Remove Dispensary Shouts from Discord

[HeWhoSeeks]

Would be cool to see active players being rewarded for being online - rather than the 10 minutes of activity with a dispensary for crushbots that then log off immediately afterwards. Want to know when a dispensary happens? Get on the server and do something.

EDIT: Currently it's a case of people looking at discord, see whose active, and 2-3 minutes before the Kings Gift spawns, someone who logged in 2 minutes ago shows up fully buffed and nabs it.

[Richørd]

1. Active or inactive should not play a role. The characters still exist. The players being online should be more of a representation of our characters being "available", aka. not sleeping, busy working in private chambers on something etc.
2. The call for the Dispensary happens through a whisper. Something that any character that has an ear bauble should be able to hear. If my character is in his chambers but then decides to follow the call to the Dispensary then that should be something I am able to represent in the game by logging on.
3. There are simply times when you have 5 people online at most. I had Dispensaries where there were 10 online and not a single person besides me showed up for a Dispensary. Sometimes you get it and other times you get got.
4. Discord should not be discouraged. I love how the server has integrated it as a tool for this community where other NWN servers shy away from it for whatever small minded reason.
5. Appearing mere minutes or right as the gifts spawn is a tactic employed by a lot of people and has nothing to do with logging in for a Dispensary but rather with if the player decides to play their character like a scumbag or not. Other times it could simply have to do with that they logged in late to the Dispensary due to being busy with other things.

[HeWhoSeeks]

Just find it very silly that people can jump on for not even 2 minutes, full buff, crush, get the full reward and then just log off. If you're going to do that shit, go play Bastions of War. "Ah yes, my extremely important business that has seen me not logged in and RPing can most certainly be delayed so I can log in (after looking at the player list and deciding on an OOC note if its worth contesting), so I can aptly carry it back to mah safe space, activate the package, pick up the loot and log off, yes, so immersive and encouraging players that are already logged in to even bother".

[Richørd]

That response reeks of salt. Take a step back and try to view it from someone else's perspective without applying your own sense of "honor" to it or whatever it is that makes you this upset.

[HeWhoSeeks]

It's annoying to a lot of players that just may not voice it publically. Nothing worse than getting prepped for a dispensary just to watch player(s) join, then, immediately leave after winning it. What does it contribute to the server other than providing a 0 effort, 0 time investment for a reward you get from a typical quest (if not better)? Especially if they've been online, and have been looking around? If someone did it IRL at work, you'd probably have the entire workplace calling them a rat.

[Richørd]

I would link the video of the russian ice hockey player getting interviewed about another player's outrage to which he replies:
"Is just game, why you have to be mad?"

Yes, loosing can be annoying. And it is very clear that you lost and are not upset. But guess what? You will have near infinite more opportunities to win the Dispensary.
Comparing logging on for a videogame to snatch a reward and then logg off again whatever one chooses to do with their free time is not against the rules of said game nor is it even the tiniest bit comparable to a IRL workplace situation.

Jesus Christ, we are talking about a decade old game in which some random pixels with no real world value get spawned several times a day for people to swing their pixel-sticks over.

And no. The rewards can range from total garbage (150 GP, no EXP, about 50 prestige worth of rewards and a Victory Beer) to quite good. The most I have ever seen drop at once from a Dispensary was a reward of about 450 GP, nearly 500 prestige in total and a stack of Barkskin potions. And that was once and nothing I have seen since even came close to that bag. In the end it makes little sense to compare rewards from a pure PvP skirmish to a PvE quest.

[HeWhoSeeks]

I've seen 4 cure crit pots, 3 hastes, bulls, deed to a property in the rings, alongside real nice prestige items from the one dispensary - yes, it is luck.

I thought these things were implemented to encourage activity - not just very miniscule spirts?

I lose dispensaries all the time lol - it's always annoyed me that certain people only log in to snatch it and log off - I don't even fight in most of them, either, I just watch.

[Anonymous Lemur]

You realize going to the dispensary early gives you a chance to pick up buffs like imp invis, stacks of 200 gold, random prestige items (I've gotten items worth 250 gold from the random on the ground spawns) right?

Also it was added to create interesting skirmishes in the commons over sometimes petty amounts of loot. It's not meant as a reward for being online and active. You get those rewards in the form of quest completion, advancement xp and whatever you can yield from your interactions with players/dms.

[Gippy]

Not a bad suggestion at all. Can see both sides!

[Charnelist]

No one is going to stay logged in explicitly because of the chance of a dispensary whisper. There may or may not be an issue with how things are done now, but if the goal is truly to provide more incentive for staying online when one is only interested in dispensary shouts in that moment, the 'issue' might be a lack of content that 'appeals' to those characters/players outside the dispensaries entirely.

But given the ENORMOUS amount of content in EfU already, I'm inclined to suggest that the real issue, if there even is one, is that those players can't be arsed to enjoy their own characters and should be pitied.
Just as likely, I think it's simply a very slow time of year.

As a player who has NEVER been at a dispensary fight, I feel like removing their announcements from Discord stinks of punitive measures. Ask oneself, what is really the goal? To prevent players from knowing when something they enjoy is about to happen? Or to encourage them to log in more often and for longer?

[Bio]

i don't think there are huge swathes of people hounding discord in wait for a dispensary to login, crush it, and log out lol.

infact times ive logged in just because i was like "oh shit a dispensary i can rub elbows with some folks" i stayed logged in afters when i wouldn't normally have logged in at all.

all this strongly encourages "no-lifing" on the server just to get into what's meant to be casual pvp for some ok rewards

[Maxwell Artfall]

I do like the idea of removing Dispensary sendings from discord for all the reasons previously mentioned. I can see both sides of the issue and I believe the pros of rewarding players willing to actively be in the game world, and who are investing their time interacting with each other, outweigh the cons of limiting the enjoyment of the players who log in to play exclusively for Dispensary events. So I agree with the spirit of the suggestion, and on paper I would support it.

However I don't think the suggestion should be implemented two reasons. The lesser of the reasons being that it does strip some enjoyment from a certain type of player, and discouraging anyone from a reason to log on to the server, even if it's just to swing around their tenth level PC's weight, isn't something I'd want to do. The second and primary reason I would want to avoid implementing the suggestion is that it would probably create a meta of discord PMing your friends and allies to get IG when you see a dispensary sending IG, which would lead to the same situation we have now except heavily favoring people who are well connected with others in OOC mediums rather than the free-for-all of random people showing up that we have now.

I think the new system of earlier arrivals getting boons gives some slight benefit to those who were already previously logged in, but other ideas that provide benefit exclusively to players who are active IG for lengthy stretches especially during the off-season would be the ideal. I can't imagine what those benefits for actively investing time in the game world and interacting with each other might be, and they probably wouldn't be related to the Dispensary fights, but I think those are the ideas that would yield better results if pursued.

[Lannister]

Please don't implement this. This gets people on the server and while yes sometimes people don't stick around after, I would rather have people turn up for a dispensary than not. To remove them just promotes people staying logged in 24/7 which not everyone can or should do.