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Post by eba on Oct 4, 2016 19:27:16 GMT -5
Detect still levels slowly, comprehensively failing to keep up with other skills as you level. It is an extremely adversarial system, as soon as one member of the group is a could of detect levels ahead of you, they will get 90 percent of the xp available, meaning you will NEVER get anything.
I don't want to walk through low level areas doing nothing but staring at boxes and urns just so I can get loot at areas that are ACTUALLY my level. I've taken search 1 and stared at urns in the tomb (by myself, doing 0 of anything else there) long enough to get 10 detect. I see 1/5 of boxes at spiders. Which is the lowest dungeon for my combat skills.
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Post by Rekov on Oct 4, 2016 19:54:55 GMT -5
I've been walking through low level dungeons where I can't get any other sXP just to level detect. I usually get a few hundred xp a day before it starts creeping up in the single digits. I just went through spiders as an example, and I got 86 detect xp. I cannot imagine it keeping pace in at-level dungeons. There just aren't enough stealthed mobs in most of them.
Detect (24) with Spot (II).
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Post by drunkensolamnic on Oct 4, 2016 22:43:48 GMT -5
I will say I utterly hated the changes, and have only now begun to catch up to my other skills with detect. Part of this is because my other skills have ground out while I wait to be able to gear myself for surviving higher level dungeons... so the gap may not be closing otherwise. I have Spot 1, Search 2, 33 Detect. I have not found a placeable up to the the first section of Wyler that I cannot detect, but it does mean using equipment and potions to pad my rolls. Most trips I can pick up a few hundred detect xp; rarely will this be more than 500 where as I can pick up 500 2-handed xp in just a few fights when I'm on-level in a dungeon.
Honestly once the shittiness of getting detect caught up is over for established players the current system seems solid, but I'd say the detect rewards per xp gain could be doubled to ease keeping it on level with other PC skills.
My skill spread is: detect 33, marksmen 36, armor 40, block 41, 2-handed 42, demo 40. I don't always use all of my combat skills in every dungeon, but detect is ALWAYS on, and its lagging behind. This includes the last week that my other skills haven't progressed in any notable fashion while I've slowly gained detect levels.
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Post by kaincallavis on Oct 5, 2016 2:50:12 GMT -5
Detect is still painfully slow, and when Kit and I are running together we're sometimes fighting for the sXP as it is... I spent hours and hours on the nights where I'm on the server with only one or two other people -- or even alone, just running between swamp cave and spiders to get 50-100 detect xp per full run.
It's exhausting... but it is something that has to be done for a snowball's chance in hell at keeping up with detect.
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Post by Rekov on Oct 5, 2016 10:56:02 GMT -5
One of the thing which makes the Detect sXP rate difficult to balance is that each tree opens up a new source of Detect sXP. Someone with the Search tree will get sXP from crates, while someone with the Spot tree will get sXP from dudes. Each on their own could be balanced to keep pace with combat and armor abilities. The problem is, you can have both. Do you then make having each tree give you sXP at 1/2 the rate of combat skills, with both trees together providing the full rate? Or does should each tree give 3/4s the rate of combat sXP, while both together get an accelerated 1.5 times the rate combat sXP? You see the problem, in any case.
The solution which YMD proposed on Discord yesterday is to split the Detect skill into two skills, one to provide mechanical advantage (detecting dudes), and the other to provide financial advantage (more and better loot). Detecting traps could really go into either of these categories, but if we took the traditional NWN2 skills and split them up, we would have Listen and Spot together, with Search as its own thing. I believe YMD originally lumped detecting traps in with the former though, so it could go either way.
I wouldn't mind hearing YMD's perspective on this, as it is his idea.
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Post by Fuzz on Oct 5, 2016 11:38:06 GMT -5
While that would be nice, I feel like we already have a LOT of Skills already, with full talent trees to go with them. Splitting Detect into two skills would be weird because what if you want to be good at both? Do you have to necessarily tank your character into both Talent lines at the cost of combat stuff or crafting? That's not particularly fair to Scout types, particularly since Stealth is one all inclusive Skill and we don't actually have traps or anything that players can set. Detect is already rather light on Talents, with only the two real Talent lines.
I'm also not understanding your initial paragraph about detecting dudes vs detecting crates in terms of exp gain... as far as I've seen, everyone gets Detect XP for everything. If someone is more likely to detect something and therefore get the exp for it because they actually spent Talents on that, then good... that's kinda the point. If you're specializing your character in that way, they're SUPPOSED to be good at it.
