Arelith

Whether you agree with the tweaks, nerfs, and so on, I think we can all agree it's terrific Arelith gets so much dev love poured into it. It makes things feel vibrant, and it really does feel like this is a community building the game it wants to play.

With that said: is it possible to slow down the pace of these updates? It's October 18th as I write this, and we've had 16 distinct updates to the game this month. That's nearly one every day. That's a staggering number.
It seems like a very weird thing to complain about, I know. But it's starting to get exhausting trying to keep up. Things start to blend together. I miss details from Update A because Update B was pushed out before I can mentally process and register the changes from the first one. My character build ideas are getting thrown up in the air on a nearly daily basis because of the pace of changes.

Ultimately I just wanted to report a distinct update fatigue I've been feeling, and I know some other players have been feeling the same way. Maybe instead of releasing constant unexpected updates, you could pool them together and release one big update every two weeks? I dunno, just throwing an idea out.

Otherwise, keep up the good work!

This is a very valid concern, and definatly something to consider.

I will say though that some of these updates are less 'grand changes' and more 'We put this in play, but it has a few bugs/issues, now we're going to tweak it.' (The Invisible blade stuff being one). So I wouldn't quite count those.

Makes more sense to do smaller, incremental updates than one giant update every 3 weeks, for the purpose of catching bugs and the like.

Giant WoW-style patch notes are way worse to me.

I appreciate additional classes spells and so on but at the same time I don’t play an 18 year old game because I want constant flux.

Change is good but stability is good too. Unexpected nerfs hit harder as I get older and have less time and energy to invest. It’s getting harder to maintain enthusiasm for the game when it feels like a build I am playing could be taken down a few pegs at any time. I also don’t genuinely know any more whether it’s best to play the flavor of the month or not, as most updates lately seem to tiptoe around weakening those too much but affect less powerful builds to a much greater degree.

Complain, complain.. sorry. I do hope rebuilds are offered again like they were last year to let us catch up and tweak our characters to adjust to big changes. That was really appreciated and it would be nice to know you can rely on that on the horizon when reading about the latest round of nerfs.

I imagine that there will be rebuilds offered eventually, but it won't be very soon simply because we've more planned, and rather large, changes on the way. To offer them now, only to have them asked for again in a weeks time would be silly.

We know big changes are coming, but we don't know how much and we don't know what they'll do. It feels like every second day the meta has changed in a big way. New stuff is cool, I appreciate the devs work hard, and it makes sense that not everything can be revealed.

However, it's been a frustrating thing to basically expect that every time I wake up I'm about to read about another change that either Snuggle a Bugbear up a current character or a gearset that millions of gold was pumped into. I can only imagine the pain of a casual player.

I love the amount of updates. I think that this is a unique game to have this sort of community still changing and modifying the system and seeing what they can do with it that you don't get a lot of in many games. I log into the forums, see the green box that signals new unread messages in Announcements and I receive a dose of serotonin. My body becomes activated.

I agree that the update-every-time-i-log-in gets annoying, but don't think we have to worry about giant wow-style update sizes because even if the updates are bundled as bigger packages it won't get to be that big that'll it'll take hours to download. I think putting changes onto the PGCC like you have been for classes is a nice compromise. Put all updates onto the PGCC first so people that want to pre-download it can log on there, and then be ready once it hits the main servers. But I'm pretty sure this is what effectively happens already?

PGCC is used as a testing zone. However, people need to realize that all changes can’t be first tested there. New content can be directed there. But, updating existing code that’s already live on all other servers cannot be redirected to the PGCC only as it would interfere in the live environment.

Irongron has stated a few times in various places that once the skill rework is finished, then rebuild will be offered.

Xerah wrote: Sun Oct 18, 2020 7:15 pm Irongron has stated a few times in various places that once the skill rework is finished, then rebuild will be offered.

This is correct.

More skills or adjusted skills means that we’d have to reconsider how skill points are being distributed and adjust the amount of skill points people will get. Which will lead to rebuilds.

is there a way to maybe have one day a week be the update day? like have it announced friday and go active saturday morning

Ebonstar wrote: Sun Oct 18, 2020 11:56 pm is there a way to maybe have one day a week be the update day? like have it announced friday and go active saturday morning

If I had a paid staff, sure.

