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

There are a lot of prior 30s who are in the middle of their 50th RCR and aren't back to 30.

I feel like someone who thinks they need to be level 30 to be involved in events hasn't tried to be involved in many events. The DM's tend to do a pretty great job IMO of making stuff accessible to everyone regardless of level, whether it's through skill checks/rolls, tailoring jobs to various levels of PC's, or other things. Most of the time, everyone gets some chance to shine.

Aspect of Sorrow wrote:There are a lot of prior 30s who are in the middle of their 50th RCR and aren't back to 30.

*Coughs* All the hair styles! Its a hopeless addiction, I tell ya! Yes, I did it again just for the newest hair. I'll get back to thirty...and then likely start all over for that bald head Fury was talking about

Valefort wrote: This is not clear. What is "playing a character" to you ? Because for me it systematically implies adventuring as this is D&D. I take it that the power loss from going from 30 to 20 hurts when you're simply changing an existing character to take into account changes but this is the occasion to explore new areas, experiment and meet new people, far from a curse.

The occasion "to explore new areas, experiment, meet new people” works if this is an alt I’m talking about. I’m quite happy to RCR alts if it really needs to come to that, and go with the flow with regard to their character concept development (this is probably why they are alts to begin with!). But not so for my main of mains, if you will. Such a character has way too much emotions and time invested to reach a clear character/RP concept with certain attained power and backstory. To simply RCR with a loss of 10 epic levels and, to repeat myself ad nauseam, spend inordinate amounts of time to regain that 10 levels is just not going to work for me, all things factored in. Much as I enjoy this game, the logical, pragmatic side of my brain screams "don’t do it!”. Yet the server releases updates on occasion that are highly relevant to my character (in this case the Dragon Disciple class), hence the conflict.

Just for the record, to some of the comments upthread: I’ve only participated directly in at most 2 DM events in my 7 years here. My time zone is not exactly player- or DM-heavy. Also, I don’t feel I need to be level 30, or be an epic character, in order to meaningfully participate in DM events (I don’t know where that came from!).

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I think we can all agree that there is no objective, universally shared criteria to what qualifies as an enjoyable play experience. It is a very individual thing. Different strokes, different folks, as they say. Some enjoy repeating the level 20 to 30 process via innumerable RCRs, while others don’t — and both with subjectively valid reasons within their own respective contexts.

This server, as I understand, aspires to cater to all play styles and to facilitate enjoyment for everyone, without imposing any one particular play style or preference.

So far I’ve not heard any arguments justifying the cap-at-20 RCR system specifically, but plenty of arguments justifying the ‘ideal' play experience. However, as I said, play experience and what qualifies as enjoyment is subjective. Chad offered a reason for the cap-at-20 RCR upthread (3b20) but I’ve already offered a solution to that.

The server has been willing to be pragmatic before, and has slain several what would have been considered sacred cows on other servers, such as muling and ILR. Why shouldn't the cap-at-20 RCR be the next sacred cow to slay?

(Yay! Finally my 100th post... after joining the forum in 2010 lol )

Zyx wrote:The Polvich plot is not tailored for level 5s, it is not tailored for level 15s. These encounters are for level 30s. Do I

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One of my characters participated in Polvich plot with a companion. Both are under 30, and my char was under 25. Achieved their objectives and lived to tell the tale without ever going down. Just two characters.

If you want to avoid situations where half of the epics on the server are present in the event, meaning DMs are going to need out bring out the big guns and supreme "immune to everything hit sponge + infinity", avoid events with more than 6 people in it.

However, my late non-magical archer participated in a "troll slaughter in troll claws" event without ever going down in it, and contributing a lot of damage - without being an epic level at that moment.

So, you should be able to pull your weight in BIG events past level 15, if you play it smart. Level 30, however, is the point where you should strongly consider killing of your character instead. Because past that point getting involved into something is significantly harder.

I'm surprsied to learn that there are people on bgtscc who think that level restricts them from events. While it is true that at level 1 you will not be able to participate in an epic battle royale, DMs run events for low level chars on occasion, and you can ping DM team to request those.

I still do dislike leveling process, but your perception of the situation is simply incorrect.

Zyx wrote: I think if people could just play with their friends and do things

you can already do that, and it was done before. THere were multiple occurrences where people started "weekly group" with characters only used in that group and went progressing. Typically those groups dissolve past level 8, one or two made it into level 14, but they do get DM attention.

For example, my group was clearing a DM dungeon at level 2 or 3, where I was playing a sorcerer.

Basically... it would seem that you made up your mind that you can't do a thing if you're not of certain level, and because of that you might not be actively pursuing plots, etc. Drop the idea, and see if the situation changes.

@Flame of anor, ok I think in your case a full exp refund is the solution. I would ping the DMs and explain the situation; new content that fits your existing RP much better than what was previously available seems like a valid reason to me.

the_flame_of_anor wrote:However, as I said, play experience and what qualifies as enjoyment is subjective. Chad offered a reason for the cap-at-20 RCR upthread (3b20) but I’ve already offered a solution to that.

