AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

Updates 4.07 onwards wrote:

Due to the amount of issues raising dead in the Entry area has caused (such as people changing servers and abusing the system, thus wasting DM time), Raise Dead and Resurrection are now disabled in the Entry.

Does this mean that people who die and can't be raised (because of the death timer) before Reset, just boned and forced to respawn?

(I guess this really only needs to be a yes or a no+explanation answer. I'm not looking for answers on anything but this - I'm well aware of the reasoning for and against the actual implementation of the disabling.)

Reasonably confident that the answer is yes. Your only recourse is to be very careful hunting just prior to reset (but accidents will happen, I mean everyone forgets the reset timer one time or another).

On a related note (and I'm not trying to open discussion on it but since we're here), is it just me or did the PvM death's no-raise period increase? Had a party member die and I'm sure it was closer to 5 minutes than 2, but I could just be hallucinating...

serbiris wrote:

and I'm sure it was closer to 5 minutes than 2, but I could just be hallucinating...

Probably just time being relative, but I know exactly what you mean. It seems to take forever, and my memory keeps trying to convince me it wasn't usually this long.

Not sure i like this change... Especially since i run on a crappy internet and my game freezes all the fucking time.

Sounds troublesome. If you die due to freezing (my internet throws me off occasionally), pvp, DM event etc. and people aren't quick enough to res you, you are screwed. It is easy to lose track of time and I doubt that groups notice reset coming up in the heat of the moment.

Regarding death, I hear that after 5 mins of death in a pvp scenario, you can press the respawn button and not suffer any of the normal death penalties. Is that true?

I do believe that you shouldn't be able to avoid the death penalties by switching server and so on, for the record.

Good change. The amount of abuse and arrogance I've seen from the allowance of entry raising has been massive. Well done team Amia.

Hooray for forced respawn!

it's a good idea. but hooray? naagh.

Not that the opinion of the community really matters here, even if it should, but I will still toss my two cents in here regardless. For one I believe that it will reduce soloing and promote group hunting. In a group lag spikes, bad luck or just being lazy for a moment are not very dangerous. I know three of the "boss-hunting celebrities", and myself who solo(d) a lot just did not respawn when the amount of gold you are carrying makes it inconvenient. I think the change is great, even if it has a few flaws. I am sure it was not decided on a mood swing either, but three things that stick out to me I want to mention:

1.- Clearly this is the second step of the staff to try to create a better economy and to encourage party hunts. As long as it is kept in mind that with such an old game you do not want to alienate players by making the server more sensible, while in doing so take the hobby-fun-past-time-aspect out of it, then I am good.

2.- The server may have 20-40 people on most times, but the characters are spread apart wide due to the lack of a central active hub. On Amia A you got people in Kohlingen, Bendir Dale, Amia Forest, Cordor, Tarkuul, Winya Ravena, Triumvir and the Shrine of Elistraee. This does not even include factions like the Order of One or others who are behind locked doors. Because of that, even with use of the party ball, it is often hard to find a party. Hence soloing is sometimes your only choice - because of that it should not become impossible, as that will just create frustration. During the last days I did not find a party in range to hunt with Isabella, and because she can not solo I was lucky enough to have a high-xp and gold rewarding job system job. Others will not have that luck if they have jobs like Templar or Minstrel.
-> Perhaps forced respawn only for characters above level 25? (imo, will not make leveling harder then and the real gold influx comes 25+. Once you hit 25 finding a group is much easier as well.)

3.- What worries me though is the possible grievances that could occur due to pvp death shortly before reset. A good portion of the community are already grumpy when they lose in pvp writing any excuse to limit their "failure" or even starting fights due to rule slip ups, even if there are none. Hence I would really like to see is a script that raises all pvp-ed individuals if the server says "reset in one minute". I think that will reduce the potential to sour pvp arguments.
- 1 Min to Reset -> Script Fires Up -> Check Status Of Characters -> Dead? -> PVP? -> True Ressurection
- Other idea: pvp token - if you have it in the entry, you get auto raised (This may be better as crashes too are safeguarded against)

Ulir wrote:

It is easy to lose track of time and I doubt that groups notice reset coming up in the heat of the moment.

