Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

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Scurvy Cur
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Scurvy Cur » Tue Sep 15, 2020 4:04 pm

Irongron, since you've taken the time to explain your thought process and poisition, I would like to take some time to engage with it.
Irongron wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 8:29 am
I understand that races will not be balanced, which is why we have ECL, and that some people feel that we should make all races a purely generic RP choice, with equal stat spreads (nothing wrong with that, it's just not a game I wish to develop).
Unfortunately, ECL is not really a meaningful balancing tool on a persistent world. Everyone winds up at maximum level sooner or later (and with the advent of adventuring EXP and writs, it's a lot sooner than it used to be). At that point, ECL adjustment has no meaning, since the only thing it does is slow down EXP gain. And really, effectively once your ECL makes up only about ~10% of your total adjusted character level, you don't notice your ECL penalties at all. The effect of this? Acquiring additional stats at the expense of ECL is a total nonsacrifice.

This is not the case in pen and paper, because a player character with an ECL adjustment will always be behind the party in level. He or she has effectively traded class levels for a better stat line, which is a meaningful tradeoff since XP is finite and handed out by a DM.

As a result, the ECL/stats system that works so well in a pen and paper setting does not work well at all on a persistent world. If the past couple decades or so of progression-style online games have taught us anything at all about the people that play them, it is that you will not deter people from mechanically superior choices by increasing the amount of game grind it takes to get them, you'll just increase the amount of game grind you see.

If the team decides, for whatever reason (aesthetics, setting appropriateness, whatever), that it is correct and appropriate for some races to be more powerful than the rest, that's fine. But they should not collectively pretend that ECL is an effective counterbalance, because it isn't.
Irongron wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 8:29 am
As an admittedly old school player I find it pretty astonishing that gifts have somehow become 'essential' for something originally conceived as an optional perk
This is largely related to the above point, so I'll group them.

I'm actually largely sympathetic to the viewpoint that gifts were a mistake. NWN is a game that, at its core, rewards players for doing a good job of assigning a finite pool of resources to fit the character they want to play. Gifts expand that resource pool. For the same reason, however, I think subraces that are more powerful than their vanilla counterparts are also a mistake, unless a meaningful drawback (read: not ECL) existst to counterbalance the bonus.

It was also inevitable that, from the moment gifts were implemented, that they were going to become essential. Again, because ECL isn't a meaningful counterbalance to the benefit of the gift, they are pretty much a pure positive. If one does not take every gift allowed to them, they become less useful and less capable not just in a pvp setting (though there is that too), but every time they would like to interact with the module. Failure to take maximum gifts means that one will be less effective at handling pve challenges when one wants to go out and do a dungeon or two with friends. It means that one's skill at swordsmanship or the potency of one's magic is measurably inferior to that of one's peers in a way that is shown and felt IC. It means that a character will qualify for fewer amazing epic feats, and will have fewer fun toys to play with as a result when they have finished leveling up.

And we've built 10 years of this server on the gift chassis. Pulling out the foundation can be done, but not without a lot of attention to collateral issues, and there will be collateral issues aplenty when you change something so fundamental as attribute pool availability.
Irongron wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 8:29 am
First, humans. Witn a free feat, extra skills? No negative stat adjustments and an rp setting that very much favours them (try being a dwarf and walking into Andunor) I don't for a moment believe that one left gift is crippling to them, and there is zero harm in letting this stand. It should also help reduce human UD outcasts a little now those gates have been opened again.
RP aside (this is a subjective thing and I think reasonable people can disagree on how meaningful human blank-slate RP is as a boon), I think many parts of this statement are incorrect.

1) No negative stat adjustment: This is not as much of a boon as the people in the "humans are still good" camp seem to think. The reason is simple: Nobody takes a stat penalty that really hurts their character anyway. Let me use half orc as an example because they have not one but two stat maluses. You don't see half orc wizards for a reason. Instead you see half orc warriors with an int gift to offset the int penalty and a strength gift to magnify the strength bonus. The result: +4 strength, -2 charisma. On just about every warrior build, you could write this as: +4 strength. The charisma penalty is meaningless. Granted, their core racial package (darkvision) is a little weak, but that's why Arelith gave them 5% physical damage immunity and free ambidexterity and power attack. It's not quite as good in most cases as a completely flexible feat and a skill, but it's at least one useful feat on most melee builds and an extra bit of hardiness that's not available to any other race.

