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Post by diemex on Nov 29, 2017 8:06:36 GMT
I think option #5 is the best one..... just my 2 gold pcs.
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Post by desocupado on Nov 29, 2017 9:55:13 GMT
4 seems more reasonable instead of having 2 versions.
It might help getting more players without losing too many vets.
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Although I think the rates (drops, xp, tag rewards) should probably be increased for greater appeal.
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Post by chirality on Nov 29, 2017 14:36:59 GMT
not sure if i really have a preference anymore (asking me 2 years ago would be unquestioned), and i don't feel informed enough atm to offer an opinion regarding what i think the best option would be (till further details start arriving--beamdog updates/decisions, estimated zots to commit to a given course of action, etc). definitely some big question marks in terms of beamdog plans: what exactly are the extent of their tinkering with game engine (seeing lot of vague references about "bringing full potential of engine/really seeing a lot of cool stuff down the road" etc, what timeline are we going to be stuck with looking at for "stable" versions (beamdog perhaps not great track record here), how reliable will bugfix support be (nor here), and ofc exactly how much "final masterpiece" makes adapting HG customizations into devwork. that said, i would like to mention that despite a sizable negative backlash so far, i'm not convinced that an EE "reset"/new vault would be all doom and gloom. it certainly wouldn't spell the end of HG, of that i'm sure. any longtime NWNer has been thru a vault wipe or 2 and for every mod that died as a result, 3 more continued and prospered in the aftermath (i still play occasionally on my 1st NWN love PW where the vault wipe at the time was as bad for me then as it would be for me now on HG--something approaching "just take the leg doc!") especially atm, when the news is relatively fresh and alarming/upsetting, and there's been no meaningful decision possible yet, i can understand and totally empathize with the feeling of "welp, i'm done with hg then" and of course atm some (most? poll in order maybe hue) vets would rather just quit HG than start over (or feel like that atm anyway), but there's gotta be at least enough who would stay to keep things going. regarding botting, unless multiboxing ends up being replicable to similar degree in EE as 1.69, there's an ugly issue ahead, where new players and current non-boxers never have a chance to reap the rewards of 1.69 boxers (eh, life isn't fair, who cares, but it would be a bitter pill to swallow for anyone, current player or new, comparing themselves to or attempting to emulate progression of leet boxers with multiple vaults of endgame-runner accounts that they xfer over to EE), and boxers can only play 1 of their thousand-hour hard-earned bot army toons at a time. backbone of HG active population is essentially players who largely multibox, and it doesn't look like that will even be possible (or at least not in the same fashion as we know it now) so if HG is relying on boxed toons to stay afloat now, that's something that will be considered and dealt with appropriately (by players, devs, or both) moving forward. it seems like most of the active daily population for the last couple years is composed of people who joined as newbies a few years ago and returned vets (other 5-10 slots going to vets that never quit), so if some returned ancients throw in the towel and some come back, and some 3-year vets throw in the towel and we get more newbies who might stay 3 more years, it could end up balancing out. there's no question that HG is/will soon be at a turning point and once the road is crossed it will never be the same again, but if boxing proves to no longer be an option in the same manner as 1.69, the mod itself may need to adapt to "post-golden age" times w/ the tiny fraction of good-ol-day population that it never really had to come to terms with since mid-2000s, thanks to boxing still enabling a semblance of "enuff toons to get runz done". starting fresh for EE makes a lot of sense to me in terms of "aesthetics"; not sure what better term to use, but it just seems "right" imo, and i don't think it would have as deadly impact on the game itself, or upon the retention of vets, as may seem unquestionable atm. it may not be an even split (or even close), but i'm sure there would at least be a "survivable" ratio between vets that hate the idea of starting over from scratch and those that actually would be intrigued by it; and some of the latter group may even be vets that largely are inactive so there could (based on forum posts so far, seems unlikely, but it's possible, just saying) actually be a potential net gain of activity, rather than loss. and there's prolly at least 1 out of 5 players who atm are thinking "hell no, if my vault goes i go with it, thx for all the fish/was a good run, time to play another game, peace" that end up biting the bullet and returning anyway; 9/10 HGers are chronic recidivists anyway. i dunno if poli meant it in quite same way as this, but to quote that anyway: i'm not sure what i think anymore. idea of fresh vault is both painful and exciting, instinct ofc says "noooooo!" but just tossing that out there. as much as i'd love to vote #5 cuz that'd be my dream (dgaf about EE tbh--first of all dont play nwn for gfx (does anyone ever ), second of all they're barely improved anyway (to be fair that could well change in future) , 3rd hg already basically does all the cool stuff i could ask from nwn, unless beamdog is gonna do something truly remarkable like fixing way combat modes work, integrating true 40+ levels, adding deeper/more intuitive quickbar UI, fixing extra attack bug so can remove 100% conceal anti exploit, integrating spellbook save/load, fixing permanently render issues, letting halflings hit enormous mobs etc)
