Upgrading lowbie areas, lowbie bosses, and loot drops

[dynneroth]

With all the work kingcamaro is doing on Pre-LL bosses, I thought I would throw in my two cents on some ideas I've had for a while. There has been talk of pre-LL loot improvements so that new players aren't quite so far behind those of us who have been here for the better part of a decade. My proposal is to create loot for Pre-LL accomplishment bosses that will be useful for toons five levels past the level of the tag, and for those tags that have no level limit, up to level 45-ish. My thoughts on the method of getting this useful loot to players is to have it semi-set, but instead of it being completely random, have a counter on the toon for how many times the boss was killed. Each boss kill by all party members adds a .2% chance to the base percentage that the semi-set loot will drop. If the semi-set loot drops, that particular boss kill counters on the toons participating in the kill are reset to 0. Also, since I hope this loot has some real value, for it to be used it needs to be bound to the toon that uses it the first time. And finally, since I'm suggesting that a significant amount of loot be bound to a toon, I think there needs to be a way to destroy unwanted bound items. I suggest giving one of the priests at the docks the ability to destroy a specific bound item for a fee. (Yay, another gold sink!)

The net effect, hopefully, will be that newer players and vets making new toons will see the enticement of the semi-set loot as valuable enough to frequent areas of the mod they might have skipped or haven't been to in years, and to hone the skills of the newer players with repeated play of bosses.

[chirality]

What about my idea in kc's hijacked thread

Personally I find the idea of spending dev time to implement new special items and code such a complex system to be distasteful (or code any system at all tbh). I think the biggest problem for anyone other than a vet with chests of URs and Golden Guards, and bots/friends to drag tags like Uro or PoM for set loot, is effectively gearing a toon @ 35+, and in particular level 40. It's not that lower-level random loot is any easier or more common to find, but up until 30ish it's pretty much a luxury, since earlier zones/tags are pretty much super easy regardless what gear you wear (weapons for tanks and slot gear for casters is a different story, true, but then, it's similarly much more of a luxury than a necessity, such as in "tougher" zones like Zhents or Xul)

If anything, like I said last time this idea was mentioned (some months ago), there's SO much lowbie gear in the game that no one ever finds/uses, it's kind of silly (to me, no offense) to want to make even MORE specialty stuff. I'd rather see rewards of some of the really nice random rare gear. I believe the amount of lowbie rare gear in circulation/bankchests is probably lower than any other type of gear in the entire mod, even less-seen than abyss or abos or ely loot. And for good reason: because it's actually really rare to find without farming random loot spots in lowbie zones.

As a sidenote, the idea of repeatedly farming tag bosses for gear is absolutely horrendous to me (again, no offense But lowbie game should be trying to push players, especially newbies, through it and into LLs as smoothly as possible imho--I think there's value in going through the circuit for a newbie, but after that, ffs, start playing Hells and "get in the game brah!"). As far as a teaching aid, yes, I do believe tags are a decent one, but mainly to total NWN newbies, and also unfortunately what it *doesn't* teach is very much valuable/applicable to LLs+, other than basic mechanics and technique (standing outside AoO range to spam spells, using mords for mantles, BBoD to tank, neg pot or you're screwed, etc).

[khaine]

Okay, so here are my initial thoughts on what I think our mod needs in terms of changes to pre-ll loot. I'll actually make a real reply soon enough, but whenever I tried to reply just to your points I couldn't stop myself from discussing this anyway. First I'm going to talk about the loot we have in game, then talk about what I would change.

Types of Loot:

• Random Loot
• NWN Default Loot
• Static Loot
• Set Loot
• Shop Loot

You may ask yourself what the difference between set and static loot it. Enervix (the DB ring) is a static drop, while DB weapons are set loot. But I don't just mean that DB weapons drop from their own list. Set loot is in some way related to it's parent group, while static loot just happens to drop in the same place every time. In this way, we currently have no (or very little) set loot, just static loot. This is the sort of loot that people really want, but is hard to do right. Another meaning of set loot is in terms of item 'sets', items which when worn together provide additional benefits. We have support for this at the moment, but don't use it. I'm not going to talk about that right now.

NWN Default Loot
Firstly, NWN default loot is terrible and needs to go. Not only is it terrible in the sense of not being useful, but it makes things more difficult for new players and vets alike trying to gather gear. Areas with NWN loot tend to have a large number of containers with low chances of spawning random loot, instead filled with trash. This strongly disincentivizes looting, especially banking. New players will have difficulty sifting through this garbage and will either end up ignoring useful random/static loot, or collecting heaps of rubbish - even worse if you don't have lore. Vets will simply ignore these and move on, since they're not even worth the time slowing down to check them. Together, this means that new players playing with vets can either trail behind the group sifting through garbage, try and pick up everything and check it later, or ignore it completely as the vets do. In the first case they won't have fun, in the second the mass of loot is intimidating to sort through as well as quite possibly being obsolete by the time the player does check through it, and in the third they simply won't impove their gear.

