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Post by woqued on Dec 6, 2017 22:25:40 GMT
1-40 has been a subject dividing opinions for a far longer time than I've been around. Some stuff regarding that: For old folks who like to buy all the consumables before heading out and for any smart new player who takes their time to figure it out or hears from an old player how smart it is to do, having to buy pots one by one in a variety of shops seems old fashioned. Common story: "I spent first hour just looking through the shops, wasted my money and got my items stolen by a pixie." We should try to cut that story into 10 minutes for a new player, and still let the goodies be stolen by the pixies. Having the most common useful items combined at the Alchemist or the Wondrous Merchant would make a lot more sense; and either enabled as purchases in 10 or 50 - or to go further, turn them into rod form with 3/rest casts. The pots include: Low level stoneskin Low level lesser restoration Low level stat buffs Various tiers of healing potions Resurrection and Raise Dead Haste Negative protection Clarity True seeing Summon level 123456 scrolls and Lesser Planar Binding Ice Storm / Fire Ball necklaces Useful tools: (Temporal!! t_t)Autocaster Universal dye kit Weightless aka magical bags ^Having all these aforementioned items in the same store would make a lot of sense. Regarding worn item shops: we could easily remove 80% of the stuff in there, but that would take too much time to decide what is never used and what is sometimes used by a curious adventurer. We could make the whole thing simpler by having weapon buffer rods drop from tag bosses at certain intervals. 1 dice of damage type rod 2 uses a day drops from Acid - Cesspool Cold - Ice Kobold Caves Fire - Hendron Elec - Render Queen Sonic - Bandit Chief Divine - Asimathas Magical - Three Hags Negative - Rhazid Positive - Mother of Corn -> Should later game versions be added then I'd like to see 3 dice of element rod 4 uses a day (two sets dualwielded) drops from A - Myconids C - Uroboros E - Ssithrak Dimension F - Black Pyramid S - Illithids 2 dice of Divine types: if they were to drop - i don't think these are needed as those are class specific goodies; but I think 1 dice divines would go a long way to make 30-40 tags more fun for tanks. D - Elysium M - Beholders N - Dulvuroth P - Rona 4 dices of elemental rods (unlimited uses? or 4 for two sets dualwielded, or instabuff all weapons, or something else) from the Abyss Lords and Juibliex A - Shed C - Than E - Zio F - Azzagrat S - Gaping Maw Having the cool stores in a building close by to the questgivers i.e Sooty Crows would make extra sense if it were in Town of Ascension instead of Docks or the UsefulStuffStore be in Docks - or simply making the first few quests in Sooty Crow provide useful rods to cast these useful spells. Easiest choice would simply be removing a lot of fairly seldom used stores and provide useful potentially stores aimed at 40+. Having the end-game of the town be crafting weapons, buying clari pots, heals (until beaker), and resses (until rods / aoerez pots) is a shame. Even Wyrm is seldom used for people who are in a guild and don't need to rely on Wyrms outdated splitting system -> has a cool guild-like splitting chest system been added to Wyrm yet? I don't think so? Another great thing to add! Following that, I think it would be cool if the Stygian Demishop or zerials augmenter seller - heck, even ixion and provide a new cool function for elemental planes (BUFF RODS? ) would reside in town not just to make the town less of a cluster of useless homes but also to provide a further purpose to the town and let newcomers witness some oppourtunities in the future for themselves early on (still level limit them except for the weaker augmenters from mr Zerial aug shop - lowbies pre-DB might even be interested in those!). But I understand if this is not doable for some lore-reason or some-some. Randomize already made the lower level augmenters and augmenter-tier bonuses on items common far before access to Zerials, so it seems sensible. If you have other ideas or simply better alternatives do chime in. Or if it's all BS criticism is also welcome.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Dec 8, 2017 14:47:31 GMT
I don't the the newest players have the cash to afford stacks, what with buying other gear, but I could be wrong. I also think that some of those already have stacks. If someone comes up with a list including the shop they are in I'm open to doing this.
I'm open to removing junk items from the stores if someone wants to make a full list per store and suggest specific removals. Unless a player takes the initiative, it won't happen, as I don't think it will help retention all that much.
We're planning to add additional shops, though I don't think in town. One will be a lowbie aug shop in a new area, and another may house some items to help players transition from the item gap beginning around level 19 - 24.