The truth is volunteers need to update when they have a window of opportunity, especially given there is always an amount of post update work.

I cannot ask over 30 people to commit to a fixed day for updates.

I do agree the pace of mechanical/balance updates has been too fast lately though; for those that don't live and breathe Arelith it can be totally overwhelming. I love what is being done of course, but will try to be more considerate of the impact on players in future.

My take on this is at least a little different from the OP:

1) I am delighted to see that the dev team is as passionate and responsive to issues as they have been over the last couple of months.

2) You can approach balance revisions one of two ways: first, you can package everything into mega updates, or you can release stuff as it's completed. Each is good at different times. When entire new systems/skills are being overhauled, it makes sense to get the entire package together before release so the final intentions can be viewed as a whole.

However, when you're addressing balance issues with systems/features that are live in-game, the latter is preferable. It is better to resolve 10% of the broken features of an imbalanced class every week for 10 weeks than it is to hold off on fixing any one thing until all 10 weeks have passed and each issue has been fixed. This is especially true when there's some disagreement/ambiguity about how far nerfs or buffs need to go to put things in a good place balance-wise, since it leaves room for high-priority issues to be resolved first, and then progressively less important issues as time allows (after all, you might get halfway through your list of intended nerfs and find out that things don't feel as bad as you initially intended).

Attempting omnibus one-patch-and-done approaches to class revisions, thus, does two things: it inhibits incrementalism, which is necessary to balance changes, thereby increasing the chance that the balance patch will also "get it wrong"; it also means that the server has to put up with either underpowered or overpowered features for longer than is strictly necessary as changes that are ready to go live wait for those that are still being debated or worked on.

The recent dex item/rogue bomb changes are a pretty good example of this.

IMO, these changes should have happened about when monk AC/div shield AC stacking was taken out. However, there was probably some disagreement amongst the team implementing the changes as to whether these changes would be needed (ie, is the problem dex builds? Is it monks? Is it just monks with divine dips?). So instead, what we've gotten has been a 3-phase implementation: 1) egregious AC stacking that everyone agreed was a problem removed; 2) Partial revision of KD/Balagarn's, nerfs to bspeed to restore some of the drawbacks of going dex in general and feat-starved tri/quad stat dex in particular; 3) reduction of the availability of disc and superb monk gear to make KD-proofing a dex build and tri/quadstatting monks more challenging.

I'd rather this than an alternative world in which, for example, we'd only just gotten the monk/div stacking removed because consensus had not yet formed on items 2 and 3.

Dreams wrote: Sun Oct 18, 2020 4:33 pm We know big changes are coming, but we don't know how much and we don't know what they'll do. It feels like every second day the meta has changed in a big way. New stuff is cool, I appreciate the devs work hard, and it makes sense that not everything can be revealed.

However, it's been a frustrating thing to basically expect that every time I wake up I'm about to read about another change that either Snuggle a Bugbear up a current character or a gearset that millions of gold was pumped into. I can only imagine the pain of a casual player.

Im coping by playing a gnome true flame lol

When are big changes not coming? Idk class changes all the time I think are a big turn off. Maybe it would be wise to do updates on a certain day just to give consistentcy?

Like every Monday all updates go live

And idk every 6months there are major class changes.

That way people know what to expect

It is kind of annoying to perpetually here about 'big changes' that change the way builds and game play works but never have any idea when those will be released or if your characters build will suddenly be garbage tomorrow

Everything is perpetually in flux with no standard time line for delivering content. I know Irongeon has said he doesn't want Devs to be on a time table. So don't be. If it's ready Monday then launch it. If it's not launch it next Monday. But like do them in a sequence that makes sense

I've got a lot of sympathy for the OP, here. I'm grateful (and, honestly, surprised) that there's still an involved team interested in continuing work on the ancient game, and I don't mean to devalue the work they're doing as volunteers - I'm genuinely thrilled that there's still people trying to make the game better.

The inevitable but, of course, is that there's definitely a looming discomfort for me that something's going to fundamentally change a character at any given moment. I play a lot of skill monkey classes (even as a notoriously point-starved cleric), so there's a good chunk of uncertainty on my end as to just what that'll look like coming out the other side of the future updates. PvP is (for me) so small a part of my Arelith experience that it might as well not be there, and the balancing around it is - Well. Distant, to what I'm doing in game most of the time. I'm one of those people who played CHA-based weavemasters because I just liked to watch people go woosh. That doesn't make it wrong to balance that way, just a little exhausting for me, personally.

