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

The decision was not Avernus Shop or Fairy shop or Neutral shop, the decision was Avernus shop or no shop. QC approved based on it's own merits.

Same with Tommy Shackles...

Same with RWoT....


Developers will work on what interests them, or what has been requested by someone, usually in a friendly, pretty please manner. QC, nor anyone else on these forums gets to tell an area designer, developer, scripter, etc. what to work on. They go through the countless threads in the public, QC and I am sure through DM and Developers forums and they pick up those things they wish to work on. This is why I said back toward the beginning of the thread, if you have someone you know with such a skillset it helps, because you have to find someone to pick up the work, that is a much bigger hurdle than getting anything reviewed by QC. You'll get more bee's with honey then vinegar though, so if you want to approach by playing the favoritism card I am not sure how much support you will find from those with the ability to assist you.

to provide more context, Tommy Shackles was the next step from the Northern Barbarian merchant in BG, providing low level epic gear, Mreider did pretty much all the work to put together the lore, build the merchant and everything. After that, Tfunke came up with the Avernus shop, it's in Avernus because he had the area built and wanted to utilize it. RWoT was a faction request that they spent a great deal of time on. Point being, each of these was it's own unique scenario and it boils down to what was at hand at the time. Had the response to Tfunke been 'love the store idea, but don't want to use Avernus' then the result would probably have been NO STORE, and then at least some of the items in the RW shop would probably not be available as well. For good or bad, that's the situation. The decision has been to open up the ability for players to obtain epic items so we have proceeded forward based on that directive. Should anyone step forward willing to do the work to make a store that you get to by planewalking to the happy hunting grounds or whatever, that will be reviewed and considered on it's own merit as well.

Easy enough solution... play neutral characters. Exo may seem like a good guy IG but he is not, he is neutral and militant about it as well.

i have a problem solver. put a shop in mount celestia's jovar. battle achons, solors and asuras on your way up the golden staircase of Yetsirah. where at a balcony one can purchase epic items.

there you go.. paladins can have their cake. oh... but what about all those archons you killed. oh yea sorry about that.

hey but that would give a spot for epic evil toons to hack for fun. or is that favoritism?

That sounds good actually... awesome idea.

V'rass wrote:Easy enough solution... play neutral characters. Exo may seem like a good guy IG but he is not, he is neutral and militant about it as well.

This guy . . he knows how to roll. Yup, Neutral, ready to trade, Shekels is ready. Great proprietor, people know his name all around and he almost never shares his work unless it is an item he's willing to die for due to how much money is behind it.

With regard to the original question I've used the AFK tag for a fair number of OOC actions, including running across the surface as a drow after a server reset to get back to my RP. I've seen others do this for quests in the past and have never been bothered by it personally.

That said if it can be done IC it probably should be done IC. If you don't have access to a friend that can "find" items for your goodly character I could see using the AFK tag for these vendors being a reasonable thing. If it benefits the character that is buying the item you really should find a way to do it IC if you can.

Even so, using a mule is still allowed, and there's no real difference between holding an item to give to one of your other characters and buying an item on your character with money for your character without money. You should be covered by the rules if you want to buy from a questionable vendor, or do a questionable quest, in an OOC manner, and using the AFK tag is a great way to show that you're not currently IC. Just be sure you don't go charging through a well positioned group of talking people who are IC while you're OOC. The IC people should always take priority.

kkrazlite wrote:
Again not trying to fight your judgement but seeking to think us evil have it easy just because our RP allows us to access things for MECHANIC value. Good guys have always gotten the better deal towards SERVER RP/ PLOT value.

The good guys have always gotten the better deal in regards to the server plot?

I am going to recap for you the server plot of a saga stretching back years regarding the good guys and stuff I have been partied to over the years:


2008 - Early 2009 - The Age of Myth and Giants of Old performing deeds of legend.

Later 2009 - Interlude - More DMs are recruiting, nothing is properly recorded, and most everything special and important about the 2008 era is pilfered from the 2008 generation of players and warped and changed to suit the 2009 gang of friends.

2010-2011 - A corrupt regime institutes 'The Norton's Bastards' who indiscriminately grief everyone both good and evil. For some reason the outcome to this scenario wasn't to punish those responsible and then ensure fair play for all, instead former HDM Mr Rogers issued his 'Let Evil Win From Now On' decree.

Interlude - Apparently laying siege to the City of Baldur's Gate with an army of Thayans and an Undead Dragon was and is forgivable by the Grand Dukes of Baldur's Gate because the Thayans were allowed to set up proper after this time.

Interlude - The Amn-Gate War where evil ultimately wins since Beregost is still under the rotten heel of Amn. The Thieves Guild of Baldur's Gate massacre every man, woman and child in the village of Markhold and then ride off into the sunset never to be executed as they so rightfully deserve.

