Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

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Shadowspinner70
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by Shadowspinner70 »

Max Hatchet wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:18 am Too many towns. Not enough wilderness.

In the LONG RUN do we need Nashkell AND Beregost?
The server feels very thinly spread over a vast area.
Its lacks a sense of scale and size. Add in a bit more road to give it that sense of scale.

ALSO:
Make Baldur's Gate BIGGER. Make it maybe 5 or 6 areas on the surface with more adventure and content. Add a dungeon or two beneath the city? Maybe something really extensive?
I agree! We need more roads in-between. It takes only a few transitions to move from Soubar to Nashkel, even when walking. Baldur's Gate needs to be scaled up as well. Maybe roads north and then roads south? Keep the enemies off of the roads and in the wilderness or in caves or dungeons off of the road?
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by Snarfy »

Max Hatchet wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:18 am If we want to continue this discussion i could simplify my thoughts as:

Too many towns. Not enough wilderness.

In the LONG RUN do we need Nashkell AND Beregost?
Yes, and yes. But that's just my opinion. There's just too much(glorious) server history surrounding those places, not to mention existing RP and the presence of guilds, to even consider removing them. And, before any denials follow suit, just because certain players don't engage or participate in those areas, or in said RP or guilds, does not mean they don't exist. If you had been around on the server during the Amn-Gate war or the years after, Max, you likely wouldn't even consider the removal of these towns as something remotely suggestible. Then again, you did suggest removing 2 vital race-specific RP centers before this....
Shadowspinner70 wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:53 am I agree! We need more roads in-between. It takes only a few transitions to move from Soubar to Nashkel, even when walking. Baldur's Gate needs to be scaled up as well. Maybe roads north and then roads south? Keep the enemies off of the roads and in the wilderness or in caves or dungeons off of the road?
There's actually a really great zone that may or may not be in the vaults, that might be dusted off: just north of Beregost there was an area with two bridges leading to the town where a bloody battle occurred to re-take the town from Amnian forces. There's also the old map south of CK, with the beach, lighthouse and caved in Ironfaar stronghold that many of those annoying beetles used to spawn on... and I miss it dearly. That being said, I'd be more than happy with more roads and wilderness(as long as they weren't overly cluttered with endless amounts of spawns).
Last edited by Snarfy on Mon Jan 13, 2020 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Planehopper
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

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And the larger "along the chointhar" map that included nodes for finding bait, where the barbarians lived, and a shoot off from there that was between it and the Sharpteeth (I think).

Lots of good road/wilderness maps, but they are exteriors and my understanding is we are tapped out on those for the time being, until we get things figured to link servers.

We could probably consolidate the cloakwood to 1-2 maps, couldn't we? Probably dont need three. We could still leave all of the linked areas, maybe move the hag cave to the Sharpteeth, near the back where there is space.

Hard to imagine any other exteriors that are as unused.
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Max Hatchet
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by Max Hatchet »

What i’m meaning is do we need BOTH Beregost and Nashkel? I don’t really see how server reconfiguring needs to be constricted by whether certain areas featured in past story lines. Is keeping Nashkel really all that vital? I have to admit it is a lovely area though.
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by Snarfy »

Planehopper wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 1:35 pm And the larger "along the chointhar" map that included nodes for finding bait, where the barbarians lived, and a shoot off from there that was between it and the Sharpteeth (I think).
Also a great map, but maybe I'm biased, since my toon PK'd a bad guy at a wedding there. Also, bring back Triel!
We could probably consolidate the cloakwood to 1-2 maps, couldn't we? Probably dont need three. We could still leave all of the linked areas, maybe move the hag cave to the Sharpteeth, near the back where there is space.
Hmm, neat idea. Shuffle the minotaur cave to west cloakwood as well, and get rid of the middle cloakwood would be my vote.
Hard to imagine any other exteriors that are as unused.
:think: ... Forest of Wyrms, Reaching woods, Corm Orp, and high moors south and north dont see a lot of action. I do enjoy them all though, but I suspect they're a bit too far out of the way, and characters dont have much reason to visit them(other than to pass through on their way elsewhere).
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by Tanlaus »

Reaching woods seems to be a prime epic leveling spot. I see mid 20s there all the time. Used to participate in groups there a lot myself.

Also the spirit troll cave and ziggurat are both great epic areas in south and north high moors respectively. Be a shame to get rid of either of those.

In fact I’d argue areas that can present any kind of challenge to epic groups are one of the things the server lacks. People still want to adventure when they reach 30.
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by Max Hatchet »

Tanlaus wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:30 pm Reaching woods seems to be a prime epic leveling spot. I see mid 20s there all the time. Used to participate in groups there a lot myself.

Also the spirit troll cave and ziggurat are both great epic areas in south and north high moors respectively. Be a shame to get rid of either of those.

