or rather, a more complete title, since the subject field isn't large enough...

A Commentary/Diatribe on the Nature of Persistant Worlds, Death, Roleplay, and how it suffers.

I'm not certain what exactly I'm trying to say with this post, and coming up with what I write as I sit here. I do this for the sole purpose of putting my general frustration with the server - and Persistant worlds in general - into words. EfU is a roleplay server. Roleplaying is what the players do. It's encouraged. It also happens to be a very difficult roleplay server, due to a huge learning curve and the difficulty involved in surviving, both the monsters of quests, the environment, and often times even other players.

I want to say now, that this whole rant, is not inspired by any event at all in particular; it's just a product of a buildup over time, and I've actually meant to write this for a few days now.

So EfU is difficult. It requires a lot of skill. But not skill at roleplaying, no, it requires a substantial amount of completely OOC skill at, quite simply, making effective builds, and surviving combat. For example, it's an established fact, and entirely true, and has even been stated by the DM team, that "Heal" is an extremely valuable skill to have, because it allows a very cheap and effective way for people to recieve large amounts of healing. It's even gotten to the point that the Heal skill is a stapel of any character, and is almost necessary. If you do not have it, you end up instead spending inordinate amounts of money on potions, or just medicinal herbs you can only use half the time.

So the heal skill is more or less necessary. If you don't have it, you take a very large disadvantage, by having to, essentially spend more money, which could go to other places.

What happens when the hardcore roleplayer decides not to take the Heal Skill, because it doesn't make sense for his character, who happened to, say, be born into slavery, and never in his life had any opportunity to learn how to use bandages?

Because the player is devoted to keeping IC, he takes a disadvantage to the 99% of the playerbase who took the skill as a matter of course.

The Heal skill is hardly my gripe though, it's just an example, and is probably completely full of faulty logic and fallacies. But the same principle applies over and over and over to dozens of situations in EfU.

Not having 'Heal' is a minor thing ultimately. It totals to a few gold in the end, now let's look at something that's a bit of a bigger deal.

The player's character, for one reason or another, is extremely angry, and is lost to logic or reason of any kind. All he wants to do right now is kill the enemy, so he charges. And he charges and charges and charges. He's killing the enemies, and then suddenly, to a few rolls of the dice he's loading the fugue, because he didn't manage to drink a healing potion fast enough.

This death is obviously, completely In Character.

The player played his character right to the death, and knew it was coming.

He respawns, because quite frankly, his death wasn't cool enough to warrant ending the character, and he's got a lot of other stuff going on for him. He wants to continue. So he respawns, and continues the quest. In the process he continues to play his character, and continues to charge and be a madman, and in the process uses a huge amount of supplies to survive. Dozens of healing potions and buffing potions and so on.

Before long, the quest is over, and he survived the rest of the way, and is back collecting the reward.

For all that happened, he was at a net loss of both experience and gold, and, because of the death earlier on, causing him to lose say, a month of playing's experience, because he doesn't quest very often at all, he is also at a net loss of enjoyment.

Meanwhile, and I'm not criticizing anyone, the other players in his party, who did not charge recklessly, all survived, and all had a net gain of both XP and Gold, and probably even enjoyment.

Ultimately, the hardcore roleplayer, the person who gives his characters disadvantages and plays his character regardless of the IC consequences, inevitably is punished in the end by the extreme death penalties.

Is it just? I submit that it is not.

And so we come to the nature of Peristant Worlds.

Death has to be serious, it can't be something taken lightly, because then you've got people who don't pay attention and always charge and die constantly, and then respawn, just because it's cheaper to die, than to spend money on healing.

So I realize why the death system is the way it is. Ultimately? roleplay suffers either way.

To break it down, because I know I'm not being clear, the point of my rant is this:

Players who choose to roleplay IN CHARACTER disadvantages despite their consequences, inevitably suffer further OUT OF CHARACTER disadvantages.

The largest case of this is when the IC disadvantage leads to an IC death and an OOC XP penalty. The player is penalized for roleplaying, when it should be promoted.

Even simpler: Heavy Death Penalties = Bad No Death Penalties At All = Bad

So my main question, and what I want the discussion to be primarily about: Am I completely off-base for feeling this way? Why? And If you agree with the way I'm seeing things, what could even be done to fix it?

Another comment: I don't want to be told that "Nobody is forcing the hardcore roleplayer to be disadvantaged except himself." I realize this. I get it. But I think it's a terribly sad state of affair when the cookie cutter build becomes common, because it's the only way to really succeed and get points.

