The State of Leveling

[blazerules]

Yeah to me that almost feels like an RP issue. Since regardless of leveling progression its completely up to how a person RPs with what they got. I have seen people hold off spells or even classes to make more sense with progress of time to well skills learnt.

Granted isnt it a field of study taking up years? I guess its strange all characters learn decades worth of stuff in mere months but it is an abstraction.

[fuego]

Not sure I follow, but then again, I don't think I ever did understand why you insisted that all your characters must be level 30 ASAP. You might have told me, but it doesn't seem to have clicked with me enough to remember.

How do I rp my character background without levels? An archmage from cormanthor with no arch mage levels? A thief from amn that can only pickpocket goblins? An assassin that cannot kill anyone? A ranger from high forest without the defining ranger skills?

You have a specific playstyle which is fine. I don’t like it at all but I understand others might like it. I don’t like to rp that my level 2 wizard who just gotten a level, learned a lvl 2 spell because he completed a maltzs quest. I think rping leveling like this is stupid, boring and mind numbing. But I understand others might feel different about it.

That’s the thing though. You like playing a certain way and try to suggest(force?) that style for everyone else. You can level as slow as you like. There is even a mechanic to remove xp if you would like. You shouldn’t worry how fast others level and enjoy playing the game

Mentalist

[Winterborne]

I can't speak for anyone but myself but I've always disliked levelling. It always has been even in its fastest state too slow and tedious here for me to enjoy myself much. I'm currently in the process of levelling two more characters and can confidently say that I will never create a new character again with levelling in the state it's in. Things don't need to cater to anyone's individual tastes but as someone who has been working 70h weeks lately I hardly have any time to play anything, and when I do have time to play something I usually want it to be something that's respectful of my time as a player. BGTSCC is many great things to me, but respectful of ones time it is not.

I generally mix RP and grinding, as in I spend some of my time logged in roleplaying and other times I spend focused on levelling, but in my experience there isn't enough non-campfire RP to engage in at lower levels.

If it matters my current two new characters are 13 and 20.

New characters keep the server interesting, and if people are dissuaded for making new ones they will stick to old ones. And that's great if they continue to enjoy them - I've been playing Nathan for about 5 years now and still have fun growing him based on things that happen. But at some point I'd like to retire him and when that happens maybe I'll enjoy one of these two characters enough to want to play them as my main character.

But if I don't, I won't be making and levelling one, I'll likely just decide that my time with BG was fun and full of good memories and friends and depart.

[Gadwin]

Leveling sucks here. Always has. The current state of things does not respect players' time investment in the slightest, from excessively heavy RCR penalties to multiclassing penalties to ridiculous 1-29 only death penalties to the absolute slog of xp gains.

Rebuilds should be totally free up to level 20 so players are not punished for build mistakes.

Past 20, 80% of xp should be taken into account. We worked for it, do not take it from us.

XP needs to be easier to gain by far, because we're grown up and have jobs.
Also because I and many others have lost friends' interest because the slow plodding and punishing leveling experience is utter crap.

[Rain]

You know whats funny.

Doesn't matter what decision is made here nothing about this thread affects anyone who is already level 30.

Make the grind slower or faster doesn't matter, people who are already done the grind will simply not care what happens to it in the end.

This will only negatively or positively affect new players. And in that regard making it so leveling is more of a slog only makes it worst for newer players wanting to be on a even playing field with others who managed to do the grind in 9 days. The only way changing the XP rate will greatly affect the server now is again if everyone started all over from the beginning.

Which ain't happening. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. ~ Asmongold 2019

[blazerules]

This will only negatively or positively affect new players. And in that regard making it so leveling is more of a slog only makes it worst for newer players wanting to be on a even playing field with others who managed to do the grind in 9 days.

Pretty much. We had an hours long argument in which a new player (Titania) mentioned how their friend quit BG because of the grind. Sure, yet another anecdote one can argue. But it's a story heard all too often.

