Death exp condensed

[Charraj]

I don't RP my XP loss, and dying doesn't contribute to my RP at all. You're definitely right about that. RP-wise, the current system is atrocious. But this system is what we inherited, and it's too late to do something as sweeping as lowering the level cap to 10 or 15, or doing away with an XP system entirely. I wish we could, believe me. It would solve so many plausibility issues, and it would make us more RP-centered than we already are.

So as long as we're stuck with this system, I guess there'll always be tension between the RP aspect of the game, and the grind/level aspect of the game. I can live with that, I guess.

For my part though, I guess I'll just try to focus on the RP aspect. Sorry, I really don't have a leveling timeline for you. Nor have I calculated how many hours a night I should spend killing monsters to reach level 30 in X number of months. I don't know which areas give too much or too little experience (although I do know which areas my characters can handle, etc.)

I just never bothered with the numbers to that kind of extent.

There have been some characters who only reached level 30 after two years of RPing. If you want an official time line, I guess that's the one I would advocate for. Because if someone is patient enough to wait two years to reach level 30, then that person doesn't care about XP or levels at all.

I know that's not the answer you're looking for, but it's the best answer I got for you. Sorreh, Merc.

[Xanfyrst]

Being in many events also contribute greatly, especially post level 21. Alistair leveled faster from 21 to 30 than he did from 1 to 20. Took him half a year to reach 30 and I only 'grinded' till his mid-teens. Oh and questing, of course.

Also had a level 28 tiefling mage and it didn't take much longer.

Hope that helps a bit, Merc.

[MercTroop]

Perhaps I should choose what I say more carefully. I don't think mobs giving experience should be removed from the game. Its one of aspects I like about DnD going out in the wilds and killing stuff, I'm not a very big sit around camp fire type of player. In the current state there is no reason things can't be refined and made better.

What we inherited was flawed, nwn2 servers need to stop trying to copy each other. End up with the same problems just getting shifted to a different server. Every thing complained about here I've seen brought up before, I was just too stupid to under stand.

From my perspective we have disconnect between levels and character growth which is extremely bad.

If you play a PC for two years to finally hit thirty, I'am curious were you RPing knowledge that only a level thirty should know. Then that is a question of what should a thirty know that a level one doesn't.

In a Campaign knowledge a PC obtains progresses with the experience they gain. So that at level one you might know only basic ideas of spells, then I think at level five you under stand the basics of level three spells. Have mastered level one and two spells. As this progresses until you have level nine spells, perhaps by then you under stand advance workings of lower level spells to use meta magic.

That is just core example of how a power source a PC relies on grows. As a PC grows knowledge of planes, surroundings, races, monsters, etc should increase. Example a druid who persues balance would rely only on them self maybe from 1-15. Once they get to level sixteen the power they have gained, connection they have strengthened with nature should give them insight. Perhaps they realize one person can't truly uphold the balance and seek out opinion of druids with ideals completely different than them.

People shouldn't be saying they don't care about exp or levels, opposite should be true. Fact that people even say they don't means that some thing is broken, as a community we should be asking how do we fix it.

Edit: I would base on character progression time lines off of monsters, excluding quests or DM events. DM Events especially are iffy topic because its not a question of if your RPing, but how they can provide a event to most amount of people. If I'm always in the forest interacting with people who pass by that makes my location lowest concentration area for people. Making throwing a event for my PC least optimized use of DM time.

[Snarfy]

If you play a PC for two years to finally hit thirty, I'am curious were you RPing knowledge that only a level thirty should know. Then that is a question of what should a thirty know that a level one doesn't.

I think the onus is on players(and many of the top notch RP'ers do this) to role play based on their characters actual IG experiences and back story as opposed to their level or some numerical digit on their XP bar. My main is level 30 but I don't RP him as such. This is of course just my preference... sorry to stray from the OP, just my two cents.

[MercTroop]

If you play a PC for two years to finally hit thirty, I'am curious were you RPing knowledge that only a level thirty should know. Then that is a question of what should a thirty know that a level one doesn't.

I think the onus is on players(and many of the top notch RP'ers do this) to role play based on their characters actual IG experiences and back story as opposed to their level or some numerical digit on their XP bar. My main is level 30 but I don't RP him as such. This is of course just my preference... sorry to stray from the OP, just my two cents.

