Couple more ideas, Lockout timer & teleport

[Guardian 452]

Hey all

I wanted to toss a couple more ideas out and see if they were possible for here. The two ideas kind of go together.

1. Teleportation (for all characters). I had this idea after my second all nighter going after things in The Deep. And the impending "LOOKS" i keot gettig throughout the following days by my wife.
In EQ2 everyone had the ability to use a spell called "Call to(your home city)". It was useable once evey 45 RL minutes. Would something like that be possible here? But probably on a much longer re-use timer? Or perhaps teleport locations in the world you can go to rather than spend hours and hours retracing your steps.... the in game teleporters ties directly into #2

2. Zone Lock Out timer. A zone lock out timer would be for say places in the deep or dungeons etc. What it would do is once you have been to said zone. Once you leave you cannot return for "X" amount of time. That would depend on what the zone was all about. Say anywhere from 8 hours to up to 24 hours or more if the team saw fit lockout.

Why add these ideas? I dont believe every player has 4 to 8 in a row to spend at their PC and make an attempt at getting Mithril, or Emeralds, or say some really awesome dungeon way off someplace. These ideas would allow them to get there but esentially taking the round trip time and cutting it in half. And because it is now so much shorter... adding a lock out timer would keep things in check I beleive.

I believe both of these ideas are possible with NwN. Certain classes in the game can teleport already. And we have zone lockouts that are tied to level, or if you have an item in your inventory. So I dont think it would be too tettible difficult to make a working lockout system (lol yeah I say that from the outside looking in)


Thanks

G-452

[HooD!uM]

I just mined 200 nuggets of mithril and got 25 emeralds... Now all I need to do is use my scroll and I'm safety teleportong home without any danger....don't think this would work, just too unrealistic, even for d&d

[Guardian 452]

Exactly what danger will you face on the way back that wasnt the exact same on the way down? Unless a GM decides to add some color.

The only "danger" is falling alseep cause you've sat at your PC for too long. and then cause the group to wipe because of it.

This is Exactly why #1 cant happen without #2.

You got 200 Mithril and 25 emeralds... great now split that amongst the party... unless you soloed all that. how much do you have now? oh and ... you are locked out of going to get either with this toon for 24 to 36 RL hours becuse of the Lock Out Timer.

As it stands now nothing is stopping me from going every single night, and getting as you say... 200 Mithril and 25 emeralds  if I can find a group to do so with me.... and if my wife doesnt kill me for all the all nighters.


Which is sounding better now?



.

[Shiokara]

This assumes that that content is supposed to be accessible, though, and that all players, or more of them, should be able to eventually access it. I don't know that that's the case.

That is, you could have got it exactly right that the zone's length is intended as a gauntlet of sorts, testing the player's endurance in a 4-8 hour trip. Plenty of MMOs include raids of this length. Of course, the most popular MMO also implements both of these ideas, but it also has the skimpiest RP out there.

What winds up happening with the timers is that the big guilds set up schedules from there and do raids Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. What you're essentially doing is making the trip shorter, but making the time in between trips potentially longer. This assumes that the deep gets raided every night by the same people, though. That's possible, but I'm not sure if it's the reality, and if it is, then I would support the implementation of idea two without idea one. This is an area that nightly raids shouldn't be happening in.

Back to the original topic, though, I could see a lot of potential for abuse just on the basis of saving time. Let's say I set my "call to wherever" in Krandor at a lower level. That would significantly reduce the amount of time the Packagemaster takes to do.

That just boils down to whether or not one sees the intended payoff as greater than the potential problems, though.

The biggest issue is my first point. I don't think this content is meant to be that accessible. I think it's likely that when the area was under development the team considered not just creature difficulty, but pace, going in and out again, so it might really be "working as intended" as the saying goes. So as far as modifying that goes it might just have to be, "Do I have the time to do this?" If not, don't go.

[Ravemore]

Teleportation by all characters? Well, I know mages work their butt off to reach 14th level to obtain the Tome of Teleportation, and it will take you to only one previously marked location.