It's tough to eradicate though. Many of these areas are built around having many containers. The nether caves are a good example, with many cul-de-sacs leading to loot, or with loot protected by encounters. Removing the loot but not the containers leads to a situation in which each container is unlikely to actually to drop anything, which is unsatisfying. Removing both contradicts the area design, making large portions of it irrelevent.


Static Loot
Next up, static loot. A mixed bag. The mixiest bag one may be tempted to say. Firstly, it can be hard to tell the difference between this and nwn loot sometimes. Also, it suffers many of the same problems as nwnloot does in regards to its effects on party play. More important here is though what this static loot was meant to be when it was put in. Some of it is based of what you're facing - it's loot that fits in with the lore of the area, but not on what the player needs. Some of it is just generic items that happen to spawn all the time. A shield of protection +9. A mailshirt +5. This is not the sort of thing we need static loot for. Much of the rest is absurdly specific, built for a particular build at a particular level. Someone at some point thought "This would make a cool item" and put it in without much thought to it's use.

While the most important part in adressing those is Item Deisgn, we also need to think about how players use static loot. Some may simply collect it, save the good stuff and transfer it to a suitable lowbie when they become able to use it. Okay in theory, but theres no benefit to those items being static over being random loot. The best and most useful way static loot is used is as a known quantity - players can search out useful loot for their character, can depend on a certain standard of gear, and can point new player in the direction of gear thats useful for them. Not only does our static loot not deliver on this, but the sheer quantity of esoteric and useless items means that no-one really knows about where to find good items, and the item's disconnect from their parent groups also adds to the confusion surrounding them. An exmaple of a static item that's reasonable respected is the Ice Kobold King's Boots of Haste.

We can create a correspondance between Static and Random loot by thinking of the list of all static loot that drops within all areas of a particular Loot Level. We want this static list to be shorter than the random list, but the best thing about this way of thinking is that we can think about the quality of items in relation to the random loot. In LL's Set loot is usually of a quality just lower than UR, to provide a reliable way to gain power without invalidating top tier random loot. In Pre-LL's we want to do the same by making static loot generally of a quality just under Rare, or perhaps at the same level.

One last type of static loot - quest items. Not all of these are strictly part of a quest, but are items that tell you about the area. Items that aren't intended to be used by the player, essentially. A problem I have with these are that there are both items are actually have an in-game non-gear use, and others that are simply there. There is no real good way to tell these apart.

Shop loot is pretty much a sub-set of static loot, but of course has a lower quality due to it having a gold cost rather than a cost in knowledge and time to find. If we think of static's as Uncommon/Uncommon+ (below rare), then shop loot should common-loot tier.

Set Loot is great and all, but theres not much to say since we don't really have any here.

Random Loot
And here's the big part. I haven't heard any complaints, but we should still go through what it is, what its role is, and what issues it has.

Random loot mostly consists of loot families. Each tier (and usually every rarity in that tier) has all 13 armours, 4 caster belts, and some sort of loot for each equipment slot, usually in the form of +X families. This means that appropriate gear is always available for characters, and players are aware of how to straight-up upgrade their gear by increasing their +x numbers. These families also ensure familiarity with the gear - you know what sort of item it is because of its familiy, and can search for the level appropriate family item that you need even if you've never seen it before. In addition to these families (not all of which use +X by the way - see Xanthene wraps, etc), there are other misc items which are usually most abundant in the rare section. For example the level 5 rares include 5 amulets each of which provides 20/- to an element, as well as boots, bracers and hats providing Phys DR of each type. There are even more unique items too.

In this way a character can be completely geared with loot from a specific level range & rarity. You can be dressed completely in Level 20 commons, uncommons OR rares, providing a reasonable standard. If we wanted to create a standard to use for player gear setups, we could use one of these. Sadly, almost no-one will be able to muster even a full set of level X common gear for their character (especially not in, say, the pre-epic areas), let alone rare. Think of each random item a player picks up as a 'gem', which when used gives the player an item from a particular level/rarity list. Think about how many of these gems a player will get while they journey through each of those loot tiers. How many level 10 gems does a player pick up between level 5 and 10? The problem here is not just that players would have to grind a long time to get a reasonable collection, but that players spend such a short time in very low levels as to make spending time trying to collect gear a waste.

