Multiplayer thoughts

[Nightchill]

I'm curious to how people feel the multiplayer scene will develop.

Originally a fair few players seemed worried about servers which allowed characters from the Local Vault. i.e. a character that's stored on your hardrive (as opposed to the servers). This gives the option of you persuading a friend to run a server with lots of gold and lots of +5 items.
However those characters will only be allowed on servers without the character checking. This checking disallows characters with too many feats, too much gold, too good items for their level.
So, in this case, are you expecting a lot of open and unchecked servers?

Or as another option. large, linked together servers. There's a lot of projects where creators are linking servers and attempting to make full blown persistant worlds. The down side is that little will be freeform, most events will be scripted into the NPCs (with the YES/NO dialogue for players). There'll no doubt be DMs to drop monsters in, maybe the occasional event, but ultimately it's a place for characters to explore, not campaign in.

The third option is the one I'm expecting to take off. However I'm from a tabletop (or pen & paper) background, as are a lot of people here. This scenario involves a group of players who meet regularly and game with the 1 or 2 DMs. The DM creates the world, the setting and the characters are stored on the server (so the DM has complete control over what items/xp they gain).
This also lends itself to freeform. After using Aurora for a while I realised that being a DM and taking control of the characters (so what you type is what the players see) is less work than creating a complex, interactive dialogue.
I'm hoping to run a campaign of this type for 4-6 players (with full character backgrounds, models for their family members etc. ) and also desperately after to play in some.

So... comments?

note: no grammar, syntax is checked due to student(esque) apathy.

 

[Nightchill]

To expand on this slightly (after having some quotes misread back to me) I wasn't denouncing persistant servers at all. In fact, I'd expect them to be the ones keeping the game going for most players (although after the tabletop multiplayer has passed).

By "freeform" I meant a DM taking control of an NPC. This should be fairly clear why it'll be less common than the tabletop-style NWN game.. A server with say, 400 people on will have maybe 20 DMs at most. These DMs will probably be watching specific portals or areas. If those 400 players are split into 80 groups then there's no way each group can have every NPC be DM controlled. And hence, the majority of the text will be scripted. And the majority of the quests/encounters will have been written in advance so players can pursue/complete them whilst the DMs are offline.

In the tabletop style game the DM could feasibly take control of every NPC (if he types fast enough). Sure, he'll use some scripts, maybe have a choice of responses he picks on depending on how much pizza the players bought him. The monsters/encounters will also probably be dropped in by the DM, and have been prepared in advance.
But throughout everything the players do is an effort to reach some goal the DM has set, and the players may not even know. Just like tabletop

Soon... soon my pretties...

 

[old.Cask]

Do these 'friends' come in the box or are they going to be included in a future expansion?

Not sure where to find any otherwise

 

[Custy]

lol

Good post nightchill, not sure of the answers but others who are more clued up can answer them.

 

[granny]

Originally posted by Cask
Do these 'friends' come in the box or are they going to be included in a future expansion?

Not sure where to find any otherwise

I'm told you can order them from Amazon, but make sure you get the UK ones, they're more compatible then the US versions

 

[xane]

I doubt the "persistant world" servers will ever challenge the MMORGs like EverCrack and Dark Age of Levelalot, but then again I wouldn't want that bunch of hard-headed exploiters coming in on my server and "killing Drizzt" as it were.

Unfortunately munchkins are a fact of RPG life, I met them regularly on pen and paper games, opening the whole thing up on the internet is bound to invoke some problems, you will probably see public servers being dominated by them.

I agree with your analysis Nightchill, it does look like the building tools will allow for automated scenarios, this can only enhance the game and keep it running.

 

[Mousey]

Am gonna pick up the game on Friday... as I read it, it will need 40 or 50 hours doing solo game, and then try to meet up with a regular bunch of like minded adults to enjoy the multi player via forum.

But am I right in thinking that with a cable connection there can only be a handful in the group? Or even only two or three plus a DM?

Anyway... willl be in touch at a later date when I know more what I am talking about!!

But any group will have to be strictly role play when in game itself. Anyone who says "ok m8?" is dead!

 

[Nightchill]

Hmm, well, thinking about it I'd guess each player is going need to 4 or 5k/sec to play half-decently. Cable can do about 20k/sec uploads? So thats 4 or 5 players. This is all a huge over simplification but probably not too bad for ball park figures (happy to be shouted down though).

If you're planning on DMing then maybe think about a regular group of 3? I'm not sure if Barrysworld are going to be running dedicated servers that DMs can book regularly and upload their modules to.

Luckily, the time I'm running mine I'll be at Uni with 10mbit (1meg/sec up and down) so should be sorted for the party of 6 hehe.

 

[ajeroth]

Friends in a box

When I get this game tomorrow, Il be spending time going through it with single player and learning how to use the toolkit as I go. Im a software engineer so I dont expect the scripting language to present any difficulties once I see where things go and what the standard variables for players and npc's are.

I reckon that by a week on friday, I will be ready enough to DM a little group through at least the first introduction to the game. As with many others, I used to DM regularly for 11 years before real life (tm) intervened and the group split up. I live around 300 miles away from the nearest member, which makes meeting up for a friday night session a bit on the difficult side

If anyone is interested in a roleplay game, then drop me a line sometime next week and Il let you know how Im doing with learning how to DM in the game and when I plan to start the first session. Im looking for four players, as Im not sure my ADSL will cope with much more..see how that goes with four and then try expanding.

Anyone who simply wants to hack'n'slash...dont contact me

As I understand it, dice rolls within the game are rolled by the players or dm and not seen by everyone..so something along the lines that requires a dice roll (e.g. searching, spot hidden etc) will require something along the lines of 30 dice rolls sent to me via email before the game, and Il just randomly allocate them to numbers 1-30...and use them as and when required.

It will be server-side character driven, as the last thing I need is some level 1 character with +5 vorpal blades running about with invulnerability flag on

So..if anyone is interested, in either playing or wanting players themselves...drop an email to:

ajeroth@nildram.co.uk

Ta, Aj