Spawn Rates

[FallingStar]

"a paradigm where Staff self-destruct the Server via poor insight and action, and we should all just "suck it up."

That is what they're doing, and the purpose of this thread.

If you are going to get worked up, contradict yourself, and resort to mockery of other players who are having a conversation, rather than proposing solutions, RedLancer stated his rebuttal far more diplomatically than I could have.

No, BG is not a democracy, but the higher-ups running the server into the ground at their leisure, without so much as a discussion about it following promised change on staff-to-player transparency, at the expense of the player base is a problematic attitude.

[DaloLorn]

Out of curiosity, what levels were you, and what kind of builds? Even soloing as a blasting sorcerer, I had to rest roughly once per 10-20 fights.

DC bard and melee ranger, RP builds for the most part, levels 11.

Okay, yeah, level 11 could be pretty tricky with the orcs. Berred (the dragon evoker) got his rear end handed to him at level 12, and Lamir (the monk) was still vulnerable to bad luck and attrition at level 14. Even so, though, I'm struggling to see how you'd need to rest after the first fight (Berred got several kills in before his lack of regeneration finally brought him down), unless you were relying heavily on round/CL spells.

Either way, unless you majorly screwed your builds up (coming from the guy who's made a point of taking all the fey heritage feats on one character, taking all the fiendish heritage feats on another, built a DC druid that can't shapeshift to save her life, and has a 50/50 wizard/cleric split on his roster, that'll be a pretty impressive - and terrifying - achievement for a DC bard and a melee ranger), you should still have fared noticeably better than Berred did, in either the Cloakwood or the Sharpteeth. There's two of you, after all, and that one level shouldn't make too much difference.

[VDub]

I honestly feel you that are making these changes are forgetting one of the most important factors here. Role play. You say your data shows us in an area over and over. That is probably so. I'm not saying they aren't there for the XP and leveling. But you might consider the RP of their build as well. I play an archer on the server. I enjoy leveling in open areas with shooting lanes for my character's arrows. RP wise, he's not going to go to a cave instead to hunt.

You say you want to spread us around the other areas. Push us to the corners of the map. We are simply saying we don't want to be pushed. Your changes based on your need to collect data are affecting the RP on the server as well as upsetting the community that keeps this server alive. We play here and enjoy the stories created. We love the server for the outlet it provides us to explore the Realms and indulge in our imagination. We also have real lives to live. WE don't have multiple hours to sit before our computer to level a character. Advancement and reward. That is NWN2. Be it from XP or RP. Advancement and reward. If you slow those down, you will upset the community.

On a game this old that we all play and enjoy, upsetting the community could very well kill the place. We see this as a community and are telling you plainly. Please don't ignore us.

[Shadowspinner70]

I can see most points in here. There's merit in buckling up and waiting a bit, there's also merit in taking the L, apologizing, and moving on, and I'm not gonna say which is the superior option because I don't know. I don't grind, like, ever, and I enjoy my low stakes, suboptimal builds, and not being bored out of my mind with each loop.

That being said...

Guys. Just be nice to each other. Tensions are already high. Even if your intention isn't to be rude, or mocking, your words likely won't come out that way to the other human. I'm not putting in private warnings right now. It's too early and several comments are borderline.

[FallingStar]

I honestly feel you that are making these changes are forgetting one of the most important factors here. Role play. You say your data shows us in an area over and over. That is probably so. I'm not saying they aren't there for the XP and leveling. But you might consider the RP of their build as well. I play an archer on the server. I enjoy leveling in open areas with shooting lanes for my character's arrows. RP wise, he's not going to go to a cave instead to hunt.

You say you want to spread us around the other areas. Push us to the corners of the map. We are simply saying we don't want to be pushed. Your changes based on your need to collect data are affecting the RP on the server as well as upsetting the community that keeps this server alive. We play here and enjoy the stories created. We love the server for the outlet it provides us to explore the Realms and indulge in our imagination. We also have real lives to live. WE don't have multiple hours to sit before our computer to level a character. Advancement and reward. That is NWN2. Be it from XP or RP. Advancement and reward. If you slow those down, you will upset the community.

On a game this old that we all play and enjoy, upsetting the community could very well kill the place. We see this as a community and are telling you plainly. Please don't ignore us.

"How dare they have fun?"

If they felt that the underutilization of certain areas was an issue, and they had an interest in preserving the spirit of fun, then the logical conclusion would be to improve said underutilized areas. It would increase traffic there.

That, the secrecy around the implementation, and the decision to just ignore the massively negative feedback makes it difficult to believe there were good intentions to begin with.

[DaloLorn]

If they felt that the underutilization of certain areas was an issue, and they had an interest in preserving the spirit of fun, then the logical conclusion would be to improve said underutilized areas. It would increase traffic there.

