Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Valefort wrote:There's a difference between grinding and adventuring, isn't there ? That's the foggy line of staying too long in one place, unless you actually plan to remain there and then that's RP and you've got to ping DMs for that, pretty sure they'll oblige you one way or the other.

As for carrot and stick isn't the absence of carrots enough of a cue ? It's not like it's impossible to grind in a single area, there's no stick at the moment (and I don't think anyone wants to bring it out, like booting a player if he grinds in an area for more than 1 hour ? That would indeed not be very fun).

The stick right now is the lack of loot, the fact I can just kill the whole dungeon time and again with no reward, makes it useless to do so. I am just penalized OOC for it. For example, if I ran 5 alts, I could run the same place with all 5 of them, the fact I choose to put all my effort and focus on just one char, puts me OOC'ly in a disadvantage to someone running multiple chars.

I would personally disagree grinding and adventuring are different. Do I really have to find 20 different Yuan-ti nests to grind them all? The point I tried to raise with this thread, grinding is here, it is something to do when no one of your Rp contacts are online, or simply if you are bored and have some time as I do, which I would like to convert into IC chests, loot and fun.

Grinding will be here, it's part of DND more than intrigues, or politics or sims like environment. My suggestion focuses on making the gameplay more fun, without forcing players to do what they do not want, or penalizing a style of gameplay.

I would claim, you want a player to run differant dungeons, give him a reason to go there. By simply making it impossible to focus on the efficient and good places, I personally feel, pigeonholed, rather than immersed.

Way to twist things, the lack of loot is a lack of carrots, not a stick. Grinding is the act of doing the same dungeon several times. At the risk of repeating myself while doing a dungeon 2-3 times is not that much of a stretch IC wise, going further hardly is.

That's the difference between grinding and adventuring, while grinding is here and will stay there is no reason to encourage hardly-IC behavior further. There's no stick, nothing, no one is actively trying to prevent you from grinding and punishing you for doing so and there are actually incentives (loot) to incite you to go to other areas.

I like it the way things are, precisely because the way things are set up now does encourage people to move on from an area. I don't think we should incentivize staying in one area for grinders; we don't need areas to be monopolized by any faction/alignment/race/character.

Why is it a hardly IC behaviour? PC's are adventurer's they chose to kill and explore to gain riches, that's the definition of adventuring.

As of carrot vs stick. I would raise again the issue, I am actively encouraged by current mechanic to get 3-4 alt's with 0 RP behind them, just so I can actually adventure with some kind of reward.

Both of my suggestions are focused more about making grinding less of a chore, rather than encourage it.

As of lack of carrots, loot is the only reason to go adventure for a lvl 30 char other than a specific RP exploration which is a very rare thing. When there is no loot, there is no reason to go do the dungeon again for any PC who is rped as an actual adventurer.

If the stance is that exploration encouraged by lack of choice so be it and I have nothing to add really, if there is a desire to make the grinding and gameplay mechancis better, I would love to have a discussion here, as it was the reason to raise the topic in the first place.

It's hardly an IC behavior because monsters won't come back all the time, the difference between adventuring and grinding is not in nature but in its repetition (I repeat; will grinding arguments work on you or should I explain the difference otherwise ? ).

Technically yes, if all you want is optimized looting then making several alts is the way to go... especially since muling is allowed.

The chest system after mrieders changes and some minor touches from other devs, works 100% as intended. There is absolutely no reason to change it.

If you want to argue whether it is IC or not to run around 1 single area, feel free to do so. However the answer will still be the same. If you want more chests to loot, go to another area. That is what the team wants to promote.

Argumantive wrote: First thing I would raise is the loot chest cooldown, I would personally be happy to see it set to 10-15 minutes rest.

It used to work this way, and it led to people basically hogging a dungeon for long time (while they circle through it several times). Current idea actually works better and encourages travel between dungeons, meaning higher chance of interaction between people. Current sysem removed a reason for people to murder each other because of loot, but that's the only negative.

Argumantive wrote:Why would a level 30 epic killing machine go play with gnolls or orcs IC'ly?

Because there are still gnolls and orcs left in the world that your character failed to kill. Aim at total extermination. In the name of greater good. Or greater evil.

Argumantive wrote:That's my point actually, what's wrong with running loops in your favourite dungeon, instead of being forced to go to dungeons you are simply forced to go to for lack of choice?

Because when there are six people running in circles in dungeon, you effectively can't use it anymore till they leave. If the loot respawns, they won't leave.

Argumantive wrote: I would ask, trying not to offend why is grinding, being treated as a bad thing? DND is all about the adventure and loot as well as the story.

In PnP you kill 5 monsters and rest for 8 hours. In NWN2 the supreme murder hobo does not ever need to rest. Or ever stop. I don't actually recall anyone ever RPing returning from, say naga area and being covered with ten centimeter thick layer of snake guts and stinking like hell.
So it isn't really convincing. Overall, it isn't really perceived well because you're not adventuring, but pretty much oocly trying to fill your xp bar. And calling murdering ten thousand nagas "training" is stretching it very far. I can understand desire to fill xp bar faster, but having done a LOT of grinding myself in the past, the whole process is just a very thin veiled excuse to get more xp.

Even running just the low/mid CR area the gnoll cave for 15-45 minutes, I make 5-10k gold every time off just that area. The loot is fine, man.