Making Including people more worthwile

[Cruzel]

Yes. Basically, if you aren't an elitist prick when it comes to who you quest with, you have absolutely nothing in terms of supplies. Now, I am completely against an XP hike for larger parties, because levels aren't nearly half the problem. I don't care about levels, in fact - the longer I'm a lower level the more I can help out newer PC/players by questing and mingling with them personally, rather than guiding them around and delegating another low level for them to mingle and quest  with.

What really grinds my gears though is the lack of supplies. Some days when I play late at night, I'll smash through  the quests with everyone on the server (Which is like 3 people) and thus stock myself up pretty damn nicely. But then the next day I smash quests with a large group, pulling everyone I see along with "Hey, maybe you'd care to join us while we~~~insert quest~~~~?" Most of the time these people end up costing me way more supplies than the reward is worth, so when on the next day I try a higher end quest, I have nothing and die, and am once more a lower level whoring those quests for supplies, before the circle viciously repeats.

I do not know the loot system personally, but adding an extra function or two to spawn one, two, three or more extra items in each chest for a group of 7 or more shouldn't be too hard! Maybe even making a 'clone' of the current system which only fires when a large party of 6-7+ starts the quest, which adds it's own special loot table to the quest's chests in addition to the standard loot?

Please, if I am going to take the effort to pull along a bunch of people on a quest rather than make them idle along the zig, I would like all of us to have a better reward than "Hey we're level three again without any supplies! Now we can spam lucinda's quest and deliveries for gold to replace all the stuff we blew on that last quest!"

[derfo]

sup i was once a new guy and these guys were like wanna hang with us? and i was all new and shit and then i became a level 10 crusher in like a week and we crushed shit together. i know it was good fun for me and i would not be here otherwise, and i'm going to go ahead and say it was fun for them, but then again den was in that group of people so that automatically makes it kinda lame

[Gippy]

There are a lot of easy quests in the 2-7 range that even with terrible support + huge spawns a party can beat. I am sort of against the rise to 8-9 becoming easier then it already is. If you plan to get high levels by questing then get companions that can handle it. Some high level quests are easier with a large party, while other quests are easy to practicly solo, while others still are just hard + expensive for any party. If anything quests are far easier with more people (competent people.) They are hard, but there is still a lot of room for players to drag along hopelessly bad questors that are fun
to interact with.

[Gippy]

I do agree it is easy blowing a load of supplies pushing a bad party (or core) through a quest though. I think an easy 2-8 delivery / puzzle whatever quest for some gold might be good for helping people stay on their feet after a hard fight/quest -- 100-150 gold or healing or invis. This is not too much bloat on the economy once every reset I do not think.

[Egon the Monkey]

I could not agree more with Gippy. A level 6+ char who burns a ton on a quest (or a l5 non-stealther) has no fedex or anything to get them back on their feet, so they get reduced to dumpster diving for stuff to merchant or selling valuable equipment, whereas a lower level PC can do easy very low risk quests.

It's less bother for a caster who can buff and backline, but for a melee type, about all you can do is persuade a team to take you on as a shooter if you're lucky and not too bad a shot.

I'd suggest a quest that's time-consuming but basically zero risk. A sort of uber-fedex with a  heavy load, that would be not worth the effort for a PC who could otherwise quest, but would be a perfect fallback quest for those who were out of all supplies. Negligible XP, but an invis or gold and some Cure Moderates.

My suggestion:
Armaments Resupply
L2-8
The Stygian picket on the docks has ran low on ammunition and blunted several weapons fighting Nightrisers.
Stage One:
You must get the weapons to Tobar for re-sharpening. That means delivering 45lbs worth of bladed weapons to him.
Stage Two:
Return from Tobar with several bundles of ammunition, and deliver them to the Stygian Picket Commander.
Stage Three:
Go to an NPC in the Stygian Compound to collect your reward.

That would be a long run, especially with the likely encumbrance, and the XP reward should be set to basically none. Pretty much should be something not worth your time to spam for XP but worth it for chars who got supply drained.

[Nihm]

Recently, I've cast aside that clique, and began to try to include as many people as possible in whatever I am doing. But this is not meant to be an insult, but let's face it. A lot of people on EFU suck at questing, be it new players or just not very good at NWN at all. Including these people makes you burn through supplies like nothing else to keep them alive, making bringing them along a HUGE hindrance in the overall scheme of things,

That clique has cast you aside or doesn't play anymore?
 
Do they suck as much as someone who REPEATEDLY CASTS WITHOUT NIGHTSHADE IN THE UNDERDARK, ON A WAY ATTEMPT NO LESS, REPEATEDLY GETTING VITAL BUFFS AND SUMMONS DISPELLED?
 
The obligatory Cruzel putdowns aside, the flipside of this inclusive behavior (which as someone who often makes open quest sendings) is a lot of unpleasantness.
 
People expect you to burn supplies keeping their feeble asses alive and then complain when they don't get the same amount of loot as the person who killed 99% of everything.  People also become vengefully bitter that a single one of them died and will remind you with a semi-ooc hatred for months afterward that it was your job to make sure none of the archers ever targetted that 11 hitpoint mage.  People also become very bitter when you don't spend 1300 gp to raise them, of course we'll pay you back so what's the problem?
 