So- Discuss, I suppose. I'll come back with my own thoughts on what can be done later.

You're playing a character who gets himself killed because he hates orogs and recklessly charges at them.

The problem is;

You quest with people who probably suck and can't kill the orogs before they kill you.

Cail can't take a hint and come to the realisation that he probably shouldn't charge into his death if he's just going to respawn everytime, or maybe he should spend that bigger chunk of gold on potions to make himself near unstoppable when he's forced to fight orogs.

All I can say is nope.

Dungal has no heal skill. Doesn't need it. Does great without it, doesn't lose any gold for not having it--in fact has lots of extra for not having it because he does other things to heal.

Mandarin had a lousy build, a wizard in heavy armor with three cleric levels and three fighter levels who used a club, didn't have weapon focus of any kind, fought front line and had a strength of 12. Other than PvP, he never died discounting one laggy death linked to a bug to boot.

To sum up, your perception is likely drawn entirely from your experience. My perception entirely disagrees with yours but is drawn entirely from my experience with numerous seperate characters.

My only lament, and it continues is that I still think the characters/players who spend the most time roleplaying and intriguing and plotting need to gain rewards; tangibly; over and faster the people who have the great OOC skill in leveling and gaining loot. I expect that the new tracking system of EFUSL (acronym may be wrong) will go a long way towards compensating for this problem.

Ok, I have got to respond here...

Kotenku So EfU is difficult. It requires a lot of skill. But not skill at roleplaying, no, it requires a substantial amount of completely OOC skill at, quite simply, making effective builds, and surviving combat.

Kotenku So the heal skill is more or less necessary. If you don't have it, you take a very large disadvantage, by having to, essentially spend more money, which could go to other places.

Kotenku Not having 'Heal' is a minor thing ultimately. It totals to a few gold in the end, now let's look at something that's a bit of a bigger deal.

Kotenku The player's character, for one reason or another, is extremely angry, and is lost to logic or reason of any kind. All he wants to do right now is kill the enemy, so he charges. And he charges and charges and charges. He's killing the enemies, and then suddenly, to a few rolls of the dice he's loading the fugue, because he didn't manage to drink a healing potion fast enough.

Kotenku He respawns, because quite frankly, his death wasn't cool enough to warrant ending the character, and he's got a lot of other stuff going on for him. He wants to continue. So he respawns,

Kotenku For all that happened, he was at a net loss of both experience and gold, and, because of the death earlier on, causing him to lose say, a month of playing's experience, because he doesn't quest very often at all, he is also at a net loss of enjoyment.

Kotenku Meanwhile, and I'm not criticizing anyone, the other players in his party, who did not charge recklessly, all survived, and all had a net gain of both XP and Gold, and probably even enjoyment. Ultimately, the hardcore roleplayer, the person who gives his characters disadvantages and plays his character regardless of the IC consequences, inevitably is punished in the end by the extreme death penalties.

Kotenku Is it just? I submit that it is not.

In case you missed my point, the OOC option for respawn is put there for players who do not want to end their characters yet. And the XP penalty is there so that they take a hit for that break in realism. Death is supposed to kill you, not just knock you down. Therefore, if you don’t like dieing, or you're tired of respawning and losing xp- then have your character LEARN from his actions and to find a new set of tactics.

The man who burns himself in a fire once, has learned better. The man who burns himself in a fire again, deserves it.

I sincerely apologize for the length of this post, but I wanted to cover the information. ((And appearently learned afterwards that his topic was actualy to mention that those people that are more inclined to be built for rp, die more often then those who arnt. In which case I avioded the question and argued the examples. Whoops))

At the end of the day, we RP through a medium called NWN. NWN is a game, and just like any game, being skilled at it will help you acheive success.

In the same vein, and even though EfU is a roleplay server, OOC mechanics knowledge exerts a tangible influence on how successful you are.

What it doesn't influence, however, is creating awesome characters who are beleiveable, original and involving. Playing these types of characters is a reward in and of itself. In addtion, you'll be rewarded by DMs.

You don't need maxed Heal skill or 20 CONS to succeed (as Oro demonstrated), even though they are admittedly helpful. Beleive me, stomping quests with powerbuilds and getting to level 8 in two days isn't as fun as making a character who doesn't. My advice is just to kick back and have fun, get your characters' stories cranking and involve others! Dying sucks, but it's something that shouldn't be at the forefront while the character itself languishes in the back.

