Player count, activity and character interaction.

[Kavrick]

So, I would have put this in general discussions but it's currently closed but I do think it's slightly relevant to the current other topic and generally the playerbase of the game. But basically, with the current player peak being around 20, 30-40 during RPTs, I think some things need to be put in place to make it so people who want to interact with other players have an easy time of it. Even during peak player around 1-2 am for me, I've struggled finding other people to do stuff with, even when I way all the characters I know. And I want to do things with other people, it's in the spirit of the game rather than doing stuff solo.

Now in the opening desert elves thread people talked about opening/closing tribes, consolidating players and it seemed like there was no good answer that kept everyone happy, I respect this, people wanna play what they wanna play. I do still think that isolated tribes are generally bad for the game if they don't regularly show up, as they are basically playing on a different server, but that's a whole different issue.

So i've had a few discussions with other players, old and new about the situation. If you use 'who', see 20 people on, but all the people you know or none of the people in your clan/city is around, that 20 might as well be zero.  I understand that there are a lot of conservative players who dont want massive, broad changes about the game so I mostly swapped ideas about optional systems that wont force anyone to interact with them, so that way, conceptually it should make most people happy.

1. The iron curtain of ooc/ic. Now this has been touched upon by a good few in the other thread, if you know who people play, you can hold them accountable more easily. Now more related to my own topic, I think if you were allowed to go on the discord and be like 'hey, I play x and i'm gonna log in, if anyone knows my character, I'm happy to hang out and do some hunting/grebbing/chatting/whatever!' then you're not forcing anyone to reveal who they play, but if people optionally want to use OOC avenues to find people to play with, I don't see the massive problem with this. There is something that I'll mention that is more than likely an 'open secret' and again, this has been mentioned in the feedback thread so I'm going to assume that it's not really a secret. And that's that people are going to metacom, and otherwise talk about the game, both mechanically and socially on things like private chats and shadow boards. By not allowing it on the forum/discord, all it serves is the fact that you can't really moderate it. I do think there's a big difference between metagaming and metacoming, talking about the game and discussing funny, cool events without the intent to act upon secret information for your own gain imo isn't a massive issue.

2. Clan limits. Now this is more of a weird thing but GMHs are known to have crafter/hunter limits, and I understand the original reason behind this was all the power consolidating into a single clan, but if people want to consolidate into a single group, why stop them? If you're worried about them getting too strong, I feel like you can always make incentives to join a different caln or even plots as storytellers that involve the clan in some way to challenge them both means that you get to involve a bunch of people in a cool plot whilst also providing challenges for a clan that might have too much power, a win/win as far as I can tell. Not to mention that a 'full' clan doesn't always mean a 'busy' clan, you have players that log in every day, and players who log in once in a blue moon. No flak against them, people have their own lives and should be able to play the game at their own pace, but they also take up the same slot as more active players.

3. Systems to find people. Now this is one that I think I believe in the most, and I have discussed how this could be implimented with other people in a way that wont be intrusive and wont effect those who do not engage with it. The most immersive way that I came to the conclusion with and with some ideas from other more experienced and long-lived players is something to do with the Way. In particular a (just as en example, ofc the commands dont have to be called this)  'broadcast' and 'find' command. Broadcast would allow you to let your mind be 'known' and the 'find' command would let you 'find' people who are 'known', making it more of an opt-in thing rather than an opt-out thing, this allows players to meet up and interact if they want to, which I think is always a good thing. For example, when you use the 'find' command, it'll say something like:

"the short-haired, big-eyed man wavers here, it's origin is the southlands.
the tall redhead wavers here, it's origin is the red desert.
the tall, big-headed dwarf wavers here, it's origin is the city of Allanak."

So you could then go on to contact people who are in the area with, get to know them, make friends/contacts and again, just interact with PCs, which I think is the lifeblood of the game.


I understand that a lot of people like the iron curtain and the idea of forcefully consolidating players by closing clans is generally not a good idea and would upset a lot of people, I just wanted to put forward non-intrusive ideas to encourage interaction between players in an organic way.

Also as a side note, if staff think this post isn't fit for this topic, could it be at least moved to general discussions for when that's opened again? I didn't have the intent to hijack any recent events or try to drag the focus away, I just had some thoughts I wanted to discuss and recommend.

Thanks in advance, I appreciate you all.

[najdorf]

that broadcast & find as 2 new mundane psi skills is a good idea
It works like whoc on a broad spectrum, for people that want to participate. Merchants, sellswords, bored people would use it.
and it would save myself from having an excel list constantly checking for 20 minds, retrying in every 10 minutes

[Jimpka_Moss]

Kavrick lays out and details some very common problems our players have, and I agree with their suggestions. Find and Broadcast are two things I would love to see IG.

[Seeker]

This has some solid suggestions.  I like Broadcast and Find as concepts.  It could be scalable as well.  You could only Broadcast or Find in your own region if staff somehow wanted to limit it.

Or have all new PCs automatically Broadcast until they flipped off the toggle.  As a N00bs Catcher tool.

[SpyGuy]

I like some of the ideas.  We need better ways to find RP if interaction is the goal.

As to clan limits, I do think there should be no limit in the roles.  That should be up to a PC leader to decide if having 3 hunters would benefit the crew more than another crafter.  Two is also a less than ideal number for both hunting and training.  The good thing is they have relaxed the more onerous rules of new GMH hunters.

Having a cap on total PCs in a clan is needed though.  Consolidation around a good leader PC will happen, particularly if that person can play a lot. That's great but it can also starve out other clans if the popular clan just hires everybody.  It can snowball easily because more PCs in a clan means more potential recruiters. Six or eight PCs in a clan is more than enough to be making your presence felt.

Interactions -between- clans should also be a focus.  GMH hunters hiring Byn units for escort or mercenaries to train their hunters.  Fale hiring Kurac for entertainers.  Small stuff that doesn't amount to a full on RPT but sees clans mixing. Luir's was particularly good for this.

[Supified]

IC skills will not make a noticeable impact on interactions because a lot of the time the person you are looking to interact with is offline or you'd zero in on them.  You could go to zones of engagement, but the proper pcs to make those zones worth while visiting can be handled entirely without being able to track players down.  It is insane to me that those sorts of players are not protected, (the players not the characters) but arm has bleed enough of them to show it clearly can't be bothered to do that.

I think what would make a bigger difference is offline scheduling tools between players.  Knowing someone might be on at this time or another could help.  The OOC element of it IMO actually improves the game too becaues it's way too easy for someone to "disappear" and you don't know if they died or quit playing.  This shouldn't be as big of an in game mystery as it is though, if you live with a roomie and you don't see them you probably have a clue what is going on.  In Arm? you do not.

Anyway I don't know what those tools would look like and I frankly think this discussion might be a little pre-mature until what changes the game is going to make to not sink in the silt sea are fully realized.

I suspect a lot of people are waiting to see if meaningful changes are actually made, I know I am.