Reliance on consumables/UMD as THE paradigm on BGTSCC

[zhazz]

I think, perhaps, saying something is "the most like pnp" is pretty subjective. There are rules in pop for high level characters to run baronies, manage trade costers, etc. I dont know if a really hard dungeon is really the closest thing to pnp that can be found here. Id say it is not.

And therein lies the difference that causes the split in the playerbase. Some folks see dungeon running, killing things and taking their loot, as the key aspect of dungeons & dragons. Some see the stories made possible through the mechanics as the key aspect of dungeons & dragons.

But both sides need gold and treasures, because guilds, assets, and roleplay often costs as much gold or more than a shiny ninja hood.

When we balance end game content around "well you should take this level split and these feats", we take away any variance that may come up in roleplay and treat it more like an MMO doing 'raids' than a role-playing game building stories.

You can see the outcome of that based on the state of RP on the server right now. Anyone saying its as good as its ever been is clearly blowing smoke or hasn't experienced some of the best times.

There is a meta understanding of "what works" mechanically and it seems to me that what works is becoming more cookie cutter and methodical and less organic and story-based.

This UMD/Consumables discussion is just a symptom of it.

That’s a fair point. Let me try to rephrase to be clearer.

I think, unlike an MMO, the combat mechanics of 3.5 D&D, are more balanced around a group of players than a single player. There’s a lot of variety in individual builds but the relative power levels are less important when they act in support of each other instead of alone.

So going through a dungeon during PnP is maybe not exclusively, but almost exclusively meant to be a team effort.

So in PnP, dungeons are designed to be tackled by a group, and the challenges are set appropriately.

It’s not that easier or harder gameplay specifically is more or less similar to a PnP experience, but playing as a group is more similar to a PnP experience than soloing is.

My argument, which I admit is subjective, is that a satisfying group experience can be fostered by areas like the Netherese ruins where relying on one’s teammates and supporting each other is necessarily part of the experience.

Grouping, and gameplay in general, is more fun when everyone has a chance to shine in their respective roles. Tanks cans tank, DPS can DPS, priests can keep everyone on their feet, and casters can have the opportunity to unleash a variety of fight changing spells depending on the situation. And in that group dynamic you don’t have to be the best or most powerbuilt character. Just adequate in whatever role you’re performing. The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts, to steal a phrase from Aristotle.

As a counterpoint I’d say like the least satisfactory experience is going on a run with a couple of archers who kill everything before it gets near you. Not that I’m disparaging archers, they have their own issues. Just that it’s an example of a situation where the game gets boring for the other players because they’re not actually doing anything.

If every area is soloable then by epics you lose the a large part of the fun of grouping. Everything becomes a speed run.

In my experience, Sigil has handled this aspect of balancing decently. It's not a perfect solution, but it does allow for customization of the content.

Essentially they have implemented four difficulties, which any player can toggle between at will. In a group the lowest difficulty set by any player is used. While I cannot remember the names of the difficulties, they essentially correspond to: Easy, Normal, Challenging, Hard.

When monsters spawn in they are chosen based on the difficulty, with Easy selecting from the lower rungs of the area appropriate monsters, while Hard selects from the very top. This means that a CR22 area can have an actual CR range of anywhere from 19 to 28. Each tier of difficulty lowers/increases the effective CR by 3.

On Easy it is mostly melee monsters, while on Hard it is a lot of spell casters, archers, and really tough melee monsters. Even bosses are affected by the difficulty setting, where some boss encounters add/remove bosses to them, while others simply increase/lower the CR of the boss or bosses in an area.

Consequently the experience and loot gained from these monsters also change in accordance with the difficulty. Not to extreme measures, but enough so that it is worthwhile to play on a higher difficulty, if you can handle it.

I have suggested this before on this forum, and I'll suggest it again:
Allow for playerside adjustment of difficulty. Not only will it effectively instantly quadruple the number of areas on the server (by virtue of having more CR appropriate areas), it will also allow for mechanically weaker characters to experience more of the endgame content, while also upping the challenge presented to mechanically stronger characters.