For once, Ged has a counterargument I can fully sympathise with. Many of those areas - especially wyverns, which is why they got hit the hardest - were so horribly underutilized that it was hard to even gauge what needed to be done to improve them. (And even after they got improved, most people would never notice, because they'd had the current meta drilled into their heads for years.)

According to her, there were straight-up adventure maps that generated less combat XP per hour of play than RP maps like the Southern Sharpteeth or Eastern Chionthar. (Where do you even get combat XP in the Southern Sharpteeth?!) In that context, there's basically two things you can do: Blindly adjust the underperformers and hope you won't create a new wyvern nest, or nerf the wyverns and watch where people spread out next. Vale opted for the latter.

I can see most points in here. There's merit in buckling up and waiting a bit, there's also merit in taking the L, apologizing, and moving on, and I'm not gonna say which is the superior option because I don't know. I don't grind, like, ever, and I enjoy my low stakes, suboptimal builds, and not being bored out of my mind with each loop.

For my part, my gameplay tests so far have shown an improvement to the grinding experience. I get slightly less XP per kill, but I die a lot less (and burn a lot fewer dailies, spells, or consumables) for a given amount of gross XP gain, so it's a clear net improvement. I also get decent loot (insofar as any loot on an average BG dungeon run ever qualifies as "decent" ) from these adventures, which would previously have been an impossibility.

Actually, when I think about it like that? I think I might tend to lean towards grinding for loot rather than XP, which explains why I'm experiencing it as an unambiguous improvement. The difficulty of finding things I can safely kill probably hasn't changed, but the difficulty of finding places I can safely loot has improved considerably... and since I typically pursued places I could loot rather than places I could get 50 XP (... though the two categories used to overlap basically all the time, and I did prefer to get 50 XP if possible), the change translated to a decrease in difficulty. Someone who instead zealously pursues that 50 XP/kill may find things slightly different due to variations in difficulty from dungeon to dungeon.

[VDub]

For once, Ged has a counterargument I can fully sympathise with. Many of those areas - especially wyverns, which is why they got hit the hardest - were so horribly underutilized that it was hard to even gauge what needed to be done to improve them. (And even after they got improved, most people would never notice, because they'd had the current meta drilled into their heads for years.)

This is where you on staff come together as a team. You update and change the areas, then the DM's breathe the life into it by focusing a story for that change. Don't tear things down. Build them up. Then allow the DM's to work their magic.

EDIT: For instance, look at the traffic that DM Ink's plot drew to Nashkel. Imagine if that were a plot centered on one of the least used areas. BLAMMO! Traffic. The players will go where the RP is. Make it fun for them and they'll stay. The areas that were changed weren't broken. The players were enjoying them. Improve the areas they weren't enjoying and focus a plot there.

[FallingStar]

If they felt that the underutilization of certain areas was an issue, and they had an interest in preserving the spirit of fun, then the logical conclusion would be to improve said underutilized areas. It would increase traffic there.

For once, Ged has a counterargument I can fully sympathise with. Many of those areas - especially wyverns, which is why they got hit the hardest - were so horribly underutilized that it was hard to even gauge what needed to be done to improve them. (And even after they got improved, most people would never notice, because they'd had the current meta drilled into their heads for years.)

According to her, there were straight-up adventure maps that generated less combat XP per hour of play than RP maps like the Southern Sharpteeth or Eastern Chionthar. (Where do you even get combat XP in the Southern Sharpteeth?!) In that context, there's basically two things you can do: Blindly adjust the underperformers and hope you won't create a new wyvern nest, or nerf the wyverns and watch where people spread out next. Vale opted for the latter.

Announcements go a long way too.

It's unclear why players needed to be pushed out of their favorite zones to begin with. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

[DaloLorn]

It's unclear why players needed to be pushed out of their favorite zones to begin with. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

And this beautifully illustrates the problem here. There are people on staff who very strongly believe that it is broken and in desperate need of fixing. Quite a few of them, in fact, though they're hamstrung by their mutual disagreements on how it needs to be fixed (and occasional disagreements with the others on whether it's broken). I was one of them, myself, though most of my ideas never got out of the "idle brainstorming" stage to begin with.

What we're seeing here is an example of one of them implementing a potential fix that doesn't immediately offend most of the others' sensibilities (else it would have been pulled awhile ago, or half the devs would have left). As such, it would probably have been attempted eventually anyway, in a more controlled manner... but Vale jumped the gun and made a potentially-controversial change absolutely controversial.

[FallingStar]

And this beautifully illustrates the problem here. There are people on staff who very strongly believe that it is broken and in desperate need of fixing.

They don't articulate why people having fun in certain areas means the system is broken.

