Respecting your players time.

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rspwn
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Respecting your players time.

Post by rspwn » Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:58 pm

To start this off, this isn't a thread to vent,complain, or cause argument. I won't engage such, either.

As you all know, there was a recent announcement talking of multiple property ownerships, etc.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was surprised to hear that the player, can only own 1 quarter. Across the board.

Even if the surrounding areas you'd chose to live in is empty, you CANNOT take that quarter, if you've another on character 2, for example.

Which is semi-understandable but comes with draw-backs. If you're a player who is constantly involved,making and playing characters to 30 you will obviously come across the issue of storage.

You will come across the issues of your character not having a place to call home and being restricted in situations because of such.

I can understand if multiple characters of the same player are owning two-three quarters in the same area, that's an issue.

I don't see the harm in having a 2nd quarter completely detatched from any previous characters etc, in areas that would otherwise remain empty due to population. Are we really saying we'd prefer "dead" zones rather than having alts owning a property?

If so, why do they exist at all, except to drain resources from server stability :?:

As to the title of this post.

As a "newer" player I see behaviours that would drive people from the game entirely. Due to painting with a broad-brush and assuming that because YOU have thousands of hours, years played that everyone else does. This is obviously not the case.

Player 1, constantly makes issues,ignores rulings being a bad sport etc.
Player 2, a newer player with much less interaction with DM's, practically zero rule breaks etc.

Player 2, shouldn't be treated by the DMs the same as Player 1.

I understand, DM's have to deal with a lot of foolishness, it can make some Jaded. If a DM is painting every interaction as if dealing with "Player 1" then you need to take a break. You're likely causing more harm than good to the community overall.
Not every rulebreak is intentional or even known and some grace should be shown for a time. Rather than a sledgehammer approach.

I intend not to get into any specifics and example above was hypothetical.

I leave you with this. If your time investment is not being respected then why stay?


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Ork » Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:05 pm

I understand your frustration, but I don't really see a correlation between time investment and resource allocation. We share this server with a lot of players, and even more characters. If players were allowed to own 2 quarters, we'd have an even more severe shortage of locations. I can say that it would be wise for all players to read up on the rules, and familiarize yourself with them so you don't happen to lose quarters. I can sympathize with the loss, but ignorance of the rule doesn't mean it won't apply to you.


rspwn
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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by rspwn » Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:13 pm

Time investment and resource allocation are intertwined in my mind. Why do people grind for gear,gold etc. Properties themselves are an investment of time and resources.

I'm not saying you should be able to own two properties in high-population zones. As I said I see little harm in bring some life to depleted zones by doing so. If not my question stands, why these empty areas at all.


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Ork » Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:25 pm

Yeah, I see that. Let's play out this a bit: if we allowed players to own 2 quarters, but only 1 quarter in a high-populated area doesn't that make the rule more convoluted instead of clearer? The truth is that if players were allowed to own 2 quarters, the ones that do have a lot of time on their hands will monopolize the cooler, higher-populous quarters and the players that don't have as much time will be left with taking quarters that are difficult to reach/get to.

I think the rule as is is simple and easy to understand. We also have settlement storage that provides 6-12 slots depending, and all characters can have access to those even if you own a quarter on another character.


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Inordinate » Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:35 pm

rspwn wrote:
Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:58 pm

As you all know, there was a recent announcement talking of multiple property ownerships, etc.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was surprised to hear that the player, can only own 1 quarter. Across the board.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that explicitly stated in the message you get when prompted to rent a quarter? If not that sounds like an excellent suggestion to fix this issue.

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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by The GrumpyCat » Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:39 pm

Inordinate wrote:
Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:35 pm
rspwn wrote:
Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:58 pm

As you all know, there was a recent announcement talking of multiple property ownerships, etc.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was surprised to hear that the player, can only own 1 quarter. Across the board.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that explicitly stated in the message you get when prompted to rent a quarter? If not that sounds like an excellent suggestion to fix this issue.

I may be wrong, and I know a few other bits of it are incorrect (e.g. 24 hour rule now 48, theft rules) But I'm 99% sure that the quarter rule is on the board in the character creation area, the one that the dialogue box you get, just before entering arelith, says you have to read before continuing.

EDIT: It WOULD though be really cool if we could have a message when we'd run a quarter/shop, so we knew to release the spare. It's been asked of the Devs I think, hopefully they'll get around to it eventually. Sadly until then people have to really try and keep track of what they bid on.