Sure it's possible its not the main reason. But things that would typically prevent this dont exist for all players (being in a Guild, finding friends etc). So having leveling that doesnt make you wish for the sweet release of death would probably help in the downtime between RP. Because let's be honest we arent RPing 24/7. Heck I can sometimes spend hours without seeing another player. Thats what grind sometimes take over from.

To sum everything up, and since we had a massive discord argument

Here are some solutions:
Make it faster post 20
Decrease death XP penalty
Add more (viable) areas
Make it fun

BGTSCC just doesnt respect your time when it comes to leveling. Not with the speed nor the fun it provides. Because if it was fun this thread wouldnt be 11 pages long, this argument not going on for years and we wouldnt have 4+ hour long discord arguments.

Leveling post 20 is pain. Many people even in this thread agree. It's far too much of a slog. There is no benefit to this. Beyond immersion which I'd say isnt worth it.

Death penalty only serves a singular purpose. To provide disincentive to leveling in other areas. I know this is obviously not the intent. In my opinion and experience the death penalty was so bad my solution to it was to grind till mobs gave me 5XP. Because the risk of death meant hours of my time would be absolutely wasted for no good reason whatsoever. The risk reward just made no sense.

Adding more variety to make it less of a bore in which you zone out into a near comatose state would be great.

Or even just so you can ICly RP it more. This doesnt mean making more areas. It can. But moreso making it easier to justify leveling in other zones. Removing XP penalty might actually do that to some degree.

It's not like it does anything of value.

Leveling being fun is a solution. It's a very vague idea. Some find it fun but if most did we'd not be here right now. How to make it fun? Man I dont know. But worth a mention.

[Steve]

. How to make it fun?

More and better rewards for role-play, beyond what “the grind” gives, so that the fun—which I assume IS the RP one comes to find on a Role-play Server—is where players spend their time, and reap from that investment, paying no attention to Level, but instead the momentary Character development.

[blazerules]

As discussed in the 4+ hours. And in my post.

People will always grind. This will not change unless there is 0 benefit to it (no XP gain and 0 money and gear gain). Heck people grind out when they cant find any RP but want to get some progress in.

I agree that we need more RP rewards too. It's all good to improve rewards for RP. Not only RP rewards but maybe additional stuff for people who participate on the forums with posts or something. Would definitely encourage new players to participate on the forums and with the community. And build up good habits really.

This does NOT mean the grind needs to be left as is. People will do it. There is absolutely no benefit to keeping it awful and unappealing for many people. Like mentioned some enjoy it but enough don't that once again this thread and conversation exists for years.

It should be made fun in some way. Only focusing on RP itself seems like an excuse to keep what is bad, bad.

[Steve]

It is bad…for some. For others, it’s not.

Focusing on RP and the moment in progression can alleviate the grind mentality.

[blazerules]

Making it less awful will just mean it will be bad for less people at the end of the day and improve it for people who don't mind it.

It being less bad for more people is more good.

Again as with the 4+ hour discussion. Nothing will remove the grind mentality.

And again.

How does this help when people dont find RP and just want to get some levels in when RP is unavailable (which is quite common)? Just leave because it's bad? Titanias friend left the game. So that's one new player we lost to it. It wont hurt to make improvements here. Because people will not be RPing 24/7. Getting more XP and rewards from RP wont help there.

Though I'll also admit I have no idea what "Focusing on RP and the moment in progression" means so I'm just guessing you mean more rewards for RP like I already mentioned or the whole "mentality" thing that means nothing. If you can elaborate on that thatd be great.

[Hydros]

Posting in Hoihe's stead:

Personally, when it comes to PVE, my frustrations lie more with older dungeon design than levelling outright.

Simply put, dungeons that are circles without beginning or end, dungeons where the only solution is increasing all your stats flat across the board with the only real counterplay that exists being UMD.

