I've heard the "Paper-Rock-Scissors" (aka Ro-Sham-Bo) analogy used frequently when describing PvP action in the BL.
On the surface, this looks like an accurate analogy: paper covers rock, scissors cut paper, rock breaks scissors. Similar to monk bashes mage, melee bashes monk, mage nukes melee. Essentially, a balance in that no one build will dominate EVERYTHING else.
Unfortunately, PvP on the BL is like Roshambo, only you show your "hand" where everyone can see it. I.e., if you're playing a mage, it's like shouting out "I'm going to play 'scissors' now... hope no one plays a 'rock'!!!"
This is why I HATE the player list at log in. Everyone can see what you're playing and if you're level 1-40. In the spirit of D&D? Hardly. Being able to see a toon's classes and split tells you a LOT of information. Pretty much everything you need to know in order to hunt that character down and kill them. Sorta takes the fun out of PvP, don't you think? This also encourages "Musical characters"- a game that guys like Dano et al. play continuously as they try and figure out what they can beat you with. Also, it allows douchewank players a chance to see your level, allowing them to bring in a toon and spam invites at you, claiming you HAVE to party up since you're similar in lvl.
Am I way off base here? Or does anyone agree with me?
It may not be possible, but I implore the powers that be (er, Q) to look into fixing this. It'd be nice to see what "players" are on (so you can log in and party up with your friends), but not be able to see what characters/classes/levels they have.
Just a thought. Don't expect anything to get done (and again, it might be impossible to code/script), but it's worth looking into.
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Deimonos said "And that being said.. what's the point? Everything is paper and scissors cause nobody plays it the way it should be. Like you are farming drows or azers, you see someone and decides to pk and go for it.
You don't know the guy's build. You can win or you can get your ass handed to you on a plate. 50%/50%. But now it's just players logging already knowing what the other is and choosing the exactly build to kill the target easily.. bah, no skill or excitement involved. Just for bragging rights, that is..
It would be cool if one could hide the build info on the server menu before you log in, like Dark suggested. Things would be different.."
Taken from the topic "An Evening of No Great Importance"
It pretty much summarizes that pk'lling on Bads these days is way less skill and more of just getting the correct build and voilá.. (unless your Ledak and even with a mage you could probably end up humilliated by a melee with no SR..)
Anyways, hiding the char info would be cool.
Hiding char info would be good if we had more players. I've been pretty busy lately and haven't had much time to play and if there's one thing I hate it's lvling between the 7-12 range(old forest and all that).
So if I finally have an hour orso to bash away I don't mind being able to check if it's even any use logging in without finding out I'll have to grind those boring levels by myself again.
True, there are certain players that feel the need to boost their low self-esteem since they have a small dick and can't afford to buy a big car yet to make up for it. But I can count those on my own 2 hands without needing my toes, heck there's probably 3 of those people at best.
Deim,
Yeah, I saw the comment before that you quoted above, and I felt it was a great point that might get lost in the "Evening of No Great Importance" post.
So, being a good blog admin, I decided to repost it as it's own topic heading.
I agree with Pyro that lvls 7-12 can be a slow (and deadly) grind with certain builds. However, I don't think that alone is a good enough reason to be able to see others' level (so you can level w/ them). It's real easy to log in and shout LFP, if you really want to party.
Thing is, BL is pretty much solo-friendly. I've taken many a character 1-40 without ever partying up with anyone (sometimes just to ease conversation). Sometimes it's helpful to party to beat a boss, but for the most part, a well-built toon can roll along to lvl 40 no problem.
But back to the topic at hand... can the char info be hidden/removed from the login page? I look forward to Q weighing in on this.
Just off the top, this is hard-coded. The info is displayed long before you are in the game.
IF, if I can do anything about it, it would have to be a setting in the server's .INI file. I have never seen any reference to this in any forum or documentation.
I agree that the musical char rotation is not acceptable, but, without penalizing the inocent, I can't do anything about it. What I mean is, that I could write a script that has a time delay to prevent you from re-logging with a differant toon unless you wait 5 or 10 minutes.
But,.... So you log on to find your buds playing a decide you should get a diff toon before you settle in for the evening. But, in order to switch toons, you need to log out and wait 5 minutes (10 for Dano and Ledek) before you can log back in. If it was me getting hosed, I would probably just go find a differant server to play and never bother coming back.
Jim Brannick said...
Yeah, I saw the comment before that you quoted above, and I felt it was a great point that might get lost in the "Evening of No Great Importance" post.
So, being a good blog admin, I decided to repost it as it's own topic heading.
Yeah, I picked up on that too. I wanted to comment on it, but felt it was to far off-topic.
I think I forgot to mention that I will look into this. There is no real reason for anybody to know this unless I tell them. If I want to lie, and they can't figure out that I'm full of shit, then tough shit.
I figured it was something hard-coded, so I totally understand. But, Q, you've scripted/tweaked some fairly badass stuff in the past- so I wouldn't bet the farm that it's impossible to change.
And yes, a delay for relogging would be very annoying, so definitely don't go that route.
In any event, knowing your opponent's class/level gives you a huge advantage. There was something fun and challenging about the old-school game in which the party would come across a villain, but get only hints as to what the villain was and how powerful. Only after successfully defeating said villain would the DM (occasionally) reveal the stats, etc.
Hiya Blade here :)
My first Guild on Badlands RPG was called "Free Traders" which i inherited, and then my next one was my own choice of Guild type, called "Free Blades" which was allowed to be an all embracing Anti - PK Guild ( I just asked a DM if this was ok, and wasn't following the Alignment types as set out in the Rules Proper)
I mention this, as when i first joined i was very "Anti-PK" and wanted protection soi could just get on and Levelup my toons.
