The Big UMD Change Thread

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Subutai
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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Subutai » Fri Oct 18, 2019 6:17 pm

Splitting any groups into two camps is making distinctions that don't exist. As others have said, many of the very best RPers on the server are also the most mechanically-savvy. But even when it comes to players who do bad things, I know for a fact that there are many good RPers, bad RPers, mechanically-savvy, and mechanically-ignorant (and specific individuals, even, though obviously I won't name them) who have been suspended or even banned for sometimes egregious, repeated PvP and other rule infractions.

Some players have no issue breaking rules and being disingenuous, or have trouble following those rules. Being a bad or good role player has absolutely nothing to do with mechanics, and being disingenuous or unfair in PvP also has nothing to do with mechanics.

Ultimately, the utopia being talked about isn't because there are people interested in balance and PvP. It's that there are people who are going to ruin it for others, and from everything I've seen, mechanical knowledge and/or RP skill play absolutely no role in identifying who those people are.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Huschpfusch » Fri Oct 18, 2019 6:52 pm

Nitro wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:26 pm
Huschpfusch wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:19 pm
If there were indeed only roleplayers casual and devoted there would not be any need for balancing at all, because everyone would give each others characters narrative space and meaningful ingame interaction.
That's a Utopia. Utopias don't exist. On a server with 100+ players simultaneously online there's always going to be those who cannot agree with how things should play out. And if there's no balance, then they don't have a level, fair playing field for settling that dispute with mechanics.

And how would you propose legitimate IC conflict be resolved in this utopia? Both sides sit down and agree which one of them should win before it even begins? That sounds incredibly boring.

EDIT: And as a final note, I think it's unfair to claim that anyone on this server isn't here for roleplay or does "roleplay-lite".
Utopia?
No.
It's called a functional troupe or acting class.
And how I propose legitimtae IC conflict be resolved is the same way they figure it all out when doing a Comedia dell'Art or their impro classes. And even if one or the other in a troupe is dead set on their thing the others figure out to compensate for that and still pull off a stunning story+ending.

If players are given significant incentives and advantages mechanically to go for better rp that would even coax mechanics-first-thinkers into rp-ing more since they get what they are after by rping. If players are encouraged to hone and max their imrpovisation and storytelling skills, If players are encouraged to communicate, publically even, to coordinate a max attempt at fun for everyon in a conflict, that would all increase the amount and quality of rp on the entire server much more than mere balancing twists could ever do.

And concerning the final note: It is not unfair to say what exists. I have met players who were absolutely not interested in RP. And no, those were not necessarily the griever variety.
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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Nitro » Fri Oct 18, 2019 6:59 pm

Huschpfusch wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 6:52 pm
Utopia?
No.
It's called a functional troupe or acting class.
And how I propose legitimtae IC conflict be resolved is the same way they figure it all out when doing a Comedia dell'Art or their impro classes. And even if one or the other in a troupe is dead set on their thing the others figure out to compensate for that and still pull off a stunning story+ending.

If players are given significant incentives and advantages mechanically to go for better rp that would even coax mechanics-first-thinkers into rp-ing more since they get what they are after by rping. If players are encouraged to hone and max their imrpovisation and storytelling skills, If players are encouraged to communicate, publically even, to coordinate a max attempt at fun for everyon in a conflict, that would all increase the amount and quality of rp on the entire server much more than mere balancing twists could ever do.

And concerning the final note: It is not unfair to say what exists. I have met players who were absolutely not interested in RP. And no, those were not necessarily the griever variety.
Subutai sums it up nicely
Some players have no issue breaking rules and being disingenuous, or have trouble following those rules. Being a bad or good role player has absolutely nothing to do with mechanics, and being disingenuous or unfair in PvP also has nothing to do with mechanics.

Ultimately, the utopia being talked about isn't because there are people interested in balance and PvP. It's that there are people who are going to ruin it for others, and from everything I've seen, mechanical knowledge and/or RP skill play absolutely no role in identifying who those people are.
Top
What you want Huschpfusch isn't Arelith. The rules would have to be changed to accomodate for banning people who don't find a way to work out their grievances OOC'ly instead of letting things play out IC'ly. Some people can't get along, some will take a mile if you give them an inch, and some people don't want to have their whole story prearranged OOC'ly before they even start RP'ing.

And what would you do when the system breaks down? What if two groups both want to lay claim to an area and both refuse to budge on it? What if one group folds and agrees to give it up, only for the same conflict to start a week later when the groups are fighting over a new area? The group that gave up last time don't want to do it again, and the other group might not be inclined to give up at all. What then, should there be a DM mediating every single dispute OOC'ly instead of letting it be solved IC'ly? Should players who can't get along get banned?

The acting troupe that you brought up sounds more like what you should go for if that's what you want to experience, because that sounds more like a stage play than an RP server where things are resolved in character and there are actual conflicts between characters that aren't pre-scripted.

All in all, this is a rather poor argument for not balancing MECHANICS in a role playing GAME.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Sea Shanties » Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:17 pm

I think the vast majority who stick it out here are interested in RP. The thing is, they may not be interested in RP with you.

I'm not singling "you" out, I mean that in a general sense. A lot of players are interested in RP in their comfort or interest zones but aren't going to give much back to strangers, outsiders or someone who seems potentially like a hassle or threat.