It's sort of sad that things have progressed to the point that people are just ignoring a core part of the game. Levels are a huge factor in DnD and nwn2, i'll constantly strive to make my characters development and level intertwined. For me to ignore levels not have them effect my RP in the slightest just feels kind of wrong.

Character development involves more than playing house with some one. If you haven't seen my character biography that I wrote I actually took time writing how his rage/frenzy effects him. Even as he levels I ask my self does it mean he is mastering his rage, would he be less hostile to those around him. Would he not try to progress as a character and in level to continue mastering rage.

I don't think levels and RP disconnect is some thing that can be fixed with out DM taking a hand to try and fix it. Things have progressed like this for so long, I'm doubtful DM's will even want to poke it let alone fix it.

As for the topic I hope the DM/Dev team consider the idea of removing experience penalty and replacing it with a debuff stat. Allot of reasons have been posted in this thread advocating why it should happen.

[TheVoid]

it's not a matter that leveling is evil. Not at all, the point is that leveling as you stated should be an organic part of character development. Development of the story of your character creates the opportunity for the PC to learn and grow by progressing in level.

What we sometimes see is the concept first, the build, and a player trying to fit that build into some ludicrous background story. It's like they shopped nwn2 database for a build and want to figure out how to:

1. optimize it to our build rules.
2. figure out where it fits RP wise (if they even care about that).
3. How to progress in levels as fast as possible to reach the end result of the recipe build.
4. Loot as much as they can to get synergized gear to reach peak efficiency.

We all know the type. The player that normally plays anti-social races or dispositions so they can run off and loot and farm the crap out of the environment. The RP is pretty much dull and littered with simple emotes *nods* *scowls* *Smiles* that make Tom Cruise look like an oscar winning thespian in comparison.

When we say there are too many epics we mean it. It's a problem. this means in any event 2/3's of the party will be epic level even if the event is geared towards mid to mid-low. This skews who and what we have to work with in terms of events. DM's don't like using exclusion tatics not just because of level disparity but because the less people in the event means the less there is to generate any kind of interesting RP interaction between players or players/NPCs. That leads to a dull dull dull event. So we run events that are mixed at our own risk. Rarely can we find a low level or mid level party that is taking their time to progress instead we see them zerging to reach level 21 as fast as humanly possible.

It's like all RP seems to start when someone hits 21 until then they are just grind monkeys which needs to stop. To tell you the truth, most of us dislike throwing events for epics. We tend to rely on the same spawns to challenge them and it sucks balls when you have killed 500 balors on the prime material plane for some god awful RP reasons some DM is trying to pull off.

We simply do not have enough epic level content to keep that many epics challenged and engaged and leads to an impression that is two-fold:

1. Everyone thinks DM's exclusively look for epic level toons to host events for or you have to be epic level to get into anything good here. TOTALLY UNTRUE. Epics come to us whenever there is an event that is open to the public and more clamor to the event because they know event XP is going to be more xp than they can make all day grinding once their quest XP is logged.

2. The server cannot create enough content in that level range to keep the larger population of high levels satisfied. This means we have bored players sitting around and making a fuss that "nothing ever happens in BG". The challenge is gone until the next update that may be very far off in the distance depending on how full or active our dev roster is.

So this is why we ask players to consider moderation and we use negative reinforcers that slow progression down, so we can at least attempt to keep a balance in content or keepup with the population. As anyone can see from PW's that do not have Xp penalties or no means to remove XP or slow progression artificially, leveling is out of control. A keeping up with the neighbors mentality runs rampant and everything gets inflated. RP and character development takes a back seat to never ending grinding with no real consequential death penality to not only curb that behavior but to set back what that player is mostly driven towards achieving.

The xp penalty is to remind you that this is an RP server and when you get punished for dying you should either take precuation or a time out to work on other more important areas of your character development, besides level progression.

The actual problem with debuffs is that it will be more obtrusive than a xp penalty. We are talking about hours here when your character will be pretty much at it's most unoptimal state. At that point most players imo would rather log out and quit playing altogether since it makes even transporting yourself more of a chore when you factor in movement speed decrease and ENCUMBERANCE. The demands for persistant storage will be a very popular topic if this penalty affects strength in any directway.