In fact I’d argue areas that can present any kind of challenge to epic groups are one of the things the server lacks. People still want to adventure when they reach 30.
Yes. Reaching Woods is one of the busiest adventuring areas on the server. Agreed on the need for more high lvl challenging areas.
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by DaloLorn »

Quoting everything I'd like to respond to would be a bit of a pain in the neck, especially with the amount of cutting down I'd have to do, so I'm just going to paraphrase the key points (both the ones that are really there and those that seem to have been inferred by others):
Well-traveled roads shouldn't use the MMO spawner
Roads shouldn't use the MMO spawner, period
Roads should only use the MMO spawner near the lairs of various monsters
I generally agree. The bandits and kobolds north of the FAI, the beetles and ogres on the Lion's Way, the goblins on the road to Beregost, the wolves on the Northern Trade Way... Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely in favor of getting in a scrap around those parts on occasion. But the Trade Way is supposed to be the most well-traveled road on the server. Why is the main artery of the region's commerce completely impassable to anything not escorted by a level 10+ character?

That being said, the MMO spawner has its uses. Less-traveled roads, like Thundar's Ride (I imagine) or the Fields of the Dead, are certainly hazardous enough to warrant its use. Monster lairs are another good use of that spawner, as exemplified by the gnolls on the Lion's Way or the main bandit camp north of the FAI (or the goblin ruins in that same area).
The ambush spawner should trigger more often, with difficulty scaling and even elite mobs from time to time
Ambushes shouldn't spawn right on top of the party
Yeah! Despite my tone above, the problem isn't (entirely?) that the roads are too dangerous. It's that they're too consistently, and too unavoidably dangerous. Now, if gangs of marauding bandits periodically popped up, sometimes right on top of you and sometimes well out of range (you could even set a minimum range based on the party's Spot/Listen scores!), it would be something else entirely. Suddenly it stops being "Grrr, gotta punch my way through the local wildlife" and becomes "Okay, let's try not to get caught by bandits...", which makes more sense IC and feels more palatable OOC.
As an exterior zone, roads fill an important role in XP grinding and should not be changed
I strongly disagree. We have plenty of exterior zones elsewhere. Based on the CRs on the wiki:
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1: Chionthar East (technically a road, but we can excuse that as being a less-traveled one).

1.5: BG East, Graveyard

4: Cloakwood East; Boareskyr Bridge

6: Ulgoth's Beard, Island

7: Thundar's Ride (day; again, technically a less-traveled road... though most players seem to prefer it to the Northern Trade Way)

8: High Hedge; Woods of Sharp Teeth; Cloakwood Central

12: Cloakwood North-West

13: Uldoon's Trail, North of Nashkel

14: High Moor South (this should really not be a CR14 zone, not with those hobgoblin mages...); Xvarts; Fields of the Dead

15: Misty Forest; South of Beregost, Road (just the wyvern lands on the east half, mind you :P)

16: Corm Orp; Durlag's Exterior (again, the magic/special abilities of this zone may warrant a higher CR)

16-17: Nashkel's Mine Exterior

18: Troll Claws

19: Cloud Peaks

20: Yuan-ti Hills (it's called Serpent Hills, but whatever)

23: Reaching Woods

24: Stone Giants (citation needed - I've never been there); Forest of Wyrms

27: Graypeaks

28: Speartop
It's not as smooth a progression as the interior areas, but there's two things to note here:
  1. The progression does not significantly change if we add the CR2.5 "Trade Way, Road south of BG", the CR5 "Northern Tradeway, Road south of Soubar", the CR5-6 "Lion's Way, Road south of FAI", and the CR6 "North of Beregost, Road" maps.
  2. The CR estimation is really messy on some maps.
I will, however, concede that magical attacks are far less common on the maps I'm excluding. In my opinion, it would be preferable to reduce the magic of some of the other maps on the server than to leave the roads unchanged.
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

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I'd like to note that staff is watching this thread, including myself, to see what players are looking for in regard to their playtime on the server.

Given that, I'd like to step in for a moment and be very transparent with the player base and set appropriate expectations on what you can see right now. Which is that we cannot have further expansion of our current module until we look into a viable solution like splitting the server. When that happens, it can be a different conversation as we'll have more memory capacity to work with.

However, at present, if we want to add maps beyond what we currently have, we would also have to remove maps that are currently in the module. Cannibalization. We are literally at the cusp of capacity for memory.
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

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Miasmata wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:57 pm I'd like to note that staff is watching this thread, including myself, to see what players are looking for in regard to their playtime on the server.

Given that, I'd like to step in for a moment and be very transparent with the player base and set appropriate expectations on what you can see right now. Which is that we cannot have further expansion of our current module until we look into a viable solution like splitting the server. When that happens, it can be a different conversation as we'll have more memory capacity to work with.

However, at present, if we want to add maps beyond what we currently have, we would also have to remove maps that are currently in the module. Cannibalization. We are literally at the cusp of capacity for memory.
You know, I've wondered occasionally...

We ("we" here being the NWN2 community) presumably know the game's communication protocols well enough to emulate them (at least to the extent that an external program could be used to act as a proxy for an NWN2 server). Meanwhile, the server staff has shown no reluctance to use external tools such as SQL databases to expand what we can do.

