34 réponses à ce sujet

[_Knightmare_]

Alupinu wrote...

*What about balance of play?* This is another subject with side quest that is concerning me. Just want to see if anybody had an opinion about this too.

alupinu

What I have done is create a scaling module in terms of the NPC/Enemy class levels. I wrote a couple OnSpawn scripts that auto-level up the NPCs/creatures based on the PC's total character level/Hit Dice. So, as the PC gets more powerful, the creatures they run into will scale along with them. The scripts also give the NPCs some random equipment based on their final level.

It doesn't work in all situations of course. I have my area critters based off what the area terrain is, not off what level the PC should be when they get there. So if the player goes to Area 1 when they are 3rd level, they would fight goblins (or whatever). If they player went to Area 1 at 10th level, they would still be fighting goblins but those goblins would be beefed up (to, say 7th level for example).

[PJ156]

I do all of the subquests first then balance the combat last. I guess you could be scientific about it and add up all the possible exp but I tend to trial and error it.

I figure when balancing that most players are going to do most side quests. Thus for balance purposes I assume they will do all. I know you are promising hidden areas and lairs in your mod (I have exp awards for talking to people at odd times of the day or for a couple of secret areas). In this case I balance on the basis that the player gets half of these.

I Think it very hard to balance for solo play and party play because I am less intelligent with moster spawning (certainly less than _KM_). I would balance for party play. If they want to solo give them a chance to take an extra level at the start perhaps but despawn the npc's.

I have to say I puts lots of effort into the npc's I hate the thought that someone would leave them behind. It makes me sad to have them waiting by the wall for someone to ask them to dance.

PJ

Modifié par PJ156, 23 décembre 2010 - 06:50 .

[The Fred]

dunniteowl wrote...
And as a side note, one of my Peeves/Rants with stock NWN2 is that time has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. How do you make a series of events that *do* affect the main quest's issues if all those side quests make no noticeable impact on your time to complete the main quest?

Yeah, this is something I hope to correct in my mod, but it's probably going to be quite a bit of work for something which ought to be relatively straightforwards.

dunniteowl wrote...
The Fred, does your countdown timer only work for, say, a minute or two, or can it be set to longer actual times?

It can be set to theoretically infinately large times (though there wouldn't be space on the screen for it) but the issue is that it counts out-of-game time rather than in-game time. At small scales, these are the same (well, 1 round = 6 seconds and somehow, 1 second = 1 second), but at bigger scales it breaks down. So this could time 1 minute, 10 minutes, even an hour or two, but not days or in-game hours (and in fact, these would last *hours* in real time unless you have a system which advances time, for example when resting).

[The Fred]

As for scaling, KM's system is good in moderation, but it has to be balanced against the fact that going back to a goblin cave when you're level 20 and finding that, all of a sudden, those little guys can cast Chain Lightning and Summon Creature VII and cut three people in half with a single stroke... this just makes things really unrealistic. Also, I want to feel that a beholder or an ogre mage is a lot tougher than a single goblin. That said, having to cleave through hordes of goblins *isn't* fun when they're all L1 with 3 hit points... so, it's a good system, so long as it's not abused.

[Alupinu]

If goblins are just as tough at 5th lv as they are at 1st lv then what's the point of leveling? LOL I like your idea there KM but I do have to agree with 'The Fred' it needs to be used in limited doses.

Modifié par Alupinu, 23 décembre 2010 - 10:31 .

[Alupinu]

KM script did give me an idea. How about a script with conditionals that checks the party’s level then spawn a creature from a predetermined table. The logic would go something like this;
Check Party,
If (get level) if <=3
 Get table=1
else
If (get level) if <=6
Get table=2
 
And obviously each one of these mini tables would have monsters of the same lv that was true.
 
Or something like that. Does anybody see what I’m getting at? LOL

alupinu

Modifié par Alupinu, 24 décembre 2010 - 04:06 .

[dunniteowl]

See? Now that is the camp I am in when it comes to play/combat balance. I honestly don't care. I make a specific encounter to be of a specific level of difficulty. Period. You wanna come along and go into the Goblin Warrens at level 10 instead of level 3? Hey, it's your party, pal.

That said, I think having MOAR Goblinz isn't such a bad idea for higher level players. And, do take into account that goblins in a large warren will have goblin guards, goblin shamans, goblin lieutenants, goblin captains and goblin priests which can vary (and here I am going to show my D&D age a bit) between 1/2 to 2 HD for goblin fodder, 2-4HD for the guards, 3-6HD for the shamans, and priests and 5-8HD for the lieutenants, captains and the goblin king.

And don't forget, goblins breed like rats, or flies, or well, goblins. So there's gonna be a lot of 'em.

