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Atmosphere Team; The Solution To A Growing Playerbase

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Hallvor Hadiya:

Now this idea has been proposed in one form or another in the past; but now more than ever we’re reaching an explosion in players and this is fantastic, and we can all pat ourselves on the back about creating a shared story and community that could draw and cater to so many people from all walks of life. And we have to thank the DMs and developers for their efforts.

However it is also a magnifying glass and we’re starting to see the frayed edges, long gone are the days of single digit player count, the loneliness and isolation enforced by sheer lack of numbers. Now the night is unfeared when there’s so many people who can hold torches in the dark without being snuffed out, and not everyone is able to participate in events or experience the setting truly. We out number the villains ten to one, even with DM events and the best efforts of AMPC/MPCs they cannot cater to this growing community as is, too few and far between. For every blood crazed vampire ten heroes on the warpath. What I propose is the next step or a step down.

The small evil; people who have access to smaller amount of commands and abilities than DMs, limited spawns, low tier loot, the details can be ironed out. While the initial push will take effort with the setting up of permissions, selection, and moderation. It is my belief that this will be able to cater to the expanding appetite and growing pains of the server.

The easy response to this is why not recruit more DMs? why not make more MPC/AMPCs? The answer is multi-layered and complicated but simply put; DMs take a long time to train and it also takes a certain type of person to endear with that level of trust, and MPC/AMPCs are a direct responsibility of the staff with peer reviewal and the eventual creation. This takes time and there’s no guarantee for the longevity of the creature.

I am not a coder and only have the vaguest of ideas about what goes on behind the scenes, however, this next part is my solution to potential abuse. The Atmosphere Team are locked to a set number of transformation with loot locked to that particular Atmosphere character and only droppable upon their death(similar to shapechange), they are to follow a set of private guides/scripts they can choose from written by the staff team and updated per need.

Atmosphere Character Examples

“An Escaped Experiment”; faced with one of the iconic forces of gothic horror you must contend with a unique flesh golem, what terror lurks in the created eye’s. But what might it hold?
“The Hungering Dead”; A ghoul champion rises from the grave, envious and hungry for the life they once left behind.
“The Frenzied Pack”; a great leader of werewolves has appeared, can you survive the hunt?
“The Roving madman”; a lunatic roves the land spouting nonsense but is there a method to its madness, FIND OUT!
“The Merchant of Ill Repute”; a merchant is on the road with strange wares, but where does he get these goods from and why does he smell of the grave.

These are not world ending events they are small twenty minute encounters that will contribute to the overall themes of POTM, its the spice of life to know there is an active storying going on you just need to find it. In short the Atmosphere Team would be entrusted with specific archetypes to play out, while they lack the variety a DM can provide or the unique story a custom MPC can create, this would be a constant reminder of the setting’s theme and put the dread back into the Demi-Plane of Dread.

TLDR; difference between AMPC/MPCs compared to the proposed Atmosphere Team they can instantly make a new one. As these are meant to die, twenty minute adventures.

Nemesis 24:
At the moment, our AMPC's are supposed to pick up the slack of being the things in the night that are feared.  However at present there seems to be something of an 'instant messenger service' bringing whole squads of extremely powerful and substantially higher level characters running from distant places as soon as they try to do something, or for that matter log in at all.  As such, its extremely hard to encourage anyone to try and play an AMPC because evidence has shown exactly what they're going to get when they attempt it, and instead of being the big scary terror it seems to mostly consist of running away for dear life.

Hard to be the scary atmosphere creature when your only option, be it survival or even interaction is to simply run for it.

That said, as much as I encourage this idea, I'm not sure how feasible it is from a scripted point of view.  I -like- it, but I don't see how it would work.  On the flipside they'd almost all of them make absolutely fantastic AMPC's.  On the other side of the coin, most of them would also be annihilated by far more powerful PC's.  It's a gnarly problem.  But I don't disagree with the night no longer being scary.

Hallvor Hadiya:

--- Quote from: Nemesis 24 on September 15, 2019, 11:50:04 AM ---At the moment, our AMPC's are supposed to pick up the slack of being the things in the night that are feared.  However at present there seems to be something of an 'instant messenger service' bringing whole squads of extremely powerful and substantially higher level characters running from distant places as soon as they try to do something, or for that matter log in at all.  As such, its extremely hard to encourage anyone to try and play an AMPC because evidence has shown exactly what they're going to get when they attempt it, and instead of being the big scary terror it seems to mostly consist of running away for dear life.

Hard to be the scary atmosphere creature when your only option, be it survival or even interaction is to simply run for it.
--- End quote ---

I think that is a matter of approach, and biding your time for the right opportunity. Vallaki outskirts or even Vallaki just isn't that place anymore. The fact is AMPC/MPCs cannot meet the demand of the playerbase, they can't be made fast enough.


--- Quote from: Nemesis 24 on September 15, 2019, 11:50:04 AM ---That said, as much as I encourage this idea, I'm not sure how feasible it is from a scripted point of view.  I -like- it, but I don't see how it would work.  On the flipside they'd almost all of them make absolutely fantastic AMPC's.  On the other side of the coin, most of them would also be annihilated by far more powerful PC's.  It's a gnarly problem.  But I don't disagree with the night no longer being scary.

--- End quote ---

That's the big question is the code, if its possible. However, the script is a loose guide that can be spread over multiple villains; spawning from an archetype with their own rules. And the big difference between AMPC/MPCs compared to the proposed Atmosphere Team they can instantly make a new one. As these are meant to die, twenty minute adventures.

Iridni Ren:

--- Quote from: Nemesis 24 on September 15, 2019, 11:50:04 AM ---However at present there seems to be something of an 'instant messenger service' bringing whole squads of extremely powerful and substantially higher level characters running from distant places as soon as they try to do something, or for that matter log in at all.

--- End quote ---

If this is only rumor and gossip, I don't think spreading it serves a useful purpose. If it is supported by evidence, then the DMs need to be informed so they can take the appropriate response toward the players engaging in it.

zDark Shadowz:
Been doing my part not to bother AMPCs overly much and wishing luck in their endeavours even if (a very few) do end up running.. kind of detracts a bit from the thread.

I can rearrange the conversation dialogue of one of my own set of scripts for equipped items to make a kind of token system if that helps with the limited loot reward thing, essentially it'd be like wearable reward items tailor made from very minor bonuses.

I never set it up for relabelling item names & descriptions, or negative penalty properties however. Just a lot of integer checks to cycle through the more positive item properties at the correct stages.

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