AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Do we have a leveling problem because of low player count?

I'm just throwing some questions and ideas out here to see how the community feels about this?

I see the player numbers are low and we do get small trickles of new people from time to time trying out Amia. With that being said, I feel like those new people end up leaving because there is no one to level up with and they can't really level up by themselves. This is especially true when they are in the 15-19 leveling range. Usually by the time new players reach the level 20s, one or two level 30s can try to help carry them to 30. I'm wondering if there is a way to remove the xp limit or set it to a bare minimum of 20-25xp per kill when there is a great level difference in a party. That way level 30s could still try to help out with those who don't have anyone within their range. Can we think of ways for level 30s to be able to contribute XP to those who needed it? If the community doesn't feel like this is a problem then I'll accept and leave well enough alone, but I personally feel like this is an issue with attracting and keeping new players. This leveling issue can also be seen when people are playing more RP builds that can't really do much in a two or three person group vs powerbuilds where some could potentially solo their way to 30.

I'm aware of the job system, but I still don't think this is enough incentive to keep someone engage with trying to level their character. I would rather AMIA have an easier leveling system with higher player count numbers than a normal or harder leveling system with lower player numbers.

Let me know what you think.

Leveling on Amia is absurdly easy.

The reason why there is a low player count is, in my opinion, due to NwN EE.

Nwn itself is old, ancient even, and if anyone will buy it nowdays they'll do it via. Steam and grab Nwn EE. Not only they don't have to go through the painful process of critical rebuilds, various patches etc. to even start Amia, they also don't have to look too hard for server to play on because in EE the GameSpy search still works so you can see all the active servers and the player count.

Amia have zero advertisement, so no one knows about it. End of story - moving to EE and joining the server list in GameSpy will skyrocket the number of players. I mean, Arelith have three servers, two of which have standardly over 60 ppl online all the time.

I agree with Guardian here. Amia's one of the smoothest servers to level on and most dungeon runs and level progressions are well known but the fact that we're on the legacy version of NWN1 doesn't give us much spotlight. Why would someone new to NWN or a returning player waste time going through the setup, rebuilding and patching required for Amia when they can simply hop on NWN:EE via Steam, download what they need from the Workshop and start playing?

If you need help with levelling, we have the Discord for that. You'll find there's a plethora of folk that'll be down for a hunting run in the chat there. It doesn't remedy the problem however that we're stuck on the legacy version of NWN and that we get little (if any) fresh blood because of it.

Compare the lvling to POTM, which is a top 3 server and at times nr 1, I saw it on 100 players in NWN EE some time ago on the server list in NWN EE. And POTM is by far, the hardest and slowest server to level on.

Amia does a lot of things right, but also does some things not at all. Advertising, missing out on 10 and 15 year celebrations was in my view devestating.

Still, I do not think your ideas are bad.

Honestly, I've never had a problem, when I did have a party. If you just hide/invis, and they slaughter stuff, the xp still is good enough for the effort being put in. If anything, I hate the last five levels. But those are a slog no matter what. But really, the trick is mostly just knowing where to go. If you have 30s with you, the lowest you can go is fire giants, and even those are somewhat meh, xp-wise. Duergar are good, and stuff like that. Is it fun to watch your friends slaughter mobs? No. But if you don't want to put in the effort yourself, you hardly deserve fun, tbh. And there are multiple ways to 30 that most builds can solo their way up.

And, like the people above me have said, there's the dsicord, that actually helps a lot for finding hunting partners, and Amia already has one of the easiest leveling routes in general.
Honestly, I'm pretty sure we're all just spoiled by what we have, that we feel like it's too tough. We got used to the easy leveling, to the point that it's normal, and now that it got just a tad tougher, we want it easier again.

My concern regarding the low numbers is almost exactly the opposite. You don't need a party to level up because leveling on Amia is so easy. And boring (in my opinion). So it doesn't encourage interaction between people. Then we get into epic loot grinding. People want to do that alone because the chances of getting what you want are so slim that you need what does drop in the event that someone else gets it and you can maybe trade or buy it. And people have this idea that they have to be max level before they can get involved in meaningful RP. I've often heard that that's because DM events are full of super powerful monsters, which isn't wrong. I'm of the opinion though that that's only the case because of the mountain of max level characters that get involved in the events. An inevitable cycle.

I believe there's very little incentive to encourage new (or old) players to interact with each other for more than social RP/events or DM events. But I think that's getting off topic.

So I personally don't think there's a leveling problem due to low numbers. I think there's just a low number problem for a variety of reasons - some of which are out of our control.

I offered leveling help for a while (usually with Wallter - the famed less than 10 minutes 5-6k exp gain runs), and still sometimes do it now with Saya... but then I more or less slowed down on this when I ended up needing help to level up and I got barely anyone ever willing to help me.

I think leveling is fairly easy if/when you know where to go, and you have a class/build that's not too gimped for the sake of RP. Because Amia is pretty much the first and only module I've ever played that doesn't reward characters with RP builds and all and every suggestion brought to try and improve the quality of life of said builds usually ends with people saying "It's your fault for making your character a RP shit!". Go figure. There's a good portion of NWN's population that is interested in RP more-so than the very boring fighting mechanics of the game. So if the RP portion of AMia is not encouraged much on the mechanic-side, then you end up with a population of players that are build-mongers or serial-character-creators. Meanwhile, instead, Amia is trimming down those who would enjoy playing characters that are more "organic", as they are directly or indirectly punishing their RP decisions.

