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

There are two threads about death exp one about high level PC's one about low level Pc's. So I made this thread with my suggestion, since I do think death exp penalty needs to get dropped down a bit.

Before posting comments here there are a few things people need to keep in mind. Pretend that your a new player on this server, you don't know any one out of character, you don't know about the quests, what areas to go to. So that means you don't know how to use certain quests to your advantage or have people speed level you from level one.

Now ignoring quests, which if they bug out you have no choice to. Lets say for sake of simplicity your making roughly forty experience per a kill. Assuming that it takes you fifteen seconds to kill a monster, with another ten seconds to find another. So each monster roughly takes twenty five seconds to kill.

At a lower level of say three you would lose 300 experience points which would take you roughly three minutes to get it back. That is excluding time spent running back to a mob from town, or time it takes your party to resurrect you. It's not so bad if you actually make forty experience every twenty five seconds.

What this does at a lower level is discourage exploration at a lower level if you don't know the server. Lets say I die at the wolves then go north towards hill and skeletons kill me, now my recovery time is six minutes.

Where a hundred experience loss per a level really becomes brutal is when you go into high levels. When you start its only a thousand experience that is required to hit level two, but each level almost doubles experience required to level.

Using the 25 seconds per a kill at forty experience, going from twenty to twenty one takes about three hours and fifty minutes of none stop grinding to level up. One death adds on roughly twenty minutes to amount of mob kills needed. Now I haven't even added in travel time to location if PC has to run to hunting spot, rests PC may need, traps to disarm, buffs to cast, healing to be done, sharing space with some one else, it can all add up up to require 5 hours or more just to go from twenty to twenty one.

That five hours of leveling time goes up with every level, recovery time from a death is roughly adding two minutes to that twenty I mentioned before. God help you if you didn't optimize your build for combat, because you could be adding allot more minutes to your recovery time. Don't even get me started on dying because of lag.

Now I think death should cost a player but when it starts to cost over ten minutes of game play time, it starts to become too much. Its a game not a job, PVM death shouldn't be so brutal on players.

My suggestion is to at least cut death penalty in half, add in a death recovery sickness of at least two minutes game time. Rp wise it makes sense you'd feel sick coming back from death, mechanics wise you don't go wtf I lost past twenty minutes of my life. -1 each stat for two in game minutes, to represent death sickness isn't going to break any ones playing. Pushing your PC to their limits should be encouraged, not killing weaker mobs to remain safe.

Before people go "I played on a server where it took 1k+ per a death, your lucky here." That server sucks that's why YOU and I play here.

Suggestion:

Levels 1-3: 0 xp penalty

Levels 4-20: 50 xp/level

Levels 21+: 100xp/level (Once you've gone epic, you're epic!)

It may not be fun to die and I did nerdrage pretty often myself when I started out here, each time I died and lost a big chunk of XP. But eventually I realized that it makes for a more interesting and challenging gameplay and even with how often people run ahead suicidally as it is, I can only imagine that it would get even worse with lower risk.

Losing a big chunk XP on death creates a more serious atmosphere around hunting and strongly encourages you to find someone to party with, since then your chances of losing that XP on death becomes lower and your chances of RP'ing with someone increases, which in turn will actually let you gain more XP anyway, rather then soloing.

Also consider how challenging it is soloing and how rewarding it can be to clear out all the chests in a dungeon by yourself. It wouldn't make sense if you had next to nothing to lose - that's not how things work around here and I don't really see any reason to lower the XP loss.

you cant be deleved from death xp.

That mean when you ding its time to explore.

Okay, let's double the death penalty to 200xp/level then!

gamer025 wrote:Okay, let's double the death penalty to 200xp/level then!

Sure ;9

How about doubling both the XP income AND the XP penality on death ?
AND not prevent de-level from death.

Now, death is scary, and it's less of a pain to gain levels without doing stupid things like venturing alone in a place where the CR is too high for you.

Laenor wrote:How about doubling both the XP income AND the XP penality on death ?
AND not prevent de-level from death.

I'd never leave town then - with any of my characters.

we would see more epics on the Baldurs Gate graveyard, both dead and alive

Given all huff and puff about making a stat debuff on death, I doubt it would be relaxed.

Way it is now its better not to push your PC to their limit. Which is especially true in epic levels, because you can lose days of game play. I think its also better when you solo to kill things that give 15-20 exp that you can easily kill. It makes things lower risk, higher kps. Which can mean more drops and experience points.

Although that can never beat a party, since RP exp makes it tip towards party play.

Only death that should matter are those that come from PC interactions.

Harsh death penalties just make the safe way the best way. Losing days of game play on a epic due to lag, or getting caught in bad spawns just makes safe way the best way.

As Managarn said way it is now, best time to explore the server is after a level up.

just lost 800 XP on a lvl 8 wizard.. ouch... there goes an evenings work...

Pretty much noded yes to the whole OP post.

Some arguments never die... I remember hashing this out back in the day as well. What it really comes down to is that you can't base the xp penalty on how much grinding time you lose, because this has always been a RP based server. How long it takes to grind a level is of no consideration when dealing with what type or severity of penalty one receives from death.

Leaf_Smoker wrote:Some arguments never die... I remember hashing this out back in the day as well. What it really comes down to is that you can't base the xp penalty on how much grinding time you lose, because this has always been a RP based server. How long it takes to grind a level is of no consideration when dealing with what type or severity of penalty one receives from death.

+1

avoid dying is a suggestion as well...

Leaf_Smoker wrote:Some arguments never die... I remember hashing this out back in the day as well. What it really comes down to is that you can't base the xp penalty on how much grinding time you lose, because this has always been a RP based server. How long it takes to grind a level is of no consideration when dealing with what type or severity of penalty one receives from death.

You say that but then if any of that was true we would have no experience penalty in game. Process of death would be left up to the players to RP, after effects of coming back would be left in the players hands. Feelings of WTF lag kill or OMG more random monsters spawned near me wouldn't even be a issue on the server.

People are complaining that people don't take death seriously even with a experience penalty. Having it be harsh doesn't work, making it harsher is only making one aspect more severe with out fixing the problem. A penalty on death in a RP server represents how much DM's don't trust the player base. If every thing is getting RPed then players would be RPing their own deaths correctly with out need to be forced into taking penalties.

Think about it if a PC dies in PVM, chances are they are going regain 100% of experience lost with time because death is not permanent. Penalty is only taking away from time gain not having a legit effect on character development. No one RP's losing knowledge or information based on amount of experience their PC's lose.

Server is essentially a sand box for every one playing nwn2. If grind time in correlation to character progression was not a issue, experience nerfs would never occur. Server is RP based, but it's sole type of play type is not RP. Better to say the server will support RP first, then try to support other player types second.

Logical RP thing would be fewer fights, tougher enemies, allot more experience per a kill. So that at level five if you killed maybe ten bandits you would level up. Fact that experience doesn't scale as you level means grinding aspect is a desired core design of the server. Saying grind times don't matter is a lie.

This makes me question what exactly does a level represent in a nwn2 server. I've always been of the belief that my level one PC should not see the world the same as when he hits ten, twenty, twenty five, and thirty. To me a level represents not only characters prowess but a higher under standing of a specific topic.

Example a SS at level one should not share the same under standing of spirits and fey a level 30 has. Level 30 SS should be able to easily effect spirits, know which one does what, and how to get information or power he needs from one.

Yet I've seen players who RP PC's the same way from 1 all the way to 30. Which makes me question my own out look on my PC's. If my guy can be level ten but have the same knowledge as a level thirty, then progression seems pointless.

What exactly does a level on this server even mean?
What does experience points mean to the server?