Alternative to removal of max hit points
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I have thoroughly enjoyed coming back to the server. All these are simple observations I've made in the last few weeks. Thanks for doing what you do.
Some of these have already been made - just summing up here:
1. HP should be max at level 1, then 1/2 hit dice + half. e.g. wizard=1d4/2 +2. That makes it always a 3 or 4. Rogue=1d6+3. That's always a 4-6. It gets rid of the total randomness but keeps it from being maxed out at level 6, you could have a rogue range from 26 to 36. Acceptable to most.
2. Lower AB/AC on baddies in quests but make slightly more of them, whose AI is smarter and chooses targets more wisely. This reduces the need for consumables, and allows each character's specialty to come to the battle. Right now, people rush rush rush through to combat because they are on the consumable clock. If you make consumables less required, you can make them drops on quests and increase their price in stores. Balance.
3. DM narrative and spice: love love love RP challenges and problems, with cost-benefit and some combat - vice spawn-fest. When a character dies during a DM quest, or spice - it should not feel like it was because they were overwhelmed with monsters and ran out of consumables, it should be because they made bad decisions or it was simply part of the process of questing. Dying from spawnfests, well now, that's not fun. Always provide a way out.
4. Lower xp gain if you want levels to drop, but do so with moderation.
5. Remember, your balance of the game should be appropriately managed with the current player base. It's a lot more difficult to play on the server if there are 5-6 players average logged in, vice 20. You can make adjustments moderately. It's like steering an aircraft carrier - you don't usually start to turn until well after the rudder is changed, and gradually.
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with lower player numbers the amount of dm attention goes up, and they will naturally be drawn to those people actively doing stuff (who will often be the higher level characters because mechanics allow them to do so to a greater degree) and then those characters will gain DM xp which is actually the main way that high level characters progress.
so a reasonable way to help slow the growth of high level characters is actually to not hand out as much DM xp, much as I know that that is counter intuitive being as the characters just ran rings and jumped through hoops for the dm.
A recognition of the player and the character from the DM via tell "that was awesome the way you did xyz" "remind me to find you to follow up with this event with something to aid your faction/a meeting with an NPC" " this is a good stepping stone to your goal because XYZ" will go as far if not more than "DMgranted xp 250xp" in the message bar.
of course the consumable use etc for players/characters should be taken into account but as was often said you quest for consumables and gold to spend in DM quests. It isn't about making a profit but making an impact I think that is most important.
TL;DR stop handing out DM xp as freely, as high levels benefit most from this.
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I want to discuss something I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is how to apply lateral balancing to CoA.
The idea behind the concept is that because a thing is considered 'too strong' that the direct nerf isn't always the best solution. Mostly because it is really hard to find that perfect balance that doesn't either completely ruin what you are trying to balance, or it just doesn't do enough.
Because games that use this approach to balance their games often have a lot of moving parts that interact with each other, these small lateral changes can have a huge effect on gameplay, without breaking what made that element unique.
When looking at something that is broken, it pays to take a step back and look at all the variables involved, not just the biggest numbers. In this case, it seems that people are a little too tanky and that is causing some problems in regard to managing levels.
So there are a few options available, and all of them are separately viable and in a few cases could be applied together to create the desired effect. But the key to this is small steps, something that the DM team has historically struggled with greatly.
The first option is one I've already stated, and gone over my reasoning. High level consumables should be a tool that evens the odds, not something that creates an insurmountable mountain of resources like they currently do. Low level or staple consumables such as bark, shield, and pfe are not the problem, and removing them would cause more problems than they fix. Consumables such as heal potions, Ethereal Visage, premonition, and other high level spells should probably be exclusively DM loot, not something you can just buy with coin. Specifically I would limit the availability of higher end healing, but also the other more higher end consumables could stand to go. I think most of the more mechanically proficient players agree with me.
The second option is the buffing and implementation of evocation spells into more quests. This is probably the choice that goes best with another one, as they would most likely be something as simple as buffing one spell per circle. This has an effect on quite a lot of the server, it makes pcs with evasion much better (rogues and monks in particular, who probably need the buff) it makes wizard/sorcerer npcs more dangerous, and it helps caster pcs in pvp, though I would suggest that the spells chosen be ones that can be readily countered if prepared.
The third option is to reduce pc save progression slightly. I am not sure if this is something that is even really possible, and is not something I really actively support, but there are several avenues in which this can be approached.
