AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Free Rebuilds

Dear Amians.

We have now been running with the current free rebuild scheme for quite some time. The DM team have continuously evaluated both positive and negative effects of the perk. In recent discussions we have come to the agreement that the amount of free rebuilds have to be reduced. DMs are simply spending far too much time rebuilding. As a consequence we have agreed upon reducing the amount of free rebuilds allowed. To clarify DMs do not get any extra privilege rebuilds and are subject to the same rules as players.

So in conclusion we have decided to reduce the amount of rebuilds to once per year instead of four per year. The same guidelines as for the current rebuilds will be in place; eg major class changes still require an in character reason.

Nothing is changed about self-rebuilds or DC-rebuilds. This change to free rebuild policy is effectively immediately and thus any free rebuild made after the posting of this post will count towards the new limit of 1/per year.

Note To clarify further, this also means there must now be an year between the rebuilds instead of the three months previously. So should you have rebuilded last time in January you will have to wait until next January to rebuild again.

The DM Team

Thumbs up for this!

Now if you would only streamline those nonsensical rebuild prices, too, so that a rebuild is a rebuild no matter the class.

VICTORY

so are you guys gonna reset the rebuild clock, or one year from the last rebuild?

and here i am, still working on the self rebuild i started a week before free rebuilds were announced... le sigh~

Yes, any rebuilds made before Maias's posting will not be counted toward the year.

LordAzack wrote:

so are you guys gonna reset the rebuild clock, or one year from the last rebuild?

One year from the last rebuild.

The reasons for this should be obvious: Simply go take a look at the requests forum since the time this was instituted. Almost every topic is a rebuild request and almost none of them have RP behind it. I think that speaks volumes in itself.

Yes tormak, thats why i asked. If its not a year from last rebuild, then i just see a swamp of requests coming in, and taking my dm's away from better things, like QUESTS

No RP requests should have simply been stamped with the rubber stamp saying: "NO RP REASON. DENIED." Only exception to that is if they were simple fixes or made changes which do not impact the concept/general way the build/character functioned.

Then again I fully expected that this would occur. Hope for the best, expect the worse and whatnot.

Thumbs up from me.

Good move.

Huzzah... one step in the right direction. The goal is no rebuilds at all.

Good. Was getting rather sick of some rebuild frenzies.

Agreed. I saw all the requests and my face just dropped when I went in the requests forum one day.

I think I've only made two rebuild requests since I started on Amia and one of them was due to user error. I think I asked to rebuild a level 12 or so. And then my monk, which was extensively RP'd.

All in all, I think it's a good call. I really don't see any good reasons to be rebuilding characters. Almost every rebuild I've seen has been "I don't like getting owned so allow me to rebuild my char so I can own monsters and people and stuff." That's a drastic exaggeration obviously, but somewhat accurate and cannot be denied.

I think putting a one year limit on it will stifle a lot of this power-building frenzy/trend. It could probably be accused that I am a fan of power-builds myself. However, if you look at my characters, I generally nerf myself (unarmed dex dwarf monk, two-hander barb, wrong races for power-builds, etc). Do I enjoy being effective in PvP and PvE? Yes. Do I think it's worth sacrificing RP for? Of course not. Can RP exist with a power-build? In a lot of cases, yes. Does it exist in power-builds as a majority? Not really (in my experiences).

But bah. I'm done ranting. Good call DM team.

Thumbs up -No need to tie up the DM's with rebuilding the whole time.

I'll take mine now and be without rest of the year.

Poorvincente wrote:

Yes, any rebuilds made before Maias's posting will not be counted toward the year.

Uh, Hey Tormak? This.

Which one of you is right?

TormakSaber wrote:

One year from the last rebuild.

Yar I took my last free rebuild to blood a new DM on the tool (cloakanddagger) Nehky was there and I only rebuilt to level ten. I took the hit for it as my quaterly and now your saying two days before I can actually rebuild a character properly I have to wait until April next year?.

I say kill all rebuilds. Because its stupid. The build thread is there for a reason. Either kill all Rebuilds for everyone, or kill the build topic completely dead. One or the other. Kerplah!

MoshingChris wrote:

I say kill all rebuilds. Because its stupid. The build thread is there for a reason. Either kill all Rebuilds for everyone, or kill the build topic completely dead. One or the other. Kerplah!

Agreed. A person should have to pay one way or the other. They should pay either a.) attention to what they're doing in the first place, b.) DC's or c.)the time needed to do a self-rebuild.

I was for the free rebuilds at first and took advantage of it after I realized I took the wrong feat on my AA at about level 12 when I was on level 17 or so. Yet, after seeing how the DM team have been swamped with rebuild requests, I switched over to the other side of the fence.

Good move DM team!

AxlLeigh wrote:

Poorvincente wrote:

Yes, any rebuilds made before Maias's posting will not be counted toward the year.

Uh, Hey Tormak? This.

Which one of you is right?

TormakSaber wrote:

One year from the last rebuild.

There seems little point in resetting everyone's rebuild timers, it goes against a clean, easy line and only forces us to re-rebuild everyone as they go through one final dash.

wouldn't "one per year" be better than "at least one year from your previous rebuild"?