If I had to balance it, I'd set a quest for lower level characters that only had to go into the hills and scout out the goblin situation, find their entrance and report back to HQ. In this way, if they take on that quest, that's all they get to do and if they try to approach the entrance to the warrens, you get a triggered convo box that says, "The entrance to this cave is heavily guarded by at least 2 squads of goblin guards. You realize it would be foolhardy to reveal yourselves at this time and you wisely scuttle away quietly so as not to attract their attention." And you just don't allow the characters to enter, based on a Level Check that's either tied to their quest journal or is a simple Pass/Fail of their overall party level.

Now that's how I'd do it for NWN2. As a PnP designer, I'd have the DM inform a very low level party that the entrance looks to be heavily guarded and entry would be, at best, foolhardy. Now if they want to enter anyway, well, like I said, hey pal, it's your party.

The same should hold true in some cases for encounters well above your party's ability to handle. You want to enter that cave with all the indicators that possibly a very large and very unruly creature lives inside? Sure, go ahead. Don't say you weren't warned. If you choose to enter the cave and then run into a nest of Wyverns or a single Dragon and you get your butts handed to you, well, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. Hope you saved before entering.

I like to worry less about overall party level balance and encounter balance. I spend my efforts on creating a story within a framework that, hopefully, self corrects by gently leading the PC(party) along some greased rails with occasional stops on the sidings and time for snacks, shopping and some souvenirs before getting back onboard.

I try not to be too heavy handed when it comes to where should a PC go next. Hey, your quest journal was just updated and you just talked to the guy that said where you were supposed to be going, so if you don't want to go that way, well then don't complain that the story doesn't unfold in a consistent or logical manner. You went the wrong way on purpose, I didn't lead you astray.

So I am not a big fan of scaling, per se, but that's my far and distant D&D roots (and general intransigence at changing a good thing) showing and not necessarily an inability to see it's potential and value under the correct conditions.

dunniteowl

[El Condoro]

Joining this discussion a bit late but it seems time is an important issue, as pointed out. There are a number of ways to easily handle time:

All these assume the main quest has a time sensitive element scripted into it - must be completed by a set date, date affects difficulty etc.

1. Really general: at the end of a quest, on the "Thank you" conversation node, use SetTime to advance the time by a number of days. This should probably be made known to the PC upfront so that they can refuse the task. Coupled with this, if a World Map is used (or any transition, for that matter), advance the time by days, hours, whatever is appropriate.

2. General but not too much: have triggers along the route of a quest that advance the time by hours or days.

3. Specific: area OnHeartbeat script that has a start integer reduce by 1 per time the script fires. It could include a FloatingString to add tension and pressure as the time runs down.

4. Resting: should advance the time and affect the quest if the PCs always want to be on full HP etc before tackling the boss monster or whatever.

There must be a consequence for the time being 'wasted' though. When timer integer hits zero bad stuff happens; quests not completed before a set time/date are more difficult or affected some other way. The sick grandmother dies, in the example above. It all involves some scripting but that is also fun!

In these ways side quests can be fun and beneficial but don't operate in a kind of parallel universe that doesn't affect the main quest; everything is linked. Like in RL, all choices have a consequence, even if it's just in time spent/misspent.

Cheers

[The Fred]

For creature scaling, it's probably best to use bands or something. So, goblins will level up as you do, but only up to a point. Based off what KM said, I for some reason get the impression they don't scale as fast as the player in his system, anyway. Once the goblins hit maybe 5th level or whatever, you have to start replacing them with ogres and things. Alternatively, just have less of the grunt goblins spawn and more of the elite goblins. I think you could really do with some sort of story reason for things like this, though ("Oh no, the Super-Evil Blood Guard of the Most Ugly Brorlg goblins have come down from the mountains because the Most Ugly Brorlg is angry!") rather than suddenly, all the goblins getting better equipment and training (though it's possible that, in the timeline of your story, the goblins *do* advance... it just seems crazy that this would haven on an adventurer's level-up timescale rather than in the centuries before or after the game).

[_Knightmare_]

I agree that small doses of the creatures leveling is a good thing. I have two sets of scripts, one for the "rank-and-file" and one for the "bosses." The first script does max out at 50% of the player's level, so the "avaerage" auto-leveled creature can't become all that powerful. The bosses on the other hand, with my second script, is the one I use more often. I have it set also to a % of the PC's level, but with no max. So the boss could be leveled up to whatever, like 125% of the PC's XP (to give it the PC's level plus one or two more levels to make the boss fight tougher).



Actually I have a third script that handles by-and-large the vast majority of general creature encounters for an area. What I do is just set up a series of progressively tougher Encounter Triggers, each with bigger/badder spawns than the last. The first trigger might spawn goblins, the next would spawn orcs, the next spawns ogres, etc. Then my script checks the level of the PC and fires off the encounter trigger that most closely matches the PC's power level.



@ The Fred - Actually, in my module there is a good reason that the average goblin might be gaining levels faster than a "normal" goblin. There is an active great war going on between the goblinoids and humanoids in my module. Both sides fight in battles often and would be gaining combat experience from that.