Shards Online

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StrykerMontgomery
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Re: Shards Online

Post by StrykerMontgomery » Mon Oct 08, 2018 12:27 pm

I find the prospect of going 5th edition on a computer a bit amusing. They created the advantage/disadvantage system rather than having to do as much math with all the modifiers and let story determine situation too. 5th edition seems like a poor choice to seriously code.

That said, I appreciate how over the years you keep posting to the same thread.

I suspect EE will still have a second wind or two.
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Liareth
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Re: Shards Online

Post by Liareth » Mon Oct 08, 2018 12:47 pm

This is actually super interesting to me. I've reached out to the team to ask about the viability of receiving early access to the modding tools. It's not entirely clear what is and isn't possible, only grand promises - I'd love to get my hands on the tools and figure things out.

Satellitemind
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Re: Shards Online

Post by Satellitemind » Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:52 pm

https://www.legendsofaria.com/forums/di ... ram#latest
You can apply to be a community admin here but I think you need to purchase the game first. If they accept you than you will be able to get access to the modding tools and whatnot. If you want to get an idea of what building will be like download the UNITY toolset, the toolkit itself is just an extension of UNITY.

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Irongron
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Re: Shards Online

Post by Irongron » Mon Oct 08, 2018 11:13 pm

Satellitemind wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:21 am
...B) I think there is real potential to be had with Legends of Aria that we couldn't even get with NWN and I think there are real advantages for PWs such as this one to consider being an early adopter of this platform.
I really interested to see what becomes of this, and while I really hope it is something great, and that members of this community and others like ours can enjoy, I can pretty much rule out that Arelith itself will ever migrate.

Arelith is the result of over a decade of development, by a host of NWN and D&D enthusiasts, and a world that carries the fingerprints of tens of thousands of characters. There's nothing I know like it, and whatever its flaws I find what has been done by this community mightly remarkable, perhaps even historic.

However dated NWN may become, however niche it's appeal I am incredibly proud to be a part of Arelith, and with it, Neverwinter Nights. It something that will continue to be built upon by players and developers alike, certainly for many years to come. The idea of building it again from the ground up on a different platform is an anathema to me.

Though please don't consider that comment in any way hostile to Shards. Many of players come here because like myself they're in love with Arelith, but many others, frankly, simply don't really have any other options. Among those NWN servers that have fallen by the wayside are many that our players fondly recollect, and if there was any possibilty of returning to the glory days of their time there would leave in a heartbeat.

As NWN servers, as games of a similar genre, I see no point in competing; we're all gamers one way or another, and we all want to have options. We sorely need them. I do what I can to promote and aid other quality NWN servers, as our Twitter account and news feed can attest to.

I'll definitely give Shards a whirl, as a player. I'm sure many of our developers will do the same. If its all that its promised to be then perhaps some will 'jump ship' to help realise a new generation of PWs on a superior platform. I'd wish them every success, and eagerly await what follows, but I, at least, will still be here, EE or not.

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Marsi
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Re: Shards Online

Post by Marsi » Tue Oct 09, 2018 6:00 am

Satellitemind wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:21 am
Thanks for the support Irongron, for the record I have played NwN for about 13 years and have dabbled with Arelith and Amia from time to time. I had hopes for EE honestly in terms of seeing a full scale revitalization but following the beamdog server population lists over the last couple of months hasn't been encouraging save for a couple PWs. Legends of Aria offers way more potential in the ways of customization being able to write rule sets from scratch to building entire worlds with the capability of hosting more players than NwN ever could. Plus the duration of official support is most likely going to outlive NwN which was already seeing it wane as early as 2006. LoA is offering its own vanilla MMO experience on top of being a platform so updates and expansions will most likely be something which continues as long as the game as life and if its predecessor Ultima Online which LoA is in the spirit of is to be any indication that is going to be a very long time. I dare say UO private shards are on the whole probably faring better than its NWN counterpart despite being twice as old. For example take this shard: https://uorpg.net/en/news
This shard started in 2010 and the current number of active players at the time I post this is 1,862. It's 8 years old and on a platform almost twice the age of Neverwinter Nights. This is just *one* private UO shard, the company itself is still releasing expansions and content updates which gives it an advantage that a game like NwN or Divinity Original Sin 2 which was the closest thing we had to pin our hopes on after Legends of Aria for being a successor. Furthermore community servers have been supported from the very get go, while the ability for server admins to make custom assets (maps, creatures, equipment etc.) have not been available until recently server admins have been able to basically script what they want since the beginning of the project. One of them Legends of Ultima already has a pretty sizeable playerbase. A 5th edition ruleset is already being written and will be released to the greater when its finished saving us NwN players a lot of time. This is the first video in the series of a few: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxujIWHXRyw
Bottom line yes Arelith for an NWN server is doing great arguably it might be the only NWN server aside from Ravenloft not to fall stagnate even with the release of EE but the prospects for everyone else look bleak and we have a platform on the horizon which promises to do everything NwN did and more on a magnitude that I don't think any of us could expect even a Neverwinter Nights 3 to give us not to mention years of support that we would not otherwise get even from an AA studio. In short I am only keeping the remaining NWN communities in the loop because A) this game has been a part of my life for quite a long time B) I think there is real potential to be had with Legends of Aria that we couldn't even get with NWN and I think there are real advantages for PWs such as this one to consider being an early adopter of this platform.
Something to keep in mind is that UO allows macroing and often even multi-boxing. That means tons of AFK and duplicate players. I looked into UO hoping to find a potential alternative to NWN a while ago and the most popular servers (Forever and Renaissance) had around 200-ish, any number of those being non-entity players. As you might expect from a game that basically tolerates botting, the atmosphere of the free shards always felt empty. The shard you linked boasts impressive but dubious numbers. Their forums are in Russian and only 35 forum users are reported as online vs. the 1900 they claim are in-game. Even at this fairly quiet hour Arelith has 52 forum users online. I think it's fair to suspect something fishy's going on there.