Quality of RP and what people are willing to give varies greatly and that's just how it is, if they are in character and don't break rules you can't ban someone for being unfriendly or just doing the bare minimum.

It would be nice if this place operated like a tight-knit improv troupe but the community is vary large and varied and the nature of being anonymous and behind screens makes it difficult to trust each other. Add in the competitiveness over resources, the power difference between characters of different levels and classes and the sheer time required to build a character to the point where they can be a major player (not saying that's true or not, but it's how most of us feel) and you get a lot of reasons for people to develop resentments.

And you know, some people are just having a bad day and don't give it their all. This is just a hobby after all and doesn't lead to anything. If you're in an improv troupe you presumably want to make a career of it or achieve fame and success so you have to push through if you're in a horrible mood or someone screws you over. Here, there's no reward other than entertainment value and the hassle to work with someone on a different wavelength doesn't always seem worth it.

But after I said all that, my point is still, almost everyone over level 3 is here to RP and there are plenty of wonderful moments to be had when you make connections.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Huschpfusch » Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:52 pm

Nitro wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 6:59 pm
And what would you do when the system breaks down? What if two groups both want to lay claim to an area and both refuse to budge on it? What if one group folds and agrees to give it up, only for the same conflict to start a week later when the groups are fighting over a new area? The group that gave up last time don't want to do it again, and the other group might not be inclined to give up at all. What then, should there be a DM mediating every single dispute OOC'ly instead of letting it be solved IC'ly? Should players who can't get along get banned?

The acting troupe that you brought up sounds more like what you should go for if that's what you want to experience, because that sounds more like a stage play than an RP server where things are resolved in character and there are actual conflicts between characters that aren't pre-scripted.

All in all, this is a rather poor argument for not balancing MECHANICS in a role playing GAME.
Banhammers need only be applied to the minority of real grievers.
Most players I believe just cause trouble for others because they simply dont aware of what things they are stepping on with their characters story.
If there was a culture of open communication between players, players could talk about issues and resolve most of them before any IC situation escalates. And if even in public talks someone wont cooperate. At least I would know not to waste any more time roleplaying with him and that story that's going to go nowhere.

And Comedia dell'Arte is not entirely prescripted. Neither are freshmen partner improvisation classes.
You are given a character, some little key points maybe and the rest is all about to the players imagination and acting skill, resolving all the things by acting out their characters, and resolving all the issues poppuing up by everyone else acting out their characters on the spot.
That in essence is the key ingredient of 21th century rpgs. Only rpgs have fancy mechanics to help decide situations of "i totally hit you in the face - na-ah", whereas actors only have their sense of story to rely on.
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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by malcolm_mountainslayer » Fri Oct 18, 2019 8:08 pm

Subutai wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 6:17 pm
Splitting any groups into two camps is making distinctions that don't exist. As others have said, many of the very best RPers on the server are also the most mechanically-savvy. But even when it comes to players who do bad things, I know for a fact that there are many good RPers, bad RPers, mechanically-savvy, and mechanically-ignorant (and specific individuals, even, though obviously I won't name them) who have been suspended or even banned for sometimes egregious, repeated PvP and other rule infractions.

Some players have no issue breaking rules and being disingenuous, or have trouble following those rules. Being a bad or good role player has absolutely nothing to do with mechanics, and being disingenuous or unfair in PvP also has nothing to do with mechanics.

Ultimately, the utopia being talked about isn't because there are people interested in balance and PvP. It's that there are people who are going to ruin it for others, and from everything I've seen, mechanical knowledge and/or RP skill play absolutely no role in identifying who those people are.
I dont see a lot of people claiming that the two are tied. They are not, but if also like yo point out that being mechanicle savvy and always having to choose the most mechanical advantageous thing are not the same thing either (and you font have to be either to care about balance also). I have seen people ridiculed when looking for advise because they didnt want to have 8 cha for their rogue.

To players who have only engaged in pvp ike 10 times over 10 years, the amount of fuss over pvp balance might seem extremely pvp hungry to them. DnD was never balanced from a player versus player perspective, and I think its grest if arelith strives to be balanced, but its not like dnd instantly lose all it's merit the moment pvp becomes imbalanced and some people are reacting like it is. To some players that appears to care more about pvp than rp; not that it is. But PvP is not a mandatory requirement for enjoyable game. We should strive for balance of conflict though.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Durvayas » Fri Oct 18, 2019 9:01 pm

My experience is that people who never get in PvP tend to be poor roleplayers because their characters never stand for anything enough to be willing to fight for it. Their PCs are wishy washy and they are conflict avoidant because they'd rather hold hands and sing kum-bai-ya with necromancers and paladins at the same time than play a character with anything resembling principles or spine.

On rare occasion, you'll find a skilled roleplayer who rarely PvPs because their PC is simply never caught holding the bag, but by and large people who do not engage in PvP are people who do not engage in conflict if they can avoid it, and have no business discussing PvP mechanics and balance at all.

Its like someone deathly allergic to fish arguing about whether tuna or salmon tastes better. They don't know what they're talking about.

The idea that everyone should settle all conflict outside of mechanics entirely and pre-determine plotlines at all times is painfully naiive, both in its utopian expectation that everyone is a good and altuistic person, but also in that it assumes that one side is always going to back down, or there will not be disputes. It sounds lovely, but its not realistic in the slightest.

Hard power in conflict == agency in roleplay.
You either have it or you don't. If the DM team is not arbitrating literally every conflict on the server, it falls to mechanics, and in mechanics, might makes right. More power == more agency.