This is going to sound a little crazy and a lot oversimplified (partly because I have only a few more minutes before I have to go), but wouldn't it be theoretically possible to split the server into a bunch of subservers (each running on a different process), all communicating with the players - and each other - via a central proxy server, which handled all the busywork involved in running a multi-server Scry, cross-server tells, cross-server zone transitions, and whatever else we might need? The key element here would probably be faking a player's connection to most of the servers, and intercepting those servers' communications to the player in order to correctly process them.
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by Max Hatchet »

Miasmata wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:57 pm I'd like to note that staff is watching this thread, including myself, to see what players are looking for in regard to their playtime on the server.

Given that, I'd like to step in for a moment and be very transparent with the player base and set appropriate expectations on what you can see right now. Which is that we cannot have further expansion of our current module until we look into a viable solution like splitting the server. When that happens, it can be a different conversation as we'll have more memory capacity to work with.

However, at present, if we want to add maps beyond what we currently have, we would also have to remove maps that are currently in the module. Cannibalization. We are literally at the cusp of capacity for memory.
I and I would think many/most people did presume that we were at a limit and that to add in areas we needed to remove them.

On another thread that involved proposals for Sschindlyrn i went thro the areas in the Underdark that seemed less used.

I dont think people expect big changes in the near future but people like to give their opinions and to muse and give opinions on the possibilites of where the server is going.

Many of us who have been regularly playing for years would like to see the server freshen up and evolve and change over the long term - including new areas or reconfiguring.
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by DaloLorn »

LazyTrain wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 1:36 pm
DaloLorn wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 1:30 pm
Miasmata wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:57 pm I'd like to note that staff is watching this thread, including myself, to see what players are looking for in regard to their playtime on the server.

Given that, I'd like to step in for a moment and be very transparent with the player base and set appropriate expectations on what you can see right now. Which is that we cannot have further expansion of our current module until we look into a viable solution like splitting the server. When that happens, it can be a different conversation as we'll have more memory capacity to work with.

However, at present, if we want to add maps beyond what we currently have, we would also have to remove maps that are currently in the module. Cannibalization. We are literally at the cusp of capacity for memory.
You know, I've wondered occasionally...

We ("we" here being the NWN2 community) presumably know the game's communication protocols well enough to emulate them (at least to the extent that an external program could be used to act as a proxy for an NWN2 server). Meanwhile, the server staff has shown no reluctance to use external tools such as SQL databases to expand what we can do.

This is going to sound a little crazy and a lot oversimplified (partly because I have only a few more minutes before I have to go), but wouldn't it be theoretically possible to split the server into a bunch of subservers (each running on a different process), all communicating with the players - and each other - via a central proxy server, which handled all the busywork involved in running a multi-server Scry, cross-server tells, cross-server zone transitions, and whatever else we might need? The key element here would probably be faking a player's connection to most of the servers, and intercepting those servers' communications to the player in order to correctly process them.
I wanna say someone had mentioned this in the past but don't quote me on that, it could've just been a conversation I had with myself too. I think the idea was to split the Under/upperdark and overworld and do pretty much exactly what you just proposed. Idk the logistics of how it'd work but I'm pretty sure you could do it, I've heard of other servers keeping some information retained between servers before.
Technically? Assuming the idea worked, you could possibly get away with locking every single map behind its own subserver. It might actually make some things simpler if each zone transition was a cross-server transition.
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by DaloLorn »

Well, I guess I could possibly do some of the gruntwork… maybe...

Then again, my current overambitious project hasn't been off to a stellar start. (Remind me again, how is one supposed to do this stuff without even booting up Blender or looking at the model files I'm supposed to write an automatic converter for? :roll:)
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

Unread post by Snarfy »

DaloLorn wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 11:40 am Despite my tone above, the problem isn't (entirely?) that the roads are too dangerous. It's that they're too consistently, and too unavoidably dangerous. Now, if gangs of marauding bandits periodically popped up, sometimes right on top of you and sometimes well out of range (you could even set a minimum range based on the party's Spot/Listen scores!), it would be something else entirely. Suddenly it stops being "Grrr, gotta punch my way through the local wildlife" and becomes "Okay, let's try not to get caught by bandits...", which makes more sense IC and feels more palatable OOC.
This pretty much sums up what I've been griping about.

Having to punch ones way through everything isn't just tedious, it can also be downright immersion breaking, or even force players to break character just to move... for example: the character in my screenshots is a lawful neutral priest of Azuth(level 30). He's a pretty gentle old fellow, generally speaking, and likes to plant turnips in his downtime, and otherwise smile cheerfully at everyone he comes across. Now, he's been known to roll up his sleeves and get down and dirty when it comes to undead and demons, but for him to be forced to stomp continuously on beetles, or otherwise fight off copious amounts of weak monsters(that are no threat to him, or others) just to walk 100 yards, is just not something that feels IC while playing him at all.

I cannot even fathom how a true pacifist character, or even nature loving druid, could walk through some of these areas and IC'ly justify having to butcher so many creatures.
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Re: Reducing area clutter + Tweaks to current maps.

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Snarfy wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 11:23 am I cannot even fathom how a true pacifist character, or even nature loving druid, could walk through some of these areas and IC'ly justify having to butcher so many creatures.
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