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Post by mireigi on Aug 12, 2015 4:16:30 GMT -5
Below I've compiled a list of suggestions based on my own experiences, talking with other players, and reading the forums. I think that the server is in a good state currently, but there is so much more that could be done, hence the compiled list.
I have very limited experience with the toolset, aside from creating a few simple areas, so not all of my suggestions may be possible, let alone viable. That being said, however, I've seen PE do amazing work that I didn't think was possible with a game as old as NWN2.
Let me know what you all think about the suggestions. If you disagree with some or all of the suggestions, then please state why in a constructive manner. If you only wish to tell me how stupid my suggestions are, then please leave the thread alone until you have something constructive to add.
Crafting
Remove monetary costs for crafting*
Introduce a weekly rental payment for the rooms at the Crafters Hall, but keep it low ($100 - $150 per week)*
This is to offset the reduced costs of crafting individual items, essentially moving the cost something that makes more sense
- Make crafted items deconstructible, but do not give any XP for it, only providing a means to recover X% of the materials used
- Introduce dependencies on other crafters
- Ie a set of plate gauntlets are always worn over a set of leather gloves, so a blacksmith would need to commission a pair from a leatherworker
- When player housing is introduced (not rooms at inns), allow for crafters to have all their own equipment at their house
*: Redacted due to inflation issues.
Loot - Make loot quality scale better with average party level, ranging from half the party level, to one-and-a-half party level
- Ie a party level of 4 would provide items ranging from 2 - 6. A party level of 9 would provide 4 - 13
- Limit the max item level to twice the CR of the area, meaning that a CR of 6 cannot give better than level 12 items, regardless of party level
- Introduce more trash loot, such as shiny baubles, broken armor and weapons, novelty items, art items, etc
Item descriptions
- List every stat on all items
- Such as the damage bonus to unarmed for light/medium/heavy armor gloves*
- Add duration and rate of consumption to items with triggered abilities
- Such as flame or electric weapons
*: This may already be in the game following an update, I honestly can't remember, and I haven't checked.
Dungeons - Mix up the spawn groups more for intelligent monsters to include
- Cannon fodder that swarm but is easy to kill, and not really dangerous except in numbers
- Supporters that heal others and/or try to control the battlefield in some way (smoke/incendiary bombs)
- High-value targets that either do a lot of damage, are hard to kill, or inspire Cannon fodder with their presence
- Black out all dungeon maps, they are purely OOC
Traps
- Make traps easier to interact with once detected
- Make it possible to loot traps rather than just destroy/disable them
- Give players the ability to set their own traps
Skills
Player-owned rooms - The rooms are way too dark, and should come with sufficient sources of light that can be replaced with bought placeables
- More placeables, including, but not limited to
- Beds, chairs, coat-hangers, desks, couches, night-stands, art-decorum, armor stands, baths, light sources, pets
- Placeables sometimes disappear when in a party and the guests leave first
- Fixable by having room exit scripts only run when the owner leaves, and only if they are the last person in the room
Stealth
- Needs some love. It is currently underwhelming due to
- Dealing a maximum of 10 damage over one minute by waiting thirty seconds next to a monster
- Damage dealt per round is halved if the target passes a save (seems to round the damage down)
- All armor, including light, incurring cumulative penalties to Stealth well beyond the bonuses afforded by the skill levels until level 50+
Combat style balancing
*: Jack-hammers, claws, or anything else strapped to the fists/arms are actual weapons, and doesn't conform to unarmed combat. Unarmed combat is using your body as a weapon, not strapping weapons to your body.
**: Updated to reflect changes since notes were first scribbled down
Skill training - It would be a welcome change if there were training dummies or clockwork training bots that could be used to prepare for actaul combat
- Training dummies could add a bonus to skill gains for the chosen weapon
- Clockwork bots could attack a character to add a bonus to skill gains for the type of armor worn
- NPC trainers could be hired to attack/defend against the player character, for a bonus to overall combat skill gains
- NPC crafting trainers could be available teach player characters in some fashion
- The best option would be for players characters to be able to train other player characters through some form of mini-game or RP interaction
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jakunen
Gumshoe
Developer
Posts: 81 
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Post by jakunen on Aug 12, 2015 7:12:30 GMT -5
- More placeables, including, but not limited to
- Beds, chairs, coat-hangers, desks, couches, night-stands, art-decorum, armor stands, baths, light sources, pets
I have made a whole bunch more items to purchase and place, and there may be more in the works. Just gotta wait for PE to put them in.  |
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Post by drunkensolamnic on Aug 12, 2015 9:22:14 GMT -5
Duel wielding was recently buffed, if I'm not mistaken the number read-outs now place two-handed weapons as the weakest melee option?