As for the low player count.. yeah, I think the major points have been brought up.
- Archaic game
- No E.E.
- Bore-fest epic hunts that doesn't reward parties (it does the opposite)
- Lots of "end of the world" events, not as many "Let's do something very simple with 2-3 players that will leave help making them grow up / develop / mature as characters".

Jes wrote:

Stuff

I mean you can't really combat that fact, honestly. The levelling process is easy as hell and often so mindnumbing running the same dungeon several times that people just want to get it over and done with before they start their RP. There's no real incentive to take your time to RP if you're low level simply because most endgame/event content is tailored to max levels, and the latter means you're going to need to be useful for the inevitable throwdown between the villains/antagonists of the story. RP for the low levels and midgame is mainly just social RP/social events (that's my view on it however, i've not had low/mid level characters in years so could be wrong!) and reaching endgame is mainly farming the epic bosses just so you're geared up and ready for those DM events. So yeah, levelling isn't a problem for people. It's a symptom of the majority of content right now being tailored to endgame. There's no real reward either for trying out different dungeons if you're going to get the same loot from the same table in a more well known hotspot.

Regarding interaction though, it does bring up the points that were made years ago regarding RP hubs. Cordor could easily fill that role if there was something to actually do there these days rather than visiting Hil'rash to dump your daily loot drops.

Jes wrote:

My concern regarding the low numbers is almost exactly the opposite. You don't need a party to level up because leveling on Amia is so easy. And boring (in my opinion). So it doesn't encourage interaction between people. Then we get into epic loot grinding. People want to do that alone because the chances of getting what you want are so slim that you need what does drop in the event that someone else gets it and you can maybe trade or buy it. And people have this idea that they have to be max level before they can get involved in meaningful RP. I've often heard that that's because DM events are full of super powerful monsters, which isn't wrong. I'm of the opinion though that that's only the case because of the mountain of max level characters that get involved in the events. An inevitable cycle.

I believe there's very little incentive to encourage new (or old) players to interact with each other for more than social RP/events or DM events. But I think that's getting off topic.

So I personally don't think there's a leveling problem due to low numbers. I think there's just a low number problem for a variety of reasons - some of which are out of our control.

I can see a concern here, the lvling is built a bit like modern World of Warcraft and you don't need a crew to grind the gear like in most MMORPGs, so no incentative to bring in people.

Im not critical of the DMs but I think some events can be focused more on interaction, inspection/detective work than the hordes of monsters or very powerful traps. All these things are "gated" and "padding" in a way to prolong event time at times (Cause players run through em like butter knife in butter),

Not being critical, not pointing fingers. I just wish we could do more things that is not always rush into a room and beat things up. We got a lot of good DMs and I understand the frustration of big parties. And I also notice when DMs do not toss the small things, playerbase decreases significantly. I cannot imagine the preasure of always having to toss new things and I see how many DMs left their roles over the last few years since my return. I suggest more GST! More people doing their little plots to pad out the event time with new ideas and lesser scale events! This should bring in the numbers.

I think Amia took a few odd turns that made it very power built aligned and focused on the big epic events, nothing wrong with that but when it gets to focused on it, we lose players to POTM, Arelith, Cormyr and other big servers in EE currently. We as a community have a legacy to uphold. It saddens me to see such vast of emptiness on Amia. Cause I remember how it was in the golden years, least in my view this was 2006-2007. It will never return but we can atleast get half way. We did have some crazy numbers last year before summer, and some under it too I think.

Seeing Revak talk about Cordor, how do one make Cordor interesting? I mean, Bendir Dale literally is only interesting cause its a cross road. Not sure why Cordor and Ultrinnan was so brutalized and even removed as places, one killing the Drow RP slowly and the other gutting the natural meeting point.

I do have to be inclined to agree with Jes that there is a multitude of involved factors as to why are numbers as a community are considered 'low'.

That being said however, for a game that is seventeen years old an active player count of 15-20 everyday is kind of a miracle if you really stop to think about it.

Especially considering, as said earlier, we are borderline invisible in the NWN community due to no advertisement and we aren't visible literally -anywhere- within EE. Which, I honestly think is the biggest detrimental factor to the reason why we as a community are so much smaller at the present moment than the places listed above.

Being someone that has been able to level a character from 1-22 in 2 days I will note the absurd ease it is to level a character within the Amia module.

As well as the notion that between the community discord, the faction discord and the forums it's a half-a-second look to find someone to group with, even if you are new and know nothing about the Amia module, that does know where stuff is.

Leveling imho isn't the reason are numbers are smaller. (a reasonable number imho given the games age you cannot really compare the #'s from 1.69 and NWN:EE and it be a fair comparison due to advertisement and marketing) it's the fact that we just simply aren't well know and aren't placed anywhere for us to be heard about actively.

Angelis96 wrote:

I do have to be inclined to agree with Jes that there is a multitude of involved factors as to why are numbers as a community are considered 'low'.

That being said however, for a game that is seventeen years old an active player count of 15-20 everyday is kind of a miracle if you really stop to think about it.

Especially considering, as said earlier, we are borderline invisible in the NWN community due to no advertisement and we aren't visible literally -anywhere- within EE. Which, I honestly think is the biggest detrimental factor to the reason why we as a community are so much smaller at the present moment than the places listed above.

Being someone that has been able to level a character from 1-22 in 2 days I will note the absurd ease it is to level a character within the Amia module.

As well as the notion that between the community discord, the faction discord and the forums it's a half-a-second look to find someone to group with, even if you are new and know nothing about the Amia module, that does know where stuff is.

