| Wemic | 0.9% [/TABLE] This shows that there are more active planestouched characters (Tieflings and Aasimar) than there are dwarves (8.3% PT vs 8.2% Dwarven). It also means that 16.5% of the population is something "rare." That's 1 in 6, or in other words, a typical Layonara party will have something "unusual" in it. Around 1 in 25 is Drow. That's a bit high, but not much. If other people played the anti-drow racial hatred properly, it would be all right. The percentage would naturally drop once word got out that "if you play Drow, you will be hated and no one will adventure with you." I would like to see the ECL applied to quest experience, if it isn't done so now. Schools of Magic: These are probably fine. Leave them alone. Languages: The system is fine. It just needs to be tightened up a bit, making it more difficult to learn languages either through training or through the bio.
The first issue I agree mostly with Varka. Sadly, we can't keep drow out of a town (I mean come on, the towns been attacked before, or at least heard the rumors of attacks. Drow are known to be sneaky, so they would not be against sending in spies. Come on towns! Throw some drow out!) I do think its partially the responsibilty of the player to keep their distance from towns as a drow or other "unwelcomed" race. Just RP that they won't let you in.
My only drow character (whom I never play and had deleted) avoided going into town, and when he did he hid behind buildings, cause he was unsure of what would happen if he was found. I'm not saying all drow should be sneaky-ish, but at least try to take into account that drow are not loved. They are far from loved. They are hated. Hated with the burning passion of a thousand suns!
Which is also something that players need to remember. Sure, some characters have reasons for liking drow. Others have perfect reasons for hating them. But I think we are forgetting that the defacto attitude towards drow is one of hatred, not indifference. Much like we can all agree IC that pie is tasty, we can agree that drow are evil.
Having said all that, I am completely in favor of having perhaps a limit on the number of drow approved per month, and would prefer it small.
I end my drow rant with this:
http://www.layonaraonline.com/forums/photos/show-album.asp?albumid=309&photoid=7273
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Now, as to mages: I never usually play them in NWN or computer games. Too much going on at once. I try, but I can't get into them. So can't really comment on about specialist vs. generalist mages.
Although I do agree with people when they say that the RP reasons for being a generalist can be just as good as that for a specialist.
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Languages. Yes, we want to learn them because it is a cool thing to do. I don't think anyone is going to deny that. But I think it is dumb to learn them so quickly. If you grow up learning them, its easy. However, in school we have to spend years learning a single foreign language. Now I know the American way is not what you would call the greatest method of teaching languages (we start far too late) but it seems to suit the same way adventurers learn in game.
It should take a long time, and there should be good evidence. The one case that I really remember where it seemed like someone took the time to learn a language was, well, with Acacea and her ear for elven. I remember she was speaking it to one of my elven characters very well without the ear, and even months after that she was -still- learning. I think we need more people who take ears and enjoy the RP of learning it, instead just trying to get the ear as soon as possible. Just take a few steps back and enjoy the ride.
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Almost forgot: Aasimars and Tieflings
I've always had a fondness for Tieflings. I like both as a playable race, but I also see them used far too often for class-builds and wonder how many people actually rp the traits. To be honest, I see it more with the aasimar than with the tiefling, and I usually see tieflings RP'd more appropriately. Of course, that also has something to due with the very nature of the two races so... yeah.
In the end, I wouldn't mind seeing these also made restricted, so only veterans can play them and so that only a certain number can be approved in a month.
DISCLAIMER: I am guilty of some things above (such as acting poorly towards other races that should be hated, or the language bit), but I think I've beem getting better at it lately, so hopefully people will see things a bit on the same line as I have.
