BGTSCC's Server Difficulty

[Tanlaus]

If you compare solo grinding to group adventuring the payout is favorable for group adventuring. Now if you compare group adventuring (as in taking your time exploring, RPing) and group grinding then yes the payout of group grinding will be superior in terms of loot and exp. What to do there, setting a combat exp cap per reset perhaps ?

The problem with a combat XP cap is that it might punish players who can't log in as frequently. Like suppose you only log once a week but you have four or five hours to play. You might get a group and start adventuring but hit the XP cap half way through… then what?

Hang out at the campfire? Keep exploring but without XP?

I think a good portion of people would just log.

Setting combat xp cap per area might be better but it might also be horrible for non 30 epic players who don’t have many areas to get xp in.

The softcap I mentioned might be a good solution to the problem you mentioned.

Maybe at lower levels but epic levels are kind of soft capped already. Plenty of people think they are too much of a grind. Slowing them down would just discourage them even more.

[gedweyignasia]

Suppose you only log once a week but you have four or five hours to play. You might get a group and start adventuring but hit the XP cap half way through… then what?

If the grind is the only thing keeping players engaged with our content, then we've made it wrong.

I agree but suppose you’re not grinding a single area but going through multiple areas? Might still hit the cap even if you’re not running circles in xvarts or Wyvrens.

If they're only doing it for the XP and wouldn't be out there otherwise, we're doing something wrong. Dungeons should be a place for stories and adventures.

[DaloLorn]

If the grind is the only thing keeping players engaged with our content, then we've made it wrong.

I agree but suppose you’re not grinding a single area but going through multiple areas? Might still hit the cap even if you’re not running circles in xvarts or Wyvrens.

If they're only doing it for the XP and wouldn't be out there otherwise, we're doing something wrong. Dungeons should be a place for stories and adventures.

Attracting the wrong crowd, perhaps? It does sound like a cultural problem. Most people I run into tend to favor the XP or loot.

[gedweyignasia]

I think most of our dungeons are reinforcing that habit. Builders aren't blameless in this.

[Tanlaus]

I think most of our dungeons are reinforcing that habit. Builders aren't blameless in this.

I would put most of the blame on the bgtscc encounter design meta. Most opponents are punching bags with inflated HP and saves.

Adding more casters with CC spells, sneaks with HiPS, opponents who have knock down, haste and/or dimension door to counter kiting, warrior types with higher AB and/or AC, will make the grind more difficult and resource intensive.

It will also make areas more difficult in some respects, but if variety is balanced by lowering the inflated HP and saving throws it will also allow for more variety in player builds. Especially casters.

[Hoihe]

I think most of our dungeons are reinforcing that habit. Builders aren't blameless in this.

I would put most of the blame on the bgtscc encounter design meta. Most opponents are punching bags with inflated HP and saves.

Adding more casters with CC spells, sneaks with HiPS, opponents who have knock down, haste and/or dimension door to counter kiting, warrior types with higher AB and/or AC, will make the grind more difficult and resource intensive.

It will also make areas more difficult in some respects, but if variety is balanced by lowering the inflated HP and saving throws it will also allow for more variety in player builds. Especially casters.

This will remove any reason to log in when I don't know there's people who are alignment, race and faith compatible to interact with.

[gedweyignasia]

I think most of our dungeons are reinforcing that habit. Builders aren't blameless in this.

I would put most of the blame on the bgtscc encounter design meta. Most opponents are punching bags with inflated HP and saves.

I'd like to experiment with making enemies that resemble players' builds. Without the +4 gear, of course.

This will remove any reason to log in when I don't know there's people who are alignment, race and faith compatible to interact with.

We can't please everyone, and we would be fools to try. It's a massive server with tons of content, and hopefully you will continue to find some content that you enjoy engaging with, even if it is not the majority of what's there.

[Roofshadow]

*Claps hands together.* Easy mode areas.