The team is taking a careful look around the 1-40 areas to see how we can improve retention. I'm not sure adding buffing rods is the right way to go about it.
One thing we are definitely doing, and which I'll be posting for volunteers (unless someone in this thread volunteers), is to add a cleric henchman that would follow you, tank, buff, and heal (and rez, when able to use the scrolls). We need someone to level up a cleric from 1-40 by playing through (akin to Johann's playthroughs), showing what feats they took, and also importantly, what gear they purchased, as they played through and leveled, AT EACH LEVEL. The idea is to get an approximation of power achievable by a new player on first playthrough, so a fair bit of work would be involved. At some later point we might implement a 'veteran' NPC who would be better geared and subraced according to the resources of a player who has already hit some benchmark (ie, get a toon immortal, hit 60, get an UR race (suggestions as to which welcome). We might have the hench level up to 60, depending, though that might be a bit trickier.
We might consider adding a mage for buffing, as an alternative to rods, though if we decide to go that route we might just go with the rods.
We're also adding new areas between 40-60 scaled like Feywild for small parties soloers, though that's a bit off of this specific topic, and more about retention generally.
Funky
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Post by Liareth on Dec 8, 2017 15:40:15 GMT
Maybe we're the exception, but my duo partner and I don't buy items from the vendors. We've bought maybe three items total - the rest comes from loot. We're level 23 at the moment and have about 2-3 million gold laying around. It's possible we just haven't reached the level that we need to do that yet though.
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Post by terrokawa on Dec 8, 2017 15:47:27 GMT
How about a modest supply of needed items that are automatically deposited in newly created characters inventories so they can jump right in. Or is this to much of a gift?
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Post by desocupado on Dec 8, 2017 17:02:33 GMT
One thing we are definitely doing, and which I'll be posting for volunteers (unless someone in this thread volunteers), is to add a cleric henchman that would follow you, tank, buff, and heal (and rez, when able to use the scrolls). We need someone to level up a cleric from 1-40 by playing through (akin to Johann's playthroughs), showing what feats they took, and also importantly, what gear they purchased, as they played through and leveled, AT EACH LEVEL. The idea is to get an approximation of power achievable by a new player on first playthrough, so a fair bit of work would be involved. At some later point we might implement a 'veteran' NPC who would be better geared and subraced according to the resources of a player who has already hit some benchmark (ie, get a toon immortal, hit 60, get an UR race (suggestions as to which welcome). We might have the hench level up to 60, depending, though that might be a bit trickier. Such a cleric would make it much easier for sneak attackers, ranged weapon users and casters. If he keeps battle tide he might be a bigger boon than many players. For simplicity sake, he could be a pure battle cleric (although an occasional prayer, blade barrier or storm of vengeance would be nice). This also limits some optimization options (after all the human player has to do the heavy lifting) while granting a nice and big battle tide eventually. For LL, I would suggest just level 45, 50, 55 and 60 no need for so much fine tuning.
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Post by madzapper on Dec 8, 2017 17:14:37 GMT
The priest at the docs buffs people up at low levels I believe. Having a few of this type of npc scattered about would be a nice added flavor. I particularly like the idea of them providing primarily things that other players would offer if they were there.
My comments on potions, gear, etc at levels 1-20:
I think the last big edit fixed a ton of the lower level gear issues. I also think it's a reasonable balance right now.
Take, for example, speed potions. The only way to get them at low levels before the changes was purchasing them one at a time. You couldn't use the 10 packs of speed for quite a while and you used to not be able to wear the random haste drop gear till level around level 9 if I remember right. Most people don't know where to find the gear and/or farm it, so they were stuck buying single potions of speed for quite a while (very annoying) and then the 10 packs. There are some other speed items that drop, but they require you to give up some form of AC, so it's not a good replacement (for example, amulet of haste, boots of speed)
Now, though, speed stacks of 10 are usable at level 3 I think?!? Which means only the toons that start at level 2 even need the single potions. And purchasing stacks of 10 are good enough to survive on for quite a while. If you do find the haste gear, it is now usable at level 6.
Most of the gear is really reasonably wearable at a good level for low level toons now. AC gear can be purchased for deflection, natural, armor in very regular ways and wearable at very reasonable levels. Dodge AC is the hardest to cover since for most toons this is a random drop.
All elements can be covered at level 4, 10/- which is plenty for quite a while.
