Yeah, it is kinda hard on the devs that put so much work into Gallia, but I agree with the majority here. It just didn't pen out. Gallia is too big for a server that averages around 100-150 players currently. Heck, I'd even scrap/fuse many more systems.
Establishing Gallia as a mini house of exiles would be the best solution imho.
It'll also help the devs focus on other issues/other content.
By the way, Kusari actively helping Gallia would make no sense.
1. Gallia wrecked Kusari and put great shame on them.
2. Actively supporting Gallic exiles is basically another war declaration upon Bretonia.
(12-25-2012, 07:54 PM)Drakens Wrote: Its only rude if you word it rudely.
They can still read between the lines though.
(12-25-2012, 07:54 PM)Drakens Wrote: I respect what the developers attempted to do and I'm sure a lot of other people will say they at least can appreciate that these people put a lot of effort into it but if the majority of people don't like Gallia the feelings of developers should not be used as a block for critique.
That would only be true if the devs were paid. It's their spare time that gets spent, after all.
Yes: It helps when dealing with players per System and such, creating an increase in traffic among systems which need it and allows new life to be made into dying factions. In which I fear several more may feel the chopping block soon. As some stated yes, Gallia didnt fully work out, so Salvage what you can to make the best of it. Last. I already see several great ideas in which RPs can be made from such a disasterous event.
No: All that hard work for nothing would be a lil hurtful, but then we might actually see Igiss come back. IMPOSSIBRU!! You say, we don't know. A lot of already established persepctives would have to be rewritten overnight, which would cause quite a few headaches.
So in turn. Im 50-50 on this. All for all. Good or Bad, I'm fine with either way.
-"If we do not learn at least one thing a day....Our minds turn to stupor"- Kyle Sparrgrove -2005
(12-25-2012, 07:54 PM)Drakens Wrote: Its only rude if you word it rudely.
They can still read between the lines though.
(12-25-2012, 07:54 PM)Drakens Wrote: I respect what the developers attempted to do and I'm sure a lot of other people will say they at least can appreciate that these people put a lot of effort into it but if the majority of people don't like Gallia the feelings of developers should not be used as a block for critique.
That would only be true if the devs were paid. It's their spare time that gets spent, after all.
While I greatly respect and almost admire your logic on this issue I simply must disagree. The developers willingly offer their services to the community and this being a roleplay community kept alive by its players has, or at least should have, a degree of obligation to do two things. The first is to ensure roleplay happens and that it affects the future of the mod in terms of story. This results in development towards those outcomes. The second obligation is to ensure that the community as a whole are happy or at least understand and accept the directions taken. Threads like this show a clear issue with 'obligation' number two. No one is saying the developers are bad or that what they made is bad, in fact I would personally lay the blame, if you even want to call it that, on whoever thought up, wrote and pushed Gallia to its prominence since if we assume that the developers work off of what they're given in certain situations then that person has in effect wasted their time on something the community is less than happy about.
It all comes down to this; if we cannot give constructive criticism in a polite manner for fear of hurting people's feelings then how are we supposed to help people or even the community at large improve? If it does cause hurt feelings then that is sadly the issue of those hurt because I have no ill intentions when I say "I think Gallia was a bad idea for x,y and z" before going on to explain myself and my points.
We can speak at length about how developers are not paid for their valuable skills and time but we must also consider that these people are not forced into these rolls. They do it because they enjoy it and if they do not enjoy it then they simply shouldn't do it because no one should feel forced to do something they don't enjoy. I am also certain that the developers are all mature individuals who can take critique if given in the right form and that they won't take offence with what I and many others have said.
Really there are things from the Gallic addition that are actually very cool. The ships are awesome and should not vanish, the factions are actually fairly rich and well thought out even if Gallia as a house was overpowered in my own personal opinion. A lot of unique ideas came out of Gallia that have shaped and will continue to shape the roleplay on Discovery as time progresses. Its just a shame that a lot of people with myself included feel that Gallia as a whole, rather than the sum of its good and bad parts, was poorly conceived.
So to finish I'll re-iterate, I believe Gallia should be gotten rid of so to speak but in a way that makes a good degree of roleplay sense. Does this mean everything Gallic must be removed? Never, the ships can stay and serve purpose. The canon and story can remain and fuel roleplay and the factions can also be adapted and progressed to interesting new points and intriguing depths. Just as the community leaders and developers have the obligations I spoke of early into this post, players too should feel they are obligated to use what we are provided with in return for our cooperation and make great things out of it. It works both ways.
