DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Sacred Kingdoms
HTML https://sacredkingdoms.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Polls
*****************************************************
#Post#: 464--------------------------------------------------
Change Management
By: Genesis Date: June 22, 2019, 2:25 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
This post is a general explanation of how I roll out my changes,
with particular focus on spells, feat, and class changes.
[hr]
Why Change?
Change in NWN is, as Agent Smith would say, inevitable. The game
is entirely designed for a single player experience with
multiplayer a distant second. As such, a lot of its scripts,
feats, and classes are configured for that single player
journey.
That does not always translate well to the multiplayer
experience and often we have to evaluate the suitability of a
particular game feature in a much wider consideration. There are
literally a billion mechanical parts all moving at once and
somehow we need to keep a track of how changing one affects
others.
These changes are entirely designed to clip overpowered (OP)
game mechanics and bring a sense of balance. It is an ongoing
process that takes a degree of trial and error before we get
'right'. It's also worth remembering that change takes time and,
depending on how difficult a change is, this can mean a
development time of a few minutes to several weeks.
Methodology
The methodology is split into three phases:
[list]
[li]Script Fixing[/li]
[li]Poll-led Testing[/li]
[li]Finalisation[/li]
[/list]
Script Fixing
The scripts of NWN are notoriously fragmented. Various
development teams, 10 years of development, and several swings
at changing the mechanics mean that some scripts can have 3+
versions within in one script.
On top of this there is NWNX. It includes a lot of features that
core NWN cannot support. Sometimes the scripts require us to tap
into this new functionality - this introduces an additional
complication, because we cannot tests these scripts offline. We
have to test such functions in live.
So my first objective is to overhaul the respective scripts and
make them easier to manage.
This will be accompanied by a forum post here to get a general
feel for the initial proposed change and invite ideas on the
matter. By the time the development is done, I should have a
decent set of feedback, thoughts, and alternative ideas.
What is not happening presently is that I am not limiting these
changes to a controlled space, such as the arenas. That needs to
change, but is part of the long term goals.
Poll Led Testing
This bit is relatively self-explanatory. Now the scripts are in
a more manageable form, they can be tweaked easier between build
releases. The ideas from Phase 1 can filter into a poll and
players then get time to critique and evaluate the different
impacts of mechanic changes.
Finalisation
We make a final decision based on feedback.
Contract
The contract is our agreement between players and the DM team.
Simply put, you will get out of the change process what you put
in. We invite you to comment at every stage of the above
process, but with that come three key caveats:
[list]
[li]Always keep your discourse polite, relevant, and
respectful;[/li]
[li]Players here are of varying experiences and everyone has the
right to state their opinion;[/li]
[li]Complaining after the process has completed, especially if
you did not contribute during, will only serve to have this
point made at you in subsequent conversations.[/li]
[/list]
[hr]
That just about covers it. Any questions, DM me on Discord :)
*****************************************************