Consider as well that the point buy system has diminishing marginal returns on stat buy during character generation: past 14, stats get more expensive. This means that you're getting a +2 adjustment to a stat that's become very expensive to buy, and a penalty to a stat that's probably still cheap. That is very valuable when playing the resource allocation game.

It looks even better on races with fewer maluses.

The quick and dirty version is: nobody really suffers from their stat malus. They just don't pick a race that's going to penalize something that they need.

2) Free feat: I cannot off the top of my head think of more than 1-2 builds which cannot afford to lose a feat in order to improve their statline by +2 in their primary attribute. The couple that cannot are probably hard stuck as humans because without it, they're missing something crucial like expertise.

Assuming that nothing crucial is lost, +2 to your primary stat is immensely more valuable than a feat. If a build has any of: Great Attribute Feats, Epic Prowess, Toughness, Imp Crit, Item Creation Feats, Saving Throw Feats, or anything of less value than the above, it will be improved by correct selection of a race that gives +2 appropriate stat.

Generally, NWN prices the value of 1 epic feat at 1 stat point. Some of our strongest server builds right now achieve excellent numbers through a simple strategy. Amass as many epic feats as possible, take the ones with truly high value (epic weapon focus, armor skin, epic prowess, blinding speed/edodge, etc etc), then spend the rest to boost their statline further. On these builds, it's childishly simple to shift them off a human base to a favorable subrace.

With one notable exception, the divine-dip bard, every build archetype that I can think of had a better option than human before human was nerfed. Now that human has been nerfed, it's in the unenviable position of being in the spot where half-orc is in vanilla pen and paper, only it doesn't have the niche of still making a pretty OK thug regardless: It's statline is bad, its compensation for the bad statline is not really adequate.

3) Extra Skills: This point has some merit in an environment where humans have an equivalent number of gifts to other vanilla races. Under the current decision, however, the obvious way around this is:
a) Take a build you'd have run as human
b) Take a subrace with a favorable and highly valuable stat adjustment
c) Gift int, gift the primary stat.

There are usually some less obvious ways too. You can, as mentioned in 1), buy 2 less of your primary stat and get 2 each of 2 secondary stats (e.g. an elf buys 2 less dex than his human counterpart, instead buys 2 more con and 2 more int than he would as a human). You can find skills to jettison (painful but doable).

4) Humans often spend that extra skill qualifying for a unique race-based piece of equipment. The bonus skill, when stacked against dwarves, elves, and half elves in particular, is probably a little deceptive. Many human builds will find themselves spending that extra skill getting to the 30-35 UMD it takes them to use a race or class locked +4 weapon (moonblade, dwarven rune axe, etc), or for an armor like armor of the wilds. This was an intentional design choice to help alleviate the skill advantage: give races with fewer skills some 30+ UMD +4 weapons that will incentivize a full UMD investment from humans who don't want to pass up the +1 AB offered.

Finally, as may other posters have noted, the removal of the second gift has made humans incapable of running some builds, and bad at many others. Monk now cannot be played as a human. EDR barb, which needs 21 str and 21 con to perform cannot be played as a human. Spellsword and battlecleric are now miserably bad as humans. Paladins are quite bad as humans.

Humans were a solid 2nd or 3rd best choice for most builds that aren't cripplingly feat-starved before the change. Now they're resoundingly worse than their counterparts. I have strong reservations about the viability of building things as a human following the update, for the aforementioned reasons.

I will certainly not be playing another one, which is sad. I really like having a racially neutral canvas to write around, but many character concepts I enjoy playing are now astoundingly bad on the new human.