This too shall pass.

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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Xerah » Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:45 pm

Also, the general goal that is encouraged is to play 1 character and not have a bunch of alts running about. You, and the world itself, get much more out of characters that are played more than a few times a month. Allowing multiple characters goes against that. While that's not an explicit goal of the server, I think anyone can take a logical look at things and realize it is for the best.

As someone who plays a lot of alts until I narrow down on what I want to play, you have a few options for this:

You don't need to keep everything. That +4 hand axe, might get bought by someone else, but you really don't need to hold it for months hoping for a buyer. Nor do you need to hold on to 67 chunks of zinc because you picked them up. Only keep the amount of mithril you need for gear (it's not even that expensive to buy these days)

Use 1 character for a shop, and 1 for a quarter.

Always buy settlement storage (not great for pirate characters, but they have other options)

Make sure that one of the characters is in a faction with faction storage.

Play a high STR character.

Craft things to 99% and leave them until you're ready to use them.


It's often hard enough to find a place you want to live, it would be even worse if everyone was buying two quarters.

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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Xerah » Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:47 pm

The GrumpyCat wrote:
Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:39 pm

It WOULD though be really cool if we could have a message when we'd run a quarter/shop, so we knew to release the spare. It's been asked of the Devs I think, hopefully they'll get around to it eventually. Sadly until then people have to really try and keep track of what they bid on.

We have messages that say when a quarter/shop is expiring; it should be simple enough to provide a warning on tick/purchase when someone already has an existing quarter/shop. I assume this is rare enough that's not worth the coding investment of zots though.

(this might be a bigger issue than I realized!)

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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Irongron » Tue Mar 28, 2023 6:09 pm

I'm sorry to hear a new player is feeling frustrated by this rule, I am nevertheless absolutely in favour of it, for a great many reasons that would require a significant text-wall to explain in detail.

To be extremely brief I feel it would create more dead zones, encourage weird meta-gaming, be extremely hard to police, damage immersion, be fundamentally inegalitarian (already we have established players sit on choice properties for years - now they'd have two), and a poor use of developer time (making content exclusively for individuals rather than groups).

As for the storage question? Honestly I think we already have way too much compared to years ago - larger stack sizes, settlement storage, fixture limits, inventory subcontainers, more carry capacity etc.

Allowing players and established groups to stockpile vast quantities of items and resources naturally decreases any reliance on trade and overall circulation - if you and your buddies are sitting on hundreds of adamantine ingots their individual GP value becomes an almost meaningless motivation to sell. Why? Because they're not 'burning a hole in your pocket' anymore - you are paying no opportunity cost by retaining them. An essential motivation to trade is only being able to maintain a finite inventory space.

To put it another way - if everyone in the RL had infinite storage space in their home, where nothing ever decayed, eventually nobody would need to buy much of anything.


rspwn
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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by rspwn » Tue Mar 28, 2023 8:00 pm

Appreciating all your comments, fellows.

Overall, I'm in favour of the rule aswell. Yet find it wasteful when areas lie empty.

Yes, there's players who sit on stacks of materials, valued properties. In my opinion that's due to an extent of stagnation which is semi-intertwined with decisions to empower "NPC" characters such as Kings,Councils etc. Rather than players filling these roles or having these roles less empowered.

Which would of course, lead to Chaos. Which in my view is preferable to stagnation. But that's another topic entirely-

I appreciate hearing Irongron's views and see the ingame material wealth in a different light. At least within Arelith


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Gilbert K » Wed Mar 29, 2023 1:32 am

The idea that allowing players to own multiple properties across their alts would help eliminate stagnation or "dead" zones is flawed altogether.

A player can only be logged in on one character at a time, and even if one managed to avoid crossing the streams and kept their alt's roleplay away from each other (which, in my pessimistic opinion, is inevitable if one plays long enough), it would clearly ensure that properties would swiftly be nothing more than storage for everyone's alts. This would lead to the stagnation and "dead"-ness that you seem to believe exists in areas that just happen to have an available quarter here and there (which there is absolutely nothing wrong with).


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by rspwn » Wed Mar 29, 2023 5:03 am

Some folk like to play alts to have truly different characters and stories, not to blast their way to thirty and roll. Crazy concept I know.

I think many here would agree that their "alts", which really i say for lack of a better term, are just as invested in the communities they inhabit as their "main". Which obviously will lead to rp,events etc.