Server-side, the new vampire dungeon in high moors is an excellent example of what dungeons should be like instead. Its mobs have clear strengths and vulnerabilities that you can engage and exploit using priority of engagement, positionin using acrobatics/jump and havig a varied party that can exploit those vulnerabilities with critical effectiveness.

I have not seen any other dungeon with such variety of mobs on BGTSCC until the vampire dungeon. Most other dungeons, even if the mobs vary in theme, end up with vulnerabilities, if they even exist, that do not provide reward for proper counterplay.

If we made all our dungeons like the vampire one? Levelling and PvE would be far more fun!

Off-server, i want to point at NWNEE: Arelith.

Arelith to me has the best PvE design of all nwn servers.

Its PvE design is characterized primarily by having the entire map of mobs spawn ahead of time **once**, and only respawn once players left for at least 5 minutes.

This enables mobs to have flavourful setpieces for engaging the player, to wander and patrol and give rogues and others the opportunities to set up traps, ambushes and lure enemies into favourable engagements without them respawning right after makig your efforts moot.

It also uses "trashmobs", allowing for far more mobs to fight without making it overwhelming for the PCs. This is admittedly helped by NWNEE's attacks per round being lower.

Another thing Arelith does well is having specific (or at least a narrow category of) thematic rewards for specific dungeons.
Admittedly this requires crafting to really work, but it gives motivation and tangible reward for visiting specific places and organizing trips beyond an abstract notion of "loot."

E.g.: "I need a herb to make a potion of Heal. I will go to the gnolls in Arelith forest and get myself some escort to do so" (or adamantine and some epic dungeon and so forth).

Beyond this, there are also repeatable daily quests that point you to specific dungeons and pve areas to do patrols. These likewise help give context to your actions. The vampire dungeon here is likewise a promising sign that we may one day have similar.

Finally, healing is way cheaper in Arelith. I can carry like 80+ healkits there with a 10 base strength PC without having issues.

This means i am OK with getting hit, as i dont need expensive potions of Heal or vamp regen or long periods of waiting for regen cloaks.

On BG, with my heal mod of 16? I feel i have far too little healing compared to the damage output of mobs with my 9 base, 12 modified strength PC. I can carry like 20, maybe 30 heal kits (leaves me at 60 lbs) before I end up having difficulties actually having invenventory capacity to actually loot things (and unlike arelith where there are abundant jewelries and gems you can collect in reduced weight collectors, i primarily keep finding heavh shields and heavy armours anyway that i am forced to abandon.

Either reducing healing kit weight, increasing effectiveness of Cure style spells would be better.

We have a healing reserve feat now, but frankly it is useless at being capped at 50% HP. If i am 50% HP, i am retreating or chugging a Heal potion as I feel having HP under 200 (165 atm at lvl 25) is an express ticket to dying even with Parry and 50/56 AC.

The healing reserve feat could benefit from synergy with Augment healing and the Healing domain's Empower healing increasing its maximum capacity by 15% by feat (up to 80% when you invest domain and feat)

As an addendum, I agree with Blazerules that the XP penalty for wide level spread needs severe nerfing.

I participated in a greypeaks run at i thi k lvl 21 or 22 with a party of 30s. Sure, i got multiclass penalty but that does not justify getting under 10 xp if that per kill.

The level spread penalty makes it very difficult to do things with others, needlessly so.

Like sure, a difference of 20 levels is too much. But why is it a problem if i party with people 10 levels above me?

There are builds that outperform level 30s at 20. There are builds at 30 that are effectively level 15.

The range of allowed deviation from mean party level should be 15.

[EasternCheesE]

I try to read it, but sorry, too many thoughts and too few concrete implementable suggestions.