It also doesn't cover the fabled gish or CoDzilla which can easily conpensate for the ability penalties to go and grind a less difficult area. It will not curb them from grinding and it will only hurt those who cannot use magic to extend their buffs (fighters, rogues, etc..). So once again, the server will hear complaints of how overly power the gish is or how combat and sneak oriented builds got shafted part 30.

So be careful what you wish for folks. Because it might be more than we had bargained for. Balancing the penalties is more a task in of itself than xp penalty because at least the xp penalty doesn't need to compensate for build variables and character design....

[MercTroop]

Simian was the one who suggested a 24 RL time debuff with movement debuff. My suggestion was just over looked for some reason.

I was the one who suggested a 20-40 second -4 all stat debuff that scaled on level. A debuff that wouldn't effect a PC for hours, only a few minutes.

It was also in one of my suggestions that taverns could be scripted to cut down debuff timer in half. It gives legit reasons for people to enter a taverns more as people who die would be there, it might make a taverns hang out spots.

So effectively if you faced a ten minute debuff at level 15, going to a tavern and rping would lesson it down to five.

If all stats take -4 gishes would get hit the hardest. They have just the bare minimum values in their spell stat to gain spells so they would be reduced to level five spells. Their combat stats which are already sub par unless buffed will be reduced significantly some builds that have low AB might not be able to hit things they normally would.

It's possible that if a Gish is around level 15 and only has 17 intelligence and dies would be reduced to level three spells for ten minutes.

Grinding in lower safer area is what happens now. Except if you respawn it feeds into the cycle of needing more experience now than you needed before. All your doing is removing that aspect of this vicious cycle, which as pointed at before might not be a issue for some.

If power builders rarely die, which is a very real possibility of them never dying. Alleged RP builds constantly die due to how tough environment is. Who are really getting punished in this scenario?

If I'm going through a dungeon with a party and we are all RPing. What we are doing is character development and level progression at the same time. If we get wiped what exactly is the penalty reminding us then?

Game is about adventurers, exploring the lands. Not sitting in a house watching a fire crackle. Action Role play should be that, I'm not playing to see a recreation of jersey shore. We have a setting with so much violence and yet so many people are cheerful or care free. Like come on now, don't get mad at me if my PC doesn't want to sit down play patty cake and talk about how his day was.

The lax rules on class combinations is what makes this game fun, I enjoy seeing absurd back stories. It's not the players fault, it's the games creators for allowing DnD to have any thing goes rules. Either write official lore, or get mad at your source material.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem with events is that DM's need to write rules related to players. With things like DM's giving event announcements like I'm throwing a event in x area for people between y and z levels please do not interrupt it.

Rules would also allow DM's to cut down on some of the stupid stuff like PC's running back into a DM event after death. If you die or get knocked out it should be a DM rule that player walks their ass back to town.

Problem is people know that if you stick out a DM event to the end you get experience points. Level of input doesn't matter, you will always get rewarded for just being there. There needs to be a under standing that if you go into a DM event and fail, as in die or get knocked out you don't get any thing.

Issue of epics messing with DM events isn't a epic problem. Its a lack of safe guards that need to be put in place, or a DM to player under standing that has to be developed better. If I stumble across a DM event that is meant for level 7's and the DM shoots me a tell saying it's for level 7's. As a player I should respect that and leave the area, finding rp excuse to leave is not hard.

[Hoihe]

Though, sometimes death/getting knocked unconcious can be a good factor in certain DM events, as it fleshes out the alignment of the party members (Evil characters will most likely leave the fllen behind, unless their skills are useful, while good characters would go through hell to make sure they live.. Example : 8 strength elf carrying a 180 pound human just to save him fom being giant food.)

[Snarfy]

MercTroop makes some good points there, especially pertaining to events.

If one of the problems is people zerging around and not developing their characer organically, then perhaps the solution is as simple as lowering the xp given for killing monsters by 5, 10, 20%(?) and raising the RP reward by the same?

*edit

Or... what if certain monsters only gave xp respective to level, and stopped giving xp altogether once a toon reached a certain level? IE. You would get scaled xp from level 20 - 24 on trolls at the ford, but before lev 20 and after 25 you couldn't get xp from them. Something like this might eliminate the need for an xp penalty altogether.

