NEStalgia

by Silk Games
NEStalgia
A unique MORPG inspired by the gameplay of classic console RPGs
ID:107435
 
Keywords: nestalgia
The Silk Games staff fields a lot of different questions every day, but many identical questions pop up pretty regularly. This post is an attempt to answer some of those frequently asked questions so that in the future I can provide a link instead of typing out the same answer over and over!

Why aren't there 4 person parties?
NEStalgia's 3 person parties aren't due to any sort of limitations in the capabilities of BYOND or my DM knowledge; during the design process I simply made a decision to go with 3 players instead of 4.

Why is that? First and foremost, it's much easier to balance the game for parties of 2-3 players as opposed to 2-4 players. Two strong characters can probably handle monsters geared towards regular parties of three... but if all of the fights were meant to be difficult for 4 players, then most 2 person parties would likely be useless.

I also considered the fact that on a low-population server it can be hard to find other players around your level to party with. It's obviously easier to find just 2 other party members instead of 3.

Finally, with only 3 people in a party, players are forced to make much tougher decisions about the class makeup of their group, not to mention the strategies they use in battle. As anyone who has played the game knows, PvP and boss battles in NEStalgia are all about strategy and tactics; not simply overpowering your opponents.

At any rate, I'm happy with my design decision and I'm sticking with it.


Why don't you add _______ to the game?
We've got a long list of stuff that Spiff and I want to add to the game. The dilemma is how high of a priority a given feature is vs. how much time we have to actually spend working on the game.

I always appreciate suggestions, and occasionally players come up ideas that we implement almost immediately. Most of the time, however, great ideas get put on the back burner until we have time to sort them out. Other times your idea may be great, but it's not necessarily the direction that we want to go with NEStalgia.


Can Admins see all communications?
We see what you see when we're in the game, but we keep a log of all communications (except GuildSay). This is for moderation purposes - since we can't be on 24/7, it's nice to be able to go back and investigate reported incidents or to occasionally skim the logs to make sure people are being civil.


What is the formula for _______?
We learned our lesson awhile back about giving people the actual formulas for how things are calculated. Without the context of how everything else in the game works, players tend to take those tidbits of information and make crazy assumptions about how out of balance something is. I'd rather keep my focus on developing the game and not debating with players about damage formulas that they don't understand.

There is a very comprehensive list of what each statistic affects on the NEStalgia wiki. Apart from that I'm happy to answer general questions, but rarely will I give out actual numbers.


Do Admins have an advantage in tournaments?
Absolutely not. What would be the fun in that? It's childish to hold the belief that we would create a game simply to cheat at it and brag about our skills. The Admins don't have better gear, we can't see your communications, and we certainly don't have OMG GM COMMANDS that let us cheat.

The funny thing is that I've personally competed in over half the tournaments, and I have yet to actually be part of a winning team.


Who uses the "SilkGames" key?
All of us use it (Me, Spiff, Balzack and Cable Monkey). The Silk Games key is the only account that has access to certain debug Admin commands; we keep all of the power on that key as an extra layer of security.

So yeah - if you see the Silk Games key log in, it's not necessarily me.


Why is there Open PvP?
This was another deliberate design decision that we are sticking to. I believe that open PvP makes the game more interactive and more exciting, especially since we're dealing with a small community of players.

There are many different built-in system to prevent PvP griefing, but if you just flat out hate Open PvP then NEStalgia probably isn't the game for you right now... and I'm okay with that. In the future if NEStalgia becomes more popular and there is enough demand for it, I'll be willing to consider the idea of hosting a separate PvE server.


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If you have any other questions that haven't been answered here, feel free to ask in the comments.







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Why do parties of 2 have the same number of enemies as parties of 3? (makes it very inefficient to travel with just one friend while still leveling) Yes, I realize you answered this kind of, but during he time that I played I had the opposite of what you said in certain caves.
"Can Admins see all communications?
We see what you see when we're in the game, but we keep a log of all communications (except GuildSay). This is for moderation purposes - since we can't be on 24/7, it's nice to be able to go back and investigate reported incidents or to occasionally skim the logs to make sure people are being civil."

Would you consider making psay exempt as well? If anyone gets offended by their party members, they're free to self moderate by leaving the party.
Quaddw wrote:
Why do parties of 2 have the same number of enemies as parties of 3?

