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Post by manuka on Nov 30, 2017 15:54:21 GMT
So I've given the vault ideas some thought as has Acaos and we're considering the following, middle of the road, option: Instead of a wipe, giving longtime players of HG, reincarnation slots on the new EE version equivalent to the characters in their HG classic vaults. This would include tags, likely subraces and their experience. It wouldn't include gear or bank vaults or wallet balance. We would likely give some level appropriate starter gear. Now hold on their sabre i didnt spend 1000hours farming 10k canopics to lose my xr gear, only to have my high level toons to farm limbo again on HG EE because they are lvl 80 x7demi and 5abyss and have no need for tags or xp.In my opinion it would be much better to transfer peoples banks over instead of their toons. Having limited items would firstly again make cores alot better than tanks and would lead to alot of boring and repetitive loot farming that we allready see in places like limbo and aboleths. It would be much better for the server if people made new toons as this would create more runs and encourage party play, without the vets loseing all hard earned lootz. People can put all their toons items in the bank and also racebooks tags should transfer.
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Post by darkwaffle on Nov 30, 2017 16:06:58 GMT
Out of curiosity what is the rationale for considering a partial transfer over a full transfer? Technical obstacle? Server health? New player experience?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2017 16:20:32 GMT
I’m inclined to agree with Manuka on this; given a strict binary choice between transferring XP/tags vs transferring bank vaults, as a player I think the bank vault transfer is a lot less tedious and would encourage more play.
If I suddenly got a bunch of underequipped Level 80/x7 Demi/x5 Prince toons I would basically have to force myself to grind Azz3/Aboleths to accumulate gear for Limbo farming, since those toons have little other purpose. Conversely, starting toons from scratch with our vaults intact would have everyone organising runs and tagging up their toons as fast as they could.
Having said that. I can definitely see potential issues with allowing total vault porting, since engorged vaults cause devaluation of gear. I wonder if players were given a limit of transfers (eg: 3-5 bank chests for 30-50 items total, per human player) to transfer over their most precious items, if that might balance out letting players feel they aren’t losing all their stuff while still clearing out the oversupply of items?
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Post by manuka on Nov 30, 2017 17:08:58 GMT
Of course if boxing is aloud then people just gna mass level toons anyways and alot less parties gna happen.
If boxing is aloud u may as well tranafer everything.Then also why even move to HG EE may as well stay on HG ORIGINAL or should i say HG SERVER OF BOT PARTIES
Boxing should be banned on HG EE when it starts up. However if there isnt enoughf new players then it should be aloud again.
Also a way to make botting less important on HG EE would be to alow toons to start a hell cycle with tia and end it with ness. BUT YOU CAN DO THE OTHER HELLS IN ANY ORDER.
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Post by Raj on Nov 30, 2017 19:02:43 GMT
As the self proclaimed winner of pre-EE HG and proud forum guru let me state the obvious: middle way solutions are cheap and don't satisfy anybody.
First of all, it's terribly unfair.
At one end of the spectrum we have players who focused on a handful of toons, played them forever and geared with the best they could find/trade, suddendly finding themselves naked (because realistically any "starter gear" you could provide is going to pale compared to what we could have found in ~9 years of randomized loot and forge) and unable to play as they were used to. For them, that's the equivalent of a total wipe, but to add insult to the injury people who levelled up multiple projects (multiboxing or not, not the issue here) are now ahead of them in terms of vault and runs possibilities. Anybody who scratched the end game on HG knows that it's gear the real roadblock here, and what good is it to transfer e.g. an Ely tag if I have no amnesia ring or cha arti from there, I'm still going to run that place again and again but the feeling won't be "yay it's as good as when I was younger" but "ffs I have to farm this to get back the stuff that was rightfully mine".
People who played together but made different choices when it came to loot pick are also going to have mixed feelings about this. How was that Nessus loot, a PW and a Rilmani book? Hope you picked the book because in some days/weeks/months you're going to lose everything except the subraces. The above rightfully pissed Manuka farmed no stop limbo to gamble dozens of XR items (mostly crap, but that's another issue) only to see them disappear while I played a comparable amount of time in such areas, saved for 22 XR subrace books and am going to keep them all.
I support a total wipe and start fresh on EE servers. If it's possible to maintain intact the Classic HG running separately even better, that way we can keep play some toons there but it's going to be obvious after few months that any new player is going to access NWN through the EE version only, so the Classic is going to stagnate. That is not going to be a problem for some people, those who play mostly alone or with a couple of trusted friends, but truly minimal dev support is needed to keep the sloths happy.