The server thus needs balance, to ensure everyone has that agency.
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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Sea Shanties » Fri Oct 18, 2019 9:15 pm

I don't think what you want is out of line, but there are some huge roadblocks in the way.

For one it would take significantly more DM involvement because you need a referee. Even improv needs a director or ringleader or what have you to smooth out the kinks. Including when two people just can't get along because they see the story going in two different directions. Or someone is a spotlight hog, maybe they're great at roleplaying but only take and never give. That stuff isn't going to work itself out if it's just between players.

Two, the game itself is in the way. There's too much to do all the time. Craft and get XP and gold and all the million other things nagging at you to progress. It's very difficult to get people to slow down and pay attention to a story that doesn't involve their own self-interests when they also have a to-do list of game chores that's a mile long. But if you get rid of the game there won't be much of a community left, so you just have to accept that people are going to be in "gotta accomplish" mode a lot of the time and aren't going to give you the deep RP you might be craving at the moment.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Peppermint » Fri Oct 18, 2019 9:20 pm

This is going to sound elitist as heck. And, unfortunately, there's no way for me to word this that doesn't sound elitist as heck. But here goes:

This change will not affect the average player. The average player logs on and engages in casual PvE or roleplay. The average player is a follower, not a mover and shaker. Maybe they have some ideas on initiatives they want to take, but they tend to be social in nature (e.g. "I want to run an event at the Nomad", or, "I want to get friends together to sell stuff"). They're conflict averse and consequently aren't central to the server's biggest, and I daresay, most interesting plots.

The average player is RPR 20.

People shriek, however, because there is also a portion of the playerbase that is very conflict-centric. They're not looking for PvP, per se, but they're looking to push nuanced plots with room for players on both sides. These players are happy to play the hero to someone's villain and the villain to someone's hero. Their behaviors tend to be polarizing because that's inherently more interesting; it creates genuine intrigue. These players are roleplay leaders, and they're more likely to be concerned about how mechanics impact conflict, because bad mechanics fundamentally undermine a conflict's foundation.

Mechanically-savvy players tend to get a bad rap. In the eyes of many, they're griefers, min-maxers, or 'radioactive grinders'. Ironically, this perception could not be further from the truth. Most mechanically savvy players I know also have an RPR of 30+*. Conflict-centric players tend to understand the importance of mechanics in roleplay, resulting in a significant correlation between RPR and mechanical knowledge.

(* Yes, naturally, some high RPR players have all the mechanical prowess of a mewling kitten. Love you, GrumpyCat.)

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Huschpfusch » Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:21 pm

Durvayas wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 9:01 pm
My experience is that people who never get in PvP tend to be poor roleplayers because their characters never stand for anything enough to be willing to fight for it. Their PCs are wishy washy and they are conflict avoidant because they'd rather hold hands and sing kum-bai-ya with necromancers and paladins at the same time than play a character with anything resembling principles or spine.

On rare occasion, you'll find a skilled roleplayer who rarely PvPs because their PC is simply never caught holding the bag, but by and large people who do not engage in PvP are people who do not engage in conflict if they can avoid it, and have no business discussing PvP mechanics and balance at all.

Its like someone deathly allergic to fish arguing about whether tuna or salmon tastes better. They don't know what they're talking about.

The idea that everyone should settle all conflict outside of mechanics entirely and pre-determine plotlines at all times is painfully naiive, both in its utopian expectation that everyone is a good and altuistic person, but also in that it assumes that one side is always going to back down, or there will not be disputes. It sounds lovely, but its not realistic in the slightest.

Hard power in conflict == agency in roleplay.
You either have it or you don't. If the DM team is not arbitrating literally every conflict on the server, it falls to mechanics, and in mechanics, might makes right. More power == more agency.

The server thus needs balance, to ensure everyone has that agency.
That hard power attitude is precisely why conflict stories on Arelith are... precisely what they are judging in terms of storytelling quality. Enough players I knew have grown tired of meaningless conflict stories, rolled their characters or abandoned the server.
Mechanical balance of classes means nothing in a conflict that just drags on and on and on.
In fact, bringing a conflict story to a meaningful end and progressing to a new story arch with someone else is probably the finest ability to look out for in a player on Arelith. Because there is no story-ending mechanic really. PvP death and victory are meaningless until the player doing the fugue time decides to make it meaningful.

I was involved in one big lame of a faction conflict story and if there had been communication between players of opposing side (probably even supervised by staff when things were getting really out of hands) that would have done probably a great deal to help that story go anywhere near meaningful and interesting again, saving everyone involved a lot of headache.
Or at least saving myself the trouble of continuing my character.

Also again I am not calling for pre-determined plotlines. Some key points dont make a plotline.

I will give a vage example of what player to player communication to resolve things could look like:
If player of a certain Calishite and player of a certain character that experienced a key moment in Calimshan get together, it would not take them long to figure out a Calimshan based background to flesh out their conflict story in reverse and bring it to a meaningful end via DM supervised event involving a third party from aforementioned background.
And all it would have required to get that started would have been a "I am getting tired of this damn story, let's get together to come up with a cool idea to end this."
Of course the other one could be a complete (censored), but then the tired one knows what he/she is at and can go straight to delete-character without wasting any more time.

