The MMOization of EFU

[Blue41]

Take this with a grain of salt, as I've only been back and playing for a month or so, but to me the more pressing thing is less finding quests/content and more about finding a group of players on a consistent basis. I'm aware that the focus of this chapter is more on finding 2-3 PC's to explore the seams/go ring-running/exploring/questing with but I can't help but feel like it places a certain OOC burden on concepts as well, because if your concept is one that doesn't play along well with 80-90% of the player base, and you don't have a group ready to roll with you from the get-go, you either need to play nice with others at creation to get established, or live a very lonely life.

Lonely isn't necessarily bad! But it's harder to be lonely in this chapter than previous ones, as well, since gates 99-95 aren't designed to be circumvented solo.  Maybe this is by design. Maybe it will prove more helpful overall for concepts to place even more of an emphasis on getting other players involved with your own, whether the interactions are positive or negative. I do know there have been times where I'll look at the player list 20 hours into a reset and know that most of the player base has already seen what there is to see at that moment, so I can either log in and kill time trying to engage them in a different way or do anything else.  If I'm playing some form of loner/outcast scum and I don't have friends to play with, I should make some or get gone, I guess, because the options as a solo low-level loser are what RWG described in his first post.

The Drips seem pretty vicious at low levels too, but that may be a different thread.

[Bobbybrown]

I would like to clarify while some might not be immediately apparent, I think there are ways to get through the rings solo, as for what they are that's FOIG

[Calixto]

Chapters 2-4 if you died and got dropped to 5-6 and below, it was far more recoverable than presently

Previous chapters also didnt have the many issues that have come with EE, so deaths happened a lot more often naturally, and properly. I've not had a single PC yet this chapter that hasn't died 2+ times to EE crashes, and it is admittedly a big part of why I've been struggling to stick to a concept myself, because many quests have their take limits, and many of the casual xp grinds to 6, also have their limit not based on level. Eventually you reach a point where recovery from deaths is well, a lot more stress to play than just not to play. Ultimately it is said many times, we play this game to have fun. And while I have always supported EFU's death system, minus a few rants here or there when i was expectedly upset from deaths, but lately with the EE issues, not poor decision, or unpreparedness, I struggle to even hit 6

I must be missing something or I have been very lucky because I've  played since EFU:M and I haven't found it easier to advance to lvl 6 (and 7) than in the current chapter. There are a TON of lvl 2-5 quests that you can do alone, and at last two lvl 6 quests that you can also solo; although you certainly cannot rely on them alone to advance to 7, they certainly allow you to get a good bunch of xp. And as for the lvl 6 max non-solo quests, they are, for the most part, ridiculously easy; and as far as the 7+ max quests are concerned, I can only think of one which is very difficult, but then again you are warned beforehand. Add to this the obelisks and the magic-selling npcs, and I really don't get what is the problem of the server as far as lvling is concerned.

[Moonlighter]

I personally just miss going into town, gathering a few cool-seeming people, and taking them on adventures to interact and roleplay with them and find out what they're all about.

I used to enjoy finding someone cool and dragging them, safety cloak and all, through a Seers Run. Some of my prior characters' best friends ever were made this way.

Hell, getting dragged to Ysinode on my 1st or 2nd day of playing EFUR was one of the things that hooked me.

With the way that Ringrunning is setup-- the secrecy, the inability to take people to rings they haven't "earned," etc-- this is now more or less impossible, unless it's Ring 95 quests.

Those quests are (at least when I last played, which was a while ago, tbf) horrible. Whenever I suggested balance changes on them I was told they were quests that were only meant to be done once, really, and to move on to the deeper rings. Those rings were just frustration.

Ultimately this leads me into the mindset of needing my character's "team" to really get anywhere on EFU, which is just not realistic. If I can't log in with consistent times, how am I meant to progress mechanically when I do have time to play? If I can't progress, fine, I'll log in and make some roleplay myself... but, if everyone else is off with their squads, there's no one around, and so I log out. The next time I log in, the process repeats itself, and so I log out again. Then I remember there's games I have that don't require me to invest so much time in just milling around aimlessly to get to the part of the game where I have fun.

[TwoOClock]

To be honest, I find 5 way less grind intensive than 4. The quests are plentiful, especially seams, and if your intention is to rock ring 99 I do not think I have ever had an easier time finding gold, xp, and people to hunt with. Completely random people will join you if you just make a call.

Ring-running is a different business, but with the notable exception of ring 92 (which is indeed very boring to break, and for all the wrong reasons- the dreaded RNG and meeting people at the right time, often requiring to be up at ungodly hours of the night) I don't think there's anything spoiler-y in telling that deeper rings are more about working out how to beat that ring's challenge at a time of your choosing, and less/not at all about tedious grinding.

I'll counter-argument Moonlighter by saying my early days of ring-running with the Five (Milos Andelko, Daniel Brandybuck, Argus Haffurd, Lori Underbough) were actually some of THE most fun I have ever had on EFU, while V4 was sometimes less appealing in terms of high adventure. V5, with a group that's more about role-playing and group dynamics than super optimized choo choo crush train, is actually very enjoyable.

