This server very slow and boring to level ?

[Ahku]

I hear you, the highest level character i have ever had was 21st level and i've been on and off the server for years.

When i do get the time to log on i ALWAYS put the following in the PLAYER SRCY:

***********************
'Character type' (my level) - LFG / Adventure
***********************

And rarely do i get a response...

1) so i do the weekly quests (then log off for another week)
OR
2) partake in the circle grind of death (for as long as i have time)

I always welcome those who ask to join me, or have suggestions for other areas to explore, etc...I SOLO because i have to...quite boring really.

[Deathgrowl]

When i do get the time to log on i ALWAYS put the following in the PLAYER SRCY:

***********************
'Character type' (my level) - LFG / Adventure
***********************

And rarely do i get a response...

I'll just go ahead and admit a bit of prejudice on my own part here: If I see that kind of scry status, I always think:

circle grind of death

And I decide to steer clear.

My own preference is to have groups such come about more organically. Meet strangers who are interested in adventuring at the Elfsong Tavern, for instance. Or stand out in the Farmlands with a sign for gathering adventurers for some specific mission like going to clear out the Nashkel Mines for some reason or another (any reason can be made up with a bit of creativity).

[Sun Wukong]

***********************
'Character type' (my level) - LFG / Adventure
***********************

I wish more people would do this, I have many different characters that are actually just adventurers for the sake of adventuring.

A myrkulite **, a dragon slayer *, a happy wandering cloud ***, a BMX bandit *, an archer ***, a transmuter extraordinarie ***, a chap that tends to get others killed ***, a wood cutting axe chucker *, and an actual barbarian *.

In otherwords, I can cover wide range of levels, but who knows when I happen to log in next, or how long before I need to log away. Which is why I would hope that more people would do what you do, it just makes my own life more convenient, because if no one is looking for group, I'll just grind quests and log off.

As for quality of roleplay, each of these characters will react differently in the exact same scenario. They have their own backgrounds, mannerism, and individual interests. Your character or you as a player might loathe one of them while simply adore another. This has been a source of some schism in the past.

[Darkwind]

Meet strangers who are interested in adventuring at the Elfsong Tavern, for instance. Or stand out in the Farmlands with a sign for gathering adventurers for some specific mission like going to clear out the Nashkel Mines for some reason or another (any reason can be made up with a bit of creativity).

Query: Do you find lots of high teen / low 20 adventurers standing in the Farmlands with a sign "will nuke for food?" or perhaps a level 19 character slumming in Elfsong Tavern with a "Merc for Hire, starving family" placard hung about his neck?

RPing is fun for the sake of, but attempting to force a situationally rare event when there is a perfectly good OOC / mechanics tool for that very purpose if part of the overall fail that is BGTSCC, just FYI, and IMHO. (Enough acronyms for one sentence? LOL)

I say this because the quoted post was specifically referring to a character that had stalled (like many) in that level range.

[Glowfire]

There used to frequently be people outside the Friendly Arm Inn or near the spawn campfire in BG with such signs actually. While they waited for someone interested, they'd usually chat with those passing.

[NegInfinity]

Query: Do you find lots of high teen / low 20 adventurers standing in the Farmlands with a sign "will nuke for food?" or perhaps a level 19 character slumming in Elfsong Tavern with a "Merc for Hire, starving family" placard hung about his neck?

This actually used to happen very often. Few Years ago certain paladin used to stand by the fai lamppost and woudl usually help people when they asked. Many people placed signs like "mercenary for hire", and one guy, and there was certain "Golem" like guy who had this kind of sign bolted to his armor.

In all honesty, to have "spontaneous RP" trigger reliably, we'd need few hundred simultaneous players, (and a new engine), due to high number of areas. And since the game is very old and because its server is far from being efficient, this won't be happening. So you need to "force" the situations a little, otherwise you might simply never meet anybody to interact with.

[Babuguuscooties]

As for quality of roleplay, each of these characters will react differently in the exact same scenario. They have their own backgrounds, mannerism, and individual interests. Your character or you as a player might loathe one of them while simply adore another. This has been a source of some schism in the past.

I really need to get a grasp on this myself. I have continuously struggled to get interested in playing the alts I've created. My biggest hangup seems to be not wanting to accidentally copy my main character's mannerisms. Like, for instance I have a level 5 Air Genasi swashbuckler who I want to come off as sort of arrogant. I know how to RP arrogance, but then I get stuck on the question of does he have any special speech patterns? Does he talk with an accent? Is he formal like a Corymian might be, or is he more hardy like an Illuskan? I get overwhelmed and give up because its easier just to login with the character I know lol. I hate it though. It's something I'm working on!