When I started to write this I didn't expect to go that far, hope you can at least understand where I'm coming from. I can certainly understand your points.
Quote:20 less systems, meaning a higher average amount of players per system.
Means more lag and crashes. 200 players spread around the systems generate less lag than 30 people shooting each other in one system.
Quote:Devs get to spend their time on things the player base care about.
Assuming for a second that the idea of removing Gallia at all was even entertained, believe it or not it would actually take probably as much work and time to get rid of it as it did to finish it in 4.86 development... mainly because of the server db nightmare that we would have to deal with, the steady assessment and removal of assets that have by now been blended into non Gallia systems and various key files quite a bit, and finally the impossible task of justifying it in the storyline so that it doesn't look absolutely ridiculous - and no "the jump hole collapsed" is a ridiculous storyline for a house that can build its own jump gates, you could be pretty sure they would have a contingency gate. So if one of the reasons to remove Gallia is to "cut down dev work", then that reason can now be considered as disproved.
And then there's the fact that the player base doesn't really care about removing Gallia (even though some people claim to speak for the entire player base), in my experience it's just a small group of people that actually still want it gone... despite the fact that since it is already in and the systems have been completed, and quite honestly IMO to remove them now AFTER all the time has been invested into the new content would be quite frankly unbelievably stupid.
Quote:Vanilla factions that desperately need help to become useful will get some love.
Just because Gallia is in the mod doesn't mean that devs will be devoting less time to lore progression of other factions. In fact, it's one of the goals that dev team set itself for 4.87 months ago to provide some manner of lore movement for each and every npc faction currently in the mod. I don't think Gallia's existence detracts from that goal in any way, and even helps this goal because a lot of the vanilla factions were quite frankly a bit of a dead end storyline wise... and Gallia's interruption of the overall flow of things in Bretonia will help a bunch of factions move a long with their things without having them "win" and destroying vanilla NPC factions in the process.
Anyway instead of removing Gallia, it's a far better idea to make it usable in gameplay by reducing system size, fixing trade and moving stuff around on the galactic map. But even then you guys have to understand that it's not Gallia's size that is reducing population concentration on the server, it's the lag/crash issues that we keep facing. If we can solve that (and it sounds like pretty much the best use of dev time that I can possibly think of at the moment, more so than anything lore related even) then I think we can count on the server repopulating itself a bit more, and the whole thing will be a non issue.
Sorry for the video, I couldn't resist. And yes, the audio is out of snyc D:
Essentially, I agree with Blodo.
Stop doomsaying people, jeez.
"You see what your knowledge tells you you're seeing. ... how, what you think the universe is, and how you react to that in everything you do, depends on what you know. And when that knowledge changes, for you, the universe changes. And that is as true for the whole of society as that is for the individual. We all are what we know, today. What we knew yesterday, was different; and so were we."
- James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed (1985)
Remove Gallia, make a full blown Coalition House? =P But seriously, removing Gallia at this point solves little, the roleplay is already firmly set, people have created and based characters around it and it's had a lasting impact on Sirius's RP.
Trimming Gallia, which is happening, is the best choice at this time.
I agree with you. It's just that Gallia is a special case because of it's size and complexity. If there was an error with say, a ship, it could be redesigned and balanced relatively quickly. But because Gallia is so large and affects so many players, it's quite difficult to handle and will require a fair bit of dev time to fix, should the devs decide to do anything at all (although I hear they are, but nothing as drastic as suggested in the OP).
(12-26-2012, 03:30 AM)Blodo Wrote: Anyway instead of removing Gallia, it's a far better idea to make it usable in gameplay by reducing system size, fixing trade and moving stuff around on the galactic map. But even then you guys have to understand that it's not Gallia's size that is reducing population concentration on the server, it's the lag/crash issues that we keep facing. If we can solve that (and it sounds like pretty much the best use of dev time that I can possibly think of at the moment, more so than anything lore related even) then I think we can count on the server repopulating itself a bit more, and the whole thing will be a non issue.
