Player Input - Epic Level Progression

[recordhigh]

I'm fine with this as long as deaths on epic levels have serious twenty-four hour (or much longer) debuffs. Mainly I'd like to see reset to 20 and no exp gain for a while. Permadeath should be only DM enforced as a character is quite an investment. Permadeath would be especially heinous if you could lose power/internet and die whilst doing so; better just avoid that.

Edit: And gold has moot value as 100k isn't -that- much in NWN2.

[FoogooFish]

What about a lottery system where dying = one of the ideas listed? Leave the result to the cold, unfeeling dice. If you die, you might be permed. Or you might lose all your gear. Or you might be raiseable if X thousands of gold are paid. Or you might be reset to a random level, yet again determined by the cold, unfeeling dice.

Have the rewards be equally random, too. It'll give some variety to an otherwise static quest. Group A might be like... "man... we went to this place, and Joe lost all his gear, but the rest of us got this sweet +5 loot of awesomeness" and then later, Group B might say... "we all increased our skills (+Xk XP), but Bob was lost forever to us".

Just an idea, of course. I'm all for having epic-level content. Refining it so that players still enjoy themselves is what has to be accomplished.

[Lilene Jora]

I rather like the idea someone put above of having a debuff that would basically make you unable to to pve or pvp for a set amount of real life time. At least then you could still RP or whatever, but you can't just keep throwing yourself at the epic content if you fail.

[Intrepid42]

If PvE permadeath is possible, then my main concern would be the difficulty balancing for the ECL+8 PC's. They may rest on a knife-edge between much too easy or much too hard. I am not sure entirely how that template is handled in-game, so this concern is solely based on my own incomplete understanding.

If the Dynamic spawning scripts create appropriate challenges for an ECL 28+ PC, then any mere level 20 PC in their party is going to be a rather brave one. Vampire PC's may have even greater problems finding other PC's to adventure with.

If the spawn calculations do not compensate for ECL, then one PC faction may obtain a major advantage gear and survival-wise they did not have before. There may be a long admission queue outside Banite HQ...

[Atmosphere]

I'm fine with the permadeath. You don't want perm'd, don't do the dungeon. High risk = high reward. You gotta risk it for the biscuit. Put it on the line. Lay it all out. Don't hold anything back. Balls to the wall. Pedal to the metal.

Besides, wouldn't it be LOL if Clive or I got perm'd in an epic dungeon?

This is pretty much my mindset on all this.

[GholaMan]

Well i for one am against the perma death, i mean it takes a long time to get to 20 in this server. I get lag killed plenty and it would be a total waste of time or energy to even attempt an epic dungeon knowing when my shitty internet connection lags me and gets me or one of my party members killed forever.

Its not like you make 20 in a week on the server. And for me because i live in japan making DM events is very difficult to attend, i have not made one. So i think having epic dugeons would be great perma death would be bad. How would you even be able to explain that IC? Its not like resurection magic suddenly stops working at higher levels.

I say make it so you cannot respawn when you die in an epic dugeon. So if you get a TPK then your stuck there for a potentially long time, Until someone happens to walk along your corpse and pick it up. To have another player res with XP item and gold loss.

[AsuraKing]

I have to say I'm kinda against epic areas, what I can see happening is either people mastering these dungeons and getting epic weapons and gear so it makes it super easy for them and then there's the fact I see (I have nothing against them, I enjoy playing with them) all the vampires teaming up and somehow going in all at once and beating the fact it's supposed to be super hard.

Dont get me wrong, I played on a server once where if you died ANYWHERE you were perma'd so i got nothing against it, but I dont see it really fitting in with the rest of the server. Even for RP purposes it doesnt seem like it would make much sense unless it was some area like a god's domain or hell or something and the players soul cant be dragged back to their body...

[Silas North]

Besides, wouldn't it be LOL if Clive or I got perm'd in an epic dungeon?

Yeah, it would be funny. But I think it's better to have well-written to funny, especially for someone like Clive. However, it's understandable that not everyone can have everything.

[Lilene Jora]

Yeah, thing about the vampires teaming up and going in there though is, you'd still never get to level 21 in a million years, unless each mob gave about 1000xp a kill >.<. Maybe the abyss will just allow for 'regular' people's epic progression.

[Kaizen]

ecl # = level 20 + #?

or am i missing something?

[Lilene Jora]

Correct, so to advance from level 20-21, as EC +8, one would need as much xp as an ordinary character going from 28-29. For example, it takes a normal character about 200,000 exp to get to level 20. For an 8 ecl to go from 20-21, it takes about 400,000 exp, double everything you've done for your entire character...for one additional level >.<.

[Kaizen]

I mean level 20 ECL 8 = level 28 as compared to a normal race ie, human.

You get ECL in accordance with those massive crazy buffs you get.

So Sorshar, at level 21, was about power level 23 when compared to a human wizard at 21.

I played on a server where the max level cap for someone was 20 - your ecl. So my drow could only get to level 18. and vampires, level 12. I'm not suggesting that this server go that route (it's stupid). Just pointing it out.

basically, a group of vampires would shred through any dungeon that a group of level 21 'normal races' would have a tough time with. I love the level 20 cap, with 21 being an RP reward for sticking with your PC for give/take a year. Being Epic on this server is something you have to seriously earn, and to just give xp out at the epic levels makes me want to

[richardleitch5]

Correct, so to advance from level 20-21, as EC +8, one would need as much xp as an ordinary character going from 28-29. For example, it takes a normal character about 200,000 exp to get to level 20. For an 8 ecl to go from 20-21, it takes about 400,000 exp, double everything you've done for your entire character...for one additional level >.<.

the price of POWER

[AsuraKing]

I love the level 20 cap, with 21 being an RP reward for sticking with your PC for give/take a year. Being Epic on this server is something you have to seriously earn, and to just give xp out at the epic levels makes me want to

I have to agree with Kaizen on this, I think it's much more meaningful if the cap stays at 20 and you can only get xp from true dedication, I'm fine with epic equipment since I know fighter types REALLY need them at higher levels but I dont think there should be a way of grinding (even if it takes a long time... like it always does) up to level 20. For me level caps are important on RP servers cause it FORCES people to RP rather than spend all their time grinding... But if epic experience is added I think there should be a REAL long play time requirement to be able to get it, rather than just hit 20 and head there... I know the cap play time requirement between 19-20 is a few days but i think it should be far over a few days difference, maybe even over 10 days... but that's just me. I've worked for over a year on Cruven and he's hardly a fraction of the way to 21, and i assume there are many more lvl 20's in the same position that would hate to see people grind right by them even though they have less dedication to a toon.

/end rant

[Doubtful]

I think in all honesty I err toward the same as Asura and Kaizen.

Epic isn't epic if it's common or easily achieved.

Personally I'd rather have a new area go in as an equivalent to the Mossdale, and have Mossdale toned down slightly to allow a wider spread of level ranges to tackle it (hopefully meaning it'll get more use than it does now).

When we start seeing Hellballs and other epic things being thrown around as fairly commonplace it'll be a pretty damn sad day.