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

Mallore wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 2:07 pm Ps I would also include hard mode for those whom enjoy permdeath. A character with a blank god selection can not respawn because no temple to go to.... as such can only chose to lay on the ground waiting for a res

Surely, this can just be self-imposed...

To deathgrowl.

Sure absolutely, but if the rest was to be considered it wouldn’t be much more to add that tiny bit. I’m just trying to offer people a little bit of everything

Im in the camp that feels things should be harder to accomplish in this game, including having strict penalties for failure. Making the game more challenging means when you succeed it will be more rewarding.

Winning the Darwin Award should have a penalty to it. In real life it is permadeath.

But because this is a game, the rules of this game attempts to be fair.

Yet, life is unfair. And death is even less fair than life.

Therefor, this game that simulates life and death, should not be so fair either.

Is losing 100 exp per level a good compromise, between having fair rules and a realistically unfair simulation?

The answer seems to be a matter of opinion. I say its not a good compromise. But I can understand why others think it is a fair compomise. So I really do not care as long as there is at lease some sort token feature to represend the unfairness of death.

Which is why it irritates me a lot to know that level 30s have no deterrant for death. It is one of a couple reasons, why I usually rcr/roll a new character once I hit 30.

We are all immortals where only a type of combination ic/ooc suicide is the only way out!
That's frigging twisted, now that I think about it!

Mallore wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 2:07 pm Ps I would also include hard mode for those whom enjoy permdeath. A character with a blank god selection can not respawn because no temple to go to.... as such can only chose to lay on the ground waiting for a res

This is a little off-topic, but I really do like the idea of supporting some sort of hard-mode on the server. While I can see the argument for this already being possible through self imposement, I don't think a lot of people even consider the prospect of it. Giving it as an option the first time you enter nexus with a newly created character would raise some awareness of it. I also believe that people who have played on this server for some time would enjoy a fresh way to play the game.

If I were to implement a hard-mode system I would give some bonus to the daredevils who do choose to wander this self destructive path. Maybe a flat increase in experience gain, to support the creation of new characters once the old ones have perished. It would also be fair to give these players more than one life, to avoid a permanent cessation due to mechanical limitations when sparring etc.

I implore you to create a new suggestion where this can be discussed further, Mallore.

I'm in for having both XP & gold penalty implemented. Then even lvl 30's have to be more careful. Removing aby panelties will result in people running around and grinding mindlessly, because there is nothing to loose in case of death. For me it would reduce the overall experience of the server.

If that happened people would just transfer the majority of their gold to mules and use them like a bank.

I can see the alternative of waiting out a period of time until you can gain xp again as a much better alternative to XP loss on respawning. That way, you can spend that IG time doing something else that you enjoy more, which could be anything in the world, really, since grinding is the opposite of fun.

Well, one system that I saw and liked was a moderate high XP los...probably lost a couple days of work...BUT! It didn't retract the XP it created a sort of "I owe XP pool" which was a certain number of XP you had to fill. Untill this pool was filled combat XP was halved but RP XP was doubled. Of course someone would have to look at the numbers here if that's the correct math for BGTSCC and if the pool thing is implementable in NWN2 on our server or if it's more feasible to take the XP and until getting back implement the penalty, but I thought that was a nice incentive to RP and deterrant from grinding....also we did lose some gold but we had banks, then again we dropped more gold than items so you mainly lost gold gathered during the adventuring and well dungeons took much longer but...anyway.

GholaMan wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 4:33 am I think a better idea than loosing XP is a period of time that you cannot gain XP via grinding. So for example level 15 fighter guy goes to fight xvarts with rogue guy, they both die and have to respawn, and so for twenty minutes because they gain nothing from grinding they go and look for another party member or two. RP, get more supplies, talk about tactics etc. And there is an actual incentive to do that, because at the very least you can gain RP XP.

Gonna quote myself here for the suggestion on what to do instead of loosing xp.