I would rather players getting together to end conflict stories in an interesting way for all was a thing.
Not in a you-have-to-get-in-touch manner or else there is a punishmen of rule. But like a open player behavior culture rather.
If a critical mass of players did this, thus being rolemodels, others would start emulating that behavior, resulting in the long run in less overall unneccesary OOC drama and boring conflict stories.
But then again. Yeah. I am probably just naive.
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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Zavandar » Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:37 pm

you're not going to force people to RP by breaking the game aspect of.. the game

you're just going to force people away
Intelligence is too important

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Chosen Son » Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:53 pm

Zavandar wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:37 pm
you're not going to force people to RP by breaking the game aspect of.. the game

you're just going to force people away
This is a very important point. I dont play arelith just for the storytelling, or the roleplay. I play it for the actual "game" aspect as well. I take great pride in getting better at all parts of nwn, from storytelling, to writing, and yes, the mechanics. Its all part of the game, and branding players that accept that, and dedicate time at getting good at that part of it as well, as "powergamers" or somehow problematic, is well problematic.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Subutai » Fri Oct 18, 2019 11:20 pm

There's one thing I do want to take from Huschpfusch's posts that I do agree with, and that's more RP incentives. The main RP incentive right now is "faster draining of adventure XP into real XP", which is a curse pre-epic, and a blessing in epics. But it still requires a lot of grinding to get that much adventure XP.

If we want to encourage more RP, I think we'd get much further by creating more means of generating adventure XP, especially in collaborative ways, rather than disincentivizing PvP. Give me a way to generate adventure XP that doesn't involve circle grinding all damn day, and I'll happily join in on as much RP as I can fit in a day.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by malcolm_mountainslayer » Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:36 am

Durvayas wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 9:01 pm
My experience is that people who never get in PvP tend to be poor roleplayers because their characters never stand for anything enough to be willing to fight for it. Their PCs are wishy washy and they are conflict avoidant because they'd rather hold hands and sing kum-bai-ya with necromancers and paladins at the same time than play a character with anything resembling principles or spine.

On rare occasion, you'll find a skilled roleplayer who rarely PvPs because their PC is simply never caught holding the bag, but by and large people who do not engage in PvP are people who do not engage in conflict if they can avoid it, and have no business discussing PvP mechanics and balance at all.

Its like someone deathly allergic to fish arguing about whether tuna or salmon tastes better. They don't know what they're talking about.

The idea that everyone should settle all conflict outside of mechanics entirely and pre-determine plotlines at all times is painfully naiive, both in its utopian expectation that everyone is a good and altuistic person, but also in that it assumes that one side is always going to back down, or there will not be disputes. It sounds lovely, but its not realistic in the slightest.

Hard power in conflict == agency in roleplay.
You either have it or you don't. If the DM team is not arbitrating literally every conflict on the server, it falls to mechanics, and in mechanics, might makes right. More power == more agency.

The server thus needs balance, to ensure everyone has that agency.
The most powerful stories of agency I have heard or witnissed were not founded in mechanicle power and done be suboptimal builds.

I do agree mechanical power will still naturally lead to a form of agency though and i think striving for balance is a good thing, though sky isn't falling when out of balance. True agency in arelith was never grounded in headed on pvp though I am glad arelith never shyed from it. The freedom, if never used, to have conflict is nice.

I mostly wanted to address your assumption of wishy washy characters. Its no known secret that a part of player will often come out in their characters, probably why ill never be higher thsn rpr 30 other than my general lack of play time. I, and often many of my characters, are stubborn to a fault and would die for what they believe in. Yet, the only time i been caught in PvP was as a gaurd with pride mages looking for a fight like a decade ago (meanwhile friends i recruited to the game are somehow being attacked by murder hobos in brsmble forest in the first week of playing lol). Mind you i didnt play at all for over half off said activity and my play time is considerably low when I do play. But most my characters are not wishy washy and when they are, its intentional character design and not me as a player being shy of conflict. I almost had a rival one time but could not keep up in terms of play time as history just flew past me in events, etc.

As much as I don't care for the philosophy that conflict ought to oriented around level 30 play, I do love me some balance and choices. Was I a fan of umd disc snd tumb dump being mandatory meta? not really but I accepted and understood why it was that way and do hope Arelith will strive to reach it's thematic goals and balance at the same time.

Obviously all mundanes having no real way to deal with all casters is a more serious imbalance in comparison to say a few mundanes being weaker against other mundanes but effective against casters. (I like latter scenario, but I undersrand not all players like rock paper scissors pvp)

TLDR:

I disagree mechanicle power is the primary source of agency.

I disagree that most people not experiencing pvp are avoiding it, I observe usually the opposite happening.

I disagree pvp balance is needed to the extent you say, but I think its really good to achieve it to help create a more real sense of choices.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Ork » Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:53 am

In the end, the mechanic-savvy community really screwed themselves by being open and available with information. I don't see them doing that again.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Huschpfusch » Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:53 am

Subutai wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 11:20 pm
There's one thing I do want to take from Huschpfusch's posts that I do agree with, and that's more RP incentives. The main RP incentive right now is "faster draining of adventure XP into real XP", which is a curse pre-epic, and a blessing in epics. But it still requires a lot of grinding to get that much adventure XP.