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Post by darkwaffle on Nov 29, 2017 18:57:28 GMT
I would be open to continuing HG on either classic or EE. I had expected more pushback regarding the need to purchase EE but my impression is that does not seem to be a huge concern so far. The release notes as I read them a few days ago did not make me think that playing on EE would really improve the player experience significantly though (at least not yet). Aside from fixing a handful of client/server crashes that I think HG has already scripted/coded around not much stood out to me as "hey that'd be nice". If we as a community think adopting EE could make for a meaningful infusion of players or if the devs see value in some of the behind the scenes enhancements then I can get behind that. Ultimately I think we need to wait for more information about what EE brings to the table and find out how much of a burden transitioning to it would be. Also worth keeping in mind is that the official forums see a lot of requests for new classes/spells/feats/skills - if they make it in then that could toss a wrench into some existing systems as well (mostly in the form of new feats or 'splash' classes I'd think).
I feel like it probably has to be one or the other though. I think that splitting devs and players between both games would be an unhappy medium and it would be better to commit to one long term. Additionally I'm not interested in a vault wipe personally but if we ended up in a scenario where HG was EE only and characters were deleted then I'd at least give it a shot.
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Post by madzapper on Nov 29, 2017 21:00:58 GMT
It won't matter to me whether the vault is wiped or not or whether I can multi-box or not. Loss of players is something that I don't know how to deal with. As it is, I struggle to find people to party with. I also would like to help out as much as possible. I would just love to see some positive movement in NWN as opposed to the letdowns that have come out like NWN2 and Neverwinter.
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Post by TJ on Nov 30, 2017 0:03:21 GMT
Let's not turn this into a thread about multi boxing. That horse is dead, and has been beaten beyond recognition.
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Post by blazingezus on Nov 30, 2017 0:14:46 GMT
Why not try a crowd funding campaign to raise money to get more people on the dev team. As incentive for people to donate for example lets say for a minimum donation of $20 they can get a BUR race book. So lets say they donate $50 they can get enough exp for a lvl 60 character. Those are just examples I'm using to illustrate my point. While this is very generous of you to think of funding us, any porting of HG to EE would be done out of our own time and money. We do accept donations to keep the server running, but have a strict policy against offering any kind of in-game benefit (other than a public 'thank you') for money. Acaos I understand not wanting to compensate server donors with loot as a core server belief. The donation rewards do not need to be loot based. Why not give certain level of donors naming rights to items, or buildings etc. IMO raising money through crowd funding is a good way to promote the epic world you all have created while at the same time take care of bugs/improvements desperately needed. I'm not saying we make it a habit, I'm talking about a one time fundraiser. The worse that could happen is missing the minimal goal to collect the donations, and everyone gets reimbursed minus the host site fee.
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Post by drunkenboastor on Nov 30, 2017 2:41:51 GMT
Whatever decision is to be made, it would be appreciated if it was made sooner than "3 days from now". Knowing that a new clean start is an option, any long term goals I have in the game are killed.
If the decision made does involve a new clean start, I firmly believe that efforts should be made to make multi boxing less effective.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2017 3:26:57 GMT
I firmly believe that efforts should be made to make multi boxing less effective. i can understand the point and i imagine its fine for you, being in a large active guild and also a common time slot (ive gotta play early morning or midday to catch anyone), but try getting a proper run going in my afternoon without people boxing, just not gonna happen, i have to carry at least half the run to go anywhere, doesnt matter if i call the run or not (when i do call runs noone shows, let alone brings an actual core to help). ee isnt gonna make any difference to this whatsoever and we'd prob lose even more players from my timeslot.