Leveling imho isn't the reason are numbers are smaller. (a reasonable number imho given the games age you cannot really compare the #'s from 1.69 and NWN:EE and it be a fair comparison due to advertisement and marketing) it's the fact that we just simply aren't well know and aren't placed anywhere for us to be heard about actively.

I am 100% sure Amia is well known in the NWN community, but not in any potential new NWN EE newcomers. That client cannot be done faster.

Budly wrote:

I just wish we could do more things that is not always rush into a room and beat things up.

A-fucking-men.

Budly wrote:

I am 100% sure Amia is well known in the NWN community, but not in any potential new NWN EE newcomers. That client cannot be done faster.

I went ahead and started browsing some NWN forums to get an idea of just how much exposure Amia has and my findings are grim. For comparison's sake, I also collected information on Arelith and Ravenloft's exposure. Take a look at the data, then consider Angelis96's claim that Amia is "borderline invisible" again because it seems to me that their claim is accurate.

Probably the most disappointing thing I found was that where Amia was mentioned, it was usually an individual mentioning that they are a former Amia player. It also appeared that most people's impression of Amia is that it is no longer online. Unlike Arelith and Ravenloft (and many other smaller servers of all genres) Amia has no posts on any of the forums I visited that detail the server's offerings and invite players to give it a try.

Silverlining: Amia has a detailed entry in the NWNwiki and we can always get the server closer to the top of the NWN server listings at http://www.nwnlist.com/ just by logging in.

Yes of course, but I think Amia is a stagnant giant, we as a community thought we where on top for so long and did not reform. We are the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a behemoth, a super power of its time but we stagnated and Swedes, Russians, Prussians and Austrians ran past us. Catch my drift? Amia used to be big, use to be top 3-5.

I was on POTM after my ban in 2007, POTM has grown even after some big drama in 2015 which had a chunk of the community gone/banned in a messy power struggle, thats what I call it when a big cliche imploded.

Amia might be able to return to somewhat high numbers permanently, but it needs a lot of work and especially EE might help a lot.

I agree with Jes here concerning leveling and grinding. I don't make any new characters anymore and just stick to what I have. I often boss raid solo or with a certain player and our drops have been non-existent for the past month or so. The unrewarding boss raiding, minuscule role play between events and saving the world repeatedly for ungrateful/apathetic citizens is just uninspiring. I don't bother to log in besides for events or players who actually want to interact with my characters.

Just an FYI you can no longer buy base NWN

https://www.gog.com/games?page=1&sort=p ... everwinter

Also I solo leveled and geared a dude here in 6 days, no dream coins, no job xp, it did not take that long to hit 30 and gearing took most of that time.

Commie wrote:

Just an FYI you can no longer buy base NWN

https://www.gog.com/games?page=1&sort=p ... everwinter

Also I solo leveled and geared a dude here in 6 days, no dream coins, no job xp, it did not take that long to hit 30 and gearing took most of that time.

Does it contain old Diamond Edition of NWN?

Did you click the link?

You can't buy NWN classic.

There is no diamond only enhanced.

Did you click the link?

The First Thing on the Page"Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition includes the unaltered original version of Neverwinter Nights Diamond (The original version will be automatically added to your account.) Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition adds all-new enhanced features to the content of Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition...."

The GOG NWN EE does include a copy of Diamond Edition. And it does (at the moment) still include proper multiplayer CD Keys for Diamond. Not sure if they'll stop offering that anytime soon, but they haven't indicated they'll stop doing it. Not that I've seen anyway!

Puresoul has a point. There is nothing to do on Amia, Boss hunting is neither fun nor rewarding, the events don't matter since the isle isnt affected by them at all and people struggle to even have something to talk about.

Add that on top of the constant struggle of the invested people to keep their Faction from just falling apart due to nothing going forward (If someone gives me the "Well do something yourself" Talk, no. That is bullshit and everyone knows it. The whole point of most factions is to shape the world around them. Which is borderline impossible.)

...

Amia has a lot of problems in terms of how it is being run.

Especially since for example Amarice doesnt even bother with Requests anymore. Wonder if she will read this. Her last post is from more than a month ago..

To me Amia feels more and more like a rotting corpse that I attached some strings to, to try and make it dance.

I am not alone with this, and things can be done against this. Look at the way Item drops work for example. Give people a reason to build proper groups without a DM throwing completely overpowered and forgettable bulletsponges at them.

Honestly, I've been thinking about the whole "Amia" thing lately... I really don't think there's much to do at this point. Lacking day-to-day things going on on the server, even social RP is somewhat of a chore, and anything more amazing than that is hardly happening at this point. Kohl's had a few events, and apart from that, I can't think of the last event. And this is despite reading the forums rather avidly. Now, maybe there were a few events I missed, but with that few events, there really is little point in logging on, for me. Additionally, based on the people who log in, I don't seem to be the only one.

Amia's dead. There might be a way to get it back up, but I really don't think dev work, or even a gateway to EE is going to be the magical fix-it-all for this place. I really like the fact that the devs work for free on this server, put stuff in for the enjoyment of all of us, but I really think that dev work isn't what the server is lacking in. From what I've seen, it's the lack of players, and the lack of events. And the lack of players is, in my opinion, most likely due to the lack of events.