So far, i see such suggestions (i name person i see initially suggested it, not how many people suggested it)
1) Make all players lvl 30 with +3 starter gear (Tekill)
2) Make lvl 30th loose something on death (Steve)
3) Renown system where lvl 30 PCs can get some official positions, nobility etc (Steve)
4) Speed up IC request processing (Steve)
5) Speed up leveling (Blazerules)
6) More quests and only 1-time per character and reward more generously (Young Werther)
7) More maps (Well, many people told about that but not as main point)
8) Introductory system for new players (Illy)

Aside from many off-the-rails discussions, these are 8 suggestions i picked from 11 pages of sarcasm, blaming each other, being polite and so on.

And, okay, lemme give my vision on them one by one:
1) Make all players lvl 30 with +3 starter gear (Tekill)

Hidden: show

We totally can do it. But, there are few issues with this:
1. Need to remake all server areas in lore-unfriendly way. We will have lvl 30 bandits and demons just outside FAI gate cause everyone are lvl 30.
2. New players will suffer trying to level PC to lvl 30 right from day one. Which means people will constantly remake their PCs to adjust them. It's a 100% RCR scenario.
3. By lvl 30, many classes become very different in their source of power, their damage type and defense capabilities. lvl 30 barb/frenzied berserker playstyle is very different to some necromancer with his undead pets and save-or-die spells. Making an area that fits both is really hard without making it a REALLY challenging encounter like 10 mobs in room who themselves form a balanced party of rangers-mages-dps-tanks etc.
4. This eliminates all character progression. I myself have 5 PCs who all are 25+ lvl (3 of them are 30) and many of their game goals and connections were made way before level 30. Historically, i get less game and less fun once i get to lvl 30 because people have their own friends to play with and i myself am not charismatic or brave enough to get into their company easily.

2) Make lvl 30th loose something on death (Steve)

Hidden: show

For mechanical reasons, i myself am against forcibly deleveling any PCs cause this may backfire given how weird is game engine code when it comes to deleveling. But, it can be done as simple as putting drained level undispellable debuff that only goes away when PC gets N xp. But, will it actually be fun and will it boost RP?
What other Rp-friendly and fun consequences of dying can you invent?

3) Renown system where lvl 30 PCs can get some official positions, nobility etc (Steve)

Hidden: show

This is interesting and it requires a combined player-DM efforts. I know people don't trust DMs often and DMs often don't trust players, but, honestly, the more people try to RP and do stuff, the better things going, especially if said people apply to DM team so they have more free hands to do player requests.
Not much i can add from myself, honestly.

4) Speed up IC request processing (Steve)

Hidden: show

Pretty much same as 3). I believe DMs can chime in on 3-4 cause i lack expertise on what makes it processing requests and making people Duches so long/impossible.

5) Speed up leveling (Blazerules)

Hidden: show

This one has both pros and cons. Honestly, to me, levels 10-25 are much better than other levels cause RP is still here, people are here and there is something to do. Speeding this up makes "dead area" much closer and makes way less sense to even build many areas cause people will speedrun levels way before ever coming to one.

6) More quests and only 1-time per character and reward more generously (Young Werther)

Hidden: show

I'm all into more quests and i'll love to implement them. Just give lore-friendly scripts for quests. Xp rewards etc are discussible on case-by-case matters.

7) More maps (Well, many people told about that but not as main point)

Hidden: show

Map making is not an easy process, especially when it comes to PvE maps where we have to invent balance. If you want more maps faster, please submit yours and we will love to check and add them. Map making is not only reserved to Builders, we do accept player-made maps.

8) Introductory system for new players (Illy)

Hidden: show

Pretty much same as 6). Please give us a quest line with texts and it can be done.

In general, it's hard to cater to everyone given people can't decide what they consider important and get consensus on it even before asking staff to do it.
The closer player team (and i wasn't among staff at that moment) been to be united and constructive is "BGTSCC takeover" event where we managed to get list of concerns and wish-we-had that staff was able to work on. I remember there were few points written by myself as well.