The absolute biggest issue in the very beginning is money and how to get it. Them beetle bellies need to be worth a lot more. This problem is absolutely resolved after the first toon makes it to immo as 5 million gold at that point is chump change.
It takes me about 2 million to gear up with basics before I head out. But I've purchased most of the consumables I need for quite a while.
It probably takes about 15 minutes to buy all the potions and gear for use till about level 20 if you know what you are doing. I'd fully support a 50,000,000 (more?) gp starter pack for rich boys that included all the basics for rings, potions such as the following:
1 x 50 pack str, dex, con, int, wis, cha potions 1 x 50 pack clarity potion 1 x 50 pack speed potion 3 x 50 pack heal potions 1 x 50 pack negative protection 1 x 50 pack true seeing protection 1 x 50 pack rez scrolls 1 x 10 pack raise dead scrolls 1 x 10 pack restoration potions 1 chime of opening 1 helm of spotting 5 ice amulets 6 bags of holding 1 elemental ring 1 sage ring 1 rhianas mind ring 1 sturdy rope 1 seal breaker 5 tp gems 3 pearls
This still leaves the class-specific gear to purchase which is still a bit.
Edit/Added:
One problem that I see a lot with the squishy caster classes is the reluctance to use the summons scrolls from the shop. It's very common for new players to just use their own summons which are nowhere near the strength of the summons scrolls you can get in the shop. This is primarily because you can use level 4 or 5 summons scrolls from the very beginning but you are lucky if you can cast a level 1 summons and keep it going long enough to matter.
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Post by woqued on Dec 8, 2017 17:17:24 GMT
I don't the the newest players have the cash to afford stacks, what with buying other gear, but I could be wrong. I also think that some of those already have stacks. If someone comes up with a list including the shop they are in I'm open to doing this. I'm open to removing junk items from the stores if someone wants to make a full list per store and suggest specific removals. Unless a player takes the initiative, it won't happen, as I don't think it will help retention all that much. We're planning to add additional shops, though I don't think in town. One will be a lowbie aug shop in a new area, and another may house some items to help players transition from the item gap beginning around level 19 - 24. The team is taking a careful look around the 1-40 areas to see how we can improve retention. I'm not sure adding buffing rods is the right way to go about it. One thing we are definitely doing, and which I'll be posting for volunteers (unless someone in this thread volunteers), is to add a cleric henchman that would follow you, tank, buff, and heal (and rez, when able to use the scrolls). We need someone to level up a cleric from 1-40 by playing through (akin to Johann's playthroughs), showing what feats they took, and also importantly, what gear they purchased, as they played through and leveled, AT EACH LEVEL. The idea is to get an approximation of power achievable by a new player on first playthrough, so a fair bit of work would be involved. At some later point we might implement a 'veteran' NPC who would be better geared and subraced according to the resources of a player who has already hit some benchmark (ie, get a toon immortal, hit 60, get an UR race (suggestions as to which welcome). We might have the hench level up to 60, depending, though that might be a bit trickier. We might consider adding a mage for buffing, as an alternative to rods, though if we decide to go that route we might just go with the rods. We're also adding new areas between 40-60 scaled like Feywild for small parties soloers, though that's a bit off of this specific topic, and more about retention generally. Funky Thank you for replying. Money isn't an issue even for newer players; I thought it would be for me, but randomized gear sells for very good money in the armor/weapon shops and random weapons or simply going through the loot at Bandits or the Beholder tag cave grants you all the money you could use on shop goods. The new blood simply needs to realize the power of randomize to have money to utilize shops or use invis and grab valuable sets from bandits/pow. That said I don't think staring and deciding which and what items to remove from the shops as is is worth anyones time unless they do it out of passion or as a curiosity. Liareth - the town bought items are by no means mandatory for success, especially when you aren't soloing. But they can make the whole ordeal a fair bit faster and easier - haste potions, neg pots, summons (tiger with cleave cleaves all spawns really fast until level 10-15, planar binding summons' weapon can be buffed to be a force to be reckoned with) and stone skin potions are particularly powerful and helpful (i.e allows you to ignore waiting for haste property items, majority of looting in general, resting, and going back to town to make it all a lot faster - and you might when you are on your 10th or 15th trip through or simply if you want to see how fast you can do it). If you haven't bought anything you might find yourself crying for negative protection soon enough unless one of you can buff that via spells. If you get to the point of adding henchmen who would provide individual players with the capability to get buffed then the rods would indeed prove to be for naught except for buffing things on their own if they show up late for runs instead of slowing the party down by begging for buffs to be effective. The suggestion is still based on being fairly easy to implement once the decision is made about sufficient power level - should the henchman project be set back. I'm not sure 40-60 really needs areas to solo if you add henchmen that are capable of casting spells. They are doable as is by level-appropriate duos or trios (i.e take Myconids and Toyshop - I was soloing them on my first character - a gnoll and later stinger barbarian for loot. Not very effective, but would have been quite profitable for a new player if I had a henchie or two to rez/buff/pick me up.) Alternatively simply changing Feywild and Elemental Planes to be more profitable and perhaps more interesting with a miniboss or two with useful loot like guaranteed URs or items to help the progression from Desert/Myconid tier runs to Toyshop to Black Pyramid / Rona / Pit of Moliation / Beholder / Hive tier runs. I'll see if I can level a new cleric as open subrace if I get to leveling my new batch of toons. Feats would be easy to write down even without the playthrough, loot and shop is a trickier one. Ideal or "good enough" loot would be fairly easy to simply write down from staring at bankchests to have a well-rounded cleric helper - but if the idea is specifically to have a new-player-tier cleric imitation instead of a "this would do well" then will have to wait for a playthrough.