AskRyze
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by AskRyze » Tue Sep 15, 2020 5:12 pm

kinginyellow wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:51 am
(All that)
I take some small and particular objection to the "spend a normal reward or better" approach - some of us don't have the time to take the mind-numbingly long grind to 26 and 1mil, and with humility gone the impression is carried that they don't want us infirolling characters for that sweet sweet 5%
Flower Power wrote:
Sun Jun 18, 2023 10:53 pm

You say this, but being MILDLY MEAN to people is treated like a war crime on Arelith.


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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Nekonecro » Tue Sep 15, 2020 5:38 pm

Just to add my own very minor penny to the pile.
I was going to make a human Loremaster/Rogue. The concept being a skillmonkey who has a lot of languages.

To function well enough on the server it takes a stat gift of int and dex, the former to give it more skillpoints and the latter to afford epic dodge. I like to design my characters to the minimum that they can contribute meaningfully to an adventuring party.
Not a strong meta build by any means and I spent a lot of time crafting it and working out the details with a friend who was considering playing a variant of one himself.

Now with the change I have the choice of dropping either the epic dodge or the skillpoints. The former is a critical feat to the build and the latter loses the flavour I wanted to have to make the character fun for me.

As a result a concept I was really excited over is now in the bin and I'm left kicking myself for not making it before the change.
Tis a bit depressing.

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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Exordius » Tue Sep 15, 2020 7:56 pm

The human nerf needs to be removed... all it going to do is make it so people wont play humans anymore. I will never be making another human ever again for as long as it remains in place... those who follow the rules and don't cheat using racial mechanics should not be punished for the sins of those who do.

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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by NauVaseline » Tue Sep 15, 2020 8:12 pm

You can't cheat using racial mechanics.

Gouge Away
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Gouge Away » Tue Sep 15, 2020 8:15 pm

Yeah that's a weird and vague accusation. What do you mean by cheating using racial mechanics?

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Irongron
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Irongron » Tue Sep 15, 2020 8:53 pm

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=25&p=239983#p239983

I'm not wild about this, and do still feel that 1 major across all races is a better course of action, nevertheless, I can see where the critics are coming from, and despite what some players might think, don't really enjoy making a lot of players unhappy.

A bit of a pity, as I was curious to see how this would have changed the landscape of non-human races.

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Party in the forest at midnight
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Party in the forest at midnight » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:04 pm

Thank you very, very much.

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Scurvy Cur
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Scurvy Cur » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:52 pm

Image


Exordius
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Exordius » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:15 pm

Many thanks here as well. :D

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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by The Rambling Midget » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:21 pm

I'm glad to see balance restored.

At the same time, though, I'd still love to see enticing boons for non-Humans that take the form of RP tools or logistical support, rather than direct combat power.
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Baseili
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Baseili » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:31 pm

Yes "balance" with the exception of any new Fey, Ogre, Orog or Firbolg who got an extra ECL attached just so two races could be effectively lowered to ECL +1. Evidently having an extra feat and a full bonus skill isn't worth an increase yet a couple of minor enhancements are.

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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Xerah » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:36 pm

Baseili wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:31 pm
Yes "balance" with the exception of any new Fey, Ogre, Orog or Firbolg who got an extra ECL attached just so two races could be effectively lowered to ECL +1. Evidently having an extra feat and a full bonus skill isn't worth an increase yet a couple of minor enhancements are.
Except that ECL3 is where those races should be.
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Baseili
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Baseili » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:43 pm

Xerah wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:36 pm
Baseili wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:31 pm
Yes "balance" with the exception of any new Fey, Ogre, Orog or Firbolg who got an extra ECL attached just so two races could be effectively lowered to ECL +1. Evidently having an extra feat and a full bonus skill isn't worth an increase yet a couple of minor enhancements are.
Except that ECL3 is where those races should be.
Except they are now ECL4 if they take one of the crafting or language gifts.
Last edited by Baseili on Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Xerah » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:44 pm

Baseili wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:43 pm
Xerah wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:36 pm
Baseili wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:31 pm
Yes "balance" with the exception of any new Fey, Ogre, Orog or Firbolg who got an extra ECL attached just so two races could be effectively lowered to ECL +1. Evidently having an extra feat and a full bonus skill isn't worth an increase yet a couple of minor enhancements are.
Except that ECL3 is where those races should be.
Except they are now ECL4.
What are you talking about?
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Baseili » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:48 pm

Xerah wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:44 pm

What are you talking about?
Sorry edited the post, they are now ECL4 if taking one of the minor gifts.