[gedweyignasia]

When we balance end game content around "well you should take this level split and these feats", we take away any variance that may come up in roleplay and treat it more like an MMO doing 'raids' than a role-playing game building stories.

It's inevitable that our server will look more like an MMO than a PnP adventure because the world cannot surprise its players very often; they revisit dungeons. Visiting the same area as a routine is what changes these dynamics. A scripted, single-use adventure could do a lot of interesting things, but we can't do that.

[Steve]

When we balance end game content around "well you should take this level split and these feats", we take away any variance that may come up in roleplay and treat it more like an MMO doing 'raids' than a role-playing game building stories.

It's inevitable that our server will look more like an MMO than a PnP adventure because the world cannot surprise its players very often; they revisit dungeons. Visiting the same area as a routine is what changes these dynamics. A scripted, single-use adventure could do a lot of interesting things, but we can't do that.

I disagree. It is entirely possible to sit down and design BGTSCC so that a Player could RP a single toon through Levels 1-30 and visiting all Areas JUST ONCE to achieve Level 30.

I myself attempted this with the current BGTSCC design, twice, over the years.

Obviously, I failed to reach Level 30 both times because of reduced inspiration in the Characters over time, but my attempt showed that the foundation is there, and it COULD be possible, with some conscious redesign.

I was hoping that the Loot Rebalance would help with reducing loot grinding overall, but now I’m seeing that it likely promotes it, or at least, promotes constant revisiting of Areas for that “great item” gain.

[Steve]

And D. ...(you're going to hate this one Steve)... he's level 30, and if I'm solo and happen to croak: *re-spawn at FAI*

Damn you Snarfbot!

All deaths at a Level 30 should take the PC down to Level 29. That there is no penalty for dying after reaching Level 30 is A (do-me) JOKE!

A (do-me) BULLSHIT JOKE!!

[Valefort]

No, it reduces the amount of time to get good loot compared to the previous one. But as was already explained in a loot thread you will still need to open lots of chests because gear is a key factor for replayibility.

[gedweyignasia]

It's inevitable that our server will look more like an MMO than a PnP adventure because the world cannot surprise its players very often; they revisit dungeons. Visiting the same area as a routine is what changes these dynamics. A scripted, single-use adventure could do a lot of interesting things, but we can't do that.

I disagree. It is entirely possible to sit down and design BGTSCC so that a Player could RP a single toon through Levels 1-30 and visiting all Areas JUST ONCE to achieve Level 30.

This would mean a dramatic decrease in the leveling time or a hundredfold increase in content; preferably a compromise between the two. That doesn't make it practical, however. There are drawbacks to that design which make it unsuitable for this sort of server. Players could speed through 1-30 in no time if leveling is much faster (there are already some who manage to grind at an astounding pace), and unless players can only benefit from visiting a dungeon once (which would make adventuring as a party unlikely or impossible) many would still choose to re-visit the same dungeon.

It's simply not practical to design a PW the same as a DM-run PnP session. It would not work well. In PnP, players deplete content; they exhaust the world of its enemies and adventures. In a PW, the content must be available for future players or it must be generated at an impossible rate. There's a fundamental difference here which limits our designs.

It poses huge challenges, because it means puzzles have to either be trivial after the first adventure (e.g. Durlag's Tower) or frustratingly obscure (e.g. Ulcaster Ruins). It means we can't tell stories that the players are part of, because they would deplete that content for the next players or they would find it meaningless. We can tell stories that took place before the players arrived in order to provide an interesting setting for PCs to create their own stories, but anything else has to be routine, repeatable, automatic, unchanging. Some of our quests try to skirt this design a little, but it's an absurd, nonsensical performance; you wind up with a parade of adventurers collecting orc chieftains' heads.

Please try to consider this from a design perspective: Players are not obliged to follow your (the designer's) script. If it is advantageous for them not to, it will become popular to wander from the prescribed path. When the ones who gain an advantage from wandering from the prescribed path interact with the ones who do not, it's frustrating for the "well-behaved" players. So you have to (i) design content to be suitable for players who use it as designed, and (ii) you occasionally need to put some guardrails on the design so that people who seek to exploit the system are not "unfairly" rewarded. Adding more dungeons is an example of (i), making quests only repeatable once per week is an example of (ii).