Personally, I think that the mechanics of ADnD is one factor. (Admittedly amongst many.) The xp-per-kill reward system, specifically. I recall one set of games I'd played, where all of the reward (xp) was given upon final completion of an issue. It didn't matter if you stealthed, backstabbed, hack-n-slashed, intrigued, lied, bribed or slept your way to the resolution.

As a result, any manner of dealing with a dangerous situation was equally rewarded, and you felt much less rail-roaded into hack and slash to develop your character and get better at whatever it is you want to do.

As long as monsters give xp per kill, and killing and combat is the main source of danger as well as xp reward, then we will have this problem to a certain degree. People who want to improve their character will have to, at some level, be effective at killing things.

Another issue is DM supervision. The engine doesn't care wether you're RPing a shortcoming, or just doing something silly. Where a DM could adjust the difficulty to accomodate for the story and give some leeway to RPing characters, the engine will not. Again, there is really not an easy fix here either - we have good DMs, and a fair number, but there will never be 100% supervision on all quests, and so forth.

Just some thoughts.

Do you judge success simply in OOC terms of levels, loot, XP gained, GP gained, and ability to beat stuff up?

If so, then that's very much not a roleplaying definition of success. Success at roleplaying can be diverse, wide-ranging, and have nothing at all to do with gaining XP.

EfU is not just a "roleplaying" server. Its primary emphasis is on roleplaying-through combat, through politics, through other mediums. I know characters are rewarded heavily for things other than combat, so they "succeed," in a sense, if you're judging success purely by XP/loot gained when you stare wistfully at the playerlist upon logging in.

Ultimately, you're saying that people who make optimized builds are better at combat than you. Of course. People who have more combat abilities, feats, and skills are going to be better at combat-that's the way roleplaying a combat character works. That character, however, is going to be much less versatile when other avenues of roleplay spring up.

You're also saying that you're terrible at combat. Yes, you are. This is not a single-player campaign where your character -must- survive. If you make a character who is prone to excessive, dangerous risks, then the chances are he/she/it is going to die. If you're not good at this game, then it's going to hurt your ability to play EfU in some aspects-but it's not going to eliminate it entirely. There are large numbers of people who play these types of servers and suck at combat, but still find fun in it. It's not the responsibility of the DMs, or the server itself, to accomodate your inability to play NWN well. It's your responsibility to understand why you're failing at it, and get better. Perhaps seek advice from one of most awesome powergamers to rock through several NWN servers-Howland. Ask for some advice on improving your character from the "good" players in IRC. The fact is, a lot of people are decent or good at NWN, and they enjoy this challenge. If you don't, then find other ways to play EfU. They are there.

On a purely tangent sidenote, Oroborous' post isn't really valid here, as his "lousy build" character was actually a build specially focused to do intense, insane amounts of damage in combat, by using True Strike and Improved Power Attack, and the character was very survivable. Single character examples also matter little in the greater scheme of things.

With that sidenote, I have to say, Kotenku-decide what you care about. Do you care about having a balanced character, or do you care about ripping people up in combat? If combat is key, then you need to make a character who excels at combat, only party with powergamed dwarves, and rock at combat. If it's not, then you just need to worry less about your sucking at combat. You have to cater to your own strengths and weaknesses-if you can't play NWN well, then you don't make ridiculously gimped builds to further destroy your ability at the game. "Gimped" builds are certainly harder to keep alive and to excel with, even for talented players, though they often succeed-don't hold yourself to a standard you can't achieve.

Or, if you're just tired of everything EfU and feel that your complaints are being ignored and you're not having fun, then you need to find a new server, where death is far less strict and even a mediocre character can excel at combat.

In short, the problem isn't with EfU, and it's not really with you, either. Your viewpoint is just skewered-but if you can't correct your viewpoint, then you need to adjust it to a setting where it's at peace.

As many have already said, a powerbuild can help one succeed in reaching a hollow goal like "Level 8!", though really it's still not that hard to level up despite a weak build if you have the time for it + desire to do so. For example, my weakest build I've ever created on this server has hit the highest level of all my characters.

Roll with the punches and learn IC from IC mistakes. Charging like a mad-man will likely result in death. Death is a terrifying and brutal experience both psychologically, and financially. I'd think after a few of these run-in's a character's personality and flaws would begin to change a little, at least.

