It's been one week since we hit Zero, and the big announcement about EfU:A. There has been controversy, bugs, glitches, lag deaths. There have also been mysteries both short and long term, exceptional character concepts, exhilarating quests, diverse social dynamics, teams beyond the Good and Evil, and overall a strong feeling that survival itself is our most imposing foe.
I spent about 1 1/2 hours hiding the basement of a building at 4hp, because Nightrisers had chased me and a buddy in. When the sun came up and they still hadn't left, he ran to get help. It ended with a fierce battle with two somewhat minor monsters, who nonetheless left three of us at less than 5hp and with no healing to speak of. Dude.
Personally, I feel like I'm in the earliest days of EfU, from what I've been told about those times by those who were there. When I see an item with one shot of light healing, I'm ecstatic because it could be the difference between life and death.
In this week, what awesome moments have you experienced, and where do you think it's headed?
On my first day with an actual character, within 3 hours I got invovled in a serious plot to form a government, ended up being at the sight of one faction massacring another and escaping after pwncritting one in the face, and drinkin an invis as i got subdued (and later escaping) and coming tantalizingly close to being in a brawl for all with said faction and a rather large pitchfork mob.
all in day 1. at level 3.
other than that it is an awful lot like the beginning of efu. i barely have any money, any healing, and am hoping to make it to lvl 4 so i can enchant my own weapon briefly. im happy as a clam
Although I'm a week late, just exploring Ymph is absolutely incredible! The island is massive, with so much to kill you.
It's amazing. The only problem with EfU:A is that I'm playing too damned much. On a related note, taking a day or two off so I don't sell my soul away. So yes, it's that good.
It's going pretty awesome, and I have hardly touched EFUA at all! I'm glad you guys are enjoying it, but as well as the good, what's the bad? (Beside bug fixes and other toolset errors, which will be hashed out shortly.) I know we had some negative criticism when EfU first ended. How are we feeling about it now?
I always seem to log in just as night time is starting, or in the middle of it. It's bad luck really, but does it annoy me that I haven't explored the island as much as I'd like to yet.
Also, more than a few times when getting groups together for quests, there's too many people, even with a character limit of 8. So inevitably somebody makes a different selection, cuts the group down to 8 excluding the original quest organizer, and goes off to pwn a quest. Which is fine for me 'cause I still go along, but it sucks when there's 10 people on top of the ziggurat and 8 people can go on the newb quests.
Finally, there's nothing going on with the Underdark anymore. It bums me out significantly. If that weren't the exact opposite direction that my character was aiming, I'd do something about it.
Playing too much. Make less fun plz.
I think most people are rocking out quite well. My only problem as of now when compared to EFU is that since I can't play for more than a couple of hours a few times a week, I can't seem to get involved with much as apposed to EFU where I could when just playing that much. I think it's because all the organizations haven't been built yet. They need effort to build and people are busy doing so. That's it. I can't really complain about it though. I mean how cool is it that the playerbase basically gets to participate largely in creating all the factions?
It's really neat.
I was looking forward to getting a feel of the atmosphere of the module. I was a bit frustrated because i logged mostly at nightime, and that cut exploration short.
But as soon as day rose... wow!
As for the main course, even if i'm not much of a builder or a human relations' guy, it's really cool to see people starting a settlement from scratch. Makes people feel really involved, and lvl is not an issue imbalancing factions.
Great work, and still going!
"It's going pretty awesome, and I have hardly touched EFUA at all!" -Sternhund
Coincidence?
It's good. I really like the concept and I'm having a good time with my new PC. I've done 3 quests, but I've been RPing a bit.
Harder to get a hold on anything, we did the Nightriser Quest last night and really felt like we were in a tense, tactical situation (despite a couple WTFs, like a tough baddy running right through our entire 7 or 8 party to whack at our lowest HP member)
Oh wow, reactions to the new server... wondrous!
The Good: I love the survivalist feel, especially when you're either doing a quest with two or three people and have to really think, or when you're doing a really big hard quest with more people and have to be mindful of tactics. Also, the thought that I could just post something on the forums, posterlike, saying that I want to start the standing military or the next War Wizards or something like that... frankly, it's amazing! I mean, I could start a bloody noble house if I wanted to, claim a castle, and have a DM faction two years later! Actually, let's keep it Player Faction. ;) Wouldn't want you all-powerful types messing it up!
The Bad: Simply because EfU:A is amazing and everyone wants to get in on the ground floor, there is a lot of overcrowding. I don't even log on at the real high-traffic times, and there is a great deal of lag. Also there are some minor balance issues and bugfixes that need to happen, but that will come with time.