Also,

I've noticed a dramatic slow-down since I hit level 21 to be honest, but that alone doesn't bother me so much. The bigger drag is that not only has the grind slowed down, but the RP and events seem slow as well. To be fair though my schedule has not afforded me much playtime in the past couple of weeks.

[Sun Wukong]

In my experience, I feel the best way to make a character his own person is to come up with a notable individual interest for that character. For example my dragon slayer wants to slay dragons, it is not all he talks about, but it is the tangent from which he approaches things. Perhaps that cave has a wyrm inside, perhaps he could use an archer's help against a dragon, or maybe that arcanist could provide wards or help locate such a beast with scrying, etc...

Arrogance is just a minor personality trait. Anyone can display arrogance depending on the situation, and therefore constant displayal of arrogance is not enough to make a genuine character. You can come up with speech patterns, made up accents by intentionally mispelling words, but even though the effort you see might be a mile wide, the character itself remains just inch deep. Therefore, the better question to ask is the reason for his arrogance. Is he a bastard son of some minor noble seeking fame, fortune, and most of all a name for himself? If the answer is yes, well, now you have a tangent that you can work with. For example he might look down at 'mere commoners' because they are beneath him and his arrogant behaviour can be excuse, while he would try to please men that posses 'titles and importance' because they are his betters. For now at least.

And, you should not forget that you can pick many languages. You can throw few phrases in Illuskan for example, if your character is from the North. Chondathan I think was the language spoken in Waterdeep, Western Heartlands, and most of Cormyr. Thus you can just type a phrase or two into the language translator box.

The rest will develop with time, the more you play, the more familiar you are with the character. But you should pick an interest, a goal, something like that and the character becomes something far more interesting for you to play as.

[Babuguuscooties]

In my experience, I feel the best way to make a character his own person is to come up with a notable individual interest for that character. For example my dragon slayer wants to slay dragons, it is not all he talks about, but it is the tangent from which he approaches things. Perhaps that cave has a wyrm inside, perhaps he could use an archer's help against a dragon, or maybe that arcanist could provide wards or help locate such a beast with scrying, etc...

Arrogance is just a minor personality trait. Anyone can display arrogance depending on the situation, and therefore constant displayal of arrogance is not enough to make a genuine character. You can come up with speech patterns, made up accents by intentionally mispelling words, but even though the effort you see might be a mile wide, the character itself remains just inch deep. Therefore, the better question to ask is the reason for his arrogance. Is he a bastard son of some minor noble seeking fame, fortune, and most of all a name for himself? If the answer is yes, well, now you have a tangent that you can work with. For example he might look down at 'mere commoners' because they are beneath him and his arrogant behaviour can be excuse, while he would try to please men that posses 'titles and importance' because they are his betters. For now at least.

And, you should not forget that you can pick many languages. You can throw few phrases in Illuskan for example, if your character is from the North. Chondathan I think was the language spoken in Waterdeep, Western Heartlands, and most of Cormyr. Thus you can just type a phrase or two into the language translator box.

The rest will develop with time, the more you play, the more familiar you are with the character. But you should pick an interest, a goal, something like that and the character becomes something far more interesting for you to play as.

Well said. That definitely helps give me a better idea of how to approach creating a character. When I created Nedrin I had my friend playing his friend. It made things easier just because of their chemistry. A half-elf and shield dwarf who were the best of friends was often enough to drive the RP into interesting places. To be honest since he stopped playing to focus on RL things I've had a harder time figuring out where to take Nedrin. He joined a faction, has made allies and at least one "enemy" sort-of.

However, I don't really have a clue what his ambition is beyond perhaps the generic answer of: Learning to better understand the Weave & serve Mystra. Being NG, and as mentioned before a follower of Mystra it is easy to see how he'd be opposed to the obvious baddies like the Zhentarim. since he isn't power-consumed and actually has some WIS (12 base) he isn't concerned with Lichdom or becoming a Lord. He doesn't necessarily look down on anyone for their class (no puns intended) in society, or for their race (Sorry, he still doesn't trust and would likely be extremely wary of Drow!). I don't want him to be a faultless, ambition-less character though. If anything maybe his flaw is being too trusting or kind-hearted in some cases. Regardless, these are the things that keep me up at night!

Roleplaying isn't all that hard, but writing an interesting character that feels authentic to the setting and all the nuances of race/class/homeland etc sure is intimidating! Thankfully it's fun as well.