Also, if I'm in an event and I get dropped by a mob and take stat damage from being incapacitated I think its only fair, as MercTroop suggests, that my character would be unable to continue and would have to drop out of the event.

Anyways, just lobbing some grenades out there... *ducks*

[Cyrugen]

Simian was the one who suggested a 24 RL time debuff with movement debuff. My suggestion was just over looked for some reason.

I was the one who suggested a 20-40 second -4 all stat debuff that scaled on level. A debuff that wouldn't effect a PC for hours, only a few minutes.

It was also in one of my suggestions that taverns could be scripted to cut down debuff timer in half. It gives legit reasons for people to enter a taverns more as people who die would be there, it might make a taverns hang out spots.

So effectively if you faced a ten minute debuff at level 15, going to a tavern and rping would lesson it down to five.

If all stats take -4 gishes would get hit the hardest. They have just the bare minimum values in their spell stat to gain spells so they would be reduced to level five spells. Their combat stats which are already sub par unless buffed will be reduced significantly some builds that have low AB might not be able to hit things they normally would.

It's possible that if a Gish is around level 15 and only has 17 intelligence and dies would be reduced to level three spells for ten minutes.

Grinding in lower safer area is what happens now. Except if you respawn it feeds into the cycle of needing more experience now than you needed before. All your doing is removing that aspect of this vicious cycle, which as pointed at before might not be a issue for some.

If power builders rarely die, which is a very real possibility of them never dying. Alleged RP builds constantly die due to how tough environment is. Who are really getting punished in this scenario?

If I'm going through a dungeon with a party and we are all RPing. What we are doing is character development and level progression at the same time. If we get wiped what exactly is the penalty reminding us then?

Game is about adventurers, exploring the lands. Not sitting in a house watching a fire crackle. Action Role play should be that, I'm not playing to see a recreation of jersey shore. We have a setting with so much violence and yet so many people are cheerful or care free. Like come on now, don't get mad at me if my PC doesn't want to sit down play patty cake and talk about how his day was.

The lax rules on class combinations is what makes this game fun, I enjoy seeing absurd back stories. It's not the players fault, it's the games creators for allowing DnD to have any thing goes rules. Either write official lore, or get mad at your source material.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem with events is that DM's need to write rules related to players. With things like DM's giving event announcements like I'm throwing a event in x area for people between y and z levels please do not interrupt it.

Rules would also allow DM's to cut down on some of the stupid stuff like PC's running back into a DM event after death. If you die or get knocked out it should be a DM rule that player walks their ass back to town.

Problem is people know that if you stick out a DM event to the end you get experience points. Level of input doesn't matter, you will always get rewarded for just being there. There needs to be a under standing that if you go into a DM event and fail, as in die or get knocked out you don't get any thing.

Issue of epics messing with DM events isn't a epic problem. Its a lack of safe guards that need to be put in place, or a DM to player under standing that has to be developed better. If I stumble across a DM event that is meant for level 7's and the DM shoots me a tell saying it's for level 7's. As a player I should respect that and leave the area, finding rp excuse to leave is not hard.

Congratulations, you have finally hit upon my breed of logic that I lovingly call 'Common Sense', some kind of super-power it's so rare.

I knew from the moment I started playing here that balancing content around powerbuilders/grinders was a hideously stupid idea. Cut XP in large groups to discourage mega-party grinding? Groups of 4 powerbuilders who might RP while grinding and looting. Enemy AC/AB/Stats (some enemies have 30+ STR to resist Bigby's, there goes Barb/FB-STR built ImpKD) made with challenging Powerbuilds? Way to go, it's like WoW's endgame raid content, only the minmaxers have a chance of pulling it off without suffering horribly. Low-magic server? I see +3 items go for hideous amounts, maybe a +4 here or there at 25+ maybe, but the spells go all the way to epic levels, and wizards/casters in general need them to survive at high levels. Guess what, enemies built around Powerbuilds who have inflated stats and all will make the +3 gear-based fighters/rogues/barbs/whatev feel like they're made of glass.

