Open Lock Skill Revisited

[Richrd]

Inky dinky little pixies should never have been able to fully replace lockpicking PCs in dungeons. I feel the current complaints about the pixies getting nerfed in this regard are merely stemming from the discomfort of players who've grown too accustomed to being able to just skip entire mechanics integral to the "dungeoneering experience" by summoning their little toolbox with wings.

[AstralUniverse]

Few things.

1) The way loot DCs (traps and locks both) work right now, looting in the absence of familiars and knock spells is mostly a chore of gear swapping. Familiars and knock spells do not add new content to the character's access realistically. I can say from experience that even when I play characters with familiars I'm usually too lazy to summon them and I burn a Knock charge. I really dont think familiars are a problem. if familiars are reworked and more of them become useful, I might not even take the pixie anymore even tho I do need it for not gear swapping.

2) We've discussed the subject of loot access in the past and iirc the consensus was that runes are too important for such content to require a Rogue in the party. Maybe it is no longer the case and it should be discussed again, but if I go with last discussion's results, I'll say raising the DCs beyond numbers which can be reached by 1 rank + gear likely results in runes being hoarded by ooc cliques and other tin foil conspiracies, giving them big advantages over the average player etc etc. If we're not raising the DCs higher than they are now, then back to point #1 where familiars dont really matter beyond the convenience of not gear swapping.

3) I agree with Dominantdrowess that it hasnt been incentivized to group in Arelith for very long time. For leveling, sure, it is easier with a group, but for gold grinding at lvl 30 (and I'm going to make an educated guess that the average player has higher play rate on lvl 30 characters than none level 30 characters so level 30 is the majority of our time on arelith) is far far better solo and it's a problem that needs to be solved before any gold/loot generation method is buffed/nerfed.

4) I absolutely hated that bard had locks/traps skills. Good ridden.

[MissEvelyn]

DominantDrowess puts it so eloquently. Arelith attracts min-maxers, and min-maxers value efficiency above anything else. Right now, it's more efficient to solo than to group up, because you will get better loot.

When you're in a group, typically you'll have one or two strong looters who will divvy up the spoils at the end. But that makes for a few issues: You only get gold, never potions, scrolls, healers kits, items, and components, except for when the looter saves such things for you out of the goodness of their heart. But aside from that, the payout is usually gold.
Thus when you group up, you need supplies so you'll spend gold on it. Had you gone alone, chances are you'd still have some supplies (kits, potions, scrolls, etc) on you since do loot those alongside gold and jewels.

I'm not a fan of MMO mechanics, certainly not on Arelith, but I feel as though shared loot should be a mechanic here. So when one party member loots, everyone gets something. Not just gold, but the actually useful loot too.

[Skibbles]

Maybe make this skill more accessible by rolling OL/DT into one skill: Burglary (or similar nomenclature). Far easier to passively gear for. (For that matter please consider rolling hide/ms into just Stealth, but convo for another time.)

Having two skills to essentially do the same thing in 99% of cases makes it pretty tedious to gear for.

Also make familiars useful. The panther is damn decent for leveling since you can guard them, but the rest of them are utterly forgettable beyond yet another cute myconid wandering the hub.

[dominantdrowess]

Thank you all for the compliment;

I admit; I legitimately PREFER to do dungeons as a group. I have had some of the most fun I've had in Arelith slamming through The Lower Dark with a crowd of friends. As a wealthy character who's basically at hard gear cap (short of sacrificing 400 masterwork runes to effectively 5% + 5% + 5% a single item; but this strategy would violently harm the player economy for very little IC gain)... I can afford to do this; to spend time with other players and make little gold. People who play Arelith 8 hours a week? Probably can't -- which is why they grind; but I feel like many of these players deserve more say on the world's economy than simply what is in their backpack. Timezones and organization are difficult enough.

Currently, gold accumulation for the average player comes in 2 serious forms:

• Small, organized groups who succeed in dungeon runs together. 10,000 gold worth of shares, and often a runic material with 10,000 gold.
• Person whacking monsters for 4 hours has more wealth to pay the above, entire squad of thugs who now don't have to grind.

