Messages

Weak...

I'm going to go stare at the floor for a while now and rethink my life.

As an update, my engine is currently "working" while still largely incomplete.  The engine is written as a library which functions in a stand-alone client or as a single panel inside of a .Net 4.0 toolset.

Currently, only DirectX 11 is supported.

I haven't written it off, but I'm admittedly hesitant to abandon my plans for a completed project.  The fact is that no matter how great a client is, what makes NWN and communities like EfU great has nothing to do it's the client.  Amazon could make a kindle that could narrate a novel with up to 100 different celebrity voices for supported stories.  If those stories were limited to 1000 word vocabularies and only common proper names, would you buy it?

I'm far more concerned with the DM client/toolset honestly.  The fact that we still play with a game that nearly an antique is proof of this.  I want to give the authors and illustrators the sharpest pen possible.  Solutions for clients with the fidelity to present their work are easy to find.  I just need one that I can modify to fit what I build behind the scenes.

VP has also, for the 12th time suggested that I use Unity for the client.  This would be a possibility as well.

DK.  I'll look at the source perhaps.  Would your friend possibly be interested in picking it back up?

I like where this is going.

SN.  I notice the date modified on those files were August 8th?

Die in a quest or get mugged and lose your faction key.  It's 10 minutes till you have to leave for OOC reasons, so you log/ragequit.  Server gets reset before you can get back.  Pwnt.

Perhaps give spawns optional inventory requirements or you get tossed to a default.

Vendayan - Charles - Evenings after 7 EST.  Just let me know a few days in advance to be sure.

I just wanted to throw this in there.  I've been a longtime player, only "new" to EfU:R.

I believe that the best part of the server is when players can have an impact on it.

First problem is that players are too secretive.  You never know who you might cross and you don't want stomped out while you're low level if team good catches on to a team evil plot too soon.  Or vice versa.  This is understandable, but it becomes VERY difficult to involve other players into a plot if you can't talk about it openly.


Second problem (I doubt my opinion will be popular) is when DMs spend too much time "spicing" quests.  It's a waste IMO.  A spiced quest is more fun than the usual grind, but it's usually more difficult as well.  This greatly increases the risk for newer players and/or weaker characters.  There have often been times when a quest was going well until the spice came at us and I either died or had to abandon the quest.  Either way, I usually have the same thought every time.  Call me a jerk if you want, but here it is:

"Where was this DM an hour ago while I was sitting in the middle of town, bored out of my mind just trying to think of a way to move my character closer towards his goals?  I finally give up on plotting and now I'm sitting in the fugue with a dire bear chewing on my corpse.  Had I known that this quest was going to turn entirely bad without notice, I would have sat on the steps and sulked this one out."

Quest spicing should almost always be done in a manner which can somehow directly promote a character's plot.  Otherwise it's just a relief from the usual grind and only entertaining until the quest is over.  Plus, there's a balance to it.  Too little spice isn't entertaining.  Too much and the characters get killed, suffering them financial/mechanical setbacks towards their goals.

Instead, I would personally like to see DMs spending more time introducing themselves to new characters/players.  Take some time to stop and ask players what plots they might have had in mind.  I know that there are far too many of us to catch and remember everyone, but DMs will always be the best guides.

If you can catch a new player on his first day and give him some advice about his plot, perhaps even help them along the way a bit by "plot spicing", you will inspire the !@#$ out of them.  Most new players probably don't even know how far their efforts can go towards changing the server.

My advice is that any time a DM might be thinking of spending 30 minutes spicing a quest, they should first look around the middle of town for new or idle players and consider some motivational "plot spicing" instead.  If you don't know the characters or their goals, by all means ASK.  Even a discussion about a character's plot can easily inspire or perhaps motivate people to get up off the steps.

Any time/day after 7pm est.  Just let me know.

A rogue or a bard should not be able to climb a wall or scale a mountain better than a ranger. I propose a ranger should have instant success on any climbing checks or rope use checks due to class proficiency.

