Upping the XP From Higher Level Quests

[tarashon]

These are indeed exceptions yes...

As for the stone/Wood/whatever placeables, where these can be bypassed we dont mind in 99% of the cases where it is merely for cosmetic cases. Infact one could imagine *cough* that maybe some places are hidden like this and that bypassing these apearent obstacles will infact lead to some else unknown area...

/tara

[icywind1980]

I have a question about the server rules for classes. It say that all classes must be at least 6 levels, but it allow harper scout and purple dragon knight, which are 5 level classes. I am assuming these would be exceptions, but I am not sure. Was just curious, lol.

I had the same question with Harper Scout and it was answered that if the most levels one can have is 5, all levels should be taken and it will be considered that the requirements are met.

[Balkoth]

I do not understand the need to reach level 40 as soon as possible. Especially since this is a roleplay server. I would rather just have a fun time playing, even if it means not gaining much levels. Getting xp from a quest is nice, but I prefer something that can help my character.

To put things in perspective:

1. I currently have the highest level character on the server to the best of my knowledge (a level 28 weapon master/fighter/rogue). Tara is the only other high level I've seen who was level 25-26 last I checked if I recall correctly.

2. Literally the only thing I've been doing for the past several levels is killing the same monsters over and over and over for about six hours to gain a level. Because that's the best XP/hour I managed to find. This probably won't shock you, but that situation does not result in a fun time playing. I have done every quest available and, as far as I know, every zone that's soloable for me (which includes several zones not meant to be soloable in the first place).

3. I have not gotten anything to help my character in like half a dozen levels -- I ground out millions of gold to make the best gear possible at the forge and buy the best gear possible from Tolmar. I agree that getting items from quests/bosses is more fulfilling than buying them from vendors or making them at a forge, but at least a good chunk of XP makes you feel like your character is permanently advancing.

I haven't even been playing on the server in several weeks now -- the meeting Tara has mentioned never happened (though he recently mentioned that apparently he's been busy) and I have nothing to do in-game. Can't even make reasonable progress toward 40, there's no new gear I could reasonably work toward either, and no one else was playing on the server. So...I stopped.

On that note, I've been looking into the structure of the current forge scripts, and they are a bit of a mess - at least with regards to changing the enchanting cost.

I figured as much, hence why I proposed to eliminate that altogether and just make it static scaled costs.

At the moment, my character is only level 5, so I do not have much opinions about balance yet.

This is part of the "problem." The server works reasonably well up until level 10 or so and is still fun until level 12-13...at which point it starts running into massive issues that you haven't encountered yet.

[tarashon]

Howdy Bakoth

Well i guess "none of us" have played lately and still waiting for that meeting and hopefully agreement on how to redesign the forge, preferably levelbased for a more smooth devellopment and also for better gameplay at later levels...

This being said the server will keep running during summertime but more than likely we wont do much with it, besides hopefully redo the forge, and perhaps some rescaling of the higherlevel quest XP / rewards.

I can only agre that soloing and grinding hours on end is not really all that fun, which just once Again "cements" the need for some "groundbreaking redesign" of the forge, armor/weapon ballance etc to make it much more enjoyable and doable alone.

We will see, the server is alive just the same and we will keep it up and redesign it for future use

/tara

[Somnium]

On that note, I've been looking into the structure of the current forge scripts, and they are a bit of a mess - at least with regards to changing the enchanting cost.

I figured as much, hence why I proposed to eliminate that altogether and just make it static scaled costs.

As the existing script uses the gold value difference of the item before and after enchanting, there isn't really any easy way of calculating a static cost of a specific enchantment. Especially since the enchantment to be added, including parameters, is encoded into a three letter code value, which is then passed as a parameter to the different parts of the forge scripts.

I have spent some time on analyzing the format (creating three pages of code/decode tables in the process), and I now have a working prototype for charging a static cost See my update in the forge thread for more info.

[Balkoth]

As the existing script uses the gold value difference of the item before and after enchanting, there isn't really any easy way of calculating a static cost of a specific enchantment. Especially since the enchantment to be added, including parameters, is encoded into a three letter code value, which is then passed as a parameter to the different parts of the forge scripts.

I have spent some time on analyzing the format (creating three pages of code/decode tables in the process), and I now have a working prototype for charging a static cost See my update in the forge thread for more info.

I think you're vastly overcomplicating it.

1. Set a variable when the specific enchant is chosen (base cost).
2. When calculating the final cost, find out how many different (aka, not the one you're trying to add) enchants already exist and add 1/2/whatever to that variable.