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Post by Kitsunenotsume on Aug 12, 2015 11:43:39 GMT -5
So very true. I find it strange that there is a monetary component to the crafting in the first place. I have yet to find any crafter in the real world who buys all the necessary tools and materials for making a cast iron kettle, then decides to throw a $100 bill into the molten iron. It makes no sense. The monetary component should just be removed completely, and instead the material costs could be upped by 1 ingot/leather hide, or there could be a weekly retainer on access to the crafting hall, just like there is for the private inn rooms, which would also make a lot more sense. Crafting
- Remove monetary costs for crafting
- Introduce a weekly rental payment for the rooms at the Crafters Hall, but keep it low ($100 - $150 per week)
- This is to offset the reduced costs of crafting individual items, essentially moving the cost something that makes more sense
- Make crafted items deconstructible, but do not give any XP for it, only providing a means to recover X% of the materials used
Figured I would offer my analysis somewhere other than the competition thread, in regards to this suggestion. Unfortunately, even as a crafting-charachter myself, I disagree with this statement. To borrow and use the words of Frédéric Bastiat entirely out of context, there is that which is seen, and that which is not seen. You'd not find anyone who idly tosses a hundred dollar bill into the furnace, because in effect they already have. The costs of coke-fuel, flux, polish, whetstones, cutting devices, solder, water, illumination, broken or worn down tools, and any number of other consumables during the forging process all cost money, which needs to be spent, simply at a time and in quantity other than the instant you produce the work. Sweeping mechanical solutions to socioeconomic issues isn't an effective or guaranteed answer. As it is there is already a far greater supply of lower-tier equipment than the market could possibly demand, and the prices are usually depressed below what would normally render a profit. With the combat-ranks everyone has been discussing, the demand is for items greater than what may be produced reliably, which accentuates the issue: unless there is a particular modification you demand on your gear, why get it crafted when the dungeon will drop better XP-potential? In the occasions that someone is seeking such items, however, demand increases sufficiently to where profit may be made, but only for a limited batch (1 item). I made some profit off sales, but lose significantly more money in development. Removing the pricing would simply drive supply up higher (because costs decreased nearly to zero), as everyone from every tier of a craft could produce effectively just as cheaply. Anyone at the highest tier would then sell their product to players, (because why buy anything less than the best if it is cheap and readily available), and anyone at the lower ranks would be producing XP from basically nothing, and rendering the system something of a farce as the NPC enforced minimum demand eats all the product for money. Forcing a difference between crafted and looted gear would require the use of a means of telling which it was, and further depreciating the value of crafted gear. Fuzz has stated on multiple occasions that the system is designed so that anything with an item rank can be looted, bought, or crafted, thereby removing a reliance on any one measure of the economy being the only mechanism for gear improvement. Additionally, an end-user would need a means to differentiate whether their current equipment has value or not, as trading found or quality crafted gear is rather common from what I have observed, and discovering that half of your gear is worthless despite being better than the other half is somewhat disorienting. Lastly, a minimal cost for weekly use would also strike me as unbalanced, as currently crafting is the primary sink for funds. Reducing the cost-per-rank from thousands to a a couple hundred dollars would likely cause crafting ranks to shoot up, affecting combat ranks gained with the new cheaply acquired high-tier gear, and thereby accentuating the time-investment gap and allowing for rampant skill progression significantly beyond developed content. While I accept that the system needs a lot of work to be fully functional, it is my opinion that removing crafting costs entirely would disrupt the market system negatively more than positively, by fundamentally altering the yet-incomplete demand curve, marginalizing the "All-gear-is-equally-possible" principle currently implemented, and would accelerate player-base stratification. I do not mean to say that your suggestions are without merit, but may be too strong and numerous to achieve their goals as intended within what I have observed of the current system. Thank you for reading, Cheers, Kit |
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Post by mireigi on Aug 12, 2015 12:43:41 GMT -5