I'm pretty sure you know the game well enough though Kotenku, sounds like a few days off might be in order, judging by the rant.

[throws in 2 more cents]

Stalwart and reliable companions have been the remedy to my troubles.

Through these aforementioned bedfellows, victory can assuredly be found.

Providing one stays the course.

RP > XP.

1=rest

setcase=1

Ibeholder Stalwart and reliable companions have been the remedy to my troubles.

:oops: Sure you should be discussing that in public? :oops:

lovethesuit

Ibeholder Stalwart and reliable companions have been the remedy to my troubles.

:oops: Sure you should be discussing that in public? :oops:

Yeah, everybody knows I let the others do all the fighting.

Without having read the other folks answers - the fact that so many people HAVE taken heal as a skill surely means that it is no longer a requirement? Just get someone else to heal you, surely?

The major point you make that's hidden behind this is clearly frustration due to dying with a roleplay-orientated character. What I would say is this, and it is extremely good advice :

Sun Tzu

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

I firmly believe you can be effective with any character class, and any combination of feats, as long as you hold to the simple rule of knowing your limitations, knowing what you can and cannot do, or can and cannot face, and having a plan for every conceivable outcome. I have far more respect for a person that can survive to higher levels with a non-standard build on nwn than a person that levels up an average half-orc/dwarvern fighter, or halfling rogue (or cleric of any circumstance. Anybody can be a good cleric. Only wussies take that class anyway. But not everybody can build a good strength-based wizard and survive. Or a good gnomish barbarian. Or a weak fighter. Be PROUD of your characters inadequacies, thrive on them, and use it to inflate your ego to yet unheard of levels when you SHOVE A THUMB IN THE EYE OF THOSE WHO BEHOLD YOU.

Everyone knows sun-tzu was a diehard metagamer ;)

I agree with some of what you said but I also agree with the replies others have posted, in the end (and heres another quote).

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us "- Gandalf

Which in this context means that EFU is something different for each different viewpoint, and it can include a lot of them. As long as people are respecting other people's time and efforts then it works. It really is as simple as imagining yourself in the other person's shoes.

I don't really think suffering from IC consequences with gold loss isn't reasonable whether its RP related or build weakness related or whatever.

On a side issue, I can't get my brains around the concept of level loss (not xp loss, level loss). I understand that XP loss is a punishment to dying, in order to make dying serious. Death has to be serious, otherwise the crone and rock would be full of people saying "Heya Fred, I died twice last week. How'bout ya?" "Oh George, your score is pathetic, I've died -five- times last week, five times, ya hearme?"

But then why would a guy who learnt something ( A feat : for example expertise) at a given level, take a blow over the head - and wake up (respawn) after nearing death, but suddenly not know how to do something he learnt in the previous week? Is it because his recent neural connections get a bit bashed up and brake down? I just find the rationale of level loss slightly...unrealistic?

OOCly, I also don't believe levels should be lost. I suppose a level is like a checkpoint for a character, when he consolidates all the gain of experience so far, and can truly call himself stronger/better. I would by far prefer to see a death system which sets back a character to the initial XP amount of his level - that means that all the work put in to reach the next level is lost, but what has already been gained remains. Its a bit more like how most games work - if you die in an action game(eg splinter cell), you start at your last checkpoint, you don't have to play the previous level again.

PS : After saying what I would prefer, I'm not truly bothered by the current death system as a whole.

That won't work, because you could simply get to the Level 8 'checkpoint' and then never having to worry about dying again. You could die 5 times in one day, and still retain your checkpoint Level 8. That's not going to happen, for obvious reasons.

Death is harsh, the XP drain signifies that. The best way to avoid it is by staying alive. Everyone dies, crashes happen and you can get way unlucky. It's a game though, and the same thing applies to everyone else who plays it. In that respect it's a level playing field.

The punishment of death is actually *DEATH*.

The reward of playing in a fantasy game is that you don't actually have to die.

Personally, I think the death penalties are light. I feel an ideal world has no respawn and a limited supply of diamonds for raise dead spells.

I think all of the respawning cheapens death, and the penalties are the only thing that makes it mean anything at all. In your example of the dying and then charging character is that death or near death not having any effect is my biggest problem. The player knows you can get gold and xp back, so death is only looked at as a setback in those two areas. Death should mean much, much more. It's a big event, and it gets cheapened.