I feel like that makes people want to rebuild asap so their next possible rebuild will be available sooner.

"I could rebuild now and rebuild again one year from now or I could rebuild in december... wait, I'm losing a lot of time then before the next one. I better rebuild now!"

How people choose to manage their rebuilds is their own business.

Does this include rebuilds done under the previous rule? Such as if I rebuilt one character for free under the 4 per year rule, and had planned to rebuild another, but never got around to requesting. Would I be able to use my 1 rebuild this year on the other character I wished to rebuild? Or have I offically used it?

It would be annoying as I rebuilt my last character under the assumption I could rebuild my other character later this year, and thus didn't really think to much about it.

Edit:

Maias227 wrote:

Dear Amians.

We have now been running with the current free rebuild scheme for quite some time. The DM team have continuously evaluated both positive and negative effects of the perk. In recent discussions we have come to the agreement that the amount of free rebuilds have to be reduced. DMs are simply spending far too much time rebuilding. As a consequence we have agreed upon reducing the amount of free rebuilds allowed. To clarify DMs do not get any extra privilege rebuilds and are subject to the same rules as players.

So in conclusion we have decided to reduce the amount of rebuilds to once per year instead of four per year. The same guidelines as for the current rebuilds will be in place; eg major class changes still require an in character reason.

Nothing is changed about self-rebuilds or DC-rebuilds. This change to free rebuild policy is effectively immediately and thus any free rebuild made after the posting of this post will count towards the new limit of 1/per year.

The DM Team

Nevermind. Didn't read it entirely, my bad.

blackvswhite wrote:

wouldn't "one per year" be better than "at least one year from your previous rebuild"?

I feel like that makes people want to rebuild asap so their next possible rebuild will be available sooner.

"I could rebuild now and rebuild again one year from now or I could rebuild in december... wait, I'm losing a lot of time then before the next one. I better rebuild now!"

Yes, it would. I brought it up when this was first introduced, but the technical implementation of the timer doesn't work like that. It would have to be tweaked, which I suppose is not considered worth the trouble. Tormak says that how people manage their rebuilds is their own business, but doesn't see that in fact this system encourages a regular and hasty rebuild cycle instead of using your annual rebuild whenever you feel like it. However, it's a pretty minor issue in a system that's fairly streamlined as is. The effect of the current method is much smaller than when you had 1 quarterly rebuild, which might mean some getting 4 rebuilds a year and others only 2 if they waited too long. The difficult and unecessary rebuild extra costs are much bigger a problem.

Rebuilds are fundamentally a good thing, though. They're part of the Amia experience, an easy and enjoyable RP server that nonetheless acknowledges that NWN is an action game. We will never compete with smaller, long-standing hardcore servers without a major change of direction, so I see little point in taking smaller steps either. I hate to see the public opinion sway from one side to the other as experiences change. The number of rebuild requests has no bearing whatsoever on whether rebuilds are good or bad, it is only an issue of logistics and moderation. This is a matter of principle, empirical experience should have little to do with it.

By the way, would a revert to a pre-rebuilt state be free regardless of the timer since there are backups?

I failed horribly when rebuilding Gagis in February, but have not played him since so loading the backup should work fine.

Silva: No its not a free go back, you'll have to wait a year I'm affraid.

Iron:Indeed its a matter about logistics since the previous model simply wasn't viable. As for being one rebuild every calender year and one year between each rebuild is only a small technical aspect.

Well Gagis is on a year long hiatus then. A pity, especially since the new build was broken by the divine shield nerf a week after the rebuild. If the DM who helped me do it had known that the nerf was coming this could have been avoided. -_-

Maias227 wrote:

Silva: No its not a free go back, you'll have to wait a year I'm affraid.

Getting a character only deleveled and not built back up counts as a rebuild now? I thought DM's were always more than happy to just strip some XP away (barring certain strange quirks, DD stat bonuses and such)?

ainjyll wrote:

Maias227 wrote:

Silva: No its not a free go back, you'll have to wait a year I'm affraid.

Getting a character only deleveled and not built back up counts as a rebuild now? I thought DM's were always more than happy to just strip some XP away (barring certain strange quirks, DD stat bonuses and such)?

Only delevelled is still free.

ainjyll wrote:

Maias227 wrote:

Silva: No its not a free go back, you'll have to wait a year I'm affraid.

Getting a character only deleveled and not built back up counts as a rebuild now? I thought DM's were always more than happy to just strip some XP away (barring certain strange quirks, DD stat bonuses and such)?

That isn't what he is asking for, though. A delevel to fix a mistake on your own is easy and free. Digging back through your character files to find the original pre-rebuild version of a PC because you're not as good at PvP anymore is an exercise in tedium for us (although it could be argued that a self-rebuild is an exercise in tedium for him).

I am assuming he is asking for it this way because the base stats had changed according to the divine shield business. Otherwise, a simple delevel and self-rebuild from there would suffice.