One issue that comes up again and again is the difference in power between new players and vets, often due in large part not to a vets ability to find the best gear as they play, but instead due to the large store of useful items such a player has. This problem feeds back on itself since the better gears the vets are the faster they go through low levels, and the faster new players go through trying to keep up/being dragged, leading to the newer players standard of gear dropping over time. In the pre-ll mod this isn't so much of a problem, but the transition from pre-LL to LL becomes a serious issue (Which chirality talking about in his last post in Kingcamaro's thread, and to which I'll reply seperately).

The final sort of important items for players are consumables. Players carry a wide range of consumables, some mandatory, some just useful. Heals, Rez and Restores are the most important ones, but players also use buff pots (incuding haste), wands, scrolls and things like tp gems. New players see a huge range of such items, and usually have little idea which are mandatory, which are useful and which are useless. As they play they'll find some as they go along, but mostly will have to keep up a stock of these items.


Proposed Changes
So that's a summary of the loot we currently have in place. I tried not to put my own suggestions there, but a few were obvious. Below is a summary of the changes I would make the loot in-game, followed by more explanation of each one.

1. Remove all nwn loot and remove excesss containers and mob drops. This will make a few early areas make a bit less sense but I think it's worth it.
2. Make a list of all important quest items. Sollicit a list of items that players acutally like (I.e. the crit imm ring). Then wipe out all other static loot.
3. Use set-rarity chests & (/mini)boss drops a lot. Put at least one at the end of each group. Extra chests could be locked, trapped, hidden or require solving a puzzle.
4. Change the shops to actually sell non-randomisable common loot.
5. Introduce NPC's who will swap random items in their families. Caster belts (within rarity), weapons (within simple/martial), armour (light/heavy/med).
6. Add consumable lists to low levels. I would also think that Beakers of Cure Minor/Moderate/Critical etc wounds would be cool.
7. Introduce set loot. This requires the most thought, and possibly the most work too.

• 1: I think I covered why we should remove NWN standard loot, and I don't think there is any real disagreement. But the side effects are non-negligable - if anyone can think of a good way to remove a large number of containers from early areas without creating deadends and other oddness then I'm all ears.
• 2. Making a list of all the quest items isn't a minor challenge. If we miss saving any then we will end up with broken mini-quests. The easier way may be to go through each group and list all of the puzzles there. Anything that needs a key, anything that drops a letter with important information, etc. I woudl also suggest that these items get a 'quest item' tag that displays in the !list rarities command. Honestly, just that quest tag would be super useful without the rest of the changes.
  Getting idea from the players on what set items they want to keep seems like an okay idea - there aren't a great deal of important ones, and anything that gets missed probably wasn't that important anyway.
• 3. Set rarity chests. Firstly, these provide additional structure to groups and give a goal to anyone going through them. They provide a reliable way for newer players to improve their gear without endless grinding, and help fast-moving parties collect loot. They can also be used to provide incentives to go to lesser visited areas in the same way that the drop% of containers varying across areas does, but in a much stronger fashion because a) it's visible, and b) it's quantised, not percentage based. Not all chests have to be rares, mixing uncommons in can increase the reward without flooding rares.
  One possible downside is that aqquiring top tier loot is easier, but I don't think that that is a major problem. We could level-cap the chests if it is deemed a problem though. It could be a problem if players try and grind out low level chests to try and get high-power augments on rings and such, for example. These chests could also opt-out of dropping rings and immunity rings if desired, and/or specific chests/drops put in thematically appropriate places to drop them. This could also be done with armours - there are 13 after all, so a chest that drops a random rare armour could be good.
• 4. Shops seeling common loot. I think that this is the sort of standard they have anyway, but it not only helps the loot available to the player become more understandable, but familiarises the player with loot in general and helps them recognize loot quality when they see it drop 'in the wild'. I think it's very important that these should not be able to be randomisable, either with a tag, or with an undisplayed 'null' randomisation setting. This is for the same reason as the potential problem with set rarity chests, but much more serious. If players can buy random loot for gold then randomise it, it becomes very easy to buy vast quantities of the particular item you want, then roll them all until you get something really amazing.
  This also makes shops relevent throughout the pre-ll mod without any need for item creation or careful balancing. It provides us with a minimum gear standard to use when balancing areas, and helps reduce the gap between new players and vets (both in terms of power and knowledge) without penalising the vets or trying to bring new players straight up to their level.
• 5. Swap Shop. I like this idea, while some others may not. This would make loot more relevent to more players and make it easier for the player to get the particular items they need. Each loot tier has a belt for each rarity, for each caster. I think there should be a way for a player to exchange either an unrandomised caster belt for a different caster variety (of the same tier and rarity), for a small fee. Alternatively, the new belt could get the same random stats and augs as the old one. This could also be applied to armours (seperated by weight - light (inc robes), med and heavy), immunity rings or weapons, or possibly even more types.
• 6. Consumables. Currently there is a wide array of potential consumables for a player to buy, but new players don't have the knowledge to pick the right stuff, and don't have the money to experiment. If we expect every player to carry rez and heals as a minimum, as well as saintsbloods and tp gems, then a way to get these to the player would be great. Scrolls, potions and wands could be included, possibly with common-scrolls, uncommon-potions, rare-wands. If the potions and wands were then removed from the shops, with scrolls and items (ie saintsblood) being available in the 'common' shops, then it would still allow vets to use those tools, but make them less ubiquitous and allow new players to share in their use and learn about their utility. Related to these are misc items - like the scabbard of blessing or lens of seeing. I see their place, but don't particularily like them. Perhaps they have to stay, but I think that if Henchmen are introduced they will overlap in purpose a lot, hopefully letting us faze these out. Oh, and I like the idea of Beakers of Cure minor/etc wounds too. We assume the player always has heals anyway, why cause them the inconvieniance of 'oh forgot heals, brb' and the like. It's not difficult, it's just irritating.
• 7. Set Loot. Firstly, I think it's pointless to add more loot without first removing most of the stuff we have now - it will just add to the problem and be lost in the mire of mediocrity. But this is I think the area with the most potential. I won't talk about it right now, since I've said so much else and everything. Please share your thoughts, and I'll presumably prepare another wall of text on that topic later on.

