Reduce experience, increase difficulty

[Damien]

I'll caveat this with yes I am probably a bit biased off the back of playing monster pcs, but I think experience should be reduced and difficulty increased.

There are too many level 8+ around at the moment who have really just never risked anything, but are ready to gang up and stomp those trying to do something, which I don't think is great EfU. 

[Electrohydra]

Level 8 being the standard is fine. A lot of classes only really feel like you have your whole kit at 8. And post-8 xp gains has already been nerfed fairly recently.

I think since Ticker was destroyed there just hasn't been as much conflict with everyone (mostly) being together, but that feels like it might be starting to change.

[Richørd]

If experience gains get nerfed it might just increase the friendlyman qwest behavior occurances and make people quest even more cautiously. Wait how the story evolves, then we'll see how it goes.

[wundyboy]

I discussed this briefly in the discord this morning when the suggestion was posted. And, personally, I believe that EFU should go under a fundamental core change, which will help address several ideas and worries.

Make the quest group limits five.

What this will do is it will entice people to have smaller groups, which will in turn prevent power blocs from forming as hard as they have in the past. I remember when WaW in EFU:R had 20+ members in its peak days, when EE had dropped. There's also certain factions right now that have sprouted up to 8/9 members. If people cannot quest with each other due to a lower quest limit, it may entice players to branch out and try different factions, groups, and other things. The main issue of the high number of 8/9s is mostly due to the fact that a player or two can 'cling on' to a well equipped and seasoned group, without having to deal with the rather frustrating low level experience currently.

If players cannot go into quests with higher level parties, then they're forced to go through the low level grind, and eventually tackle the high level grind themselves.  This also addresses another issue that has been taking place, and that is the supply bags from mongrelwoods / orcs / morghouls. You bring in 8 people, those 2/3 wizards that dont really need potions say to their frontliners 'please buy my pack for only 300gp', which doubles their supply intake for that run. If you try to 8 man any other content, most people are left squabbling for a single potion, or that ring of will.

So my main argument is that high level PCs have the ability to bring in newer PCs on 8 party size quests, which makes that newer PC hit 8 relatively quickly than a normal new PC. If we trim the party caps, it'll make it harder for these new PCs to get onto the backs of the higher level ones, and actually make them do the content that's on the server.

Also I think you can do a lot of more interesting quests with a 5 man party cap than an 8, because most quests these days are just romps and murderfests, where with a five man group you can experiment and test out new quest designs with only 5 people in mind. Needing rogues for lockpicking doors and dealing with traps, or wizards to make several spellcraft and lore checks to progress in the quest. Or a priest to consecrate an area for a shortcut through a quest. The limitation on party sizes will force people to think 'who do I bring', which can also be applied to general quest design, in the question of 'Who do you think you'll need to solve this quest?'. But that'll be further down the road when this is experimented with, and it's not like new quests are being pumped out left and right.


Anyways that's just my ideas on the subject. I think XP has been tampered with left and right, and still, to this day, the amount of 8/9s are prevalent. So try something different, instead of doing the same stuff over and over again.

[cmenden]

I like wundy's points and think his advantages have a strong pull with me, but I always worry the downsides would outweigh the advantages!

I enjoy inclusive all call quest shout type things being pretty standard, and wouldn't necessarily love to see things get more insular and hyper-efficient... but I also love pen and paper D&D where the 4-5 person questing party is much more standard, and honestly in NWN it's more fun to RP and traverse narrow corridors without too big a mob...

Some complementary ideas that come to mind:

• Revamping old quests to fit this paradigm would allow fresh life to be breathed into content that some of us have seen a lot of!
• With our current amount of quests and the ways seams work, offering only one or two a reset that people find, it'd be super cool if we could find a way to let multiple groups take a quest at the same time, but I don't even know if an instanced quest system is possible in NWN
• And if messing with current stuff isn't desired, maybe new quests could be built in this style as an experiment to see how well it works, whether people enjoy it or not, if they get powergamed too hard, etc.

I don't know, just some thoughts!

[Electrohydra]

Dropping the cap to 5 just means that less experienced/enfranchised players get stuck unable to ever quest, while people with the high-efficiency, daily orc > deep orc > elemental plane > 94 etc crush crews continue on as usual. The weak get weaker, and the strong don't care. The fact factions get that big doesn't have anything to do with the quest size limits. Even when Zheng was like 10 people, I never did a single quest with more then 4 Zheng members at once. The only thing this change would make is that we would quest -exclusivly- with our faction instead of creating some diversity in parties.

Say no to cliques.

[putrid_plum]

I think the greatest wrong here is when players assume what other players are doing when they in fact have no clue, or that they are 'do nothings' which irks me.

Lowering quests to 5 man will really enable OOC quest cliques even more.  I personally find things in a decent spot where you can regain lost XP if you die without it being this crippling thing to you're character.  Supplies seem decent enough where if PvP conflict is what you're into you can do that pretty freely or use it for some other agenda like Ring Running or whatnot.

Making a game incredibly hard really takes the fun out of it for people who can't delve in long hours daily.

[Blue41]

Alternatively, raise the minimum level on the more difficult quests, from 2-3 to 5-6.