This raises a valid point.

What do you guys think about say, having the last 3 minutes counted down not only in the combat messages (which are very easy to miss) but perhaps sent in a Tell or even an OOC whisper (from "yourself" so it would also appear over your toon's head) stating the "countdown".

I think it should even be possible to do this only for PCs that are in combat at the time.

I'm not saying this will or will not necessarily happen, just throwing it out there as an idea for now.

Glim wrote:

Ulir wrote:

It is easy to lose track of time and I doubt that groups notice reset coming up in the heat of the moment.

This raises a valid point.

What do you guys think about say, having the last 3 minutes counted down not only in the combat messages (which are very easy to miss) but perhaps sent in a Tell or even an OOC whisper (from "yourself" so it would also appear over your toon's head) stating the "countdown".

I think it should even be possible to do this only for PCs that are in combat at the time.

I'm not saying this will or will not necessarily happen, just throwing it out there as an idea for now.

I think this is a good idea. 5 minute whisper warning + 3 minute whisper warning. Sometimes you are caught in a battle at minute 3, and do not have time to raise with the 2min cooldown.

Honeydew Snugglepoof wrote:

Hence soloing is sometimes your only choice - because of that it should not become impossible, as that will just create frustration. -> Perhaps forced respawn only for characters above level 25? (imo, will not make leveling harder then and the real gold influx comes 25+. Once you hit 25 finding a group is much easier as well.)

I don't see why. If you take a risk and die, that was your choice. If you go somewhere dangerous without sufficient protection (buffs, summons, party), that was your choice. I hardly ever do those things, but in the last month I've done them with both two of my PCs (30th & 8th) and died both times. My stupidity, I pay the price. If you want to gain xp or gold without risk, stick to easy monsters or the job system.

Death should have consequences.

Answers for Gabe:

1) Its not actually, the fact that soloing now has a drawback if you die is just a side effect of fixing a system of abuse that we really should have fixed 5 years ago. We are a party oriented roleplay server, and having the in entry raises encouraged soloing.

2) When ever I see someone stupidly log out after soloing and wait for 40 minutes to get a free entry raise I face palm. In forty minutes you could step down a couple of CR and earn back triple or four times the amount of your xp and gold soloing. Your actually looking at it from the wrong perspective, the reason we are over factionalised is because it is so easy to create a character and get it to level 30 with zero risk soloing.

3) The PvP death token should already happen? If it doesn't thats an oversight.

Glim wrote:

Ulir wrote:

It is easy to lose track of time and I doubt that groups notice reset coming up in the heat of the moment.

What do you guys think about say, having the last 3 minutes counted down not only in the combat messages (which are very easy to miss) but perhaps sent in a Tell or even an OOC whisper (from "yourself" so it would also appear over your toon's head) stating the "countdown".

If you dont notice the bright yellow text because you're in combat, you're not likely to notice a hard-to-see grey text, IMO. If you're pushing the reset to try and whore that last little bit of xp or that boss drop, you're taking chances. I realize reset is an OOC thing, but I liken it to the movie scene of trying to defuse the bomb with 3 seconds left on the timer - you're in a very tense situation and if something goes wrong you won't have time to correct it. Sometimes excrement occurs and it's not under your control.

The bright yellow text gets eaten very quickly by the mass amount of spam that is combat text though.

And most people have their whisper text set to a color other than grey. Also in combat people tend to be watching their character, so if (as long as they have chat overhead text enabled) it's whispered from "yourself" then it'll pop up right over the toon's head too, in plain view.

The status of whether or not you're entitled to a free respawn due to PvP is recorded at death. It persists between resets (you have been reading the update logs right?) which means that the worst that can happen is that you end up waiting for the respawn timer while you're in the entry area.

Honeydew Snugglepoof wrote:

Glim wrote:

Ulir wrote:

It is easy to lose track of time and I doubt that groups notice reset coming up in the heat of the moment.

This raises a valid point.

What do you guys think about say, having the last 3 minutes counted down not only in the combat messages (which are very easy to miss) but perhaps sent in a Tell or even an OOC whisper (from "yourself" so it would also appear over your toon's head) stating the "countdown".

I think it should even be possible to do this only for PCs that are in combat at the time.

