AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

"But what if we did this, would that make "hunting" more fun?

Random Spawns - Each spawn would have a small chance (1% or less) of spawning a creature from a neighbouring area. I.E, Ice Manticore in Brog Eastern Wilderness. There could also be a batch of special "Roaming Monsters", related to regions, such as "UD", "Desert", "Snow", "Forest" that could spawn on an even lesser chance. There could also be "Roaming Merchants", i.e. "A Sembian Merchant" could sell som special stuff, and the chance of spawning him could be like 0.00001% or something. I dunno. There could be "Roaming Adventure Parties", a whole get up classic NPCs that make out an competing adventure party that would attack you if you were a drow or a smartmouth or trade with you if you were a more diplomatic human, for instance. You could have the opposite in the UD, of course, "Roaming Drow Patrol" or something.

You get it, I could go on and on. Yes, this would lead to unfair deaths, but mostly for soloers, and I think that is better than the current system, where you almost never have to leg it, because you know so damn well what's up head in the dungeon. " End Quote

Just restating a segment of Kjetta's post from another thread due to the utter radness of the idea. This would make scouting more important, it would make plain old traveling more exciting and nervy. It would make Amias ecology and sociology more realistic. It's a plain brilliant idea. Let's get a movement for change on this one! We can! Not been so enthused about any other Amia related idea in ages. I think this idea is gold.

Biased poll options for the win. For those of us who are legitimately interested in what other people think, I fixed the options from "Yes", "Yes", and "I'm dull" to make them less fallacious.

It would be neat, and there's a system out there that will let us change the regional spawns on the fly and based on the time of day as well, but it's sort of experimental and generally isn't tooled around with as it makes pan-reset changes. We could mess around with that more often, I suppose.

Of course it's an awesome idea!

Whether there is the developer time to implement it or if other things take precedence is another story. But it would certainly be cool.

Leggomi Eggolas wrote:

Biased poll options for the win. For those of us who are legitimately interested in what other people think, I fixed the options from "Yes", "Yes", and "I'm dull" to make them less fallacious.

It would be neat, and there's a system out there that will let us change the regional spawns on the fly and based on the time of day as well, but it's sort of experimental and generally isn't tooled around with as it makes pan-reset changes. We could mess around with that more often, I suppose.

As long as it doesn't make 'night time = everything's undead' >.>

Awesome. I'll implement that right now.

Woot! Salandrans will be in paradise if the night of the living dead comes forth.

That'd be great ... I stated my support when he posted it in the ... anti-Heal thread I think it was, but I'm not sure since it semi-derailed.

I do like the idea, as I like the idea of items in the loot bins shifting about a bit. I just wonder about the implementation. Does each area need a bunch of variables listing what other areas are adjacent? Or can that be pulled by a script from the transition tags or something? If one script can do it all without needing to code variables for each area, that's awesome. Otherwise... sounds like lots of work, but still awesome!

The reason I ask is, what's adjacent to, say, the Fire Giant throne room? Everything else on that level? One level up? Anywhere in the Spires? or anywhere on the mountain peak?

i would assume it would be limited to 'wilderness' areas. otherwise undead from the manor would be running around Kholingen

How about adding random double spawns as well, for that added bit of challenge.

I'm not sure if challenge was he point. More about making it more interesting. After all, maybe a goblins scouting party managed to stroll around unharmed in the orc territory, or maybe not even sneaked, maybe just befriended them.

Or at least, that's what I'm voting for.

If it's another reason to make people have to power-build in order to have any sort of steady experience, I'd change my vote to "No". But I don't believe that's the case.

sounds fun and interesting.

I find that groups of enemies outside of their normal hunting zone don't add so much diversity if there is only a small chance for them to spawn anyways.

I like the roaming monsters idea, and I like the idea to randomize and juggle it up a little. Though on the flipside you already have slightly irrational combinations of enemies that have no trouble teaming up against the PCs. What I would like to see, for example, is..

