Player Improvements

[DM_Kev]

Part of our mission for this year has been to listen to the concerns of our players and address those which would greatly benefit our module and make things more enjoyable.

I've read and chatted to players with concerns over difficulty, combat and such and a range of measures are now being implemented for the next major update. All of these are player inspired - so a big thankyou to all our regular contributors :)

For the next update, expect to see:

- Ever-so-slightly easier low level quests

- Full regionalisation and racialisation of equipment, giving each race and region a distinctive advantage in certain areas.

- Improved Healing Potions - This one will be warmly recieved - Each potion type has been customised (or tolkienised as we like to call it here) and the spell level has been increased so each potion performs slightly better. Our rarer Epic healing potions have been customised and given a mighty boost. Dealing 10 D10 +100 points of healing, they are a life saver if you are fortunate enough to carry one.

- "Convienience Stores" - Being the manager of such a shop has probably inspired me on this feature a little. We will gradually implement some stores which are only available on certain quests. (The quest will obviously have to be suitable to warrant such a feature) These stores will provide valuable supplies for the quest, but at an increased price (50% more - you pay for the convienience).

- Cheaper Arrows - We will sell arrows in seperate stores so we can justify the price reduction. Arrows will be 50% cheaper.


I hope this interests many of you. I look forward to working on more of your ideas in future :)

[Scramasax]

Hi,

I do have one suggestion...

There are too many threads, and boards even, dealing with suggestions. It makes things rather diffuse, imho. Perhaps they could be merged?

1) Bugs & Typos
2) Revising Existing Content
3) Suggesting New Content

Or something like that with nicer titles.

Cheers,

[Mhyradin]

I agree with Scaramsax here, it can be easy to get lost in this section.

There was something I wanted to suggest, so I'll put it here, you can always move it or delete once a decision is made.

It concerns magic tokens. For me customising the way your character looks is an important part of the rp and the mechanism of the magic token is an ideal way of preventing players from having to spend a fortune on crafting. However, I do feel that they are overpriced given that they are used for purely aesthetic purposes. I often see characters in game wearing plate or chain which can be clearly identified as the armour bought in Minas Tirith with no significant alterations. This seems a shame, given that there are many personalities in the game and I always feel its nice if the character's appearence reflects this.

I was quite dissappointed to find that I couldn't copy the properties of a helm that Anah had found to a helm that a DM gave me and was wondering if a helm without the +2 concentration property could be made available in some stores to rectify this. The dialogue at the smith's in Tharbad does a great job of explaining how the tokens are to be used but a mention in the new manual could be useful to describe OOC how exactly they function.

[ghost81]

There are helms without that property available in the Shire at the very least.

[int19h]

However, I do feel that they are overpriced given that they are used for purely aesthetic purposes. I often see characters in game wearing plate or chain which can be clearly identified as the armour bought in Minas Tirith with no significant alterations. This seems a shame, given that there are many personalities in the game and I always feel its nice if the character's appearence reflects this.
I agree with that. Furthermore, gold required to customise even the basic non-enchanted armour can sometimes be absolutely insane. E.g. for full plate, it's 150gp for each changed element; to customise it completely, you'll need 19x150=2850gp! That's more than it costs to buy it in the first place! And that's if you always succeed, and the DC for it is, IIRC, 20. Then throw in the cost of the token to transfer the magical properties from your old armour, and you might see the problem. Given that customisation gives the player absolutely no advantage in the game, and is solely done for RP purposes, I think it is very much overpriced.

[ghost81]

Although many players keep an armours appearance because they want others to know they've aided certain cities/factions and feel some pride in this.

[Mhyradin]

If armour was given out for quest completion then you might have a point, but the reason I mentioned 'Minas Tirith' armour is that its the best armour I've yet found on sale in the game, which seems more of a character build reason than an rp reason. I actually forged basic plate for Anah because I knew that the design was closer to what I was looking for than the suits on sale, I then made a few adustments and copied the properties of +3 plate to it. Yes, it was very expensive, what price RP *sighs*. However feel that its worth it and was wondering if others would share this veiw if the tokens were cheaper.