In other words, can tear out the existing scripts for those spots and put in much simpler ones.

I've also given some thought to making this work for multiple people simultaneously -- idea is that it triggers a private conversation for the player rather than having to actually talk to the NPC directly. Which also means you could store the variables mentioned above on the player directly (doesn't need to be on an item or in a database since the value is recalculated from the start each time you select a property and proceed to the next steps).

[Somnium]

As the existing script uses the gold value difference of the item before and after enchanting, there isn't really any easy way of calculating a static cost of a specific enchantment. Especially since the enchantment to be added, including parameters, is encoded into a three letter code value, which is then passed as a parameter to the different parts of the forge scripts.

I have spent some time on analyzing the format (creating three pages of code/decode tables in the process), and I now have a working prototype for charging a static cost See my update in the forge thread for more info.

I think you're vastly overcomplicating it.

1. Set a variable when the specific enchant is chosen (base cost).
2. When calculating the final cost, find out how many different (aka, not the one you're trying to add) enchants already exist and add 1/2/whatever to that variable.

In other words, can tear out the existing scripts for those spots and put in much simpler ones.

I've also given some thought to making this work for multiple people simultaneously -- idea is that it triggers a private conversation for the player rather than having to actually talk to the NPC directly. Which also means you could store the variables mentioned above on the player directly (doesn't need to be on an item or in a database since the value is recalculated from the start each time you select a property and proceed to the next steps).

Actually, quite the opposite. The forge system conversation nodes set the enchantment type, the enchantment value and the enchantment secondary value independently from each other, and reuses the same conversation subtree for similar values (i.e. the same reused conversation tree for choosing the size of the enhancement bonus, no matter which kind of enhancement is being made).

Which was a quite brilliant construction by the original creator, since that means that instead of having a separate script and conversation node for each and every combination of enchantment type, subtype and secondary subtype, relatively few scripts and unique conversation nodes are needed. This also allows for the script to have a central place to define ALL costs (i.e. a central cost calculation method), instead of having to spread the costs around many "end nods" scripts in the crafting conversation.

However, this also means that a specific conversation node does not know how "expensive" it should be, hence there is no place to "set a variable when the specific enchant is chosen", since the action taken script does not know how expensive it should be. On the other hand, as all end nodes can then be powered by the exact same script, that is a "trade-off" that I'm willing to make - I'll take maintainable code which takes a bit of extra time to set up, over a simpler spaghetti-like copy/pasted mess, any day

This of course also means that I had to create code/decode tables, so that when I have to calculate the cost of "2-27-1" I know that this means "add a +1 bonus to reflex saves". Those are the tables I mentioned in my post above.


As for having this work for multiple people simultaneously, this is not just a manner of the local variables (which could easily be moved to the player as you mention), but also that you have to designate the item you want to enchant, in some manner which also prevent duping glitches. The easiest way to do this, is to force the player to relinquish the item (i.e. put it into the enchantment container). And in my opinion, the current method also has the added bonus of feeling natural. I.e. you give the item to a NPC which has the skills to enchant, speak with him about the enhancment you want, and then he performs the work. And multiple customers do not speak with the smith at the same time, as he can only work on a single item at a time anyway.


I agree on the "extra cost" calculation - we already have the logic to count the number of enchantments, so it should be easy to make a similar method supplied with an enchantment type as a parameter, which then disregards existing enchantments of that type from the total. What needs to be decided is what the added cost should be.

[Balkoth]

On the other hand, as all end nodes can then be powered by the exact same script, that is a "trade-off" that I'm willing to make - I'll take maintainable code which takes a bit of extra time to set up, over a simpler spaghetti-like copy/pasted mess, any day

This comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/1205/

And this: https://xkcd.com/974/

Keep in mind that, unless things are drastically changed from the stuff I listed, most of that system is completely irrelevant -- you don't need a whole spectrum from 1 to 5 or whatever for enchantment power to weapon/AC/saving throws/etc. Going off the list here, it looks like you might be able to save one script for the enhancement/AC section and five scripts from the damage bonuses (because you could re-use the ones from damage resistance)...so, at a quick count (which might be off) you'd go from 36 scripts to 30. And that's not taking into account the extra work going into those 30 scripts. The main problem seems to be in the bonus spell slots as you'd wind up with 16 scripts for that rather than 50.

So it's really the bonus spell slots that are the issue there.