The only other options are getting a shop (most characters cannot have one), and getting lucky with loot-drops; usually while soloing anyways; or stealing things from other players houses.. so I am only going to seriously address the two options above.

Because the second option, currently, legitimately, provides -everyone- far more benefits than the first one does.. it seems backward. It's just weird to me. Even BRINGING one other person, because of how the spawn system and loot works.. legitimately reduces your ability to make money by 50% ... the extra body doesn't make it MORE likely to get fat loot.

It makes it -less- likely. This is literally the meta; the common knowledge anyone who's played Arelith long enough fully understands after they done a dungeon and seen someone get the Masterwork Runic material that spawns 1 out of 20 times go to a stranger they barely know. And I'm -certain- that's what's gotta get fixed for lockpicking to matter. It is simply impossible to do enough dungeons to get everyone what they want..

[Peachoo]

I would frankly love for familiars to be revisited period.

All of them. I would argue each familiar should be good at something that reflects their forgotten realms lore. Either from casting certain spells to some other thing.

The issue with familiars is that there are objectively only three that have good utility for the caster.

I just would love an overhaul period on them. There's so many things you could do with them.

I also agree that pixies shouldn't get such high open lock skill if bards are not allowed to have it either. If we're going to make open lock only a rogue thing, then it should be only a rogue thing.

[-XXX-]

First off, no amount of emphasis on OL/DT will make people bring a Rogue along and rely on them to handle the loot.
The inconvenience of having to find a specific build to team up with set aside, some people actually like to solo or do so because their timezone limits their options.
There's also the issue of trust - rogue opens the chest while carrying a blueleaf sample to showcase to their party while secretly pockering an intact theurglass - there's literally no way for the others to know when that happens.

All that any increased emphasis on OL/DT would accomplish is warping the preexisting builds - everybody who can will keep investing in these skills to whatever degree becomes necessary no matter what (ranging from minimal investment and swapping gear sets up to the point of taking ESFs if needed) - the ability to access loot is just too essential. There's very little point in engaging PvE without it.

Builds that won't be able to reach necessary OL/DT values will simply vanish - with the exception of S-tier PvP ez mode builds which will occassionally perservere in discord clique factions that gear them up (which was actually one of Irongron's major pet peeves regarding the state of IG economy, if I recall correctly).

Dominantdrowess correctly identifies the problem with the current state of PvE that makes soloing the hands-down optimal form of wealth acquisition over adventuring parties - which is far from ideal.
ATM the only PvE experience that actually incentivizes parties is the sailing system - which also shows us how detrimental the reliance on a single gimmick (sea shanties) can be.

[Whosdis]

If the other familiars weren't hot garbage, I generally think the pixie nerf wouldn't be aggravating as it is, not to mention I struggle to see how it will have a purpose later on. I guess mitigating improved invisibility wand usage for enchantment and divination wizards?

Honestly, DominantDrowess puts it very eloquently: The system is not very rewarding for grouping up EXCEPT FOR SAILING. Now, if I'm in a quasi-faction or actual faction or something where we're sharing the bank and profits th at everyone can contribute and dip into, having a search bot, lore bot, open lock bot etc. is nice as having each of us present speeds up the content, but in any other circumstance? I'm loath to run into people when I'm doing content. It doesn't help that the easily soloable content is also a ripe hunting ground and I'm nearly guaranteed to be caught up to by another group, or get to the end of the dungeon after we've killed swathes of mobs up to that point - and there's nothing in chests.

It's honestly quite aggravating considering that content is quite unrewarding as is, and it feels like the content is a waste of time if we're getting sub-20k from the runs in a group of all things, since we're getting no adamantine and on top of that the runic altars have a knack for giving either clay of sub-1400 gold.

In the past year we've had:
1: The bash chest loot nerf, which made pixies more necessary.
2: The leadership head turn-in nerf
And now this to bash in one of the effects of point 1.

There's a reason everyone without sail wants to run the Duergar library, as it actually gives a rewarding amount of guaranteed currency for the time investment.