Either the base save progression of most classes needs to go down, or the availability of flat save bonuses on items needs to be heavily reduced. Both is also possible, though I would try one before implementing the other. Focusing more on specific saves (mind affecting, poison, disease, death, that sort of thing) to make people less generally invulnerable and more specifically resistant. I am under the impression this is something the DM team wants to see happen anyway, and I think it would be a good change to affect survivability of pcs in a way that is still fair, which I think is what we want to aim for.
All of these things are possible, though I might say that trying to implement all of them at the same time would be a mistake. I truly think that the right way to do this is going to be the long difficult way to do it. The easy way is going to cause a lot more pain and misery than if we do it the right way.
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Its been a long time since I have logged into COA, the main reason being RL and lower player count at my time zone both reasons fall under uncontrollable factors. That being said, I wish dare to put my two cents with limited understanding on roleplay, due credit to COA community which shaped my understanding on the importance of story telling over mechanics and character development. I remember the server of Arabel being a rich city under purple dragon control, then the phoenix legion, to Zhents, Redharts and then Rift, complete destruction…the shade got darker and darker, as if DM's wanted the fantasy setting to be as realistic as possible...kinda remember a game that was released in 2015 named Darkest Dungoen where stress level in Dungoen crawling can give you boosts and quirks along with a very dark setting.
Two things
The degree of reality in fantasy setting
I want to point out here as each character I created, I wanted it be remembered and a hero, which naturally means I wish him to survive the odds, now if you want the fear of death and survival to be an important factor while being an adventurer, I do not know how logical is it to expect that kind of reality to be incorporated in a fantasy setting, Dungeon crawling in its base version and in many single player mode has the story revolve around the player character as he becomes a epic character and so the technicality was designed keeping this in mind, I do not want to get into loot level, magical items, potions etc...its far too complicated for me to calculate the balance and my IQ is not that high, all I know is that I just want to have fun...I wont be lying scripted quest with random characters have been more fun and less stressful for me than playing a story telling character who often dies...I remember few really good players cause of the scripted quest I have gone out with them and end up feeling really great...yes I agree I am a commoner in real life and my escapism is to immerse into quest that makes you look like a hero...I know many players and DM where so convinced to remove the +1 loot and making crafting as hard as possible to make the setting as realistic as the world we live in..naturally bringing in the stress level and hard reality that you wanted to escape at the first place when playing these fantasy games and yes I hate dark setting with dooms day this coming sunday
Having fun and recognized without being a Leader
The characters I cherish over the years are very few...may be three...a PD, RH and a paladin of Kelemvor. All these characters required me to be a leader, take initiative, involve as many characters, many hours of plotting and rping...these were memorable moments with its added stress, back then I was not that career oriented and no demanding kids. Its not fair to expect that same level of reward while playing casual characters, going out on scripted quest, so it makes playing less fun when you cannot put amount of time it needs for a remembered characters.
In sum up, I would love to login, do some scripted quest, have some fun rping with characters with a sense of escapism from my real life and even if its for few hours, want to feel like a hero, but it disappoints me that a certain way of playing needs quest to be nerfed, rewards to be curtailed, things to be earned over time, whether that certain way of playing can be accommodated in my current life style is a big question, may be this is a reason why I do not play COA these days I am look for instant gratification, its awesome but demanding
Forgive me for my ranting if you feel its out of context and not in line with the expected playing style, as I said I am thankful to COA, the DM and Players and grateful to the community for what ever limited understanding I have gained on the subject
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@cadiz_stoker:
A recognition of the player and the character from the DM via tell "that was awesome the way you did xyz" "remind me to find you to follow up with this event with something to aid your faction/a meeting with an NPC" " this is a good stepping stone to your goal because XYZ" will go as far if not more than "DMgranted xp 250xp" in the message bar.
This. I just wanted to quote it to show that I agree with this 100%.
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This is going to be entirely anecdotal, and as such may not be relevant to the decision, but I've had a character that I've played fairly actively for a week now. Much of my time has been spent in hours where I've been alone on the server, or one of two people. I've so far managed to die and respawn 8 or 9 times in the level range of 4-7 and I'm still close to hitting 8. Max HP and a ton of consumables helps to keep people alive but the point I've been trying to make is that even the people who die all the time level up really really fast.
So my belief is this: sure, removing Max HP might make people die more, lowering consumer amount definatley will make people die more. None of this will stop them from levelling back up to 8+ just as fast as before. I'm perfectly fine with removing max hp and I'm heavilly in favour of dropping consumable amount, I'm not remotely convinced we'll see much of a change in the time it takes to level up. This is why I believe adressing the XP gains is a better option.