Ne'er - 8/30/2006 5:39 PM Sadly, we can't keep drow out of a town (I mean come on, the towns been attacked before, or at least heard the rumors of attacks. Drow are known to be sneaky, so they would not be against sending in spies. Come on towns! Throw some drow out!) I think monster races should just start somewhere else. There is no reason that they should come to Hlint anymore, they are not summoned. Give them a little outcast camp somewhere, let people play them because they can be cool, but reinforce the roleplay aspect of YOU ARE NOT WELCOME right off the bat. (Heh-heh. Or start drow in the Underdark and make 'em fight their way out...no? Ah well.) Agreed that there is some player responsibility to remember how you would be being welcomed were the NPCs real... drow chatting each other up in Spellgard and buying from the merchants just because the AI says you can, does not mean Spellgard is a drow-friendly town and people should not feel they're free to do so... *Coughs* Getting kind of off track here, though. Languages are a lot of fun, elven should take bloody forever--you can grasp common principles as mundane, but it should take ages before an elf goes "Oh hey, you speak pretty well." Because they'll be saying that in 34534090 words just to mean "Good job!" Acacea has a lot of fun with Yard and Rev about elven and its shades of meaning. All roleplay of course since what you type is what it spits out, but some of the definitions are too funny if you bother. Like essentially taking a dictionary-definition of a word, and using the whole phrase in place of the word every time you talk... for most words. *Snickers*
Acacea - 8/30/2006 6:57 PM
... in Spellgard and buying from the merchants just because the AI says you can, does not mean Spellgard is a drow-friendly town and people should not feel they're free to do so...
That would be easy to code a fix for *snickers thinking about the drow unable to buy anything anywhere*
If helmet equals no, NPC equip torch and pitchfork? :)
I do not dispute the percentages cited above on the commonality of subraces. I would also venture to guess that the percentage of half-elven is skewed in the same manner as well.
But statistics can be misleading.
Keep in mind that, when talking of PC's we are dealing with only a very small percentage of the whole (day to day unseen) population of Layonara as a whole. The PC's represent only the 'adventuring class', thus they already a select sample of total population.
It is entirely possible, and reasonable to assume that plane-touched and others would gravitate toward this lifestyle of adventure and leadership.
Conversly, there may be a huge population of dwarven as a whole, but perhaps only a relatively few venture to leave their clans (because of strong clan ties or whatever), and choose the adventuring lifestyle.
I am for taking out the monstrous and evil races as playable races. Most of the reasons have been mentioned and I more or less agree with Varka on this. These characters are VERY rare. If a character is born in drow, goblin or orc society he is raised by their norms, beliefs and laws and would follow them. Only a major thing would change his personality and only so many of these major things take place or it all gets strange and unrealistic. I would prefer if the playable races were limited to the normal, civilized races: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings
I would leave the option open for characters who have played on the server for a long time and have shown that they are mature and able to handle RPing such a race. Similar to the rules we have for playing evil characters now.
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On the spell casting suggestion I also agree that diversity would be a great thing. Additionally we play in a low magic world and therefore spellcasters should be rarer than they are now - i.e. more dificult to get approved, such as what happened to druids and priests. What I see right now are casters with identical spellbooks - almost without exception.
In NWN2 we will see new spells I am assuming and the spells will start out without having been balanced for Layo. Before we consider balancing them or nerfing those that may be abused to harvest CNR or kill overpowering oponents we might consider making restrictions to the spell schools available.
In a low magic world the number of spell casters would be lower than it is now. Therefore teachers are hard to find and their areas of expertise is further limited. Therefore I propose that mages and sorcerors limit their range of spells to half the number of schools. In RP terms that simply means that they were not able to find teachers for the remaining schools of magic. This would create very different caster characters and show us a broader range of spells used in game. I know that evocation will be the school that is chosen by most, but still there will be far more differences and variety than we currently have in the world.
Again there is the option of undertaking a CDQ or similar quest to find a teacher in a school one does not have, thereby allowing one to learn spells from that school on successfull completion of the quest.
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On the languages. Well, they should be rarer than they are today. Personally I would limit them to one additional language that may be learned in game, and also limit character applications to 2 languages for a new character.
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The above ideas reflect my personal opinion and are a few ideas among many that I have and would love to see implemented. The caster option requires discipline by the players, but I believe that this might lead to interesting characters.
Harlas
1) Monster races
I used to RP hatred towards all monster races and tried to drive them out of town. I was successful at first but as the world grew and more and more players came I faced very weird situations. Unfortunately many people began metagaming here and I just dropped the entire thing, it just became a useless waste of time that just wasn't fun. The example of the situation, very much simplified, just to give the basic idea.
Rufus: Get out of town!
Drow: But I am a good drow...
Rufus: You don't belong here, just wait until the militia arrives
Drow Metagame Nr 1: I am not afraid of the law, the people of Hlint have nothing against me (nothing against a drow?!?!)