And I'm not talking about events that are mostly just a one-off deal. There's a reason I'm not a DM. I don't know how to make a better event. But there's very little point in logging in at all lately. Maybe a fun and interesting alternate beginnings campaign could make this interesting, or even just a longer-running event-line with any sort of impact on the world could be interesting, and might just be that spark that breathes life back in. Saving the world is all well and good, but ending's always going to be "the world is saved". There's even very little divisiveness, because even evil isn't very likely to just be "yeah, I don't mind if this random duder goes and kills everything". I actually enjoyed Kamina's dragon plot while Tarkuul was in there, because it felt like we actually had some sort of impact on the server, at least, with that. Even if it was just the worsening of political relations between Kohl and Tarkuul. That said, the way Tarkuul's involvement ended was pretty underwhelming for quite a few people, from what I gathered...

Apart from that, I can't think of any real impact any events had, lately. Blow shit up. Kill some commoners, I don't know. At this point, blowing up the whole Isle mgiht even be somewhat poetic, given the lack of heroes about, and the way the server's been going lately.

As it stands, unless something changes, Amia's dead. and I really don't think EE, or even the playerbase really is to blame. There's quite a few DMs that, at least from this point of view, seem to be hogging their DM seats, and don't seem to be doing DM stuff. If they want to be devs instead, make them devs. If they can't DM for other reasons, maybe they should step down, and reapply when their schedule clears up. And at that, maybe also make becoming a DM easier. Becoming a DM shouldn't be something you have to apply for longer than you would for a job in real life. Hell, if I wanted to become a DM, and I had to wait for months, I'd be pretty demotivated to do anything as well.

It is hard time to turn it around, old game, not the newest version and so on. We had a good summer but as autumn and winter came, it started to trickle down again! I'd say Amia is on it's last legs but it was a good run. Do the best with the little time we have.

Sadly, as many pointed out, it has stagnated, the social RP is just same old talk about the old days and making a change is hard. EDIT: Even if I enjoy a lot of it! There is a lot fun to be had but the hubs are just pretty much the same everytime with the social RP.

Also applying for positions take months to get answers on, this is also devestating for motivation as been said many times.

Budly wrote:

It is hard time to turn it around, old game, not the newest version and so on. We had a good summer but as autumn and winter came, it started to trickle down again!

It trickled down because People flocked in, seeing that people were checking back in.

Then they left when nothing. fucking. happened.

Look at the club. Got just shelved and pushed aside. *shrug*

I think the biggest problem is that nothing fucking changes on the island. Nothing. And then DMs walk in like "Ay yo, just do stuff without DMs! You can push your Faction forward without us, we don't have to supervise everything" Which is utter fucking nonsense, the reason people start factions is to bring some kind of change to the world around them.

You can only have so much "Giggle-poke"-RP before people get fucking bored.

freaxxshow1338 wrote:

Budly wrote:

It is hard time to turn it around, old game, not the newest version and so on. We had a good summer but as autumn and winter came, it started to trickle down again!

It trickled down because People flocked in, seeing that people were checking back in.

Then they left when nothing. fucking. happened.

Look at the club. Got just shelved and pushed aside. *shrug*

I think the biggest problem is that nothing fucking changes on the island. Nothing. And then DMs walk in like "Ay yo, just do stuff without DMs! You can push your Faction forward without us, we don't have to supervise everything" Which is utter fucking nonsense, the reason people start factions is to bring some kind of change to the world around them.

You can only have so much "Giggle-poke"-RP before people get fucking bored.

I gonna step carefully here, but yes. the "You can do stuff without a DM" line I heard on other servers too, it do not really work that way. You get to a treshhold when you need a DM to help out or pull an event. A faction made by players can only do so much before its stopped. Hell, you even need to be a liked enough player or know enough people to render your faction getting ooc interest.

Factions need support, players need support, DMs need players, players and DMs both need to help out to move the world forward but Amia is not really persisent in that matter.

Jes wrote:

Did you click the link?

The First Thing on the Page"Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition includes the unaltered original version of Neverwinter Nights Diamond (The original version will be automatically added to your account.) Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition adds all-new enhanced features to the content of Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition...."

The GOG NWN EE does include a copy of Diamond Edition. And it does (at the moment) still include proper multiplayer CD Keys for Diamond. Not sure if they'll stop offering that anytime soon, but they haven't indicated they'll stop doing it. Not that I've seen anyway!

I guess the page wasn't displaying correctly for me in Firefox. Works in chrome. Worked again in FF with noscript off.

RIP me.

Haha! That's okay. We're still down to just one place to get a valid Diamond Edition copy, which is unpleasant. But as Kamina posted here, we are looking into EE still. No one's giving up yet, at least!

People I usually RP or sometimes grind with are not logging on much anymore. Sometimes the server is also completely empty (like at the time of this post) and I move onto do something else. We did manage to get a nice abyss grind going for a little bit the other day though.

Hello, so I've been viewing over this topic for some time and I figured I'd give my insight. Points have been brought up on both sides, and a lot of you elaborated many of my thoughts so I figured I'd just provide a brief summary of what I believe.

There is a leveling problem on Amia, though the server is incredibly easy to solo and clear the content. Looking at it from a perspective of a new player though, and fortunately, I've actually had the pleasure of speaking to a couple of new players - and the number one thing I can pick from what they said was the lack of knowledge and progression that made it difficult. There isn't a guide or a formatted path telling you where to go, and while such details can be obtained through roleplay, but not even that is always possible. It boils down to three things to me: They're new, they don't know anyone anyways and it makes it difficult to approach people. Timezone issues is another big factor, I'd feel very unfortunate for any person attempting to progress through and grind out on Amia. if your a West Coast American on an average day, the server population is usually very low and that in itself is discouraging to even try to find a group. Number three is simply the low player count which is attributed to many other reasons, it's not fun to hunt or play on Amia alone - and that in itself when a player logs on and see's a minimal amount of people, aren't invited to any party, are left to their own devices - I'd log off and quit too. Being friendly and extending the arm to new players or /ANY/ players you see would help a lot in that regard, be the welcome wagon, ask if they have any questions or if you can help them out. You might just find yourself involved in some really fun roleplay.

