A bit of criticism

[Ash]

Quests are an excellent means of expanding Sundren's lore, as well as enhancing the character of certain NPCs. They also provide an automated means of earning XP other than monster-stomping, and if done correctly give PCs a reason to form parties and objectives and goals that can inspire roleplay, all without a DM involved. They can be made non-repeatable, and/or instanced, so they seem more realistic (that's simplifying the quest model I have in mind but then I'm not the one creating the quest system). Finally they add another level of content and depth to the world.

Quests will not replace DM events.

[uhwo]

As for quests, they are in development. Like most things on the server, we like to have our own system here, and the coder for it likes it to be perfect; and it is. There are, however, many player-based quests, especially at the mid-high levels (Druids asking people to help thin the recent population explosion of dire creatures, Paladins leading or sending people against the undead hordes or after information within the necropolis, thieves and rogues wanting information about a person or treasure). This is known as roleplay. While you stated you are a hardcore roleplayer, it seems your evaluation took into account all the things you could see at a glance, and no roleplay at all.

Don't judge a book by its cover, no matter how pretty or shallow it may seem.

I agree with you, it was just the first glance. I stated it pretty clearly on the first post. And I'm talking about scripted quests here. Of course, the roleplaying environment makes more "quests", that are based on characters interacting with eachother. But that doesn't justify the lack of other kinds of quests. But I understand that this is a beta-stage server, so no doubt there are still some missing things.

And about the roleplaying, the time I play, I find it hard to find any players to roleplay with. Maybe I'll try to play a bit more in the weekend now, as I have my last exam today.

Whinewhinewhine, sorry if you feel like I'm a complete ass by criticising the server on the first glance. Just making my point here about a little bit of this and that. I'm not here to start a flamewar.

Happy RPing!

[uhwo]

I'm not that much into going straight to perma-death. I just want it to be harsh. It really does break immersion if your character has no reason to be afraid to die. I used to play in a server, where you'd drop 2-3 levels if you were lvl 8 and decided to respawn (raise got it down to around 1 level). Then again, there are only few people who ever made it to level 14 or so, and that's with DM helping them out. And someone asked, where would be the fun in playing a game with such harsh penalties? In the roleplaying! It's not about who gets to lvl 20 first.

I personally hope there's never any scripted quests. The idea of every single character that exists coming through and going on whatever identical rundown of tasks as the other hundreds of characters on the server is just a bad image to me. I'm conflicted, though, because at the same time I'd like to see some way of characters advancing outside of going around killing things or harassing DMs for quests and rewards, but that's just the game's layout I suppose!

And it's somehow better, that there have been millions of zombies everyone has killed and they just keep coming back all the time? Or same with anything else. I think scripted quests are a bit more reasonable way to do it. But that's just my opinion.

Last, don't get me wrong here. I think you've done a hell of a job in the server. There's very much work put into it and I love the areas. It's not all negative, just some points I found out.

I'm not all about whining you know

[Kaldaris]

People want perma-death, until they lose the character they've invested the most time in. It's just words now, until it's put in-- Then you'd start regretting it, despite what you say now. I've heard it a dozen times.

The death system may change, but it's very unlikely any sort of auto-permadeath would be instated.

This isn't a thread about death, so don't go in depth to it in this thread. Carry on with the OP's post.

[Vichtor]

For the record; perma-death DOES exist...you're just not going to see it without some incredibly in-depth and far-reaching roleplay and story to surround, enrich, and lead up to it. The epic showdown of PC's is a perfect example...that just doesn't happen when two random people meet, that happens with events cumulate to a point where it cannot be avoided, and two people are forced into a conflict which may pivot the history of the server itself.

Is this going to happen? Not any time soon that I can see. There has yet to be any sort of characters that hold that kind of influence, power, or prestige. The most noble and powerful of Paladins could die today and nothing would be left to mark his/her passing...because though they hold a great deal of sway with their God; they do not possess such influence in the land itself. Such characters are in the making, but they have not yet reached maturity.

You're looking for a lot of things (other than your death penalty comments) that take a great deal of time to come to fruition and actually have meaning, purpose, and results. The server itself is not old enough for much of this to have developed, and so it seems to be lacking, but when you start interacting and meshing with the community, you will see that it is very much in the making.

