Just some general stuff I've seen so far.
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So I've been able to play on the server for about a week stretched out between work. For the most part I think its a pretty good server and everyone is going in the right directions for an RP server. I did note some things about it you may want to consider.
I've seen some lag here and there. Some in heavy encounter areas like the ants. That's mostly obvious. If you scale back the number of creatures by one (instead of 6-8 say 5-7) that may help out a lot.
The builders do a great job of simple areas with few placeables for the most part. inanimate placeables will not add load to make the server lag but they can screw with area load times. You all don't have to worry about that. Very well done.
I have also seen lag in areas that had little in the way of encounter spawns. Most of those are in tilesets I do not recognize. A suggestion would be check those tilesets for the TGA or DDS skins and the number of pixels each have. That can have a huge effect along with general polygon count of an area within the tileset. Also any suspisious tilesets I would put through old mans beards tile editor. That may help a lot with some of these tilesets. it will fix rounding errors and a host of other things.
I do not think you use jasperres ai or you have fixed it for TMI's. Jasperres is notorious for them. I used to use it but with two scripters fixed the problems with it back in 2006. As I've observed you have no problems with yours. But have noticed some general and persistant bugs with general ai bug in the forums. like the invisibility bug. Very common bug.
The server has some large areas. try to keep them to a minimum. I wont make an area for a pw more than 144 tiles in total. This will keep general area load for the server down to a minimum.
I'm not sure about the max level of 10 although I have heard that may be a soft cap and you can go to 11. Maybe, Maybe not. I do like the feel of it though. It feels a lot like 1rst edition tabletop which is my favorite edition.
One of the things is I was able to go from 3rd or 4th level start to 7th down to 5 and back up to 7 within 2,000 of 8th. in a week. That's a bit fast for my liking. I like time for other players and dms to mold the pcs though events and rp. when I go onto a server I usually expect to make 20th level in 9 months to 1 year. so I think you could slow your xp output some. Being theres a 10th level cap is beyond my experience in NWN though so there may be something said for how you do it.
Dms and admins are great. keep doing what your doing. Very welcoming to new players. Kudos to all of you. Players are in the end your customers and you have to keep your eye on that. I think the team does that well and its important.
Just some suggestions from an old an cranky Dev. Take it as you will. I'm really enjoying the server and think your doing really well.
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@Winterhawk99 said in Just some general stuff I've seen so far.:
I'm not sure about the max level of 10 although I have heard that may be a soft cap and you can go to 11. Maybe, Maybe not.
Once you hit 11, you are bounced back to the start of 10 again. This keeps 10 the hard cap.
@Winterhawk99 said in Just some general stuff I've seen so far.:
I do not think you use jasperres ai
I don't think so, either. Does not sound familiar.
@Winterhawk99 said in Just some general stuff I've seen so far.:
I have also seen lag in areas that had little in the way of encounter spawns. Most of those are in tilesets I do not recognize.
Can you list the areas so I can hunt down the tilesets?
@Winterhawk99 said in Just some general stuff I've seen so far.:
I was able to go from 3rd or 4th level start to 7th down to 5 and back up to 7 within 2,000 of 8th. in a week. That's a bit fast for my liking.
Fast for my liking too, but trying to balance levels with keeping players happy isnt the easiest at times. I remember the days where 14 was cap and it was a milestone to reach 10. Now players can reach 10 in a month, depending on playing style/timezone/event availability. It kind of makes me a little sad, actually.
@Winterhawk99 said in Just some general stuff I've seen so far.:
Dms and admins are great. keep doing what your doing. Very welcoming to new players. Kudos to all of you. Players are in the end your customers and you have to keep your eye on that. I think the team does that well and its important.
THANK YOU!!
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@Winterhawk99 said in Just some general stuff I've seen so far.:
I have also seen lag in areas that had little in the way of encounter spawns. Most of those are in tilesets I do not recognize. A suggestion would be check those tilesets for the TGA or DDS skins and the number of pixels each have. That can have a huge effect along with general polygon count of an area within the tileset. Also any suspisious tilesets I would put through old mans beards tile editor. That may help a lot with some of these tilesets. it will fix rounding errors and a host of other things.
Turning off Grass in your video settings seems to largely fix this (though it still isn't perfect.)
The server has some large areas. try to keep them to a minimum. I wont make an area for a pw more than 144 tiles in total. This will keep general area load for the server down to a minimum.
This is a design concern as well as a hardware/software concern. Most of these areas have very little reason to be this large because they are largely devoid of any real purpose or content. In addition, some of them tend to use their huge areas in ways that make them very unfun to visit. Turning them into one huge hallway with no real feel of exploration other than just moving forward. The design of most of the areas outside of greater Arabel tend to function this way with very little openness or connectivity between areas the further you venture from the city.
I'm not sure about the max level of 10 although I have heard that may be a soft cap and you can go to 11. Maybe, Maybe not. I do like the feel of it though. It feels a lot like 1rst edition tabletop which is my favorite edition.
One of the things is I was able to go from 3rd or 4th level start to 7th down to 5 and back up to 7 within 2,000 of 8th. in a week. That's a bit fast for my liking. I like time for other players and dms to mold the pcs though events and rp. when I go onto a server I usually expect to make 20th level in 9 months to 1 year. so I think you could slow your xp output some. Being theres a 10th level cap is beyond my experience in NWN though so there may be something said for how you do it.Setting the hard cap at 10 was probably the best decision. Some classes (Casters in particular) start to really break the game when they hit that magic level 11, so keeping everyone on a relatively level playing field is a great call.
The way we handle XP is a little strange, being that once you hit 8 or so your XP gain basically stops dead and your only real source is DM XP, Crafting, and the XP granted at the end of quests. This basically means that people who are able to attend every DM event in the span of a week can hit 9-10 very easily, but those who don't see much DM activity end up suffering because of this lack of action.
I'm not super sure what the point is though, having a hard cap AND and XP penalty when you get close to it seems redundant, and gates off the highest levels to those who either push themselves through crafting or get a lot of direct or indirect DM attention.
Metering XP gain across the board for all levels but in a less extreme way could help solve that problem, extending those lower levels a bit while making the highest levels a bit more available to players. I'm still not convinced that this is a good solution at the moment though until the lower level content gets better.
There's other methods, but I'm not sure I like any of them. I'm not a fan of starting any lower than we already do for instance. 4 is a great level to start at, giving players both a little more room for conceptualizing their characters while also skipping the worst parts of leveling up on these servers. Pushing that limit back seems like it would be a mistake.
Dms and admins are great. keep doing what your doing. Very welcoming to new players. Kudos to all of you. Players are in the end your customers and you have to keep your eye on that. I think the team does that well and its important.
