What do you want to see out of a player world?

While we can't promise to address everyone's desires or thoughts with our player world, we can promise to contemplate on them. Ergo, with that, what would you like to see out of a player world?

Futher, what have you seen on other servers you would like on Ravener?

What have you seen on other servers you would like us to avoid?

Any thoughts / comments from forum members are welcome.

Something grim and dark.

One of the reasons why I've always been a fan of the Ravenloft setting is because it's always been considerably darker than the FR stuff we have.

I like to know that the world is in a bad shape, or that it's a harsh place to live in. Like to see evil winning. I like to see common people suffering while the corrupt, rich nobles and aristocrats stuff their faces full. I like to see goodly orders headed by corrupt leaders who keep a false veneer of good and nobility, or orders that fight for good, but are gruesome and serious about it (no paladiny white-knight crap). Common people turning to dark ways (fiend worship, for example) to better their lot in life. Racism and human/elven/whatever supremacy. Famine, disease, plague. Evil running amok, etc. Players, especially good ones, having a hard time against the world that (depending on who they are) barely welcomes them.

Most of all, I'd like that to reflect on the world design and interaction with it. Would be nice to walk around a city that -actually- looks miserable, with the outer areas of it made up of rundown shacks and filthy streets, while the noble quarter in the middle is kept in pristine condition (beautiful, but corrupt on the inside). Instead of seeing a pristine city, all shiny and cute, with ridiculously elaborate and big buildings almost everywhere and a lush, sunny, beautiful countryside, it'd be awesome to see the opposite of that.

Just to take an example from Ravenloft: Barovia, a land made up of superstitious, narrow-minded people, hardy and tough, but mistrustful (at the very least least) of outsiders, hateful and fearful of all magic (with the slight exception of divine magic for healing purposes only). The land itself is mostly miserable and extremely dangerous, individuals live in fear and most of them barely manage to survive and scavenge a living from one day to the other. In the countrysides and cities, it becomes incredibly perilous at night and all homes, shops and shacks are closed before the sun even fully sets - anyone foolish enough to remain outside after nightfall is highly unlikely to ever see the dawn again. To top all it off, the land is ruled by an evil, power-hungry, completely inhuman vampire count who rules the land with an iron fist, the more powerful he becomes as an individual, the more the land suffers, darkens and decays. There's almost no hope for anything better there. Good is highly unlikely to prevail or win the day.

That's the kind of stuff I'd like to see from a player world. It's, honestly, rare to see such a server in NWN 2 these days, let alone one that actually sticks to the gritty and dark theme over the long term, instead of letting it be diluted and deteriorated with time. Most servers claim to have dark, rough and grim themes, but, when you get in 'em, you realize it's more like carebear land, sunshine and unicorns, good and good players wafflestomp evil and prevail, the grim darkness has been beaten long ago, etc.

Now, the other point would be realism. Yes, I know it's a bit of a contradiction to ask realism from a fantasy setting, but bear with me.

What I mean by realism is:

- Life not being easy. Not having everything be so easily solved by a fireball, or everyone kept at the peak of their health by a cleric's healing spells.

- Equipment and such that actually makes some bloody sense. Chainmail bikinis are not realistic and do not provide any protection whatsoever, no matter how someone may try to justify it.

- NPCs reacting negatively, horribly so, when they see, for example, a wizard/warlock/sorcerer/whatever transform into a troll or devil or something. Way I see it, you just don't get to do something like that without peasants being fearful and, later, mob-with-pitchforks angry.

- Actual consequences for players' actions.

- The possibility of failure. I can't stress this enough. A substantial possiblity that characters won't always win, that things won't always go their way, that sometimes they might just fail very hard, or face unforeseen consequences that far outweigh their success, because they weren't smart about the way they did things. There might be a possibility that, for example, the corrupt city guard officer they're investigating and chasing around might actually grab 'em and throw 'em in jail if they're not smart about how they're going about it. Perhaps murdering all those goblins in order to rescue someone/retrieve an item/find an ingredient for a cure to a disease will only make the bastards grow angry, seek allies and mount a massive attack in retaliation, resulting in the deaths of dozens.

