davidb
Senior Member
Posts: 300
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Post by davidb on Nov 17, 2008 17:26:50 GMT -5
At least I think it is cool! Make creatures at night to be much harder than during day. That way you achieve many interesting things. My suggestion is, keep current day spawn, but make a night spawn dependant on the average level of people in the area, so everybody can "enjoy" this "feature". And yeah, some low-level bypasser could get it instead... but he always has the option to wait until dawn to start travel... Evil critters usually enjoy night more than day, so it would be realist. Low or even mid level people would need to stick to daylight travel, or be in groups. If night is coming, a defensive camp may be in order. Also, all level players would still need to be a watchful while at night. It's not good for roleplaying to be chitchatting in front of a Gnoll Fortress with absolutely no care about enemies around, because they're trivial. At night Gnolls may get reinforcements and attack! These creatures would always spawn close to players, and automatically de-spawn at dawn, of course. I miss the days when I was level 5 and travelling was a challenge  |
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Post by broham2 on Nov 17, 2008 17:51:07 GMT -5
I think just modifying some of the spawns at all would be great.. there has to be more low level creatures available than wolves... even if there were bears and/or a few loose kobolds it would add some variety.. and I think a bandit party on the tradeway every now and then would be sweet... a dire wolf in the ogres, a bugbear party randomly in the goblins, etc.
ON EDIT: But yeah, I agree with you that spawns changing at night would be a cool feature!
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Post by loudent2 on Nov 17, 2008 17:57:13 GMT -5
but make a night spawn dependant on the average level of people in the area This is a bad idea IMO. It's one of the reasons most PWs eventually ditch the standard NWN encounter system and use something else. A high level running through a zone who neglects to clean up the spawns he creates can render the zone unusable for the duration (in this case, until daytime). I'm a big fan of spawns changing based on time of day (partcularly with undead at night) but level based spawns should be located in an area designed for them, not in the general popluation areas. IMO. |
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Post by Tiefling on Nov 17, 2008 19:51:51 GMT -5
I miss the days when I was level 5 and travelling was a challenge I really do not like the sound of your suggestion. No offence intended. However, being at character level five, and finding a party is hard enough as it is. Why make the game even more needlessly difficult? Though I admit one of the main reason behind the tough time is mainly due to the character build I got, one made simply for role-playing reasons. ‘Arcane tricksters’ are fun to solo… after base level eight. |
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davidb
Senior Member
Posts: 300
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Post by davidb on Nov 17, 2008 20:00:59 GMT -5
but make a night spawn dependant on the average level of people in the area This is a bad idea IMO. It's one of the reasons most PWs eventually ditch the standard NWN encounter system and use something else. A high level running through a zone who neglects to clean up the spawns he creates can render the zone unusable for the duration (in this case, until daytime). . Well, yes, maybe dynamically generating content based on level has many consequences and is more complex than it sounded to me. But that was just a small comment on the general idea at making night more deadly. |
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Post by DM Sir Carnifex on Nov 17, 2008 20:13:02 GMT -5
I miss the days when I was level 5 and travelling was a challenge I really do not like the sound of your suggestion. No offence intended. However, being at character level five, and finding a party is hard enough as it is. Why make the game even more needlessly difficult? Though I admit one of the main reason behind the tough time is mainly due to the character build I got, one made simply for role-playing reasons. ‘Arcane tricksters’ are fun to solo… after base level eight. The whole problem is that difficulty all depends on character class. My rogue/bard still struggles at level 12 with the goblins, yet my level 11 druid/barbarian can steamroll right through them. Any changes on the difficulty are hard to do because of this inbalance. Different spawns or something wouldn't be bad, but making everything harder even after we switched to hardcore might be a little too much. |
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Post by Tiefling on Nov 17, 2008 20:40:20 GMT -5
Well, you could make things even more difficult, but in all fairness it would require that there would be enough NPC quests to make it possible to level withouth getting your behind whooped far too often. Even if the quests would be simple delivery quests from place A to B, more or less located inside Gate. But we got various trade organanizations inside Baldur's Gate, Iron Throne, The Merchant's League for starters. And I'm sure those two could use some errand boys and girls, when trying to wrestle the trade control from one and another. And yeah, it took about two days to get my rogue to reach level two. When it only yook 15 minutes or so with my Fighter.  |
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Post by DEV Akavit on Nov 17, 2008 21:09:35 GMT -5
I must admit that I like challenges and therefore will generally have a preference for tougher creatures and higher difficulty settings. Yesterday I even tried to take a hill giant with a level 12 fighter/mage/duelist just for the fun (and RP) of it.