The Ugly: Your MOM!
I think it's great! A few quests popping up in the actual underdark would be nice, but that's about all there is that strikes me as wrong!
I havn't felt the survivalist thing yet, but I think that's because Iv'e been getting really really lucky drops in loot.
Got a chance to meet the Elders of the only "neutral" halfling tribe on the islands that we've encountered. Found out some IC bits of our history here through DM interaction. And in a single day, had no less than 3 different DM's lead us on quests while we were exploring around in a single session of game plays!
Where do I think it's going? Well I honestly find myself less 'worried' ICly because it looks like we are all okay. The underdark provided the 'fish-out-of-water' experience for all of us. All the characters would run from beasts of the underdark. here, its the surface, there is no universal fear like that.
I'll see how it goes, been okay so far, but not spectacular like I felt the previous version of the module was.
There are things I truly love and there are things that are driving me to distraction.
The things I love I think are things that will grow with time. The things I hate are things I hope will fade, but things I think it important to note.
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PROS:
* Exploring the wilds of the server. This is a very well built module. People obviously spent a lot of time on it and it shows. There's a good bit of lore that seems to be burried around out there as well. I'm eager to see it.
* The player-driven plot, such that it is so far. It's been an interesting thing to take part in. Anarchy, in all of its utter misery and confusion, has produced some interesting RP so far. It comes in fits and starts, though. After the heavily DM-driven plotline to close EfU, there's also some refreshing freedom to it. That wears in time, though (as I'll cover below).
* The occassional DM spice. Rare, but it happens. I also appreciate that the staff is busily debugging a lot of stuff right now and it's draining on time and resources. Especially after the 'all hands on deck' period for the wrap-up of EfU, this has got to be testing the adrenaline reserves of your staff. The fact that we see DM's on right now responding to all of the hickups you get with a new product after how much energy has already been poured into this is frankly impressive.
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CONS:
* It's starting to feel a bit like why I quit WoW and that's not why I came to EfU. That sounds harsh and it is. But I quit WoW the first time when I realized I had played the same dungeons over and over and over to the point where they were no longer interesting and in pursuit of a goal that seemed to remain perpetually out of reach.
Given the current state of EfU:A, most of us seem to log in... run Trogs, run Ghouls, run goblins, run nightrisers, and maybe we get through all of those before a reset. One way or the other, on average once per two days, you are going to die to something completely random, cheesy, and outside of your control. This will set you back a couple levels and you will start back at the same spot on the next reset.
Rinse. Repeat.
Same quests. Same sequence. Every reset. Over and over.
I think this cycle has only been encouraged by two factors:
1. The pervasive feeling that without higher levels and more gear, each "side" of the various IC conflicts will be unable to face each other. Rather than engaging in these conflicts directly, each party now seems engaged in a rinse repeat powerquesting arms race.
2. The lack of DM-driven plots. I'm amazed that DM staff has had the energy to run such a blockbuster series of plots to wrap up EfU and yet still have the energy to launch a new server with all of its exacting demands on debugging, quest balancing, and endless complaints and requests from players without all of you becoming certifiable. It's impressive - really. I also know our feedback after the end-of-EfU plot was that it seemed very railroaded (and it was). All of those are caveats to this point.
One of the results, however, is an empty space in which player-run activity is either doing well (there are cases of this) or is naturally petering out in favor of the questgrind.
The reason that's important is that you can find the sort of RP people do on quests or in predictable drama conflicts on almost any server - and most of them are vastly less frustrating to level on. For a time, the sheer beauty and work that has gone into building EfU:A will engross you and distract you from this, but after doing the same quest over and over in a futile attempt to progress to other content, it becomes less of a dazzlingly hypnotic distraction and more of a chore.
EfU's niche is in building narratives that are compelling and vibrant. It achieves this by making the risks and opportunities in those conflicts -real- (unlike most servers) and by providing a setting rich with compelling conflicts and stories from which those narratives are drawn.
Whether or not the party can beat the bosses of each dungeon consistently for several resets so you can gain that elusive next level without randomly or cheesily dying somewhere to something beyond your control is not a compelling conflict and does not build a compelling narrative.
Where the conflicts we've been building are really sort of dull right now, whether because they're "on hold" for the questgrinding arms race or simply formulaic and predictable to start with, there'a vacuum for something to come along and generate some real conflict.
Got to explore the isle, meet several werewolves get torn apart by two of them. Find exotic quests that nobody else has ever done and pioneer them! Got all giddy over splint mail. Obsessed over collecting a set of items that really only have semi decent stats, simply because I must finish the ~set~. MOAR SETS.