If some type of teleportation were offered to just anyone, to be fair it should be used by only 14th level and above, be one time use and then *poof*, take you to only one previously marked location, available only at a vendor, and be insanely expensive (50,000 true). Otherwise, it cheapens a primary benefit of the classes that have it now and pretty much defeats the intent behind the current travel systems in place, ie. boats and portals. Would be a good "gold sink."

Never tried it before, but unless there is some mechanical code in place, buy a housing portal, set it and abandon it at your camp in the deep... Do not see any RP reason why you cannot do that, and does not seem like it could be classified as an exploit, at least at this point in time. Would be concerned about an Army of Dark Elves using it to access locations on the other end though... LOL

Personally, I think if you want to teleport, play a mage or druid.

[lonnarin]

I do agree that absolutely no CNR trip should last more than 2 hours.  And even that is excessive... I would place the limit at 1 hour.  If we are supposed to be a Family Server, then we should also take a look at how much time is taken away from the family-time.  If a kid wakes up at 7am, gets to school by 8, gets out at 3pm, has football practice till 6pm, three more hours of homework till 9pm and his bedtime is midnight, he is NOT ever going to be able to go there, save for the weekends.  Same with a full time worker who wakes at 7, gets to work by 8, works till 5, gets home at 6, grocery shopping/chores till 7, then you have 7-midnight.  Close, you could only pull it off if you had it scheduled in advance.  What usually happens is I see the trips leaving around 9pm, so I have a choice... get mithral and lose my job from sleeping in the next morning, or not get mithral.  And if you DO get mithral that night, its fairly certain you have spent 0 hours family time for the day.  Compact that with needing 4 nuggets for an ingot and 10 ingots for a fullplate, then you have a few realtime months of realtime family time lost.

CNR needs to take less bloody time!   It needs to be less exclusive to the college student/non full-time worker.  It needs to be something fun in the game vs. a full time job in itself.  A few suggestions for that...

1. Do we really need to run all the way back up?  Can't we have a one-way transition at the bottom where it says "Travel back up past the corpses of those you defeated" vs. hack n slashing the entire time it took to get there?  I agree with Guardian above how tedious it is to defeat all the same enemies over again for one trip, they should be dead or cowering after they saw what the players did on the way down!

2. Emergency teleports for EVERYBODY.  Not just wizards.  People need to be able to leave the PC if their baby's fussy, their child needs discipline, their spouse wants action, their mother wants them to clean their room, etc.  By making a huge "oh I can't get out of here for 4 hours" situation, we wind up making the family conflict increase.  However if like in WoW they had a little token that they could select that beamed them out of any place to a home location, then this game would be far more family friendly.  And I don't see it as exploiting to portal after mining, I see the monster exploiting for respawning themselves to thwart you on the way out after you have already killed them.  Most GMs in PnP allows the party to speed time up by "we all go back to town" at the end of the quest, vs making them fight every single encounter they already fought earlier that evening in reverse.

3. Instead of increasing the amount of nuggets it takes per ore, do a straight 1-for-1 nugget to ingot ratio.  CRafting difficulty should be a virtue of the skill of the player and the difficulty in getting the CNR, not bottlenecking supply and lengthening time.  So what if level 30+ characters can now make mithral quicker, they've already spent realtime YEARS to get to lvl 30 in order to survive the mithral run.  Let the monsters dictate the difficulty, not the amount of free time drained from a human being in real life.

4. Make CNR available on the open market, simply costing ana rm and a leg vs. the mining.  Sometimes you have a rich character who'se willing to buy a spare nugget of something for an outlandish price, let them.  There needs to be some kind of basic market out there, else all these NPCs are just living in thatch huts bound together by mud.  Charge something like 50 per ingot of copper, 100 for bronze, 200 for iron, 300 platinum, 400 silver, 500 gold, etc and for mithral something like 20,000 an ingot.  It would still cost 200k to make a fullplate of mithral, PLUS labor, so people will still typically mine it themselves... unless of course they're already rich enough to own mithral, then they should be able to just buy it outright.  Crafting should offer a player cheaper prices and a leg up on the competition, not negate all competition in the world.  We keep complaining about too much gold in the world, then we force everybody to craft everything... that means gold doesnt vanish, it changes hands.  You want it to vanish?  Make more basic gear shops with outlandish prices but convenient delivery times.