Why do you think LoA will have a longer duration of official support? NWN has just had its run "renewed" by an established company sporting the original developer (not to mention it had no need of official support beforehand) whereas as far as I can tell Citadel Studios is just a Kickstarter dev who could just take the money and run at any time as many have done before them. If the NWN roleplaying community could outlive the neglect of an ever-distracted, big-bucks company by over a decade, who's to say how long it could last now stewarded by a team who are uniquely plugged in to not only the community, but Arelith itself?

I've seen many greenlit/kickstarted boutique MMOs claiming to be the next Ultima come and go. Even if they do hit the numbers necessary to push the developer into the green (thus ensuring continuing support instead of mysteriously disappearing) that doesn't necessitate functioning RP communities. It takes time and luck for culture like Arelith or Ravenloft's to develop. I'm skeptical LoA would be able to replicate NWN's current RP server numbers let alone exceed them even if it was a commercial success. Which, to be honest, isn't looking like it will be the case -- I've seen games with bigger hype miscarry on the first day of release. I don't think there's been a succesful sandbox MMO release since... well, ever.

All I'm saying is that the odds are stacked against LoA while the collective NWN RP player count has been on a steady upward crawl since 2016. I remember at this hour on Arelith back in 2012 there'd literally be 30 active players tops. At peak time you might expect no more than 70. Instead we have 70 online right now, and during peak hours we've reportedly hit over 200. Rookie numbers compared to a commercial MMO to be sure, but one fully-roleplayed, in-character entity fills the world in a way that twenty mainstream MMO players won't, so it's a meaningless comparison imo.

I don't mean to be harsh, I just approach this with learned skepticism from many burns from the proverbial flame of failed sandbox MMOs. In any other context I'm hyped for LoA and will consider playing it. But Arelith and the NWN community is doing just fine. Like Irongron I consider it almost historic. Whomever wishes to be called its successor certainly has to earn it before we all consider jumping ship.

By the way, if you're affiliated with LoA/Citadel in some way, why not just say so? I think you'd have more success and support through honesty than not-so-subtle astroturfing.

Why should the great bell of Beaulieu toll when the shadows were neither short nor long?


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In A Motionless Scene
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Re: Shards Online

Post by In A Motionless Scene » Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:37 am

Just here to say that at a first glance, I always think you're a bot out for my credit card information. Because those normally do the seemingly random link + text without paragraphs just the same way.

You're trying to do marketing here, and I guess you're doing it on other forums too. Perhaps a few paragraphs and structure in between or even an introduction at the start would help a lot to be heard.
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Ingen rörelse.
Inga drömmar.
Inget ljus.

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Liareth
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Re: Shards Online

Post by Liareth » Tue Oct 09, 2018 12:45 pm

The devs were kind enough to hook me up with access last night. (major props to them, from email to personal answer from a developer of the game in like six hours!)

From what I've seen so far, the engine is really open - to the point where you can tear out every single aspect of the game's behaviour and replace it with your own. It wasn't just marketing hyperbole. It's pretty impressive stuff and a massive leap forwards compared to nwscript.

I'm not convinced it's going to be a viable substitute for NWN at launch because the tooling for designers and artists doesn't measure up. But I think it could reach feature parity and quickly exceed it with a little bit of work. The client is built with Unity, which means you can create your assets using their tooling and pipelines - which is more flexible than NWN's way of working.

I'm still a bit skeptical about certain aspects of the modding structure. Why mod this game when you could just make your own game in Unity? At the end of the day, if you're tearing out the core rules and behaviours and writing all of your own stuff, all this game actually offers (for a modder) is an automated server hosting infrastructure and some low-resolution assets. And - technically speaking - exposure on their server browser. In exchange for that, players have to pay Citadel Studios to play, you have to pay Citadel Studios to host, you are beholden to Citadel Studio's terms of services, and you can't monetize your project. I'm not sure the trade-off is worth it.

With that said, I don't think this game, or any other game, will ever replace Neverwinter Nights. It's not a matter of quality - it's about familiarity and nostalgia.

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