What does all that have in common aside from making me require some Advil/Tylenol for the headache I got just talking about it? Death is what. The RP builds who you know, build a concept character will suffer the most. Before you ask, no, Fighter/WM/FB is not a concept RP, it shouldn't even be possible as FB requires Rage or Greater Rage to take levels in, so the tabletop argument falls flat.

To the RP/concept/casual build, the death penalty and 20+ enemies are a chore at best. To a coordinated group of 4 powerbuilders that the devs have long designed content around to challenge them? Just another speedbump that slows them down for a little. Nerf the build/feats/spells to reign in the powerbuilders? Way to go, everyone suffers while the powerbuilders just go to a different build that will work just as well as their previous one did, and they'll quickly get to where they were before, that's their nature.

How do I know all this despite being a player who doesn't log on much anymore? Simple: I'm someone who powerbuilds like you wouldn't believe if the game calls for it. Games that are utterly unforgiving in every aspect of dying, like Dead Frontier.

BGTSCC should not be the kind of game where you have to powerbuild to have the best shot at getting to the top while avoiding (as much as possible) an archaic and very not-fun death penalty system.

There, I've said my piece.

[TheVoid]

The point is moot in any PW concerning powerbuilding. No matter what we do or changes we make that is not our problem that is the problem of the player that is doing it. The only way to balance content is for each of your characters to be approved before entering the PW. Essentially, a closed door policy like PnP when a DM can look at your character sheet and monitor your progression closely and call out BS.

That is the only 100% way to mitigate the pbuild issue even then you will always have smarter players who teach their methods to others that might up the challenge rating on everything in the game. What everyone seeks in terms of balance of power and how it involves death and loss of XP cannot be an even playing field because the game is not meant to offer that. Some individuals are just smarter than others or have more time to dedicate to the game itself. The only way we could possibly mitigate those problems altogether would to convert to a closed door policy and assign a character class/race and it's progression for you. This way everything balances out to our system despite being an awful experience for the player.

As far as the death xp penalty, I have heard the arguements to eliminate it and how to offset it. The proposed in it's various forms is still flawed and not a solution that will solve much, it off-sets one type of hardship for another and it really does nothing in the end in terms of eliminating complaints about death, it just creates another set of complaints different from the ones we are hearing about in the current system.

I'd rather not go through all that dev work for something that will not completely change and satisfy the majority of players on the PW unless there was a guarantee which we know is impossible since this is only theory. On the surface, it doesn't look like an investment in time that I would want to assign a dev for but that is not my call, that is Luna's call.

The only PW's that I have not seen an XP penalty used would be the ones that enforce permadeath or have no rules at all or penalties regarding death. The XP penalty here is extremely lenient, 100XP a level is nothing if you are patient. If you aren't then there is not much else I can say to indulge you. Others that have several toons of epic level have had to deal with the same issues everyone else has, myself included and no not all of these characters are Powerbuilds.

As for the so-called fact that we build around powerbuilds, that is not a true statement. Some areas have increasingly power creatures not necessarily due to Powerbuilding there are several other factors that a designer considers when they are making spawns for that area. I know, since I dev and in none of my areas, I have ever offered or requested enhanced spawns that are inappropriate for the CR level they are intended for. Several other devs will tell you the same, we do not give two craps about thwarting FB/WM or FS/BG's when it comes to designing a suitable CR level area. It comes up a lot when we see the area being exploited but rarely is it ever changed.

It's not always the case but generally from the submissions that we get in and implement not many are purposely built with spawns that are abnormal in terms of what a non-powerbuild can handle. If your comparison is from the source monster manuals than you will be disappointed since most creatures do not adhere to the monstrous manuals offered in DND 3.5.

[Cyrugen]

The point is moot in any PW concerning powerbuilding. No matter what we do or changes we make that is not our problem that is the problem of the player that is doing it. The only way to balance content is for each of your characters to be approved before entering the PW. Essentially, a closed door policy like PnP when a DM can look at your character sheet and monitor your progression closely and call out BS.

That is the only 100% way to mitigate the pbuild issue even then you will always have smarter players who teach their methods to others that might up the challenge rating on everything in the game. What everyone seeks in terms of balance of power and how it involves death and loss of XP cannot be an even playing field because the game is not meant to offer that. Some individuals are just smarter than others or have more time to dedicate to the game itself. The only way we could possibly mitigate those problems altogether would to convert to a closed door policy and assign a character class/race and it's progression for you. This way everything balances out to our system despite being an awful experience for the player.