Silvarus wrote:

Well Gagis is on a year long hiatus then. A pity, especially since the new build was broken by the divine shield nerf a week after the rebuild. If the DM who helped me do it had known that the nerf was coming this could have been avoided. -_-

Oh please, a level 27 sorceror is not broken by losing divine shield. An epic sorc is incapable of being broken n a manner that makes it not the best thing in the game.

Dunno, but would itch me like hell to pay a fair pile of feats and ability points for something completely useless. I'd at least consider an exception as the poor sod had no idea about it.

Clearly he took Paladin levels because it mattered to his RP though, and only getting +1 AC instead of +15 should make no difference to that.

TormakSaber wrote:

Clearly he took Paladin levels because it mattered to his RP though, and only getting +1 AC instead of +15 should make no difference to that.

The thing is I want the old good paladin levels back, and to get rid of the feats involved in getting divine shield. Before the rebuild Gagis did NOT have those feats. Feats are a waste, a paladin level definitely is not. In short: pre-rebuild: +n to saves and no ac, post rebuild +n to ac and no saves instead since saves were nerfed... and then the ac was nerfed as well. If I just had known.

I just hope I took power attack on a late level so deleveling would be easy... It might have been on the first one, which would be a catastrophe, if not, there is no need for a full rebuild.

I am sure you can imagine how frustrating it was, since there is no way I could have anticipated further changes that were not already done along with the saves.

You can check in the player tools man.

TormakSaber wrote:

Oh please, a level 27 sorceror is not broken by losing divine shield. An epic sorc is incapable of being broken n a manner that makes it not the best thing in the game.

I will tell you right now, this is a load of crap. Me, and my lvl 24 Sorc that routinely got owned by the Yuan-ti.

Lotsa <3, Grumpy.

AxlLeigh wrote:

TormakSaber wrote:

Oh please, a level 27 sorceror is not broken by losing divine shield. An epic sorc is incapable of being broken n a manner that makes it not the best thing in the game.

I will tell you right now, this is a load of crap. Me, and my lvl 24 Sorc that routinely got owned by the Yuan-ti.

Lotsa <3, Grumpy.

That's player error then, because a level 20 sorc can solo the entire server let alone a 24.

TormakSaber wrote:

That's player error then, because a level 20 sorc can solo the entire server let alone a 24.

Any tips on how this is done Tormie?

No. Because you shouldn't be wasting your time by turning Amia into a glorified single player experience.

TormakSaber wrote:

No. Because you shouldn't be wasting your time by turning Amia into a glorified single player experience.

I can live with that answer.

That and 'cause you smell, Nysor. Go take a shower.

MoshingChris wrote:

You can check in the player tools man.

Thanks.

*facepalm* Appears I did take it on the first level. -_-

Finns.

Suggestion for if the team finds this to not be ideal either. 1 rebuild per character, per year. This way if you play more then one character you don't end up benching them from complete and utter annoyance.

Well, to clarify... blame my twittyness for the need for it. My first rebuild was some time in December if I remember correctly. This would mean any rebuild made after the posting of Maias would then count towards the one year time limit, correct? Or does the rule count backwards, meaning that I can get the next in December? DMs I talked to give me very split answers, even in this topic, or change their position. I am confused!

DMs knew about the Divine Shield nerf months before it was implemented. If somebody rebuilt you and didn't think to mention it, which is unfortunate but understandable, I should think they'll be happy to rebuild you if you make a clear request and submit it to the entire team instead of asking individuals in the public forums. I don't think they could've gone from reasonable people to spiteful brats in such a short time.

Even if the timer didn't restart, which is still unclear. The official announcement says that it will, but some comments have been to the contrary.

IronAngel wrote:

DMs knew about the Divine Shield nerf months before it was implemented. If somebody rebuilt you and didn't think to mention it, which is unfortunate but understandable, I should think they'll be happy to rebuild you if you make a clear request and submit it to the entire team instead of asking individuals in the public forums. I don't think they could've gone from reasonable people to spiteful brats in such a short time.

Even if the timer didn't restart, which is still unclear. The official announcement says that it will, but some comments have been to the contrary.

Right right. I'll do it during the weekend.

KrautBoy wrote:

Well, to clarify... blame my twittyness for the need for it. My first rebuild was some time in December if I remember correctly. This would mean any rebuild made after the posting of Maias would then count towards the one year time limit, correct? Or does the rule count backwards, meaning that I can get the next in December? DMs I talked to give me very split answers, even in this topic, or change their position. I am confused!

Maias post seems pretty clear to me. It says "This change to free rebuild policy is effectively immediately and thus any free rebuild made after the posting of this post will count towards the new limit of 1/per year."

If any other DM is arguing otherwise and not adhereing to the offical annoucemet's posts clear wording, they need a kick up the ass and a pair of glasses bought for them.

Errr, and all the highlighting isn't me being obnoxious but making sure it's very clear for everyone to read and see.

Hence my asking which DM was right.

I've got a same class build that already been preapproved and pending to June 6th. I've been waiting a month for this and the character 'clone' is already made. Are preapproved rebuilds subject to this new rule or are you going to go ahead and let the ones pending go on through?

Here's a link to the thread.
http://www.amiaworld.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=47140

Free Rebuilds - Please read

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