On one last note, which does not really impact on this discussion. I've been reading as much of the literature on mod building as I can (much has been lost in the great IGN vault, and similar actions). Recently, I read a really interesting post on data-mining your modules which survived. I was thrilled when I read the title, since that is the sort of thing that I think is really important in dealing with stuff like loot. It was almost disappointing when I saw that the post was penned by Funky, and so there was no real chance of me finding some crucial information which would make this process easier.

[chirality]

I think the easiest solution is to just not worry about totally re-designing everything in PoA content. I'm not even really sure where to start for responding to your ideas here. It's great, for sure, but other than the part about expanding shop inventories, I kind of have an ambivalent reaction. Meh...maybe it's just karma to get a similar headache trying to digest your post that I'm sure I've given to other people for the last 3 years I mean, really if we're gonna talk re-doing loot, then I'd be more interested to start with LL runs, in which the same problems (lot of useless/bad loot) are rampantly abundant. I'm honestly not trying to be argumentative, but I'd rather see an analysis/proposal for systematically fixing all the endleslly-bad LLs loot, and just leave lowbie gear to rot: it's not worth it imho. I agree that there should be better distribution and "bring to market" means for all the idiosyncratic and mind-boggling lowbie loot, such as allowing shops to sell stuff you otherwise have to find, but to use the shops as an example, I really don't care about doing a spring cleaning on all the ridiculous old PoA stuff; some of it's useful, some isn't, but really what's the overall impact on a HG player's career from level 19 shop gear made 15 years ago for "JD sorc set" (whatever tf that is)? Whatever that impact is, unless it's some nub HCer endlessly playing level 19s, it's way less impact than serious issues like ranger OP abyss armor or hilariously-outdated Yeti/Beholder/BP loot or true poison instakills creating an insupportable dynamic or non-selfbuff tanks being useless without casters (whereas casters got summons to make tanks redundant...yeah the beauty of that still astounds me). I know this is turning into quite a rant but...bleh I don't get why this gets the go-ahead from the power(s) that be, while the forum is full of the same complaints/suggestions repeated literally time after time, year after year, with no change. I understand the impetus to fix the terrible structure of lowbie zones in the name of finding/keeping nubs but if it's seriously such an issue, just make an option to totally skip it if desired, like I suggested the other day Yeah, the Illithid Lab Coat in the chest by the Thrall Master outside Kard is a funny and useless item, and surely the game would run that much smoother with such extraneous things pared away, but what about the fact that the few-remaining pros can barely get Abyss runs to fill without begging and pleading, and this zone has been out for years and the loot is still chock-full of problems that seriously impacted vet relationship to the mod.