[Larzs]

I can get that, I got two PCs and I pretty much refuse to play the other as I do not want to do the agony of grinding back to 30. Which I did mostly solo stabbing lizards and running quests over and over and over and over. Quests is good XP(or it was) as it is static and never based on your level, but it becomes less and less effective as you need more and more to gain a level :/

[trice001]

tghanks

[Vartigy]

***********************
'Character type' (my level) - LFG / Adventure
***********************

I wish more people would do this, I have many different characters that are actually just adventurers for the sake of adventuring.


In otherwords, I can cover wide range of levels, but who knows when I happen to log in next, or how long before I need to log away. Which is why I would hope that more people would do what you do, it just makes my own life more convenient, because if no one is looking for group, I'll just grind quests and log off.

This. I agree.

I'm finding this myself. Barely can scrape together a couple hours at best. And it's usually the back hours when there's not many people on.
I can RP with the best of them, been doing it for well over a decade or more now.
But I don't bother with in deep RP any more.
Because the minute I start, there's a decent chance that i'll get interrupted and have to log off.
Talk about a conversation/mood killer. And it's not really fair for the other players. (probably the same for most folk, and maybe why you're not seeing major guild/faction RP as often anymore).

Occasional organic Rp that appears whilst adventuring, sure, that's fun and helps pass the killing time. And I enjoy it, and always thank the person when we finish.
But frankly, I know what you mean. If i have limited available time to play, and PLAY the game I want to do, then i'm not going to sit around the FAI/BG 'hoping' something will happen.
I'll be out in the field doing things in stead, with a tag on the scry saying "LFG - adventuring".
Because let's face it. NWN is about creating an adventurer, going out on adventures, killing monsters, finding great loot, completing quests.
But each to their own, we can all play how we want to play. That's the beauty of it.

I just wish it wasn't such a hard slog lvl 20 onwards.

[Calen]

Personally I find it slow and incredibly boring past level 20.
Which is strange since the server has a lot of interesting places to explore.
The main thing that bothers me are these

- The risk vs reward system.

The XP gain is capped at 50XP (semi boss monsters aside),there for it is not rewarding to go to a more difficult area.
My PC can die in such an area, it costs me consumables while the reward is not bigger.

BGC favors killing large amount of weak mobs over taking down high level stronger ones.
Unless there is a RP group that wants to explore a tougher area I have IC and OOC no reason to do it.


- The XP gain is in general low for a game that consists out of mainly auto attacking and dice rolls, most builds start working late on.
Creating builds and characters should be something fun, how ever getting a character up to a decent level where the build works on BGC takes ages.
Personally I never experienced this as fun but more as a chore with out a reward.

Rolling an alt is dreadful because of this.


-About 3-20 rule.

A lot of builds start working past level 20 because of the 3-20 rule (something that should just be removed if you ask me).
Which means that a lot of builds are a complete pain to play until you went through the grind.



While this is a RP server there aren't always people available.
Neither does feel logical RP wise to pick up Vrook orcosh the elf slayer at the campfire and run around an undead crypt.
Yeah the RP might be fun and it is better than solo grind, but normally IC wise it is insanity.


But ah well it is at it is.

[Steve]

Maybe the statement/question to be making is: This server is very slow and boring to RP?

Because many posts do equate leveling with role-play, IC equal with XP rate.

I feel for you, anyone, that cannot find a "makes sense" partner in the adventuring and/or storytelling without adventure. Or a mix, in between.

There is, however, nothing MORE BORING than being a Lvl 30 toon. What do you have to gain, at that stage, anymore? PvP is a joke because there is no Permadeath, or ever, consequence when you kill another PC, even if that happens through non-combat RP (though how rare, right? *waits for the incoming anecdote to prove me wrong....lol).

Reach level 30, the pinnacle of your PC's power, then...start BG: the Sword Coast SIMs.

The mechanical power of a Level 1 PC is Godlike...in the company of all Level 0 PCs/NPCs. See what I did there? The real problem is a Server filled with Levels 1 through 30. That was never meant to be, in the concept of D&D. There really should only be a max 4 CR difference, between. This sandbox will forever remain frustrated, because of this.

On another note: what does anyone think of the e15 Leveling system, like what they have going on, on the Skullport Server?

[Ahku]

Is this interesting?
could you elabarate?

"On another note: what does anyone think of the e15 Leveling system, like what they have going on, on the Skullport Server?"

;-p