And thanks for mentioning the helms in the shire, I'll look into it.

[barneynibbs]

I'm on the fence on this one. On one side, I agree with the others that this seems overpriced simply because I am one of those that would like to customize the beejeezus out of my appearance. Since this gives no real game benefit it does seem unbalanced.

On the other hand, I think there are good arguments for keeping things the way they are both as a way of keeping the game itself balanced as well as from the perspective of remaining true to the spirit of the world. It is actually a rare thing, in both historical figures as well as the Tolkien world, to find a highly "customized" suit of armor/sword/whatever. Customized or unique items either had to be found, as with Sting or The Mithril Shirt, or crafted specially for a wealthy person, as with the armor of the Prince of Dol Amroth (can't remember his name), or gained by special service, as with the customized armor of the Guard of the White Tree. For the common man, and by common it could be meant anyone without enough gold, acquiring such unique items are pretty much restricted to the first and last example - finding it while on adventure or joining an elite group that provides the item as part of a service.

The hobbits in LoTR are prime examples of this "common man" concept. Frodo had Sting and the mithril shirt, but only because Bilbo had an adventure and acquired them. By the end of the story, Merry and Pippin have unique armor and weapons, at least by Shire standards, due to their service to Rohan and Minas Tirith. Every other hobbit in existence had to make due with whatever they could find, which I'm certain wasn't "customized" in any way.

This can be applied to a gaming system as well. Adventurers - our characters - are set apart from the ordinary man on many different levels, including the unique/magical items we acquire through our adventures. But even those items should contain a large number of stereotypes with only the occassional truly unique items (most +1 longswords look about the same). Who would want a thousand Glamdrings or Andurils lying about? The lower the level the character, which also usually carries with it the less disposable gold, the more like the "common man" the character will be, including being restricted to the more standard, non-unique pieces of equipment. As the character gains level/prestige/wealth/notariety, the more unique that character should be, something that these characters can show simply by typically having more disposable gold to fritter away on highly unique/customized items.

And, in many ways, making it more difficult/expensive to have highly unique/customized items makes those items even more unique and special. If everyone had the resources to customize everything they had without restraint then it would be common place to have "unique" items, reducing the coolness factor on them. Running across someone on the server with really cool items that they have customized under the current system would make me want to strive harder to be able to do the same thing. Right now my reaction would be "Cool! How do I get something like that!", whereas if customization became too easy the reaction would more likely be "Ahhh, that's nice. You wanna see my ten other unique swords?" ;)

I think that's a strong argument, at least in my mind, for keeping things the way they are, but I sure would like to be able to afford -- right now! -- to play with the customization myself. Right now, my characters are too much the "common man" (read first or second level) to have acquired any such items. And I am okay with that. ;)

[ghost81]

I do believe that the price of tokens was in som way a tool to keep player monies low(ish). After all once you reach a certain point, there isn't that much left to buy. Also if you look at the cost of modifying the top range armour, or buying a normal plate of suit, modifying it, buying a token and using it - you still save a lot of money. Also I feel its a bit of a cop out for players who don't want to put skill points into craft armour at level up - by putting enuogh in to change basic armours, they can then change the appearance of well crafted/masterwork armours without fear of failure or spending too much money.

[Mhyradin]

I agree in a lot of ways, but I think its a shame that low level characters are given the standard NWN kit and when they enter the game they all look the same. If you take the veiw that you'll buy all the equipment you want before customising your character then you may be lvl 12 or above before you actually get around to it.

Maybe this could be rectified by having a trader in the entrance halls with a selection of the already customised items from the traders around the module but only selling basic items and buying at the selling price so players can effectively 'trade' the basic stuff you start with for something that looks a bit more special.