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Post by madzapper on Dec 8, 2017 17:52:50 GMT
Regarding leveling to 60:
With casual play, it takes a while for a new player to make it to 60 with one toon. There will likely be lots of problems with the builds they make and their knowledge is minimal.
I think the biggest source of this is the builds that new users see. The builds on the wiki are not built for leveling 1-40 and 40 to 60. The are mostly built to be done at level 60. This leaves a lot of spots in-between where the users have a lot of difficulty. (consider spell selection, or skill dumping, or splash classes).
Perhaps we could do a special competition for "leveling toons for your very first character" with certain level ranges that new users can be pointed at with special attention given to the leveling process. I realize that the competitions before were for producing good starter toons, but I still think the result of those was mainly toons that try to be their best at level 60.
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Post by woqued on Dec 8, 2017 18:05:33 GMT
Regarding leveling to 60: With casual play, it takes a while for a new player to make it to 60 with one toon. There will likely be lots of problems with the builds they make and their knowledge is minimal. I think the biggest source of this is the builds that new users see. The builds on the wiki are not built for leveling 1-40 and 40 to 60. The are mostly built to be done at level 60. This leaves a lot of spots in-between where the users have a lot of difficulty. (consider spell selection, or skill dumping, or splash classes). Perhaps we could do a special competition for "leveling toons for your very first character" with certain level ranges that new users can be pointed at with special attention given to the leveling process. I realize that the competitions before were for producing good starter toons, but I still think the result of those was mainly toons that try to be their best at level 60. For Tanks the progression is actually fairly straightforward be it 1-40 to 40-60 to 60+; Example: LSA:Tumble is the best option for all tanks without Tumble as class skill even as soon as lvl 42, not 60 - reincarnation or no reincarnation - and oc/dcand other high power feats are taken before Legendary Levels and most LL level-up feats are saved for LL feats, so the progression is straightforward in power. Same goes for most casters; you simply take your spell school /spen feats and metamagics and that's it. Exceptions would perhaps be Greater Ruin or the Conjuration school, which rapidly lose power at and beyond 60. The biggest issue to me seems to be builds built to utilize demigodhood, paragon feats or very specific gear to work - whether it be UR, BUR, Endgame set items like Wrap or Moliated class items or something else. These are the pressing issues, not the feats themselves and as such having new builds doesn't seem to be the issue unless the builds on the forum suck and fail to mention this as a disclaimer at the beginning. Edit: I do get your point - using the tumble example lacking tumble AC can be harsh for an open sub lvl 40 trying to tackle lvl 40 tags, or a class relying on a party when the party isn't around... Perhaps you have a point and we'd need to have a "Capable of doing X without help" build list somewhere.
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Post by Raj on Dec 8, 2017 18:15:02 GMT
We're planning to add additional shops, though I don't think in town. One will be a lowbie aug shop in a new area, and another may house some items to help players transition from the item gap beginning around level 19 - 24. The 100% useless area east of the boat ramp, all empty and with just a shady figure halfling vendor (buying stolen items for like 0 money) could use a vendor upgrade and get the lowbie augs (assuming it's the common ones selling for 1000 at Zerial's). Or be deleted from the module to make room for the newer stuff, but hey it's there.