As much as there seems to be a bitter hatred of MMORPGs on this server, I think the area design on popular modern MMOs is good to take a look at for this. A lot of overworld content is pretty accessible in said MMOs because that isn't the content meant to be challenging or competitive-- it's the content meant for exploration and working through the story, for all players to engage with. There isn't really much of a "grind" because the leveling process is about going through the story, and those story quests will tend to get you to level cap without having to run any circles to catch up. You can also often scale to enable playing with your friends/veteran players, but that's a bit beyond the scope of things here.

The challenging content becomes various tiers of dungeons, raids, trials, world bosses, PvP matches, and so on. So putting in "easy mode" areas is definitely a successful way of letting unoptimized, less skilled, disabled, and so on players access a game. I don't think "easy mode" impacts story quality any, either, considering most RPGs have difficulty levels you can set, and easy modes are usually labeled the "I'm just here to enjoy the story" mode. Since you can't easily let people manually set their difficulties in a multiplayer game like this, different zones of differing difficulties is the next best thing.

While some people say there's no problem and everything's already easy, the fact that so many players do voice a struggle suggests there might be something worth looking into. Sometimes it boils down to class: I absolutely hated my completely optimized rogue leveling experience, it was miserable, some days I lost more xp than I gained in a session due to deaths, I died all the time compared to my similarly-leveled peers in DMed events, and it was a struggle to find people around my level to adventure with because at the time most everyone I met was level 30. Meanwhile, my 21 druid/9 assassin unoptimized sneaky dispellable tiger absolutely breezed through everything, very survivable, with room for RP-flavor feats. Some people might just not be good at number crunching, or playing games in general. Some people might be disabled and struggle with fine motor movements or adapting to new mechanics on the fly. All those kinds of people can still be excellent writers with whom you can share fantastic stories.

Hell, even learning the UI and mechanics of NWN2 is a struggle for new players, I've seen that first hand because I've invited friends to try the game and did my best to help them learn. It's not intuitive for those unfamiliar with the style, and if someone's struggling with the UI alone, chances are they'll be struggling even harder in content. Also, this crowd seems to skew towards older adults, and while today's youth are all hackers, according to my mother whenever I turn the modem on and off to fix a problem, people who didn't suckle their nourishment from a USB as babes are a coin flip for whether or not they'll adjust well to a new medium, even if they might have plenty of old tabletop RPG and lore knowledge.

Accessibility is important in any design. A ramp might be easier to walk up than stairs, and stairs might be better for physical fitness, and people might boast of their stair-stepping skill and how easy they are to use, but some people just legitimately need the ramp, whether it's because of a permanent problem, a temporary problem, or the fact that they chose to play a rogue.


tl;dr: I think introducing a few more less punishing areas is a good idea.

[DaloLorn]

As for the economy being suppressed, I'm not sure what you mean by that...

BGTSCC's Economy:
1. Stunshot Sling is an epic level sling on sale for 60,000 gold pieces by an NPC Vendor.
2. Any character who invests in Appraisal Skill Points can purchase this sling at a discount (Incentive to invest skill points).
3. Any character who takes a three-level dip in the Guild Thief PrC will also receive a 10 percent discount on top of their Appraisal Skill investment.
An epic item valued at 60,000 gold pieces is purchased for ~50,000 or less based on a player's build.

BGTSCC's Economy Suppressed:
1. Stunshot Sling is an epic level sling appraised at 60,000 gold pieces by a character who invests in Appraisal Skill Points.
2. Any character who invests in Appraisal Skill Points attempts to sell this sling for a higher price due to their innate understanding of its value (Incentive to invest skill points).
3. Any character who takes a three-level dip in the Guild Thief PrC attempts to sell this sling for a higher price due to their 10 percent discount on top of their Appraisal Skill investment.
An epic item valued at 60,000 gold pieces is sold for 1,400 or less in spite of the player's build.

...the loot coming from grinding, solo or not is by far the main source of gold income, which is largely overly generous too.