As for quests, they are in development. Like most things on the server, we like to have our own system here, and the coder for it likes it to be perfect; and it is. There are, however, many player-based quests, especially at the mid-high levels (Druids asking people to help thin the recent population explosion of dire creatures, Paladins leading or sending people against the undead hordes or after information within the necropolis, thieves and rogues wanting information about a person or treasure). This is known as roleplay. While you stated you are a hardcore roleplayer, it seems your evaluation took into account all the things you could see at a glance, and no roleplay at all.

Don't judge a book by its cover, no matter how pretty or shallow it may seem.

[pook]

I would be open to more death penalty maybe, but only if the server becomes very stable and almost lag free. Its fustrating enough to deal with dying to lag/crash as it is.

[Deathevn]

I have to agree with the not perma death thing... A server with perma death tends to bring a certin.. mentalty to the game. There would be alot more power building around beacuse, as said, no one wants to perminately lose their character, and the only way to assure that is hopefuly have a build that can resist the many pitfalls of an adventures life.


PVP death... well I myself would rather see it reduced to 0 exp penelty, but alot more time In the afterlife, perhaps some sort of character agreed IC recongition of the events in mind. Having harsher penelties just discourages that part of the game, making really no IC sense. Ie: I have no problem with wadeing into piles of orks, facing the bloodist of creatures, and braving liches, but that peasent with a pitchfork is a PC who knows if hes really a secret weaponsmaster? Its just..well yeah.. when its reduced to anumber system there are to many abuses and to many ins and outs....


and on a final, bone chilling note... Can you imagin getting perma dead... beacuse the lag beast attacks?! Ohhhhh that would cause me no end to fustration

[undeadsteak]

Agreed with Wang. Really, i dont want to loose my char. Its fun rping her. Players are here to have fun.

[wangxiuming]

Permanent death would add to other people's roleplay...but what about the person who dies? They then are forced to making a new character or leave the server altogether. I've said before that losing a character that you've invested hours and hours into would be pretty devastating, especially if you yourself hadn't planned it.

Plus, what about dying through lag, dying by griefing, death because of metagaming...with permanent death, all these non-issues would immediately become a huge deal.

What I think might be interesting would be to increase the respawn timer based on level. The higher level you are, the longer you'd have to wait.

Then again, I'm also fine with the way it is now. It's a game! I want to have fun! Not cry over my dead characters :'(

[Simplistic]

Alright dont start 'flaming' me here either, after all it's just a game right?

Light death penalty is the only thing I have against Sundren as well. Everything else however is just great. You have to remember it is BETA... and I mean you have explored a bit right? Checked out other NWN2 servers? ... You HAVE to agree Sundren's areas are far beyond anything that is available on any other server. IMO it even surpasses the OC's areas. But anyway I have a suggestion about death and want others to let me know what they think. Ill post it in the suggestions forum as well.

I used to play on a NWN1 server where you have 10 lives. Now I know what you are thinking '10 lives no way!' But the catch is you didnt lose a life everytime. Lets say everytime you respawn you have a chance of losing some kind of 'life' or whatever the staff would want to call it. Upon respawn perhaps you would roll a d100 against a DC of say your lvl multiplied by say 1%. So a lvl 7 would have a 7% chance of losing a 'life' or whatever it would be called? So that would make the DC a 7 and so on so forth. Or however the staff wanted the equation to work out? IF this sounds stupid let me know.. besides its late here and I am tired. As stated above I think permadeath really does add alot of roleplay. Revenge, mourning, etc etc. I also understand a lvl 20 would find this harsh.. but it *should* be. You are a level 20 adventurer.. normally you would be looking to retire to own some inn or something ;P And perhaps once a character is permadeathed.. if he had a significance in the world.. maybe a gravestone could be erected somewhere? Or some other form of appreciation etc. Or for those who were extremely a focus point in the world upon permadeath could have the PC Rp'ed to have been raised however retire? Be made a NPC of whichever faction he was a part of? Once again Im rambling... good night

[Valkyrie]

I love the epic "I have only played on this server for a few hours and havnt really experienced anything but here is what I think.". Anyways. 5% sucks when you are level 14. Trust me. 5% of 91k hurts. PVP is a fine line aswell, we are still working out the system. You cannot have it to harsh, this is a game that people play for fun. This is not "OMG RL WIT SWORDZ" so we gotta keep it light. You cannot respawn in RL anyways.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[Araxielle]

I also think death should be harsher, and that's really the only thing I have against Sundren, as I'm otherwise completely enraptured and addicted. That said, the whole thing is still very much in the process of being made (there were areas added just today in fact), so the DMs are made to be quite busy with both keeping us all entertained (which they do) and steadily expanding the world as well as fleshing out what's already here.