I hate to say this, but the major con are the areas. Which well quite aesthetically pleasing are absolutely badly built.
1) The ziggurat itself has a number of rendering issues which has actually caused my NWN to crash several times despite running a fairly powerful system (for NWN standards). Typically, the issue is large placeables set over the grid-lines which forces a machine to render that item between two and four seperate times as you move forward. Multiply that by several items so moving forward an inch causes between 8 to 24 new renderings all at once-coupled with the staggered level of the ziggurat itself and my NWN just shuts off. Took me four crashes to walk up the ziggurat one day when several people were in the area even until I essentially zoomed in really close and turned my settings to the lowest possible settings.
2) The rolling hills rural 2 terrain is wretched. It looks great, but the clipping issues on the main gate area are horrible. The hills themselves cause terrible "freeze" frames of between 1-3 seconds which is going to cause many deaths I think for people. There really is no way around these issues and Bioware has said that honestly, the tileset may not be useful for PW builders because the lag will happen no matter what.
This is all very sad, because it does all look so very good and is really an impressive and fresh setting.
A few less of the "new" trees will help with the 'hiccups' on the rolling terrain. Those trees are terrible frankly and you can't do much about that, especially the willow trees.
Move placeables so they're not across grid lines. Every placeable on a grid line causes overall lag on the client and server side, even if they are set static!, and if they're not static its considerably worse.
Be careful with new 1.69 placeables, some of the animated ones if set to static will cause terrible lag and outright crashes.
If you're having lag issues, consider using this in your nwn.ini
"increase the cache size by opening nwnplayer.ini, and under [Game Options] add the line Max Memory Usage=64".
I've not tried this myself, its on my "to try out" list right now. If it helps with the rolling terrain hiccups though, let me know because I'll do it right away.
In regard to the issues with the Ziggurat and the rolling terrain:
But they're just so gosh-darned sexy!!!
The issue of aesthetics vs. playability is definitely key, and we've tried to hit a happy medium. What you see is the result of compromise between members of the DM staff. Believe me I have read all the posts about technical area building in the Bio boards and am familiar with the various (several year old maxims) about no placeables on tile-edges (although I thought that was mostly an issue for NPC AI), and so on... but there's a point where you have to weigh making the areas look good vs. trying to make them fast on a game that's many years old.
I'm surprised the Ziggurat area itself is causing issues though. Certainly some of those placeables will be removed as the area is "built up."
For me, rolling hills does cause a brief pause for my PC to render, but it's not that bad. The Ziggurat area loads super quickly and cleanly for me.
I'm very interested to know if lots of players are having these issues though, so (perhaps in a separate thread) if you are a player who is finding some areas unplayable or extremely crash prone, please let me know.
(The only hiccup I've experienced with the Rural tileset is at the main gates beneath the archway that leads outward.)
Things are going great, and the good times have been rolling so far.
Edit:
@ Lorloth's commentary:
It is true. There is a lot of level racing going on right now. While many of us DM's are busy squashing out bugs obsessively, and play testing the quests, areas, and so forth for balance and bugs firsthand, there will be a bit less DM activity while we are still trying to set up. I can promise and assure that will change once we're settled into a more 'Beta'-or call it what you want-phase.
I would like to see some big plots start up soon as well.
Well to answer the oringinal question the first week was awesome. I made a intelligent sarcastic goblin, did a bunch of quests managed to reach level four. Played a fun DM quest involving a lot of Kobolds and three bosses, resulting some really cool loot. Only bad part of the whole time was the glitchy transitions (looking backwards?) and my goblin getting killed.
This first week has been incredible and really revived my love of this server. In this historic week I made a cool fighter and became the military commander of the island! Who knows what the second week will hold? Perhaps, king of the universe?
I am very pleased with the aesthetic quality of the areas and the abundance of mysteries on the island of Ymph. The tie-ins with older plots/setting lore are pretty awesome when you discover them, and the generally primitive conditions make for some very involving role-playing.
One of my favorite things about this setting is that we get to watch the economy, the government, the whole civilization evolve, shaped by the characters as they arrive. The idea that the experience of future players depends on the actions of the current ones is fantastic.
I have been enjoying the new server immensely! There has been a great volume of interesting and creative pc's that I hadn't expected to see so soon. Keep it up, I say.
I'm really enjoying playing the new server. Despite having trouble sticking with a character for the first few days, due to disinterest, death and other such fickly forces, I've found my niche and am enjoying my current character immensely. The level of roleplay is excellent, the survival feel is brilliant and the ability to, truly, carve your name in the stones of history is definately my favourite thing so far! I can't wait until all the cogs start whirring. I'm especially interested in seeing the new DM factions that I (hope) are in the works!
