the exact same version of the HG-EE module; the *only* difference is that character/bank vaults aren't shared between the two. Players who want a clean-slate can get it, players who want to keep their characters/gear/multi-boxing can continue to do so unimpeded. In terms of Acaos' list of potential options, this is a combination of #3 and#4.
One major advantage here is that the division can always be mended later. If HG-Fresh is a total flop, or succeeds to the point that it has reached comparable levels of inflation as HG-Classic, or if both servers gradually decline... then the player/bank vaults could be merged with the multi-boxing restrictions being dropped, thus converting the compromise solution into the equivalent of a full port of HG to EE (Option #3, which many were already advocating for). So we would always have that safety net available if it's needed. The reverse is not true; once data has been merged, it's not going to be unmerged.
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There's never a perfect solution, and I've identified three main problems with this idea:
1 - It formally splits the server
I think that it is impossible to keep everyone happy and playing without ‘splitting’ the server, whether it is a formal physical split or a more subtle psychological split (that is, people just won’t play if the experience isn't what they enjoy). The silver lining here is that for the most part, the players that want different things are already separate - many of the players who want a clean slate are players who have burned out and feel uninterested in continuing as is, having finished everything there is to do already. Conversely, many of the players who want to keep their vaults are the ones who still have progress to make in Hell/Abyss/Limbo and want to continue focusing on those areas. So I would argue that in many cases, these two groups of players would not be doing a lot of partying together anyway.
If any players want to play a bit of both, they are free to do so - you could probably even configure Webdash and the inter-server chat channels to work with both HG-Port and HG-Fresh at the same time (excluding the !bazaar one). As I mentioned above, strictly speaking the split is 'temporary' since it can be repaired at any time if deemed necessary.
2 - It channels new players to HG-Fresh, thus constricting potential growth of HG-Port
Given a choice, any new player is far more likely to choose HG-Fresh instead of HG-Port. While this is obviously not ideal, if you didn't fall asleep reading what I wrote about new player retention then you'll understand that the current HG (and thus HG-Port) is exquisitely bad at retaining new players past Level 60 anyway. In other words, since most HG-Port players want to focus on their Hell/Abyss/Limbo progression, most of the new players that will now not be joining HG-Port would never even reach those areas to be able to join those parties. So I believe that this 'loss of potential players' is actually not very significant.
As stated in the point above, there is always the option of a merge between HG-Fresh and HG-Port which would then fully integrate these players and solve this problem.
3 - Potential technical issues with hosting two separate servers
I’m not a computer specialist, so I have no idea how large an issue this is (or if it would even be an issue at all). Presumably there would be some amount of extra work on Acaos’ end. If the existing Hubs were simply divided (eg: 2 Hubs for HG-Port, 1 Hub for HG-Fresh) then I would imagine that there would be no extra costs associated?
-----
So, that’s my suggestion for how we might be able to fully capitalise on EE’s release, whilst keeping as many existing players as possible feeling satisfied. I think it maximises player choice.
What do you all think? It is of course just an initial idea, and is very open to being refined.
EE’s release, particularly on Steam, will cause a one-off increase in NWN interest (the magnitude of which is impossible to predict) that will never be repeated again. The issue here is that the current iteration of HG has proven for years that it is extremely ineffective at holding onto new players, so an increase of NWN interest might not have as large an impact on HG as we would hope.
-----
I'm not a bleeding heart that cries about "how will newbies catch up to the veterans?"; as I've previously posted I personally think that once a new player reaches Level 60 (and thus access to BURs/Hell) they are not far away from being able to feel relevant and contribute significantly to endgame parties. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of these new players never make it to Level 60 at all. I used to be very active in chatting with newbies to scout out potential talent, and I've lost count of the players whom I exchanged advisory PMs/tells with that ended up quitting in the Level 25-50 region (which is why I don't really bother anymore).
There is a tendancy on these boards for players to say "well, not getting many new players is expected because the game is old", which has truth to it... but the reality is that HG has *always* had a steady trickle of new players joining. HG places very high on the NWNScry server list, and if you ignore the RP/ERP servers then HG is unambiguously #1. If any NWN player is searching for an Action world, HG is currently one of the first places that they'll notice and consider.
Today's new player experience is pretty dry. The 1-40 world is lonely, and while there are a handful of amazing helpers (eg: Madzapp, Tacpilot and a few others) who do a lot to help newbies directly, if they aren't around then newbies are primarily alone or dragged by multi-box armies - not particularly exciting to party with, since their contribution has very little impact. IF they manage to climb to 40+, the road to 60 mostly consists of being dragged by Paragon toons (again, often with multi-box armies), where they similarly make a zero impact contribution. The entire trip from 1-60 has no real items/gold of value. Overall, those first 30-50 hours of gameplay are quite boring, grindy and leechy. I think this is a key factor in why so few players stick around to 60 and beyond, where the 'real game' begins and the fun really picks up.
