I am an odd duck in this game. I am not a power gamer. I am an explorer.
Actually, you might be overestimating the percentage of HGers that are power gamers. In fact, as time has passed, I'd argue that casual/explorer personalities have became less and less of the exception and power gamers have became less and less the rule. Many power gamers moved to greener pastures, whereas many explorers never left. I think there's probably about an even split in terms of newer players within the last several years.
I understand your meaning, but the point is the game is now and always has been full of explorers, and a sizeable chunk of content that you've probably read through on the forums is actually derived from the experiences, opinions, and ideas of people that aren't power gamers at all. HG has always catered to explorers, which might seem surprising, but any power gamer can tell you that there's a huge representation of suboptimal builds, suggestions, and approaches to playing that are found on HG. That's because explorers have always pulled hefty weight in terms of commanding attention from playerbase and devs.
It's easy to see why: power gamers are fickle, arrogant, argumentative, and extremely critical. Explorers on the other hand are more like HG's "meat and potatoes" folk--those who seem less perturbed by nerfbat swings or big changes, less likely to get upset and quit or disappear over an update, less likely to cause friction between player cliques and when interacting with devs. Explorers are steady and solid and don't ask for much, while power gamers constantly demand attention to the endless list of things that are broken or should be tweaked.
Explorers are casual and might play with their family, even children that are too young to really even grasp much beyond exploring in the first place. Power gamers are power-hungry and their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness: when they are in full addiction mode and happy with the game, they are devoted to playing, to contributing, to helping build, to obsessively analyzing builds and theories and pushing the envelope for "the community" and "the game," but when they lose interest, feel like their important opinions weren't acknowledged, or otherwise become frustrated, they are not very supportive.
One might say that at face value, or in theory, explorers should be more at-risk than power gamers for beating the game and losing interest, because after all, if you've explored and experienced everything, what's left? In reality, however, explorers tend to be more casual and progress at a far slower pace: they probably play less total hours and they also accomplish less in a given hour; power gamers tend to play more (when they're truly absorbed) and, due to their ability and drive to find the optimal methods of progressing, are more likely to burn through the game at a far faster rate, even if playtime was strictly equal. So, most explorers never really truly "finished" HG and the ones that left did so for real-life reasons or because they just lost interest period. On the other hand, power gamers attain a critical mass and either burn out, get frustrated, or move on.
All that is to say that you're not such an odd duck as you might see yourself. Yet when I said you should consider that other classes have special roles, it wasn't about the gamer archetype box that slot into, but more about suggesting that as an explorer you're trying to do it all on one character, which just isn't the way the game was designed, regardless of the personality type being targeted. In other words, be you explorer or power gamer, you shouldn't expect to pick the "jack-of-all-trades" class and still do everything: it's not a single-player game.
Sure, shifters are jacks-of-all-trades,
but they are masters of none. Shifters will never be on par with rogues or spell-casters or fighters in those classes specialties, and getting close in any one area requires considerable sacrifices with feats and cross-class skills (which will have knock-on effects of limiting your Shifter in other areas) I think my suggested tweaks would not change that, particularly if you require form foci for the kobold trap perks (How many shifters focus in humanoid?)
I'm not sure that's a defensible position. Shifters excel at many things. No single shifter
build or
character will be a master of all, but a given shifter can certainly match (or even exceed) the performance or efficiency of the classes' roles that the build emulates. For casters, they primarily lack epic spells, but aside from that, it's certainly not true that a shifter is a "subpar" version of anything else. In fact, the opposite is sometimes true: there are situations and/or runs where a shifter is actually better than a caster due to their overlapping-yet-distinctly-different mechanical features. That's because casters often require synchronized teamwork and core-to-core synergy (for example, dispelling spell mantles or immunity-by-spell-level buffs, or reducing SR, which prevent spells from being effective), whereas a shifter may be able to not only accomplish those tasks by themselves (albeit slower) but even ignore the need altogether (for example, basilisk death/medusa petrification gazes can be immediately used on mobs that have spell mantles blocking death spells).
