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Now that Sundren is Mask of the Betrayer compliant, I can once again focus on the top priority. Your progression.
I've had to put some of this work on hold in the past as I fixed other scripts and features for sundren that needed immediate attention. For example, unique boss loot and more.
I wanted to explain the Quest system that may be ready tomarrow to go in as well a Epic levels since they are now available in Sundren and already being handled as expected.
Why so long?
Essentially, the reason the quest system has been taking awhile to develope is because, unlike other simple solutions we could have made, the Sundren quest system operates on two concepts, Speed and Expandability. Basically, NWN script is too slow for our tastes and reuseability of coder can be a hassle. This required me to create a system in our custom plugin, written in C++, that allows a much faster execution and lookup time for quest related stuff.
As you might imagine this can get complex and also required a custom editor tool, which I wrote in C#. It's nearing completion, and should be finished after I put in about 12 or so more hours of work in code.
Quest Mechanics
The quest system works on three concepts. Objectives, Failures, and Rewards. Quests will give rewards in the form of Experience points, Gold, Items, and reputation. I will get into reputation later. To complete a quest, you must fulfill all of the objectives which will be tracked as you complete them. These can be as simple as, "Kill 30 Spittlefist Goblins", or as complex as "Discover the location of a key, unlock a vault, destroy the guy in the fault, bring back his head and embalming fluid so we can scry information." It's essentially limitted by imagination of Quest designers. Once objectives are met you may be required to accomplish a final action to complete a quest and recieve rewards, or you may instantly get the rewards the moment the quest is completed. Failures are the opposite. When any of these objectives are met, such as "X must not die." you will fail the quest. Some quests will be repeatable, some you may only attempt once.
The quest system will be tied into Journal entries for now. The NWN2 UI system still has limitations that need to be overcome before we have a custom Quest UI (Which is planned).
Quest Rewards
Some of you might feel the experience rewards on Sundren are quite low. The quest system is the very reason they have been lowered. The idea is with the quest experience, coupled with killing experience, players will be at an Experience rate we can manage. Some of you have been grinding a great deal, which I expected people to do given the lowered rewards and the want to progress, but now you can see why it has been a headache.
Quests will also give item and gold rewards too, which in some quests, you may be able to choose a reward from an NPC or other means when complete.
Reputation
Part of the reason Sundren is not saturated with magic items in shops revolves around the concept of reputation. Reputation will dictate how NPCs react to you in factions. Conversations will change, stores may allow you to buy more, DMs will also take reputation into account as you deal with DM events. Reputation will be VERY important to your character. DMs will be able to grant reputation as well as quests or other activities.
Much as positive reputation has a good effect, negative reputation will have bad effects. Reputation may be so low on a character, a faction will attack them on sight. For example, Drow PCs that we allow may find themselves being hunted within cities and killed by guards. Druids may find the grove friendlier to them by default than most. Etcetera.
The scale will be very detailed, ranging from around -10000 to 10000 for reputation.
Epic Levels
Epic levels alter character effectivity a great deal. But more importantly, we want to hold true to the concept of "What really is an epic character?" Epic people are so far above the normal that they're pillars of what they started. We felt grinding to something like this would trivialize what it really stands for. As such, players will be halted from all killing experience at level 20. The moment your experience is 190,000 (Or more for ECL races) you will no longer grow with kills and essentially reach the epic barrier.
Following these levels there will only be two ways to progress. Specific Epic quests, which will likely require very skilled groups to accomplish in dungeons and events for which the likes of Bane would wet themselves, or you will require experience rewards from DM events. Essentially this assures us of one important thing. The first player to reach 30 (Which WILL take a long while) will be someone that nobody can look at and say "That guy doesn't deserve Epic." So, whenever you right click yourself, select show information, and see 20 as your maximum level, that is where it will stay.
I've had to put some of this work on hold in the past as I fixed other scripts and features for sundren that needed immediate attention. For example, unique boss loot and more.
I wanted to explain the Quest system that may be ready tomarrow to go in as well a Epic levels since they are now available in Sundren and already being handled as expected.
Why so long?
Essentially, the reason the quest system has been taking awhile to develope is because, unlike other simple solutions we could have made, the Sundren quest system operates on two concepts, Speed and Expandability. Basically, NWN script is too slow for our tastes and reuseability of coder can be a hassle. This required me to create a system in our custom plugin, written in C++, that allows a much faster execution and lookup time for quest related stuff.
As you might imagine this can get complex and also required a custom editor tool, which I wrote in C#. It's nearing completion, and should be finished after I put in about 12 or so more hours of work in code.
Quest Mechanics
The quest system works on three concepts. Objectives, Failures, and Rewards. Quests will give rewards in the form of Experience points, Gold, Items, and reputation. I will get into reputation later. To complete a quest, you must fulfill all of the objectives which will be tracked as you complete them. These can be as simple as, "Kill 30 Spittlefist Goblins", or as complex as "Discover the location of a key, unlock a vault, destroy the guy in the fault, bring back his head and embalming fluid so we can scry information." It's essentially limitted by imagination of Quest designers. Once objectives are met you may be required to accomplish a final action to complete a quest and recieve rewards, or you may instantly get the rewards the moment the quest is completed. Failures are the opposite. When any of these objectives are met, such as "X must not die." you will fail the quest. Some quests will be repeatable, some you may only attempt once.
The quest system will be tied into Journal entries for now. The NWN2 UI system still has limitations that need to be overcome before we have a custom Quest UI (Which is planned).
Quest Rewards
Some of you might feel the experience rewards on Sundren are quite low. The quest system is the very reason they have been lowered. The idea is with the quest experience, coupled with killing experience, players will be at an Experience rate we can manage. Some of you have been grinding a great deal, which I expected people to do given the lowered rewards and the want to progress, but now you can see why it has been a headache.
Quests will also give item and gold rewards too, which in some quests, you may be able to choose a reward from an NPC or other means when complete.
Reputation
Part of the reason Sundren is not saturated with magic items in shops revolves around the concept of reputation. Reputation will dictate how NPCs react to you in factions. Conversations will change, stores may allow you to buy more, DMs will also take reputation into account as you deal with DM events. Reputation will be VERY important to your character. DMs will be able to grant reputation as well as quests or other activities.
Much as positive reputation has a good effect, negative reputation will have bad effects. Reputation may be so low on a character, a faction will attack them on sight. For example, Drow PCs that we allow may find themselves being hunted within cities and killed by guards. Druids may find the grove friendlier to them by default than most. Etcetera.
The scale will be very detailed, ranging from around -10000 to 10000 for reputation.
Epic Levels
Epic levels alter character effectivity a great deal. But more importantly, we want to hold true to the concept of "What really is an epic character?" Epic people are so far above the normal that they're pillars of what they started. We felt grinding to something like this would trivialize what it really stands for. As such, players will be halted from all killing experience at level 20. The moment your experience is 190,000 (Or more for ECL races) you will no longer grow with kills and essentially reach the epic barrier.
Following these levels there will only be two ways to progress. Specific Epic quests, which will likely require very skilled groups to accomplish in dungeons and events for which the likes of Bane would wet themselves, or you will require experience rewards from DM events. Essentially this assures us of one important thing. The first player to reach 30 (Which WILL take a long while) will be someone that nobody can look at and say "That guy doesn't deserve Epic." So, whenever you right click yourself, select show information, and see 20 as your maximum level, that is where it will stay.
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