In regards to the people saying that they wish there were more DM's, more events, more things to do and that the server is dieing because of it. I wish there were all of those things too, and it does affect the server to some regard. However though, what kills the server the most is the mentality that is percieved about it. The DM's want to help you achieve your goals and proceed with your plans, but the way you handle it in itself is a big factor. If you log on and complain that there's nothing to do and have the mentality that a DM needs to create an event and provide purpose - I'd get pretty burnt out on my end if I was sitting on a chair dealing with that. However, if you make a plan with what /you/ want to accomplish, gather friends and associates, be friendly and communicate. The result of that would be much more productive for both ends of the players and the DM's, because honestly I think most of the team members would LOVE to participate in things like that and would even spark more inspiration for the DM itself. I'm not blaming anyone, or calling anyone out for doing something wrong, but it's the honest way how I see it.

With that being said, if any player needs assistance leveling or someone to roleplay with, I'm more then happy to assist and don't hesitate to send me a private message in whatever way possible, on the server or on here.

TheCortroy wrote:

In regards to the people saying that they wish there were more DM's, more events, more things to do and that the server is dieing because of it. I wish there were all of those things too, and it does affect the server to some regard. However though, what kills the server the most is the mentality that is percieved about it. The DM's want to help you achieve your goals and proceed with your plans, but the way you handle it in itself is a big factor. If you log on and complain that there's nothing to do and have the mentality that a DM needs to create an event and provide purpose - I'd get pretty burnt out on my end if I was sitting on a chair dealing with that. However, if you make a plan with what /you/ want to accomplish, gather friends and associates, be friendly and communicate. The result of that would be much more productive for both ends of the players and the DM's, because honestly I think most of the team members would LOVE to participate in things like that and would even spark more inspiration for the DM itself. I'm not blaming anyone, or calling anyone out for doing something wrong, but it's the honest way how I see it.

Thats what people do.

The problem is that resuslts take forever or don't happen at all, to the point where the players involved just plain stop logging in because waiting a month for a Faction chest to be added - nothing else - is a fucking joke.

Problem is, from my perspective it is only when the DMs are online a lot, tossing a variety of events here and there that the player base grows for a while. Which do not work in the long run, but this is because it is hard to do anything without a DM around. It tend to just be "stand around" or "Hunt" modes from what I see. I worked hard myself to mantle the role of arranger of the council meetings after Pebbles was retired, in Bendir Dale. I done it without a DM and the interest in said events been rather lackluster. Just check the "Inner circle" at how many threads I started icly on Budly and how much response I gotten. I do not blame anyone or point fingers, but without a DM it is hard to get any notice or that extra push to make people lift there head and notice "Shit, something is going on here!?". :cry:

Budly has the problem down with the wrong reason: There is nothing to do except for Events. Nobody likes boss hunting because its unrewarding and not fun. So all you can do is stand around with your faction and talk about the same plans you have been talking about for months while you wait for any DM to care enough to take a look at it.

God bless Elyon while I'm at it, if hadn't hit her up the shrine would be dead already again. Hell it already took a big hit because no other DM cared for the things we did, archived and put up for them to look at.

I’m gonna be a bit brief as I’m slacking at work but noticed there was no DM response yey so I’ll delve in.

There is a LOT of valid points here. I feel like people aren’t giving them credit where credit is due because they involve giving negative feedback to the DM team. There are some evident flaws in the current DM structure that needs to be addressed.

I will have to join others in generally disagreeing that Players can’t be expected to solely RP without DM oversight. My only rebuttal is, if you guys do something whether faction-based or personal, PLEASE document it in screenshots, copying logs or just doing a write up! As much as I can agree we have some matters to deal with in regards to how our DM structure is working, it still really helps us if we know what people are up to during quiet times.

There’s only so much I can elaborate on the public platform, but I do want to assure you that I have read through these comments and criticisms and want to proactively help improve on them. The only thing I ask is nothing gets nasty to either your fellow players, devs or DMs. We’re all here to grow our server and I think you guys have so far brought some civil, valid points. Keep it up because nothing is immune to critique.

Obviously this is all my own opinion and not representative of the DM team.

Kamina wrote:

I’m gonna be a bit brief as I’m slacking at work but noticed there was no DM response yey so I’ll delve in.

There is a LOT of valid points here. I feel like people aren’t giving them credit where credit is due because they involve giving negative feedback to the DM team. There are some evident flaws in the current DM structure that needs to be addressed.

I will have to join others in generally disagreeing that Players can’t be expected to solely RP without DM oversight. My only rebuttal is, if you guys do something whether faction-based or personal, PLEASE document it in screenshots, copying logs or just doing a write up! As much as I can agree we have some matters to deal with in regards to how our DM structure is working, it still really helps us if we know what people are up to during quiet times.

There’s only so much I can elaborate on the public platform, but I do want to assure you that I have read through these comments and criticisms and want to proactively help improve on them. The only thing I ask is nothing gets nasty to either your fellow players, devs or DMs. We’re all here to grow our server and I think you guys have so far brought some civil, valid points. Keep it up because nothing is immune to critique.