Back to lofting everything back into Rogue, well, I think a lot of people are a bit loathe since a lot of the class needs severe crunches to become useful at the exclusive things they can do (including but not limited to locks, traps, and stealth), limiting their combat potential: The Epic Dodge Sauce weapon master build days are over, though I get the feeling people prefer assassin for its mechanical benefits over similar classes like rogue, but its locked to an application.

[TurningLeaf]

I shall miss the wafting aroma of the Pixie, sometimes smelling like Swiss, other times an aged cheddar, or even a nice Gruyere

[Eyeliner]

I agree on the soloing thing being almost better than parties some times, but at the same time as an adult I don't have the free time I once did and if I have 4 hours to play I don't want to spend 2 of it trying to get a party together so I'm glad you can solo-- and taking that away would kill the server for me. Soloing time to me is cramming in some mechanical progressing in the short windows I can play during the week so I have a character who can hang in groups and meetings and events on the weekend.

I really think a forgiving policy towards players soloing when they want/have to is a major reason why this has been the most popular server in NWN and the many others I've tried with "you must party up or be punished" policies are limping along or gone.

That said it doesn't have to be easy for one player to do everything and I'm fine with a pixie nerf.. My own feeling is giving some rogue skills to other familiars like imps would cater to a better range of alignments and capping familiar skills at what a mid-level rogue could accomplish and allow classes with familiars to open a reasonable amount of dungeon chests without making them too good.

[God_In_Action]

The point about soloing being more rewarding than parry adventuring is spot on. It's made worse by the fact that the overwhelming majority of level appropriate dungeons become completely unchallenging to a party. Certainly classes like warlock or invoker make PvE completely painless because they are so good at infinite casting of group damage and crowd management spells.

Even if you go to a dungeon in theory above your level range, this remains less rewarding than soloing a lower level dungeon.

I might turn this into a fleshed out suggestion for party only dungeons with higher rewards, locked behind puzzles that need multiple players to solve.

[AstralUniverse]

I think even more content locked for parties isnt necessary. You already have boats who require 6 characters to operate and sort of unlock you content (since idk about you but most groups I play with dont tend to enter deep waters with a small fishing boat and only 1-2 competent sailors, not to mention solo) and that content has the best loot and map pieces. I'm concerned that even more content that's meant entirely just for parties would kill the server for a lot of players who just want to be mechanically competent and arent blessed with time zone.

Imo, there should be some scaling factor to the loot drops to take the numbers of party members into account, for all content.

[Azensor]

What can you reasonably add to open lock/disable trap..without locking dips out of looting?

Has is you can push high 80s open lock for certain special doors, and thats about it.

If anything i'd rather see someone with high open lock have the ability to forge a blank key into a useable key for a dungeon or a house, tie it to /high/ open lock and boom plenty of reason for peeps to go high open lock if they want to

[Xerah]

Unless loot is increased by a full amount, you're not going to promote partying.

i.e. if a party of:

2 would get 2.1x loot
3 would get 3.2x loot
4 would get 4.3x loot
And lower from there.

There's no really good way to promote partying. I know, "but it's easier" but a lot of time, it's not really that much of a increase in costs, just time. For someone with limited play times most of the time, I'd rather not waste the time trying to find a party (when most people seem to be max level, and if they're not, they're probably fighting something).

A LFG thing, as OOC as it is, would help a bit (can list what writs you want to do) and it can be made an IC thing if they are connected through the writ system. I've seen PWs do this, and it still doesn't make it that much easier but maybe with the writs and higher population of Arelith, it might be more successful here.

All that said, no one is going to really go all out looking for a rogue to do dungeons (nor should they). That's not fair to anyone, except rogues.

[Hazard]

I think one way to .. maybe not promote partying, but promote situations in which partying would happen organically, would be to cut down on the amount of portals/fast travel around the module and slow down the rate of leveling.

It is more likely to bump into people leveling, in the past, because people would level for longer and travel for longer, so you naturally bump into each other and RP and work together. These days you just teleport to quest area, complete quest, use nearest portal to teleport back, and you're level 30 before you know it, having met absolutely no one in your adventures outside of a town.