If we want to encourage more RP, I think we'd get much further by creating more means of generating adventure XP, especially in collaborative ways, rather than disincentivizing PvP. Give me a way to generate adventure XP that doesn't involve circle grinding all damn day, and I'll happily join in on as much RP as I can fit in a day.
Someone already suggested an expanded fishing mini game in the secondary skillset thread.
And there could be a hunting mini-game.
An animal-taming mini-game.
Books could be used to make one-time doable textadventures with players contributing stories to the matrix of those.
And if riding were turned into a learnable secondary skill there could be horseback type of knightly arena for everyone.
And while those are singleplayer activities rather they'd be more enjoyable still than xp-farming.
Though e.g. animal taming and hunting could involve teaming up with a ranger for some significant use of tracking skill for some rare animals.

And if the secondary skills were teachable by PCs that could really become the source of more rp between players depending on how many learn- and teachable skills there are. And even more so if there were also related quests.
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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Arigard » Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:55 am

I've played in servers in the past where RP was semi arranged and agreed upon in terms of outcome and let me just tell you.. it did the opposite of aiding with RP, it actually just caused massive stagnant situations on the server.

I'll tell you why. There are are a lot of fair people that play NWN, but there are also a lot of people who, whether intended or not become invested in both their character and their situation in the world and fight harshly against any change that might affect them or their standing in the world, especially if it looks bad.

We already see this mentality in the world with player housing, where people hold onto things even if they barely play those characters to maintain their position in the world. The same thing happens with arranged RP. It has good intentions, but ultimately all it does it stifle player and character progression in the long term.

Whether we like the fact there is a PvP system or not, it's there and it's there with the intention to be as much of an equaliser as possible. Sometimes your amazing knight character that you had in your head will die when you least expect it. That's ok. That doesn't ruin RP, it adds more to the character arc of how they deal with situation they weren't ready for.

With arranged RP it's very unlikely that people will take a loss except in a position that they are agreeable with, but the mechanics for conflict are not supposed to be agreeable. People roll 1's, people forget to cast certain spells, things simply just happen that you aren't ready for and that's ok. In other worlds I played on where social RP was a big thing, factions became more and more stifled over time, with people complaining every time something didn't go their way to the point being able to drive -any- RP that put someone out of their comfort zone at an OOC level became impossible. People wanted 'their' playtime to be about them and weren't ready to roll with the punches unless it suited 'their' story and 'their' character arc. That's not how online worlds based around mechanics are designed to be used and far more people quit the world I played in due to social RP than those that died to PvP mechanics. I would go as far to say that if people are quitting because something didn't go their way mechanically, they shouldn't really be playing in such a world in the first place if their whole experience is constantly tied to "I won, or I lost" at every given moment.

What people seem to forget is that mechanics are the character too. Your RP character is driven by your hard mechanics. If you had 6 charisma, you shouldn't be RPing as a 26 charisma beauty (although it happens all the time). If you are a druid you shouldn't be just ok standing next to a necromancer. The issue with social driven RP is it becomes a story of the player and not a story of the setting and how the classes should be driven by their mechanics, which is how DnD is built to work at its core. We aren't writing novels here, we are RPing situations based on how our characters and by proxy their sheets respond to events in the world determined by rules. RP is the social face of your character sheet. It isn't the background story you've written in your head that has to be represented at every single possible moment in game, because those stories often contradict with the weaknesses and negative aspects of the mechanics that are there for a reason.

What generates the most RP is a fluid server with mechanically balanced opportunity for characters to achieve success in their goals. If people are deleting characters because they are losing mechanically driven battles, then there is one simple solution, learn more about the mechanics of the game. Characters understanding how spells work is seamlessly tied to the RP of those spells. High level mages -should- have deep knowledge of magic, it's counters, it's use in certain situations in the same way the warriors should understand the mechanics that underlie their character, albeit in a role play sense. There are a lot of mechanics to learn, but it's a part of the game and separating those that want to learn into "powergamers" from those that don't into "RPers" has always been, in my 15 years of playing NWN just a way for people who don't want to invest time learning core parts of the game to demonize those that do.

The solution for more RP options in a mechanically driven RP world, is more mechanical RP options to the players. Systems like the governance and election systems, tracking, epic spells for scrying etc all add agency and interesting RP outcomes in a way that social RP won't ever achieve and all of it requires no policing outside of rule breaking.
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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by TimeAdept » Sat Oct 19, 2019 6:11 am

Ork wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:53 am
In the end, the mechanic-savvy community really screwed themselves by being open and available with information. I don't see them doing that again.
On this much I disagree, at least. The mechanics-savvy community on Arelith may be pretty open for this dislike or like of various changes happening lately in the server, but it hasn't caused them to quiet up about helping people - it's just caused them to change how they offer that help, because it needs to be done within the scope of the new changes, and that means giving an honest impression on the build meta of the server that some people find unpalatable to the state of mechanics on the server at the moment. Help is still available, there's just lots of asterisks right now, because it becomes difficult to help someone when you don't know if next week "phase 3" will drop and invalidate the help you just gave them. I for sure don't want to give someone a build that I worry about being useless once they hit 12. I'd feel bad, and I don't want to waste their time.

The community didn't really "Screw themselves", I don't think. Any sort of open and free information is always going to be a net positive for the community. The ideal is for people to become more comfortable all around with mechanics. The more comfortable the entire community becomes with mechanics an the game, the less fear and annoyance around it there is, because the skill gap is narrowed. People no longer feel "bullied", because they have the mechanics knowhow and pilotting skill to "play the game" on equal grounds - no matter the build they choose to play. A stronger sense of mechanics enables a person to play a build that might otherwise be suboptimal, because their piloting skill can make up for it. That helps drive build variance on the server. Mechanics knowledge spread to the community, crowdsources and openly offered, only helps that community - but the community has to be willing to accept it, and not demonize it as "powergaming".