On the whole death thing:
Experience points are a loss and all, yes - but in PVP especially, that's just not enough. There's no finality to death. There'd be no substantial consequence (unless it was self-imposed) to, say, a final climactic showdown between PCs. Everyone will just go on living forever and at worst will have to suffer a loss of X number of hours worth of killing. From a roleplaying standpoint, I'd like a PC's death to be some truly tragic, far-reaching event - the kind that inspires roleplay like mourning, revenge, yada yada - not just the irritating setback that it is now. Maybe with every trip to the afterlife, you'd lose some of your inventory or equipment, or you've been mangled too badly to come back the same. Maybe you'd lose a random point off of your attributes permanently. I'd love to see permanent death of some sort too. Perhaps a limited number of "lives" before you start seeing these consequences, and a certain level where they kick in at would help to soften things a bit.

But I'm sure all of that would be very hard to program or whatever (I know nothing of such things! lol), and even if they were wanted by everyone, we probably couldn't see them until quite some time in the future. It's all a work in progress, after all.

I personally hope there's never any scripted quests. The idea of every single character that exists coming through and going on whatever identical rundown of tasks as the other hundreds of characters on the server is just a bad image to me. I'm conflicted, though, because at the same time I'd like to see some way of characters advancing outside of going around killing things or harassing DMs for quests and rewards, but that's just the game's layout I suppose!

But, to the original poster: if you actually engage in some of the roleplay here and interact with some of the DMs, then very quickly you'll be just as addicted to Sundren as I am now.

See you around hopefully!

[Kaldaris]

First: The death

It's just too easy to get by. PvP is pointless, because you don't lose/gain anything (I know this has been discussed before) and PvE is all the same. 5% loss in experience doesn't mean anything, unless you can drop levels at the same time. Also, you can't lose any of your equipment and/or money (I'm not completely sure of this, but at least I didn't lose any when I died the first time). This death related stuff in whole doesn't make any sense, as it doesn't affect anyone in any way. So, what I'd like to see is more harsh death penalties, and tighter penalties for people randomly attacking each other without in character reason.

This isn't exactly a hardcore roleplaying server, though we may have some elements that reflect that and mislead your idea of the server. The death system is light because . . . Nobody likes dying anyhow. Additionally, there is a harsh penalty for people that run around randoming. It's called getting banned.

Second: Areas & scripted quests

I don't know if it's just me, or is it because this server is on beta-stage or what, but here are some of my feelings. Where are all the scripted quests? I didn't find a single one (I found a place where there could've been one, but I was too low level I guess). I haven't checked all the areas out yet, but I got a feeling that it was mostly some roleplaying sites (such as crossroads or what's it called) and towns with lots of shops and what not. The shops seemed to be quite pointless (many of them selling same kind of stuff, and a lot of inns and other places with nothing of interest).

Yes, this is a beta, and most of the content is directed towards fleshing out the module itself-- Areas and Scripts.

And then, there's the areas with monsters, just randomly appearing all around (only tried the necropolis). Most of the characters wouldn't have any reason to go to these kind of places, but they still do. Just because that's the way to make your character better. It wouldn't be that hard to make a scripted quest around those areas, and only allow entrance to the group taking the job.

Players have more reasons than you think, as Undeadsteak pointed out. As for the monsters appearing, I don't think there's very many animations to have them rise out of the ground. In fact, I believe there's zero.

Might be just me, as I said earlier, I've been only playing for few hours, but this is the first impression I've gotten out of the server. Feel free to correct me

Welcome to the server nonetheless.

[Stratigo]

Well personally I love this server. its great. As for penalties, well they are changing the respawn on PvP to having to wait for someone to use a scroll on you. and 5% is nasty considering the small amount of xp given when you level up.


And yes it is beta. Notice the server name. Sundren.orgBETA.

[InquisitorFury]

I love the epic "I have only played on this server for a few hours and havnt really experienced anything but here is what I think.". Anyways. 5% sucks when you are level 14. Trust me. 5% of 91k hurts. PVP is a fine line aswell, we are still working out the system. You cannot have it to harsh, this is a game that people play for fun. This is not "OMG RL WIT SWORDZ" so we gotta keep it light. You cannot respawn in RL anyways.