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Zoomshot
Gumshoe
A Shields-man stands before all, a boundary of protection and security.
Posts: 77
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Post by Zoomshot on Oct 20, 2016 16:46:37 GMT -5
The issue I'm having is, in dungeons there are not as many nodes spawning anymore, Which means there are even less to detect. I went to Graveyard 3ish times the last 2 days, and only found 2 chests I could detect in both runs. Maybe 3.
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Post by drunkensolamnic on Oct 20, 2016 22:21:06 GMT -5
Detect XP seems to have gone wonky again. I've gained 147 roughly detect xp on a Wyler run as the only one detecting boxes. In the Mad Nurse room alone, I gained 0 xp for 3 detections, which I assume this is the highest level chests/nodes. This includes me using the pumpkin helm.
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Post by kaincallavis on Oct 21, 2016 1:26:06 GMT -5
I'm feeling the hurt on detect as well...
It is still brutally difficult. I have run areas at my detect level on 8 hour intervals almost religiously and have been stuck gaining little to no xp.
It has been such a sore topic for so long it is hard to keep bringing up without feeling like a whiner despite the problem still being legitimate.
I don't think anyone enjoys feeling like a whiner and repeatedly bringing up an issue, valid or no.
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Post by ronan on Oct 21, 2016 13:13:03 GMT -5
What if, on a successful detect check, the xp were applied on a lesser basis to the entire party? The person detecting the object would get the full amount, and the rest would get a smaller percentage.... but enough to still make some progression?
Think of it as learning, if someone repeatedly points out the hiding spots of stuff or the baddies sneaking up on you, you would get better at spotting them yourself?
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Post by drunkensolamnic on Oct 21, 2016 13:24:05 GMT -5
Ronan, its not a matter of the shared xp. That actually is working fine... its the reward for finding it at all. I've gotten as low as 3xp in areas I hadn't been into in over a week that are rated for 40 to 50 skill progression. My skill is 40, and I was wearing that pumpkin. If I'm not progressing in that situation, I'm a little concerned as to what others are getting as well.
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Post by gorirah on Oct 21, 2016 14:11:17 GMT -5
I've not been finding it easy with detect, though there are other skills I find a lot harder to progress with. I did notice that if I go through an area then I'll get no experience for some detects and 40 or more for others, so it seems highly variable.
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Post by electrohydra on Oct 27, 2016 2:18:13 GMT -5
YMD came up with something very interesting a while ago on Discord and I just realised it had never been mentioned on the forums. It might be not that important, but I feel it's actually the core issue with Detect.
For every other skill, if you start using that skill while it's lower then your other skills, it will grow at an accelerated rate. If you're normally a two-hander and you switch to two-weapon fighting, your two-weapon fighting skill will go up very fast because it's much lower then the level of the mobs you are hitting. If you're level 40 and you've never used Animal Training and decide to pick up a dog, every hit from your pet on those trolls will give you a huge chunk of animal Training XP. Heck, even for crafting if you have 0 craft armor and start deconstructing the level 50 armors you find, you'll be getting multiple ranks per suit of armor at first.
But for detect, it's different. If your detect is behind, instead of catching up when going to level-appropriate areas for your character level, it will actually -stop increasing-, leading to a vicious circle of falling behind on detect xp meaning that you just keep falling more and more behind on detect xp.
(There's other issues, but it's just one I wanted to point out for now)
A possible solution? Grant detect xp not only for succeeding to detect something, but also for simply -trying-. A quick example. Numbers are completely arbitrary.
Let's say there is a loot node, and detecting it would normally grant you 100 xp. Every round you spend trying to detect it, you gain 10 detect xp, up to a limit of 50 xp. If you manage to detect the node, you gain 100 xp, minus whatever you've already gained from failing to detect the node. (So you don't get -more- xp for taking a long time to find it).
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Post by kaincallavis on Oct 27, 2016 16:19:09 GMT -5
^ that is a really cool idea...
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Post by electrohydra on Nov 15, 2016 14:58:22 GMT -5
Bump. This is still an issue. Detect levels up slower then other skills (Even solo, so it's not somebody stealing your detect XP). At this point I can't detect loot nodes in dungeons anymore at all, so I get little to no loot for dungeons.
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