[Zanniej]

Please be aware that you are always allowed to discuss [fill in your topic here]. If these topics are specific people however, we of course prefer you take it to PMs to the relevant staff groups. But if these topics are choices made, then there is always room to discuss those choices. But these discussions should be done in a productive manner. We barely lock threads nowadays, but if we do it is simply because the discussion is little more than namecalling back and forth without a way forward. Address the issue, not the people.

There is a big difference between: "I disagree with this change because X and Y, and would propose we resolve it by doing Z.", and "YOUR CHANGES ARE BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!". Please keep in mind that everybody here is dedicating their spare time to the life on this server, and that staff is even dedicating that time to improve life on this server for everybody. Everybody participating here just wants all of you to think they are awesome.


Having said that, instead of arguing the way we are arguing, I want to ask you all two questions, and I would like to get an as short and concise answer as possible, preferably in one sentence per question:

1. What is the problem for you really?
2. What do you propose we do to resolve it?

I'd like to challenge you to go beyond "I don't like this change" and "It should be reverted". There is an underlying cause here, and I'd like to get to what the real problem is. Because it's not just the change.

[DaloLorn]

What Zanniej said.

Hoihe's a good example of articulating the why of her complaints - she does, admittedly, sometimes make the mistake of assuming everyone's had a chance to read the last 50 rants on the same topic, but nobody can reasonably accuse her of not knowing how to describe exactly why she feels screwed over by various changes to the server. (Curiously, I've noticed nothing from her on this topic, good or bad...) It's gotten to the point where I feel I can easily gauge in advance whether she'll like or hate a change that impacts her, and I've even occasionally used her arguments as a starting point for my own, because we do have some common elements we'd like to see on BG. (Like being able to log in and play without first saying a prayer to Kronos. )

I do not have that level of familiarity with your preferences. I don't matter quite as much as an active dev, especially since this sort of change was out of my territory in the first place, but all the same, I'm trying to figure out why our experiences with the change have been so different. But there's just not enough information to work with. Maybe you just don't fit in with the devs' vision for the server. Maybe the devs are genuinely screwing up in trying to implement that vision. With the information currently available, who can tell?

[FallingStar]

1.) See here and here. There are 9 pages worth of reasons why this was a poor idea.

2.) A rollback. No embarrassing apology necessary, though this an the following non-apology is quite egregious. Then, if the admins feel there's a balance issue with certain areas, this can be remedied by improving other areas.

[Zanniej]

1.) See here and here. There are 9 pages worth of reasons why this was a poor idea.

2.) A rollback. No embarrassing apology necessary, though this an the following non-apology is quite egregious. Then, if the admins feel there's a balance issue with certain areas, this can be remedied by improving other areas.

As I've said, I challenge you to do it in one sentence, and to go beyond "it should be reverted". And I would prefer to discuss issues, not people.
A lot of good arguments fail to make an impact due to the personalized arguments, which will often be felt as an attack, which will give people the desire to defend themselves. That will put us in a loop of attack and defense, instead of moving forward. We are where we are, we have done what we have done. Let's not reminisce and just move forward.

Give the reason why this was done a chance, and maybe think what could've been done differently to achieve that result in your opinion.


As I said before, we rarely lock topics. But I see a lot of arguments that feel more like personal attacks than a discussion on changes. And that helps nobody. I'd hope to think that it is nobody's intention to make others feel bad, and that we are all actually aiming to make things better. Making things better has nothing to do with people, so let's not discuss the people and just discuss the actual issues.

[JustAnotherGuy]

At the very beginning of this thread, I stated my support of slowing down spawns. My statement then was a blanket statement of the entire server, and I firmly stand by that statement. The spawns as they are right now only benefit one group. Those who like to do what we've been calling "racetracks" alongside those who like to literally run through dungeons.

Those of us to like to RP through everything are very hindered in our RP by the high spawn rate across the server. This was played out at least five times in my last dungeon "run". We'd clear a room. And while we were taking our time to loot and discuss things, mobs spawned on top of us. The only real RP there is "Where were they hiding this whole time?" That became our go-to line.

Now, to the example at hand, the cry keeps coming out "Buff the other areas". This would further harm the experience for those of us who like to take our time, and again benefit only one side of the equation. Not to mention this is essentially how power creep happens. If there is one broken ability that everyone is flocking to, we do not fix that broken ability by buffing every single other ability in the game. Rather, we nerf that ability to bring it in line with other abilities.

This is how I see the area fix. If that area was broken and wildly out of proportion, then we shouldn't buff every other area in order to bring them up to the broken level. We should nerf that area and bring it in line with the areas that are working as intended.

As for the seemingly mountain of evidence where players are against the change, from what I can see it's a vocal handful that is making the noise in this thread. The same people posting over and over in anger, making it appear as if it's an entire thread against it.