Rufus: Alright, then I will personally remove you from this town
Drow Metagame Nr 1: I am not afraid of a little wizard and your magic
Rufus: *summons something big and nasty*
Drow: *laughs*
So this was a rough example, conclusion? It becomes really old really fast when I am not able to do anything and just face a blank wall. In reality Rufus would have executed that drow or goblin or giant or whatever on sight, if he didn't have a good reason to be there aaaaand would so arrogantly mouth off.
So yes, I agree with drastically limiting the special races!
2) Mages and specilizations
Mages used to differ at the start of Layo. One could clearly see who was an evoker or enchanter or necromancer, because they used mostly the spells from their school. You couldn't ever see an enchanter casting a fireball or an evoker using a finger of death. These days it is just silly. Everybody hates a necromancer because he names himself like that, but nobody hates a generalist wizard who runs around casting Wails and Finger of Deaths....right...logical hmm?
Honestly I don't know what to do about this, people used to have common sense and did not take Meteor Storm if it was an enchanter or Weird if the person wasn't an illusionist. It's gone now and I doubt it could be brought back *shrugs* I guess we will have to live with this until NWN2. For me, spellcasting in general has been bad and broken for a long time.
Harlas Ravelkione - 8/31/2006 7:58 AM
What I see right now are casters with identical spellbooks - almost without exception.
That's because quite a few spells have been "balanced" For example a person who began as an evoker will soon realize that most of his spells are useless in a party and will begin searching for other alternatives.
my few ideas for the drow and Tieflings, i play a tiefling cleric and i love playing him, he is of a not so nice alignment and i think its how they should be played, tieflings should be looked on with distaste and even if they gain trust allways watched, i would like to see it that these two "evil races" be limmited to the not so nice alignments CN etc aswell with the monster ones, my Tiefling has allways been met with fear and aprehension as it should be. when they know what i am *evil cackle*
On the mages,
Af far as specialist mages are concerned. You have to acknowledge the fact that some schools are terrible in a combat orientated environment. The schools of Necromancy and Enchantment are incredible powerful in NWN compared to the other schools. Illusion isn't as good as it used to be. So if you want a powerful mage, you make a necromancer who also focusses in Enchantment and wields the Staff of Elements.
Now Daeron for example started as a generalist wizard, I did this because I wanted him to find his school of magic ingame. Now, it's a pity you can't switch from generalist wizard to specialist. You can be considered one through a CDQ, Tathnolu is as far as I know the only example of that.
I choose for Daeron to become a 'generalist abjurer', meaning he's stuck to being generalist but has taken spell focus and greater spell focus in Abjuration. Now, these two feats give him a +4 DC on two spells, Dismissal and Banishment. So yes, not the most potent build in terms of combat.
But in a GM-controlled environment, the specialisation, or in Daeron's case focus, can actually provide advantages. This really is up to the GM in most cases.
My point being, yes there is a point, you can go for a combat orientated mage. But given the right circumstances, a mage specializing in a certain school has some great bonusses in the right situation.
To force people into a certain school would leave us overflown with necromancers, enchanters and illusionists likely. Choose one of the less popular schools to specialize in and you might be surprised how much potential this can have.
EDIT: On the identical spellbooks; look at the list of available spells compared to true PnP. What makes wizards better in a combat environment is there big choice in spells. Now, if you leave out the useless spells, this advantage over sorcerors is almost non-existant.
My proposed changes were meant to bring less power builds. Some players start out with a character they have in mind, but then they discover that they want to be able to slay things themselves and forget everything about their initial character and his feats in abjuration and divination - and instead they focus on necromancy and enchantment instead, since that allows you to kill things. By barring schools a mage/sorceror will work with what he has from the beginning and not be able to change along the way to empower his character.
Of course, there will be those who choose only the strongest schools from the beginning, but they will at least have created a background and a personality based on these teachings. They will be more powerful in game when soloing, but on GM run quests you also need the spells these characters do not possess - such as scrying via divination, illusions that allow a mage to trick or confuse an enemy when the player works with the GM, hold a portal via abjuration to allow the party to escape, etc.