Kaeldre wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 10:28 am Loosing xp in and of itself does not better role-play. The threat of loosing it does. What is argued for here is that the current system offers greater consequence to the act of dying. Which in turn gives players incentive to avoid it. Your suggestion would do the opposite by the same chain of logic.

Its not so much a chain of logic as it is an observable truth. Please correct me if I am wrong but I think we are both in agreement that the server in general has a culture of treating death flippantly right? So if death is treated to be meaningless on the server then you could say that the current system of consequence is actually inconsequential to RP. Its been discussed many times on the server how death is treated like it is meaningless, and no one can really come to agreement on how to improve it from its current state.

Kaeldre wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 10:28 am I find your claim doubtful. The natural reaction to loosing is not encouragement to try again, it is discouragement of that activity. There are certainly people who will rise up to the challenge in the face of defeat, but far from everyone will. In the end, the loss of experience does not equate to more grinding being done after death.

My claim on loosing XP causes more grinding doubtful? Well, I do know a way that can empirically show how it causes more grinding. Just through some simple math. If you are a level 20 human fighter it takes 21 thousand XP in order to reach 21. So if you are grinding mobs at 50xp per kill, and are killing 10 a minute which is one mob per round, assuming the human fighter doesn't need healing ever and never dies then they would reach level 21 in 42 minutes of play. Which is amazingly fast. In reality it takes much longer than this we both know that. But lets say the human fighter does die and and looses XP but the time to come back for grinding is 0 seconds and they immediately can start killing mobs right back at the same rate without rest. That adds 10% more time which turns into 46.2 minutes of play.

So which 20th level fighter had to grind more in order to get to 21? Well the obvious answer is the one that died, and mathematically speaking they did 10% more grinding.

Kaeldre wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 10:28 amJust because there are a few unfair ways to die it does not mean that we should make dying more trivial. I would not pin dying by traps or rolling badly to this category however. The former can be detected and dissarmed, the latter can be negated through immunities. I dont think the remaining two reasons warrants change.

My point was that death doesn't always warrant an XP loss. Heck there was a bug that I had to deal with personally that would about 50% of the time kill my character on login and I would loose XP because I had to go through the fugue in order to play the character. Yes I reported the bug, no I did not get the XP that I lost back. And the character in question is in epic levels. So yes there are deaths that have happened and will continue to happen that by the standards of the current system do not warrant an XP loss or punishment of any kind. My suggestion to take away XP loss and instead put a timer of not being able to gain XP from grinding will not make dying more trivial since with that method you would be removing the option of grinding away from someone they would have to do other things. Like I don't know RP.

Jay dies a lot.
#barbarianproblems
#poorpeopleproblems

It's annoying. Grinding =/= RP, so let's stop lumping the two in the same category. Grinding is mindless and uninteresting. It's punishment enough on its own without imposing penalties for what was probably a death by lag or glitch.

I'm with the OP on this one.

NwN2 is a twelve year old game. Let's not pretend the combat mechanics are anything other than sluggish and bad.

If it were up to me, I'd do away with the XP penalties, and instead, add a "battle fatigue" of -2 CON after death that stacks. This ability score penalty would not be removable and would last (12-24) RL hours, but would go away on its own afterward. If you die again while the timer is still active, you'd get another -2 CON and the timer would reset. The max con debuff would cap at whatever your character's Total CON minus 1 (so you won't ever reach 0 CON).

Raise Dead would reduce the battle fatigue to -1 CON and halve the fatigue timer.

Resurrect would negate all penalties.

Characters with less than 8 base CON could be granted a one-time chance to take a 100% RCR?

Just my two cents. IMO, this doesn't overly penalize, while still giving some consequence to death. Players are still able to continue grinding after death, if they so choose, just at a greater risk. They're also not penalized for NOT grinding more (because there's no longer any xp loss). Instead, they can choose to spend their time RPing, fishing, etc. while they wait out the fatigue timer.