Originally, all parties faced the same number of monsters. Having single players face smaller sets of monsters was something that I actually added at the last minute, right before the public release.

There are a variety of reasons why I haven't added an additional set of monsters for 2 player parties. One is the amount of time it will take to go back and redo everything (on top of making sure the new monster sets have equivalent balance). Another is that I feel it might encourage 2 person parties over 3 person parties. Finally, I'm still not convinced that it's a necessary addition.


Caer_Death wrote:
Would you consider making psay exempt as well? If anyone gets offended by their party members, they're free to self moderate by leaving the party.

I understand the desire to have a private chat channel, and I agree that moderation issues aren't a problem over PSay. My hesitation is that I also use the logs to hunt for bugs that players fail to report. Often times people will complain about a bug they discover in the game and just leave it at that.

I've probably fixed just as many bugs that I've found by searching the logs as I have that were reported. If the community can change the culture of laziness regarding bug reporting, I'd be much more open to the idea of making PSay private. I know that many people do report bugs right away, but most players are just too lazy.

Another possible fix for this is a "Bug Report" button in the game that will allow players to report bugs on the spot from inside the game. This has been on my list for awhile and is already halfway done, so we'll see.
How about some more details on what a subscription gets you?

"Subscriber-only specialty shops with interesting items up for sale." and "special subscriber-only areas" is kind of vague.
There is a big button that says "Subscription Info" in the post.
But that has less info! It doesn't even mention the "special subscriber-only areas" and has the same quote regarding the shops.
Digdogger wrote:
But that has less info! It doesn't even mention the "special subscriber-only areas" and has the same quote regarding the shops.

What information are you looking for that isn't provided by that page?

If want specific details about the shops, you can go up to the vendors in the game and see what they sell. If you're that curious about subscriptions then I'm assuming you've already played the game for awhile. Between that and the page linked in this post you should have a pretty clear picture of what you get.
Any plans on adding npc party members that you can hire for gold/hour since story progression requires a group or vastly out leveling content? (solo play / low population cases)
Quaddw wrote:
Any plans on adding npc party members that you can hire for gold/hour since story progression requires a group or vastly out leveling content? (solo play / low population cases)

I hashed out the basics of such a system, but Silk doesn't want to go down that route right now. If in the future player counts are still low, we'll be willing to implement this idea.

The main focus of the game is multiplayer, but if we decide to have a version that can be played solo, this would be a feature or the game would be completely rebalanced to compensate.
Have to be critical here, I don't like those buttons man. Having a modern gradient underlaying the 8 bit isn't sitting right with me.

Has nothing to do with the game, but it's detracting from the theme from where I stand.

ANYWHO, my question is "because it's open pvp, are there any safe areas?" I think I remember seeing the first town have pvp disabled, or lower levels having it disabled, not sure which.
Disturbed Kat wrote:
ANYWHO, my question is "because it's open pvp, are there any safe areas?" I think I remember seeing the first town have pvp disabled, or lower levels having it disabled, not sure which.

Characters under level 10 are safe from PvP- and safe areas include the starting town, as well as Banks and Marketplaces within the two cities.
Open PVP comment:

Ever think population remains kind of low because of PVP? I only played for two days and already saw about 5 people stop playing because of being killed as soon as they turn level 10 (almost always by level 30s). How is it supposed to get popular enough for a separate PvE server when people keep quitting because of pvp? The logic is not there.

Why not just restrict the pvp by level count? So level 30s could only ambush levels down to 25, and anything lower is a formal request for duel instead? As for group pvp, it could go by the highest level in the group.
Ruesen wrote:
Ever think population remains kind of low because of PVP?

No, I don't.

One, back when NEStalgia was first released we were running 40-60 players online at a time on the main server with practically none of the current PvP protections in place. During that time we also offered a separate PvE server... and only about 3-5 people actually played on it. I actually had to shut down the PvE server due to lack of interest.

Two, most of BYOND's existing playerbase that we're currently pulling from are PvP fanatics. There may be the occasional vocal PvP hater, but on the whole most people here prefer Open PvP.

I've answered most of your other concerns about Open PvP already in this post - check my answer for additional information. Thanks for the comment.
Byond has always been a place for people to play games for FREE. WHY THE FUCK DO I HAVE TO BUY THIS GAME IN ORDER FOR ME TO PLAY IT?