2012-2013 - 'The Triel Debacle'. Instead of the forces of good meeting the forces of evil to settle the dispute over one stupid little village this ugly series of events is dragged out over three years right into 2014, where the Village of Triel is massacred and sacked a half-dozen times, to which apparently people kept going back and living there each and every time, and then suffers the bubonic and black plague all rolled into one. Former DMs and staff members go out of their way to spite the Order of the Radiant Heart Auxiliary with the peasants of Triel thanking the Zhentarim for orchestrating their demise and gleefully leaving for Darkhold to be their willing slaves. Orphans gleefully and willingly run away from Baldur's Gate into the black gauntleted embrace of Zhentarim slave masters.

2014-2016 - For years I campaigned for the Detect Evil Paladin ability to be added to BGTSCC for Paladins, and this would be the era where players and staff would really abuse its absence. Not only is the Radiant Heart Auxiliary sanctioned under untenable circumstances by staff pushing the evil agenda further and further, we get three infiltrators and traitors who never got their just deserts.

James White disappeared for good when the gig was up, as did Beric Engel, and the Eliphas debacle was not only an illegal action, but the finale was a farce. We got group therapy instead of something heroic like this:





Then we have the Hitman Hard months of griefing and his bizarre slander campaign, followed by The Hunter of Vengeance debacle which was another illegal PVP incident which Golem refused to retcon because it made so many players on this server happy to grief my character and my faction.

The Hunters of Vengeance brigands again were never outlawed from Baldur's Gate. Hunting parties were never set up and they were not dragged in chains back to Baldur's Gate to face their well earned summary executions, and this faction built on an illegal PVP incident remains on the server today.

Instead all of it was swept under the rug, and my grievances were dismissed and ignored.

Now we move on to the Unholy Blight Campaign, at the end of it the stronghold of my faction was destroyed with the promise that it would be rebuilt new and proper, and not some wooden manor, over the course of two weeks at the end of the meta plot that year.

But it does not take two weeks, it takes two years (or five years if you count how long we had been trying to get a proper stronghold constructed in the face of Doron Amar being given an entire village, En Dharasha Everae an entire forest, and Krak Helzaak and entire Dwarven Kingdom, the Zhentarim an entire city devoted to evil), and the reconstruction is still on-going.


2017 - And now the punch line for my faction's beyond mighty efforts to restore the land to good in destroying the Avatar of Bhaal, destroying the Temple of Bhaal, defeating Klauth, destroying the Temple of Bane in the Wood of Sharp Teeth alongside the Elves of Doron Amar, and ten other things that I can't be bothered recapping on is that the Grand Dukes of Baldur's Gate are presented in 2017 as being even more corpulent and corrupt with another concession to evil with the trade deal with the Zhentarim.



Then there are the other facets of the situation that has plagued BGTSCC since its inception in 2008:

-Game mechanics have always favoured evil and neutral characters.

-The Paladin kits are still spell warrior buffers and a pale shadow of what the arch type is supposed to be in the lore. All of this was done in spite of my years of efforts to gain some semblance of game mechanics that actually match the class as it is presented in the stories and the lore. And I was the one who instigated the great class kit game mechanic shift in the first place with my thread on the forums in 2016. There is still no martial Paladin, no Holy Knight in the image of the AD&D Paladin arch type.

I have privately messaged Rasael several times about the Holy Warrior Focus Path feat that I was told was approved and I can only surmise I am being ignored.

The Paladin Kit I posted was also approved, only apparently the staff are suddenly short of hands in implementing it yet they have no shortage of hands to full on create new classes like the Phantom, and make changes to other classes like the Barbarian and the Swashbuckler that actually are improvements to those classes.


Now moving on to the great myth that BGTSCC caters to the good guys and the bad guys never get nothing?


The last time I checked the list of active factions, it looked like this:

The Good Guys who actually are willing to fight:

The Order of the Radiant Heart Auxiliary
The Order of the Silver Rose


The Bad Guys:

The Zhentarim
The Ebon Blades+The Hunters of Vengeance
The Sword Coast Commercial Exchange
The Darius Holding Company
The Thayan Enclave
The Coven of Darkness
The Entire city of Sshamath

And there are at least a half dozen other lesser groups with ties to those above.



As you can see this great myth perpetrated on BGTSCC about the server being full of good guys doesn't hold up to any amount of scrutiny. The server is overrun with villainous characters, and it should come as no surprise that this is the same state of affairs it has always been held under by.


And finally as for the Epic Vendors being "themed", the last time I took my character down to the shop in Avernus with an AFK tag over his head, all or at least most of the gear in there was just properties with no lore descriptions on them at all.

Okay who told Atlas!

