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Post by chirality on Oct 16, 2018 17:57:52 GMT
well jeez if this is that serious, let's at least get our facts straight! don't forget about the +5 saves! it's only +5% to all ele imms. Phys you get 3%. exos you're getting whopping 6% (!!!) neg (least important imm% in the game by far). others 3%, with an extra 1% variable from gaobin, depending on alignment. ___________________________ Look, I definitely understand and respect the position of arguing that these tags are kind of a false option. It's true--they're not optional, they're mandatory.....*for a player who cares*. You put it well when you said this in earlier post, but don't forget that you choosing to absolutely min/max your character IS a choice. People banter about the tiniest things on build threads, but hey, we're gamers, that's what we do...the fact that that's a thing doesn't equate to that being a golden standard. That's just a thing; powergamers will powergame; most people aren't even close to being obsessed with a few skillpoints or imm% as others, and there's plenty of people that give up halfway through with the plan of proxying later. I've known at least 2 guys (easily known as "pros" or fairly on the leet-vet side) who were good at playing and building in this game and (to give an example) choose not to always waste their time and effort fully-tagging a toon, just tag what they can when/if it's convenient, cherry-picking some of the tags that give imm% they judge to be valuable enough to bother with. But yes, all that is talk-too-much way of saying that, for a zomg TRUE min/maxer, you're right, the "choice" of tagging or not is an illusion. Unfortunately (or not, depending on your view), this game does "suffer" from some of that, because Funky's (and iirc shard's) historic position on these matters has been that "not being maxed != nonviable" / "choosing most optimal != lack of choice". On the one hand, he's right--it's a logical fallacy. It's not going to work convincing a lawyer or economist to take the stance that anything other than the best is not viable, or that there's only the most optimal calculation or nothing. On the other hand, people do tend think that way, regardless. --NOT ALL OF THEM-- Just some. Many, most...?...all we know for sure is not literally everyone. I don't think anyone has any actual numbers, if we want to take this to a mathematical breakdown of what % of players are min/max extremists, what % are somewhere in the middle, and what % don't care much, if at all. Nonetheless, despite it not making sense, or being a poor platform to argue from in regards to development or game-crafting, the fact is that there are many facets of this game that really do end up creating a false paradigm of choice, either in large extent (like tagging vs not tagging) or small extent, like playing a GI vs playing a druid. But at the end of the day, the game is full of toons that aren't fully tagged, and people do have GIs. ______________________________ On a sidenote, I don't really understand the problem that you mentioned with "starting over". There's a reason proxying exists. There's no "gotcha" here, actually most people afaik will tag up a new toon to the point that they run out of steam, with the intent of going back later. It's really not a big deal. The people who only ever fully tag a toon on the first playthru are the people who a) are powergame extremists and b) either have bots, friends, or can solo them to the point that it's not having a noticeable impact on their enjoyment or the time investment required to progress to immortality.
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Post by kusin111 on Oct 18, 2018 16:18:24 GMT
I’ve never completed the preLL list on any toon, and yet I have been to the end game areas a couple times. It can be done no problem. Have hope young warrior.
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Post by AuBricker on Oct 19, 2018 11:13:03 GMT
I realize that many people hate the Pre-LL tags, but I'm not one of them. In fact, I wish they continued into the LL areas.
But remember, they are optional. If you truly hate them, don't do them. While there exists a bonus for completing the tags, no penalty exists for ignoring them.
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Post by chainlink on Oct 19, 2018 12:08:13 GMT
I always do them now they exist, mostly they just require a small deviation from the standard power levelling routine used for pre-immortality and with a bit of planning they aren't too difficult to obtain especially if you can find some friends to play with.
It does get slightly irritating when you join a group (for instance 29-35) who are doing the 35 accomplishments only to discover they've done the one you need and unfortunately the exp across a set of same level accomplishments can massively differ causing people not to want to redo the joke exp ones again.
Another irritating thing is being told you are too high level to pop the gold piles on dragons for which you are the appropriate level to get the accomplishment, yes its not a deal breaker but you did it at the correct level so why can't you take the gold?
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Post by thomascovenant on Oct 20, 2018 4:10:40 GMT
I also dont realy mind doing the pre LL tags but this worth for the little bonus and more for the xp bonus when you do them all.