Anyway, I hope this long rant on design philosophy has helped you to see how I think about things when I'm trying to build. I did a lot of thinking on this sort of thing when I was designing Ulcaster Ruins, and started giving it some more thought when Ariella suggested something new (project in the early stages; it'll be announced when it's nearing completion).

[Steve]

No, it reduces the amount of time to get good loot compared to the previous one. But as was already explained in a loot thread you will still need to open lots of chests because gear is a key factor for replayibility.

I am still hopeful to experience what you say! But damn...I’m burning through A LOT of consumables and UMD just to find out.

[Steve]

Choosing to revisit a dungeon vs having to in order to adventure/level are simply two different things.

What is wrong with slowly down leveling? What is the point in a system where everyone is Level 30 with no where to go? Is the end goal just to get better gear?

Nonetheless, the topic is getting off track the OP. Let me just say that I appreciate the design work everyone is doing, and maybe it is simply that so many leftovers from the past are present still, it is difficult to exist in the transition, because it doesn’t quickly appear there are guiding principles at work. Maybe share that as well to the player base?

I still think that powers that be should consider the reliance on consumables and UMD, and whether that improves or actually hinders players grinding, soloing, grouping, power building.

There are changes that can be made!

[EasternCheesE]

Just a small addition to power levels.
I myself played monk/warlock (which is pretty terrible synergy of classes, but speedz!). I teamed up with ranger/cleric PC. We both were about our lvl 21-23 when we went and killed green dragon, frost king and ziggurat black dragon in one day.
It was very tough and we only survived because of tons of heals and regeneration so ranger/cleric could shoot while i was tanking with my word of changing.
I guess we both were a sort of powerbuilds, because warlocks get huge power spike when they get access to word of changing.
E.G., we spent about 20 minutes to kill Ziggurat black dragon and my PC was nearly dead more than 15 times, cause he was chugging all the incoming damage keeping boss busy. That's where cleric regen and heal spells saved the day.
As of balance, there was a fun thing happened at Graypeaks. We went in, we killed everything on our way, we killed fire giant chief, then we tried balor and fled. And then, on our way back, we got a fire giant spellcaster, who buffed himself and nearly killed both of us. That was a regular mob, not a boss. And it made us way more trouble than fire giant chief (we had to just run out from the area hoping we can do it).
That sounds weird to me from gameplay point of view (regular spellcaster mob being more dangerous than fire chief and all his minions together), but that was refreshing experience and an unlucky coincidence (we used all our buffs when fighting balor), which led us two going from "Holy shit, we are so strong, nothing can stop us" to be beaten and getting off our high horse.

But, the idea is that neither me nor that PC could even solo frost keep/ziggurat (even without bosses) reliably, while in two we only found it impossible to kill Balor, most of other CR 25 content was totally doable. I actually loved that rp and that adventure, because it was high risk and good challenge, but not "one shot and you are dead" or "one shot and all the enemies dead.

I have no idea how can builder make a risky challenge for every class set, for 1-6 players so it doesn't become impossible for solo and also not becoming an easy walk for a party of 6. I guess, if monster spawns were very related to PC quantity, that could do the job, but not that completely. Warlocks are AoE cannons and the more enemies are here, the better they show their potential, thus, simply scaling mob quantity won't do the trick.
I don't mean scripting wise, i mean logically, i can't imagine a system that won't be super complex and being able to provide ~same challenge for solo player and group of 6 in the same area.

I just feel like the easiest way to do so is to make separate dungeons designed for solo/duo play and introducing some "nightmare" mode places where solo play was never planned. Just like many MMO do. They have some areas which are specifically designed for N players with N level to be passable.
Also, having some areas relying on different aspects of classes would help too. Say, you have a dungeon full of deadly repeater traps. You can only slowly chug them on your way forward drinking all the health pots you got, or get a rogue. Same for ranged mobs staying behind the bars so only archers/wizards can take them down etc. Powerbuilds are still pretty narrow in terms of their effectiveness and there are always things at which some regular rogue can do better than powerbuilt weapon master etc.