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Gondor vs Mordor  |  Gondor vs Mordor 1  |  GvM1 Future Talk (Moderator: Rade)  |  NEW GvM Suggestion Thread~!
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Author Topic: NEW GvM Suggestion Thread~!  (Read 5700 times)
Baugnesh
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« on: 29 January 2015, 17:29 »

Suggestions from a new(ish) player's point of view

First and foremost I'd like to get across that I love this server, and have enjoyed my 5-6 weeks playing here. I would just like to express some ideas I've came up with from both the conversations I've had with old players and what I've seen from new players coming and going. Listing them in no particular order and hope they don't fall on deaf ears cause many of these could not only renew our player base but also retain some of the new faces I've seen come and go since I began playing.

Drop Rate

I'm going to get this one out of the way cause I'm sure you've heard enough complaints about it so far. Let me give you some examples; I have farmed the graveyard bosses over 40x to yield 1 amulet. Spent 3 days parked in Cirith Ungol to attempt to get Shagrat's armor and double-axe and ended up with 3 Immolator Staffs, no drops from Shagrat or the Orc Thrall after 20-30 kills. I also have a friend who has been attempting for 1 item from a certain boss for a week straight to no avail.

Now look at it from the perspective of a new player trying to attain items so they can make build or gain power to be able to do more things on the server and the possibilities of doing so begin to look so slim that it's practically pointless to try unless you are willing to dedicate months to doing so. It makes one feel like it just isn't worth the time and with monotony of boss camping comes losing the flare of excitement being on the server when it becomes more so a job than a game to get anywhere. I understand these changes were implemented back when the server was more populated and you had boss ganking mobs running around getting these items and DMs wanted to make it more difficult to do so, but now with an average of 1-2 people playing and all of them aside 1-2 players are new players this is serving more of a purpose to discourage new players to want to try continue playing as they feel they aren't going to get anywhere.

Drop Rate Solutions

I personally feel an increase in base drop rate from anywhere to 5% to 10% as being a fair chance for a player. The idea of you will have to kill a boss 10-20 times for the drop you want is far more acceptable than having to kill him 100 times or more if you are unlucky. I like the idea of the drop rate crystal and do not think it should be removed, but with so little pvp how about some other ways to charge it, like the killing of Gondor or Mordor alligned boss giving it 125 points to use on the next boss and so on, as well as 125-250 for an opposing faction player still giving the crystal a max charge of 500-750 and only the ability to add 250 to a drop rate. Also a global faction rate increase for the faction that has control of Osgiliath and The Keep to say another 125 points each. This would actually promote more PVP and battle for territories there giving more player interaction. So then theoretically if we had a base drop rate of 500 + 125 for each controlled territory (250 max) + 125 for each faction boss & 125-250 for each faction player kill with a maximum of 250 we can use per boss on crystal we could have an effective drop rate we would have to work for resulting in a max of 1000 or 10%. I don't think any player would say this is too much or a bad idea and hope it gets considered.

XP and New Players

Being that this server is centered around boss hunting and PVP the leveling process is a bit tedious even when you are vet player you start to think "this is going to take me 3-4 days on average to get my next toon to 40 to begin what the server is meant for" and the more times you do it the more frustrating leveling gets to be.

An NPC in Eru's lounge that gives your toon some modest buffs, flame weapon, stoneskin, protection from elements, magic weapon, mage armor. This NPC being useable till around level 10 when it says sorry your now too high of a level for me to bother with i.e. so by the time the player has amassed some of it's builds own abilities it would no longer be of use.

An XP rate increase! As stated before the focus of this server is PVP and boss hunting, leveling is the means to that end, being able to level in a day or so is the norm for most servers focused on what this server is focused on. Let's say 30%-50% more xp aside boss/minibosses and certain creatures that yield the dividable 1000xp per kill. A 2000xp bonus for purple lettered boss kills would be a nice addition as well. The logic behind this is when you have a new player who makes his first toon and realizes a Fighter/DD isnt going to tank much aside a minibosses grandma doesn't feel so discouraged to try another build as the process is much less tedious to get that next toon built up to try again, and vet players can create their next toon with the same ease of mind. After all we are here to PVP and fight bosses not grind toons for 3-4 days to realize we wasted our time, this happened to me about 10x and yes live and learn but the burnout of doing it again wouldn't happen if it were easier to get back to 40 again.

Unlock the XP bank to allow XP to be given to build up to level 30 instead of 18-19 or so that it is now, and possibly reduce the penalty from 20% to 30-50%.