Anyway, please don't think I'm just being a d*** when I say all this but really, this is my take on the fresh dev blood I see recently:

Make xp better to make up for quest xp sucking; then let's spend the other time fixing class imbalance and working on Limbo. Honestly, reading your very long and well-thought-out posts in the last few days, the main thing that keeps coming to mind is, jeez if this guy (and whoever else, like KC) was putting this much effort into fixing the real HG mod, wouldn't we have Limbo and better artifacts and better classes and more long-promised updates by now? I know it's a cop-out but I have to say it again: lowbie content is broken beyond repair, and fixing it properly seems like <insert bad/misused analogy here> : you have a crappy old hand-me-down car, it's driving you nuts, it doesn't even have a CD player! You want fix it up enough that it's more fun (and less embarrassing ) to drive, but shouldn't you be saving up money to fix your house instead and putting only minimal investment into the car? So long as it drives and gets you to work, then you can go to work and make money to buy what you really need (like moving out from the crappy apartment with tissue paper walls, which for my analogy would be HG stuff like having some classes suck less, or theorized niceties like wizard-only spells or special class benfit, or tanks being less dependent on weapons buffs, etc etc)

Make it more fun/easy to play and progress through, and focus on the parts of HG that really make HG, HG. The vet retention rate has sucked mainly due to endgame issues, and as far as I can tell, the only thing that ever really drove people away in regards to lowbie stuff was how crappy the xp gain is (the loot issues might be annoying but there's a big difference between that and "lowbie content reverted to status 6 yrs ago when the population was 50x bigger to make up for lack of quest xp", and when quest xp disappeared, that was a huge blow. I have never seen as much whining, disappointment, angst, and quitting over something like "Blood Hag set loot is mostly bad" or "kard tag level is way too high". Don't get me wrong, I agree that this must be done, "eventually", but I don't mean to be a total downer when I say that I think all this effort could be far-better-utilized for pleasing the vets we still have, with bare minimum of effort leftover for making lowbie crap less of a timesink.

I know I'm on a super-troll super-derail thing lately for these threads but I like reading your posts and it prompted me to get nice and wordy too

[khaine]

dynneroth

Firstly, it's been a long time, good to see you again.

I think that the complicated business of increasing the drop rate over time and number of boss kills is unnessecary. Adding good set lot is good in my opinion, but the big problem is that creating good set loot is really challenging. I think I want that to be the next thing I talk about. Set loot has to be good, it has to be memorable, and it has to be accesible. One problem with creating gear that will be good for a long time is, as chirality said, the item value. This is not normally changeable, and is the prime determinant of item quality vs level for the pre-ll mod.

Bound loot is an interesting idea, and I think you'd also be interested in the Set loot (as in loot thats part of a gear-set that improves the more items you wear of it) as regards making set loot (of the other sort) dropped by bosses useful. On the other hand, encouraging repeat boss runs is going to be very difficult. If each set does not apply to every single toon, then each person in a party will have a different boss they want to grind, and additionally grinding a specific area can be very boring, discourages exploration and variety, and is opposed to the current ethos of tag-hopping or xp-grinding-zone hopping. As such, it may simply not be used at all by vets who know about it, or the new players who don't.


chirality, regarding both your posts here and in KC's Tag Boss thread.

Firstly, this multi-thread thing is doing my nut in. I'm going to reply to your comments in the Lowbie Quests thread here too.

I want to say please don't apologise for your long 'rants', or being argumentative. You're view represent many other people I'm sure, and honestly what I'm afraid of isn't disagreement but silence. I believe in my changes, and really want to opportunity to put their case forward. Please, be as argumentative, cantankerous and nitpicky as you can, I pray you find holes in my arguments and flaws in my plans. Then I'll fix them. I guess if I can persuade you I can persuade anyone.


"really what's the overall impact on a HG player's career from level 19 shop gear made 15 years ago for "JD sorc set"
Exactly. I realise now I said in my post change the shops, and include common loot. What I didn't say was that I want all that old shop loot gone. Wiped. Gone. It's pointless in my opinion. I love the lowbie areas, but I don't keep any lowbie gear in my bankchests. This is also why I want all the old PoA and other static loot gone. Adding other (useful) set loot would be great, but doesn't have to happen.


In the Lowbie Quests thread, responding to my claims that the rec. levels from the pdf are still the best way to look at things, you mention that the method which I inexplicably overlook is actually playing the contents, making notes and asking people ingame. Heh, well, you do have a point. But I have my doubts. Everyone here has played this content, but you could almost hear crickets when specfic feedback on particular bosses is asked for. We all play through different areas of the mod on different chracters, and play each area at a different strength relative to it's local difficulty. Playing through every area of the mod and making notes on each is in fact the best way to get this information, you are right. But you go ahead, be my guest. I think fusa was the last person to do that, perhaps you can be the next and save us all some trouble. Other than that, I think crowdsourcing this data with the idea I discussed in that thread is our best shot.