You have palettes like there already are with many kinds of opponents. Archer, Fighter, Mage and a couple of others. BUT. You have it with a randomized table. The table looks at the level of the critter. Orcs for example have in their melee table:

- Battleaxe + Shield
- Light Flail + Shield
- Greataxe
- Heavy Flail
- Two Battleaxes (with TWF and Ambidex hardcoded on one of them, it's easier than juggling stats and feats on the critter)

Now for level 4 Orcs the table determines that their weapons are all +0. The table also determines that their Shamans will have two level 1 spells and one level 2 spell. These spells are also randomly chosen from a list with the "Spells for Orcs" descriptor. Now if we encountered a band of Brogendenstein Orcs, the table would determine that they get the same kinds of weapons, but adds to that the properties +3 Enchantment and Keen, or +3 Enchantment and 1d6 Elemental. The Brog Shamans would get two spells each of the levels 4, 5, 6 and 7 that match the "Spells for Orcs" respectively.

These are just examples. I've never balanced critters in NWN. The point here is that you encounter Brog Orcs and you always go for the Warlock or Shaman first, depending on what kind of character you have. Because you know that the 'Lock will soon toss a Delayed Blast Fireball and you know that the Shaman will cast a Storm of Vengeance. He'll also heal himself if he has to. No two spellcasters should be entirely alike. It makes no sense that they are and it makes things very predictable if you know the area.

Don't know how feasible this idea is from a scripting and lag point of view. But I've seen stuff like this in other modules, offline training ones and also action servers.

If it's spell selection that sets casters apart, then you either need an AI that doesn't choose spells predictably, or a way to block NPCs from casting certain spells (so that you the designer can cheat and use one palette creature as more than one caster of the same race, instead of having more than one caster on the palette which can cause confusion).

As far as weapons go, it's probably easier just to supply the resref of what you want to arm them with and if it isn't to be droppable on death, make sure and set that flag.

I'm neutral on this matter.

In terms of challenge, I find there to be more than plenty as it is when trying to make groups and find a zone that seems agreeable. This alone can mean running into areas where we nearly wipe, or experimenting for two hours in places that are "okay, but we could find better".

I'm not sure if I like the idea of random merchants though. I mean, unless the cost of stuff offered will stay the same [no special discounts because it's a traveling sales person] I suppose it'd be alright. But if the lootbins start to get randomly sold so you don't have to hunt for it? *Kicks what player economy there is out the door* ... Yeah. I see it becoming a big hurt. Even at low probability, with the number of spawns easily seen per-reset, the merchants would probably be findable. Say, as infrequent as those "glowies" who are "miniboss" or whatever dubbed. It'd have to be far less frequent than that unless the sold items are just what can be found in common locations of other given NPC merchants. [IE, Cordor, Kohl, Whaftown, locations easy for underdark character (don't know those towns yet)]. NPCs out there selling stuff that are meant to be a bit more work to find the items of need to stay that way. And I know that isn't the issue discussed, yet.

If anyone followed that.

And I don't think it'd be that fun to be out with a new character trying to bop a goblin when an orc runs over and slays me [or worse, a whole orc spawn]. Or more mid levels, fighting a beastman and a minmir bridge mage starts launching spells. Or vice-versa, a beastman on the bridge?! What, the ogres are suddenly less territorial? Obviously places for this would need to be reasonable or it'd be a painful "that doesn't even OOC work for IC" experience.

I can't say about later-level stuff. It might be good there since characters are going to be better prepared [how else would they make it past level 15 or be a leech who deserves to be hit?]. And I picked level 15 because that is the farthest I've gotten yet on any character.

Having been on this server for as long as I have, I can honestly say I'm bored of killing creatures which is why I don't do it often anymore. For players in the same position I am, this idea wouldn't really make much difference: we'll still be bored of spawn bashing.

For the newbies though, whatever floats their boat.

Don't care for making things harder or more challenging. We play heroes, they are supposed to be able to mop down hordes of demons without breaking a sweat.

I like being able to steamroll most spawns easily, and not having to ''leg it''. And anything that brings unfair deaths into hunting is meh.

I voted yes, as I would have no objection for the idea being implemented, but I think it would mean a truely mad amount of work on the developers side to get it all to work. And god only knows the number of bugs it would bring about.

Still the idea does have its attractions *submits vote*

Gods. I feel obliged to disagree with this.

It's obviously a great idea, and a lot of work to implement properly. Some of the options are almost impossible to do, for instance true random spawning (you don't want to spawn on top of a cliff, and you don't have any way to make sure you don't unless you define the spawnpoint).