Of course you would have to be very careful that this trader would not buy expensive items from the mod as this could be exploited.

I suppose the counterpoint to my suggestion of lowering the price of tokens would be that the 'nobodies' or the lower levels would have the same old mass produced kit and the higher levels would have something a little more unique to reflect their status.

[barneynibbs]

Maybe this could be rectified by having a trader in the entrance halls with a selection of the already customised items from the traders around the module but only selling basic items and buying at the selling price so players can effectively 'trade' the basic stuff you start with for something that looks a bit more special.

I definitely like this idea. ;) I've made up several characters now just to see how they feel and for every one the first thing I want to do is change out my starting equipment. I think having the ability to trade the stock OC equipment in for items more appropriate for Middle-Earth would be an awesome thing.

I suppose the counterpoint to my suggestion of lowering the price of tokens would be that the 'nobodies' or the lower levels would have the same old mass produced kit and the higher levels would have something a little more unique to reflect their status.

That's what I was trying to say in my own, long-winded way. ;)

[int19h]

I do believe that the price of tokens was in som way a tool to keep player monies low(ish). After all once you reach a certain point, there isn't that much left to buy. Also if you look at the cost of modifying the top range armour, or buying a normal plate of suit, modifying it, buying a token and using it - you still save a lot of money. Also I feel its a bit of a cop out for players who don't want to put skill points into craft armour at level up - by putting enuogh in to change basic armours, they can then change the appearance of well crafted/masterwork armours without fear of failure or spending too much money.
There isn't much trouble for higher-level characters, indeed. But for lower-levels, it's a pain. And everyone running around in the same-looking armour is just, well, boring... Regionalisation can only help so much, since one cannot get a non-enchanted armour from the region of his choice.

As for craft armour/weapon - isn't the main purpose of this skill to produce useful items, with ability to customise your gear visually being just a minor bonus? As I said before, your character does not really get anything from such customisation, so it's hardly a balance issue.

[Steve-Law]

This may or may not be the right place to bring this up and I am 99% certain it's been mentioned before, but as we know, the search is rubbish, and I can't remember the resaons against so I'll mention it again.

It would, in my opinion, be very useful to have a tool that shows characters locations. It would be useful for when you log in, you can see that characters, but you don't know where they are. It's a matter of luck, a little guess work, and lots of tells (which I don't like to do, especially for players you may have met or know that well) to have your character "bump" into someone or someones.

Maybe the tool is only usable for a short period after you've logged in to prevent mis/overuse?

[int19h]

I think this has indeed been raised numerous times before (hint: to search the site, use Google, and put "site:forums.wireplay.co.uk" before the search terms; it searches all the forums though, not just NWN ones, but still better than nothing), and shot down each time due to potential for abuse. Even so, I have to say that I'm one of those who also hate using tells for arranging meetings, and would very much rather see something like this implemented.

Speaking (purely theoretically, of course ;)) of misuse prevental: it could also be restricted to show the locations of players of your own alignment, and only in villages & towns - not those travelling or on some quest.

[Mhyradin]

Hmm, it does sound like that idea may get a little complicated. I don't see anything wrong with using tells as long as you suggest somewhere obviouse, like a tavern or Rivendell.

[Steve-Law]

How about turning it around a bit... something like, a toggle. Normally you aren't shown, but you can set your character as "open for RP", or "Looking for a party" or similar and then your location (and possibly level) is shown?

It just always struck me as odd that the server, so strongly for parties, doesn't have something like this to help parties get formed...

[int19h]

This actually sounds like the best idea I've heard so far. No potential for abuse, yet very practical. How often have you seen people idling in taverns waiting for someone to chat (and hopefully travel) with? How often did you do that yourself? I know that for me at least, the answer to both questions is, "all the time".

Then again, it may be just the timezone thing...

[Steve-Law]

It could also trigger a server message "Jach is looking for a party in Tharbad" or something along those lines...