Pre-LL Boss Tag Ideas Thread Post:
I oppose finding alternate ways/easier ways to give new players URs. Set chests, and at most a modest increase in spawn% I like, but thats my limit. The huge increase in power that a player gets from shedding their pre-40 gear and moving into UR's is as much a product of the terrible gear that players wear at level 40, as the power URS offer.

The Level 40 rare 'tier' is +14. Although currently that's not 100%.
LL set loot tier is +15
UR tier is +16

I was going to argue that LL set loot is generally good, and invalidating all of it by making URs the new baseline even for new players would be a terrible waste and shame, but from what I hear it's not that great. I've looked through the wiki loot lists, and considered all the static loot that is in Siss'thrak, for example, and can see your point. Additionally, the validity of trying to kit your new caster out with dachy gear is somewhat compromised when you don't see dachy runs called a few times a day. The 'new' LL areas (Okay, so they're not that new) add to this problem by requiring different and more types of immunities, and so more flexibility in gear setup.

However, I still feel that the ideas I put forth ahead will help ease the LL transition by making it far, far easier to get a reasonable gear setup for that level. I also think adding the rewards as part of the quests isn't great, first because I still see them as firmly pre-LL, but also because I don't really like those quests. Also, due to the random nature of random loot this small number of ur items doesn't guarantee in the least getting items relevant to your character. Still, as you say, this would probably not affect power creep for vets in the slightest.

Making the LL set loot better would be the other half of solving this problem, if my ideas were to be implemented and actually work as intended. The rules governing the design of LL set loot is pretty much exactly the same as for pre-ll loot, and the guidelines I plan to talk about (at some point. There seems to be a lot I'm planning to talk about) apply equally well to both, and should illustrate the problems we have pretty well.

Your idea is in my opinion a much softer version of the other one that you've mentioned and has been bandied around - make HG start at 40. I don't like it, but I can see exactly why people feel this way. But here we're going to start talking about your more general gripes about working on Pre-LL content.

Firstly, never fear. KingCamaro had a very specific task he set himself, the Tag bosses. All this talk of completely revamping the Pre-LL mod is mostly my doing. No-one's given me the go-ahead for it, or suggested or even hinted in the least that doing anything of the scope I want is possible. Frankly, this is the reason I came back to HG. The only reason I go in for hell runs is if it looks like a run needs a hand, or if I need a break from work on the pre-ll mod. So this isn't 'instead of' work on the LL mod.

Secondly, fear. While we may never here about how badly designed low level content drives players away, that's because most of the people we drive away we never hear from. They don't stick around long enough to gain a presence, never visit the forums, and never speak to other players about their concerns. They just play for an hour or two, then leave and don't return. Losing vet players is a whole other thing of course, and indeed their focus is mostly on end game content. Bear in mind that there are plenty of long term players (including the very oldest, as far as I know) who do not engage in the endgame content at all. But I've been gone too long to really comment on that.

Oh, and I think it's crazy to critisize our vet retention vet. However much they gripe, HG is over a decade old now. The level of vet retention is nothing less than miraculous. But that's just me.

That concludes that bit. Now, more generally about trying to fix lowbie areas.




One thing you mention in the Lowbie Quests thread is that in PoA level 20 is half the levels of the game. Now this doesn't really affect your argumennts, but I'd like to point out that in PoA level 20 was the cap. HG added the epic content. You can really see the difference, more obviously in the way that the epic groups are a lot more like runs, with everything that implies. What was original PoA and what was added as part of HG is a really interesting topic and sheds a great deal of light on what exactly has happened to cause all these problems. But later, later.

"The inherent problem is expecting people to take this stuff seriously"
As with all games with an expanding level cap like ours, the low level area which once was at the top of the cap is not treated as seriously as it was when it was the cap. Once the cap was level 20 with an easier mana, then it went to 40, then 60 and now 80. Each time the previous areas suffer.

The essence of taking these levels seriously has a few core principles: Optimising your build for that level, Learning in detail about the areas and critters you're facing, collecting the right gear for that level, preparing your character for a specific challenge with gear/spell/etc swaps, using careful teamwork, taking time to do each area properly, and capatilising on the rewards each area offers. Currently players do all this for the Abyss or deep hells, but not for early hells. When I first entered hell I wasn't even kitted out in URs, but that was okay because everyone took it seriously enough that we could make up for those deficits. Now if I tried that I suspect that I would not be able to contribute because I would not be able to keep up with high-powered toons sweeping through.