Removing ownership of properties which are unlikely to be used is also flawed, In my opinion. You're losing a huge aspect of the game because somebody -might- want to use it.

There seems to be an assumption that I approve of property (muelling?)/camping, which couldn't be further from the truth.

I'm speaking in very specific terms about specific areas, not Cordor, not Guldorand, not Andunor, not Brog.

For example, there's a cave-ish home that's been empty for real months. I don't see a problem somebody with two characters owning it and using it.


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Skibbles » Wed Mar 29, 2023 5:42 am

Just use settlement storage or move in with your alt's friends and share storage/business. I think you're projecting yourself pretty hard on this 'problem'.

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-XXX-
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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by -XXX- » Wed Mar 29, 2023 6:02 am

A lot of players keep IC property solely for storage. Give us 50 item capacity citizenship storage = problem solved.


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by DM MoonMoon » Wed Mar 29, 2023 8:36 am

rspwn wrote:
Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:58 pm

Player 1, constantly makes issues,ignores rulings being a bad sport etc.
Player 2, a newer player with much less interaction with DM's, practically zero rule breaks etc.

Player 2, shouldn't be treated by the DMs the same as Player 1.

I understand, DM's have to deal with a lot of foolishness, it can make some Jaded. If a DM is painting every interaction as if dealing with "Player 1" then you need to take a break. You're likely causing more harm than good to the community overall.
Not every rulebreak is intentional or even known and some grace should be shown for a time. Rather than a sledgehammer approach.

Wanted to just point out here:

The way I, and many of the rest of the team handle cases, is that there are the big 5 rules you agree on when joining. Yes that box that when you make a character says: "You agree to the rules and have read them"
When it comes to little things, we are inclined to pull aside and give advise and guidance to lead to better experience for the player and the community.
Warnings come in when the above guidance is ignored, and repeated behaviour is seen. With the warnings including what will happen if they continue to not follow the rules.
Punishments then come in if the warning is ignored.

Now, the exception to warnings etc.
If we see someone Actively trolling (Making characters to harass others, ruin the game on purpose etc)
If we see someone explicitly going beyond the rating (Sexual content, overly graphic violence)
If we see someone bringing in radicalisation, racism, homophobia etc..
Then these are areas of instant and often permanent bans, we have ZERO tolerance for such actions.

I know I may of missed out bits here, but in reflection to your comment:
We treat all players the same, to the best of our ability. So player 2 causing one minor issue, is given guidance, whilst player 1 is given a harsher stance due to past issues.
That said, we do give opportunity for players to grow, some who may of had bans in the past for bad behaviour have shown us years later coming back a far better fit for the community. We use past cases to get a picture, but understand people can grow from them!

Hope that helps!
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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Kuma » Wed Mar 29, 2023 11:18 am

rspwn wrote:
Tue Mar 28, 2023 8:00 pm

Overall, I'm in favour of the rule aswell. Yet find it wasteful when areas lie empty.

This sounds like a great reason to incentivise development of those areas to make them more attractive - the Arcane Tower quarters, for example, have less storage than most places, less space for mad science fixtures, and over-restrictive class requirements. So it's almost always empty.

I'd suggest listing areas you find habitually empty with some suggestions for improvement.

-XXX- wrote:
Wed Mar 29, 2023 6:02 am

A lot of players keep IC property solely for storage. Give us 50 item capacity citizenship storage = problem solved.

Same issue gron laid out - you'd have PCs being used as adamantine ingot stack storage. Trade stagnates even more than it already is. Resource disparity becomes worse. Horrid idea.

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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Rei_Jin » Wed Mar 29, 2023 11:34 am

As much as I would love for everyone to be able to have as many properties as they want, the reality is that this would be bad for the server in general.

The fact that it is ONE Quarter/Guildhouse + Internal Quarter/Ship + Internal Quarter(if one exists) PER PLAYER means that folks are incentivised to only have one active character. Having one character allows for deeper investment in time and RP, and therefore, a richer server.

If, for example, the Underdark numbers dropped and we ended up with an empty district, so what? That's now space that new characters can come into and fill, because there is a space for them to feel like they can invest themselves in.

By comparison, it is immensely frustrating when one attempts to invest in a location but cannot get a house or store. It often results in folk moving on, or giving up on that goal for the character.

Yes, folks can (and many do) play multiple characters, and enrich the server. Nothing wrong with that.