Atlas wrote: The Bad Guys:

The Zhentarim
The Ebon Blades+The Hunters of Vengeance
The Sword Coast Commercial Exchange
The Darius Holding Company
The Thayan Enclave
The Coven of Darkness
The Entire city of Sshamath

And there are at least a half dozen other lesser groups with ties to those above.

Damn metagamers!

You've heard it here guys, The Zhentarim guild is showered with DM favoritism. Who wouldn't want to reap the benefits of something like that!?

Wow...interesting post I guess.

There are a couple of things that slipped through the cracks. The shops' location aint one. I am certain if the epic shop was in Arvandor and a player had to kiss all fey in order to get there, there would be at least one player who would think we favor the good aligned. It happens all the time. Epic sneak items are introduced, we favor sneakers. SBs get Epic Precision we are anti-sneak, the epic shop is located in Avernus we are favoring the evil and so on. For every decision there will be some who complain.

Without a doubt, The nwn2 community has always had a damned if you do damned if you don't mentality. If this was just one shop i would be willing to concede to this point, But its not. Its every epic shop so far added. Now i don't actually have an issue with the location, I have an issue with the fact its still a Devil when it was going to be shifted to a planeswalking wizard.

That is fine and in a way expected based on what has happened in the past. No matter how much you are complaining though, one thing wont change. A devs desire to create a new shop. If anything it will create the opposite. Why would any dev would go through all the stages required to complete a shop, only to read comments like the ones in the Tomy's and Avernus threads.

So ye, you can be kind or whatever you like. Nobody cares. Shouting favoritism when there is none though, aint helping.

I shouldn't have to shout favoritism or anything of the sort, Balance between alignments should have been taken into account. The shop should have already had a skin change and an update to the conversation, As was agreed in the early topic. Now if that's something you have no one to do, You send me the blueprints/conversation and i will have that done right away.

A forum mod can lock this thread, Its degraded enough into some off topic rant.

Ariella wrote:

There are a couple of things that slipped through the cracks. The shops' location aint one. I am certain if the epic shop was in Arvandor and a player had to kiss all fey in order to get there, there would be at least one player who would think we favor the good aligned. It happens all the time. Epic sneak items are introduced, we favor sneakers. SBs get Epic Precision we are anti-sneak, the epic shop is located in Avernus we are favoring the evil and so on. For every decision there will be some who complain.

Without a doubt, The nwn2 community has always had a damned if you do damned if you don't mentality. If this was just one shop i would be willing to concede to this point, But its not. Its every epic shop so far added. Now i don't actually have an issue with the location, I have an issue with the fact its still a Devil when it was going to be shifted to a planeswalking wizard.

That is fine and in a way expected based on what has happened in the past. No matter how much you are complaining though, one thing wont change. A devs desire to create a new shop. If anything it will create the opposite. Why would any dev would go through all the stages required to complete a shop, only to read comments like the ones in the Tomy's and Avernus threads.

So ye, you can be kind or whatever you like. Nobody cares. Shouting favoritism when there is none though, aint helping.

I shouldn't have to shout favoritism or anything of the sort, Balance between alignments should have been taken into account. The shop should have already had a skin change and an update to the conversation, As was agreed in the early topic. Now if that's something you have no one to do, You send me the blueprints/conversation and i will have that done right away.

Valefort and I were brainstorming this subject (before the topic came up here on the forums actually) and our idea was to have this planeswalking wizard show up at High Hedge one day a month or something and sell the Avernus shop content there (maybe he's visiting Thalantyr off of a fresh trip from Avernus and resells things he bought from the devil). This alleviates accessibility concerns for both level and alignment and makes a fair deal more sense to me than a normal wizard who just lives his entire life in some tower in Avernus selling wares to random adventurers who stumble in.

That said, if it's decided this change is adequate then it will be made when it's made. We have no shortage of developer hands but the simple fact of the matter is this is not currently a priority fix. We have a lot of content to work through at the moment and we're doing it as best as we can and trying to do it with some semblance of order.

Whether or not the DMs wish to allow an OOC exemption in the mean time is up to them, but my experience would lead me to personally advise against it since historically speaking these temporary exemptions cause quite a fuss among the player base when they're eventually rescinded (re: 100% RCR).

Atlas wrote: The Bad Guys:

The Entire city of Sshamath

Hey! We're not all bad! Some of us would be more than willing to assist in your goodly efforts, so long as you have the coin.

Side wrote:

Atlas wrote: The Bad Guys:

The Entire city of Sshamath

Hey! We're not all bad! Some of us would be more than willing to assist in your goodly efforts, so long as you have the coin.

that whole shall not consult nor work with known evil creatures (that half the so called paladins on the server ignore) rule might limit that.

A true dnd/pnp Paladin is by far the hardest class to play on the server. Try it out, its harder then playing an full Orc.