That's not to say that shifters don't have their own handicaps as well, but the point is that viewing shifters as jacks-of-all-trades that are not as effective as casters by virtue of being hybrids, is not really accurate. There's some famous cases where shifters in fact don't just "outperform" other classes but actually may uniquely provide an efficient solution to a run or spawn that no other class can match (for example, and most importantly, Aboleth Savants and abos in general due to the package of other abilities perfect for the run, although nerfs hurt that niche function as well).
Anyway, not to sound snarky, but I doubt you have the experience to really claim that shifters will never be on par with rogues or spell-casters or fighters in those classes specialties. You're wrong. Shifters are popular and excellent at replacing both spell-casters and fighters. Rogues, not so much, but that's kind of a special rogue thing, where you need to be a rogue (at least 1 level) to do a rogue's job, period, end of story. As for tanks and casters though, it's not true at all.
In fact shifters are generally accepted in the current meta as one of the best tanks in the game, specifically even in the very endgame content. As for "caster" shifter, that has taken a huge hit in recent years, but that's only relative to how absurdly overpowered they were previously, so it's hard to really say that the drop in popularity/quality shows that they are no longer "good" but just closer to casters in terms of delivery/team synergy, and therefore less likely to be chosen
over casters because if they can no longer single-handedly demolish entire hell runs, then real casters or real tanks look more attractive.
Finally, just to emphasize the point, your rhetorical question about shifters focusing in humanoid just demonstrates the lack of familiarity you have, and meanwhile the answer to the question demonstrates the opposite of your claims: most shifters
are humanoid shifters, especially in the current meta. Before "ability mage" shifter was nerfed dramatically, the ratio of humanoid to non-humanoid shifters was probably skewed in favor of non-humanoid, because those were generally less by power gamers and more by explorers (or when used by power gamers, almost always when the other version existed in the stable as well), and because as "shifter tanks" they didn't serve to replace casters/cores, but only to replace tanks and as versatile options or "for fun." Nowadays, however, humanoid shifters certainly dominate.
I think your understanding of shifters might be derived from some of the non-power-gamer forum stuff that I alluded to earlier: you are reading too much "explorer" literature, and rather outdated at that, if you catch my drift
Humanoid shifters are probably the single most
en vogue class of the recent years, and are extremely popular as a result of their ability to be "jacks-of-all-trades" and masters of the craft as well, serving as either DPS-focused tanks that can largely match or outperform their "fighter" counterparts, or as utility/hybrids that can largely match the role of their counterparts and if not exceed as a rule, provide a vast benefit of being able to do multiple roles within one party member slot.
For the mind-flayer, I figured that it makes sense to be smarter when your entire head is brain matter. :-D (NWN seems to agree, since mindflayer form gets a +8 int. Unfortunately, that means nothing with the +12 ability bonus cap)
Right, so what's the argument then? The mindflayer brain comes with magical enhancement bonus-granting gear, pre-installed?
Heh, separately, I can understand people who are charmed by the different mechanics and play experiences from the different classes, but that is minor for me.
I get it. Again though, I think the problem isn't class vs class or gamer archetype vs gamer archetype, but rather the expectation of being able to experience everything on a single character in a game that is very much designed and built for party play. This is just not a game that is engineered to offer a "jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none" class for a single player that lets that player do everything "even if it's not as good as the other class." It's a tactical "MMORPG" that offers hybrid classes and depending on the target run/zone/level range, may offer some classes the ability to virtually solo to much extent, but that's about as far as catering to single-player-mode goes. This is party D&D, online, not a roguelike.
For me, the main charm is exploring the world, experiencing the adventure (always role-playing in the back of my mind) and overcoming challenges. Tailoring characters for different challenges doesn't really count as
overcoming the challenge, for me.
Trust me, I know exactly what you mean. I'm very much the same way. However, again, managing expectations is important. There's tailoring characters for different challenges, and then there's needing characters for different challenges because that's the foundation of the game itself as a multiplayer/party-structured environment. It's not that you're being asked to build a character to make a challenge easier, it's that you're being mandated to use more than one character to overcome all possible challenges. Expecting otherwise is not "wrong" per se, it's just inapplicable to this game. If you
shift (get it) your expectations to match the idea of "overcoming as many challenges as possible with that one character" then you can still feel satisfied, but the process should involve the understanding that not all challenges are for even a "jack-of-all-trades" character. If that challenge is "identifying gems" or if that challenge is "opening a high-DC lock" then you must accept that.