So very true. I find it strange that there is a monetary component to the crafting in the first place. I have yet to find any crafter in the real world who buys all the necessary tools and materials for making a cast iron kettle, then decides to throw a $100 bill into the molten iron. It makes no sense. The monetary component should just be removed completely, and instead the material costs could be upped by 1 ingot/leather hide, or there could be a weekly retainer on access to the crafting hall, just like there is for the private inn rooms, which would also make a lot more sense. Crafting
- Remove monetary costs for crafting
- Introduce a weekly rental payment for the rooms at the Crafters Hall, but keep it low ($100 - $150 per week)
- This is to offset the reduced costs of crafting individual items, essentially moving the cost something that makes more sense
- Make crafted items deconstructible, but do not give any XP for it, only providing a means to recover X% of the materials used
Figured I would offer my analysis somewhere other than the competition thread, in regards to this suggestion. Unfortunately, even as a crafting-charachter myself, I disagree with this statement. To borrow and use the words of Frédéric Bastiat entirely out of context, there is that which is seen, and that which is not seen. You'd not find anyone who idly tosses a hundred dollar bill into the furnace, because in effect they already have. The costs of coke-fuel, flux, polish, whetstones, cutting devices, solder, water, illumination, broken or worn down tools, and any number of other consumables during the forging process all cost money, which needs to be spent, simply at a time and in quantity other than the instant you produce the work. Sweeping mechanical solutions to socioeconomic issues isn't an effective or guaranteed answer. As it is there is already a far greater supply of lower-tier equipment than the market could possibly demand, and the prices are usually depressed below what would normally render a profit. With the combat-ranks everyone has been discussing, the demand is for items greater than what may be produced reliably, which accentuates the issue: unless there is a particular modification you demand on your gear, why get it crafted when the dungeon will drop better XP-potential? In the occasions that someone is seeking such items, however, demand increases sufficiently to where profit may be made, but only for a limited batch (1 item). I made some profit off sales, but lose significantly more money in development. Removing the pricing would simply drive supply up higher (because costs decreased nearly to zero), as everyone from every tier of a craft could produce effectively just as cheaply. Anyone at the highest tier would then sell their product to players, (because why buy anything less than the best if it is cheap and readily available), and anyone at the lower ranks would be producing XP from basically nothing, and rendering the system something of a farce as the NPC enforced minimum demand eats all the product for money. Forcing a difference between crafted and looted gear would require the use of a means of telling which it was, and further depreciating the value of crafted gear. Fuzz has stated on multiple occasions that the system is designed so that anything with an item rank can be looted, bought, or crafted, thereby removing a reliance on any one measure of the economy being the only mechanism for gear improvement. Additionally, an end-user would need a means to differentiate whether their current equipment has value or not, as trading found or quality crafted gear is rather common from what I have observed, and discovering that half of your gear is worthless despite being better than the other half is somewhat disorienting. Lastly, a minimal cost for weekly use would also strike me as unbalanced, as currently crafting is the primary sink for funds. Reducing the cost-per-rank from thousands to a a couple hundred dollars would likely cause crafting ranks to shoot up, affecting combat ranks gained with the new cheaply acquired high-tier gear, and thereby accentuating the time-investment gap and allowing for rampant skill progression significantly beyond developed content. While I accept that the system needs a lot of work to be fully functional, it is my opinion that removing crafting costs entirely would disrupt the market system negatively more than positively, by fundamentally altering the yet-incomplete demand curve, marginalizing the "All-gear-is-equally-possible" principle currently implemented, and would accelerate player-base stratification. I do not mean to say that your suggestions are without merit, but may be too strong and numerous to achieve their goals as intended within what I have observed of the current system. Thank you for reading, Cheers, Kit Quite a good explanation of how the suggested change could negatively affect the server economy and balance. I will try to retort by explaining the basis upon which the suggested changes are based, although you have in some ways already outlined them. The current monetary component of all crafting is there to simulate the tools required for the crafting, as well as wear-and-tear forcing replacements of tools, payment for solder, flux, coal/fuel, and a lot of the other items that are there behind the scenes. And I agree with those costs, just not the way they are currently implemented, hence my suggestion. My suggestion is based on a popular business model among artisans and crafters in the real