I'm not saying this will or will not necessarily happen, just throwing it out there as an idea for now.

I think this is a good idea. 5 minute whisper warning + 3 minute whisper warning. Sometimes you are caught in a battle at minute 3, and do not have time to raise with the 2min cooldown.

I like this too. The combat log is busy when you are in combat. A tell that pops over your head would be really neat. Great idea.

Possibility for Staff consideration I assume NWN1 can do this with scripting if you wish it but others may cry immersion breaking. NWN2 is such a POS when I was playing on a server, before I nearly threw the game in the trash, they had to perform hourly reboots. To help warn the players they'd have a countdown of the final couple minutes a gong-ish sound wound chime and a cursor spell like icon whatever the hell you call it would surround each character briefly like the cursor that surrounds your character when you get dinged for a dream coin but these were red or yellow and larger so you'd notice them much easier. They'd cycle at the top of each minute for the last 2 or 3 minutes before the reboot and once at the 5 second mark. If you couldn't hear and see that and adjust your play and RP accordingly, I'm sorry for ya.

And I've had just as hard a time finding parties as others, I've died many times at the hands of my own stupidity. I'm not sure if it gets logged or not but I'm fairly certain I've never logged out dead unless it was via a crash or due to a reboot so I would be one of the players that would be hit by this change and I welcome the change after seeing many a raise in the login room. You die, I'm all for laying there and praying someone will happen by and find you (respawning before a reboot of course). Sometimes it pays off, sometimes not. If it's not, whether you are solo or another total party kill.. hit that respawn button and pay the ferry man!!!

666WaysToHell wrote:

Hooray for forced respawn!

Honeydew Snugglepoof wrote:

Glim wrote:

Ulir wrote:

It is easy to lose track of time and I doubt that groups notice reset coming up in the heat of the moment.

This raises a valid point.

What do you guys think about say, having the last 3 minutes counted down not only in the combat messages (which are very easy to miss) but perhaps sent in a Tell or even an OOC whisper (from "yourself" so it would also appear over your toon's head) stating the "countdown".

I think it should even be possible to do this only for PCs that are in combat at the time.

I'm not saying this will or will not necessarily happen, just throwing it out there as an idea for now.

I think this is a good idea. 5 minute whisper warning + 3 minute whisper warning. Sometimes you are caught in a battle at minute 3, and do not have time to raise with the 2min cooldown.

I think server messages may be set to your chat window if combat log is devouring and drowning them in the window... So that isn't much of an issue(unless I am wrong ^^).

fairdady wrote:

Possibility for Staff consideration I assume NWN1 can do this with scripting if you wish it but others may cry immersion breaking. NWN2 is such a POS when I was playing on a server, before I nearly threw the game in the trash, they had to perform hourly reboots. To help warn the players they'd have a countdown of the final couple minutes a gong-ish sound wound chime and a cursor spell like icon whatever the hell you call it would surround each character briefly like the cursor that surrounds your character when you get dinged for a dream coin but these were red or yellow and larger so you'd notice them much easier. They'd cycle at the top of each minute for the last 2 or 3 minutes before the reboot and once at the 5 second mark. If you couldn't hear and see that and adjust your play and RP accordingly, I'm sorry for ya.

The problem with any visual effect unfortunately is (especially for higher level parties) all the other visual spell effects that are blasting around your characters and the battlefield. It would be easy for "just another VFX" to get lost in the maelstrom.

Be afraid to die.

So, the answer is original question is "Yes"?

Alright, thank you!

LetumLux wrote:

So, the answer is original question is "Yes"?

Alright, thank you!

Sorry for hijacking your thread

I think what you need to do is just get into the habit of stabbing the rest button and cancelling out of the rest menu to see how long until the next reset.

*stab stab stab*

Good thing too, have seen several instances of this lately where someone claims they died on the other server during reset getting someone to raise them. Then someone else checks forum timer and informs the now-unwitting-accomplice that the other server had reset about 2 and a half hours ago, and as they went about trying to explain to the player (who was relatively new, not brand new, but relatively) He hopped back to the other server and we informed the DM who was above at the time.

It's been a long time coming and, i hope like most people, it won't really effect me.

