Nudist Progression

[Zed-F]

I plan to be there tonight.

[KingOfPain]

Probably can't make it tonight. The worse of it is I somehow got committed to be working 7 nights a week at least for the next while/months :rant::rant:

We will have to recruit additional Nudists (with FoxBat, Drasca and my status unknown. I will know more in a week or 2, if I can match other time slots at all) for this to carry on.



KoP

[Lurker Wyrm]

I'll be around, in some form or another.

[Lurker Wyrm]

I've gone a little nuts, but the next part (Gates of Kryta) is up. When I skimmed through the last few parts I've done, I decided they were decidedly too long, so I'm going to make a more conscious effort to keep them shorter (this one is about half the size of what I've been doing). I think I'm also going to stick with the less-serious style of telling the story.

Here's a snippet from the new part that I'm especially proud of:

In the meantime Arty had gone off on his own and came back with a pig. "Isn't he cute?" he said, "his name is Oink."

"How do you know that?" asked Buffy.

"Hey, little pig, what's your name?" Arty asked the pig.

"Oink," the pig replied.

"There you have it."

[KingOfPain]

Heh, I like it

Well, it wasn't even remotely on their way so they decided to get the thing.


KoP

[Zed-F]

So, I was thinking, we don't seem to have many people available to come out on Nudist night these days. I believe Wyrm, Hawkmoon, and myself are still interested. KoP would still be interested if he could make it, but has no gaming nights free anymore. I'm not sure about anyone else. Certainly we can't get a full team of 8 anymore.

So, I am thinking we need to revisit the rules somewhat. Perhaps with Nightfall, and customizable heroes, we can reboot Nudists with a mixed team of PCs and NPC heroes to approximate the spirit of the original rules as best we can. One problem: I don't think the NPC heroes can take off their armour. (Can they?) The original rules had restrictions on henches to prevent them from being able to tank for PCs. We might be able to adopt a similar anti-tanking restriction by setting our heroes to Passive behaviour and setting them up purely as support characters. This would force our PCs to do all the actual killing.

Anyway, I'm just spouting ideas to try to get Nudists going again. One thing is clear: we can't rely on having full parties of PCs for this or any other variant. Our alliance just is not very interested in variant stuff, and our player base here at RB is relatively small. (This didn't stop us in D2, but in Guild Wars there's still new stuff to explore, whereas the character classes and gameworld in D2 have been mostly static for a long time.)

Thoughts? Please post something if you're interested in seeing Nudists start up again (and that means participating!), regardless of format.

[Lurker Wyrm]

I don't think the NPC heroes can take off their armour. (Can they?)

No. I like questions that are easy to answer.

We might be able to adopt a similar anti-tanking restriction by setting our heroes to Passive behaviour and setting them up purely as support characters. This would force our PCs to do all the actual killing.

Here's the question though, what roles do we have the heroes in? An even bigger question: can we even bring our heroes from Nightfall back to the other campaigns?

Our alliance just is not very interested in variant stuff

From what I gather, most people in the alliance don't even know about the variants and nudists in particular. At the end of the night tonight when Zedf came back on TS and started talking about nudists, I got the impression that Aravis hadn't even heard of them before. Why don't I talk to her about it the next time I have her attention and see whether it's something we might be able to get some KKoP people for. Also, I know at least 1 person from ZoS who might be willing to give it a try; TNE won't go for it, they're a GvG guild; bobo seems to be doing nothing but HA and other forms of PvP; NP we haven't really heard from in a while; HRK... I have no idea.

our player base here at RB is relatively small.

Well, we can always try and recruit, but that's a pain.

(This didn't stop us in D2, but in Guild Wars there's still new stuff to explore, whereas the character classes and gameworld in D2 have been mostly static for a long time.)

Also, I think the player base we have in GW is less interested in variants in general. There's also a lot less variety in what we can do with our characters in Guild Wars than there was in Diablo 2.

Thoughts? Please post something if you're interested in seeing Nudists start up again (and that means participating!), regardless of format.

I think it'd be great if we can get the nudists through Prophecies, and I'm willing to stay the course, so to speak, to keep it going; however, I don't see nudists as a team of 3 people and 5 heroes/hench. To be honest, I don't think we're going to be able to start up again as things stand. Asking people to drop armor and weapons, running with basically no protection and only 20e and 2 pips of regen is asking a lot from new players, especially ones who are unfamiliar with running a variant in general.

< quick personal story > Back when nudists first started, it was my first variant and I didn't really want to do it, I joined more as a chance to get to know people in the guild better (I pretty much didn't know Hawk or Zedf at all at that point) and because the team needed another player. Had it been a situation more like this one (down to just 3) I highly doubt I would have joined. < /quick personal story >

Anyways... what I'm saying is we're going to have to get more people in the guild and interested in variants in general by running some that don't have as many restrictions (or, at least, less severe ones) before we can think of starting up nudists again. Perhaps the Lay of the Land one can work or we can try a full assassin (or whatever people might be interested in, just not all monks -- maybe all Paragons?) team again, even though I sorta stole the night that one was using. Also, PvP is a really huge venue for most players so we might try running a variant in that (not try to GvG with it, but I'm thinking more along the lines of variant scrimmages*) to rouse up interest.

*Sorry for the side track (you should be used to them by now), but I just had a brief idea for one of those: We use our guild hall, and we take teams of 3-4 at most. No capping the flag stand allowed and no attacking NPCs unless all the players on the other side are dead. Also... wait for it... the entire match has to be fought on the ice. Ok, enough of that idea (for now).

I've been keeping Nudist Night listed in the welcome message (not that anyone reads it anymore anyway), but perhaps it should get changed to Variant Night and whichever variant we're able to run at the time can be on that night.