[int19h]

For those, we already have shouts. No; the only real issue here is that one can only shout every so often while remaining polite, while a device can simply be activated for anyone interested to see at any time, and left in this state for as long as desired.

[Steve-Law]

That's the point, I like to shout even less than send loads of tells to everyone. A shout is okay if you have something specific in mind (in moderation) but "Jach just looking for some company and adventure"? What's that the Tharbad lonely hearts notice board? ;)

[int19h]

My point was that, if you make the thing trigger a server message upon activation, how is that any different from a shout?

[Steve-Law]

Its not in the chat window, its got a defined text so can't be abused.

[bytor_x86]

We had "PC Scrying device" on the server I played on before... Its main purpose was (supposedly) to prevent high lvls barging into place with low lvl chars (or vice versa; since spawns were lvl based), so when used, it showed list of PCs, their challenge rating, location and AFK/LFG (looking for group) status. It also had an option to prevent your char from being displayed on the list... And yeah, in my opinion, it was mainly used for arragning people "randomly" bumping into others. I guess the same thing can be arranged via tells, and it's actually better IMO because when arranged this way, one can be certain they're not interrupting anything...

But yeah, displaying only a list of people who are looking for group/RP sounds like a way to go.

[ghost81]

I'm not automatically against any such thing - as long as it can be deactivated. I've seen them used before successfully, but also used before to abuse. One place they were used, that no longer exists, some players used them to hut down others and kill them.

[Steve-Law]

How about another limitation on them, they only show location if you are in any of the "starting" areas... Shire, Bree, Tharbad, etc...

[int19h]

I'm not automatically against any such thing - as long as it can be deactivated.
Or rather, as long as it has to be manually activated? Opt-in rather than opt-out?

How about another limitation on them, they only show location if you are in any of the "starting" areas... Shire, Bree, Tharbad, etc...
Not sure what would be the point of it then. It's easy enough to check out Bree & Tharbad in 2 minutes, and few people hang around for long in the Shire these days.

[Steve-Law]

Not sure what would be the point of it then. It's easy enough to check out Bree & Tharbad in 2 minutes, and few people hang around for long in the Shire these days.

The person who *wants* to be found is switching on the notice. So they will wait there. I only suggested that as a counter to the "hunting people down" thing.

Location isn't actually needed to be honest if we get the "looking for a party" flag. If someone is looking for a party you know you can tell them and they are going to be open for something. Saves several shots in the dark to find someone. I only suggested it list location so that you know if someone in Tharbad wants a party there's no use contacting them if you are in Gondor or something. Or you know you should log off and back on with another char or whatever.

The whole point of the idea, and it's development is to have a system that gives players the best, most convenient and helpful way to get partied up. Yes you can do it now with tells and shouts, but you *can* get from any point A to any B via land and sea. Why did we invent air travel? Just because there is a way to do something, doesn't mean there can't be a *better* way. And if we are looking for a better way, why not try and make the best way we can? I'm trying to include as many factors as might be useful in the idea while we discuss it.

[Steve-Law]

Or rather, as long as it has to be manually activated? Opt-in rather than opt-out?

Opt-in would be safer I'd agree. Everyone starts with it off, and they have to switch it on. It should also probably switch itself off as soon as you join a party, and possibly each reset.

[The Frenchman]

Or maybe only if you are in a pub. I know D&D online (ok the only other multiplayer I've played) have a looking for group toggle thing. I'm not saying it works, but somewhere as intimate as this server I doubt it would get abused much.

Actually maybe I am serious about that only if you are in a pub or other specific establishment.

Basically if you are a new player using a Tell seems fantastically rude, I mean what if the player is a 15th level something currently very busy trying to prevent a Nazgul sticking something sharp somewhere soft and squishy. They might come round afterwards and turn you into smoking boots.

I'm all for player group building aids, I'm sure any of them would working better than the armtwisting and thumbscrews that have so far failed to get any of my mates to join me on this server...