People like these ruin the experience of being inclusive for everyone and are definately a reinforcement toward clique-forming.

[Howlando]

I'm certainly not opposed to figure out some good ways to make being inclusive being more rewarding, but it is nonsense to say that bringing along a few extra characters makes it impossible to earn a profit on quests. And nonsense to say that the only PCs who getting well supplied are those who stick to some elite cadre of the min-maxxed. So let's not exaggerate.

I do agree that the idea of perfectly dividing spoils is a pretty strange IC position to take when it's clear someone used more/did more than someone else.

[Caddies]

I remember when including other people wasn't about supplies or broadcasting the fact you actually did it to everyone else over the forums in a tragically self-aggrandizing fashion.

[Daemonic Daz]

Not had time to read the whole thread so excuse me.

Recently I've changed my stance of "splitting loot fairly" to "you get what you earned". Now I don't know if this IG or OOC but a few people have seemed quite angry at this (even accusing me of theft) thinking that since you tagged along on a quest you deserve a equal share.

As Howland touched upon, it seems to me that the majority of EFU'ers (myself included) have fell into this idea of splitting loot equally where IG logic is subconciously blotted out by OOC courtesy to other players. Whilst we can ask DM's to increase rewards for larger parties, we could also take a look at ourselves and ask what we can do to break the trend.

As for more rewards for including more people on quests, I don't see why we should be rewarded for something we all should be doing in the first place. The DM's do a pretty good job of keeping tabs on seeing who includes people on their quests/schemes and those people are the ones that get the rewards/plots/spice along with the characters they involve.

Some things are left upto players to change just as much as the DM's.

[PanamaLane]

I'm going to say yes to the higher level "delivery" quest idea, because I know it happens a lot that a highier level character spends his supplies on some DM quest or just a regular quest and ends up in a real pickle. Not having enough when you are essentially expected to on tougher quests means death.

As for the more rewards for larger groups argument, I'm going to say no actually. This stems from the general feeling I have that 3-5 people is the perfect number to have on a quest. Sure, it might seem elitist and noninclusive, but when you have 8 people on a quest, the RP suffers. I never mind bringing new people along, but I'd rather do it in a way that I can interact with them.

[I can has fun?]

Recently I've changed my stance of "splitting loot fairly" to "you get what you earned". Now I don't know if this IG or OOC but a few people have seemed quite angry at this (even accusing me of theft) thinking that since you tagged along on a quest you deserve a equal share.

For my part, it's IC. I think it's a fun thing to argue with Stygians about, since I'm playing a PC who doesn't need much from quests (or get along with Stygians).

What I've also seen, however, is an attitude that only fighters contribute to a battle, or that they deserve a bigger share of the pie simply by virtue of what they are. That annoys me OOCly. I can see the justification for giving them first share of the healing supplies, but beyond that I think it is unjustified.

[Witchburner]

What I've also seen, however, is an attitude that only fighters contribute to a battle, or that they deserve a bigger share of the pie simply by virtue of what they are. That annoys me OOCly. I can see the justification for giving them first share of the healing supplies, but beyond that I think it is unjustified.

At the moment I play a wizard as my main character and I've encountered this trend several times as well, and while those who usually put their hide in more danger can be justified a greater reward ICly, it's still a little silly when that level 4 warrior is granted three or four times the gold compared to the backline mage of the same level. Sure, a low-level mage isn't particularly mind blowing, but I'd still expect people to remember those buffs, or that lifesaving cloud of bewilderment at the vital moment. Moreover, most of the backline characters are often happily keeping the frontline fighters alive with wands and potions, even if that seems to be quickly forgotten when the time of sharing the spoils comes.

While I'm sure that all of this can be explained ICly, I have to admit that a few times I've been frustrated when the reward after a day of slinging spells, identifying the party's magical equipment and spending three rods of minor healing on others turns out to be 25 gold and a few cantrip scrolls. This sort of a deal seems to be especially common with bigger parties, and I wholeheartedly agree that a distinct loot-party size scaling would already fix half the problem.

[Edit]

Not to derail the thread any further, this isn't a "I'm not getting enough lewts" rant, but rather I feel that support characters are underappreciated a lot of the time. Obviously a distinct line between IC and OOC should be drawn in this matter. In any case I had to get that out of my system.

[Howlando]

Loot division is entirely an IC issue, and should be subject to your character's RP.

It is entirely inappropriate to be OOC'ly annoyed with an IC position of this kind, one way or another.

If you character's position is that loot should be divided according to supplies used, that's great. If your character's position is that everyone went into the same danger and thus should be divided equally, that's great. If your character's position is that loot should go to the PC that did the most killing, that's great. If your character's position is that he is the best and everyone else should practically be paying for the privilege of him coming along - also great.

What is not appropriate in EFU is people's OOC opinions or feelings as players getting involved.

[Calavera]

word

[petey512]

Yeah I think you should involve people even if you don't get crap for it. Maybe I'm weird or something.