Lower the difficulty level of the Server

[Velve]

I couldn't be bothered reading everyone's post, so apologies if its been said before or answered to somehow.

I have to agree. I think the server is a notch or two too hard.

However, that line of difficulty appreciation changes for everyone. I am sure there are a few who would enjoy things a touch harder.

So while personally, I would like it toned down, I can respect that the server may well be as balanced as it can be, and it IS supposed to be a rather hardcore server.

[DeputyCool]

@ Politoed:

It's not exaggerated. I can think of a lot of players/PC's that reached L6/7 on EFU in a matter of 2 days. It was extremely doable.

I can also think of some people (NAGA) who can do it in EFU:A as well. The thing is that while people were extremely familiar with the ins and outs of questing on EFU, EFU:A has been a bit more reticent in giving away it's path to glory.

I think that overall, it is not a bad balance and is mostly just unfamiliar to a lot of people. That said, some adjustments would certainly be welcome in various quests/ranges.

[Drakill Tannan]

THe problem is, DeputyCool, how many gameplay hours you need to spend there? You also need a good party to do that, and by that i likely mean a group that OOCly knows each other, considering timezones, some get lucky and find it, others don't. Thouse who don't will spend a week at level 6, while the lucky ones can get to level 7 in a couple days.

Now the only real way to balance it would be to give bonus XP to players who don't log as often, wich is lame IMO.

My suggestion is to increse the XP gain in spawns (both outside and inside the SQAs) and the rewards from quests as well as reducing the XP penatly from death, for players under level 7 (2,3,4,5,6) so that reaching level 7 is not as hard, and PCs won't have to grind low level quests 75% of the time due to how dificult the server is. Levels 8+ would still be meritorious.

[scrappayeti]

@ Everyone who says low level is easy.

I am currently struggling to keep a character above level four. I cannot possibly see how a character can level up quickly here, unless they jump on the end carriage of a high level quest group. I have always hated doing that.

Doing quests at the level where you can lead is slow and dangerous. For example at level five I got a total of seven hundred xp for Scalemount. It’s a fun quest, well written, where PCs regularly die. At seven hundred xp you would have to do it eight times to level up, and that is good xp here. I get less than three hundred for some quests.

Even the level two rat quest is slow. In EfU killing the rat would get you a third or half the way to level three. Here? A measly two hundred odd xp? You would have to kill that rat over and over to level. (I know no one would, I am just reiterating that the xp rewards here are low, low, low).

@ Those who talked of easy and hard quests.

Sorry, where are these easy quests, I must not have found them yet?

Trogs doesn’t scale well, so it's not too hard with a lynch mob, but it's still easy to die here, I have seen heaps of characters go down. My last death was "fall in pit, meet shammy without armour, get feared, die" (Prot from Evil? At level four? I couldn’t cast it, hadn't seen a potion of it, hadn't met a brewer. Where was I supposed to find one, let alone one per run?). That last room with the endboss and the spoilers is a mean fight for a three man. That room caused one of my above mentioned unrecovered full wipes.

But yes, they do get harder. That orc quest is a nightmare (fun, I'll grant you). We fought what seemed to be a metric fuckton of orcs, who spammed dispel and were regularly empowered with mysterious orcish true seeing ability. It was sheer dumb luck I survived that quest, sheer luck. So I will acknowledge we have various difficulty levels, but they are hard and harder, not hard and easy.

@ Caddies.

Challenge to you my son. Next time you roll a character, try this for size. A) Roll a distinctly non-optimised build. B) Don’t accept DM loot or DM adventures. C) Don’t do any quest which have a top cap level more than one higher than your own (so if its 2-5, only do it at level 4). See if you still think it's fast and easy to level.

[Caddies]

I've already done your challenge quite a few times Scrappa, and with less optimized characters than your own. The difference is I had time to adjust to EFU:A by that time. You've been here a week or whatever it is and you're finding it extremely difficult; thats always going to happen to everyone. After a month of acclimatisation, albeit through trial and error, you'll know the server as well as the rest of us and you'll thrive.

If it makes you feel any better, I found EFU:A perplexing hard compared to EFU when I first started. It is -much- harder, I agree, but its something you 'just get used to' over time. If anything, it'll probably give you razor sharp NWN skills.