Of course removing it completely is foolish but I personally feel that it should be brough to a point of barely existing as a result of sensible decisions made to, on an in character basis, reduce the number of systems that are not being used. Be under no illusion that I think this will increase player concentration because it simply does not. This is because if no one is there in the first place then you are not displacing anyone. I'm actually of the opinion that more systems is a great thing if they are border or edge world systems, less so house systems. I think Discovery kind of lacks that element of 'discovery' because of the sheer familiarity of it all. There are simply not many systems that have not been built up by one faction or another but hey, that is another story for another thread perhaps. What I'm getting at is that Gallia's addition and large system count did not really go down so well and that player representation, or rather the lack of it, doesn't seem to help in regards to justifying their presence.
To quickly talk about lag and crash issues I'd just like to say I've really never had much of an issue with lag or crashes personally. I'm sure there are many people suffering from these issues however and indeed some of my friends whom I brought with me here have had problems. The core issue here is clientside however and while the developers can focus resources into the reduction of crashes theres only so much that can be done. If we're talking about server crashes as a whole then I still say I've barely seen the server go down more than once a day. That seems completely reasonable as well considering this is a 225 slot server that peaks at 120-140 concurrent players on an average day, probably more in the summer. Lag on its own is also not an issue I've had first hand experience with on Discovery. Perhaps I'm just lucky, I probably am to be honest and I expect someone to correct me but I just can't see evidence suggesting crashes and lag are massive issues. Then again, I'm no developer.
Moving back to Gallia, my issues stem from the initial outcry against Gallia as the be all and end all steamroll faction. While those fears are somewhat arrested now I do fear that Gallia's initial set up as a powerful faction makes it very difficult to bring down to a reasonable level of power. Indeed, how does it make sense within roleplay? Houses like Gallia do not simply lose the resources, the strength, the numbers and other advantages. Something has to happen then to make it occur lest Bretonia be almost totally lost to Gallic forces, creating a strange void in the familiarity that is Vanilla. Arguably a good thing, arguably a bad thing.
From what I can gather, there are people writing or things have been writted about Gallia since 4.86's release that might play into this downsizing and de-powering but being a regular player I can only really speculate and guess as to what these actions might be. Alternatively I could come up with my own story for it which, while fun, doesn't contribute to anything. I did it anyway and it filled a fairly slow hour so I can't complain. With all that said however I find that when it comes to things I care about that I get worried for them and this is no exception. I worry that Gallia's poor beginning and lack of player representation will eventually lead to a situation where a phantom house of NPC's beats a more regularly staffed house that, in game, is winning its engagements despite the obvious storyline dictations.
Then again maybe I worry and care too much. I've said it before and I'll say it again, my opinion is that Gallia was a fine concept with a bit too much power put into it to be realistically acceptable and that despite that the resources created for it would be foolish to waste. It is, in my mind, a matter of salvaging those and taking the roleplay Gallia introduced to a new point that fits better with other factions.
Either way, you did describe some hefty development work that would go into 'removing Gallia'. I understand that would be a major deterant even if the development team were to have considered it properly. I hear theres basically a restructuring of some of the Gallic systems going on with updates and fixes etcetera being planned for 4.87 to hopefully fix the 'Gallic problem'. I doubt there anything extreme when compared to this thread or even compared to what I wrote but I look forward to seeing them nonetheless.
(I really need to stop posting in these sorts of threads. I plan for a paragraph and write six and I have to doubt whether it really stays 100% relevant.)
(12-26-2012, 05:56 AM)Crackpunch Wrote:
(12-26-2012, 02:43 AM)Drakens Wrote: -snip-
I agree with you. It's just that Gallia is a special case because of it's size and complexity. If there was an error with say, a ship, it could be redesigned and balanced relatively quickly. But because Gallia is so large and affects so many players, it's quite difficult to handle and will require a fair bit of dev time to fix, should the devs decide to do anything at all (although I hear they are, but nothing as drastic as suggested in the OP).
Much respect to you, friend and I totally understand. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Can't stop me dreaming though but thats all its likely to be, dreams. Anyway, I'm tired as hell and its 05:30 in the morning. Pleasant dreams, all.
Kill off all the routes in/out of Gallia. Make it accessible only via Jump Drive. That way, there can be an internal Gallic economy, with highly-priced imports/exports such as Cryocubes which make it worth the trip to/from Gallia.
Also, that'll keep those Valors available. How to get them out of Gallia is the buyers' problem.
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