There also is no way at all to define 'neighbouring area' without making a matrix of neighbouring areas. It will be 600 x 600, and you don't get any array structure to make it with. Good luck!

A reminder: I will not let any poll dictate my agenda, and making them just risks annoying me so much that I won't implement a good idea just because I am annoyed by what I see as raising popular pressure. I don't fancy that, I already got a girlfriend.

1% chance means nobody will ever notice anything.

I think you fail to consider how many spawns are spawned on Amia each day. IMO, it should be even less likely. What's the chance of the glowing sub-bosses?

I probably kill 50 spawns a day when I'm in the hunt mood. Many kill more, some don't kill at all. But yes, it would happen quite often.

Speaking of randomization, no clue if this idea is even doable or not, but just throwing it out there.

Mazes. Yeah, I know we have the Electric Castle and the Minotaurs, maybe a couple others... But after a couple go-throughs, most people know how it goes and they really cease to become mazes. So would it be possible to make a maze area that kind of randomizes at each reset?

It could be a regular maze, with parts that get randomly chosen, though I'm not sure how feasible that is. Or you could do a lot of small rooms spread across one area, with doors that randomly send you to one of the other rooms and eventually the exit. A third idea is for five or so pre-made areas, that the server just picks at random to implement at each reset.

I have no idea how difficult it would be to do this, if at all, but they're just ideas. And I like mazes. And randomization. And pie.

Cobs has been playing Diablo II recently.

I wasn't even thinking about D2, but now that you mention it... Kinda like that, yeah.

Kjetta wrote:

I think you fail to consider how many spawns are spawned on Amia each day. IMO, it should be even less likely. What's the chance of the glowing sub-bosses?

5%.

Last edited by ticket on Mon, Mar 02 2009, 10:36 AM, edited 1 time in total.

The Cobbit wrote:

Mazes. Yeah, I know we have the Electric Castle and the Minotaurs, maybe a couple others... But after a couple go-throughs, most people know how it goes and they really cease to become mazes.

Aye, mazes are nice. And adding a degree of randomness on the solution would make that area's replayability rocket up. Especially when there's a good purpose/reward to complete it - like a quest, a boss, or a black caravan merchant?

Implementing it however...

One problem with mazes in NWN, is the minimap. It gives you an birds eye view of the surrounding area and it becomes easy to solve then.

Maybe make it a several transitions worth of maze and/or a good deal of scripting to randomize a door locking system, forcing a different solution each reset. Have multiple sets of choices and solutions. Three sets of three solutions would have a good permutation to keep an adventurer/boss hunter always on their toes and wits.

I think there are ways to disable the mini-map for certain areas... Or I could be thinking of something else completely different, like pie.

Zante wrote:

Don't care for making things harder or more challenging. We play heroes, they are supposed to be able to mop down hordes of demons without breaking a sweat.

I think what you're referring to are Gods. The adventure is all about the reward for the risk taken. Thus when heroes go out, they expect to be putting their lives on their line for the pursuit of gold, glory, the greater good, whatever. Hence how "hero" becomes commonly associated with "idiot" in the more learned parts of Faerun.

Also, the entire purpose of the proposal is not to increase the level of challenge of spawns, but to increase the variety and by relation the unpredictability of the hunt, which to many people increases the fun and thrill got out of it. For example, the abovementioned roving goblin party in orc territory isn't nearly as hard as the orcs themselves, but it's both a pleasant change as well as an opportunity for some RP. Why're the goblins here? Are they planning an invasion? Is there an alliance? Should Cordor be getting out the candy pikes and sugarswords?

Zante wrote:

And anything that brings unfair deaths into hunting is meh.

Hunting deaths are not unfair deaths. Many adventurers both famed and unknown fall by the sword doing what they do best. It's how many would like to go. Your character should be prepared to catch any lemons thrown his way. Or better still, use 'em for Storm of Vengeance to pay them back.

Notion 1: The bosses never do that Queen/Prime Minister thing of going on tours of their domain. Random chance of the area's boss spawning n a mob, says I.

Notion 2: The colorued miniboss system is upgraded to have all six of them spawn in buffed.