Good luck and welcome back! :)

[Dr Dragon]

My current char reach lvl 6 in two days (counting today) It isnt that difficult to level at all if you have a survivalist build I even had lvl 9 for awhile with Carlos before he died VIA DM quest and then as soon as he hit 9 he died again during tolls. And with Red Eleint Spice Ive gained lvl 8 On Kelian. and Lets not forget Sarlee who also got lvl8. I honestly think in EFUA its easier to level. In the old EFU I had only 1 char that was lvl 8 and that was Koinus Sten. Other then that the highest level ive ever been was 6.

[politoed_]

@ Politoed:

It's not exaggerated. I can think of a lot of players/PC's that reached L6/7 on EFU in a matter of 2 days. It was extremely doable.

I can also think of some people (NAGA) who can do it in EFU:A as well. The thing is that while people were extremely familiar with the ins and outs of questing on EFU, EFU:A has been a bit more reticent in giving away it's path to glory.

I think that overall, it is not a bad balance and is mostly just unfamiliar to a lot of people. That said, some adjustments would certainly be welcome in various quests/ranges.

Pretty sure I said it was possible. It was done, but it was definitely a minority. If some people want to put in the time to become X level in a couple days or whatever, that is fine, but I don't think they should necessarily set the bar for everyone.

[Joe Desu]

Hmm, so the only way for the server to become easy (not overly difficult?)  is for OOC knowledge of the ins and outs and only questing with those who have the same OOC knowledge?
 
That's okay with me, I am used to barely reaching level 5 for short periods of time before dying again and not getting into various quests as I am not aware of them or don't know a group strong enough to handle it so that I can learn it and don't mind bringing along a shmuck like myself.  I still enjoy it for the story and RP.

[Paha]

Unfortunately this is the deal, if you think about it.

Some parts need tweaking, sure, but it cannot be made too easy.

It is a fact, that sooner or later if one has power to continue to play, they will come used to things and learn the common way around the setting. At this time if things are so said "easy" already, for a used guy these will be even more overrun than many things that may be at this time.

And in all honesty, at that point we'll be having more of lvl 8-10 than ever before, another set of posting about how our level has gotten out of hand once again, and so on.

Suggestions to tweaking here have been very good, lets stay to that. Others need to think a bit what happens if we take it too far.

[KjetilofNorway]

This server is catered pretty fiercly towards the needs and wants of the gung-ho crowd with lots of hours to invest in this hobby, which leaves us more casual players hanging high and dry in some regards, but that's just the nature of the beast, I figure.
C'est la vie.
 
I'm quite poor at NWN, in spite of the amount of time (gosh, many years now) I've played this game, and so I expect to die a lot on EFU;A. I don't mind however, as long as low-level characters get to face worthy adversaries, scary enough to warrant for your PC to be considered a heroic, late adventurer and not just some lost farm boy that got eaten up by rats in the event of his death. If I felt that I had a slim chance of ever pushing my PCs beyond "surviver" to "adventurer", I wouldn't play here. The Temple of Jergal is quite good in this regard, you get to face stuff that it's quite acceptable to die from early on, it's not just embarrassing, like rats or something.
 
 
It's cool that your PC starts out as some riff-raff, but the next level of achievement, adventurer status, should not be exclusive to the NWN savvy, IMO.
 
I don't think EFU;A is failing in this regard, but I think it's something to keep in mind: That level of difficulty does not revolve solely around the mechanical aspect of the game, i.e. levels, but also around the sense of achievement derrived from other sources, i.e. how easy is it to get the gear to look cool, how easy is it to kill cool stuff etc.

[Elytherin Dragonius]

Scrappy, i hear you man, EFU, was much easier than EFU:A but having said that, ive been back about a month of so and ive found it much easier now than i did before (although i do die quite alot, Skub for instance has yet to crack lv 6)

agreed the RP factor is what gets me coming back but if im playing a Barb like Skub he isnt going to enjoy standing around talking all day long and neither do I.

I do think the idea of adding rest points at either the finish or mid way through the rather longer quests is a good idea and i also think the idea of having areas containing more loot getting locked off if they are used is also a good idea, heck the areas might simply contain a scattering of weak mobs for an easy hundred or so more xp and a few trinkets or perhaps those areas contain side quests like say you find a prisoner and you have to find the key to release him/her and it happens to be on the body of the boss but the prisoner is poisoned and only has a short while to live (making sence if you take time to rest then the prisoner dies) but if you release the prisoner you still have to get them back to the start where their supplies are kept and they can heal themselves (again resting will cause the prisoner to die and thus no bonus xp/loot/coin)

another way to add to the possible xp you can gain/loot is simply to give the option to go further in but if you do you cant leave untill you clear it through (cave in or the like) a chance to rest before pushing on (or maybe automated in the form of being knocked out from a cave in or something) but there are significantly more and harder mobs there. Think of it some what like the wolves at the farm quest but it would be adaptable to say gnolls, clear the last room and the battle causes a minor cave in, or one of the chests contains a hidden leaver or something of that kind.