Much good, aie!
I am having a great deal of fun even away from the city. I can say I have spent only a few hours total inside the Ziggaraut, and the areas are just amazing. I cannot say what Oro is experiencing, as I have brief hiccups in some areas, but not anything that would be to terrible.
I always get a two-second freeze when passing through the South Gate area. Other than that, I've experienced no issues with freezes or crashes, and my computer is pretty old.
the level racing is a bit dreary yes, but having tried to explore with a character with maxed stealth and three stealth feats, and consistently being seen and pwnt, I think its understandable that people want levels to explore with.
I'll echo others here and say I've only had issues going outside of the main gate. There is a two second freeze and that's it. Other than that, I've had no problems. I have not had a single crash, and the computer I am playing on is pretty old with settings pushed to the max.
I did have a few crashes, but I can't really tell if it was because of the areas or not. The Main Gate causes me a 2-second freeze.
Here's some, I hope, constructive, or maybe actually ignorant criticism:
The areas are too 1-way at the moment.
**Possible Spoilers**
Remember how in the Underdark, you could enter Upper in about three different ways without actually walking through a gate? You could go use that hidden entrance somewhere in some area and teleport, or you could go into the Sewers and walk through the doohickey, or you could swim through a nasty, but cool underwater area and then emerge near the ruins, and I am pretty sure there was a few more ways I forgot.
Likewise, you could go to Fort Mur along the High Road, or the Low Road, or by boat. And you could go to the Troglodyte Quest via the nasty Spider Cave, or by means of the Dark Canal, or, if you were a wussy, through the Mines.
There were a lot of these alternate paths one could take. You could get from the Dark Lake to the Low Way eventually through some winding caverns that emerged near the Trolls, or go all the way around through the mines, and so on.
Now take our new server: You go to the Docks; you're stuck, aside of visiting the tower. You go to the East, you're stuck aside of entering the shrines. You go to the goblin town: all you can do is enter places or go back, with the exception of the drain pipes.
Granted, there's lots of ways to go from the Main Gate, but two of them are seemed to be cul-de-sacs. The others, though, led to some nice exploration, but even then I often missed the "open" feel of the Underdark, ironic as that might seem.
** End **
What I am trying to say is that either I am missing many hidden paths and many haven't been implemented or finished yet, or the areas seem a lot more "closed" than back in EfU. I think this isn't actually a good thing; I really miss the abiltiy to go many, many paths to arrive at the same goal and I think it should, as the server develops, be brought back.
Disclaimer: like hinted at, this might be sheer ignorance talking. I haven't even found the Stargazer village or the Scale Hill thing, or any underwater areas, though I know they exist, so I might just have missed a lot alternate exits, but I thought I'd better bring it up just in case.
I logged in topside with a new PC for the first time last week, after getting tired of my Underdark PC consistently failing to be online in time to put together a surface party. My new PC ported in to the tower, and encountered an entire gaggle of PCs. I began emoting my disorientation from the teleportation, and the other PCs barely even glanced at me. "Oh, another one. That happens a lot around here." Then they all walked away en masse.
Obviously, I felt very welcomed.
I wandered down the tower into a weird shelter thing, where I was once again summarily ignored by the other PCs upon asking about where I was. I sat around for a few minutes, then logged out in frustration to play Team Fortress 2.
I'm not sure how to feel about the new EfU so far. I'm not too impressed as of yet, though part of it is frustration at having my main PC still stuck underground (effectively permanently, due to timezones and my low level).
Initiative. Dude, you don't walk around waiting for someone to draw you into a plot, you make your own, and draw others in them, or you smack someone's head and say, "lemme plot with you!"
With two or three exceptions, we're all new characters. If there seems to be exclusionism, it's an illusion; nobody is really all that higher up than anybody else. Part of me really enjoys that.
The other part of me expects the other shoe to drop. I want some totalitarianism up in the hizzie.
Quote from: lovethesuit;87551With two or three exceptions, we're all new characters. If there seems to be exclusionism, it's an illusion; nobody is really all that higher up than anybody else. Part of me really enjoys that.
The other part of me expects the other shoe to drop. I want some totalitarianism up in the hizzie.
It took me like an hour and a half to find someone who would give me clothes. My nuggets were frozen by that time, let me tell you.
That has nothing to do with exclusionism, but I think a lot of people are having difficulty 'vibing' with the new server atmosphere/PC's. I know I am having trouble getting into a PC in the new environment, but I'm sure it will pass.