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Post by chirality on Nov 30, 2017 4:14:31 GMT
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Post by Test on Nov 30, 2017 4:24:53 GMT
Whatever decision is to be made, it would be appreciated if it was made sooner than "3 days from now". I second this. I suspect the decision made will strongly influence decisions that players will make about what to do from here onward.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2017 5:14:53 GMT
as much as i'd love to vote #5 cuz that'd be my dream (dgaf about EE tbh--first of all dont play nwn for gfx (does anyone ever ), second of all they're barely improved anyway (to be fair that could well change in future) , 3rd hg already basically does all the cool stuff i could ask from nwn, unless beamdog is gonna do something truly remarkable like fixing way combat modes work, integrating true 40+ levels, adding deeper/more intuitive quickbar UI, fixing extra attack bug so can remove 100% conceal anti exploit, integrating spellbook save/load, fixing permanently render issues, letting halflings hit enormous mobs etc) i have a pretty similar opinion, HG is already 1000x better then anything EE is gonna do. the gameplay and customisation of this mod is what makes it so playable for such a long time, little gimmicks do nothing for me, never cared about graphics etc.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2017 6:02:18 GMT
I firmly believe that efforts should be made to make multi boxing less effective. i can understand the point and i imagine its fine for you, being in a large active guild and also a common time slot (ive gotta play early morning or midday to catch anyone), but try getting a proper run going in my afternoon without people boxing, just not gonna happen, i have to carry at least half the run to go anywhere, doesnt matter if i call the run or not (when i do call runs noone shows, let alone brings an actual core to help). ee isnt gonna make any difference to this whatsoever and we'd prob lose even more players from my timeslot. As suggested in my previous post, I agree with DB on this one. I absolutely understand and empathise with your situation, I'm in almost the same timezone as you (Australian East coast) and I never had *any* guildies around. I also multi-boxed a lot (obviously). However, the simple reality is that it's unfairly efficient for players who have the ability to pull it off, and this negatively affects the server. I only really began to clearly see this when I stepped away from the server for a few months. I'm going to use some numbers as an example, using the typical PUG Nessus (ie: not a guild run, or filled to the brim with elite players). I've watched a lot of these form on Webdash (and played in some in my earlier days), and they mostly follow the same pattern: Now how about from the perspective of a multiboxer who can solo the run? Seven times the loot/tags in half the time... Let's call it roughly 15x reward per hour. Or another way to look at it is that the PUG Nessus yields ~7% of the reward per hour compared to soloing. Honestly, at that kind of reward rate the only reason for me to ever join a PUG Nessus is altruism; the reduction in reward is so large that I may as well just pass on the loot and accept that I'm joining purely as a service for the group (or maybe just to show off). And guess what, I've never joined a PUG Nessus since then. The server needs good players to function smoothly, but multi-boxing allows good players to not need the server. It's destructive, plain and simple. I did it because I could, and was blinded to the negative effects on others because I was enjoying the insane profits that came with it. But like I said in my previous post, I don't support getting rid of multi-boxing in the current server; that would be unfair and too drastic of a change to make, since it is part of the game at this stage. So the question stands: if there is a clean slate, should Acaos be putting effort into trying to make multi-boxing work in the EE? And my answer, though just an opinion, is a firm "no". I think there could be *some* merit in allowing dual-boxing (which is the focus of the topic which has been beaten to death), if it is easy to implement. But IMO there is no reasonable justification for running more than 2 toons at once, outside of further increasing efficiency and gaining a power boost. It's overpowered, just like the original Flensing/Reverse Gravity/Fissure/Immute. Players were resistant to have those changed too ("low server population, we need a way to beat bosses in small parties" etc), but they rightfully earned the nerfbat and I think the game is better for it. If a technique/strategy in the game is too efficient, it needs the nerf-bat - it's not the players' job to decide if there are times where it is justifiable to take advantage of it, it's the dev's job to remove the option from the game. If multi-boxing is easily able to be integrated into EE, perhaps a compromise could be to use IP checks to determine boxers, and allow it when server populations are very low. For example, if 3 or more toons share the same IP, the entire party gets no XP/tags/Sets unless all servers have a total of <10 players. But personally I think it's clunky, perhaps a clean EE where everyone needs to work together will be able to get an Australasian playerbase? Who knows...