There's not much to be done for it. The reworks'll happen, and hopefully bring some more options for folks out of them (I'm very hopeful that it'll still make investing in non-combat skills a choice, so if you want to sacrifice combat ability for utility you can. I'm hugely enjoying sacrificing any real survivability on my cleric to gear heavily for skills. It's fun. But that's more my lingering discomfort than anything else). But - Yes. Feeling the same sentiment.

Being a little bit freer with the ol rebuilds would probably solve most of these complaints, but then again, maybe not.

Yeah, when your only option is delevel or a rebuild it does get a little nerve-wracking for anyone that isn't on the dev boards. I mean, not even UMD is considered safe so who knows what is safe to play?

But then again we can't even be trusted with a -delevel feature because tryhards use the last level as the situation comes up. I'm not personally bothered by someone transforming into a wizard from, say, a fighter but I can understand how that's something you don't want easy to facilitate.

Honesty it's not even about abuses, it's about encouraging character turnover.

Please don't get me wrong, I entirely understand them when we have one massive change (the UMD change) or lots of incremental small changes (the recent skills changes) which effect almost every character.

But having some changes leave older characters behind a bit honestly isn't so bad.

Older characters have a lot of benefits. Often they have the best property, best items, huge amounts of gold, excellent contacts and a vast array of IC memory/knowledge to draw on, and it's reasonable that, as a payoff for this, they may not be on the cutting edge curve of mechanics.

Making rebuilds too ready would remove this. So I'd really like to keep such for really huge changes.

Honestly I am genuinly shocked by the change of culture of late in reguards to this. Back before the UMD changes, pretty much NO ONE asked for a rebuild, because Rebuilds... basically didn't exist. But now it's relitivly often we have to tell people, 'Sorry no, we don't do rebuilds, just -delevels.'

So whilst I don't object to rebuilds for huge, grand sweeping changes I really want to limit them in general going forward.

I think the biggest problem for me is that I'm wary about making new characters now because it sucks when you get partially through leveling and then suddenly get hit with an update that really messes with your build, not knowing if it's worth to keep the character to see if there's further changes, or to risk remaking and potentially get hit with a flurry of adjustments to he initial change a month later. Actually playing with new classes, skills or what have you? No way, not until several months have passed so I know my character won't suddenly become significantly worse overnight.

EDIT:

The GrumpyCat wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2020 1:34 pm Honestly I am genuinly shocked by the change of culture of late in reguards to this. Back before the UMD changes, pretty much NO ONE asked for a rebuild, because Rebuilds... basically didn't exist. But now it's relitivly often we have to tell people, 'Sorry no, we don't do rebuilds, just -delevels.'

I think your rose tinted goggles are coming on a bit there. Even back on the old forums the question of rebuilds popped up now and then, but it was always refused so it quickly died down again until someone unaware of the no-rebuild policy came to ask the question again. What changed was that rebuilds started being granted, which of course means that people started asking for them a lot more frequently because it wasn't a rock-solid guarantee of a "no" any longer.

Arelith is a way easier environment to level up, I don't think rebuilds are warranted. I do, however, wish there was a way of "remaking" your character (from level 1) that didn't require foregoing all of their stuff. I've thought about remaking characters on multiple occasions, but they also have a lot of very player-made and player-writing stuff in their inventory. It's really nice - I don't want to have to give that up. That's what I care about the most.

I'd happily restart at level 1. I'd unhappily remake. Rebuilds seem like a rich unnecessary desert.

But in regards to updates -

They should keep coming. All aboard.

The only thing I would think would be appreciated is that it be better communicated that this update is like "part 1 of X" or "part 2 in our attempt to do Y." Sort of touching on what Scurvy Cur did.

Garrbear did this in a recent update - communicating that some recent changes are a part of a broader mechanical update roadmap for STR builds. That was really cool. It was 1 sentence. It just helped contextualized everything.

I spearheaded an attempt in the past for devs to communicate their ideas and plans. I think a lot of backlash is never from an update itself, but rather, being blindedsided overnight - particularly on mechanics you never thought were problematic (see Animal Language - which I thought was a great change, btw).