For those worried of "vets" not being able to carry their sorry ass through runs if their toons are wiped out, guess what, having level 80s with little to no gear is going to make scrooges even more greedy. If I don't join a run it's most of the time because I don't gain anything out of that. No tags, no loot, no fun.
Fully ported-over highbies are not going to party up with EE newcomers because the challenge and reward in most runs is still going to be minimal. There's a limited amount of times we can help newbies find their way in the maze or afk-tanking abishais in Tia with a toon made to survive black slaads, before burning out. People losing their gear but owning end-game toons still are not going to populate the lowbie areas to greet the new EE players, magically shout dustbone runs all day long and let you tag along on some open race character for abyss runs when they aim at re-building their toons. If you think hg endgame is elitist you cannot imagine what it's going to be when players are rushing LL-Hells with their lvl 80 bur toons trying to farm back a full Tia set or similar stuff. Most of the people left here have a distorted visual due to economic inflation and burs given as freebies, with highbies helping them out of good heart because it's quick and they don't mind letting you take part to the split (even if you did nothing beside using rez charges) and keep all the loot.
That's not a realistic expectation, and I know that because I was a newbie when other people weren't incredibly wealthy and the difference between newcomer and vet was a small fraction of what is it now: I was expected to contribute or pass on loot, or was plain told I didn't deserve to join such run yet. If you think I'm the only example left of the old greedy guard, you're going to be disappointed: it's easy to be generous when what you're giving up is worth nothing in an old server economy.
So what's the difference between a partial and full wipe I hear you worried nublets screaming. In the full wipe situation I'm of the idea that old timers willing to rebuild from scratch NEED to party up with newbies, to build up xp, do not-that-fun tag runs and because simply put they might not be that overpowered anymore. It's a totally different situation if I am on a level 80 XR or a level 50 open race when it's time to shout a 'thids run and a fresh immo 30 fighter/10 wm asks for a spot: in the first case I don't need him, plain and simple; in the second case I'm less powerful but mostly important, I might have been levelling with that guy, maybe we share loot (caster stuff to me, tanky stuff to you, let farm this thing until we both have 1 each...) because that's how you build up wealth and friends when you need both.
Put me back to square one and I'll party with anybody in my level range hunting the same tags, give me back a pale imitation of my old toon and I'll begrudgingly party with the 'worthy ones' only, doing our best to keep the good stuff among us while we rebuild the powerbase. Or simply quit, because if there's a worse thing than farming xp and tag cycles forever is to play countless runs for no xp and no tags and only improve your gear, that's how we lost most true vets in the last years.
About that, a quick multiboxing prophecy: if I'll be allowed to play 4+ toons at the same time, forget all of the above, I'm going to keep everything for myself and alienate new players. If I don't give up on the module straight away (actually, it'd be the perfect moment for that, right after the ceremony for my Classic HG victory) you're not going to see me inviting anybody who's not a guildmate on any run from the beetle cave to the fortess of entropy. And the guildmate better be a sexy spanish female one or somebody who's not afraid of my random bursts of rage and plays a bard. I've been here forever and remember many couples (gf+bf, hubby+wife, parent and son) playing here but only one circumstance of a family of 3 people and never 4+. Should the EE .exe allow for multiboxing (a big IF), it might be the good moment to put a scripted limit to 2 toons per IP and manually apply exceptions for big family groups, or 'politely' ask VPN users to play by the rules.
tl;dr: I tend to play at least a couple times with any guy I spot reaching past Immortal and then focus my 'spare' time (funny talking about spare time during the game time but that's it...) on the promising ones: most of the good padawans in the last years left when they realized that 1) there's a disproportionate gap between players and at the same time the existing end game players have little motivation to play with them instead of focusing on the more rewarding content and 2) they'll be forced to multibox if they want to close that gap in realistic time (6-12 months I call realistic). Everybody happy to play in the 1-40 or early LL runs shouldn't be bothered much, but then without new players all that's left to do for the few that stick around is multiboxing, or give up as well. Should a wipe not occour, or only be partial, I can guarantee there won't be any change in how slowly the fresh blood gets involved, and how quick they give up altogether.