world. Rather than pay for their own equipment, and all the necessary tools and items required to carry out their work, smiths and carpenters often pay a monthly fee to a workshop where everything is provided for them. They do not have to worry about mundane supplies or having the right tools. All that is supplied by the workshop, which pays for the maintenance through the monthly fees imposed on the smiths and carpenters. Drawing a parallel to the server and gameworld, the Crafters Hall is the workshop, while the crafters represent smiths, carpenters, other artisans, and anyone else whom have need of a place to work. Rather than pay for the use of one hammer and one anvil for ten minutes, which the current cost per crafting essentially is, it makes a lot more sense to pay for the use of all the tools for one month, or even week. It stands to reason that as a crafter becomes more experienced, and are able to do more intricate work, they will also require other types of tools. Again I can draw a parallel to what workshops often do, which is limit the machines and tools available to crafters of varying experience, since those new to the trade is likely to misuse or break a tool beyond their understanding, resulting in differentiated lease contracts depending on skill and experience. Drawing upon the above, it is reasonable that the weekly/monthly fee for crafters on the server could increase in stages, such as every 15 skill ranks. There are of course also crafters whom, just like some carpenters and smiths in the real world, have the coin to buy and maintain their own equipment. This is something that can be addressed once player housing makes it to the server. Crafters with enough coin can purchase the necessary equipment as a one-off payment, with a weekly/monthly fee deducted to pay for the maintenance and resupplying. This is of course only viable for crafters whom craft a lot, and expect to do so for a long time moving forward, thus justifying the large one-off payment to avoid the weekly/monthly payments to the Crafters Hall. Essentially what it all should come together as, would be a system that imposes high crafting costs early on for the crafters, then changes to a leasing model with high weekly/monthly costs, but unlimited crafts as long as materials are provided, and finally a very high one-off payment to nearly abolish the crafting fees altogether, bringing more focus to the required materials. The fees and costs could be as follows Skill Cost
< 10 $X per craft
11 - 25 $350 per week to Crafters Hall
26 - 40 $525 per week to Crafters Hall
41 - 55 $700 per week to Crafters Hall
56 - 70 $875 per week to Crafters Hall
71 - 85 $1050 per week to Crafters Hall
86 - 100 $1225 per week to Crafters Hall
Equipment Max skill Cost
Basic 40 $5250, plus $75 per week
Expert 70 $8750, plus $125 per week
Master 100 $12250, plus $175 per weekThe Crafters Hall wouldn't want just everyone to have free access to the equipment and tools, thus they have to pay per craft until they have reached sufficient skill and expertise to be accepted. A parallel would be a smith or carpenter paying for their education to become novices in their field, and once there, can get a lease. Of course, none of the numbers are to be taken as exact or final values, but are merely there to serve as an example of how it could be done. The goal is not to make crafted items flood the market, but rather to allow crafters to have goals to strive towards that will make their lives easier, while not bankrupting them just to get their skills to acceptable levels. |
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Post by Kitsunenotsume on Aug 12, 2015 13:00:33 GMT -5
A well considered implementation and would be effective at providing for crafters, perhaps, but still fails to broach the primary mentioned fallout of vastly increased supply. The intent is well received, but the unintended consequences must still be considered and addressed. Reducing crafting costs (which is what the suggested change would achieve), without significant counterbalance in other areas of game-play would flood the market, intentional or not, with the grand potential to disrupt the still-equalizing dungeon balance, due to the many variables involved as rather elaborately described here. |
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Post by kingofaquilonia on Aug 12, 2015 13:10:31 GMT -5
Taking in all factors like survivability as well as damage output , Two handed weapons are the worst weapons. They have less dmg per round than dual wielders and their damage is highly inconsistent as well.
Guns and dual wielding are the kings of the server right now. I see gun users getting pretty good damage and then they also get that nice big FAT crit about once or twice per big fight.
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Post by Fuzz on Aug 12, 2015 13:30:20 GMT -5
Real life doesn't have a theoretically infinite supply of cash that will keep flowing into the market and can stay there indefinitely. Your suggestion would work better if money and loot didn't exist and people had fixed income which would fluctuate based on the market.
That's not gonna happen, obviously, so your suggestion will, by design, ultimately lead to inflation, the economic bane of every PW ever.