- Are the rings more about diving with a small (up to 8 people) party? Yes.

- Could the server benefit from having something that's a good alternative to Ring-Running? Probably. The seams are there, but there isn't a lot to do in terms of open exploration. Still interesting to prospect though.

- Is it a probably bad idea to apply the average shelf life of V4 characters to V5? Hell yes.

V5 seems built for longer term characters, so recklessly FDing ringrunners not only means ending their PC, but dooming the player to run the rings AGAIN. Which is why I frown so much at dishing out FD lightly in this chapter. It's nice and dandy when there is clear and mutual conflict, less fun when a random opponent murders someone "for the evulz". V4 was more forgiving, in the sense you could, indeed, roll something new and go anywhere.

You FD someone in V5, an entire ringrunning crew falls apart. So many ringrunners choose to be completely outside of conflict, "neutral" and whatnot because if your ring 86 buddy dies, good luck having to redo all previous trials just for the sake of recruiting someone new.

- On one hand, ring 99 could probably use a little expansion. On the other, being tightly packed together means you run into everyone, everywhere, all the time. Gone are the days of logging in into an empty Freedom Square, or being exiled and roaming the wilds endlessly, meeting literally no one for days. I distinctly remember retiring a wildling just because how dull it was to roam around alone with nothing to do. This will probably never happen in V5.

- Is EE part of the problem? YES.
Crashing and dying randomly is no bueno. This definitely encourages people to travel in packs, unless you're a stealther. Quests aren't horribly hard once you know what to expect, and it's absolutely possible to avoid dying altogether by just learning quest "counters" or, much like in V4, which quests are horribly dangerous and unrewarding and are in most cases not worth taking.

Possible suggestions:

- Make shallow rings (99-92) a little larger/multi areas. We already saw this happen with the inclusion of Water Gardens. Mongrel-woods were a non-permanent QA, but extremely cool.

- Tap the potential of ring 101 and beyond. Add a few rings that can be breached solo/do not count as true ring running with interesting thingies in it that do not require a ring-running party to be explored. A single vast wilderness ring?

- Make ring 92 not RNG reliant. Or make the path to the [spoilers] open-able at will through item collection, much like ring 95. Right now it just forces people to camp the ring across resets, and it is not very entertaining.

- Make Keymasters OFFICIALLY a thing. IG especially. Allow a single keyrich keymaster to open the door for their crew, even if the rest of their crew does not have the keystones and keys. This would still require the keymaster to go through all trials, but would be slightly less punishing in terms of who you can and cannot bring with you.

- Remove/reduce the Bulwark Toll. Make it count how many people are close and make the toll 20 gp per head, or make it work more like the old V4 Troll Toll. It really really forces you to pick one side of the Rings, and makes an otherwise very cool, RP-intensive place (93) ridiculously expensive to reach. Right now if you're interested in being part of the Warrens you better grind that gold, only meet after a reset, live alone in Warrens until your colleagues log in and/or be prepared to run for your life and EE crash in 95 while running back.

- Bandaid EE deaths in some way. The trouble here is that there's no way to distinguish EE crashes from genuine deaths. And EEing and EFU, like heavy lag and EFU, do not mix well. Not sure how to fix this.

- Oh yeah. Reset rush is a thing. Especially for explorables. So is "slow days" where no seams spawned, and everyone is just sitting around with nothing to do. Making sure a few seams will always spawn in the Rifts/raising the ratio of random spawn seams might help. But the latter is quite fine. I've seen unstable seams aplenty.

[Paha]

As has been iterated in many occasion, and beforehand by Mort likewise, we are not done, nor ready. It may feel like long period has passed since beginning of the chapter, but for people involved in working with things this time has not been long. Likewise nwn related things hopefully get better the closer we get to summer, as Beamdog will eventually release the new patches which have been reported to have a whole list of bug reports and all, along with the renderer and 64-bit client.

Areas and things will open up, and may change as time passes, so feedback is always good to give, but please do not assume things are set in stone just couple months after the launch of the chapter. Efu always lives and iterates, and there are long-running plans in play, always.

[Mort]

If it's any consolation - what I get from this topic is :
- It's harder to interact/hook in random newbie/low level players/strangers to experience the content together OR there is less incentive to do so and in some case, it might be non-intentionally discouraged.
- The bulk of the randomization being at reset make people play more around reset to ensure they don't stumble on 'cleared' content.
- It's hard to get 'up and running' and because of it- it's a barrier for meaningful PCs/partaking in harder stuff/plotting, and so on.

We're working on these issues, already.

[Halfbrood]

Should also be worth noting that we continue to be extremely lenient in the case of 'EE' death and continue to offer TRs to people that suffer them. This may differ in certain situations (decided upon by a DM presiding) but the vast, VAST majority of EE deaths have been reimbursed as a matter of course.

[Random_White_Guy]

It's been really great to see the back and forth, as well as heartening to see all the tips and pointers shared here or on Discord or etc to help the community out.  Also awesome to see the DM input, players bouncing ideas, and etc.

It's helped a lot to air it all out. Can probably give this the ol' Lock.