For the most part I agree with and like this idea. My concern is lagdeath. It happens alot to me, due to playing on a wireless internet connection. I've also found with playing a shifter, that you can randomly explode and die for no particular reason. Beyond the shifting when at low HP killing you, it's happened that a few times after porting with 100% hp on one server, to find myself dead on the other server.

I'm happy to pay for death when it occurs IC, or from silly mistakes, etc. I don't like paying for it when the death is the result of some lag spike, bug or glitch.

Gobbledygook wrote:

I'm happy to pay for death when it occurs IC, or from silly mistakes, etc. I don't like paying for it when the death is the result of some lag spike, bug or glitch.

That.

Plus, it's awkward to figure out what happened to react to it ICly.

"Oh yeah, I just happened to stand there there like a moron for eight whole rounds while my NWN client (not that I know what that is) chugged up. That's totally in character for me, I do that all the time. Derp McHerperson, that's me."

Or

"I sure don't remember these monsters being able to be so glitched invisible that See Invisibility doesn't work, my player can't see them, or their names, or select them to attack them at all so my only recourse is pretty much to die there or run away, then die while running away because of a million attacks of opportunity."

So, why can't you have a script that sends anyone who is already dead, no matter what server they enter, to the Salandran temple hospital ward. Or why not to Igor at Moribund? Or some place like that. Maybe based on alignment? If you're drow/duergar/schmurf or whatever, send them to an appropriate Underdark place like Underport. This would remove all stiffs in the entryway, give the salandrans or other good clerics a new role, or maybe it's their old role that really make sense this way.

-No more abuse of entryway raise and no dead bodies to walk by when entering the game
-Give good clerics a role as helping clerics since they can wait at the Salandrans/Underport to help the dead ones entering the game
-Give evil players a chance to plunder the bodies as graverobbers would do
-Give partymembers, who know that they left a fallen comrad on the ground at reset, a chance to find the dead and raise him/her.

That's exactly the same as the problem we had before, except in a different location.

PaladinOfSune wrote:

That's exactly the same as the problem we had before, except in a different location.

No, in fact it's not exactly the same:

The system is possible to abuse because there are two different servers and two different places you'll end up dead in. I.e. if mean orcs kill you in A, you can just log into B and wait for some kind player to raise you. Or if you die in A, you can just wait for reset and and get back after it and wait for some kind player to raise you in the entryway.

With my Idea, if you die in A, log and wait for reset, you'll end up among the Salandrans. If you enter before reset, you'll end up among the orcs (as it is now) but if you try to enter B, you'll automagically switch server (as you do when using the ships) and end up among the Salandrans in A. (Or Underport, but you follow my thoughts I hope).

This means, you can't just wait for mister no name to enter Amia and ask kindly for a raise 'cause no one will see that you're dead. The only one seeing your dead body has made an active choice to travel to the place where your dead body turns up. If you were in party before the reset and died, there is an RP reason for the party to come and get your dead body and raise you. Both Salandran temple and Underport are quite remote places where very few people come to for any kind of other reason.

If I look upon my own gamestyle, I always raise unknown people in the entryway. I feel as if I am a better human being by helping those unfortunate. If I don't see them, I would never even be presented by the choice so I wouldn't raise them, and I assume more than I think this way. I play say 1-5 hours / month since I have a family and a job and just don't have more time than that for computergames. If I die during that narrow "gaming window" I usually just clench my teeth and log in disappointment. Next month, when I return to Amia, I end up dead in the entryway waiting for some kind person to raise me. Of course, I can hit "respawn" but for me, it's several months play to regain the xp lost, so I avoid it as much as possible. If my body ended up in the Salandran ward instead, I could make it an RP event by using another character and trying to find a cleric or other player that could follow me to the temple and help me raise my fallen character.

I don't think you understand what was changed. You -can't- be raised at entry anymore. That was the change. It's actually not possible to cast the spell or read the scroll. it's not just a rule change, it's a mechanical change.

swe_west_coast wrote:

If my body ended up in the Salandran ward instead, I could make it an RP event by using another character and trying to find a cleric or other player that could follow me to the temple and help me raise my fallen character.