As far as the death xp penalty, I have heard the arguements to eliminate it and how to offset it. The proposed in it's various forms is still flawed and not a solution that will solve much, it off-sets one type of hardship for another and it really does nothing in the end in terms of eliminating complaints about death, it just creates another set of complaints different from the ones we are hearing about in the current system.

I'd rather not go through all that dev work for something that will not completely change and satisfy the majority of players on the PW unless there was a guarantee which we know is impossible since this is only theory. On the surface, it doesn't look like an investment in time that I would want to assign a dev for but that is not my call, that is Luna's call.

The only PW's that I have not seen an XP penalty used would be the ones that enforce permadeath or have no rules at all or penalties regarding death. The XP penalty here is extremely lenient, 100XP a level is nothing if you are patient. If you aren't then there is not much else I can say to indulge you. Others that have several toons of epic level have had to deal with the same issues everyone else has, myself included and no not all of these characters are Powerbuilds.

As for the so-called fact that we build around powerbuilds, that is not a true statement. Some areas have increasingly power creatures not necessarily due to Powerbuilding there are several other factors that a designer considers when they are making spawns for that area. I know, since I dev and in none of my areas, I have ever offered or requested enhanced spawns that are inappropriate for the CR level they are intended for. Several other devs will tell you the same, we do not give two craps about thwarting FB/WM or FS/BG's when it comes to designing a suitable CR level area. It comes up a lot when we see the area being exploited but rarely is it ever changed.

It's not always the case but generally from the submissions that we get in and implement not many are purposely built with spawns that are abnormal in terms of what a non-powerbuild can handle. If your comparison is from the source monster manuals than you will be disappointed since most creatures do not adhere to the monstrous manuals offered in DND 3.5.

So when can I roll a sorc/bard who'll be able to become a RDD? Or is that still out of the question despite so many other builds having classes/PrCs that sync better than a few levels in a caster class and a bunch in RDD?

[MercTroop]

100 exp is lenient compared to what?

We wouldn't even be having half the problems that we do on this server if we didn't copy from other nwn2 servers. Or at least ask the question why did that server implement things in a certain way.

Some servers have players only earn 10 exp per a kill with 1k per a level on death penalty. This isn't because they are trying to make people RP more, it's because they lack content. They under stand that the longer they keep players grinding, longer players will stay on the server. Then you have idiots who say they are proud to play on these types of servers, they bring this terrible server design idea to other servers.

I know this because I've asked the developers of these servers why they lower exp if they know people will end in the same place with time. Above is the answer I've gotten multiple times in the past.

These servers have damaged meaning of class, experience, and levels to the point some people have stopped using these things in their RP. Thoughts are not given to how a class might view the world differently, or even in what I consider extreme cases, races are being RPed as little more than humans with a skin job.

Experience penalty isn't meant to improve RP, it's meant to draw out play time on a server. When you go to any server they all have people they consider RP is above the others, I have yet to see a single one of these people RP experience loss. They wouldn't need to draw out play time if they focused on developing areas from 1-30 that is satisfying for every one to play through. Kept focused on making playing classes unique, along with the races.

Games that have experience penalties have experience points that scale with level. So if you die and take a experience hit, it would only take the player a few minutes to regain what they lost. Here it could be hours or even days to regain what was lost. Our experience doesn't scale, you can only get up to a certain amount of experience. Even if what your killing would be considered significantly harder than some thing else.

I'm not saying stat debuff on death isn't with out flaws, given how experience works it seems like it would be allot better than experience loss.

Cyrugen people are content to take punishments meant for slow actions of a minority but harshly effect majority. If DM/Dev team make design changes to effect people playing most optimized class combo in the game. I can only fault the community as a whole for allowing this, or not trying to have the server developers find a middle ground or change it back.

Min/Maxing happens in PnP, so it was only logical it translated to nwn2. Only way to fix it is to go the route of RPGS these days and disable player choice on stat allocation. Then you'd be destroying aspects of DnD, which is player choice.