Provide an NPC in Eru's Lounge that allows complete toon rerolls at a 75% of current XP, with the exception of RDDs f'course for any toon lvl 10-40.

Give players either an inventory item or journal entry upon choosing faction or an NPC in MT or MM that gives tips on where to go to level from 1-20 so new players not oriented with server layout can find their way to a good start.

A few more Suggestions to freshen up gameplay and spark new interest for new and old players

The tweaks to mechanics here are great and well thought out, much better than other servers I've seen that lack imaginative innovation. Now here's a few ideas to broaden build possibilities; An NPC or widget for with the exception of Paladin or Blackguard going from good or evil to neutral unless moving to unlawful toward middle neutral row. Allow alignment changes from good to neutral, evil to neutral, lawful to neutral, chaotic to neutral. Which would give players a plethora of new build options like Bard/Monk, DD/Barb, Barb/Monk, Assasin/HS, Paladin/Shifter, this would give people who love to build toons and play with mechanics many more opportunities aside making cheesy Paladin/Blackguards. This can only be useable once per character so if they wish to give up give up good or evil (Aside Paladins or Blackguards who will be stuck to Neutral Good etc) will not have a chance to change back. This is an old game and fresh build options always sparks enthusiasm to play.

All the running around

The server is large and sometimes it takes up to 25 maps and 30-40 minutes to get to a destination, how about a player tool function that enables a "run mode" of sorts in the form of a permanent expeditious retreat that cancels in the event of combat, or simply give expeditious retreat at a higher level unlimited times per day on the starter boots found in cities so players aren't discouraged to make the trek to bree for instance. I know a ticket system is being worked on, this is also a good idea, and what about that book of porting that costs 16 to 20 million that only works 1x before going poof, how about 10-20 times before its gone. Which brings me to...

Something useful to do with all that gold

I have 45 million in my bank I do nothing with but if I could do this with it I would be collecting more: A forge in MT and MM that for a large sum say 10 million gold can add +5 ac to any item or +5 ab to any weapon so some weapons and armors and boots etc become more useful and give us something to save up gold for. Many of these items are merely +4 but when crunching numbers for ab/ac or wanting to make that dagger with only sleep on hit +5 as well it would be worth it and give u a reason to save that gold up. If you wanted to take it further for 10-20 million add Keen to any item, +4 of an ability score to any item, or even +6ac for 30 million (with a maximum of only one upgrade for that item ever.

A final suggestion

Level 60 servers are immensely popular in NWN because of reasons I stated in the last paragraph, it changes mechanics enough that it makes the game and building toons fresh again. This script is easily customized to suit your needs as well. A relaxed leveling system of 1 new legendary level every 40k xp could be easily done to not make attaining 60 an overkill, as well as adjusting how many ability increases and AB increases you could get. Say for instance you were given a feat every 3 legendary levels, an ability increase every 4 levels, no AB progression or simply 1 per 10 leg levels, and standard skill point allotment (you could disable tumble on the list which would yield and extra 4ac if you wished). this would yield an additional 5 ability points, another 20 skill points in each category, and about 7 extra feats which could be used for Great Strength or other Epic or Basic feats allowed by primary class. So with a little tweaking the maximum bonuses a character could get would be roughly 6 or so more AB/AC/DC via ability bonuses, some extra skill boosts, a few more feats. This would not imbalance the challenge of this server drastically, on the contrary it would make with the current population much more of a chance to fight certain bosses with 1-2 toons, and give many more options to build a toon that can tank/hit/stay alive vs some of the bosses and if we ended up with a higher population you could always give the bosses a little boost to rebalance things. LVL 60 will bring new players I can guarantee that and probably bring alot of old players back (along with the drop rate increase fcourse).

Thanks for taking the time to read over my input on things I feel would get this server booming again, they are only suggestions but I hope some of them do get implemented especially drop rate and xp increases. I have never been a player that felt like they should be given everything they want on a server, servers like that are cheesy and this one is not. But we are now playing with very few old players and a seemingly revolving door of new players trying us out some and dropping out soon thereafter, I think alot of these ideas will bring people back and keep some of these new faces around, thank you!
« Last Edit: 29 January 2015, 18:08 by Baugnesh » Logged

Da Orcs inda hood say Sauron's all gewd.
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« Reply #1 on: 29 January 2015, 21:38 »

Wow  headbang and Thanx! icon_thumleft is the first that came into my mind when I read youre topic.