That's what I'd like to see in a server from a viewpoint of setting and theme.

Now, in game mechanics and related aspects, I'd like to see a bit of a harder configuration:

- Slow leveling (highly doubt it'd fly, but a level cap for leveling through grinding/monster XP at around level 12-15 would be great, a soft cap only, RP and DM XP would still lead to a level up), because, honestly, dozens of high/epic-level characters running around is not as good as people think, nor is reaching said levels. From my experience, it eventually breaks the RP, the immersion, etc. Things get a bit ridiculous when every bloke and his mother can cast vampiric feast, can cleave a dragon in half with a single swing, etc etc. Plots lose their point. Threats are no longer threatening. A horde of orcs suddenly becomes much smaller.

- Low magic. Basically the same principle as above.

- Harsh punishment and loss for dying. My preference is for semi-permadeath, a system of death tokens or something, but I dunno if that'd fly. Example: characters start with 10 tokens, run a 0.000001% chance of losing a token whenever they come back to life by respawning (not raise dead scrolls or such), and are permadead upon the loss of the last token (tokens might be renewable or not under certain circumstances).

- No ridiculously-buffed monsters (no goblins with ridiculous AC and HP, that can take three acid arrows and a fireball to the face and still, for example).

- A viable crafting system (bit vague, I know, but it's late here and I'm too tired to elaborate).

- Economy and prices balanced so that, for example, players won't get tens of thousands of gold coins a week, but, also, won't need those to keep themselves stocked with enough equipment, potions and supplies to survive. Low monetary rewards for loot, but also low prices for potions, equipment, etc. Basically, a horizontal/widespread reduction of coin involved in the economy, across the board.

Anyway, that's about it. I'm getting off my soapbox, now, as it's late, I'm a bit tired and forgot half the other suggestions I had to make.

-B

You want Grim and Dark setting? YOU'LL GET IT!

Baardago wrote:Something grim and dark.

One of the reasons why I've always been a fan of the Ravenloft setting is because it's always been considerably darker than the FR stuff we have.

I like to know that the world is in a bad shape, or that it's a harsh place to live in. Like to see evil winning. I like to see common people suffering while the corrupt, rich nobles and aristocrats stuff their faces full. I like to see goodly orders headed by corrupt leaders who keep a false veneer of good and nobility, or orders that fight for good, but are gruesome and serious about it (no paladiny white-knight crap). Common people turning to dark ways (fiend worship, for example) to better their lot in life. Racism and human/elven/whatever supremacy. Famine, disease, plague. Evil running amok, etc. Players, especially good ones, having a hard time against the world that (depending on who they are) barely welcomes them.

Most of all, I'd like that to reflect on the world design and interaction with it. Would be nice to walk around a city that -actually- looks miserable, with the outer areas of it made up of rundown shacks and filthy streets, while the noble quarter in the middle is kept in pristine condition (beautiful, but corrupt on the inside). Instead of seeing a pristine city, all shiny and cute, with ridiculously elaborate and big buildings almost everywhere and a lush, sunny, beautiful countryside, it'd be awesome to see the opposite of that.

Not to spoil too much, but this is precisely what a major city will be like.

Baardago wrote:Just to take an example from Ravenloft: Barovia, a land made up of superstitious, narrow-minded people, hardy and tough, but mistrustful (at the very least least) of outsiders, hateful and fearful of all magic (with the slight exception of divine magic for healing purposes only). The land itself is mostly miserable and extremely dangerous, individuals live in fear and most of them barely manage to survive and scavenge a living from one day to the other. In the countrysides and cities, it becomes incredibly perilous at night and all homes, shops and shacks are closed before the sun even fully sets - anyone foolish enough to remain outside after nightfall is highly unlikely to ever see the dawn again. To top all it off, the land is ruled by an evil, power-hungry, completely inhuman vampire count who rules the land with an iron fist, the more powerful he becomes as an individual, the more the land suffers, darkens and decays. There's almost no hope for anything better there. Good is highly unlikely to prevail or win the day.