That's what's called metagaming. You can't do that. You can't jump on another of your PC's to get other people to come help your dead PC. Your PC's aren't allowed to interact by the rules for these kinds of reasons exactly.

Hey if you want to cheat death, set the ship to self-destruct and tell the Klingons to beam on over. It worked for Kirk.

This server is getting more and more interesting. Saddly I can't play as much as I was used to be.

The solution should be found for the metagamers who switch servers but with this respawn-or-pray-that-someone-comes-along-before-the-reset system, you will have people ask their buddies on msn or wherever to "hop on and go hunting in that-and-that place". This will cause more damage metagaming wise than the previous system.

Bottom line if someone is breaking the rules and swapping servers for a raise use the banhammer and be done with it. Make an example out of such people becouse they are the core of the problem, not game mechanics.

Or, if you stop hunting before reset, you have no problems. Granted, I still have hunted until reset, but that was with my mage that wasn't taking damage and the rest of the group was murdering everything. Still, things happen, and it would have sucked for them (or me, I guess, somehow) if they would have died suddenly. The only accidents that can really happen is if the server crashes. But typically if it crashed, you are likely to log back in alive, since during a crash the server doesn't save your character (unless it saved after your death and before the crash, of course).

The change is really not that big of a deal, and it relieves the DMs for needed to ban those people.

The thing is that they may be relieved to ban them for swapping servers, but on the other hand, people who are ready to break the rules by swapping the server, will break the rules by doing something else and ruin the experience of other people.

That's a good point, though I still stand by what I said before that. Mosh put it really well in his post up above, and heeler touched on it.

That was the other issue as well, people that would solo and expect to get a free raise after reset. Or that would log out and then come back it. That's hard to track as well, unless you have everyone report every person you raise, or have the server log everyone that shows up in the entry dead. But, then, you have to account for people that died in a crash or something like that. Plus then DMs have to check logs, which is not fun lol

Hell, I once logged into a char dead, went 'wtf when did I die?' in the entry, laughed about it for a moment with a few people that were there, and then respawned. That was before the change, even. The only thing that sucks about respawns is the gold loss, anyways. You can usually get the XP back in fifteen minutes hah.

I think this is a really good change, and is going to do more good than harm. It quickly identifies this sort of behavior as against the rules, so metagamers are going to have to resort to other methods to cheat the system. Sure, it's gonna happen, but I think that this will cut down on it significantly.

I speak, of course, as a person who's died in the reset and by lagging out as well.

Dead wrote:

The thing is that they may be relieved to ban them for swapping servers, but on the other hand, people who are ready to break the rules by swapping the server, will break the rules by doing something else and ruin the experience of other people.

How does something you don't know about ruin your experience in the least?

Well that's the thing, if someone dies and they don't want to just lay around waiting for someone to happen by and raise them, they're going to start sending Tells to players to arrange a raise. In other words, they're going to be a nuisance instead of taking the hit and then approaching their hunting a bit more cautiously.

I'm not wild about the current respawn penalty either but it acts as a deterrent to players who would just chuggalot and do a suicide charge. So unless a reasonable alternative is found, it stays.

Eh... take it or leave it. It neither greatly changes roleplay nor truely hampers powergaming, and even then its of such trite value that as I said before "Eh.". Neither worthy of zealous contempt or fawning praise. If the dms are happy, then well enough. If a player is angered, death really doesnt cost that much xp and gold is plentiful at the levels where this truely affects you.

Selmak wrote:

I'm not wild about the current respawn penalty either but it acts as a deterrent to players who would just chuggalot and do a suicide charge. So unless a reasonable alternative is found, it stays.

My question, posed to a developer, is: What is the purpose of the respawn penalty? If the purpose is to deter a set of behaviors - in this case, 'chuggalot' - then my next question is: Why? Defenders of the change have argued that it's a minor penalty, so why try to dodge it? If it's such a minor penalty though, why all the consternation if someone dodges it? Why does it anger a player if another player doesn't pay the two coins to the ferryman?