I dont realy mind for myself but a point chainlink said and i am also thinking it's for when players do the tag at the max cap lvl and are not able to pick the gold treasure at draggy this is surely frustrating for newbies players, as all know newbies players start with very few gold, and if no old players give them help there they have to hunt to be able to equip them toons decently, easy to imagine when they just killed a draggy how frustrating this can be to not be able to bank the draggy gold treasure.
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Post by tanishasreturned on Oct 23, 2018 12:02:54 GMT
What about lowering the amount of tags and raising the rewards per tag? I would also like to see level 36 toons being able to tag with immortals again its harder to find a groups to do higher tags. This way a couple of guildies or friends can help. Im ok with getting the tags the way it is also!
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Post by chainlink on Oct 23, 2018 14:39:24 GMT
They can tag with immortals as long as they don't go past level 40 (people often keep a 40 immo spare for this purpose, I know I have at least one cleric buffer toon).
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Post by droidarmy on Oct 24, 2018 7:19:09 GMT
(people often keep a 40 immo spare for this purpose, I know I have at least one cleric buffer toon). This fundamentally goes against the way many, and some very popular, modern games are progressing. This requires significant forethought and investment just to be able to ease onboarding potential friends and newcomers. Why? To encourage lower level gameplay in some way (in this case:meaningful benefits in the long haul). Even then that's only helpful for 34-40+. Truly tags are a great and fantastic benefit. But most people here are right - they're not 'required', but if you want to make the most out of what's available to you, to maximize your time/benefit from the game they're required. Reading all this, combined with my personal feelings on tags (the whole thing is a slog) and the quality of life other games have shown you can give if done right, I feel like there's a lot of unconvincing bickering over what could be a great thing. Unfortunately I don't think that's something that's going to be solved by us (so far) in this or previous chains. Ultimately it's up to the man in charge to decide who he wants to continue to market this experience to. Maybe it's just moot and I'm just yelling at a cloud now. I get it - you want to increase playtime of the module. Two ways of doing that: - Make people play longer
- Have more people play
And right now it feels like the module is set up to weed out casual players. In my experience when any situation starts hard-to-get-into bounce-rate is high, your attrition jumps and drops slowly, and in the end you only get really dedicated (invested) players with strong opinions on something they spend so much time on. The current state of non NWN-EE is doing a good enough job of stopping #2 for all of us who enjoy this same thing. We shot the badger that was on our foot with the current design - the badger was the problem - now we need to tend to the infection we ignored while we felt strong and finished milking the barn. I'm going to beat that horse once more: every time... the lowby 1-40, tags especially, feel like such a slog. Many, and increasingly more, titles are allowing end-game players to play with new-game players, and I think that's great, and can immediately ease what entry we have from #2, - it fosters inclusion
- nobody gets punished to level lower, and right now to me shackling feels like a punishment without yielding tangible benefits like a wider selection of loot (no spoilers).
- I don't want to be punished for my time helping people to help me meet my goals, and
- I don't want to be punished for creating more characters to play more classes and roles to fill
[li]If fosters growth - I don't seem to be the only one who think the 1->Immo grind is freaking terrible. Without a dedicated group, or bots/alts, you have to go to some pretty far lengths do that slog in a reasonable time. Even then, that requires some serious research/Q&A/A willing guide. And that's only to get to the *real* game, when stuff really opens up and gameplay gets wacky and great. Maybe you can speed it up (I saw fewer tags mentioned, offer more xp, but meh - the game should be explored) but gosh it's bad doing it.
- New players won't be forced with such a limited (vanilla) set of mechanics for so long only to be thrown into a world of immunity reductions, immunity-ignoring effects, AI combat features, etc
- People can play the characters they enjoy are very familiar with and set-up to play. Super finger-licking QoL
[/li][li]It speeds gameplay[/li] - I won't have to invest months of solo-duo work in limited play time to get up to speed, and
- repeated (though shorter, once you know people) effort to play new characters, especially since the only effective mechanics are given so late into the game
[/ul] HG POA is a freaking incredible creation on a dying platform - unless a move to NWNEE can be made (and realistically the numbers are meh, but factors better than origin NWN) new player experience needs to be addressed and yes it will benefit the whales, too, but let's face it: whales exist. Hunt them seriously or they will... be.