Obviously this is all my own opinion and not representative of the DM team.

If we need to document it, then we need DM input. The hard part is having a faction or RP involving many players, get interest without DM pushing it a bit.

Quote:

There’s only so much I can elaborate on the public platform, but I do want to assure you that I have read through these comments and criticisms and want to proactively help improve on them

As I have discussed before, I still don't understand all the secrecy around the DM side of things. We're a small community with few members and fewer DM's and the DM team is acting like what they are doing behind the scenes is top-secret information.

Shadowfiend wrote:

Quote:

There’s only so much I can elaborate on the public platform, but I do want to assure you that I have read through these comments and criticisms and want to proactively help improve on them

As I have discussed before, I still don't understand all the secrecy around the DM side of things. We're a small community with few members and fewer DM's and the DM team is acting like what they are doing behind the scenes is top-secret information.

There’s genuine personal reasons that I don’t think is fair for me to speak on some DMs behalf’s.

Even if you document the stuff you do, you still get ignored. Amarice is still somehow the DM in charge of a lot of things, yet in two years I've been on Amia she has never done anything other than the Djinn.

Tarnus (May god have mercy on my soul for throwing shit on the name of the by far best DM) is struggling with RL, yet apparently when we had to involve Kampos in our Plans APPARENTLY everyone was like "well thats Tarnus domain, not my problem. Which is retarded. Its been what, two months now that we have beem awaiting any response from Kampo?

That's just examples.

While we're at constructive criticism: What the fuck is all that Retconning about? Why the fuck was that necessary? I dont know any exact things but from what I keep hearing people some times don't even know IC and OOC what did and what didn't happen...

My apologies for dropping off the face of the Earth when I did.

When it comes to Amia, I just got bored of roleplaying with the same people consistently. And it's not that it's the individuals I mind, but I liked when the server was big, and you got to meet new people, with interesting quirks. It added a sense of dynamism as people formed their own little sub-groups of larger ones, which very much allured me into the old Drow base, and later I saw that potential in the Chromatic Covenant. There's only so many times I can log in and speak with the same people, and come up with new things to talk about in a world with mostly the same people and sparse events outside of Kohlingen.

I imagine I'm also jaded of the characters I play, and yet I have a habit of wasting DC's leveling up characters I don't end up playing, particularly as I loathe leveling on Amia aside from when big-ass groups pump through the high XP areas many times.(It's loathsomely boring then, but it takes the suffering part out of it, mostly.) Seeing as I spend all my DC's, it leaves little opportunities to spend DC's to create more unique characters via appearance requests and all that.

The Enhanced Edition change, whenever it comes, may have the potential of fixing these issues. A potentially larger player-base means not only returning players mingling with new ones once the prior sees the server count is up, but new roleplay may lead to greater persistence, as there would be new things to discover. This would no doubt increase motivation for both current and aspiring DM's among the new players, and increase the pool of DM recruits via new ones.

freaxxshow1338's problem did arise last time I was playing. A few players were interesting in doing things in lesser-played areas on Amia, but were effectively roadblocked due to DM deference. There was an unfortunate phenomena where it appeared that NPC-ification occurred in places like Cordor, which not only reduced player choices in a great span of areas, but also made the areas static as ever, as DM's were unwilling or due to time issues, unable to control these NPC's to actually direct the areas they controlled. The sense of change is, in my opinion, what makes Persistent Worlds so interesting and enjoyable, and without them, I see little reason to not join roleplay in other games with similarly static environments, seeing as they would instead benefit from being newer, graphically superior games, generally with more players, in spite of their lamentably static worlds. Then you have a certain DM with a particular reputation of being horrendously biased against evil PC's.

As to the original question of leveling on Amia, the major problem, in my opinion, is the necessity of groups outside of PC's who are A: masterfully built characters that are also rich/lucky enough to have the perfect setup of gear and potions, or B: especially patient Mages who don't mind using their summons and familiars to run the same zones 100 times; I was the latter on Alethias, and it was suffering as the concentration of levelers was quite low. It took forever and was downright extremely unengaging. If this is to remain the only way of leveling, especially after the incredibly stupid decision of nerfing herbalism XP, it really should be made expedited.

On the other hand, the reason that certain servers have more effective leveling systems in spite of being harder, is due to fundamental differences in both gaining XP and its impact on gameplay. When Amia's events are made by nigh-invincible level 40 XP's that can bring down level 30 players, let alone lower level ones, it basically means you can't do anything meaningful outside of social RP before the high-20's. This is just silly.

One of the best experiences I had on NWN was Ravenloft's New Player Week, I believe in 2017. I actually joined it completely on accident, but for this week, the server was mostly curtailed around new characters. Whilst the DM's did events based around us, there was also a menagerie of people to both do low-level hunting with, and roleplay with. Roleplay gave XP by the way, so you were always slowly leveling just from interacting with the world around you. The main focus was staving off the nightly attacks from various Vampires and lycanthropes, and our efforts to destroy them once our characters were strong enough and found out where they were hiding. One of the Lycanthropes was given a story we found out in-game that made them tragic and sympathetic, and one of the Vampires was discovered to be an unwilling progeny of another, and once her traitorous thoughts were uncovered, her sire assaulted her, and she ended up helping us destroy him, until she forced us to destroy her.