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Post by dopplegang on Nov 30, 2017 6:38:44 GMT
i can understand the point and i imagine its fine for you, being in a large active guild and also a common time slot (ive gotta play early morning or midday to catch anyone), but try getting a proper run going in my afternoon without people boxing, just not gonna happen, i have to carry at least half the run to go anywhere, doesnt matter if i call the run or not (when i do call runs noone shows, let alone brings an actual core to help). ee isnt gonna make any difference to this whatsoever and we'd prob lose even more players from my timeslot. As suggested in my previous post, I agree with DB on this one. I absolutely understand and empathise with your situation, I'm in almost the same timezone as you (Australian East coast) and I never had *any* guildies around. I also multi-boxed a lot (obviously). However, the simple reality is that it's unfairly efficient for players who have the ability to pull it off, and this negatively affects the server. I only really began to clearly see this when I stepped away from the server for a few months. I'm going to use some numbers as an example, using the typical PUG Nessus (ie: not a guild run, or filled to the brim with elite players). I've watched a lot of these form on Webdash (and played in some in my earlier days), and they mostly follow the same pattern: Now how about from the perspective of a multiboxer who can solo the run? Seven times the loot/tags in half the time... Let's call it roughly 15x reward per hour. Or another way to look at it is that the PUG Nessus yields ~7% of the reward per hour compared to soloing. Honestly, at that kind of reward rate the only reason for me to ever join a PUG Nessus is altruism; the reduction in reward is so large that I may as well just pass on the loot and accept that I'm joining purely as a service for the group (or maybe just to show off). And guess what, I've never joined a PUG Nessus since then. The server needs good players to function smoothly, but multi-boxing allows good players to not need the server. It's destructive, plain and simple. I did it because I could, and was blinded to the negative effects on others because I was enjoying the insane profits that came with it. But like I said in my previous post, I don't support getting rid of multi-boxing in the current server; that would be unfair and too drastic of a change to make, since it is part of the game at this stage. So the question stands: if there is a clean slate, should Acaos be putting effort into trying to make multi-boxing work in the EE? And my answer, though just an opinion, is a firm "no". I think there could be *some* merit in allowing dual-boxing (which is the focus of the topic which has been beaten to death), if it is easy to implement. But IMO there is no reasonable justification for running more than 2 toons at once, outside of further increasing efficiency and gaining a power boost. It's overpowered, just like the original Flensing/Reverse Gravity/Fissure/Immute. Players were resistant to have those changed too ("low server population, we need a way to beat bosses in small parties" etc), but they rightfully earned the nerfbat and I think the game is better for it. If a technique/strategy in the game is too efficient, it needs the nerf-bat - it's not the players' job to decide if there are times where it is justifiable to take advantage of it, it's the dev's job to remove the option from the game. If multi-boxing is easily able to be integrated into EE, perhaps a compromise could be to use IP checks to determine boxers, and allow it when server populations are very low. For example, if 3 or more toons share the same IP, the entire party gets no XP/tags/Sets unless all servers have a total of <10 players. But personally I think it's clunky, perhaps a clean EE where everyone needs to work together will be able to get an Australasian playerbase? Who knows... At the risk of again taking this back into the multiboxing dead horse which I really am not interested in doing, I would say that you are the exception, not the rule. I have watched a lot of people multibox, most of them cannot effectively play more than 2 boxes with any reliability. I myself can say that outside of preLL content I do not intend or want to play more than 1 box ever and if I do it is only because I have to bring some core, otherwise the run will never get off the ground. This is the norm, you are the exception. I have no idea how you can even keep up with more than 2 boxes, the best I could ever do was three boxes in phleg and if i don't control the tempo I will get overwhelmed. From what I have seen playing with others they are the same way, slow, clunky, risky, ignoring flatfooted toons constantly. It is always better to reduce the amount of boxes you bring and it is a punishment to play them anyway so no one wants to, they just don't have much other choice or the run is not taking off or its a high risk venture lacking requirements.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2017 6:44:14 GMT
You're right that I did generalize too much. Most of what I said applies to players running 3 toons or more, while most of what you said applies to players running only 2 toons (which I am far less against). To my eye, there is no justifiable reason to run 3 toons or more, other than wanting to claim the free power boost which is too strong right now, or to enable an extra AFK-leecher which I think is not a good concept either.
While other players may not take advantage of multi-boxing to the same degree as I did in terms of speed, there are definitely still some decent multi-boxers around. If EE is able to be kickstarted with new blood, then perhaps many of the reasons dual-boxing is currently needed might go away? It could be reintroduced later if necessary, but once it's allowed it's difficult to undo.
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