i think if we establish the thought that lv 11 is the upper most lv that any one could manage (no content to tailor for beyond that and as such it is impossible without running ALOT of DM events) and that we establish lv 9 as a good high goal, it kinda makes alot of sence for people to struggle at lv 5, your over half way through what is achievable using SQA's and unless your char is exceptionally good at being all shifty and keeping out of trouble or is just simply so bad ass that it puts down any attempts on its life then i dont see any reason why evil char's dont plan on putting down the high lv pally to further their plans or the good citizens dont put down the evil char that has plotted to cause (insert generic goal objective here) because even though levels make doing things easier, its only really a mechanical adaptation to make your Char capable of being a fulcrum for storytelling to be hinged on. Thats what i play EFU:A for,

while ive been working christmas trading hours, being in australia puts me online at awkward times for other players around the world, especially the states so untill after new years i wont be able to be on while other char's are that are integral to my owns story ive been showing a friend the RP ropes and getting him used to the server.

we wiped on the farmers daughter quest with a pair of lv 3's simply because his warrior got feared and killed while feared, this sort of quest shouldnt be an issue for 2 lv 3's with plenty of equipment but he simply was hit with an unlucky roll and my cleric couldnt stay standing long enough to get his figher back up, but thems the rolls his comment though stuck,

"how the hell do you remember everything about this place there is just so much here to do and the difficulty is just insane at times, did i make a mistake in the stats i rolled or something?"

him having no idea on the mechanical parts of NWN and only a conceptual idea on how to work them along side RP meens that he has alot ot learn, and i cant teach him most of it (myself not being terribly good with the mechanics of the game but reasonable at RP'ing the stats [atleast i think so] leaves it to being alot for a new player to take in.)

the part that struck me the most with that was that i had a very similar reaction when i first started playing EFU, i never got a charactor to higher than lv 6 there and actually enjoyed my lv 4 Monk the most out of my charactors, but if it wasnt for Diamisus, there is no way i would have gotten to that point, i had no idea on how to work the ropes (heck it was some what daunting to get thrown into the middle of sanctuary and walking out having never played NWN in multiplayer let alone RP ment i had no idea about anything.

But i guess that is part of the feeling of accomplishment you earn for getting used to the ropes and how everything works and then adding in your own plots and stories to continue the setting

[The Beggar]

There are a core of players that are just mechanically gifted and have awesome game sense. Of those, many are also amazingly good RPrs, as Caddies is. Though I disagree that it is easy to get to L6/7, it is probably due to my overall suck factor mechanically. It's like this in every game though, that has online interaction, and it's extremely improbable that any game can be balanced for everyone playing it.

[UnholyWon]

I think we should talk about the spoi...details of the quests and be very specific about what is exactly hard. I suggest using area maps that show where gank squads are in quest areas and such. Details, details, details!

Just a suggestion, I will certainly take notes.

:mrgreen:

[SirSerious]

I am with Scrappa on this. I don't have endless hours to invest in this game and with my current PC I've managed to do every quest on the surface except for 3-4 and I am still only level 7. This is frustrating to me. I would love for there to be more high level PCs for me to quest with, and for the median server level to rise 2-3 levels. I trust Mort to come up with a sweet solution though, if he's working on it, so no worries from me here.

P.S. I am part of the mechanical elite on this server, and I think Scrappa's points are really well articulated. Some parts of the server really feel like Russian roulette.

[Letsplayforfun]

This server is catered pretty fiercly towards the needs and wants of the gung-ho crowd with lots of hours to invest in this hobby, which leaves us more casual players hanging high and dry in some regards, but that's just the nature of the beast, I figure.
C'est la vie.

That's a very good point.

On a side note, i've witnesses someone complaining here fall in vermin tower because he ran  ahead at 'near death'. I've seen other fall in harpy because he ran ahead while other were healing, with no mind ward on top. I've seen another fugue because he wanted to 3 man orcs part 1, deliberately ignoring those asking 'for a job', and then 'telling' my high lvl pc if i can set up a rescue team. There's lots more example i could give of how i've seen people die. And most of the time, it's not the 'server's fault'.

On another note, there was a thread somewhere about "Why PCs die". Read it. Read it again. And once you've read it, apply it.