That's the kind of stuff I'd like to see from a player world. It's, honestly, rare to see such a server in NWN 2 these days, let alone one that actually sticks to the gritty and dark theme over the long term, instead of letting it be diluted and deteriorated with time. Most servers claim to have dark, rough and grim themes, but, when you get in 'em, you realize it's more like carebear land, sunshine and unicorns, good and good players wafflestomp evil and prevail, the grim darkness has been beaten long ago, etc.

Can tell you right now the people that "win" are going to have to be the smart, have good plans, strength (military, personal, etc - all situation depending), and tactics. Morals are irrelevant to the end result in those types of situations.

And yeah, we'll be going for realistic... hardly carebear.

Baardago wrote:Now, the other point would be realism. Yes, I know it's a bit of a contradiction to ask realism from a fantasy setting, but bear with me.

What I mean by realism is:

- Life not being easy. Not having everything be so easily solved by a fireball, or everyone kept at the peak of their health by a cleric's healing spells.

- Equipment and such that actually makes some bloody sense. Chainmail bikinis are not realistic and do not provide any protection whatsoever, no matter how someone may try to justify it.

- NPCs reacting negatively, horribly so, when they see, for example, a wizard/warlock/sorcerer/whatever transform into a troll or devil or something. Way I see it, you just don't get to do something like that without peasants being fearful and, later, mob-with-pitchforks angry.

- Actual consequences for players' actions.

- The possibility of failure. I can't stress this enough. A substantial possiblity that characters won't always win, that things won't always go their way, that sometimes they might just fail very hard, or face unforeseen consequences that far outweigh their success, because they weren't smart about the way they did things. There might be a possibility that, for example, the corrupt city guard officer they're investigating and chasing around might actually grab 'em and throw 'em in jail if they're not smart about how they're going about it. Perhaps murdering all those goblins in order to rescue someone/retrieve an item/find an ingredient for a cure to a disease will only make the bastards grow angry, seek allies and mount a massive attack in retaliation, resulting in the deaths of dozens.

That's what I'd like to see in a server from a viewpoint of setting and theme.

Our server is going to be directed at people that immerse themselves into the role of their character, roleplaying out all aspects, good and bad - especially the consequences to their actions. It isn't for everyone, I'm well aware, but that's who we'll be focusing toward and what we'll expect of our players.

Baardago wrote:Now, in game mechanics and related aspects, I'd like to see a bit of a harder configuration:

- Slow leveling (highly doubt it'd fly, but a level cap for leveling through grinding/monster XP at around level 12-15 would be great, a soft cap only, RP and DM XP would still lead to a level up), because, honestly, dozens of high/epic-level characters running around is not as good as people think, nor is reaching said levels. From my experience, it eventually breaks the RP, the immersion, etc. Things get a bit ridiculous when every bloke and his mother can cast vampiric feast, can cleave a dragon in half with a single swing, etc etc. Plots lose their point. Threats are no longer threatening. A horde of orcs suddenly becomes much smaller.

- Low magic. Basically the same principle as above.

- Harsh punishment and loss for dying. My preference is for semi-permadeath, a system of death tokens or something, but I dunno if that'd fly. Example: characters start with 10 tokens, run a 0.000001% chance of losing a token whenever they come back to life by respawning (not raise dead scrolls or such), and are permadead upon the loss of the last token (tokens might be renewable or not under certain circumstances).

- No ridiculously-buffed monsters (no goblins with ridiculous AC and HP, that can take three acid arrows and a fireball to the face and still, for example).

- A viable crafting system (bit vague, I know, but it's late here and I'm too tired to elaborate).

- Economy and prices balanced so that, for example, players won't get tens of thousands of gold coins a week, but, also, won't need those to keep themselves stocked with enough equipment, potions and supplies to survive. Low monetary rewards for loot, but also low prices for potions, equipment, etc. Basically, a horizontal/widespread reduction of coin involved in the economy, across the board.