[s0ulz]

Hey all

I wanted to toss a couple more ideas out and see if they were possible for here. The two ideas kind of go together.

1. Teleportation (for all characters). I had this idea after my second all nighter going after things in The Deep. And the impending "LOOKS" i keot gettig throughout the following days by my wife.
In EQ2 everyone had the ability to use a spell called "Call to(your home city)". It was useable once evey 45 RL minutes. Would something like that be possible here? But probably on a much longer re-use timer? Or perhaps teleport locations in the world you can go to rather than spend hours and hours retracing your steps.... the in game teleporters ties directly into #2

2. Zone Lock Out timer. A zone lock out timer would be for say places in the deep or dungeons etc. What it would do is once you have been to said zone. Once you leave you cannot return for "X" amount of time. That would depend on what the zone was all about. Say anywhere from 8 hours to up to 24 hours or more if the team saw fit lockout.

Why add these ideas? I dont believe every player has 4 to 8 in a row to spend at their PC and make an attempt at getting Mithril, or Emeralds, or say some really awesome dungeon way off someplace. These ideas would allow them to get there but esentially taking the round trip time and cutting it in half. And because it is now so much shorter... adding a lock out timer would keep things in check I beleive.

I believe both of these ideas are possible with NwN. Certain classes in the game can teleport already. And we have zone lockouts that are tied to level, or if you have an item in your inventory. So I dont think it would be too tettible difficult to make a working lockout system (lol yeah I say that from the outside looking in)


Thanks

G-452

Both I'd consider MMO terms and functions that don't fit well at this stage of NWN Layonara. I'd move this to MMO suggestions to make sure something similar is implemented. NWN has never been the most user-friendly game especially in multiplayer modes, so I'd rather spend the manpower put behind a similar function in the MMO.

[lonnarin]

Oh! and to avoid abuse, put a timer on the emergency teleport just like in WoW, 1 hour realtime.  Even have it add the no-xp skin that you get after dying.  This keeps them from crafting or hunting during that downtime, and lets them come back after solving a RL issue.

[lonnarin]

People need to be able to leave the PC if their baby's fussy, their child needs discipline, their spouse wants action, their mother wants them to clean their room, etc.

Ah, and in Pseudonymns case, this would read "People need to be able to flee the game if their spouse is fussy, wants action or wants them to clean their room, otherwise they risk being disciplined.

[Guardian 452]

Exellent points brought up by both Ravemore and Lonnarin.

I am a fortunate player in that at times I can devote 4 to 8 hours to sitting at my PC, so I am rewarded by being able to go get mithril or emeralds or whatever.

How many else here can say that? Is that fair? IMO, it isnt.
Do players here with less time to play have just as much right as I do to try and get mithril, emeralds etc?  absolutly!

Allow characters to teleport once every so many hours, days whatever the team finds as balanced.
Allow zones of high value CN, Items, etc to be on lockout timers. If needed 24 hours or longer.

The playing field has just been equaled.


G-452



.

[Dorax Windsmith]

Great discussion, I like the ideas here but I also see where this could become another possible exploit.  

The questions now are:

1)  Is there enough time/interest left in this server to develop/implement these ideas?  (The Team does so much already - Thank you!)

2)  Can the community appropriately use what would be implemented without it becoming a discipline problem?

Personally, I think it would be great to be able to potentially cut the trip time down when needed.  I know there are a lot of people that can't/don't go to the Deep because it takes too long, this would give the option.  To address the issue of encrouching on the Mages Tomb, the general player versions could be restricted somehow....time was already mentioned (once per RL day would be appropriate I think), but maybe something like it only ports to one location (say the server entry point), then it wouldn't be as useful or as flexible as the Mage's Tomb, but it would allow a safe port when you just don't have time.