Notion 3: An IC enemy of the locals spawns in as a Neutral and you can use them there social skills on it and it'll apply the Dominate effect on it so you get a buddy for a shortish time, then it says goodbye and despawns peacefully. If you are also an IC enemy of this chap, or if you fail your social rolls, he or she attacks.
An example would be a dwarf spawning in the Brog giants. If you're duergar, you're gona be fighting; if you're a drow you suffer a big penalty on talking your way out.

Uberuce wrote:

An IC enemy of the locals spawns in as a Neutral and you can use them there social skills on it and it'll apply the Dominate effect on it so you get a buddy for a shortish time, then it says goodbye and despawns peacefully. If you are also an IC enemy of this chap, or if you fail your social rolls, he or she attacks.
An example would be a dwarf spawning in the Brog giants. If you're duergar, you're gona be fighting; if you're a drow you suffer a big penalty on talking your way out.

That is so so so cool on so many levels.

Wait till you see the new UD. It will give non-UD races such an headache.

Dev Disco wrote:

Wait till you see the new UD. It will give non-UD races such an headache.

*giggles maniacally in the dark*

Last edited by Azrael on Mon, Mar 02 2009, 15:14 PM, edited 1 time in total.

The Cobbit wrote:

Speaking of randomization, no clue if this idea is even doable or not, but just throwing it out there.

Mazes. Yeah, I know we have the Electric Castle and the Minotaurs, maybe a couple others... But after a couple go-throughs, most people know how it goes and they really cease to become mazes. So would it be possible to make a maze area that kind of randomizes at each reset?

It could be a regular maze, with parts that get randomly chosen, though I'm not sure how feasible that is. Or you could do a lot of small rooms spread across one area, with doors that randomly send you to one of the other rooms and eventually the exit. A third idea is for five or so pre-made areas, that the server just picks at random to implement at each reset.

I have no idea how difficult it would be to do this, if at all, but they're just ideas. And I like mazes. And randomization. And pie.

Isn't it true that if you have the same tag listed on several transitions it randomly picks one? (I might be wrong, haven't tested)

...but could easily make a maze where you go to a random room or 'start point' in that case. I think in the campaigns, gawds its been years, but wasn't there something in undermountain (Halaster) where they had random portals?

P.S. random monster spawns could occur if a DM randomly spawns one? *wink wink* (if the automatic system is too hard to impliment)

I made a randomising dungeon two years ago. Never used it... maybe I should.

That'd be fun!

Uce's idea on the 5% glowies would i suppose do the same thing without adding different types of creatures to areas where they wouldn't normally appear.

The other part of this idea was to make people take a little more time with their 'hunting' (the time someone spends scouting may give others time to RP while out and about). If anyone plans on saying 'but my buffs will run out and I want to get to level 30 now!' then go to a server when you start at level 30.

I think Uce has maybe come up with an easy way to do almost the same thing.

You know it has always irked me that buffs in NWN don't have standardised durations. Oh sure, they have rounds, turns and hours, but it sucks to be you if you're a low-level caster that has to burn through a whole pile of spell slots to keep everyone buffed because they don't yet have enough levels to last a full fifteen minutes (which is how often you can rest and regain your spells.

For example if a stat buff lasted thirty minutes regardless of caster level (an hour with extend) you would have loads of time to stop and roleplay, because when you're not in combat you're not using your offensive spells, and if buffs last far beyond fifteen minutes then you will always be able to rest if the roleplaying takes longer than you expect.

Not all buffing spells should be fixed-duration, in my opinion, just the protections that you routinely cast on the party before travelling.

Yeah I know that "it's always been that way" but really, show me how it's going to hurt if people aren't clock-watching so much and roleplaying more.

I would cut out the buffers and buff myself from items. That's how it hurts.

looking selmak's suggestion... what if any hour/level spell lasted a minimum of 15-20 RL minutes (to match rest time), and beyond the appropriate level, the duration increased?

Uberuce wrote:

Notion 1: The bosses never do that Queen/Prime Minister thing of going on tours of their domain. Random chance of the area's boss spawning n a mob, says I.

Notion 2: The colorued miniboss system is upgraded to have all six of them spawn in buffed.

Notion 3: An IC enemy of the locals spawns in as a Neutral and you can use them there social skills on it and it'll apply the Dominate effect on it so you get a buddy for a shortish time, then it says goodbye and despawns peacefully. If you are also an IC enemy of this chap, or if you fail your social rolls, he or she attacks.
An example would be a dwarf spawning in the Brog giants. If you're duergar, you're gona be fighting; if you're a drow you suffer a big penalty on talking your way out.