As for the "tailoring the character for the challenge versus overcoming the challenge" argument, I recall you advocated for a shifter form to provide div% immunity so you could shapeshift into something capable of tanking Hall of Statues explosions. That seems about as tailored as it gets, no? I'd cheekily suggest that overcoming that particular challenge is using ice storm ammies to blow the statues without dying, which is what I used to do when soloing with a class that couldn't GS--risky, but doable--and using a shifter to change shape into a form that just walks through the trap zone unscathed is tailoring a character to overcome the challenge by simply making the challenge no longer a challenge at all.
Separately, it is not much fun when a challenge is simply impossible.
Agreed, and again, this is part of what I meant by HG's "charm." What I mean is that the charm of the game is that it's a party module, that it's an "MMO," that it's D&D on the internet, that it's not a single-player NWN module or single-player RPG. I love soloing RPGs and figuring out the class/build/etc that can solo as much as possible, and there are games that either offer "beating the game" solo with a "jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none" character, or even are designed explicitly to be single-player and allow any of various builds to achieve this. The beauty of HG is that you can get quite far by soloing with the right build and right class, and the challenge of doing so has stimulated many players, both explorers and power gamers, by attempting to overcome as many challenges as possible. Nonetheless, managing expectations: there's just no single build that can do it all, nor should there be, because the challenges of the game are designed to challenge party play.
Swiss-army Shifters give me the best of both; they have potential in all situations, so patience can usually allow a plan, but, compared to any tailored class, such shifters are also handicapped in all situations, thus
requiring patience and planning. As HG gets more involved at the higher levels, though, the only working Shifter builds seem to be rather one dimensional, which means some exploration gets cut off unless you tailor an entire new character. I thought these tweaks might keep Swiss-army shifters playable longer.
Again, not to be rude, but I don't think you really know what you're talking about. They are not "handicapped in all situations," because a given build does what it was built to do, and is handicapped in situations other than those it was designed for--which happens to be the universal case for any character, so the distinction that you see between shifters and "other classes" is a false dichotomy.
As for "the only working shifter builds" being "rather one dimensional," again this is untrue and I can only imagine is derived from some "forum literature" that is either incorrect, outdated, or both. There is a bit of a consensus in the current meta for the "optimal" shifter build (which, again, in contrast to your earlier claim, is precisely a humanoid
) for all-purpose character slot, but there is also some popularity of a build that focuses instead of the undead form for being a "2h fighter," and of course "ability mage" still exists as an option, although most likely with dragon these days instead of in the old days where dragon wasn't popular. As mentioned above, "ability mage" isn't favorable right now, but that's because they were heavily-nerfed.
At any rate, it seems as if you have embraced the "swiss-army knife" concept as being something both more-than, and less-than, it is: more-than, because you expect to do everything (even if less efficiently), with just some extra patience and planning; less-than, because you miss the extreme golden-boi status of humanoid shifter in the "real game." I'm not sure why you think exploration getting cut off shouldn't be a natural function of the choices made for a build. This isn't a feature that is "intended" as a limiting factor to hamper exploration--it's just a fact of any RPG. If you're good, you miss out on the evil quests, if you're a mage, you miss out on the thieves' guild quests, if you're a male, you can't get the female ending, and so on. The challenges of HG are by definition limited to the ability of multiple characters to cooperate to overcome "100% completion" and having a "swiss-army shifter" that can replace an entire party and overcome all the challenges of the game would kind of defeat the entire purpose of playing any other class, let alone playing the game in the first place.
Cheers for the engagement and sorry if I come off as attacking you. Just offering my own feedback on your thoughts and experiences. I think you might find a lot more satisfaction by adjusting your expectations to include leveraging a second character that you can "bot" as you progress, or by seeking out party play. Don't forget, this isn't "NWN" or even Diablo--the storyline isn't meant to be accomplished by one player, let alone character. It's not meant to either provide a single-character experience or a single-player experience, be it a singular character overcoming challenges alone, or a single player controlling multiple characters overcoming challenges alone. It's about multiple players working together to overcome challenges.
The game definitely may be played solo, and offers a lot of fun, but skipping the team aspect is losing out on the joy of the game, and losing the best parts of what makes it awesome.