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Arigard » Sat Oct 19, 2019 7:17 am

TimeAdept wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 6:11 am
Ork wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:53 am
In the end, the mechanic-savvy community really screwed themselves by being open and available with information. I don't see them doing that again.
On this much I disagree, at least. The mechanics-savvy community on Arelith may be pretty open for this dislike or like of various changes happening lately in the server, but it hasn't caused them to quiet up about helping people - it's just caused them to change how they offer that help, because it needs to be done within the scope of the new changes, and that means giving an honest impression on the build meta of the server that some people find unpalatable to the state of mechanics on the server at the moment. Help is still available, there's just lots of asterisks right now, because it becomes difficult to help someone when you don't know if next week "phase 3" will drop and invalidate the help you just gave them. I for sure don't want to give someone a build that I worry about being useless once they hit 12. I'd feel bad, and I don't want to waste their time.

The community didn't really "Screw themselves", I don't think. Any sort of open and free information is always going to be a net positive for the community. The ideal is for people to become more comfortable all around with mechanics. The more comfortable the entire community becomes with mechanics an the game, the less fear and annoyance around it there is, because the skill gap is narrowed. People no longer feel "bullied", because they have the mechanics knowhow and pilotting skill to "play the game" on equal grounds - no matter the build they choose to play. A stronger sense of mechanics enables a person to play a build that might otherwise be suboptimal, because their piloting skill can make up for it. That helps drive build variance on the server. Mechanics knowledge spread to the community, crowdsources and openly offered, only helps that community - but the community has to be willing to accept it, and not demonize it as "powergaming".
Not just this, but being able to build well is more than just about making a strong character, it's also about being able to make unique characters so that not everyone is just playing the cookie cutter defaults. If everyone is running exactly the same builds all the time, it's easy for the server to become very stale. I personally like being able to build well, because I can make things that a lot of people haven't necessarily thought of, or consider "useful" because they don't fit in to the cookie cutter meta. There's plenty of fun and interesting things out there you can do that add variety to the world, if you understand on a core level what is viable and what isn't.
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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Cagus » Sat Oct 19, 2019 8:21 am

Hi all,
albeit I am no fan of majority (almost all) updates and changes recently (months), I have to vindicate this one (at least in the notion of going the right direction). Maybe the implementation could be done in less harsh fashion.

But I start with another issue and make way back to umd. I noticed the trend, that most of the recent changes and attempts for balancing going in direction of mediocrity and averageness. By that I mean thinking like:
Monk has less dmg than other 'meleé' classes, let's pump it up.
Monk is faster than other classes, let's cut it, so all have the same.
Monk have spell resist, cut it off. On the par with some subraces are given.
Wild mages have special surge-spells, cut it out or give it to everyone.
Etc...
if you see what I see. Unique features are stripped down and everything becoming the same.

Now back to umd. I also don't see the reason, why everyone (for cheap bard/rogue dip+16 skill points) should have access to (almost) all spells in game, as there are some spells not dependent on caster level.
But! I think there should be some. And I would find them in between those, who by default already had this access to it. Yes, Bard, rogue and assassin.
Unfortunately with the system like it is now, everyone has the same way to access the high-level scrolls (save wizards for naturally high int).
I don't understand why bardic knowledge doesn't count towards the lore check. That's exactly what makes sense. And I would add similar 'use magic scrolls bonus' per level to rogue and assassin.
(Maybe this could be limited by UMD in the fashion of using lower of those two, UMD or class level)
In vanilla, these classes are not as good fighting classes as those fighters, barbarians, WMs, etc., but they compensate for it by (originally) UMD which they could use in fights by buffing and whatnot.
Bards and rogues are not in good spot anyway. Mostly they are just used for dipping, buy as high level class, they are not on the top for sure. This could get them a bit more utility.
For dedicated bard and rogue 24/6 (with 16 int), the numbers would be around 33+24+3= 60. Still 5 to 8th circle of spells. This is for being dedicated in one class, and spending 1 (or 2 with umd relevant version) skills. Lesser numbers go for assassin (or double his level-limiting part for compensation).

Second idea how to make higher level easier reachable would be changing otherwise useless 1st level feat "Courteous magocracy" in this fashion:
is not 1st level feat anymore
increases one circle of scrolls readable (let's say I got 40 lore, but I can read 7th circle scrolls)
adds 5 to umd (umd still requires training)

So for some feat charge, you can manage your scroll-reading ability a bit better.

These changes are fashioned in the way of adding something, but I am very afraid of domesticated trend here on arelith, that balancing is done by taking things from players and I am afraid this will be the way in the nearest future (this time on the caster's side) which would solve the problem, just adds some fire to the heated discussion.


As for the balancing discussion. This server will never be really balanced, if there will be things like unisave enchant on items and 3 level master skill dip (usually servers solve this by max 3 skill points assigned to a skill per level, but I am also not fan of this), and there will always be this discussion, because(given example):
There is a guy who cannot do anything against wizard.
There is a guy, the wizard cannot do anything against.
And balancing changed are just who the dev team will listen to at the moment.
The strength (of the side) should come in a balanced party, not 1v1 fight of jacks-of-all-trades (meaning barbarian casting timestops vs. 60+ discipline wizard).



