Seriously Frustrating Deaths
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I am staring at my screen, and I can physically feel my chest tightening with frustration and anger. I woke up today at 12am and explored and quested until 9am because I live in a timezone that is terrible. I took a nap and tried to do some exploration points with a friend due to the server being completely dead. Three Cormyrian Mountain Bears basically took four seconds to ruin and waste 9 hours of my life.
These spawns are not fun. These spawns are not nice. They are unrewarding to the player when the player wins, they are severely frustrating to the player when the player loses. They contribute nothing to the server. Nothing. They are unbalanced, and punish players with sub-optimal builds, new players, low-level players, and poor players. The not-so-new AI, which can sometimes see and react faster than players can, are absolutely deadly on certain creatures. They discourage travelling, discourage exploration, encourage powerbuilds, encourage blatent metagaming and basically prohibit low Timezone players like myself from enjoying the server solo or in small or sub-optimal parties.
I have too few fingers to count the number of times this has happened to my PCs, dying such deaths because the server was empty, or no one was responding to sendings and I had four to six hours free. Enclosed is the app I've been working on for some time, which I have just now been curtly reminded is not feasible. I feel almost silly for having spent time writing it.
Please don't tell me to take a few days off and come back.
Topic Title:
1. Janni/Ranger/Bard/Rogue/TN/Keldraav
2. Janni Subrace /topic/9233, basic adventuring gear
3. Thune, Kraegus Thune, Syndra of the Sacellum of Fury
4. One of the rarest creatures in Faerun, Keldraav has, aside from his parents, never seen another of his kind. Born in the Magocracy of Hulruaa as a guest in the Sapphire Synod of Halarahh, Krldraav has always been consumed by a natural curiosity, and a desire to explore distant lands and discover new things. Yet as he grew older, he also realised how extremely lonely he was. He desired to find one of his own kind, a mate which he could take to wife. Wandering many lands, he searched in vain for one such as he, and finally, consumed with disappointment, he set to kill himself, convinced that he would die alone. It was an epiphany that stayed his hand. To search fruitlessly by oneself was not the way. He would become one of the Great Explorers of the Era, famed throughout the Land. His name would be spoken in taverns and festhalls and palaces across Faerun, and his wife would come to him, for surely, there is someone out there, someone like him, who is lonely.
5. 1. The Great Explorer
a) Keldraav seeks to explore every cave, every quest, every area, every mountain, swamp, desert and valley.
b) He will form or join an existing group, with the goal of completely exploring the server in its entirety, mapping and creating a "The Complete Guide to the Arabelese Wastelands"
c) He will sponsor or encourage the production and documentation of all magical phenomena in Arabel, creating a centre of learning, compiling "The Mysteries of Mystra, Arabel Edition"
d) He will seek to gather sufficient Mythalite and magical artefacts to form a Minor Mythal for Archmage Aldek, in order to unravel the height of Elven and Netherese Magic.
e) He will seek to introduce a new magical method, that will allow for recharging wands and staves through the use of Mythalite Dust, which is ground up Mythalite. A special "Kaleidoscope Alter" would be needed to be made via adventuring and gathering of a wide variety ofspecific reagents, metals and minerals, hence Kaleidoscope.
f) Create a Explorer Repository which has all area maps, a Creation Repository which lists every single craftable item and its properties. -
The spawn you ran into is rare, but sometimes no matter what you do, a character dies. Bad rolls, bad spawns, bad lag. The DM team all play characters here too, we all run into these spawns ourselves. My PC died last night to a phase spider leaping from behind a wall, rolling well while I rolled a 1 on a Fortitude Save.
That said, if you view 9 hours wasted because you lost so XP, then it feels to me like you're forgetting what this game really is about–the interactions with other players for those 9 hours you were online that were hopefully fun but admittedly feel lessened because your character suffered a set back.
As for the application, since you went ahead and posted it publicly, maybe I could explain the problems with it? If you don't mind, publicly.
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I tend to find that after the first or second deaths, quests that are performed are generally the same old favorites, done as quickly and continuously as possible, in quest trains, to grind back up to the point where death occurred. I believe this is more than commonplace. During this, there is very little actually enjoyable player interactions.
The Application is designed on an idealistic scale. The goals, in general, were about the journey rather than actually accomplishing anything. Feel free to go ahead explaining it. Its very very rare that I get a point by point breakdown on applications
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Thune, if you're just grinding the same quests, that could by why you're bored. I've been doing lots of little done quests lately, its fun. The same ones over and over are boring, the upshot of ME doing the little done quests is that I am also then fixing problems I find as I go along. Maybe I should form a quest testing team. Friday EST mornings free for anyone else?
I'll hit the application later. I'm at work right now, but heck, if you're open maybe it'd be a good way to approach this. People just don't get the application process, maybe its too oblique.
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If I end up doing the same two or three quests every reset that's usually the first sign that I'm doing something wrong with my char and need to spice things up.
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Also those bears do actually have something of use now. Leather/Boneworking items can be made from them. Including the (previously much covetted) +1 Con boots.
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and there is a bounty attached to them too. though only 50gps a kill.
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i have some similar complaints as thune; however, as far as dying to spawns, i found a rogue ranger (or just ranger) can potentially sleep when necessary without much money, and can sometimes track to find monsters etc before bumping into them, so when i'm like three giants over there? large animal? ok i will avoid there or approach with caution… although i've completely stressed over a couple of oxen or deer in east before.
faerydae showed me something pretty interesting when choosing to be de-leveled back to first level from 9th or so... in this game, with the lower player base now, it is possible to get isolated based on being out of level range with other pc's you can quest with, etc. people can always start a new first level, and maybe get to third fairly quickly, but the high level spots, and tougher quests, will tend to be more rare, etc.
so if you have the time to quest a lot, and you're enjoying the story, and you have other people to play with, what level you are is not as important - the dm's can make pc relevant quests as easy or as hard as necessary to keep them interesting - so staying in a level range that is fun for your character may be more interesting than climbing to the top quickly and then being out of step with the rest of the server, albeit maybe you can start pwning other pc's or creatures etc.
I feel like the high turnover, and lack of ...persistent characters from which to... go to for various game lore in game... has led to a lack of... precession... or like inheritance of past wisdom/goals/ etc. there is some good in that, people get to try something new. but a balance is important. in complexity science they talk about being on 'the edge of chaos' is where the most fruitful growth happens... stable enough for things to become more complex, by dynamic enough for things to evolve.
i don't play that much, and sometimes i play at odd time when like nobody else is on. sometimes that is not as fun. I've taken to mostly trying to do weekends when i am more free, and then potentially schedule events or things with other players during the week, or kind of like solo quest grinding with low level characters, crafting, etc in the more off hours. sometimes i bump into others, or a dm event, and jump on, or rp a bit, but i find that shorter and more focussed gaming is more fun for me anyways... and then there is the forum stuff that needs to be kept up with to build connections, plot etc if you are not consistently in game with the same people, etc.
in short i have no solutions, except to not bang your head against a wall while continuing when it is becoming less fun.
even tho it is a game, these are real people behind these characters, and when we forget that, we can hurt people and their fun in our own frustrations.
speaking from experience where I was bored or tired and played to long and maybe spoiled the fun/immersion for some people sometimes although sometimes crazy is fun too O_o