But since I'm not the only player here I'll suggest an alternative. Eventually there will likely be new outdoor areas leading to such places as Durlag's Tower. Going to places like that ought to be exciting and full of the unexpected. Perhaps remote locations and the areas that lead up to them would be a good place to put the random monster spawns and insane nighttime spawns. That would force players to prepare for many situations rather than saying, "that place is full of spiders so let's bring lots of antidote." Imagine the horror when a greater basilisk jumps out of a bush.
Finding a party really shouldn't be as difficult as it is. If the large number of players who rush past my PC's face would even stop long enough to type "hi" I could probably get a party going nearly every time I log in.
Though if the developers do make night travel along the Tradeway more dangerous I would quite pleased. I will say that Flail hasn't been in use nearly so much as he used to simply because there's only so much fun to be had out of a character that can shrug off nearly every creature in the PW.
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Post by whenwizardswar on Nov 17, 2008 22:04:30 GMT -5
All valid points, but theres one thing that makes it very hard to do something like this, many have tried all ahve failed.
Day-Night, say those words right after each other and thats how quick the transition is. We will end up with night time creatures dureing the day because the time between is so short.
I'm not the expert so i cant say yay or nay to this, its just my ten cents.
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Post by dyndrilliac on Nov 17, 2008 22:18:56 GMT -5
I agree with Akavit, the only time my lock gets a good work out is when a DM is actually making an effort to overwhelm him with an infinite spawn or if he's soloing the toughest spawns the PW has, the frost giants. Even the Nightwalkers/Skeletons don't prove to be very challenging anymore.
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Post by DM Sir Carnifex on Nov 17, 2008 22:34:14 GMT -5
All valid points, but theres one thing that makes it very hard to do something like this, many have tried all ahve failed. Day-Night, say those words right after each other and thats how quick the transition is. We will end up with night time creatures dureing the day because the time between is so short. That's correct. Just today I left an inn at dusk so I'd make it to the Coast Way by sunrise. It was nearly perfect timing, too! |
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Post by DM blessedone on Nov 17, 2008 22:43:57 GMT -5
I have seen on one server in particular, where they did this very thing with the DAY-NIGHT issue. It seemed to work well, but it did change often granted. When night time hit...you had better be in a group, when day light hit...it was back to the 'normal' ways. I think the way it worked was when no one was in that area, then, when daylight hit, it would change. Now, I may remember this wrong so please do not quote me on that one. I do not remember any problems with the transitions on that one. Yet, I could see the problem with the Level dependent issue, because, I am really sure that there was that Lvl. dependent thing there as well and it was a major issue to deal with if you were a newb running around exploring.....
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Post by loudent2 on Nov 18, 2008 2:55:44 GMT -5
All valid points, but theres one thing that makes it very hard to do something like this, many have tried all ahve failed. Ummm....That's a pretty bold statement. There are spawn systems out there that handle this sort of thing just fine. Yes, by a heartbeat (or pseudo-HB). The thing is, though, that there are transition times between night and day (defined by your lighting setup in the area). They seem to last roughly 3 hours (or 6 minutes). Where it's technically night but not quite dark or technically day but not very bright). I think one could do a staggered setup of switching mobs from night to day and day to night over that transition that would feel pretty natural. Or one could simply have the respawn dependant on time of day (so when a mob respawns, it chooses the blueprint based on time of day) but that would have the aforementioned issue of spawns bleeding over their alloted time. |
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Post by dyndrilliac on Nov 18, 2008 4:08:51 GMT -5
One thing I've noticed that might be a problem with this is sometimes I'd be running around and it would be pitch black night and then all of a sudden without warning it would instantly become bright-ass day, like someone flipped a switch - no transition just insta-change. I'm not sure if everyone experiences this from time to time or if it's just me, so it may be completely unrelated.
It seems to me that a cure to the whole speed of the change issue can be remedied by simply slowing down how quickly time passes? I'm no dev but I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard.
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Post by luna on Nov 18, 2008 14:21:17 GMT -5
Well this might sound a bit cliche and has been done at other servers, but some undead at night are kind of neat.
And other spawns as well.
Also, they can be set to de-spwan (clean themselves up) if someone run's by them so they don't stick around forever.
That takes care of running into them during the day time.
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