I know in many gams when something becomes easy, it becomes expected. People often rush in easy games, current arelith, retail WoW, etc, because it is fast and easy so you feel as if you are entitled to be at the end already because you are not really challenged in getting there.

I know that when a thing is more difficult to travel to, or a level slower to reach, parts of the playerbase (not all) will care less about getting there fast now because it is less expected and you do not see everyone else getting there much faster and easier than you (only some of them, will always happen).

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

There's a lot going on in this thread, but I dig it because it touched on the biggest issue Arelith has when it comes to pve content. Before i get into that though, I want to touch on the other things mentioned-

Familiars. Pixes are not the issue. They were the issue for a long time, because of rogue levels needed for traps of a high dc, but now that that's gone anyone can open the goodies with some gear and a small investment. I do think they could be reworked, but if I were doing it? I would do it at the same time I nerfed summon usage in pve, specifically by lowering their duration. Then boost the familiars power level a good bit, but incorporate synergies that are both boons and detriments to the caster depending on what happens to the familiar. This, if done right, could even the playing field between a caster solo dungeoning and a melee dungeoning, since now if something goes wrong with their built in tank they have to deal with it instead of getting away when the summon is near death and clearly going to lose, resetting, and having another go at it.

Gear swapping. I get it, it seems silly to me at times too. But who cares. If you take ten minutes to set them up, you can use hotkeys on your control hotbar to painlessly switch back and forth with little to no interruption in game. This isn't a real issue, people are just being stubborn lol.

Now to the important Bit-

The point about soloing being more rewarding than parry adventuring is spot on. It's made worse by the fact that the overwhelming majority of level appropriate dungeons become completely unchallenging to a party. Certainly classes like warlock or invoker make PvE completely painless because they are so good at infinite casting of group damage and crowd management spells.

Even if you go to a dungeon in theory above your level range, this remains less rewarding than soloing a lower level dungeon.

I might turn this into a fleshed out suggestion for party only dungeons with higher rewards, locked behind puzzles that need multiple players to solve.

Dominentdrowess brought this up first, but i just to quote this guy/gal because it was more to the point and had a suggestion to boot. This revolves around three main issues-

One, without an easy way to group up in game icly its more convenient to just log in and go, especially if you only have an hour or so to play at that given time. Someone else brought this up, and its spot on.

Two, you make way more gold if you just go solo all the way through to 30, to the point that instead of having to jam out lowbie dungeons at 30 you are probably pretty good on gold where you don't even have to bother pushing it at 30 at all. Take sailing, often accused of being too easy on gold, where you can go out with a group for two hours and make 40-80k, and then compare that to someone solo dungeoning their favorite dungeons (or worse, just circle grinding). The solo dungeoner is going to make give or take some 33% more gold in the same amount of time. ITs going to be harder, sure, but that actually brings us to point three-

Three, the pve content is kinda fun alone. It gets steamrolled even by a group of two in most cases. Being in a group 9 times out of 10 doesn't lead to a fun group adventure, but rather plays out as a bunch of mass hasted people running to show off their build by killing everything in their path as fast as possible. So, yeah, while i will always group up with folks if given the opportunity because meeting other characters is still the name of the game (at least I hope it is), I'm not doing it because it's more fun, and I often find myself laughing at folks who talk down their nose at folks for solo leveling on discord or whatever.

Now, these are all separate issues with different solutions, but they all have one thing in common. They all play a big role in the solo leveling reality that is Arelith. And trying to force people into groups without addressing these things first is a fool's errand. That's why I am hoping God in action follows through with his suggestion and actually has a good idea. I have some ideas myself, essentially breaking down dungeons into two classes, exploratory maps and "quests", the first being a place where someone can go solo and hopefully run into folks of the same level to go take on the one time only but heavy on reward quests as a group, but the amount of work to get us there would be staggering. So, hopefully he has something better suited to the reality that is arelith instead of something that would require a complete overhaul.

[Hazard]

Gear swapping. . .This isn't a real issue, people are just being stubborn lol.

