General Discussion Regarding Loot Levels and Storyteller Freedom
-
@Acemvi said in General Discussion Regarding Loot Levels and Storyteller Freedom:
Not to leapfrog past the discussion, but I'm generally in favor of simple solutions rather than adding to Zool's already considerable workload. Updating whatever loot matrices that Storytellers use so they can give out more interesting items and expanding the "loot cap" from +1 with upsides to something more would be easier, I think.
This said, a broader discussion to be had here is the importance of a number of Admins not having a ton of experience with video games, which is ostensibly what NWN is. CoA might be a roleplay server, but you cannot divorce it entirely from its foundation as a video game. Basic game design concepts are falling by the wayside in adherence to a not incomprehensible but ultimately flawed vision of "how things should be."
Case in point, if rank 2 faction gear is the best possible gear that players can normally get, you're denying player progression in this regard once they've fully joined a faction. And player progression is absolutely necessary in order to maintain player interest in a video game. We can wax philosophical about how CoA is "about the RP" and everything else is simply not as important, but RP only happens with players, and players do not stick around without player progression.
tl;dr You cannot build a house on sand.
There isn't actually any rank 2 loot, really.
All the faction loot is now in the prestige store.
There is, faction prestige store loot (which is a progression, just based on prestige) and then, DM crafted loot which you may or may not get when gaining ranks.
-
Faction ranks confuse me, but you get my point.
Embracing NWN being a video game makes things easier for everyone. A convoluted vision of adventurers only having nigh-mundane gear unless sponsored by a faction, at which point they get mildly enchanted gear that is also the best possible gear they can get, works well in the fiction of a low magic setting, but not in a video game.
At some point it becomes time to recognize whatever vision for the server that currently exists simply doesn't seem terribly appealing to a lot of players. We're hitting maybe 11 at our peak lately, and this isn't a "summer lull." If player numbers are to go up, thereby fostering more RP, something has to change.
-
Since there's been talk of designing new quest loot, thought I'd bring this up here:
I think craftable gear (especially armor) could use a slight bump in power level. In lieu of this, I'm also of the opinion that 7 - 10 quests should be quite a bit harder than they are now, so that the quest loot you find in them can be on par with better craftable gear (anything under mithril, for instance).
Likewise, 6 - 9 quests should drop gear that's roughly on par with non-top tier craftable gear. 4 - 6 quests should really focus more on useful consumables.
-
6-9s should be harder as well, only quests that really pose a hard challenge are frost giant optional and frozen war
-
@Ethika Well, those are 7-10s so they should be the challenge haha.
-
@sharkinajar Yeah but they are really the only hard quests on the server, would be fun to have a variety and better loot as a result of completing them as ace said.
-
@Ethika Agree with that though! The loot needs a bit of a looking at across the board- through all the quests and all the tables and whatnot.
-
I want more super long 4-10s with multiple stop points. It would be nice if you got to the 20 minute point you were afforded 1 ending, and then every 30 minutes a different ending, so you could in theory just spend 5 hours doing 1 quest for some cool rewards.
Like a big hole in the ground.
With loot.
But as you dig it becomes a crypt, then a ... bigger crypt.. then a mind.. now we're in the Underdark.. Ohshit a portal to the Abyss! Ah, now we're in the Historic district.
-
@Lord_Acererak Possible with nested quests. Kind of like how the ice caves frost giants one is designed, you could just have a quest within a quest within a quest within a quest that gets progressively harder the deeper you go. Definitely a lot to build though.
-
@Lord_Acererak I like quest chains a lot. Be it in the form of multiple linked quests or a single super long quest with multiple stopping points.
On an unrelated note, with the addition of +1 AC to Mithril (and you might as well add it to Adamantine as well, to be honest), there should probably be something equivalent to this for leathers. Maybe Malar Panther leather?
-
@Lord_Acererak i like the idea of being able to leave when you run out of time, as the missing pilgrims quest in the moountians used to be where there were various possible endings ... the lycan, the orcs , the bandit.. or if you continued you found the cyricists.
another alternative would be similar to the note book quest where you needed an item to access the thing. so complete one quest find the access item to the next which ought to be harder etc. similar the the ashby trilogy.
if the item was pesistent then you could progress to the next tier when you next logged in (obviously make it weigh significantly so they werent just accumulated, and set them to decay if put in storage or magic bags)
-
@sharkinajar I did that, twice.
Some of the stuff I put in there isn't... the same now as when I put it in there. Not sure how.
I also re-scripted the entire treasure system to enable loot to be better distributed instead of having one loot chest everything spawns from so you need to put 5000 wands into it to make certain items "rare"
-
Suggestions and feedback reviewed, with changes implemented.