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Post by manuka on Nov 30, 2017 19:26:06 GMT
Also would be fine with full wipe if no bots. Even tho my greedy inner self wants me lootz so i can show off to them noobs like raj😂 its common knowlwdge he wants my trash random XRS
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Post by Raj on Nov 30, 2017 19:42:34 GMT
Also would be fine with full wipe if no bots. Even tho my greedy inner self wants me lootz so i can show off to them noobs like raj😂 its common knowlwdge he wants my trash random XRS Quoting you only because it saves me the hassle of checking that abort I just posted looking for typos. I can be lazy and not correct them if we accept to keep a low standard
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2017 19:53:29 GMT
Well said, Raj. I agree with basically everything in the post, and I think the model of 2x IP's with manual exceptions allowed could be a reasonable balance.
I'm curious about how much damage allowing a small number of items to be transferred would do (even just 10), which could perhaps soften the blow slightly for players who feel that all their time was literally for nothing. Yes, it's a middle-ground solution, but only a small one. Obviously it's hard to argue against your case, since you would be losing more than practically any other player on the server and still support a clean slate.
At this point I'm honestly okay with whatever happens, but I'm pretty confident that a clean slate EE is best for HG overall. I will also highlight that to me, it is not so much an issue of "we need to let new players feel good" (which is something many, including myself, have disputed), but instead think of it as an opportunity to fix: 1) Lowbieland is a ghost town, which will be repaired if vets are forced to restart (at the moment, reincarnation and full vaults hugely reduce the need for existing players to make new toons) 2) Level 41-60 is a drag-fest; I don't remember the last time I saw a Sissy run that didn't have a Level 70+ present to carry the party through what would normally be a pretty challenging run (if attempted with a level-appropriate party). All that LL content has zero challenge and zero value 3) Everything that isn't a well-rolled BUR/XR/rare Set is worth almost nothing 4) Additionally buys a little time to work on Limbo, and automatically improves XRs by comparison (because we won't have accumulated as many BURs with godly rolls, which are a nightmare to balance against)
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Post by manuka on Nov 30, 2017 20:04:22 GMT
Trying to pick only 10 godly items to take with me sounds very hard to do😢😢 i would have to play favourites
Also think item transfer if only 10 should be cosidered to motivate people to still play on HG LAND OF BOTS untill HG EE comes out Probs with 10 items is tho race book tags? Or no racebooks aloud
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Post by FunkySwerve on Nov 30, 2017 21:24:17 GMT
Hello all,
A few thoughts, as I agree with the sentiment that we should let our position be known sooner rather than later.
First, some general operating principles:
1. We don't vault wipe. This is actually a corollary to a more important principle: we will respect your playtime to the greatest extent feasible. 2. We don't generally give a toot if you multibox. If part of your reward center is maximizing your 'efficiency' in that way, you'll do it; if not, then not. 3. If possible, even if it involves a lot of work, we will do a full port of HG to EE. It's an incredible opportunity, and one we will not pass up.
That being said, acaos' option #3 looks best to me. Unfortunately whether or not option #3 is viable will depend in large part on Beamdog. We may have some happy news on that front, though I will let acaos share that if it materializes.
Similarly, whether or not multiboxing is possible will likely depend on Beamdog, not us. There's not a lot we could do to accommodate it, regardless, and my position on it (see #2 above) hasn't changed. That said, if we did for some reason decide to limit it, we would probably limit it to two connections per ip (though again, that's unlikely to be possible).
I'm beginning to be in a position where I can commit more time to HG again, though I still have a new house I'm getting in order and am still building my practice. Because of that, and other factors, I do disagree with acaos on one point: I'm considering setting up a Patreon account, to the extent that the software licenses we are using it permit such things. It's primary purpose would be to ensure that the server hosting continued indefinitely, much as our donations do now, but I'm also interested in other options if I can find a way to do it that doesn't run afoul of our EULA with Bioware.
Having put that out there, if we do wind up being able to covert to EE fully, my main priorities would be hammering out 3 or 4 more area sets for EEs, including likely the endboss, Atropus, though he could prove well-nigh impossible for quite some time. Next on deck is Mechanus, which is not an EE area, but more akin to Limbo, and which is screaming to be done. Before that I will be tweaking the hard version of Limbo, which has, shall we say, a few unfinished edges.