Much early content currently expects this sort of approach, and as you point out it's outdated, and unreasonable to expect that from players. I want to assure you that I don't want to make the mod a place where players are expected to take this approach in lowbie levels. Lowbie levels are now just that, the low levels before the high level content. In fact, I think my proposals will help with this problem, not make it worse. For example at high levels most players have a somewhat standard setup they wear most everywhere, but swap out certain slots (rings especially, obviously) to be able to adapt quickly. By using a smaller, but better thought out and far more accesible loot set, we can do similar things at low levels.

The purpose of my loot changes is to make a base standard which all players can easily reach, above which better gear provides a bonus - a non-mandatory bonus. I don't want players to have to stop mid-session to go upgrade their gear, they should easily be able to play a lengthy session and go up a number of levels but still have the leeway to be effective, all without compromising the utility of actually putting in effort. I don't want to slow down levelling parties progress, I want them to be able to keep up their pace without leaving new players behind.

Changes I want to see in the general sort of encounters and combat difficulty across the mod (which I really haven't gotten into, and don't plan to for a good while) should make being effective far less dependant on specific knowledge, instead being based on skill. It should be far, far easier to actually learn some useful stuff, that can help immediately after just one playthrough of an area. But even more than skill, they should be fun. Originally the fun came from challenge, but there are other ways to make this engaging without making it hard.

Changes to the areas, and specifically cutting out areas, should further reduce the quantity of learning required, and make it far easier to learn what is there. It should also dramataically help with the tag-hopping that goes about. Players jump from tag to tag, and before tags they jumped from grinding zone to grinding zone. The ambitious part of my plan, which I haven't discussed at all, should really restore sense to the pre-ll mod. Playing through these levels should be fun and comfortable, not unpredictable and hectic.

Lastly, throughout my proposals I want to ensure that work for the DM team is minimised. Firstly I do this by avoiding any new content. I don't expect anyone else to make new areas, or create new items. Next I want to create a series of proposals which can be completed in phases, with each phase building on the work of the last, and expanding the scope of the changes. Lastly, I want to take as much of the work away from the DM team as possible. Here we've been talking about this stuff in very general terms, but before any actual work begins I want to lay out very clearly what tasks need to be done, in what order, and give all the relevent information possible so that what remains is the implementation of changes, not the work of exploring and envisiging ideas. Everyone supports more good loot, but from what I've seen any threads asking for ideas are usually met with a lukewarm response. Well, we want to fix the pre-ll mod. This will not be a lukewarm response.



Ideally if I started my own thread to discuss my ideas then you could adress your issues with my approach there, instead of spread out over many threads, but I simply haven't worked it into a state I want to release yet. Count this as my reply to your other posts too. And remember, I welcome your 'rants' as you put them. Even if the OP of the current thread might not.

[dynneroth]

khaine

Yes, it has been way too long. I really appreciate all the work you are doing. My attempt at help was to try and really get outside the box, so to speak, and come up with ideas to encourage revisiting areas and bosses when anyone makes a new toon instead of going to the same old maps to grind out twenty to thirty levels. However, I definitely understand your concerns about part of my proposal, so I will just let that be.

[KnightErrant]

khaine said

Lastly, throughout my proposals I want to ensure that work for the DM team is minimised. Firstly I do this by avoiding any new content. I don't expect anyone else to make new areas, or create new items. Next I want to create a series of proposals which can be completed in phases, with each phase building on the work of the last, and expanding the scope of the changes. Lastly, I want to take as much of the work away from the DM team as possible. Here we've been talking about this stuff in very general terms, but before any actual work begins I want to lay out very clearly what tasks need to be done, in what order, and give all the relevent information possible so that what remains is the implementation of changes, not the work of exploring and envisiging ideas. Everyone supports more good loot, but from what I've seen any threads asking for ideas are usually met with a lukewarm response. Well, we want to fix the pre-ll mod. This will not be a lukewarm response.


This paragraph is likely a big sticking point for the vet crowd...there is afaik, only one staff member currently working on the mod...Funky...the rest have either left, are on hiatus or lack the ability to code.

Off the top of my head the current "to do" list includes: Finishing Limbo-(Which gets XR loot in the game raising the player power bar so much further), Weapon Edits, New Spells, Ego items for classes lacking them, HC reincarnation, underpowered class upgrades, Artifact balancing, Armor balancing, Set Loot for Limbo, etc etc etc...as much as I would love to see Lowbie content be upgraded to be more fun with cooler stuff I would rate it near the very bottom of any "to do" list someone might put forth. (And big Kudos to KC for volunteering to try and tackle some of it).