Anyway, that's about it. I'm getting off my soapbox, now, as it's late, I'm a bit tired and forgot half the other suggestions I had to make.

-B

Can't comment much on this as we haven't discussed it as a team. At this moment, we're still working on the lore, how it all fits together, etc.

Goodly Kingdom / City / Authority that's actually L to NG, more G than L - and controlled by NPCs whom can overturn PC leaders' rulings. If you have a bunch of grim darkness there needs to be a hope spot.

As far as the "controlled by NPC's" part goes...we hope to guide the setting and stories so that people have a reason TO be good or evil depending on which side they're on. Though if the good side starts acting Neutral Leaning toward Evil then it makes sense that they would need NPC guidance, which will happen. Hopefully as a last resort.

First and foremost, I greatly enjoyed the Staff's responses to Baardago's long and well put post. That in and of itself has my attention on this up-coming server.

Just my two cents about things, though it won't be as eloquent.

I agree, mostly, with Baardago, but not completely. I would suggest mid, maybe low-mid, leveling. Slow it down too much and it chases away an already dwindling and entrenched player-base.

I'd say the same for magic. Low-mid, probably. Make it too low and the math can break down at mid levels causing everyone to be potion addicts, something I feel is unrealistic and, frankly, annoying.

I agree completely with his other points on mechanics, especially the economy and crafting. Crafting, especially when it's based on specializations, just supports the economy, and gives something extra people can do alone, or in a group, outside of quest or hunting and sitting around RPing.

The only point I can bring up at the moment that hasn't been yet, off the top of my head, is Kaedrin's work. I feel that it's essentially a requirement at this point in this game's life that a server uses as much as they can/deem appropriate. For those of us who play/ed p&p and nwn1 and/or 2 we've done the 'core' thing far too often. There's only so many fighters a person can make before they can't stand the idea of doing it again. I feel we need the options his base classes and PrCs offer, not to mention the feats and spells. Maygbe not everything, but a decent amount. It's the first thing I check when I look at a server, in fact that's how I found you guys, I saw a link of his page.

Thanks, guys. Keep up the good work.


EDIT: Right after posting this I reread part of the thread and saw the mention of semi-permadeath. I'm not much of a fan of this, it's too easy to have a string of bad runs and end a character with great RP potential before their time. I don't really have a suggestion of a better way, unfortunately......

What i want to see:

Active DMs that engage in making the world more lively while refraining from favoritism (as humanly possible - we all make mistakes)

Non-vanilla classes and abilities - original game is pretty stale by now.

Non-combat being viable - harvesting , crafting , building and so forth should be in the hands of player characters who dedicate themselves to it. (non-combat professions essentially - could be non-craft related per se like dancer or what not)

Dungeons that involve the players in scripted puzzles/detailed surroundings and sensible enemy placement - it makes pve alot more pleasing than whacking a random orc wandering about a random forest 50 million times.

Trolls - eliminate quickly and do not let fester. the community has it's share of rotten apples that want to disrupt everything and make everyone miserable.. just ban immediately and problem averted.

Kannexx wrote:First and foremost, I greatly enjoyed the Staff's responses to Baardago's long and well put post. That in and of itself has my attention on this up-coming server.

We try! Just sorry about the late response to this.

Kannexx wrote:Slow it down too much and it chases away an already dwindling and entrenched player-base.

I can't agree more. I've seen many servers rise and fall, due to them losing a playerbase by appealing to a handful of people -- IE, people that want very slow NWN 2 leveling.

Issue with that is it generates a low server population -- and when that population leaves, generally the server dies. With something that generates more interest, it's far more likely that people will continue to try it.

Kannexx wrote:I'd say the same for magic. Low-mid, probably. Make it too low and the math can break down at mid levels causing everyone to be potion addicts, something I feel is unrealistic and, frankly, annoying.

We were thinking a +5 max on weapon enchants, which I suppose is "mid" (considering NWN 2 goes to +10).

Kannexx wrote:I agree completely with his other points on mechanics, especially the economy and crafting. Crafting, especially when it's based on specializations, just supports the economy, and gives something extra people can do alone, or in a group, outside of quest or hunting and sitting around RPing.