Great to see so much enthusiasm from a new player ... and .... welcome to our server!  :pompom:

Loved to read you're suggestions BTW ... I liked almost all of it.

I'm just the hoster (and maybe a deputy or DM one day) , but am luckily in close contact with our DMs, so I hope I can help in some areas.

BTW drop rate and traveling is already work in progress ... hope to see some tests of these soon, firecracker? Vlad??  gandalf drunken_smilie
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« Reply #2 on: 29 January 2015, 22:22 »

As one of the active players... i must say I totally agree with everything is said. Especially at the drop rate point. When it becomes a job more than a game... its frustrating Sad. A buff is needed to encourage ppl. I think everything is well explained by Baugnesh so dont need to go into details... hes been clear enough. Server needs to adapt as it is nowdays... doesnt matter how it was... cuz is not like it was before so...

Hope u guys get the point and thank you so much for typing this buddy Smiley
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Chaozrulez
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« Reply #3 on: 30 January 2015, 12:41 »

Drop rate could use an increase, back in the day where there was more PVPing to charge the crystal and 10-man parties you could always expect a drop.
Nowadays crystals don't get charged anymore, and even while I'm dual boxing a 2% chance is not so big. Some bosses I have killed over 100 times to get a specific drop, so if this could be doubled to, say 3,5% initial with 0,5% per team member this could be 4%. Realistic without going overboard..

I would say keep the level 40 toons or all bosses would have to be updated..also I absolutely hate grinding levels so going to 60 would drive me nuts!
What could use an update is the stupid multiclass penalty when not going human, so if that could be removed it would be a big help.

All the walking around can get tedious yes, although I am getting used to it but a ticket-buy system for all the gold would be nice too.
« Last Edit: 30 January 2015, 12:47 by Chaozrulez » Logged

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« Reply #4 on: 31 January 2015, 00:09 »

Yeah lvl 60 maybe is to much work. Prolly u will need to balance everything and thats a lot of work. We can leave this out but the loot drop rate... I think its easy to do as far as i know. Hope we get any news soon.
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Baugnesh
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« Reply #5 on: 31 January 2015, 00:45 »

Yup thats why I left it as a final suggestion, main point is to retain playerbase and keep new players interested in getting into the mod and not dropping out. I seen 4-5 new players flake out after a few dats or weeks and I can see the reasons why. So the main focus should be lightening up the level process and opening up drops so people keep biting, you throw the chum out and people chum up, you let them get fattened up on the goods and they are 'hooked'. Right now we are left with a dated system designed to not give the previous pool of players everything so easy but these were highly populated days of gank mobs and there's an inherent DM tendency to try to thwart that. But in the aftermath when those players are gone and your getting new players trying out the mod with a lower population they are experiencing a mod that's quite harsh to get anything especially on a solo or 2-3 player level many times of opposing factions or whatnot that keep them apart further.

So yeah the priorities should be drop rate and xp boost, lets look at it like this if you can kill a boss 20x you obviously got it down pat you deserve the goods and you can move on, right now you can kill a boss 100+x and still not get all his goods or maybe even any at all. What is an initiate gamer going to think about that when lets face it this mod is about the gear to a major degree, I'd say the build has a majority of the makeup of what the toon can do but still about 30-40% is dependent on what they are wearing and also can serve as a crutch to a novice player if he lands 3-4 great items and distills that ever important human emotion 'hope' Grin. Same with leveling, the faster a new toon levels without it being ridiculous the better chances you have of them exploring more and more and henceforth becoming embedded in playing the mod. If a novice player creates 3-4 toons and begins to realize its a 5 day process of heavy grinding to get to their completion they are going to think, hey theres 400 other servers i could try this from scratch and never even get into the greater aspects of the mod itself that really makes it shine like pvp, territories, boss hunting. I've seen this in my short stint here and I always think 'they flaked out before they even got a taste of it'. Now that may be a question of their human character or whatnot but like I said, the more chum the fatter the fish gets for the hook and we need a playerbase, a server with 2-3 players looks much less appealing than 5-6 players from anyone browsing the nwn server lists, so every incentive to keep these new people around is worth it any way you look at it, the server itself is worth it. Lets do what we can to make these new players enthralled all we can thats where the servers heart continues to beat.