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Who really cares if an average level character that does average things has a shit-ton load of whatever? Nobody does, or at least I've never seen anyone really care.
Who really cares if an above average level character that does average things has a shit ton load of whatever? Nobody does.
What people care about is when a high level character, that nobody has ever heard about, all of a sudden decides to be some sort of force of will on the server because he/she is high level.
We used to have an increasingly steep XP curve and DMs seemed to be active in curbing the influence of above average level but below average notoriety/fame characters. That worked out fine. For players who grew up slow and were about the character and their story (which the game clearly stated it was about), leveling slowly was just the way things were, but it didn't prevent you from telling your story until one of the "who are you" and you're kicking my ass with ease characters showed up to "wtfpwn" them because they could.
Figure out what you want the average player level to be. Have it really easy to get 2/3 of that. Have it fairly easy to get that level, hard to get two levels past it, very hard to get two levels past that. Then, cut off all but a minuscule amount of XP that can be had by player action alone. Make them "earn" their XP by being awesome characters, not being awesome button mashers. The ones that don't like that will go join an arena server. The ones that do, seem to be who you want on your server.
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Make them "earn" their XP by being awesome characters, not being awesome button mashers.
This. This basically characterizes so many of my feelings. We're becoming more and more an action server over the years.
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After being gone for years and returning I too would like to add that I was super surprised how many level 10+ were running around. There was a time that only those that dedicated alot of time and effort into long term characters were reaching that kind of level and they were well known for holding positions that actually matched their mechanical power.
A small suggestion and one that will no doubt be unpopular; Level Caps. I remember a DM saying a while back, if you're a level 10 Retainer of a Noble then it's probably time that you start looking towards moving on and doing a bit more. Once I hit level 5 as one of my various Militia Private PCs I'd rarely quest at all. And I think with my Sgts and Minor Noblemen I tried to hover around the 6-7 mark. These days I see the majority of the server around level 7+ despite some of them not even playing "main" characters.
In my opinion, it doesn't make much sense for there to be level 8 Militia Privates. Level 10 Retainers or Level 11 Conscripts.
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Remove xp rewards from lvl 8+, have xp after that point dm event and plot related. Quests after this point can give more gold and/or loot than lower level quests to make them worthwhile (if they don't already).
I tend to avoid rabid questing after around level 8, but I'm finding I need to in order to get gold to spend on smithing, and the consumables I will need should some murderous dm event come along. A byproduct of my quest for gold is xp.
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I recall my level 9 cleric couldn't defeat a fighter in a combat in which he was paralyzed for over 14 rounds because that fighter had 160 health. Since when is that a reasonable thing? We have 2 handed weapon characters and characters with 10 or 12 constitution tanking instances incredibly well with no real investment towards their survival.
There are SOOO many more factors in an encounter like this. What was your AB? What was his AC? What buffs did he have? How much damage did you do? Was he concealed? Did you have Blind Fight? DR? DI? What level was he? With 160hp… lets see. d10, 14 Con, toughness.. that's 13/level. Would require Level 13 to break 160hp. Even if he had 15 Con.. He would need to be level 12 to break 160hp. With Level 12-13 comes a pretty massive amount of loot/gear, especially if you earned the bulk of 12-13 from DM related plot events. Mind you 13 without significant DM involvement is VERY difficult. So is 12.
So you went against someone with 30% more levels than you, probably much better loot than you, and didn't manage to drain 160hp in 14 rounds and the conclusion is ignore all other variables and blame Max HP fault? That's a bit of a reach. Then it moves from that to, "If you don't believe me I'll make a min/max build to munchkin as much HP as possible to prove it's a problem because I can make an extreme example that exploits it."
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I like when we claim that levels do not matter, because it reads in truth that levels aren't amongst the more important things on a roleplay server. Now setting level caps would go against that.
It wouldn't make any sense to stop a running story because my rival managed to hit level 10. I don't want to go and wrestle a grizzly nude just to avoid my char get retired.
Also, with the 40% (was it?) XP penalty on death it makes zero sense to try to relate the character level with the game-world position, as I can enter a quest where you can't come, and leave it as 2-4 level lower and roleplay it as getting knocked out twice.On the top of that, there are secret agents in prison in real life. I suppose they are pretty high level, right? Convicts none the less. What's there to make a high level low rank char insensible?