Now I'm going to be 100% rude and offer a couple contrived solutions in my 2nd post on this account: - Let me level with lowbies.
- Restrict loot, nullify my XP, whatever. Make it easier for me to make new characters and play with my friends. There's lots of models you can use, depending on how loose you want to be:
- Weighted ceiling, to let lowbies level with highbies at lowbie rates
- Weighted floor, to let lowbies level and significantly-reduce highby rates
- Or you could just significantly reduce the lowbie XP rate based on the power of the highby and intended XP: e.g. rats give 0 to all, formian in the desert give some X (42; or you can tune this to the current value/need-to-level of the recipient if you want to get real mathy) to lowbies, intended XP to highby, goes up as average unifies
- XP is one thing, but don't block me from those tag benefits if you decide to let high levels play with low levels. If someone is willing to take the effort to shackle to 40 and drag me though so many tags, please please please let us do that as long as I'm under the tag requirements and have the kill count.
- I think anything post-40 probably shouldn't be allowed to tag with a lowbie. The mechanics are so wacky and hard to deal with that things just get messy. Besides, the ~40 tags are at least dangerous shackled even if the rest is a long meandering. I think shackling here is a good thing.
2¢, probably with typos and bad formatting.
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Post by desocupado on Oct 24, 2018 12:26:21 GMT
Tags should really give a flat XP amount to any kind of tag (Pre-LL, LL and end-game ones). And that xp should be given to everyone in a party with at least one tagger, so helping is worthwhile XP-wise. For LL+ levels about 50% of the total mob's worth at appropriate level (let's say Ssithrak Dimension has 200k xp of mobs at level 42, if you have a tagger everyone gains 100k xp, even if one person is level 70 and the other is level 40). Also, we just would have to have about 50% XP of an adequate level in a few tags in Pre-LL and we are golden there.
This idea might feel a bit out of context, but it does ameliorate one problem - several veterans feel bored with the said pre-LL content - re-purposing a character would avoid said frustration.
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Post by chainlink on Oct 24, 2018 13:05:16 GMT
How about every character that completes the all pre-LL accomplishments gains a non-transferable augmenter that applies one beneficial property to any suitable item they apply it to (similar to the Asmo sword) and in doing so binds the item to them. This would add a degree of randomization to achieving all the accomplishments and also mean that you couldn't just use it on something to pass on to other characters.
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Post by tanishasreturned on Oct 24, 2018 14:51:10 GMT
Only problem I see with that is what if its a proxy? Will it transfer to the toon that the proxy is for?
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Post by shaengarne on Oct 24, 2018 16:34:28 GMT
What about making the tag bonuses obtainable with some investment other than tagging at the respective level or with a proxy? It could work similar to Captain Borian selling the survival rings in exchange for a rare weapon. The discussion of "How much are the tag bonuses worth?" I prefer to leave to others.
But going one step further (and avoiding the question above) you could make the tag bonuses tradeable...similar to pandects, tomes, librams, artifacts or epodes with a one time use per character. That would allow people who enjoy doing lvl 1-40 tags to "trade" their tags on a proxy character to those who don't. After all it's just a time investment into your character: If you don't want to farm pyramid for a wis arty, you trade something for it. If you think it's worthless, you don't farm pyramid or buy it on the market but instead you spend your time farming PW rings. Why not do the same with low level tag bonuses?
It doesn't solve any issues brought up in the last few posts with tags being a roadblock for newer players or player retention, but that wasn't a point in the OP either. And I think these issues can be solved apart from the suggestion of making tags tradeable.
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Post by desocupado on Oct 24, 2018 20:50:05 GMT
Only problem I see with that is what if its a proxy? Will it transfer to the toon that the proxy is for? Remove proxy, and have people paying exorbitant gold/xp for preLL tags, if missed.
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Post by chainlink on Oct 24, 2018 22:11:16 GMT
Only problem I see with that is what if its a proxy? Will it transfer to the toon that the proxy is for? No it would be bound to the character it was created on, you don't get survival rings transferred over at the minute so it would work like that, if it were a proxy character the added property item would die with them.
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Post by axis16666 on Oct 25, 2018 0:05:44 GMT
How about if we quit bitching and just play 'em if ya want, don't bother if ya don't want?
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