Gross.

My comment is unconstructive. As unconstructive as just declaring something to not be an issue, and that people don't want to do it because they're stubborn. There's totally no other reasons, like .. This supposedly being a roleplay server, or something.

[xanrael]

Personally I think considerations increasing the enjoyment of grouping would be more desirable then trying to reach parity off of efficient gold/hour.

As a bit of a 'meh' example, have a repeatable writ event where the PCs have to defend a town from zombies/demons/etc. They defend multiple entry-ways at the same time for 30 mins to an hour over waves of baddies rewarding group play and a bit of setup. Add in some randomness like demonic assassins flying into town to assassinate NPCs etc for some variety. Payout is based on how successful they are keeping NPCs alive etc.

Sailing does similar but is pretty dependent on the Sail skill (and wanting to RP sailors) and a longer timeframe. Which fits for ship based actions. I was just considering something along the same vein without the skill pre-req.

And I'm not saying the exact idea I proposed is the right way, rather creating more PvE options for non-sailors than grinding the same dungeon(s) for x hours alone versus doing it in a group. God_in_action's more group based crawl might be a better way.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Gear swapping. . .This isn't a real issue, people are just being stubborn lol.

Gross.

My comment is unconstructive. As unconstructive as just declaring something to not be an issue, and that people don't want to do it because they're stubborn. There's totally no other reasons, like .. This supposedly being a roleplay server, or something.

Well, I'm sorry you found a personal attack in a throw away comment, that wasn't my intention. And hey man, we all have our things. Yours is switching loot, mine for an easy example is elven paladins. But you don't see me calling for the eradication of elven paladins just because I personally don't like them, and if I did, I think it would be fair of you to say it's not a real issue when talking about what's best for a population of 1500 to 2000.

[Waldo52]

Gear swapping. . .This isn't a real issue, people are just being stubborn lol.

Gross.

My comment is unconstructive. As unconstructive as just declaring something to not be an issue, and that people don't want to do it because they're stubborn. There's totally no other reasons, like .. This supposedly being a roleplay server, or something.

Well, I'm sorry you found a personal attack in a throw away comment, that wasn't my intention. And hey man, we all have our things. Yours is switching loot, mine for an easy example is elven paladins. But you don't see me calling for the eradication of elven paladins just because I personally don't like them, and if I did, I think it would be fair of you to say it's not a real issue when talking about what's best for a population of 1500 to 2000.

wuts wrong with elven paladinz?

[-XXX-]

wuts wrong with elven paladinz?

Elves are supposed to be mostly chaotic alignment, so elven paladins should be very scarce. It's a FR canon pet peeve - not a big issue.

[Feargys]

It seems to me that a lot of folks are looking for out-of-character solutions to in-character problems.

One of the main motivations behind several posts in this thread is PvP (which explains the many cooky-cutter builds on the wiki). In-character, very few people should be pursuing one-on-one killing as a solution to a crisis: unhinged assassins, perhaps, but I can think of few others who should be motivated by PvP. In-character, alignment, occupation, and the rule of law should make PvP a rare and unfortunate occurrence. A significant number of posts talk about game economics but I'm not sure that they refer to game economics at all. No Persistent World should be designed to make it easy to get rich. The in-character constraints on getting rich quickly are the same as those for PvP: alignment, occupation, and the rule of law. Confusing these in-character motivations with the need to keep up with the server's Joneses is the only thing that explains the somewhat ludicrous (to me) "in-character" scenario where someone strips butt-naked in the dungeon to dress again in magically enhanced clothes, and then re-dresses in their armour until the next chest, where you rinse-and-repeat. Having to wait too long to find a rogue? Oh, wait, see the first point about PvP trumping otherwise viable builds. Running the risk of a rogue taking too much? Welcome to the real (in-character) world!

TLDR: PvP, felt need to power level, and getting rich fast are not good reasons to drive change on a Persistent World that boasts that characters should be in-character at all times.

I'm new here. I've not done my time. So I'm going to shut up now.