[Eifer]

I am enjoying seeing everyone's opinions on this; I believe there of course is not a perfect solution, only solutions that would be received by certain groups of people differently. Because of the systems in place on the server currently (the death system being an important one) we see the composition of playerbase as it is currently. If such a system is changed, we may see changes in the playerbase because new players may be attracted to such a new system, or old players will find it disagreeable and play elsewhere. The staff has a difficult job in figuring -first- what kind of playerbase it wishes to attract, then anticipating what sort of systems foster an environment that that chosen type of playerbase would be most attracted to, and finally to implement those systems in balance with the other systems it already has in place.

I don't really think of it in terms of playerbase 'happiness', because there is a threshhold level of happiness that all players must have to log in. Clearly, the playerbase is 'happy' enough, because there's plenty enough of them that log in to give the server numbers, and (presumably) support the server financially enough to keep it running.

Now, cutting experience penalties, from what I have seen, usually attracts more players interested in combat systems of the PW (powerbuilders or not). I find RPers tend to care less because they care less in general about reaching maximum level. Now, there is some nuance here, because a harsher death system -may- deter roleplayers just starting out because they will be unable to access server hubs and other roleplay opportunities. Such can be avoided by giving an easier time on the lower levels within the system. Powerbuilders, well, I agree they don't have much of a place in the argument, but increased death penalties may make them less interested in playing here because powerbuilders often are interested in leveling up new builds quickly and anything that slows that down (even a small bit) will make the server seem less enticing to them.

As for the current suggestion, of death recovery sickness, I think it will more or less even out with the decrease in experience penalty. So I do not anticipate any change in the playerbase if such is implemented. I, like others, am annoyed when experience penalty occurs; but I understand why it needs to occur to keep the playerbase as it is.

If it were up to me, I would increase the experience penalty, as well as implement the death 'sickness' for higher level characters; but such would complement a host of other changes such as decreasing number of spawns in mobs, lowering monster CR, implementing experience caps for combat per level, increasing RP xp for taverns/guildhalls and adding new powerbuild restrictions.

[TheVoid]

In terms of finding a middle ground for death xp loss, ive seen much harsher increments on many different pws.

We do remove xp to slow you down thats what ive been completely open about in the beginning. We want to cause a ripple in your progression when you are killed mechanically. We do this so playing catch up with an ever increasingly progressive playing strategy does not exceed what we can offer content wise.

Thats the objective in removing your xp that is the number one reason pws still use xp as collateral when you are killed mechanically, that is why dms will strip your xp if you misbehave. It is about delaying you and no one is saying anything different about that. So it is no secret that this is agenda pws habe when they implement xp or gold penalties, we are trying to reduce the available capital (xp) from the system before it leads to more symptoms of hyperinflation, in which we cannot supply for the increased demand which is content and further progression.

Its not a perfect system but it does what we intended it to do. This why this type of penalty system is popular in nwn1 and nwn2 pws. When I say not harsh its compared to my entire experience with medium and hardcore pws some which have permadeath, tokens for leveling, loss of entire
Levels for death, permanent stat loss for death, gold and xp loss on death, loss of inventory upon death, loss of xp by percentages upon death, deleveling by loss of xp upon death/respawn, etc.....

Ive played almost every system described here permadeath being my favorite. So when I say 100 xp per level is a slap on the wrist I know what I am talking about. When I first came to this pw I thought the death system was a joke until I understood the minimum level of rp and play skill needed to not get banned by the staff. I've petitioned for harder consequences that were more plausible rp wise but staff in past felt it would be to far of an extreme for the casual player.

Im not saying stat debuff isnt relevant but it is not a substitute for the current system that guarantees xp is removed from the system. If anything I would propose to allow both and let the player decide which they prefer, but 40 second debuff is not at all a consequence nor is 10 minutes, going to a tavern to half the time to five minutes is a bathroom break, coffee run, not enough time to engage in immersive rp.

Timers would probably upwards of an hour or more.

Ultimately, penalties are more for our benefit than the players. A player can definately learn a lesson about being careful about death but I really could care less how a player wants to ro xp loss, my priority is that if the conditions are met xp is removed from the system until it is regained, giving us time to distribute content that makes leveling meaningful and significant to the player character.