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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by The Rambling Midget » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:57 pm

Baseili wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:48 pm
Sorry edited the post, they are now ECL4 if taking one of the minor gifts.
And other races can end up at ECL 3 by doing the same thing, which still doesn't give them bonuses equivalent in potential to what those races get.

Setting aside that ECL is meaningless in the long term, huge bonuses like +4 or even +6 STR, and permanent +3 Regen on top of free immunities, should come with some negatives to balance them out. A negative that has absolutely no lasting effect on your character is an unfairly small price to pay. They're still getting an amazing deal out of it.
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by kinginyellow » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:59 pm

Level Adjustements would only be realistic nerfs to a character's power (in exchange for extra stats) if they capped your level below 30 for each level you're adjusted at.

This is also the only realistic scenario where I'd consider removing gifts from the server entirely.

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Baseili
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Baseili » Tue Sep 15, 2020 11:15 pm

They do come with various negatives, and while ECL may be negated at max level it still has an effect while reaching it or are those races simply consigned as casualities of the Human experiment?

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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Xerah » Tue Sep 15, 2020 11:22 pm

Baseili wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 11:15 pm
They do come with various negatives, and while ECL may be negated at max level it still has an effect while reaching it or are those races simply consigned as casualities of the Human experiment?
The effect of ECL is extremely trivial. ECL1 has the requirement of 24,838 extra EXP to go from level 3 to level 30. That number assumes you get 0 EXP from writs or RPR. In all likelihood, you're looking at an extra 10,000 EXP over the lifetime of a character when you take those into account (since those are not affected by RPR).

I really don't know what you're trying to get at here.
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by The Rambling Midget » Tue Sep 15, 2020 11:23 pm

I haven't noticed the effects of ECL at any level, regardless of how high, since the introduction of writs. You can ride your RPR up to epics with the adventure XP from them, too.
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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Baseili » Tue Sep 15, 2020 11:38 pm

I simply wished to find the line between what matters and what doesn't, which I apparently have found. Thank you.

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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Dr. B » Wed Sep 16, 2020 12:06 am

Thank you to Irongron for listening to the feedback here and reverting the update to humans.

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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Drowble Oh Seven » Wed Sep 16, 2020 12:36 am

I've always found the effect of ECL on levelling to be a slightly weird, antiquated holdover from PnP. It doesn't really translate to anything, since most builds'll just grab whatever helps amplify their thing anyway, rather than go without. And even in the days where it slowed down your levelling noticeably (and even then, typically only at early levels), at most all it did was cause you to fall behind your established group - If you were lucky enough to have one.

The only thing I can see it being intended to achieve was rewarding people (for a given value of reward) for playing slightly less powerful characters. Which, I suppose, is a call for the team to make on what they would like to incentive.

---

That aside, human revision good, thanks for listening! I can't imagine how frustrating it is to put all the work into updates, and then immediately have a bunch of us picking it apart when it goes live. So, hats off for keeping civil and explaining, and being willing to go back on things.

The human build-versatility and fairly level power across character concepts always struck me as one of the great triumphs of Arelith - Humans are canonically common, and the way they were set up in Arelith resulted in that being reflected in PC demographics, without the race being so powerful as to dominate in all respects. It was (and is!) a great example of directing RP and setting integrity through mechanics.

Sure, you'll have humans pushing into places they historically weren't, straining against the staid powerbases of other races - And that's a good thing. That's in-line with the setting (as I imagine it, at least), and means that other races are defined - to some extent - by how they react to that encroachment. I'm glad we're keeping that.

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Re: Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

Post by Wrips » Wed Sep 16, 2020 1:04 am

There's also the obvious fact ECL, by empowering your character, allows you to buy-off the xp penalty faster by tackling higher level content. As Xerah said, it's impact is negligible on the lifetime of a character.

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