Option 1: I'd s[expletive] a brick. But so very cool.
Option 2: Only if all of them drop loot :3
Option 3: That'd be really, really, really, really...*Gasp* really, really, really cool.

TormakSaber wrote:

I would cut out the buffers and buff myself from items. That's how it hurts.

blackvswhite wrote:

looking selmak's suggestion... what if any hour/level spell lasted a minimum of 15-20 RL minutes (to match rest time), and beyond the appropriate level, the duration increased?

Pleeease! Noooooo! Resting limits are a -great- way as it is to make you RP sometimes even lightly "I'm not strong enough right now" or "I could really use a rest soon!"
And if it doesn't make you RP, at least it gives you a goal of restriction to get past! A goal! Something to motivate you further! And relatively an easier one to work on so you can see and feel your progress as your character can keep up spellbuffs longer and longer with a clock to time against.

TormakSaber wrote:

Kjetta wrote:

I think you fail to consider how many spawns are spawned on Amia each day. IMO, it should be even less likely. What's the chance of the glowing sub-bosses?

5%.

So maybe 1% -might- work. But I still push that there is a huge amount of spawns being triggered per reset that you just can't keep track of without being a DM [if they even can].
And that isn't always just from people trying to hunt. The occasional being pushed off a cart, or a stroll in GS still causes spawns. Or high levels running past low level spawns to get to where they are going. Spawnspawnspawn.
I must see at least 1 a week of them glowies just walking past the goblins in GS from Bendir to Cordor. [Go pacafists <.< We cause spawns too!]

Dev Disco wrote:

I made a randomising dungeon two years ago. Never used it... maybe I should.

Now -that- could be fun. Even if it's a randomized map selector of only ten possible combinations to generate [I don't know how hard such stuff is]. You're not changing anything we're kind and used to and know how to work with. You're expanding our offered territory of play.

Suppose... now, if you wanted to mix the maze-map with the 'neighboring spawns' stuff... Naw, sounds much too complex there. But if that was doable everyone could be happy with the new without killing the stuff that is now.

Where was that quote, "Don't Fix what Isn't Broken"?

giving cast buff spells a fixed duration would just make already powerful casters even more powerful. Seems a bit much if you ask me.

Would also mean people wouldn't spend money on buffing items as much. This may annoy people but it would seem that most of the arguments against random dangerous spawns involve PCs never having to worry about dieing. Sounds dull

Thought.. Most underground areas should have random Galatinus Cube spawn.. make em tuff too, but slow, so you can just run away. That would be cool.

Xenos wrote:

Thought.. Most underground areas should have random Galatinus Cube spawn.. make em tuff too, but slow, so you can just run away. That would be cool.

I don't know ... I liked critting the cubes in the UD

We need the really scary cubes, I can't remember what they're called, but they're awfully nasty. I put one at the bottom of a pit trap once

Giving spellcasters fixed values is going to end in your murder.

If I go pure sorceror only to find out that my duration is the same as a level 15 sorceror, I wouldn't be a happy duckling.

Dev Disco wrote:

Wait till you see the new UD. It will give non-UD races such an headache.

Yay I can't wait, that is how the UD is supposed to be. Hopefully this will extend to the rest of the UD, like the one on A with the 5 minute walk from drow land to the surface is.

Uberuce wrote:

Notion 3: An IC enemy of the locals spawns in as a Neutral and you can use them there social skills on it and it'll apply the Dominate effect on it so you get a buddy for a shortish time, then it says goodbye and despawns peacefully. If you are also an IC enemy of this chap, or if you fail your social rolls, he or she attacks.

An example would be a dwarf spawning in the Brog giants. If you're duergar, you're gona be fighting; if you're a drow you suffer a big penalty on talking your way out.

I love this idea, for instance you wander the nexus region((the area with the beastmen and pgyrmies)) and you could encounter a random elf patrol from winya, if you are a hated foe like a drow, you would be attacked, a surface elf would be netural. this would make going near certain areas as a race alot more unique.

It reminds me of Actand, where you're seeing friendly angels and friendly demons depending on the side you're on. Quite a cool addition, imo.

Kjetta's Idea

Who is online