This is settled law, so I'm asking hoping the discussion will inform future considerations. When I think of the top ten things that ruin my RP, someone cheating the death penalty doesn't even come to mind - I honestly can't care less because we all end up at 30, one way or another. I wish the time spent discussing and arguing about raises in the entryway, and the time spent enforcing it and then writing and implementing this script, were spent on things that actually improved RP. I wish that time was spent encouraging the positive things going on - giving ad hoc events to people who RP while hunting, running events - than were spent trying to squash the few people who break the rules.

Let the morons who break the rules break the rules. This is a PvP voluntary server, so what's the worst thing they can do to me? Kill monsters faster than me? I'd rather have DM's hunting for people to reward with fun things than hunting for rule breakers. I can't imagine DM's wouldn't rather be doing that too.

Your questioning a mechanic integral to the function of just about all video games with unlimited respawns? No stop, that is trolling in league with my own trolling and I won't have it.

There is more to changes implemented on Amia than simply protecting and improving roleplay, there are the classical components of a hack and slash to uphold.

Quote:

Let the morons who break the rules break the rules.

When you ignore little rules being broken, people start breaking the big ones. You enforce all of them or you don't bother making it a rule. You do your job right or you don't do it at all. No halfassing.

The no-rez on entry is good. Everyone takes the same risk, so just don't hunt right before reset if you want to play it smart and avoid risk. In the end, everything balances out because it applies to everyone. At the heart of this debate is gold, and it just seems that many people can't handle an increase in chalange.

TYP wrote:

My question, posed to a developer, is: What is the purpose of the respawn penalty? If the purpose is to deter a set of behaviors - in this case, 'chuggalot' - then my next question is: Why? Defenders of the change have argued that it's a minor penalty, so why try to dodge it? If it's such a minor penalty though, why all the consternation if someone dodges it? Why does it anger a player if another player doesn't pay the two coins to the ferryman?

It's not about 'ruining RP', and I don't understand why people this the respawn issue had anything to do with it. It was about enforcing rules. You wouldn't believe how pissy people get about respawning. I have seen a player literally bitch and moan in party chat because they had X amount of gold and didn't want to loose it all and didn't want to loose XP and blah blah. Hilariously, by the time they finally respawned they triggered a spawn again and immediately died again.

TYP wrote:

I wish the time spent discussing and arguing about raises in the entryway, and the time spent enforcing it and then writing and implementing this script, were spent on things that actually improved RP. I wish that time was spent encouraging the positive things going on - giving ad hoc events to people who RP while hunting, running events - than were spent trying to squash the few people who break the rules.

This. This right here is, I'm sorry to say, stupid. Flat out stupid. You do realize that the DMs, for the most part, do not do the coding, barring a couple cases? Conversely, the Devs have nothing to do with DM events. Not to mention the incredibly small amount of time, I'm going to wager a few minutes, that a script change like this would require. There was already a script that limited what spells you can cast in the entries, how hard do you think it was to have it include all spells? So I'm not really sure how the hell you think that this detracted from running events. And, before you claim that the forum-debating detracted from such things, how do you know that the sparse DMs that commented were able to be IG when they were on the forums instead? Frankly, your assumption of how such time has been spent is ludicrous and borderline offensive.

Bini wrote:

Your questioning a mechanic integral to the function of just about all video games with unlimited respawns? No stop, that is trolling in league with my own trolling and I won't have it.

I hardly doubt it, Bini. You're trolling isn't even that good to compare to.

Okay let's put it another way, if players suffered no penalty at all for respawning, then there wouldn't be much incentive to spend gold on buff potions or even bring a caster along to do the buffing. Partying would be pure and utter chaos.

I am in 100% support of disabling rezzing in entry on one condition - I would like to see the option to return to the spot where I died, dead. If I want to wait several hours for someone to find me dead, I'd like the option to do so. Even servers with much harsher death penalties, such as Ravenloft, have systems in place to accommodate this.

I am in 100% support of disabling rezzing in entry on one condition - I would like to see the option to return to the spot where I died, dead. If I want to wait several hours for someone to find me dead, I'd like the option to do so. Even servers with much harsher death penalties, such as Ravenloft, have systems in place to accommodate this.

That's a nifty idea, and it would actually allow your party to fight back to recover your body as well after a reset/crash. Which I think would enrich RP all around.

Re: Update 4.07e, Rez in Entry Disabled

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