I am all for limiting the number of spellcasters. Heavily. Admittedly, I might be a bit biased, since I have more experience writing than most, but... There should definately be more stringent requirements for ALL spellcasting classes, most especially Wizards.
Why Wizards? Well... Thier magic is learned. They have no innate power, just a heck of a lot of studying. And getting that study in a low-magic world would be HARD. My character spent most of a year studying out of a book written specifically to teach the basics of Wizardry (doing absolutely nothing else in the day, I should add) to even get the hang of his first Cantrip, Light. And this was in the Great Library, possibly the best study environment in Layonara. It took this brilliant little elf the rest of seventeen years to get a general handle on the other spells he came with at first level, and most of that was groundwork; the actual spells are all more or less variations on a theme. (As a side note, I do not support limiting the number of schools a character can participate in; while specialist Wizards are GREAT fun, what about those nutty ones who want to learn every spell ever written? ... Like mine.)
I'd also support changing the requirements for subrace characters to the same as the CN alignment: 10 levels and 6 months at the minimum. Take out Orcs, maybe limit Half-Orcs a bit... From what I understand, the orcs of Layonara aren't nearly as civilised as the ones from Faerun.
Languages should probably need a good bit more support than is currently required.
Harlas Ravelkione - 8/31/2006 7:58 AM
"On the spell casting suggestion I also agree that diversity would be a great thing. Additionally we play in a low magic world and therefore spellcasters should be rarer than they are now"
Well since we are playing in a low magic world we are sort of asking of getting a great number of spellsingers and priests. Sure we could make it harder to get those classes aproved. But I don't think that will have any greater impact on the number / % that will play this classes.
If you look at the number of priests we have now compared to earlier you will see a clear difference in numbers. This trend is most likely caused by the requirements that need to be met by character applications for said class. I believe that similar requirements to wizards/sorcerors would be beneficial.
And even if what you predict will happen and we see no decline in the number of players in these classes, there will be HUGE difference compared to today where we see mages with all the same spells and spell-feats.
True. and perhaps you are right about that Harlas. But i don't think there are to many wizards out there. As Ar7 has stated for a long time there are problems in this classes and the players are more or less "forced" to build their character with a certain spell book and certains feats. I am for that it should be more dificoult to get a spellcaster class aproved, but not because i think there should be less spellcasters out there. In my opinion the spellcasters out there is needed since this is an low magic world.
Example: Kobal is one of the most powerfull fighters out there that are not a spellcaster. I would like to see how far he could get and what he would be able to kill on East without any help from a cleric or an wizard/sorcerer. The spellcatsters are needed when adventuring and it would be less fun without them. ( Just taking your character as an example here Harlas but it would be exactly the same for every fighter including my Boon)
I say more Buff monkeys for us fighters.. Everey fighter should have one personal Cleric and one wizard.. :-D
I am just going to repeat my beliefs here, but firstly...
Varka, this is a good post dude. You bring up a lot of issues that are pretty important here. But, in my view of Layonara, it's not the rules that make the server, or how many characters of a certain type there are that give it a soul. It's a community of players, playing together, and playing who they wish to play that makes it true.
The Planes are infinite, there's bound to be loney Celestials and Demons and Devils always like another lowly servent. The Underdark covers most of Layonara, as far as I know, and for the possible number of Drow out there, there's bound to be several good ones. Even if it's rare, the amount we have now is really nothing compared to most servers.
While they are power builds, powergamers are easy to spot, easy to ignore, and are often passed over for more interesting, more developed, and deeper characters.
I won't comment on whether this is "right" or "wrong", but now, around 10% of all actively played characters in Layonara are principally wizards (meaning have more levels in wizard than any other class, tie going to the first class the character picked). Around 6 and a half percent are sorcerers. 15% are clerics and just under 5% druids. So that puts just over a third of the characters in one of the classic "caster" classes.
Oh, and because someone asked, about 6.5% of characters are half-elves. And around 14% are elves.
SquareKnot - 9/1/2006 11:38 PM
I won't comment on whether this is "right" or "wrong", but now, around 10% of all actively played characters in Layonara are principally wizards (meaning have more levels in wizard than any other class, tie going to the first class the character picked). Around 6 and a half percent are sorcerers. 15% are clerics and just under 5% druids. So that puts just over a third of the characters in one of the classic "caster" classes.
