New Scry Duration

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Hazard
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New Scry Duration

Post by Hazard » Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:59 am

I wanted to give my feedback on the new scry durations, after having played around with them.

I love that the default is 1-2 minutes now, it allows for a quick check to see where someone is, or a longer peek to see if anything is going on.

But I still find the loading screens eat up a lot of time, the time it takes for people to type eats up a lot of time, and sometimes the cameras wandering off or getting stuck ruins the scry attempt. As well, you are still locked out when failing to scry someone and must wait 10 minutes.

I think scrying across the board could use with even more of a little bump in duration. Two minutes seems like a lot when doing mechanical things like fighting in a dungeon, but when it comes to RP/typing/walking and talking, just walking, it still ends up being wasted and not divining much at all.

BUT! Not a complaint. It's a huge improvement! I'm also loving that alcohol-scrying isn't a thing anymore. Being able to scry every 10 minutes without resting is way more frequent scrying sessions for me and my playstyle.

Thanks to the devs who upgraded this feature, just wanted to give some feedback. These are just my opinions.

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Hazard
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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by Hazard » Tue Apr 06, 2021 4:46 am

Just as a little anecdotal example of a test run I did recently with the 2 minute scry duration.

Two friends who had given my character permission to scry were having a casual conversation and drinks.
They type regularly/quickly, and are pretty chatty. They are RPing attentively and no one is AFK or distracted.
Emotes tend to be short, or medium length when descriptive, and sentences tend to be pretty normal or on the short side from what I see in most peoples RP. I chose these two because I felt it would be a generous test run. A sort of 'best case scenario' if watching from afar for RP purposes.

This is an hour of my playtime devoted entirely to scrying an active conversation.
Out of the 6 scry attempts (one attempted every 10 minutes, of course), and each attempt lasting 2 minutes (minus loading times) I got the following results.

Sentences: 6
Emotes: 3
Attempts: 6 (60 minutes playtime)

This is obviously a single, very brief test and just the one. It isn't meant to mean anything significant, just a little example.
In this case, I wasn't able to determine what the two were talking about in any meaningful way, after 60 minutes. I was only able to determine that they were speaking, and their location.

Shrouded Wanderer
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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by Shrouded Wanderer » Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:03 pm

Everyone should know by now that i dislike, heavily, the scry mechanic.


However i do agree that loading screens should not factor in to scry duration, i do not know how to fix this other than to suggest installing a SSD or an M.2 drive into your computer and running NWN through that. Effectively reducing your loading screen times to 2 seconds maximum.


I dont think there is a scripting solution to this issue.

But for others with loading screen issues, most modern rigs now even cheap ones have an M.2 slot, and you can get a

XPG Gammix S5 256GB PCIe 3D NAND PCIe

For 40 bucks on amazon. Its a game changer for most things.

Food for thought

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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by godhand- » Tue Apr 06, 2021 10:56 pm

Shrouded Wanderer wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:03 pm
installing a SSD or an M.2 drive into your computer and running NWN through that. Effectively reducing your loading screen times to 2 seconds maximum.
This is unfortunately, wrong. I spent a bunch of money on a gaming PC last year, which in hindsight is funny when all i play is arelith....

It runs an m2, overclocked cpu (5ghz) etc. and there are areas like the hub that will still take me 15-30 seconds to load into due to the way nwn handles all the additional hak content/tiles.
Cortex wrote: Addendum, the immediate above post by godhand is wrong in about every aspect, as were most of his other posts.

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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by Shrouded Wanderer » Tue Apr 06, 2021 11:42 pm

godhand- wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 10:56 pm
Shrouded Wanderer wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:03 pm
installing a SSD or an M.2 drive into your computer and running NWN through that. Effectively reducing your loading screen times to 2 seconds maximum.
This is unfortunately, wrong. I spent a bunch of money on a gaming PC last year, which in hindsight is funny when all i play is arelith....

It runs an m2, overclocked cpu (5ghz) etc. and there are areas like the hub that will still take me 15-30 seconds to load into due to the way nwn handles all the additional hak content/tiles.

Pretty odd. I load up the hub in the same amount of time. Usually limitations on loading has to do with server speed. Perhaps slow internet?

Bare in mind i do also utilize a T3 line for internet so there is that

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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by godhand- » Tue Apr 06, 2021 11:46 pm

Shrouded Wanderer wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 11:42 pm
Pretty odd. I load up the hub in the same amount of time. Usually limitations on loading has to do with server speed. Perhaps slow internet?
Bare in mind i do also utilize a T3 line for internet so there is that
I'm also on the complete opposite side of the world to the server. So, there is that. :lol:
Cortex wrote: Addendum, the immediate above post by godhand is wrong in about every aspect, as were most of his other posts.