I sort of think the point of this has been missed. I don't believe Kotenku feels that the death system is too hefty or that anything necessarily needs to be changed. He plays a character with an obvious flaw which often leads to his death- a flaw that if he chose not to add then he would be able to survive, but it makes up his character. It has little to do with engine mechanics or "XP", just that he decided to add something to make his character unique, but while he may have fun playing it, it ultimately always leads to death/severe disadvantages, while by mearly tweaking that a bit to allow him to either "learn" or not have it, and have a less cultured character, he would be able to be farther along on either the level or gold or whathaveyou.

The other problem with it though is that people go to all this effort to make a character, a history, complex interactions, plot etc. And then it all comes to naught when they die randomly to lag, engine failings, misplaced spells, PvP, critical rolls or mishaps. etc

This might be how real life works, but in a fantasy world you hope for something more.

Thats why I like the system as it is, people have the option to when they WANT to say goodbye to their character/plots etc. I think most people make the appropriate decision when the time comes around to it.

(p.s. one of the reasons why I'm waiting on the player driven 'ascend/descend to your home plame' portal eg. "delete" character option in the city of judgement, you can mess around with 1 day characters etc then delete them without completely obscuring your selection list.)

I'm harder on min-maxed characters. I'm perfectly up front about that. I always played characters with lots of flaws. I know it can be done, you can have fun, and you can be successful at it.

MC - as i was typing about the "Checkpoint bit", I did think about the level 8. I meant that the checkpoint system is what is used globally throughout most games.Efu is rather exceptional since most characters never reach 9 and a lot of players don't try - having a checkpoint at level 8 is definitely a problem. There isn't much to complain about the death system as a whole.

Same goes for any level, really, Aekula.

HyperVision got it.

It's the characters that have flaws, the ones who do stupid things, while the player knows OOCly that the things are stupid, and does them anyway.

To become a good roleplayer, at least in my opinion, but I know others agree, is first to very clearly and very distinctly learn to seperate In-Character from Out of Character. The closer you get to behaving constantly, and completely ICly, the better of a roleplayer you become. Nobody can do it completely, some people can get close. Even I do a piss-poor job at it sometimes. But what this means, simply, is that you do, as your character will do, regardless of the consequences, and accept them. This is good roleplay, and I don't see how anyone can disagree with that, so I'll continue.

The consequences, in addition to having a 'near-death experience', includes a very hefty XP penalty.

My gripe is very simple.

Because I try to play my character consistently, and well - and because of my concept of what good roleplay is, I lose XP.

To be specific towards my character, like HyperVision pointed out, if I get rid of the character flaw, the character instantly becomes less interesting, more stale, and more like the people who walk in and out of combat to avoid AOO's and only chat to say "trap there" or "get the loot" or "ouch".

But that's a different topic all its own. I may go more into why I hate Scripted Quests later with another thread like this.

Hopefully this post will have cleared it up though.

The consequences, in addition to having a 'near-death experience', includes a very hefty XP penalty.

My gripe is very simple.

Because I try to play my character consistently, and well - and because of my concept of what good roleplay is, I lose XP.

I think this is the core of what's being discussed.

Firstly, the XP hit, as mentioned, signifies the 'near-death experience'. Your character got majorly slammed or died, and the XP hit relates to his new condition. He can recover from it. If you die and don't lose XP, it would mean dying becomes completely unimportant. Being a RP server, that's not what we're about.

As for playing your character consistently and well, you will be rewarded for doing so, sometimes in ways which are more satisfying than an XP injection.

Lastly, flaws do indeed make a character interesting. However, they aren't static. If you're character's flaw is charging a horde of powerful orogs by himself, and continually dying everytime he does it, there may come a time where he actually re-thinks that. >_>

I don't particularly think it makes much sense or would be desirable for a character to be rewarded for a flaw of this kind, particularly when the character doesn't learn from it.

The flaw isn't that he hates orogs, the flaw is that he demonstrates an inability to learn from his mistakes and just turns into a total wild berserker and then respawns when he throws away his life.

I know this thread isn't discussing a specific character, but although I like Cail a lot it's for reasons very different than the pattern he demonstrates of routinely throwing his life away against orogs because of berserker behavior. I guess we can talk about it in more detail privately if you like.

I think the answer is that I agree with you that generally most interesting characters will have a real flaw, and it's the business of the DMs to reward these good characters when possible. Which we do try to do, but probably don't do as good a job as we should.

Incidentally, the "heal" skill is hardly a necessity! In fact, quite the opposite. But that's a side issue, I realize.