I have a pattern on Arelith.

1) Get excited and start a character
2) Get that character to 6th to 16th level.
3) Loose excitement and roll that character.
4) Repeat steps 1-3 several times until a character sticks.
5) Invest deeply into developing that character.

This is my method, and it's been so since I started playing Arelith almost a decade ago. It has historically worked for me and led to some successful (by my own metrics) characters. The thing is, of the last year or so I have added an additional step into the process.

6) Character/Server faces a large mechanical change and I start again at step 1.

That is a big change for me and one that I am often frustrated by.

In my time on Arelith I have never played a character past their expiration date. I have always tried been cognizant of my character's presence and how that affects the server, be that positively or negatively. I mention this so that when I say the following it registers that I am aware of and working against the Bored Epic troupe.

All I want to do is invest into a character and tell a good story for about a year, roll that character, and start again.

The pace of changes is affecting my ability to play a long term character. I should probably be better at being able to swallow minor and drastic changes to my characters. I have an expectation that Arelith and NWN is a more stable game than it has been for some time. When my expectation meets the reality that we are in a constant state of flux I am often disappointed and find it hard to summon the motivation to invest deeply into a character.

The following is not fact, but a theory I have formed watching the server progress over the past couple of years. The constant state of change combined with the rapid pace of leveling and the rise of better means of OOC communication has led to a trend of PvP and build obsessed players to whom realism of character often takes a back seat to a race to 30th level where you can participate in the current meta before it drastically shifts and we begin the process over again. This style of play lends itself to forming groups and alliances out of game as much as in game.

I do not have a solution to offer. I love the attention that has been given to Arelith by the talented and caring DEVs, DMs, and Contributors. I want people to care for, and shape Arelith in their direction. But, the same things I love and am grateful for could be unintentionally moving the server in a direction that I feel powerless to change.

Seven Sons of Sin wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2020 2:23 pm Arelith is a way easier environment to level up, I don't think rebuilds are warranted. I do, however, wish there was a way of "remaking" your character (from level 1) that didn't require foregoing all of their stuff. I've thought about remaking characters on multiple occasions, but they also have a lot of very player-made and player-writing stuff in their inventory. It's really nice - I don't want to have to give that up. That's what I care about the most.

I'd happily restart at level 1. I'd unhappily remake. Rebuilds seem like a rich unnecessary desert.

But in regards to updates -

They should keep coming. All aboard.

The only thing I would think would be appreciated is that it be better communicated that this update is like "part 1 of X" or "part 2 in our attempt to do Y." Sort of touching on what Scurvy Cur did.

Garrbear did this in a recent update - communicating that some recent changes are a part of a broader mechanical update roadmap for STR builds. That was really cool. It was 1 sentence. It just helped contextualized everything.

I spearheaded an attempt in the past for devs to communicate their ideas and plans. I think a lot of backlash is never from an update itself, but rather, being blindedsided overnight - particularly on mechanics you never thought were problematic (see Animal Language - which I thought was a great change, btw).

Few things on this:

You can ask a DM to take all your EXP away and start again if you have reason to do this; lots of people do. In terms of giving all the EXP back right away, sometimes we do that if there is a fundamental change. With these updates, we don't feel that these are major changes and there is a relevel coming down the line once we finish the skill rework (which is why we're trying to get all the balance adjustments in now). I understand that some people enjoy a static and constant world to play in, but that's not really pretty interesting to the development team.

We've mentioned a few times over the past few months that adjustments were going to be necessary to deal with the overabundance of tools that DEX based characters get (this had nothing to do with any recent forum post or anything; it was already long discussions we were having on the forums and discord). Exactly what those are often cannot be announced ahead of time because we might not know at the time, and/or it might lead to people attempting to horde things (i.e. see complex templates, which people were coordinating on discord to create though it wasn't possible by that time since I had them removed early).

I'm not sure if we're totally there yet, and there might be a few other tweaks (STR melee is still underwhelming, archer damage is still a bit out of wack, divine rogues are probably still too good) but we're still working on what we need to do (if anything). I would like to reiterate Scurvy's post on exactly why our approach is what it is.

Xerah wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2020 6:14 pm I understand that some people enjoy a static and constant world to play in, but that's really pretty interesting to the development team.

Did you mean to say 'NOT really interesting to the development team?'

Oops.