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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by Shrouded Wanderer » Tue Apr 06, 2021 11:55 pm

godhand- wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 11:46 pm
Shrouded Wanderer wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 11:42 pm
Pretty odd. I load up the hub in the same amount of time. Usually limitations on loading has to do with server speed. Perhaps slow internet?
Bare in mind i do also utilize a T3 line for internet so there is that
I'm also on the complete opposite side of the world to the server. So, there is that. :lol:

Lol thatll do it

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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by Lolths Kisses » Wed Apr 07, 2021 3:06 pm

Sentences: 6
Emotes: 3
Attempts: 6 (60 minutes playtime)
I'm going to be honest. That is hardly worth the effort of acquiring the skill. I think what needs to happen is that you can Scry as long as you want but have a way to exit scrying at will.

OR

When your attacked.
Or A Ward is thrown Down your forced out of the scrying.

After all your right conversations can take 1-2 hours for a dedicated RP session. And a few minuets, even 10 minuets is hardly enough time to really ease drop in on a critical conversation to gather meaningful, useable information.

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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by Xerah » Wed Apr 07, 2021 3:50 pm

I really don't understand how you could only see so little. That was often 1 scry for me when I was doing it with 1 min duration. The whole point is knowing when to scry and who to scry. That's part of the "game"

Also, the length of the scry is slightly longer to account for transitions.

There are certainly no plans for unlimited length scry. If you want to scry a lot, you can be a diviner.
Katernin Bersk, Chancellor of Divination; Kerri Amblecrown, Paladin of Milil; Xull'kacha Auvry'rae, Redcap Fey-pacted; Sadia yr Thuravya el Bhirax, Priestess of Umberlee; Lissa Whitehorn, Archmage of Artifice

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Hazard
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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by Hazard » Wed Apr 07, 2021 4:58 pm

Xerah wrote:
Wed Apr 07, 2021 3:50 pm
I really don't understand how you could only see so little. That was often 1 scry for me when I was doing it with 1 min duration. The whole point is knowing when to scry and who to scry. That's part of the "game"

Also, the length of the scry is slightly longer to account for transitions.

There are certainly no plans for unlimited length scry. If you want to scry a lot, you can be a diviner.
Well, in this trial run I did know exactly when.
It was pre-planned IC. Couldn't have been more perfect.

I like that there's an option for playing a specialist diviner now, but being good at scrying isn't something that only specialist wizards can do in D&D. Infact they're not any better at it than any other class afaik.
I don't know how I feel about "If you want to scry a lot, you can be a diviner." There's always room for improvement. If only one path gets to have the best version of a 3 feat investment toy that other classes can take too, I think that's a little unfair.

Some people want to play other classes that aren't wizards, and scry a lot.
In D&D there is nothing that lets diviners scry longer/more often than other classes afaik.
Arelith has it's own rules, but it's still advertised as a forgotten realms setting, with 3.5ed based rules.
Obviously we can't have everything be the same for balance reasons, but it's a reasonable expectation that players will keep coming up with concepts that fit to the setting and clash with the specific rule and balance changes we keep making.

Maybe diviners should get something else instead of long scry, and everyone gets 4 minute scry?

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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by Ork » Wed Apr 07, 2021 5:00 pm

Scrying is passive roleplay and shouldn't have a lot of power. I'm glad the mechanics have changed.

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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by Xerah » Wed Apr 07, 2021 5:02 pm

This isn't actually D&D. In D&D, you're working with a DM at your side at all times and targeting NPCs so it is very different. IF you're in a DM event on Arelith, I wouldn't be surprised if they would let you scry outside of mechanics (I know I've done this on other PWs for a "diviner" based character that didn't have a scry mechanic)

Scry is quite a powerful tool on an always running player story lead world with no DM handholding. Scry isn't even a spell in NWN.

I don't see the issue with diviners being best at this type of divination to set them apart.
Katernin Bersk, Chancellor of Divination; Kerri Amblecrown, Paladin of Milil; Xull'kacha Auvry'rae, Redcap Fey-pacted; Sadia yr Thuravya el Bhirax, Priestess of Umberlee; Lissa Whitehorn, Archmage of Artifice

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Re: New Scry Duration

Post by Anomandaris » Wed Apr 07, 2021 9:15 pm

Ork wrote:
Wed Apr 07, 2021 5:00 pm
Scrying is passive roleplay and shouldn't have a lot of power. I'm glad the mechanics have changed.
I'm glad drunken chain scrying is gone as that was a bit odd. I don't necessarily agree w/ it being passive RP, though that I guess depends on definitions. It's only passive if you just sit there and don't do anything with what you learn. Or more so, if you don't learn anything and sit there twiddling your thumbs creating no value or new rp through the exercise.

It opens doors for interactions on plots and RP between characters that otherwise would have no interaction because things were happening behind closed doors. That's awesome. It's much needed counterplay to being able to otherwise meet completely in secret all the time. The fact it gets abused for less productive means doesn't mean it's "only" for one thing.

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