Oh, and because someone asked, about 6.5% of characters are half-elves. And around 14% are elves.
May I ask how you came up with these figures?
May I ask how you came up with these figures?
Certainly. I have a background perl script running on my machine that pulls in the Server Status page once every 5 minutes. It then parses the page and stores the information into a database. The current data set started on June 18th. So any character that has been played for more than 5 minutes since then has been logged. If I look up Filatus, I see that you play two characters. There's Daeron, who is a level 21 Lucindite wizard. I know roughly how many minutes he's been played since June 18th, but I won't post that kind of thing (information specific to a character or player) without permission. And then there's Janus, the 5th level druid, who was on for a few minutes as well.
I can mine the data for classes, races, average character level (8.6), which deity has the most followers (Lucinda has a slight edge over Toran and Aeridin), which character logs the most time, and so forth. For example, 4 of the 10 most played characters are half-elves, which could make them seem more common than they are. A Drow doesn't show up until number 17 on the most played list.
Aragen in the computer age.
I'm going to dispute the "low magic world means fewer wizards/sorcerers" argument that's come up. With the ready prescence of a continent full of demonic/diabolic beings summoned through gates between the planes, forests populated by undead, and golems maintaining eternal vigils, I'd argue that Layo is a normal-magic world, but wherein ITEMS do not well hold a magic charge. Magic is fine while fresh, but the ring you enchanted might only work for a hundred years, or never accept a truly epic enchantment - in fact, only a masterpiece of craftsmanship might accept a powerful spell that would last centuries. This would explain the dearth of truly powerful magic items, while allowing wizards/sorcerers to wield the power they draw from the Weave without an inherent contradiction.
SquareKnot - 9/2/2006 6:19 AM
May I ask how you came up with these figures?
Certainly. I have a background perl script running on my machine that pulls in the Server Status page once every 5 minutes. It then parses the page and stores the information into a database. The current data set started on June 18th. So any character that has been played for more than 5 minutes since then has been logged. If I look up Filatus, I see that you play two characters. There's Daeron, who is a level 21 Lucindite wizard. I know roughly how many minutes he's been played since June 18th, but I won't post that kind of thing (information specific to a character or player) without permission. And then there's Janus, the 5th level druid, who was on for a few minutes as well.
I can mine the data for classes, races, average character level (8.6), which deity has the most followers (Lucinda has a slight edge over Toran and Aeridin), which character logs the most time, and so forth. For example, 4 of the 10 most played characters are half-elves, which could make them seem more common than they are. A Drow doesn't show up until number 17 on the most played list.
Heheh, you almost lost me at the word perl, but this seems handy and very interesting.
I would be more interested in a most played race list and then limit it to West server where Hlint is. Like.. total playing time divided by playing time by race, for west server. Not sure if that's possible of course.
SquareKnot - 9/1/2006 10:19 PM
May I ask how you came up with these figures?
Certainly. I have a background perl script running on my machine that pulls in the Server Status page once every 5 minutes. It then parses the page and stores the information into a database. The current data set started on June 18th. So any character that has been played for more than 5 minutes since then has been logged. If I look up Filatus, I see that you play two characters. There's Daeron, who is a level 21 Lucindite wizard. I know roughly how many minutes he's been played since June 18th, but I won't post that kind of thing (information specific to a character or player) without permission. And then there's Janus, the 5th level druid, who was on for a few minutes as well.
I can mine the data for classes, races, average character level (8.6), which deity has the most followers (Lucinda has a slight edge over Toran and Aeridin), which character logs the most time, and so forth. For example, 4 of the 10 most played characters are half-elves, which could make them seem more common than they are. A Drow doesn't show up until number 17 on the most played list.
Did you write this yourself? And is it easily distributed? I'm curious if anyone on the staff has something like this to help them view the realtime statistics.
its been said a million times before, just becouse there are only so few dwarves or elves or whatever, dosent mean there are that few in the world, the players make up like .5% of the population.. er wait.. we have what, 8 million people livving on Layonara.. and lets say... 240 PC heros. That means the heros make up .00003% of the population. Crazy isent it?
edit: Just an example really.. i dont know exactly how many people are left after the war, i think L announced it, but i dont recall.. was it 3 mil? *shrugs* anyways you get the point.
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