[Hellblazer]

I just mined 200 nuggets of mithril and got 25 emeralds... Now all I need to do is use my scroll and I'm safety teleporting home without any danger....don't think this would work, just too unrealistic, even for d&d

The teleportaion tome, dissalow the toming of encumbered people. So That could work in the same way. It just need to be copied over, have a timer of usage added to it, and voila! The big difference between the Branch for the druid, and the teleportation tome of the wizard, and this system, would be that The the one of the druids and wizard wouldn't be impacted by the timer set on the one that every one else would have. So they do not lose the prestige of having the branch or tome.

Both I'd consider MMO terms and functions that don't fit well at this stage of NWN Layonara. I'd move this to MMO suggestions to make sure something similar is implemented. NWN has never been the most user-friendly game especially in multiplayer modes, so I'd rather spend the manpower put behind a similar function in the MMO.

We already have half the system in place for the zone lock out timer that can be cannibalized and reversed.

The zone lock out timer as I was discussing with Gurdian could work in the same way, but in reverse of what the Fort of kings uses.

To enter the fort of kings you need a tome. If you don't have the tome you can't enter.

But now lets reverse this.

You go mine emeralds. Now lets say that we remember the rules of no more than three pass at an cnr zone (and the same with logging in and logging out when you mined, only 3 times from the rules), then you put the lock out timer outside of the safe zone where the player rests.

When the player enters the locked area, an invisible item gets added to your inventory. That item has a life expediency of let say 24 RL hours for this example. If you have the invisible Item and you try to enter the zone locker area that the item is made for, after leaving it, then the system doesn't let you enter, giving you a message stating that you have this much time to wait before you can enter again.

Once the counter reaches 0, the invisible Item gets taken away, and you can enter that area again. Being that the lock out timer "sensor" would be placed outside of the area where the player can mine and find a safe place to rest. It would allow them to go at that cnr 3 times, but then they would have to leave, and the zone locker would be effective.

Toming out of the area would do you no good, as you would already have the invisible item on you. And if someone was to set the Teleportaion tome to bring them to the cnr, I'm sure it can be edited to prevent toming in a zone locker area.

Now the only thing I think could be a problem here, is if there is 100 people with different HIGH CNR counters going off all together. Could potentially be a problem.

[Acacea]

I liked the talk of leaving and resuming trips from established camps. Like leaving bookmarks on the way through the longer hikes. Yes, you can change everything to be one hour, or you can split the longer ones into one-hour segments that people can do over time, or pull an all-nighter if they choose.

Some of my favorite trips have been those that broke off at an agreed campsite, did not play the next day, and all resumed from there the next night. They were less rushed, had camping hang-out times, and fewer strand massacres near the end when everyone has to get up in an hour.

The reason I have only done it a very few times is that it's hard to all get together again to pick up. No one wants to wait that long to play their characters just to continue a trip, even a good one.

I don't want everything to be just an hour in and out, and I do like the longer ones, but as an example I couldn't take everyone through the Deep on a trip because I know I couldn't get them back out without completely sacrificing the whole point of going. I know, we've tried in other places. What happens is you get people that aren't used to going on longer trips, that misjudge the time they have or, more importantly, the time others have to show them around, and go at a snail's pace because walking is good roleplay and ultimately blame people going too fast for deaths when most of the time the ones blazing through are trying to save everyone's lives because they know how long it takes... and it takes a long time.

We know this guy's kid is sick and could wake up any minute, the other's wife is due home and he was supposed to paint the living room, this chick has to be at work at 4am, this guy's wife is going to be ticked if she wakes up at 2am and finds him drinking while playing video games, and this one's dog hasn't been on a walk since noon, and more importantly you know that the one with the sick kid is the one you absolutely cannot get through the last area without.