[Hawkmoon]

I think it'd be great if we can get the nudists through Prophecies, and I'm willing to stay the course, so to speak, to keep it going; however, I don't see nudists as a team of 3 people and 5 heroes/hench. To be honest, I don't think we're going to be able to start up again as things stand. Asking people to drop armor and weapons, running with basically no protection and only 20e and 2 pips of regen is asking a lot from new players, especially ones who are unfamiliar with running a variant in general.

I agree completely with Wyrm's assessment of what would really constitute a Nudist team - 3 players and 5 henches just defeats the whole purpose, in my mind. For me, it was never really about beating the game - sure the challenge is fun, but what it was really about was playing regularly with you guys, where we were all at the same place in the story and we could all go through it together.

< quick personal story > Back when nudists first started, it was my first variant and I didn't really want to do it, I joined more as a chance to get to know people in the guild better (I pretty much didn't know Hawk or Zedf at all at that point) and because the team needed another player. ...< /quick personal story >

Glad you did, Wyrm - I wouldn't have gotten to know you without the Nudists. "The guildies who Streak together...?" (can't think of any good rhymes - anyone? anyone? Bueller?)

Anyways... what I'm saying is we're going to have to get more people in the guild and interested in variants in general by running some that don't have as many restrictions (or, at least, less severe ones) before we can think of starting up nudists again. Perhaps the Lay of the Land one can work or we can try a full assassin (or whatever people might be interested in, just not all monks -- maybe all Paragons?) team again

I think you're right, Wyrm - less severe variants ought to be more attractive, though it seems there's limited interest even for that. Wasn't there an attempt on the ZoS forum to organize an all-Assassin team? Whatever happened to that? Did it ever start up at all? I don't want to be a wet blanket, but we may be doomed in our efforts to get a specific team going - it might be more successful to advertise that on a specific night, you want to organize an all-Asn team (or whatever) for the challenge of taking on a specific mission. Make it a one-shot thing, not a deal where you require a weekly commitment from specific people. I bet you'd get more takers that way, and we'd slowly spread our insidious Variant Scum influence to permeate the entire Alliance! Muahahahaha!

...We use our guild hall, and we take teams of 3-4 at most. No capping the flag stand allowed and no attacking NPCs unless all the players on the other side are dead. Also... wait for it... the entire match has to be fought on the ice.

*thumps Wyrm*

[Zed-F]

I did try to arrange an all-assassin team (the most popular of several variant ideas that were proposed.) I think we did one mission after several weeks of trying to get a team together. But participation was always an issue, and when a couple of the people who said they'd participate had to drop out, I knew getting replacements would be nigh-impossible, so the whole thing fell by the wayside.

I don't know that trying to go for a less severe variant would really help matters. It just seems like trying to get anything regularily organized at all, variant or not, PvE or PvP, is an uphill battle in our current guild/alliance environment. But I can see that if the association with other players is what's important, and not the challenge of the variant itself, then going for a variant with a smaller PC base, filled out with heroes, would lose appeal.

I'd be interested in trying a Living off the Land variant rather than the nudists on Tuesdays, if we can get a team together. Or even just have a few new Nightfall characters that happen to run through the game together. Whatever works.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Wasn't there an attempt on the ZoS forum to organize an all-Assassin team? Whatever happened to that?

I don't think we'll have any luck probing the ZoS forums for players. Very few people from the other guilds even go to those and I've pretty much stopped going myself. The last time I checked it was pretty much just people from ZoS and HRK. I think the best (and, atm, only) way to get people interested in variants is to sit down and talk with them about it.

it might be more successful to advertise that on a specific night, you want to organize an all-Asn team (or whatever) for the challenge of taking on a specific mission. Make it a one-shot thing, not a deal where you require a weekly commitment from specific people.

That statement's a little ambiguous, and I've got mixed feelings about both ways I'm reading it. First way: I think if we try to get people involved the night of the variant we'll just wind up spending all the time setting up just like we're doing with GvG (and for GvG we're already supposed to have a gameplan worked out -- and we do, it's become more a matter of getting people to show up on time). Second way: if we get the word out about a certain variant ahead of time and people know what's going to happen, they might still be hesitant to show up because we're not really doing anything. Yes, we've got a variant and it's fun and all, but if we're only doing it for one mission and then moving on; we're not really accomplishing anything.

It just seems like trying to get anything regularily organized at all, variant or not, PvE or PvP, is an uphill battle in our current guild/alliance environment.

It wouldn't matter if we had an alliance full of people who want to try variants, it's always going to be an uphill battle getting people interested in anything. When we try something new, we're breaking the norm. In order to get people to go with us we need to get in their faces about it and talk them into making the commitment to show up. I think you'll find a rather large number of people who would like to try something different, but won't show up because they were never asked, even though there's an open invitation posted where they can see it.

I think our biggest problem right now is we don't have a leader for the variants, so all we do is talk stuff over and try to figure things out. It's nice and I enjoy the conversation, but we're just not getting anything done. We need 1 person (or, at most, 2 people) who can just make the decision and go out and promote it (i.e. do more than just post something on the forums/site about what we're doing when). I learned that the hard way with PvP. How many times did I fall flat on my face trying to get something organized but fail miserably because I didn't really do anything more than rant about it on the forums? Well, once I started talking to people on an individual basis and just using the forums as a point of reference things started to happen. And hey, it only took me about 10 months.

Anyways, starting to ramble again, so let me just say this directly and bluntly. What we've got right now resembles a pure democracy too much and that's just not going to work (just ask Pericles and the Ancient Greeks). We need someone who will go out and get interest in a variant, not just sit around and expect it to happen. Said person also needs to have a game plan so people know what to do when they show up. Until we get someone to do that I just don't see anything other than these conversations happening.