So with not much time to really conceptualize and pen out structured realm encounters, as well as all of the wiring, I still find that if I had some way to easily engage with the moderators and make tweaks to realms post release, that this could have great effects for the game.

The big example is that instead of relying on people to improve on their realms by putting large chunks of effort into entirely new realms, that they could just use the given feedback and reiterate on their already designed realms. An example of were this is effective...Look no further then chaos reborn itself, a product that receives iterative updates post release.

Might not be perfect parallels but as a new player, i think i'd rather play a more polished realm that received some feedback then just playing something and hoping i don't get lost from some bad directions and have only a 0 star rating to show for it.

This can also be handy as more tweaks are made to realms. Being able to rename all of my mercs in the older realms would be a nice touch.

Certain limitations might be needed: perhaps anything more then adjusting realm encounter text, giving mercs names, or taboos (maybe stacked taboos in the future?) could be the limit, to mitigate high score ratings. Just release the realm back up with the existing high score charts.

I feel the biggest barrier removal could just be giving the moderator the ability to take realms off of the list to pass back to the player. As i understand it now, the snapshot staff has to do it, but if this was removed, it could help the game alot.

+1 At the very least should be able to make changes to the text descriptions.

I can understand people's concerns if you were to start changing mechanics, but tbh the combined scoretable for both law and chaos playthroughs makes a mockery of the scoretable system anyway.

the #1 thing I'd change about realm design is the capacity to edit realms after they are released. As Spite mentioned, there would need to be restrictions on what could be changed, so as not to mess with the difficulty and scoring, but the scoring mechanism has its own issues, and that would honestly be a minor concern, and one easily navigated.

Realms are simply too complex to create in a vacuum.

Iterations are vital to creative endeavors.

If only there was a simple way to keep track of what the realm designer does inbetween iterations, so the realm moderator doesn't have to comb 100% of it to clarify changes. Say i remove a map tile, encounter, etc. the editor could take note of that for the moderator.

My ahnaahn realm as example, is pretty riddled with bugs, which i could easily change to work, though this would require the mod to literally start moderating from scratch. (found at least one place holder typo, which obsidian beard uncovered on his twitch stream.... ...;(

But if any future for chaos reborn is still in the cards, patching up the way realm moderation works alongside any final polishing bits of the realm mode itself could go a long ways for satisfying the PVE aspect of the game.

In my limited understanding, the main problem is what to do with players who are in the middle of exploring a Realm and may not even be online at the time. What happens to their playing experience? Are the booted out of the Realm, losing all effort/progress, right before they enter in the final battle? What happens when edits are made to something the player has already done?

At this point, asking for major changes to the infrastructure of things is likely wishful thinking. That said, there may be minor tweaks that help accomplish functionally the same thing.

For example, Realms have (or had?) are certain number of player playthroughs before they are removed from circulation. What if -that- number could be changed at any time to any number between the current number of playthroughs and the current max. In this way, when the last current player finishes their playthrough, then the Realm would go offline and return to the maker's Realm editor for whatever copying, editing, and re-issuing that they would like.

This may have been fixed, as this problem also came up when that entry limit occured.
Someone in the middle of a realm was kicked out of it when the 2000th player had entered it if i recall correctly.

Think it was arenji's realm that this happened on.

anjovi wrote:This may have been fixed, as this problem also came up when that entry limit occured.
Someone in the middle of a realm was kicked out of it when the 2000th player had entered it if i recall correctly.

Different problem that doesn't yet exist: what to do with players in a Realm which is edited.

I'm pretty positive it did happen.
Someone was playing when they got mysteriously booted from the realm. I think they happened to be in the middle of the realm when the 2000th player had played the realm, causing it to get removed from the list.

Regarding the editing of realms, if you restricted it to just fixing texts, merc names, maybe encounter wiring/taboos under the moderator's discretion; you could have the realm just removed from the list, and anyone in the middle of the realm can just play that old version of it and play the newer version when it gets re released.

I could be wrong about the other thing with the 2000 realms, which would make this suggestion non applicable.

What happens if realm designers release realms with a version number?

You can already make a copy of a realm which is in your design pool. So just prior to release, make a copy, release one copy as a 'beta' and then after however many playthroughs and feedback make any changes you feel you need to before releasing version 1.0.

Also you don't need to pull the previous version of a realm, you just need to hide it from the realm list.

If that previous version could be hidden from the list of available realms it would remain in a playable status, players could complete their existing play through, but nobody else would be able to find it.

You don't even need to impose anything on the moderator, you could let the designer hide their own earlier realm versions once they've released that newer version.

Wow. yeah. that's awesome, Spite, that seems very doable. Designers could have a certain amount of time allowed for the beta version maybe, the realm listing could be a different colored font. So, when a realm is in beta/feedback version, it is understood that scores won't carry over to the 'final' version.