Pointlessness of unscaled CARES
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So, to try and get myself in the mood to play again while thinking of a concept, I log in to wander about with a existing character.
As it had little gold, I took the 5-star quest to get some.
Sure enough, on the way back, CARES spawns 4 Gnoll Veterans and 3 Gnoll Trackers right on top of me.
A level 6 fighter died in the beginning of the second round, before I could hit any hotkey (whether invis, imp expertise, or healing)CARES being unscaled, especially on ROADS (this was at the stream just outside the west gate) serves only three functions:
1. It drives away new people due to pointless overwhelming death
2. It makes people scared to explore
3. it promotes powerbuilds if you want to survive travel in a small party or at lower levels.As we're talking about ways to get and keep people…. Either scale CARES to level of people in the area or get rid of it on major roads.
while it may have served a useful purpose when we would have 20,30,40 people playing... Now it serves only to cause frustration. -
Unless the gnoll veterans detection range -still- hasn't been fixed, you have to leave the 'safety' of the road to fight those dudes as they don't spawn on the road itself. That's pretty much how it is everywhere.
In order to make every spawn scale on the server, it would require someone to go through every single spawn point on the server, and replace it with a new one, or at the least change some variables/tags. It's a butt tonne of work.
CARES basically works by a DM setting the base level of the spawn, and it can scale up, sometimes, from that level. The chances of it scaling one level are not that low, but after that the chances get insanely small. If you think a particular area has spawns that are too hard, or positioned slightly dodgy, then report those. It would take a massive amount of time to change all the spawn points dotted around the server to scale directly to the level of the characters triggering them. You should always get a chance to flee though, as you can see enemies before they can see you. (except in the case of a bullette or something, perhaps, as they detect your vibrations)
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gnolls wander way far from their spawn point
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Gnoll trackers and veterans do seem to have a very high perception range.
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I droppped the veterans perception to a grade lower than it was. Didnt know about trackers.
Also should have fixed those teleporting gith half dragons in that nasty quest. Probably.
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It's not just the half dragons on the scrambled eggs quest, it's all mobs in the area. Perception range seems to be the entire screen, meaning if you stealth on them, when they spawn, they'll just port to a random party member instead.
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It might be the way the teleportation script works, though I will drop the perception range on all the monsters that have that ability.
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All CARES encounters scale actually by default. Almost all "road" areas were set up to have encounters between level 1-5.
We use to have a few scripted "friendly" road encounters too, but someone removed all of the blueprints for that–-which made roads a little more dangerous. Possibly, they added in a few poorly thought out spawn options too.
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I bet they didn't document.
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All CARES encounters scale actually by default. Almost all "road" areas were set up to have encounters between level 1-5.
We use to have a few scripted "friendly" road encounters too, but someone removed all of the blueprints for that–-which made roads a little more dangerous. Possibly, they added in a few poorly thought out spawn options too.
I KNEW IT.
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Just remove silly stuff like dire tigers, half-orc bandits. Or at least, if you spawn something, spawn something with loot. Dire wolves really hurt, and do nothing but kill you or eat your gold.
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Just killed two for 56 XP each on level 5.
Dire tigers can be tamed.
Half orc bandits are… I have no idea if they have loot. -
They drop some coins.
But the spawns used to be a lot tougher before. To me it is a relief when you see a group of orcs/gnolls/odd giant.
Makes me feel I am in Arabel. ;P
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The problem with these types of enemies is that for anyone who isn't a Ranger/Druid/Cleric it's a losing battle. It means exploring as a fighter or barb by yourself is a very expensive proposition because it costs more gold to heal or protect yourself from encounters than you get back.
Which is fine. That's frankly how it should be.
The roads are almost always safe, which is the important part.
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make good use of healing kits and get others to use them on you so you get enhanced healing on resting. or use the baths/springs to achieve the same end… keeps the costs down!
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I would like to propose a new thread:
Pointlessness of the pointless of unscaled CARES
As they are scaled…