I actually have concerns about people being able to stack their best spell slot(s) overall, though, and it's something I had hoped to discuss.

but also that you have to designate the item you want to enchant, in some manner which also prevent duping glitches.

I'm not very familiar with exploits in NWN, but I was under the impression duping glitches involved giving an item to someone else and then crashing the server (somehow) after it saved the item as being on the second person but before it saved the item being lost on the first person (which means both players get a copy when the server comes back up). Offhand I'm not seeing how that would have an impact here unless you're thinking of something else or I'm wildly off the mark (which is entirely possible).

And in my opinion, the current method also has the added bonus of feeling natural. I.e. you give the item to a NPC which has the skills to enchant, speak with him about the enhancment you want, and then he performs the work. And multiple customers do not speak with the smith at the same time, as he can only work on a single item at a time anyway.

Speaking as probably the only person on these forums who has actually been to the forge with a group, having to wait "in line" is significantly less than enjoyable. Spent over 30 minutes one time with the three of us in the forge rather than 10 minutes. Is that the end of the world? No, but if we only have like 1-2 hours a week to play together we don't really want to be spending that time waiting for the other people to figure out their stuff (and it'll only get worse with a fourth player who we've sometimes had).

Doubly so with the current glitch where a ton of options don't even appear so people have to keep restarting the process.

[tarashon]

Feel free to explain the problems with the "spellstacking"

As for the forge multible use ive never really thought about "fixed adventure Group" players but i do see the problem there as you explained it...

/tara

[Somnium]

This comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/1205/

And this: https://xkcd.com/974/

Keep in mind that, unless things are drastically changed from the stuff I listed, most of that system is completely irrelevant -- you don't need a whole spectrum from 1 to 5 or whatever for enchantment power to weapon/AC/saving throws/etc. Going off the list here, it looks like you might be able to save one script for the enhancement/AC section and five scripts from the damage bonuses (because you could re-use the ones from damage resistance)...so, at a quick count (which might be off) you'd go from 36 scripts to 30. And that's not taking into account the extra work going into those 30 scripts. The main problem seems to be in the bonus spell slots as you'd wind up with 16 scripts for that rather than 50.

So it's really the bonus spell slots that are the issue there.

If I had built the above script from scratch, perhaps. But with the system already in place, why on earth would I waste time altering several scripts (and destroying the generic system in the process), when my solution means only having to change a single function inside the global crafting include script? Also, having only to tweak a single function in order to change costs, will make it far easier for Tarashon to be able to tweak it later on - keep in mind that, ideally, any new functionality which impacts mechanics and balancing, has to be easily maintainable by Tarashon as well, since he is the one who handles the balancing of the server.

I'm not very familiar with exploits in NWN, but I was under the impression duping glitches involved giving an item to someone else and then crashing the server (somehow) after it saved the item as being on the second person but before it saved the item being lost on the first person (which means both players get a copy when the server comes back up). Offhand I'm not seeing how that would have an impact here unless you're thinking of something else or I'm wildly off the mark (which is entirely possible).

There were some issues with the copy function supplied by Bioware for cloning objects, the exploitation of which, is not dependent on the procedure you describe above. I'm not 100% sure they were fixed in the last patch. There is also another unrelated exploit, which I'll rather not discuss in detail here.

Speaking as probably the only person on these forums who has actually been to the forge with a group, having to wait "in line" is significantly less than enjoyable. Spent over 30 minutes one time with the three of us in the forge rather than 10 minutes. Is that the end of the world? No, but if we only have like 1-2 hours a week to play together we don't really want to be spending that time waiting for the other people to figure out their stuff (and it'll only get worse with a fourth player who we've sometimes had).

As for the forge multible use ive never really thought about "fixed adventure Group" players but i do see the problem there as you explained it...

I guess it's a balance between "game convenience" and the verisimilitude of the experience. I'd personally much prefer the enchanting of magical items to feel more like a special event, rather than a trip to your local convenience store, but I'll concede that this is probably a matter of personal opinion. If your mindset is that you feel like waiting in line in the supermarket rather than taking the opportunity to role play with the people waiting for their turn, I can understand your frustration - even so, I'd still prefer to spend the time on "streamlining" the most common activities rather than the occasional enchanting (which is why, for instance, the improved loot drop systems were prioritized).

Doubly so with the current glitch where a ton of options don't even appear so people have to keep restarting the process.

I have been trying to reproduce this, so far without any success. Please provide additional detail about the steps necessary to recreate. The "text appears when" conditionals should be pretty standard fare.