P.S.:
Noone mentioned the massive inflow of books from libraries as everyone now will have maxed lore :)

P.P.S.:
Wizards feel too strong? Don't worry, there is the whole anti-mage specialist class with high spell resistance netting at 50% probability of absorbing the casters spel.... ou... nevermind, this was cut off.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by monkeywithstick » Sat Oct 19, 2019 8:31 am

Consequence builds conflict.

At the moment the major mechanical consequences on the server are:
- Death, usually inflicted by PvP in cases where conflict related. 2hrs of "recovery RP" or log-off, 24 hrs of "avoid the person that murdered you". Yes you must RP death, but practically speaking, you never have to bring it up. Boring PvP deaths tend to end up getting treated like PvE deaths and are swiftly forgotten. It's easy enough to do (and quite logical anyway, seeing as what IC conversation will come from "Bob one-lined me in the Arelith forest this one time"?); simply don't talk about it, it is hardly likely to randomly crop up in conversation.

-Exile/Pariah, inflicted by governments, loss of home and shop, loss of city access is easily ignored by some characters via Bluff checks.

Real consequence in either comes from a combination of RP quality and IC support (usually a function of RP quality). The ability to get to the point where consequence comes from PvP reliably is where mechanics knowledge matters.

I often talk about fiction as a whole when I talk about RPGs, simply because they are another form of fiction. And I think it's important to ask in a fictional context what purpose violence serves. In my experience writing, a fight scene is a "cheap" (as in low-effort rather than bad) means to maintain narrative tension. To wit, the writer runs out of momentum and throws in a fight scene because there's nowhere else for them to go.
If you look at a lot of fiction, the combat doesn't take up a lot of "screen time", the works of Phillip K.Dick are a personal favourite of mine and even in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, direct depiction of violent conflict is pretty minimal. Lord of the Rings, the novels are not full of descriptions of swordwork, though violent conflict is obviously part and parcel. Yet both the referenced novels are masterpieces in their own way, maintaining narrative tension throughout.
On a more directly relatable note, I've had a LOT of fun over the last few years in my PnP games trying to discover ways to keep a group engaged, challenged, and threatened, without them just being attacked by mooks. It's been challenging, but it has been possible. (For an arelith centric callout, Xerah's Bersk, and Protector's Lladria both managed to have an enormous impact on my personal game, offering threat, tension etc. and at no point did either of them threaten violence to me or anyone I noticed - good show)

None of this is to say stop fighting. Modern fantasy is full of violent characters, especially in DnD where Gygax and co made the decision that killing everything with or without a pulse was the best means to track xp.

I had an idea a while back with Grumpy in direct messages for DM granted tokens for "hero of/ pariah of settlement X" before pariah was mechanised, whereby a DM could grant a token after plot events so some of the settlement NPCs had different dialogue. Side eye from the barman or a toast to your health kinda thing. Mostly because I thought the dialogue might foster or initiate RP.
Likewise I posted ideas about mechanical curses that could be added (similar to nightmare, mostly RP things, increased hunger, colourful message a la the belt saying "covered in boils" etc)
Small consequences are really important to my eye, because they give player characters something to react to. Right now the vast majority of player plots I encounter end up being "The evil faction is doing X" or "The good faction is doing something that might be construed as evil". For the above two examples, "That witch covered me in boils." Is a pretty good reason to be upset. Likewise "The barman gives me side eye cos the guard captain blamed everything that went wrong in the siege on me". Both of these are RP cues, both of them can escalate. Escalate far enough and you end up with violence and therein back to the mechanical knowledge. (Granted the speed with which Arelith tends to escalate might put paid to such a concept. I provide both examples to illustrate, please do not discuss their relative merits here, one has another thread, the other was deemed not worth coding by the team)

However, a system which allows such a vast disparity of mechanical power is always going to have issues with mechanically potent characters. Simply because on some level, the player knows they cannot be touched except by a shortlist of characters with similar potency and player skill. I've seen characters who were so dominant in PvP that people bent character concepts over backwards to avoid fighting them. This is irritating for both sides I imagine and doesn't really make for great narrative.
I also think that cookie cutter builds are a bad thing for RP diversity. There are limits to how far one can stretch the numbers on a character sheet and whilst I accept it's much further than many people who cry such seem to think, the limits are still there.

But just to be clear: These are problems with the game system, not the players in question. Characters are defined by what they can do, the mechanics is the window into that. This is why balancing is important.