After reading this all, as a Dev and QC, i either got a list of things that have pretty clear immediate drawbacks that need to be thought about and polished or a lot of non-concrete feelings that i cannot get full idea of, thus, cannot implement them.
Please, try to keep your ideas as suggestions and systems that you though of pros/cons, it's way easier for QC and Dev team (and, i believe, DM team as well) to process and check them.

But, as i said many times, our real issue is not lack of ideas, it's lack of hands. There are about 600 dead threads in QC archives that had bright ideas just because there was noone to make them happen.
Some finally made their way in like cosmopolitan feats which, after 2 iterations, completely changed the way BGTSCC skills work.
Please, not only suggest, try to analyze and DO make things that make your bright ideas possible.
I am more than ready to check and discuss and point pros/cons of any idea that relates to our game mechanics (or explain why it's impossible if it's the case), but every "make leveling better" gives nothing because we know what issue is, give us the idea on how to fix it exactly and we discuss it.


P.S. I made a post before Hoihe's feeback, but lemme add that while having some issues, it clearly points what her issues are and ways she would like them addressed. If this goes to work, it's not guaranteed that we will address them in exactly the way she told it (as they can have their own underlying issues that need to be solved), but it's something that is good to start working off.

[MrSmith]

We can just get it over with and have a double XP weekend once a month where everyone logs in to grind together.

I'm not seriously suggesting this btw.

Actually, this is a way to validate whether or not the server population (or reported loss there of) is proportional to XP opportunities (DM Events, Reversal of the Retreat Clause driven by Voodoo Statistics , etc.).

I was genuinely excited to find this server during the early days of COVID. I am committed to the server as a result.

I reached out and invited friends to join the server so we could grind together, and they did. Then the loot system changed. Then Voodoo Statistics were used to nerf popular areas (Wyverns & Trolls). These two topics alone were fodder for passionate forum posts... Unfortunately, my friends quit the server in part (not entirely) because of these changes. I continued to play.

I have read repeatedly that BGTSCC is a RP centric server. I disagree.

That said, I do believe the staff and other invested players want BGTSCC to be an RP centric. Occasional DM events do not make an RP centric server. If the staff wants to use statistics to drive server evolution... I would recommend starting with the percentage of RP centric events or opportunities on the server vs. the rest of the time where a player could log into the server during their downtime to experience the server content. I would wager a gentleman's bet it's roughly a 1:1000 ratio. Granted, this swag is my version of Voodoo Statistics... nevertheless, based on my observations I am not far off.

So, what does this have to do with leveling? It's simple. Decide whether the server is going to cater to RP, Grinding, or Both. Once the staff makes this decision, then tailor the leveling experience relative to the server's focus. Reward the behaviors you want to see! Once you decide, please let the rest of us know. I for one would like to see the server accommodate both.

Cheers!

[Young Werther]

We can just get it over with and have a double XP weekend once a month where everyone logs in to grind together.

I'm not seriously suggesting this btw.

Actually, this is a way to validate whether or not the server population (or reported loss there of) is proportional to XP opportunities (DM Events, Reversal of the Retreat Clause driven by Voodoo Statistics , etc.).

It would be a fascinating experiment that I agree. But pressuring people to play during a certain timeframe is something I feel is worth resenting. A more one size fits all solution is best.

[Young Werther]

I try to read it, but sorry, too many thoughts and too few concrete implementable suggestions.

So far, i see such suggestions (i name person i see initially suggested it, not how many people suggested it)
1) Make all players lvl 30 with +3 starter gear (Tekill)
2) Make lvl 30th loose something on death (Steve)
3) Renown system where lvl 30 PCs can get some official positions, nobility etc (Steve)
4) Speed up IC request processing (Steve)
5) Speed up leveling (Blazerules)
6) More quests and only 1-time per character and reward more generously (Young Werther)
7) More maps (Well, many people told about that but not as main point)
8) Introductory system for new players (Illy)

Great job finding all that lol. You should include the thought of reverting changes such as those mentioned in the OP and the loot nerf.