The solution where we further put administrative work on to DMs both on forums and in game to review, approve and administer free rcr? Generally something we avoid since asy times DMs spend there entire login period fixing issues and addressing administrative tasks already, compounding that is adding to the problem and thus a poor solution. You already started you've rarely been in DM events and i habe similar experience. Personally i find it unfair to cause more of the same by adding more non - story building related work. There are other issues with over 20 rcr such as leveling up with able learner than rcr'ing to gain an extra feat such as with assassin builds that use it so they can take 8 levels and gain HiPS asap then go back with rcr and alternate levels so as not to require able learner. Just one example, the point is rcr over level 20 carries many exploits.

Final point. RCR to change a build impacts the rp of other players. If there were no cost it hurts rp. Thus arguing to support multiple pay styles is not a valid argument for a change when it adversely impacts other play styles.

EDIT: Also, @Zanniej, can you look at our mobile support? Posts such as this one cause user to be unable to select submit without editing

You should just give up on 3b20 anyway, because it fails to do what it's supposed to. 5b30 would make a lot more sense if you really wanted to limit things (OK would require slight change to one class IIRC, but that's a very small problem). Or just remove it.

There are a lot more effective ways to prevent power builds if that was really the objective.

Thorsson wrote:You should just give up on 3b20 anyway, because it fails to do what it's supposed to. 5b30 would make a lot more sense if you really wanted to limit things (OK would require slight change to one class IIRC, but that's a very small problem). Or just remove it.

There are a lot more effective ways to prevent power builds if that was really the objective.

The issue is builds already exist base on 3b20 so changing to 5b30 would require another massive RCR period with allowances made for players who are currently on a break. As I said on page 1, moving to 3b30 has been previously discussed and was decided against. No rule will ever STOP power builds, all it does is change the definition of a power-build. We could implement the most complex, difficult to understand rules on the planet and there would still exist a set of 'tiers' for the various legal builds. If we lowered the level limit to 15 Gishes would become lower tiered, casters would overall be a bit less powerful, while Rogue/Assassin type builds would be more powerful and some fighter types would be very strong. If we added a bunch of full immunity items and increased the max EB non-casters would be a bit stronger. If we implemented 5b30 more care would be needed when building things like a HiPS mage or any caster that takes non-caster progression or less than full caster progression classes. However, there would still exist a set of 'builds' that are notably more powerful.

End of the day 3b20 has been a rules since before I joined the server and provides for a building experience unique to BG. Unless there is a compelling reason to change it, I doubt the decision would be made to do so.

5b30 would also make gishes with infinitely small cls suffer even more :S.

Gishes should suffer - it's good for their soul.

OFC 5b30 would cause all sorts of problems - I was merely pointing out that 5b30 would actually be a lot more restrictive on PBs than 3b20 is (as confirmed by Hoihe). The only merit to 3b20 seems to be "it's always been that way". Except this is no longer a defence, as many, many things have been changed.

What I'm saying is that BGTSCC has a set of rules and "mores" that have grown haphazardly over time and they don't fit together well, e.g. RCR and 3b20; e.g. no power building, but loads of power builds.

Really it needs re-thinking from base and a set of logical imperatives turned into a coherent set of rules. However, this won't happen, because in actuality many people are trying to preserve their character's power and indeed enhance it.

Hence RCR30. We went through this before, but with no penalty a level 30 FS at 1200 can be a level 30 Bard at 1300. I would not like to speculate why people are asking for it again.

chad878262 wrote: Final point. RCR to change a build impacts the rp of other players. If there were no cost it hurts rp. Thus arguing to support multiple pay styles is not a valid argument for a change when it adversely impacts other play styles.

While I take your point about the various exploits, I would have to disagree with this. The current RCR system will still give rise to your concern about flippant RCR's adverse impact on other's RP.

What my opening post suggests is a RCR system that is friendlier for late epics who, for character/RP or pragmatic reasons or both, can't bring themselves to go through the "chore" of re-levelling their epic levels all over again. I even suggested a 1mil gold payment for such a system. I don't think people will just throw away 1mil gold to change their builds on a whim (which, as your concern goes, adversely affects others RP).

And even if they do so, this is a self-selecting process, isn't it? Such players will just end up playing more with fellow RP-lite players. The more serious RPers will probably avoid them like a plague. I believe we already have such player-segmentations in our community, but hey, we try to be tolerant of all play styles, right?

My earlier points on play styles were in response to Valefort's question to me. As mentioned above, whether RCR 50% or 100%, you are still going to get some people who would RCR on a whim, just at different character levels and at different stages of their RP.

I personally think a solid middle ground would be to allow for 100% RCR if you haven't done it in 6 months. There's enough custom content added/changed on a regular basis here that I would like to not have to just make a new character to experience.

I definitely took advantage of the RCR period recently to be able to take skills that didn't exist back when I started levelling my character like some of the split lore skills and escape artist, even though nothing major about my character concept changed - it was just that instead of having some filler points with nothing good to spend them on, I could instead use them on RP oriented skills.

Winterborne wrote:I personally think a solid middle ground would be to allow for 100% RCR if you haven't done it in 6 months. There's enough custom content added/changed on a regular basis here that I would like to not have to just make a new character to experience.

why didn't i think of this?
nope.. wanna play them all at the same time