There are however different ethos's to balance around. And different things to balance for. On reflection, I actually think items that can surprise wreck a dominant PvP Character are very possibly a good thing in small doses, it potentially takes the veneer of immunity to consequence away and allows some of the other consequence narratives to play out. Hopefully this will follow for the caster's immunity to mundanes soon. I've some faith it will.
Characters: Izzy, short for Isabel. Shaena Ash.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Aodh Lazuli » Sat Oct 19, 2019 9:02 am

Cagus wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 8:21 am
Bards and rogues are not in good spot anyway. Mostly they are just used for dipping, buy as high level class, they are not on the top for sure. This could get them a bit more utility.
I mean... Except for the fact that 20 bard/4 paladin (or blackguard)/6 fighter... And 24 rogue/6 fighter... Were two of the strongest and most flexible melee builds in the game.
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Dont text eggplants.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Cagus » Sat Oct 19, 2019 9:26 am

Aodh Lazuli wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 9:02 am
Cagus wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 8:21 am
Bards and rogues are not in good spot anyway. Mostly they are just used for dipping, buy as high level class, they are not on the top for sure. This could get them a bit more utility.
I mean... Except for the fact that 20 bard/4 paladin (or blackguard)/6 fighter... And 24 rogue/6 fighter... Were two of the strongest and most flexible melee builds in the game.
1st: were or are?
2nd: Not the fact. That's an opinion which I don't agree with, especially the rogue. I played one for many months (Ashi, if you remember). And I really believe these two are/were not the strongest meleé build, I believe there are plenty of other meleé builds, which were/are stronger.

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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Aren » Sat Oct 19, 2019 10:13 am

Cagus wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 9:26 am
Aodh Lazuli wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 9:02 am
Cagus wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 8:21 am
Bards and rogues are not in good spot anyway. Mostly they are just used for dipping, buy as high level class, they are not on the top for sure. This could get them a bit more utility.
I mean... Except for the fact that 20 bard/4 paladin (or blackguard)/6 fighter... And 24 rogue/6 fighter... Were two of the strongest and most flexible melee builds in the game.
1st: were or are?
2nd: Not the fact. That's an opinion which I don't agree with, especially the rogue. I played one for many months (Ashi, if you remember). And I really believe these two are/were not the strongest meleé build, I believe there are plenty of other meleé builds, which were/are stronger.
Just because you played something and you felt it was bad, does not mean it’s bad. It could be that you just played it inefficiently. That’s not a stab at you, that’s just an observation.

".. the other number that isn't 18." - Jack Oat
".. but- someone is still pumping the brakes sometimes, right? ...right?" - Batcountry


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Re: The Big UMD Change Thread

Post by Aodh Lazuli » Sat Oct 19, 2019 10:47 am

Cagus wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 9:26 am
1st: were or are?

2nd: Not the fact. That's an opinion which I don't agree with, especially the rogue. I played one for many months (Ashi, if you remember). And I really believe these two are/were not the strongest meleé build, I believe there are plenty of other meleé builds, which were/are stronger.

As it happens, both have been nerfed by this recent change - Just to a lesser degree than some others, although my comment was primarily directed at pre-change balance.

My answer would probably be "were, because now there are no strong or flexible melee builds, unless they happen to get lucky finding the correct rods in the loot matrix." But I feel this wouldn't be the most useful reply in explaining the overall situation.

I could engage in a lengthy unpicking of the prior strength of bard and rogue, but I will simply state that I do not make random statements, and the things I do say come packaged with a certain logical underpinning and active research. Both bard and rogue possess a toolkit which gives them a wide array of options to dictate the manner in which a fight occurs. Buffs and debuffs in the case of bard - and a horrifying mixture of stealth, high damage output, good defenses and extremely nasty grenades for rogues. Going through the numbers and specific uses of all of these in this post would produce something so long nobody would read it - But the very much shortened version would suggest that a competent player who knew how to properly utilise the tools available, would be in possession of one of the most potent and dangerous builds in the game, if playing a rogue or bard. A poor or mediocre player would suffer as a rogue, but would at least be useful as a bard.

A more in-depth discussion of the manner in whch these specific classes functioned and worked is possible, but would clog up this thread with a lot of needless text.

However, both have suffered somewhat as a result of the recent changes. Not as much as other builds (bards in particular seem to have had their effectiveness polarised - They appear to now be more effective versus mundane builds and less so versus pure-blooded spellcasters and battleclerics...), but they are both overall now somewhat less useful and less intimidating than they once were.

Since the update, rogues have maintained some degree of their usefulness simply because they have access to disjunction shards as a rogue grenade. This renders them still effective versus spellcasters and still able to remove buffs from mundane melee without relince on random loot drops. The ability to breach spells is vitally important in pvp combat. However they, like other melee, have fewer options open to them now to handle summons without achieveing a lore score of 50 or 80 (80 being largely unattaiable for all but wizards).

This lore score of 50 (or 80) to get word of faith (or mords) reliably, is a very big deal.

Bards (expecially non-human bards) were already quite strapped for skillpoints, requiring UMD (12 ranks), tumble (30 ranks), discipline (33 ranks), concentration (33), spellcraft (33) and perform (33) at a bare minimum, not counting heal which is a very useful economic QoL and pve skill to have, or a detection feat such as listen, which is very useful to counter stealthers (and is one of a bard's greatest strengths when used efffectively). Adding the necessity to invest in lore, means bards will need to take more intelligence, which in turn leads to lower AB numbers or fewer hitpoints or lowered charisma resulting in fewer spellslots and uses of divine feats.

In the case of rogues, it means they will need to sacrifice one of the skills in which they previously invested... This could be a detection skill, lockpicking, trap removal, and so on... Things which are thematically very much "rogue" and are extremely useful in the game world.

In both cases, this is much more of a hit for non-human characters, which have fewer skillpoints at their disposal and often would have to make larger sacrifices to shore up their skillpoint total with a higher int score.

As to your character Ashi, I have absolutely no recollection of that individual. I am sorry.
Sofawiel wrote:
Sun Apr 14, 2019 8:09 pm
Dont text eggplants.

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