Just because Arelith allows for many things does not mean it should incentivise the things it doesn't expressly want.


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Cthuletta » Wed Mar 29, 2023 1:46 pm

I can agree that it's frustrating to have an alt with only citizen storage space of 6-12 slots in a bank. I personally don't play alts a lot, but definitely understand where you're coming from, specifically when playing low-strength characters.
I think having maybe 15-20 slots in banks would be an improvement, particularly because I know that'd benefit myself even WITH a quarter.

That said, when it comes to 'dead zones', the only dead zones I've seen on my time here have been locked behind classes. So druid-specific areas come to mind immediately, because not many play druids in GENERAL, and less join Groves proper, particularly in the Underdark. Just as an example. I've never come across a dead zone that allows anyone to bid regardless of class/race, they're usually taken, with maybe one for bid every so often because they found a quarter closer to their desired RP area.

So when it comes to having 2 quarters per player, I again understand your sentiment and desire, but look at it from a number's perspective. There are, in general, about 100-150 characters online during your average day. This isn't counting people who are in different time-zones and log on during different times while the server is 'quiet', so let's go 150 players total purely for an example.
That's 150 quarters that are being actively used. Most people who play an alt in any capacity would probably utilize the use of a second quarter, even if only for storage alone and not RP. You see that happen already with just one quarter per character.
In this example, that'd be 300 quarters needed if the majority have two quarters each, in a place where quarters are already strained and are a limited 'resource'. I personally have had trouble finding quarters, I know others who've spent weeks looking, bidding, and failing to get one. I can't imagine if that issue was doubled.

The new(ish) bidding system has relieved a lot of that strain by giving people time to find and bid, which I certainly enjoy since it gives everyone a fair chance. Though the 'name in the hat' RNG system would be a lot more polluted if most people put their name in twice, compared to those who only dedicate time to one character for whatever personal reason being outnumbered and potentially halving their own chances of success in winning a quarter.

In the end, I definitely see where you're coming from, and why it would be a useful thing, but sadly it would come to the detriment of other players and the playerbase at large, no matter which way you spin it, even if unintentionally.

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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Subtext » Wed Mar 29, 2023 1:56 pm

I quite like it how it currently is - it ensures that quarters are more spread around and more people can get one.

However, I would like to suggest one change - take certain official settlenent quarters out of the equation. They shouldn't count given how quickly you can lose access to then and how vital these quarters sometimes are.

Examples...Cordorian military HQ, Guldorand garrison.


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by -XXX- » Wed Mar 29, 2023 2:01 pm

Kuma wrote:
Wed Mar 29, 2023 11:18 am

Same issue gron laid out - you'd have PCs being used as adamantine ingot stack storage. Trade stagnates even more than it already is. Resource disparity becomes worse. Horrid idea.

While certainly a valid argument, players can already store up to 1200 adamantine ingots in their citizenship storage right now, so it seems to me like we're waaay (by approx. 60000000gp) past such concerns.

Then the next stage would be "I want a shop to put the remaining 3000 adamantine ingots into"...
...and after that "sure, a quarter for a library full of grimoires and a chest for coal and glass sounds neat".

Ofc. that's all a hyperbole - I doubt there are many characters who are in possession of 4200 adamantine ingots, which is the case I'm trying to make here.
Larger storage would only be a QoL improvement at this point - one that might deincentivize people from sitting on an unused quarter that serves them for little more than those 20 extra inventory slots.


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by Richrd » Wed Mar 29, 2023 10:47 pm

When I looked at the title of this thread I was expecting complaints about anything else.

But not a whole tirade dedicated to how it's unfair how each player can only have 1 piece of in-game housing. You clearly refused to read information given, then got upset and are now just dumping thinly veiled frustration off.
There's far less property available than Arelith has players.
Even implementing a new clause for the 1 housing rule that separates surface and Underdark housings would not be a good idea, as it'd probably end up indirectly causing players to cross the streams and start playing characters on completely opposite sides of the fence, risking metagaming.

Anyways, since you are a newer player I'd suggest reading the rules and text boxes given to you upon entering a server more thoroughly, maybe even sit for a minute and think about them.


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Re: Respecting your players time.

Post by rspwn » Wed Mar 29, 2023 11:29 pm

I think this has run its course, I truly appreciate the folk who took time to make constructive comments. A few leading to engaging and genuinely interesting PM's.


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