Another long-term goal is to do a loot rebalance, in order to make gear somewhat less important, and to permit additional 'levels' of said gear. That would be an incredible time sink, but one where we could farm out some of the labor. I know there's still some deep dissatisfaction with many XRs, but much of that was anticipated due to their balancing having been done with a very long-term set of balancing priorities (making some properties nigh-useless, for example, until later-implemented content). And, of course, class tweaking, like we have been doing of late, as PLs have left a lot of issues to address.
All that being said, if we are unable to do a full or close-to-full conversion to EE, I'm not sure what we will opt for. Raj makes a persuasive argument for a full wipe, but see #1 above. I think there are many other options to explore. I'm not going to delve into them, because it's premature, and I don't want anything I say to make people alter their play.
That's my two cents for now.
We'll update you as things progress.
Best, Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Nov 30, 2017 21:29:01 GMT
2) Level 41-60 is a drag-fest; I don't remember the last time I saw a Sissy run that didn't have a Level 70+ present to carry the party through what would normally be a pretty challenging run (if attempted with a level-appropriate party). All that LL content has zero challenge and zero value If we pull off a conversion and increase traffic, level restrictions would tighten again. We only eased them due to lagging numbers. Because of that, the dragging phenomenon may become a non-issue (and the gear rebalance I mention in my previouvs post would help a bit as well). Funky
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Post by Test on Dec 1, 2017 3:32:29 GMT
Hello all, A few thoughts, as I agree with the sentiment that we should let our position be known sooner rather than later. First, some general operating principles: 1. We don't vault wipe. This is actually a corollary to a more important principle: we will respect your playtime to the greatest extent feasible. 2. We don't generally give a toot if you multibox. If part of your reward center is maximizing your 'efficiency' in that way, you'll do it; if not, then not. 3. If possible, even if it involves a lot of work, we will do a full port of HG to EE. It's an incredible opportunity, and one we will not pass up. That being said, acaos' option #3 looks best to me. Unfortunately whether or not option #3 is viable will depend in large part on Beamdog. We may have some happy news on that front, though I will let acaos share that if it materializes. Similarly, whether or not multiboxing is possible will likely depend on Beamdog, not us. There's not a lot we could do to accommodate it, regardless, and my position on it (see #2 above) hasn't changed. That said, if we did for some reason decide to limit it, we would probably limit it to two connections per ip (though again, that's unlikely to be possible). I'm beginning to be in a position where I can commit more time to HG again, though I still have a new house I'm getting in order and am still building my practice. Because of that, and other factors, I do disagree with acaos on one point: I'm considering setting up a Patreon account, to the extent that the software licenses we are using it permit such things. It's primary purpose would be to ensure that the server hosting continued indefinitely, much as our donations do now, but I'm also interested in other options if I can find a way to do it that doesn't run afoul of our EULA with Bioware. Having put that out there, if we do wind up being able to covert to EE fully, my main priorities would be hammering out 3 or 4 more area sets for EEs, including likely the endboss, Atropus, though he could prove well-nigh impossible for quite some time. Next on deck is Mechanus, which is not an EE area, but more akin to Limbo, and which is screaming to be done. Before that I will be tweaking the hard version of Limbo, which has, shall we say, a few unfinished edges. Another long-term goal is to do a loot rebalance, in order to make gear somewhat less important, and to permit additional 'levels' of said gear. That would be an incredible time sink, but one where we could farm out some of the labor. I know there's still some deep dissatisfaction with many XRs, but much of that was anticipated due to their balancing having been done with a very long-term set of balancing priorities (making some properties nigh-useless, for example, until later-implemented content). And, of course, class tweaking, like we have been doing of late, as PLs have left a lot of issues to address. All that being said, if we are unable to do a full or close-to-full conversion to EE, I'm not sure what we will opt for. Raj makes a persuasive argument for a full wipe, but see #1 above. I think there are many other options to explore. I'm not going to delve into them, because it's premature, and I don't want anything I say to make people alter their play. That's my two cents for now. We'll update you as things progress. Best, Funky Best forum post ever.