There are ample claims of overly generous amounts of gold... I hold these claims lightly; meaning, I am neither convinced it's true or certain it is not true. Your comment however is consistent with my point - BGTSCC's economy incentivizes grinding.

You know, I'm not sure how I ended up not posting this...

What if we overhauled the vendor system? Massively cranked up the maximum sell price on an item, in exchange for tuning down the actual sell prices? For instance, instead of capping the 60k sling at 1400, we could let it sell at 6k, and appraise up to 12k. Right now, a mere 4 ranks in Appraise would get you around 30.7% of an item's purchase cost (tested at the FAI dwarf), which seems sort of extreme when most "junk" loot clocks in at 3-8k.

[YYA]

I would put most of the blame on the bgtscc encounter design meta. Most opponents are punching bags with inflated HP and saves.

Adding more casters with CC spells, sneaks with HiPS, opponents who have knock down, haste and/or dimension door to counter kiting, warrior types with higher AB and/or AC, will make the grind more difficult and resource intensive.

It will also make areas more difficult in some respects, but if variety is balanced by lowering the inflated HP and saving throws it will also allow for more variety in player builds. Especially casters.

*Claps hands together.* This has been tried before, and everyone hated it.

And actually, there is an area just like it on the server already, the Stonespear Cave in the Goblin Lakes of the Underdark. Roll a new character, a role-play character with no negative ability score modifiers and an unoptimized build, do no muling of equipment, no partying because usually there are no players in the Underdark to level up with, and try to give that area a fresh run as if you had never played the game before. You know, level up from scratch, and get back to me when you have soloed both levels. That area has spellcasters with Haste, Bigby Five, it has mobs that will abuse HiPS to land sneak attacks and break combat, it has mobs that will use knockdown, and if the casters get their chance to buff up, they will have AC of 35~... This area can be soloed, I have done it, and the two areas have many chests indeed to be looted, however, it does require a powerbuild of sorts to be done alone and even then some powerbuilds will struggle far more than others.

[MrSmith]

As for the economy being suppressed, I'm not sure what you mean by that...

BGTSCC's Economy:
1. Stunshot Sling is an epic level sling on sale for 60,000 gold pieces by an NPC Vendor.
2. Any character who invests in Appraisal Skill Points can purchase this sling at a discount (Incentive to invest skill points).
3. Any character who takes a three-level dip in the Guild Thief PrC will also receive a 10 percent discount on top of their Appraisal Skill investment.
An epic item valued at 60,000 gold pieces is purchased for ~50,000 or less based on a player's build.

BGTSCC's Economy Suppressed:
1. Stunshot Sling is an epic level sling appraised at 60,000 gold pieces by a character who invests in Appraisal Skill Points.
2. Any character who invests in Appraisal Skill Points attempts to sell this sling for a higher price due to their innate understanding of its value (Incentive to invest skill points).
3. Any character who takes a three-level dip in the Guild Thief PrC attempts to sell this sling for a higher price due to their 10 percent discount on top of their Appraisal Skill investment.
An epic item valued at 60,000 gold pieces is sold for 1,400 or less in spite of the player's build.

...the loot coming from grinding, solo or not is by far the main source of gold income, which is largely overly generous too.

There are ample claims of overly generous amounts of gold... I hold these claims lightly; meaning, I am neither convinced it's true or certain it is not true. Your comment however is consistent with my point - BGTSCC's economy incentivizes grinding.

You know, I'm not sure how I ended up not posting this...

What if we overhauled the vendor system? Massively cranked up the maximum sell price on an item, in exchange for tuning down the actual sell prices? For instance, instead of capping the 60k sling at 1400, we could let it sell at 6k, and appraise up to 12k. Right now, a mere 4 ranks in Appraise would get you around 30.7% of an item's purchase cost (tested at the FAI dwarf), which seems sort of extreme when most "junk" loot clocks in at 3-8k.