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I recall my level 9 cleric couldn't defeat a fighter in a combat in which he was paralyzed for over 14 rounds because that fighter had 160 health. Since when is that a reasonable thing? We have 2 handed weapon characters and characters with 10 or 12 constitution tanking instances incredibly well with no real investment towards their survival.
There are SOOO many more factors in an encounter like this. What was your AB? What was his AC? What buffs did he have? How much damage did you do? Was he concealed? Did you have Blind Fight? DR? DI? What level was he? With 160hp… lets see. d10, 14 Con, toughness.. that's 13/level. Would require Level 13 to break 160hp. Even if he had 15 Con.. He would need to be level 12 to break 160hp. With Level 12-13 comes a pretty massive amount of loot/gear, especially if you earned the bulk of 12-13 from DM related plot events. Mind you 13 without significant DM involvement is VERY difficult. So is 12.
So you went against someone with 30% more levels than you, probably much better loot than you, and didn't manage to drain 160hp in 14 rounds and the conclusion is ignore all other variables and blame Max HP fault? That's a bit of a reach. Then it moves from that to, "If you don't believe me I'll make a min/max build to munchkin as much HP as possible to prove it's a problem because I can make an extreme example that exploits it."
I could list the stats out. in a PM. I feel I will drag too far away from the current topic of conversation however. Send me a PM, and I will give you the stats.
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To be frank i'm going to add my two cents into this. i point i think people need to understand is that with any game nwn WoW Secret world. Your going to get an advance in average player level the longer the server goes on for. in CoAs case its a few levels but an average of 3-4 levels higher over a period of 12-13 years is not bad at all. The reasons for this are as such
1: increasing the stats on loot: back when i started i had to save up to get a full plate on a character. And finding just a mundane half plate was hard in itself. Normally most people ended up saving up the 800-1000 gold for a full plate by grinding quests. A +1 full plate was like omg thats awesome. But now they can be found and bought. If you want to go back at anytime and look what used to be op on the server just go and see the two shops that show players the old faction gear. You can see the progression of just how more powerful loot has gotten over the years
2 more quests: As time goes on quests are added and removed. But the fact remains is that no matter what you guys do. Less xp, removing max hp. You are always going to have people grinding quests until they are powerful. This in the end is a game and when people arn't doing anything or preparing for a dm event in which they know they might die. They are going to grind levels. Its common sense and what people will do in any video game because they dont want to die.
3 supplies: most people and the ones with title and prestige. Are going to have a lot of loot and consumables. Again this happens when you grind out and save up. high skilled players are going to have a stock of supplies always on hand. And will target quests that give mostly consumables [shamans mask and other quests like that come to mind] and to be fair that is fine. There are a lot of other games that do this. but it does contribute to people who have the money and the know how to play those quests properly to get the items they need for pvp
in the end im looking at this not as a balancing issue but as the natural progression of a game and a server. I know people who are game designers. I know people who work on MMOs they can tell you that these factors in any long lasting MMO will contribute to a games level progression. I am not saying that the servers level need to progress to 40 but as new things are devloped in game for more powerful items you need to look at it from a different aspect. Such as in real life the march of time goes on and humans get access to more powerful weapons and things to kill each other. So instead of looking at what you can do to keep the levels down. Why not look at where we are lacking in other areas in this new level climate and balance for that.
One of the points I have seen is the classes that cannot take out the others. There are feats and spells that have long been nerfed to balance out for a server population off 55/55 and an average level of 6-8 perhaps we should revisit those things and take a second look. im not talking about making everyone super op. but the problem we are running into seems to be is your trying to balance backward and not forward. Minor nerfs are fine when something is way more powerful then other classes however, when you try to nerf everything in an attempt to keep the level down you are going to run into this problem. And at this point if you want to relive the the old days of CoA then the only way to do that would be a total server reset back to the start of Arabel and CoA
TL:DR Balance the server for what its at now and dont try to relive the old days of the sever.
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In response to RabbitTRK's post, (and I agree with the points made, which I sumamrize here)
- Loots has increased 2) grinding 3) supplies
All 3 of these increase "stuff". #2 increases stuff and XP. It is XP that determines the levels, feats, the skills, the individuality of characters (at least according to the character sheet)
But the increase of lootpower and supplies outstrips the increase in levels, so it just comes down to who has what loot.
Balance the server so the levels are higher, to match the loot level.
- Loots has increased 2) grinding 3) supplies
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The quests that I have been doing, are more challenging now, than they have been in my entire time on COA.
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My god Durmoth and Gypsies.
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Quests are very hard. Orc quests, goblin quests in general are murderously hard.