Later on, when i tried to shed my "Soft Image", I had a Guild called "Death Blades " which was an evil PK Guild.
Now, as i understood it, there were strict rules about what was acceptable when it came to PKing other players toons. This involved knowing their level so that you tried to make sure that youwere within 10 levels of them if they were lower, and ideally you sought out players with chars that had more levels than you (or that was what earned respect, if you could pull it off).
So how on earth can we play to PK other players without being able to see their stats on login or in the game ? Do we just hit and hope that they are not an embarressingly low level target ?
I would much prefer all toons to be automatically put in one of the 3 Alignment Guilds, and the DM to initiate a "Server Shout " that war had broken out between the Guilds whenever they felt it was a good time for some action :)
I would try to stop PKing at other times and keep Fighting one another to the Arena.
However if there are any clever ideas to make all this stuff work better, i am all ears :)
All the Best .......Blade :)
OK !!!! WE'RE ON NOW !!!!
I DOOD IT - I DOOD IT
After much frustrating searches in the forums, I found a link to a link to a link. (Is that like a friend of a friend of a friend?)
I found a NWNX plug-in that blanks out the player list. Unfortunatly, the window is completely blank now. It makes the server seem empty, but, you no longer have pre-logon-info about the players.
There is no immidiate problems. I will let run for a while before making any hard decision as to keep or throw-back. This is the best place to voice your opinion. (I lost my spell-checher, I hope it doesn't show.)
The thing about knowing how close you are in levels is actually quite easy. Right click on the player or the monster. If you or the other is close to, or over, level 40, then use the Ring of CR. The report is in terms like "challenging", "easy" and "difficult". The right-click function is a hard-coded Bioware (NWN) service. I built the Ring of CR to give a proper report for the over-40-crowd. The full list is in your NWN manual.
"Challenging" means the same level as self.
The full range is + or - 6 levels.
This check should be done before inviting others to your party. If I don't have time to run this check before accepting an invite, I do so ASAP. If you ever heard me bitch about being invited by somebody nowhere near my level, that's because it's off the scale and I prefer to party with anybody near my level, regardless of their build, alignment, or personality. (those are sepperate issues).
Do us ALL a favor and do a Right-Click. It's fast and it's free.
Oh yeah, The right-click is hard-coded and does not count as an action, so it can be done anytime even during combat. The Ring of CR uses an action slot and, although it will function during combat, it stops you from doing other things that are more important.
I just wanted to put in my two cents. I'm not much of a PKer to begin with. If I do PK, it's usually targeted on "Griefers". Those players that target low level players and kill them repeatedly.
As a defense against "Rock, Paper, Scissors" PKers, there is a very good defense. Grouping, like Q is always trying to encourage. If the rampant PKer can kill my Melee, then the monk or mage in my party can kill him. He probably won't come back after a couple of deaths. And with a party, I can get a Raise Dead, so I don't lose any exp like the PKer did.
P.S. If you plan on grouping, please carry some Raise Dead scrolls. Any class can use them. All you need is a skill of 24 Spell Craft. Even if you don't have a spell craft score. You can use them to replenish the other persons stock that raised you.
Sorry I took so long to get to my point.
I like having the list. Not because I use it to PK, but It is a GREAT way to get new ideas for builds. My new build might only vaguely resemble what I saw, but without their inspiration, it would never have happened.
I play this game more for the creative aspect. You build them, then take them out for a test drive and see how well they do.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the list go for good, but I would really miss all the cool ideas I would never see.
I've read a few times now that pking a high lvl with a lowbie gets you respect. Now I can understand that as it can be quite tough to kill certain builds if you even if you have the right build but the lvl difference is too big.
But how is anyone here gonna get some respect for killing high levels if the server itself won't even acknowledge it? The server won't give you a shout unless you pk'd someone more than 5 lvls lower than you. And if there ever happens a shout like this below lvl 30 everyone's gonna start shouting the pker is a pussy.
I've said it before, please make the server shout on whatever pk action might be happening. Lvl difference or no.
I agree with a lot of things said here, especially the bit about seeing other peoples lvl before log in. is there any way to make it where you can see the character name and next to it it just say lvl 5 or whatever lvl they are and nothing about there class or classes?
Also in refference to what terry said yes it can give you some good ideas when you see what people are playing, but also there is a hidden gem when you see someone is playing a lvl 37 wizard and lvl 3 pm we'll miss out on some top class comedy.
It think this will help the musical chair aspect of the PVP. But after a little while the regular PVPers will know what a toons name means. I think the real root cause of rock paper scissors is that
1. Gear makes it very easy to min/max.
2. The built in penalties have mostly been fixed. (e.g. you can make a Dev critter with decent AC or a mage killer with epic dodge and buffs, or a mage with lots of extra spell slots and 1000HP, or a Dex built that does 300HP/RD in damage.)
3. It's quick to level fast. So if the most efficient build has a 5 level drag it doesn't take long to get past.
4. There's not need to put any effort into non-combat activity. If the skill, ability or class doesn't help your combat plan there's no need for it. (e.g. appraise.)
not that any of that needs to be changed. I'm just saying.
extomorf said...
I agree with a lot of things said here, especially the bit about seeing other peoples lvl before log in. is there any way to make it where you can see the character name and next to it it just say lvl 5 or whatever lvl they are and nothing about there class or classes?
In the forum (Playerlist Disabling?) where I found this plug-in, I later did ask that question. It is too soon to expect a response.
QUOTE: The blank player list gives the appearence of the server being empty.
I would like the player list to show the names of the characters logged on without showing the build types. Showing the user log names might be nice as well. Perhaps it would be possable to have some of this user-adjustable in the servers INI file.
Just a thought.
Oh, I really like the idea for posting character name with user log in name. Wish Bioware would have thought up that one to begin with.
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