So the money question is: "If we were able to immediately port HG (as it is now) to EE as it was released, how much would the newbie situation improve?". It's impossible to know for sure, I think that merely having more players entering the server would somewhat reduce the loneliness of the 1-40 road, but overall not significantly impact retention to Level 60 and beyond. I suspect that the road simply involves too much leeching and feeling that your contribution and rewards aren't worth anything.
In short, I believe that a straight port to EE will be a major failure to capitalise on this single opportunity to significantly grow interest in the server. A clean-slate EE obviously removes many of these issues, since everyone is forced to start from scratch. The removal of a 10 year+ inflated economy means items have value, and injects new challenge into the server (many of the LL runs are in fact quite difficult and fun if attempted with a level-appopriate party).
I absolutely understand the perspective of players who don’t want to lose their stuff. I think that removing the vault of a player who doesn’t want it removed is a great way to drive that player away, perhaps forever. And so we have the apparent dilemma of being unlikely to capitalise on EE’s release without losing our own players.
-----
My suggestion is to try and satisfy both goals at the same time, by hosting TWO sets of EE servers:
HG-Port: an unrestricted data port to EE, with players retaining their character/bank vaults and being able to play the way they currently do
HG-Fresh: a clean-slate version of the module, with multi-boxing limited to dual-boxing (exact method can be discussed later)
(The names are obviously just for discussion's sake)
They would both run the exact same version of the HG-EE module; the *only* difference is that character/bank vaults aren't shared between the two. Players who want a clean-slate can get it, players who want to keep their characters/gear/multi-boxing can continue to do so unimpeded. In terms of Acaos' list of potential options, this is a combination of #3 and#4.
One major advantage here is that the division can always be mended later. If HG-Fresh is a total flop, or succeeds to the point that it has reached comparable levels of inflation as HG-Classic, or if both servers gradually decline... then the player/bank vaults could be merged with the multi-boxing restrictions being dropped, thus converting the compromise solution into the equivalent of a full port of HG to EE (Option #3, which many were already advocating for). So we would always have that safety net available if it's needed. The reverse is not true; once data has been merged, it's not going to be unmerged.
-----
There's never a perfect solution, and I've identified three main problems with this idea:
1 - It formally splits the server
I think that it is impossible to keep everyone happy and playing without ‘splitting’ the server, whether it is a formal physical split or a more subtle psychological split (that is, people just won’t play if the experience isn't what they enjoy). The silver lining here is that for the most part, the players that want different things are already separate - many of the players who want a clean slate are players who have burned out and feel uninterested in continuing as is, having finished everything there is to do already. Conversely, many of the players who want to keep their vaults are the ones who still have progress to make in Hell/Abyss/Limbo and want to continue focusing on those areas. So I would argue that in many cases, these two groups of players would not be doing a lot of partying together anyway.
If any players want to play a bit of both, they are free to do so - you could probably even configure Webdash and the inter-server chat channels to work with both HG-Port and HG-Fresh at the same time (excluding the !bazaar one). As I mentioned above, strictly speaking the split is 'temporary' since it can be repaired at any time if deemed necessary.
2 - It channels new players to HG-Fresh, thus constricting potential growth of HG-Port
Given a choice, any new player is far more likely to choose HG-Fresh instead of HG-Port. While this is obviously not ideal, if you didn't fall asleep reading what I wrote about new player retention then you'll understand that the current HG (and thus HG-Port) is exquisitely bad at retaining new players past Level 60 anyway. In other words, since most HG-Port players want to focus on their Hell/Abyss/Limbo progression, most of the new players that will now not be joining HG-Port would never even reach those areas to be able to join those parties. So I believe that this 'loss of potential players' is actually not very significant.
As stated in the point above, there is always the option of a merge between HG-Fresh and HG-Port which would then fully integrate these players and solve this problem.
3 - Potential technical issues with hosting two separate servers
I’m not a computer specialist, so I have no idea how large an issue this is (or if it would even be an issue at all). Presumably there would be some amount of extra work on Acaos’ end. If the existing Hubs were simply divided (eg: 2 Hubs for HG-Port, 1 Hub for HG-Fresh) then I would imagine that there would be no extra costs associated?
-----
So, that’s my suggestion for how we might be able to fully capitalise on EE’s release, whilst keeping as many existing players as possible feeling satisfied. I think it maximises player choice.
What do you all think? It is of course just an initial idea, and is very open to being refined.