Yes - Increase the maximum sell price relative to the appraised value of an item + your appraisal score - the Vendor's appraisal score.

Yes - Increase the relative appraisal scores of NPC vendors so they are unique just like in RL.

Yes - Expand the dialogue options at a Vendor to account for a character's bluff and diplomacy scores. If a character attempts to Bluff his way to a higher appraisal of an item and fails... then hold this against him/her until reset. Word spreads fast amongst Vendors.

Eliminate gold in all loot and chest drops. Make gold available only in the piles of gold-related drops. Make BGTSCC's economy run on wit, guile, and skill... and not grinding.

Reevaluate and increase the price of Epic items. On any given day there are +4 EB weapons on the Auction for ~4,000 gold pieces. This is a clear reflection of an economy out of whack with the intended value of Epic items.

[Valefort]

Nobody is going to go through the thousands of items to reevaluate their prices guys, even just the hundreds of epic items is unlikely. Consider those things are mostly set in stone. Appraise skill already gives you more gold when selling because you reach the vendor cap sooner, I understand it's not as much as much as you'd like however what you're talking about amounts to much more gold flowing when we need much less. It would also lead to people muling gear to an alt with high appraise to get maximum gold from their loot, ending up with .. just much more gold in the end but perhaps some IC interactions as well from time to time between PCs.

[DaloLorn]

Nobody is going to go through the thousands of items to reevaluate their prices guys, even just the hundreds of epic items is unlikely. Consider those things are mostly set in stone. Appraise skill already gives you more gold when selling because you reach the vendor cap sooner, I understand it's not as much as much as you'd like however what you're talking about amounts to much more gold flowing when we need much less. It would also lead to people muling gear to an alt with high appraise to get maximum gold from their loot, ending up with .. just much more gold in the end but perhaps some IC interactions as well from time to time between PCs.

I would have imagined it's the vendors that need editing, not the items. Changing the vendor cap, and changing the (already vendor-specific, as evidenced by the fish and gem vendors) multipliers involved in determining how much of an item's value you'll get when you sell it.

[MrSmith]

Nobody is going to go through the thousands of items to reevaluate their prices guys, even just the hundreds of epic items is unlikely. Consider those things are mostly set in stone. Appraise skill already gives you more gold when selling because you reach the vendor cap sooner, I understand it's not as much as much as you'd like however what you're talking about amounts to much more gold flowing when we need much less. It would also lead to people muling gear to an alt with high appraise to get maximum gold from their loot, ending up with .. just much more gold in the end but perhaps some IC interactions as well from time to time between PCs.

I would have imagined it's the vendors that need editing, not the items. Changing the vendor cap, and changing the (already vendor-specific, as evidenced by the fish and gem vendors) multipliers involved in determining how much of an item's value you'll get when you sell it.

I agree. I am not sure why every item would need to be reevaluated. Valuations already exist. It's appraisal scores and hard limits that would need to be assessed...

There appears to be a general fear of introducing "more gold" into the economy... while there is also a generally held belief "too much gold" already exists.

Gold provides any character the opportunity to outfit themselves for adventure (the purpose of the game). Beyond buying consumables, what is the real value of gold on the server? Candidly, this is not a rhetorical question as any items of real value are already being traded via the forums and not bought and sold for gold. Epic gear? Muling is already legal... so whether a player mules loot drops to get "more gold" or epic gear, either way, it's allowed.

This server, like any community, will get the behaviors it rewards. Reward grinding and you will get more grinding. Reward RP and you will get more RP.

Cheers!

[gedweyignasia]

This server, like any community, will get the behaviors it rewards. Reward grinding and you will get more grinding. Reward RP and you will get more RP.

It's not simple to come up with a fair, reliable, stable system that rewards RP instead of grinding. It would be even harder to push such a system on our players, many of whom would feel like they're being told their playstyle isn't valid. (Which is something you will hear literally no matter what you change.)