For that week, Ravenloft presented an engaging and immersive experience that I would say rivaled singleplayer RPG's. And I got up to level 7 by the end. Both before and after, it's been quite a while since I had that much fun roleplaying in general, let alone on Amia, where much of that feeling is from a bygone age, but it goes to show the power of player and DM interaction when coordinated into something beautiful.

waswar wrote:

My apologies for dropping off the face of the Earth when I did.

When it comes to Amia, I just got bored of roleplaying with the same people consistently. And it's not that it's the individuals I mind, but I liked when the server was big, and you got to meet new people, with interesting quirks. It added a sense of dynamism as people formed their own little sub-groups of larger ones, which very much allured me into the old Drow base, and later I saw that potential in the Chromatic Covenant. There's only so many times I can log in and speak with the same people, and come up with new things to talk about in a world with mostly the same people and sparse events outside of Kohlingen.

I imagine I'm also jaded of the characters I play, and yet I have a habit of wasting DC's leveling up characters I don't end up playing, particularly as I loathe leveling on Amia aside from when big-ass groups pump through the high XP areas many times.(It's loathsomely boring then, but it takes the suffering part out of it, mostly.) Seeing as I spend all my DC's, it leaves little opportunities to spend DC's to create more unique characters via appearance requests and all that.

The Enhanced Edition change, whenever it comes, may have the potential of fixing these issues. A potentially larger player-base means not only returning players mingling with new ones once the prior sees the server count is up, but new roleplay may lead to greater persistence, as there would be new things to discover. This would no doubt increase motivation for both current and aspiring DM's among the new players, and increase the pool of DM recruits via new ones.

freaxxshow1338's problem did arise last time I was playing. A few players were interesting in doing things in lesser-played areas on Amia, but were effectively roadblocked due to DM deference. There was an unfortunate phenomena where it appeared that NPC-ification occurred in places like Cordor, which not only reduced player choices in a great span of areas, but also made the areas static as ever, as DM's were unwilling or due to time issues, unable to control these NPC's to actually direct the areas they controlled. The sense of change is, in my opinion, what makes Persistent Worlds so interesting and enjoyable, and without them, I see little reason to not join roleplay in other games with similarly static environments, seeing as they would instead benefit from being newer, graphically superior games, generally with more players, in spite of their lamentably static worlds. Then you have a certain DM with a particular reputation of being horrendously biased against evil PC's.

As to the original question of leveling on Amia, the major problem, in my opinion, is the necessity of groups outside of PC's who are A: masterfully built characters that are also rich/lucky enough to have the perfect setup of gear and potions, or B: especially patient Mages who don't mind using their summons and familiars to run the same zones 100 times; I was the latter on Alethias, and it was suffering as the concentration of levelers was quite low. It took forever and was downright extremely unengaging. If this is to remain the only way of leveling, especially after the incredibly stupid decision of nerfing herbalism XP, it really should be made expedited.

On the other hand, the reason that certain servers have more effective leveling systems in spite of being harder, is due to fundamental differences in both gaining XP and its impact on gameplay. When Amia's events are made by nigh-invincible level 40 XP's that can bring down level 30 players, let alone lower level ones, it basically means you can't do anything meaningful outside of social RP before the high-20's. This is just silly.

One of the best experiences I had on NWN was Ravenloft's New Player Week, I believe in 2017. I actually joined it completely on accident, but for this week, the server was mostly curtailed around new characters. Whilst the DM's did events based around us, there was also a menagerie of people to both do low-level hunting with, and roleplay with. Roleplay gave XP by the way, so you were always slowly leveling just from interacting with the world around you. The main focus was staving off the nightly attacks from various Vampires and lycanthropes, and our efforts to destroy them once our characters were strong enough and found out where they were hiding. One of the Lycanthropes was given a story we found out in-game that made them tragic and sympathetic, and one of the Vampires was discovered to be an unwilling progeny of another, and once her traitorous thoughts were uncovered, her sire assaulted her, and she ended up helping us destroy him, until she forced us to destroy her.

For that week, Ravenloft presented an engaging and immersive experience that I would say rivaled singleplayer RPG's. And I got up to level 7 by the end. Both before and after, it's been quite a while since I had that much fun roleplaying in general, let alone on Amia, where much of that feeling is from a bygone age, but it goes to show the power of player and DM interaction when coordinated into something beautiful.

I agree with the lvling, Up till 30 its mainly nothing to do but social RP. It is a bit like a MMO "But at max lvl the fun begins!". Well I want fun before that too :/ And just not only a chore of getting up to 30 and join in on events if possible and be useful for people. Not lvl 30, means you're not useful.

Shadowfiend wrote:

Quote:

There’s only so much I can elaborate on the public platform, but I do want to assure you that I have read through these comments and criticisms and want to proactively help improve on them

As I have discussed before, I still don't understand all the secrecy around the DM side of things. We're a small community with few members and fewer DM's and the DM team is acting like what they are doing behind the scenes is top-secret information.

IMHO there really isn't anything "secret squirrels" that is being kept from players. There will always be politics and DMs need to stay impartial and not spoil plots for any side.

I’ve been keeping an eye on this thread and I see lots of valid points here. I haven’t commented yet because there isn’t much I can add. If I read correctly, it started as a mechanical discussion on how to level up more efficiently, but seems to have turned into a complaint about being bored and not having enough DM interaction. Yep, we get that.