Rangers are simply masters of their own environment.  I'll go out on a limb here to suggest that the stereotypical ranger is own who has mastered a woodland environment.  I might think that across the entirety of Faerun, mountain rangers would be no more common than desert or plains rangers.  In the case of a ranger who came out of the mountains, I could see your point.  However, few other rangers would be daft enough to choose climbing steep cliff faces over simply walking around them.  Typically, if you aren't in the mountains there are quite remarkably few cliffs that you couldn't circumvent in half the time they would take you to climb.  Such endeavors are done through sport or stupidity, not necessity.

Rogues on the other hand learn to climb because more often than not, climbing through a window or over a wall to accomplish an unlawful goal is usually far safer than taking the front door or a well guarded gate.  Thus they could be more likely to have a reason to attempt such endeavors in any part of the world.  The argument against your suggestion that rangers should be better than rogues at climbing "walls" should be all too obvious.  Rangers lack both the opportunity and motivation to learn such things.

Consider how a cliff climbing competition would play out between the rogues and the rangers of Calimport and the Calim Desert.  I'd bet my left nut on the rogues, and I'd still call if someone raised me for the right one as well.

Bottom line is that a small outdoor bonus should be appropriate for rangers.  Though automatic climbing success for all natural surfaces or even class based superiority over rogues for structured surfaces is absolutely absurd.

Never played to L8 myself, so my opinion is more or less shot from the hip here, but past experience tells me that part of the problem has involved players who simply want to rocket their way to L8 in a month by arranging a rapid questing schedule with a familiar party.  Only then, when it's as safe as it will ever be, will they attempt to really get their hands dirty with plot and goals.

I can give some credit though to players who complain about the difficulty of staying well geared for the inevitable PvP struggle which comes along with high level plotting.  However, I've always found the enormous level of consumables to be an incredibly unbalancing part of the game to begin with.

An endless supply of consumables allowing any class to create nearly any spell effect has led to far too many fights where L8+ clerics, druids and wizards have been brought down by L5 bards who walked into the fight with the greater capacity to use 3rd and 4th level spells.  I would actually find the fights to be entertaining if hording such an arsenal was a long term goal for those characters, but unfortunately it's too quick and easy for a 5-7 compared to an 8+

It's bad enough that you can watch a halfling KD an orc right now with a dagger.  If he can somehow do such a pansy blow that it doesn't even damage the halforc yet still puts his ass on the ground, it's just going to be that much more lame.  The only way it should really happen to begin with is if said halfling managed to hamstring the orc or rupture some groin.

IMO, the only time KD should ever do 0 damage is from a non lethal unarmed attack.  Perhaps some sort of tumbling check could be applied to break the fall for 50% damage from other forms of attacks as well.

[actively]

The "Did you know...?" Solution.


    Problem is people don't sit down and plan to dedicate time to learning a server.  They just give it a shot and they may just stick around if they start having fun before they lose interest.  A new player could either spend 5 minutes in the starting area to level, grab some cabinet junk and play OR they could spend an hour reading through more or less boring starter material (no offense to the authors).  Personally, I'll be damned before I dedicate an hour towards a game I don't know before I actually get to play it.  This is why I don't play Japanese RPGs and why the rules to Monopoly change every time you play at my house.

    My suggestion would be to first clear up some of the stuff which is currently up there (it's getting kind of crowded now) and organize it better into categories such as "How to find players" "Questing" "Setting Information", etc. Things people want to know rather than a "READ THIS MANDATORY 212,000 WORD INSTRUCTION GUIDE ON HOW TO PLAY IN THIS SERVER."  I would implement these as several objects which have conversations in order to relay their information.  That should encourage players to read them when they know what they will be reading and why it is actually important to sift through it all.

    Some players will still be too lazy to read through the information though and will instead make fools of themselves trying to wing it.  So we should at least actively use that 5-10 minutes that we have them there for.  This brings me to the "Did you know...?" solution.  Every 30 seconds or so, one of the new categorized help guides should spit out a helpful message which pertains to their content.  The messages that they give should be some of the most important bits and should also be worded in a way that might attract a character to talk to them to know more.  So even if they are the dive right in sort, they will at least be fed some of the basics.