As with the rest of my suggestions I'd reiterate that on the alignment change thing, anything to shift from lawful to chaotic and vice versa would be good enough, and yeah agree with previous poster, race multiclass penalties should go, lets look at a gnome or halfling are they really THAT much more if in fact at any advantage to their tallfellow kin that they should have to level 20% slower. Its pretty simple to remove that. Another idea is giving half-elf the wild shape feat at character creation to open up any 3rd lvl spell caster the ability to take up shifter. The people left on NWN are either diehard vets are casual novice players or sons/little brothers etc of old vets and keeping character dynamics as fresh as possible is the way to get the foremost of these players interested. If you look at the more popular servers nowadays they all have greatly revamped dynamics, some albeit are cheesy *cough cough* the lameining *cough* but they genuinely attract players. The current mechanical changes here are top notch and consider the more you open up the options the more you can enthuse a creative mind, and who else would want to play this old game ;)
« Last Edit: 31 January 2015, 00:50 by Baugnesh » Logged

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« Reply #6 on: 31 January 2015, 15:06 »

Can we get some kind of answer from DM/DEV about this? Ive seen some old posts regarding some concerns we did talk about ( take drop rate as an example ) that have been forgoten/not taking in count... so after some forum research im wondering if this is geting ignored aswell? I mean theres a year old post talking about buffing the drop rate. One year later ( so nowdays ) drops chances still the same so everything makes me think u are not listening/giving feedback to what is said what so ever so... The server is well worth playing it, I actually love it so plz, give some feedback/show some love to players that still/want to play it?
I dunno... listen to player base and tune up some things we players all agree to change doesnt seem that hard to me.
At the end the ones that who actually play are us.

The only "active" DM i know is firecracker so, can we get an answer? Plz.

Example of a year old post: things didnt change much :s

http://www.gondorvsmordor.com/gvm2/forum/index.php?topic=3164.0

« Last Edit: 31 January 2015, 15:20 by NoXWiPe » Logged
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« Reply #7 on: 31 January 2015, 20:04 »

It is not getting ignored, responding to this amount of information with sensible answers takes a lot of time from a mod development POV.

I am kind of waiting for others to post their opinions (if they do) as one of the main problems I have is I get conflicting reports of what people want, mainly around the drop rate and leveling-up time. A lot of players want it to increase the drop rate and want a faster level-up, others (a smaller amount I admit) want both to stay the same.

I will put a full response together today/tomorrow but please be patient.

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« Reply #8 on: 31 January 2015, 22:43 »

Well, I can tell u that the only regular/active players are Baugnesh, chaos and me, thats for sure. Atleast at week days no1 else plays besides some new random guy that pops up and shows up for 2 days then its gone. So im not sure whos telling u about leaving the mod as it is now but im sure they arent active players so i personally would care about ppl who actually plays and comes here to show some ideas, points of view and shows some love/respect for this mod. All 3 of us agreed that drop chance is way to low, and im sure u think it aswell. 1.75% is nowdays with no way to increase its ridicously retarded to me, no offense plz.
As an example, I killed over 80 times the Osgil boss, still didnt get the drop i want, do u think that farming him is still funny? I can tell u that not funny anymore... its annoying to see every kill im doing still no drop ( no drop at all wich is the sad part.
So i dunno whos telling otherwise but... Im so sure the ones who do arent playing anymore or are the casuals of the casuals cuz i can tell u, theres not many ppl nowdays, server already lost many veterans and after some talk with them... they all left cuz no changes/adjustments where done and maybe they where told that things will change peraphs things still the same... so its more a matter of:
Do u want the server empty? Or want ppl on to play it? Cuz there are some who already left cuz no adjustments where made so? Want every1 to leave? Want ppl to feel frustrated over and over again?
I dont think the drop chance is right, I wont do the maths to show how hard to obtain an specific item is but im sure all can figure out. Dont think is that hard to understand and i dont think u want ppl to get frustation.
Hope u get the point.
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« Reply #9 on: 01 February 2015, 02:50 »

The drop rate has nothing to do with the majority of vets leaving. The drop rate has always been the same, for years and years it has been low, for years the mod was popular with that drop rate and for years dedicated players logged in to get the gear they wanted over time.

The main reasons vets left were:
  • The mod underwent a item/map overhaul a few years back (power was toned down, areas removed/edit heavily) and all toons in the vault were wiped - some vets came back but some just didn't
  • Development stopped on the mod as a whole for a long period of time as more and more DMs became inactive over time - players wanted to see new areas/drops/bosses/events but there was no-one around to make things happen
  • The server went offline for the better part of 6 months without word

I took it upon myself to get this mod backup after months of it being offline, and with the kind help of Grey who hosts it we have been able to do that. There are a couple of new areas with another being worked on, a nearly-finished travel token reward system with updates to the travel center, more bug fixes than I can remember as well as one or two others things in the pipe-line.