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Post by axis16666 on Dec 1, 2017 3:41:09 GMT
Hello all, 3. If possible, even if it involves a lot of work, we will do a full port of HG to EE. It's an incredible opportunity, and one we will not pass up. Best, Funky This ^
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Post by chirality on Dec 1, 2017 10:31:15 GMT
2) Level 41-60 is a drag-fest; I don't remember the last time I saw a Sissy run that didn't have a Level 70+ present to carry the party through what would normally be a pretty challenging run (if attempted with a level-appropriate party). All that LL content has zero challenge and zero value If we pull off a conversion and increase traffic, level restrictions would tighten again. We only eased them due to lagging numbers. Because of that, the dragging phenomenon may become a non-issue (and the gear rebalance I mention in my previouvs post would help a bit as well). Funky altho the end is worthwhile, the means has a bit of backfire potential imo. ofc we'd like to try reduce dragging but heck ppl bring the toons they have or (most often) their "current project" for pug LL runs and if vet is working on L74 ploder and needs xp, that's common motivation for vets to join lowbie runs imo. it's sad (in regard to "newbie getting dragged=bad") that ppl show up on low LL runs with OP toon but hey, at least they show up. but shackling, rite! meh: the shacklee still getting op boosts vs true lowbie: lot of wearable set gear, op UR randoms, etc so still gonna be carrying harder than newbie toon with their op kit and more. sure, it's orders of magnitude from unshackled L70 dragging, but i did plenty of lowbie LL runs with op-geared shackled toon (or 54-parked ph farmer) and it's no less satisfying for lowbie/tagger to have guy of same level as u but invincible and breezing thru the run cuz he's wearing the best of the UR/set gear he found after years of playing while ur wearing 2 months worth of handout/lootsplit leftovers. there's not a lot of vets with such a large stable of new toons that they have low-LL compatible things to bring for a newbie sissy run in the offtimes when they're bored/feeling helpful/no desirable endgame run happening. there's always the possibility of making level-capped tag helpers for this purpose like i've done in -hc- mode but holding a toon at L50 is a lot harder to rationalize than holding toon at 780k xp; most people that get a toon into high 40s want to get it to hells and onward, anyway it's asking quite a bit from vet players to do this when they can just shackle and play op toon that still dominates the run for the newbie. ofc a big reason sissy runs get dragged by PL toons is cuz ppl like to be dragged, but imo when it's intentional drag that's usually when it's small friend party/"guild"/boxer run, and the ppl on lowbie taggers are not noobs, but rather vets wanting to hurry up and get another toon thru LLs; if newbie wants to join should they say "no this is gonna be super fast cheezy drag, ur not welcome cuz u should be properly learning the run with other L48 noobs" imho an even bigger reason LLs get dragged by op toons is because there's vets that like to help newbies and it's almost always 3 cases: 1) they really don't have a L50 toon to bring (or worse, they do: it's tagging and their other acc is the dragger huehue) 2) they focusing on a lowbie-ish toon right now, it's op for sissy at L64 but it's still a baby compared to their L75+ mains 3) their well-intended idea of helping newbie is by dragging the run. there's a lot of newb sissy runs that ended up dragged but it's not like the newbie asked in chat "any old vet have a op PL toon to afkdrag me thru this run thx :-) ", it's more like "newbie guy sissy run, all welcome to attend : ) " and ppl showed up with that op toon for pick-a-reason (cuz it's common in nerds to enjoy zomg t-rekt ez content with op char, or satisfy unconscious desire to show off, or just thinking "hey i'll make run super smooth and ez for poor newbie", the latter of which imo holds quite a bit of blame for hg decline). anyway, speaking as a guy who hates stunting newbie development in a lame drag (still wants to help tho), and doesn't have neither fresh LL-compatible toon in vault (or "L45 sissy helper") nor has outkast's giant vault of toons of all levels ready to bring to lowbie run: if it's a question of "bring op toon to sissy and try teach newbie without senseless drag" or do some boring solo farm/not log in, i used to pick the former a lot of the time. if it's a question of "have a toon of appropriate level or don't come", wellllllll.... just seems like potential to reduce overall vet participation in lowbie content, not improve it. huge wall for tiny and offtopic subject, but just to point out this is another issue haunting hg that really has only 1 solution, which i won't name again
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Post by rainbowdash on Dec 1, 2017 11:10:32 GMT
I actually would enjoy a full reset on EE would give me the opportunity to enjoy low levels with people who are pretty burned out off running limbo or some abyss/helllayer for the 10000times to have a 00.1% chance of a gearupgrade.
Sure. I could just wipe my whole stuff myself and they could too. But for some reason it's something else if its a neccassity or an option.
Anyway. Imo "vets" whatever that is imo arent just defined by their accumlated gear/exp but mostly by their gameknowledge and mechanical prowess and that's something what they'll always have over the "newbies" bc "newbies" who aquire those kind of skills become "vets" pretty fast.
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