[Hazard]

It seems to me that a lot of folks are looking for out-of-character solutions to in-character problems.

One of the main motivations behind several posts in this thread is PvP (which explains the many cooky-cutter builds on the wiki). In-character, very few people should be pursuing one-on-one killing as a solution to a crisis: unhinged assassins, perhaps, but I can think of few others who should be motivated by PvP. In-character, alignment, occupation, and the rule of law should make PvP a rare and unfortunate occurrence. A significant number of posts talk about game economics but I'm not sure that they refer to game economics at all. No Persistent World should be designed to make it easy to get rich. The in-character constraints on getting rich quickly are the same as those for PvP: alignment, occupation, and the rule of law. Confusing these in-character motivations with the need to keep up with the server's Joneses is the only thing that explains the somewhat ludicrous (to me) "in-character" scenario where someone strips butt-naked in the dungeon to dress again in magically enhanced clothes, and then re-dresses in their armour until the next chest, where you rinse-and-repeat. Having to wait too long to find a rogue? Oh, wait, see the first point about PvP trumping otherwise viable builds. Running the risk of a rogue taking too much? Welcome to the real (in-character) world!

TLDR: PvP, felt need to power level, and getting rich fast are not good reasons to drive change on a Persistent World that boasts that characters should be in-character at all times.

I'm new here. I've not done my time. So I'm going to shut up now.

Need more new people with this mindset.
+1

[dominantdrowess]

It seems to me that a lot of folks are looking for out-of-character solutions to in-character problems.

One of the main motivations behind several posts in this thread is PvP (which explains the many cooky-cutter builds on the wiki). In-character, very few people should be pursuing one-on-one killing as a solution to a crisis: unhinged assassins, perhaps, but I can think of few others who should be motivated by PvP. In-character, alignment, occupation, and the rule of law should make PvP a rare and unfortunate occurrence. A significant number of posts talk about game economics but I'm not sure that they refer to game economics at all. No Persistent World should be designed to make it easy to get rich. The in-character constraints on getting rich quickly are the same as those for PvP: alignment, occupation, and the rule of law. Confusing these in-character motivations with the need to keep up with the server's Joneses is the only thing that explains the somewhat ludicrous (to me) "in-character" scenario where someone strips butt-naked in the dungeon to dress again in magically enhanced clothes, and then re-dresses in their armour until the next chest, where you rinse-and-repeat. Having to wait too long to find a rogue? Oh, wait, see the first point about PvP trumping otherwise viable builds. Running the risk of a rogue taking too much? Welcome to the real (in-character) world!

TLDR: PvP, felt need to power level, and getting rich fast are not good reasons to drive change on a Persistent World that boasts that characters should be in-character at all times.

I'm new here. I've not done my time. So I'm going to shut up now.

Need more new people with this mindset.
+1

I disagree with this assessment because Arelith’s popularity comes from many, many, many playstyles coming together into a common world.

You have hardcore story writers. You have party and event enthusiasts. You have politicians. You have merchants. You have conflict-players. You have dungeon delvers. You have PvPers. You have people who simply love hanging out in parties. You’ve got ship sailors. You have people who’s only plan is to grind rewards.

All of these need to be held in balance; and crowding any of them into a single box or saying the solutions are IC to a wide and deverse set of people all crashing into eachothet undermines the complexity and interconnection that makes Arelith both popular and functional..

Right now? Certain groups have more power over others than I think they should (my own play style!) with minimal effort.. and it legitimately affects other people’s playstyle disproportionally because it cuts out other people while affecting the wider player ecconomy; and I do think that harms the community disproportionally by bogarting them out of certain systems they may otherwise be into - like the settlement systems.

All these things are very, very interconnected - castle bidding, district shop availability, solo vs. group play, etc.

Everything, and everyone’s playstyles are touching. Ignoring that is not a way to go about it.

[RedGiant]

I'll do an increasingly rare weigh-in here.

Keep pixies-pilferers. Keep bard-lock-smiths.

We don't ever want to go back to the days where the entire server was x/x/Rogue 3.

We also don't want to turn every dungeon into a dressing room.