But to read the kind of response that says how something is ridiculously retarded just annoys the hell out of me as it shows a lack of respect for the mod and to all those who have contributed to it. It kind of makes me think was is the point?

Skim answering some of the positive ideas posted:
  • Multiclass XP penalty - consider it gone in the next update, or sooner as it's only a 2da change
  • I like Chaos's numbers for the proposed drop % increase - however the drop calculations are not flat, e.g. lower and mid levels already have a higher than 1.75% chance so this is also a consideration
  • XP bank - I need to have a look to see how/why this thing was scripted but yeh sensible ideas to help players here
  • Traveling - already being worked on, including a possible change to the book
  • Info for new players on where to start/go - great idea, will go nicely with the new map too

There is a lot more to cover which I will itemise in the next day or two but there some immediate thoughts.
« Last Edit: 01 February 2015, 02:55 by -firecracker- » Logged
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« Reply #10 on: 01 February 2015, 11:35 »

First than all, if the words ridicolously retarded sounded weird ill apologize. English not my main language and i know my english its bad, so maybe i did a mistake chosing the words in there. I said i love the mod and the fact ill care to type in here shows some kind of respect by itself and show some care about the server. Again, im sorry for that.

To point something out:

" The drop rate has nothing to do with the majority of vets leaving. The drop rate has always been the same, for years and years it has been low, for years the mod was popular with that drop rate and for years dedicated players logged in to get the gear they wanted over time.

The main reasons vets left were:

    The mod underwent a item/map overhaul a few years back (power was toned down, areas removed/edit heavily) and all toons in the vault were wiped - some vets came back but some just didn't
    Development stopped on the mod as a whole for a long period of time as more and more DMs became inactive over time - players wanted to see new areas/drops/bosses/events but there was no-one around to make things happen
    The server went offline for the better part of 6 months without word"

First:

If DMs/devs are leaving a server... its a bad signal... i can feel why some of them left, maybe they feared the fact no1 cud care about it and just left before it was to late.

Second:

Low drop rate does in fact take influence over some of them not coming back and some of them leaving after the server wipe u mentioned even when they plaid a bit afterwards. The thing is easy, they had good chars for good builds, they all got stripped out, they all knew how hard to get the loot was. They simply tought, not again.
And as im sure i pointed before, after a bit of talk with some of the old veterans they told me drop rate
does in fact was a plus for them to decide leave the server. Dont call me a lyer for that cuz its true.

Third:

Again, as i pointed before, i see the reason on why for all this years the drop rate was low. I think baugnesh pointed that before, "When u had like 10-12 ppl online every day and u cud buff up the drop widget, get a full party roaming all bosses and basically be active all the day long, i see the reason on why it was such that low" even i like BUT ais i said, this is not like it was before, theres no ganking boss partys, no pvp, no way to buff up the drop widget ( before u cud do it so maybe thats why it was good as it was ) but as i said, again, servers imho needs to adapt... and be a little more rewarding with its current player base. I think every1 agrees with that. Theres no fun on killing over 100 times the same guy and didnt get the drop u want, neither u can trade the items now cuz theres simple no ppl to trade with so again, Adapt the server as it is nowdays is the key imho.
And as a side note, i can tell u aswell that some newcomers went out scared when the numers at drop rates where spoken so... ill rather keep those newcomers aswell.

Hope i get news from u, especially at the point if u accept my apologizes and lets be clear, if we all are talking here is cuz we all love the mod and want the best for it and attach as much ppl as possible to it.
Waiting for news, reggards.

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« Reply #11 on: 01 February 2015, 20:11 »

So this thread doesn't get long and hard to follow, I will create a new threads over the coming days for each suggestion, so they can be discussed individually.
« Last Edit: 01 February 2015, 20:46 by -firecracker- » Logged
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« Reply #12 on: 05 February 2015, 23:26 »

OK have created a bunch of new threads in this section to cover all these different areas - don't think I have missed anything. Hoping there is some input Smiley
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« Reply #13 on: 22 February 2015, 04:08 »

(hello all Smiley again )

Suggestion for travelling:

Once you visit an area for the first time you'd get a 'token', enabling you to access horse travell, for example.
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