Agreed, I'm looking into various crafting ideas atm. Enchanting, absolutely, and maybe a hunter / gatherer type of system to add on top of it.

Kannexx wrote:The only point I can bring up at the moment that hasn't been yet, off the top of my head, is Kaedrin's work. I feel that it's essentially a requirement at this point in this game's life that a server uses as much as they can/deem appropriate. For those of us who play/ed p&p and nwn1 and/or 2 we've done the 'core' thing far too often. There's only so many fighters a person can make before they can't stand the idea of doing it again. I feel we need the options his base classes and PrCs offer, not to mention the feats and spells. Maygbe not everything, but a decent amount. It's the first thing I check when I look at a server, in fact that's how I found you guys, I saw a link of his page.

If you look at the memberlist, Kaedrin is registered here because we informed him we planned to use his content.

Kannexx wrote:EDIT: Right after posting this I reread part of the thread and saw the mention of semi-permadeath. I'm not much of a fan of this, it's too easy to have a string of bad runs and end a character with great RP potential before their time. I don't really have a suggestion of a better way, unfortunately......

With our considered system, permadeath by PVP would be hard -- unless your character just keeps dying, repeatedly. We were thinking of a system to add penalties after death, and when the penalties stack to high, you're permakilled. They reset after a week, though, so you can avoid anything permanent if you play it smart.

It's not finalized, but it is more of a system to encourage people to be cautious of deadly situations, not rush into them and keep dying repeatedly.

Eizendur wrote:What i want to see:

Active DMs that engage in making the world more lively while refraining from favoritism (as humanly possible - we all make mistakes)

We have a general idea of how to prevent that in our mission statement.

No more hidden staff activity. We want you, the players, to know what we are up to -- that is why we will be creating a Builder's log, detailing what builder is currently working on what, as well as a DM log -- detailing what events were ran, by who, and for what group of players.

This way, the players know just what is occurring around the server -- and we, the staff, can more readily identify problem areas (such as when one faction is getting too much attention, and another is getting none).

Only way this won't work is if DMs refuse to make logs -- but if they refuse to, after I keep asking them to, they will be fired. I can not stress how important it is to this community's goal of inclusiveness if we do not know who is getting DM attention and who is not.

Eizendur wrote:Non-vanilla classes and abilities - original game is pretty stale by now.

Non-combat being viable - harvesting , crafting , building and so forth should be in the hands of player characters who dedicate themselves to it. (non-combat professions essentially - could be non-craft related per se like dancer or what not)

If I can figure out how to script it, I'd love to do it -- and if I can't, maybe when our server is up and running, it will attract a scripter that can figure it out.

Eizendur wrote:Dungeons that involve the players in scripted puzzles/detailed surroundings and sensible enemy placement - it makes pve alot more pleasing than whacking a random orc wandering about a random forest 50 million times.

I'm planning to build a series of "temples", or trials, that are going to have puzzles and a boss people have to kill at the end -- but if they win, they get a permanent reward. Just don't want to spoil too much.

Eizendur wrote:Trolls - eliminate quickly and do not let fester. the community has it's share of rotten apples that want to disrupt everything and make everyone miserable.. just ban immediately and problem averted.

We have a person focusing purely on PR, our Head Admin, and the Assistant Administrators just for this. It is their job to identify problems in the community and fix them -- especially people breaking rules. I just don't plan to ban anyone till they've broken rules here.

There are few things I would like to see.

One of wich is random mini events. Like a Druid suddenly running into a group of loggers. Or some beggars running up to some one looking for a hand out, or some commoners throwing rotten tomatoes at folks. Just to name a few things.

Granted life can be a dark and evil place in some places, but in other places it can more bright and good. While a hand full of places can be swayed one way or the other depending n the RP and events. A server that's trailered to both extremes of law, chaos, good, and evil. Would be grate challenge, with the possibilities of grate rewards.

Over all I'm quite exighted to see how this server shapes up. Looking good from what I have seen, and heard.