Yes, a lot of it is based on out of character issues, but that is because it is ultimately Player Consideration. I've seen a lot of GM grumbling about the pace of trips and I really think some perspective is in order - either shorten the trips so the players behind the characters can afford to Walk Because It's Good Roleplay, or (better, to me) add more safe-stops and the ability to return to those as a party.

Personally, even though it requires scripting and tweaking and some imagination, I would rather still be able to get a group of crazy people together and try to pull a 6-8 hour all nighter... and then in more sane times, be able to pick up where we left off for a pace more suited to having a job, a spouse, kids, school, or whatever else is applicable. Maybe it's something more suited to an MMO suggestion, but I still think it could be done in NWN. Those long trips are some of my favorite in the game, and I'd hate to see them chopped to pieces for the sake of expedience. Most just don't have the time to do them all at once.

-----------------------

On the subject of location binding and hearthstones, if they are used I think they should have an equal or greater level requirement as the caster teleports, and have a quest to acquire them. Going only to a single location is a possible compromise, and with a quest in mind it could be related to that location.

Of course, I don't think that something like location binding is a concept that can be casually and only partially implemented, because it affects a lot of things and brings up a lot of questions, so it would have to be carefully thought through. For example, what if you never gained the ability to bind to any location you chose (save for the caster teleports), but gained different locations through quests, be they static or GMed? Or rather than gaining the same static location as everyone else, you have a one time "set home" use that then cannot ever be changed?

There are enough pros and cons that I'm not sure if I agree with the thought, and like I said, it's not something you can really just casually agree to, but there are a lot of things that could spring from it that might not have Apocalyptic Consequences.

My only other comment regarding the thought of an item that could act as a location bind is the sudden potential to have an IC Gem of Remembrance.

[Hellblazer]

I'm not talking of location binding there Acacea. I'm talking of Preventing it to prevent abuse of using the teleportation tome to get back into a cnr zone. Also we are not talking of making long trips a 1 hour trips. But take the mithril and emerald run. If you do both in the same trip it takes up to 6 to 8 hours to do it. It's long, fun but long, and not every one can go because it's toooo long for the time they can allow to play. That's why if you give the player some tools to reduce it, more would probably enjoy those trips. Even if you put that system in place. It would still take 3 to 4 hours to get down there.

[Acacea]

I was not responding to your post. I was responding to the topic. Since I was typing a lot here and there over a long period of time, you had not yet actually posted when I hit reply. I'm pretty sure I also commented on possible tools, rather than arguing against them for the sake of preserving long trips.

[Hellblazer]

Yep I saw the tools I was just making sure that the location binding wasn't what people understood of my post.

[Dorganath]

I know it is only a partial answer, but the Deep actually has several relatively safe locations. I counted 4 or 5 on the way from emeralds to the surface, and one even had an actual "safe rest" area.

So it's more than possible to break up trips to the Deep or other long-haul areas.  The group just needs to agree and plan.

As for the rest of the topics here (and the original post), all I'll say is we're monitoring this discussion.

[Acacea]

I think the rest of that point was missed, which is the ability to go back to those areas next Saturday.

[Dorganath]

I think the rest of that point was missed, which is the ability to go back to those areas next Saturday.

No, it wasn't.

I just didn't want to get into how utterly exploitable that sort of situation could be.

[davidhoff]

I actually like the fact that a trip to emeralds or mithril takes as long as it does because it is the main deterant to over mining.  If it was possible to get those items quicker then the rarity and value of those items would fall drastically.  I think most people could set the time aside to go after them if they really, really wanted to and if they had a good group to go with.  It just takes planning.

If you don't want to make the trip then you will simply have to pay for those resources to those that do make the trip.

If you get into the trip and you have an emergency or a problem come up and have to log, then you can always ask for a GM port, tome out, log off in a safe area and ask for a GM port the next day or arrange for a rescue party at a certain time.

I think if you take away the length of the trip, then the spawns that guard it should be made more powerful to balance that and keep the precious rare items like they are.