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Post by desocupado on Dec 8, 2017 18:59:48 GMT
I would suggest the following:
1 - Every character has permanent haste (it's a pain to walk slowly and to buy haste potions) - alternatively, a ring/boots of haste equip-able right away. 2 - Starting at a higher level (9 would be nice) - while increasing the earlier challenges and removing the rat killing in the cellar notion (only a player completely new to NWN should ever consider such a thing... and only once) 3 - Change Pixie into stealing less valuable things (gold and/or consumables only). 4 - More vendors with less items in the inventory so it's easier to browse - ideally the vendor scales his inventory to the character level. 5 - Quest rewards that replace low level consumables with uses/per day or even unlimited uses (lesser restoration, stat buffs, haste, ice/fire storm and so on)
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2017 19:47:17 GMT
One thing we are definitely doing, and which I'll be posting for volunteers (unless someone in this thread volunteers), is to add a cleric henchman that would follow you, tank, buff, and heal (and rez, when able to use the scrolls). We need someone to level up a cleric from 1-40 by playing through (akin to Johann's playthroughs), showing what feats they took, and also importantly, what gear they purchased, as they played through and leveled, AT EACH LEVEL. The idea is to get an approximation of power achievable by a new player on first playthrough, so a fair bit of work would be involved. At some later point we might implement a 'veteran' NPC who would be better geared and subraced according to the resources of a player who has already hit some benchmark (ie, get a toon immortal, hit 60, get an UR race (suggestions as to which welcome). We might have the hench level up to 60, depending, though that might be a bit trickier. Others might disagree with me, but my personal opinion is that this would take a long time to code while providing minimal benefit. I think it's neat for people to get a second chance when they die to a trap or something, but from what I've seen and heard new players don't particularly need a tanky henchman. For the most part tags are not too 'difficult', in fact most new players can fly to Level 30 until they face the Mother of Corn and the !newbie channel blows up with "Help, I can't damage Mother of Corn, it's been 20 minutes and she's only Barely Injured!". This is only the beginning since half the Level 30+ tags are the same; if you're a new player, good luck trying to bring down those ridiculously tanky bosses with your melee toon. Unless the henchman can cast IGMS, I don't think it'll make a difference. I believe that if a fraction of the time required to code a henchman was instead spent on re-scaling the 30-40 boss defences (there have been a bunch of suggestions about this years ago, discussing changes to AC/DR/immunities/temp HP), it would go a lot further in terms of making the game more playable. If a new player quits before Level 25 it's probably not because the game was too difficult for them to solo, and I doubt a tanky henchman would have kept them around.
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Post by bubsnaga on Dec 8, 2017 21:29:11 GMT
An auto-join guild. After stepping off boat, subrace updates etc., but also added to Higher Ground leveling(newbie) guild. The demo guild hall is already built and can be used. I think this will go greatly into retaining new players. Unless the DM team wants to keep the "guild experience" on a more personal(player controlled) level. I doubt most new players know there is even a guild system on HG, other than checking the webdash player list there is not much notice and players rarely talk about guilds. Are guild some sort of sacred institution on HG, reserved for vets(and friends of vets)?
Can use the guild token as a form of all these multi-buffs idea passed around. Can even use the token as a summon tool(henchmen summoner) The chests could auto-fill with scrolls, whoopee cushions, pizza . ya know useful gear. I am not quite up to date on all the systems and benefits a guild provides. Does guild interaction help retain newer players?
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Post by rainbowdash on Dec 8, 2017 21:39:58 GMT
guilds are pretty much just used for chatting among guildmembers and having a place to split loot.
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Post by madzapper on Dec 8, 2017 21:47:02 GMT
Money isn't an issue even for newer players; I thought it would be for me, but randomized gear sells for very good money in the armor/weapon shops and random weapons or simply going through the loot at Bandits or the Beholder tag cave grants you all the money you could use on shop goods. The new blood simply needs to realize the power of randomize to have money to utilize shops or use invis and grab valuable sets from bandits/pow. That said I don't think staring and deciding which and what items to remove from the shops as is is worth anyones time unless they do it out of passion or as a curiosity. I believe the new users are forced to randomize most of their gear by hand. Even if 50% of the found gear was randomized, I think it would be enough of a boost to help out. I say 50% because at low levels, finding gear you can wear is rough enough without it being randomized out of your level.
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