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Post by mireigi on Aug 12, 2015 13:58:55 GMT -5
Real life doesn't have a theoretically infinite supply of cash that will keep flowing into the market and can stay there indefinitely. Your suggestion would work better if money and loot didn't exist and people had fixed income which would fluctuate based on the market. That's not gonna happen, obviously, so your suggestion will, by design, ultimately lead to inflation, the economic bane of every PW ever. Granted. It will cause inflation in the long run. Let's leave that one be then. Does anyone have thoughts on any of the other stuff? |
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Post by judicator on Aug 12, 2015 14:23:13 GMT -5
Eliminate the Combat Style Balancing section.
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Post by mireigi on Aug 12, 2015 15:21:13 GMT -5
Taking in all factors like survivability as well as damage output , Two handed weapons are the worst weapons. They have less dmg per round than dual wielders and their damage is highly inconsistent as well. Guns and dual wielding are the kings of the server right now. I see gun users getting pretty good damage and then they also get that nice big FAT crit about once or twice per big fight. Updated the post to reflect the situation. I was working off some notes not quite up-to-date Eliminate the Combat Style Balancing section. Rather than eliminate it, I'd wish to hear what to change, or where there is fault. It could possibly be broken up into individual categories for each Combat Style. Would that work better? |
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Post by judicator on Aug 12, 2015 15:32:20 GMT -5
It's not a matter of changing, but eliminating. We can't possibly determine that the styles are too disparate with only tier 2 abilities in play. The rest of the assertions are either harmlessly true or they're false, and the scaling base damage for unarmed is ridiculous. Unarmed isn't meant to outdamage actual weapons, and giving it a 6-48 base in conjunction with its passively increasing damage and abilities that further up its damage and allow a huge number of attacks per round with built-in utility would be, and this is a dramatic understatement, unbalanced.
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Post by mireigi on Aug 12, 2015 17:28:09 GMT -5
It's not a matter of changing, but eliminating. We can't possibly determine that the styles are too disparate with only tier 2 abilities in play. The rest of the assertions are either harmlessly true or they're false, and the scaling base damage for unarmed is ridiculous. Unarmed isn't meant to outdamage actual weapons, and giving it a 6-48 base in conjunction with its passively increasing damage and abilities that further up its damage and allow a huge number of attacks per round with built-in utility would be, and this is a dramatic understatement, unbalanced. It's a suggested change to how it could be, and the suggestion would remove the passive bonus to damage, and is no way to be taken as anything but an example to show the concept. I have no idea how powerful actual level 100 weapons are, but seeing the damage range some of them currently have (I've seen two-handed weapons with a damage range from 3 - 24 for a level 19), it's not unreasonable to think that they will go much higher than 6-48. I'd love for a way to test out all the weapons and abilities at various levels, but to my knowledge there is no way to do that aside from actually leveling up to it, which isn't ideal for the purposes of figuring out balance issues. I'd also love to see some spreadsheets of how damage, dodge, armor, and block are at each skill level, with appropriately leveled items. |
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Post by drunkensolamnic on Aug 12, 2015 17:42:30 GMT -5
the base damage at level 100 is going to stay 3-24, the difference is that the damage will earn a +1 damage every so many levels up to around 100. To give you an example, my level 27 sword has a +2 damage modifier. so I'd imagine at 100, the bonus would be perhaps +10 at best?
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Post by Kitsunenotsume on Aug 12, 2015 17:43:19 GMT -5
It's a suggested change to how it could be, and the suggestion would remove the passive bonus to damage, and is no way to be taken as anything but an example to show the concept. I have no idea how powerful actual level 100 weapons are, but seeing the damage range some of them currently have (I've seen two-handed weapons with a damage range from 3 - 24 for a level 19), it's not unreasonable to think that they will go much higher than 6-48. I'd love for a way to test out all the weapons and abilities at various levels, but to my knowledge there is no way to do that aside from actually leveling up to it, which isn't ideal for the purposes of figuring out balance issues. I'd also love to see some spreadsheets of how damage, dodge, armor, and block are at each skill level, with appropriately leveled items. Every weapon of the same item type has the same base stats, modified by a combination it item rank and user skill. The damage varies by weapon, but each has a fixed static increase over 100 levels. For example, a claymore gets +1 damage every 6 ranks maxing at +16 or so (that I recall), and requires a corresponding rank of two-hand weapon skill to gain the benefit from. Attack bonus is similar: +1 AB every 10 ranks. A long-sword with a base AB of +5 will get a +15 at rank 100. Hopefully that helps clarify why +1 damage increases are listed. |
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