If you know where to hunt, most players can level a character up to 30 going solo. Yep, it is boring grinding through levels solo, but it's doable. For new players, it's hard because there isn't really a where-to-go guidebook, but personally, now we have Discord, it's pretty easy for folks to ask for help on where to go etc. Yes, it's harder with fewer players. It’d be nice to have more players regularly…not just over holiday seasons.

Budly wrote:

I agree with the lvling, Up till 30 its mainly nothing to do but social RP. It is a bit like a MMO "But at max lvl the fun begins!". Well I want fun before that too :/ And just not only a chore of getting up to 30 and join in on events if possible and be useful for people. Not lvl 30, means you're not useful.

Yep, it’s hard to manage bigger events when there is a range of characters because the more dominant and higher level characters will always take over the plot and activity. I also find it hard with the Good/Evil split. So if you’re feeling it on the player side, chances are, DMs are feeling it on their side too.

I can really see that. Really annoying times to fix events.

I think Amias player base is so small the natural split between good/evil, low and high, comunities and such is har to work around. Everyone is in the same hubs.

#BringBackAlternateBeginnings

I remember Alternate Endings.

CratzBlade113 wrote:

#BringBackAlternateBeginnings

There was mention of this possibly happening in the Discussions thread of the discord.

Kiasyd wrote:

CratzBlade113 wrote:

#BringBackAlternateBeginnings

There was mention of this possibly happening in the Discussions thread of the discord.

Good for them, I hope they do it.

I would submit the supposition that the introduction of the discord server is part of the current problem with attracting new players, as well as, retaining the old, and re-attracting those who had previously moved on.

They log on to the server and see a low player count, come to this forum and see a lack of consistent posting activity (perhaps one or two new posts a day these days, though I have recently noticed no posting activity for 48+ hours).

The lack of consistent use of the official forum leads to the perception that the server is nearly, if not already, dead.

Personally I find that the Discord server [which is easily found on the forums here for new players to join], has been the best help since I came back. It has led to more connections between me and other players, arranging hunts, looking for roleplay, and keeping track of events. Without it I would have been hard pressed to come back at all.

Just a thought...

If someone can make either a short video or image/poster/ad I'm more than happy to post to my social media account to try to advertise. We can all do so and hope others will share.

I'm a motion designer/animator by trade and I'd love to help if I can! If we could distill what makes Amia, Amia I could try and weave that into a quick video post/social image.

I always want to post in threads like this, but I feel like a broken record. Everything I could say in public is pretty much already said by others, though. Bad past management has contributed to a lot of the issues, and that's a battle the current DMs and players will have to fight together (but let's be honest, it's going to mean more if DMs work harder because of perception). Getting EE to work is going to help, but that's just a band-aid. Things just have to change.

Mind you, idk what's going on anymore cause I've pretty much given up on Amia in the sense that I want to see it prosper but I have zero drive to come back. Which makes me sad.

Stay classy, folks, and remember always try to be nice but never fail to be kind.

Naivatkal wrote:

I always want to post in threads like this, but I feel like a broken record. Everything I could say in public is pretty much already said by others, though. Bad past management has contributed to a lot of the issues, and that's a battle the current DMs and players will have to fight together (but let's be honest, it's going to mean more if DMs work harder because of perception). Getting EE to work is going to help, but that's just a band-aid. Things just have to change.

Mind you, idk what's going on anymore cause I've pretty much given up on Amia in the sense that I want to see it prosper but I have zero drive to come back. Which makes me sad.

Stay classy, folks, and remember always try to be nice but never fail to be kind.

I could be misinterpreting what you just said however from how it sounds, you want to fuel infighting and enjoy ranting, which does not help the situation, and honestly, no wants to read about. So, after talking with a few people, I've come to understand that its a highly complicated issue in of itself, and there is a lot of frustration on both sides of it. I want to help this server, but the current mentality of whipping the developers into shape when ever they do not provide what is wanted. The dms do have lives, they are not making a salary to do this. They're doing it because they're inspired when they work on the server. Now, whenever you insult the dev team like that, your killing their inspiration to work on this project, which clearly, you love just as much as they do, because your posting these messages. And I love it to, as well, Or else I wouldn't be here either.
I suppose you also think they should step down and give you the reins, because you know right. Well, based on what I just read, I think I wouldn't do that either. Personally, I think if I was a dev and I read that I would have less trust in your abilities as a developer myself. I'm just speculating there though, a guess based on the fact that the opinionated usually like to get behind the wheel, which isn't a bad thing in of itself. Still, hostilities need to be cooled, because killing each other is only going to harm the server in the long run, and none of us, people who are passionate about this server, want people to be leaving.
So I feel we need to relearn our customs and courtesies, all of us, and form a professional player/dev relationship, where the proper respects are given, to both sides. I feel the dms are not getting the amount of respect that they should be. I feel that people need to understand that as a player, you are a guest. Most, if not all of you are playing for free, therefore, you should act as a man in another person's house. If you are paying for it, then good for you, I suppose I can't justify telling you how to act. But those who are not, need to show respect to those who maintain this server.
Lastly, Naivatkal, a word of advice. Don't make a post just to start conflict and vest your frustrations on a server which you want to play on. It doesn't look good. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't better the situation in any way. I know your frustrated and want change, and I assume you want to get into the developer's side and try to make things for the better. However, if you want that. You need to prove yourself a developer. Show that your will not cause discord and earn the respect of your peers, especially of the developer team, and I think you'd most likely get let into the group. But I don't know, and I don't know much about what transpires here. So I may have just rambled and wasted everyone's time like I usually do. But I hope there is something to take away from this.

Do we have a leveling problem because of low player count?

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