KE.

[chirality]

Well-said from an actual longtime vet (not just couple-year-old troll like me)

I do want to emphasize again/agree with that closing sentence: huge props to KC, and you as well khaine. I'm a bit embarrassed to offer such "hostile" responses to this work. I've had nice chats with KC about the project ingame though, and I'm 100% eager/willing to help, so don't think I'm just being a douche for the sake of arguing. At this point, I'm guessing that quite a lot of the work I reference as being "higher priority" might well be impossible to do atm, especially if as KE says there's a lack of skilled dev coders, and I know quite a few things have already been on the back burner for a while awaiting even more intense hacks which iirc would be something only Acaos could do, like (just example I recall) fixing Galvanic Cone gfx etc).

[khaine]

That's very unfortunate KE, I had no idea that we were so short on manpower. Luckily, I am familiar with NWScript and have done some coding myself (granted, on a very different topic), as well as having been looking under the hood of NWN (and where possible HG) as much as possible. I think the next step from here for me could then to be to actually write the code for the new Common Shops, as well as the swap shops. I don't think either will be a problem. NWN default loot and static loot I can handle in two ways - firstly by continuing my in-game effort of examining loot, and so to make a list of containers by area. I'll tag each container as containing random, static and/or default loot. The second is using Funky's data-mining scripts to try and find a way to extract the infromation of the location of all default and static loot in the original PoA, just to make sure I'm appropaching it right. Then we could apply the script to HG and get the information we need more easily.

The big problem with most of the items on the to-do list, the big important ones everyone wants, are that they are not just mechanical implementations of thought out ideas (with the exception of HC reincarnation). Most are either balancing, or new content entirely. Not only are they big and tough projects, but making any sort of mistakes will have serious consequences, considering how anticipated they are.

Of course, these loot changes are fairly minor, more serious tasks won't be able to be done quite so independantly.

[FunkySwerve]

If you're going to help with the mod, we can talk about actual access to the mod, so you don't have to data mine a nearly irrelevant module for data.

Funky

[KnightErrant]

5. Introduce NPC's who will swap random items in their families. Caster belts (within rarity), weapons (within simple/martial), armour (light/heavy/med).




This isn't likely to fly, IMHO, allowing everyone to trade their Tia Bard Belts for Cleric and Sorcerer ones and their Dustbone daggers and clubs for morningstars seems a bit broken...might just as well have the loot drops be tokens that can be exchanged for whatever item the player wants, which seems a bit "metagame"... (Tho tbh most players would likely LOVE the idea...)


KE.

[chirality]

[khaine]

@funky, I'd be very interested in getting access to the module, though I felt I should demonstrate I could be of use before presuming. I'll send you a pm about it.

KnightErrant

I can see your concern, and see I did not phrase that carefully enough. These swap shops would only deal with random items, and with low levels: I was only intending to include Common, Uncommon and Rares in there. A UR swap shop is an interesting idea, but that pushes on the issues you raised. I think the key point is that something like a tia caster belt might be worn for dozens of hours of gameplay on a particular character, if not more. A level 20 caster belt will not see anything like that, so it should be a lot easier to aqquire. In some cases, you might spend longer searching for the right item than wearing it.

Where exactly the line is currently stands like this as I see it: Level 35 weapons & level 40 LL loot (though there aren't really any level 40 LL families to swap around). These items still retain some value going into LL levels, and these are fairly abundant. Perhaps these should not be included, but I am inclined to put them in anyway.

[desocupado]

Jul 3, 2014 22:38:09 GMT KnightErrant said:

5. Introduce NPC's who will swap random items in their families. Caster belts (within rarity), weapons (within simple/martial), armour (light/heavy/med).




This isn't likely to fly, IMHO, allowing everyone to trade their Tia Bard Belts for Cleric and Sorcerer ones and their Dustbone daggers and clubs for morningstars seems a bit broken...might just as well have the loot drops be tokens that can be exchanged for whatever item the player wants, which seems a bit "metagame"... (Tho tbh most players would likely LOVE the idea...)


KE.

It would be good for UR and bellow (upgrade those pesk XXX +6 into +8 then +10). Some set loot from legendary areas could use this token system as well.

More point if it somehow grow into a system that eliminates loot split altogether.

[condude]

The item swapping idea isn't bad, but it would need a price. A bunch of gold?