Co8 7.0?

Discussion in 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' started by Salk, Jul 29, 2011.

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  1. cezmail

    cezmail Gorboth's Rider

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    Well we knew it was likely, but still a little sad on the news. I know that the time is needed to flush out the bugs and all, so will buck up and play a new round of 6.1 while I wait.

    Thanks for the news Gaear.
     
  2. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Back in the saddle. (Sometimes some time apart is a good thing ... been able to get a handle on a few mind-bender problems from before with a fresh look.)

    Question about CR: in v7, we are going to reduce CRs for all NC opponents by ... I think 2 ... in order to limit XP. (The more content we add, like WotGS - which would add massive amounts of XP into the game, the more rapidly you would level under normal conditions. There's only so much room to level, the game being capped at 20, so something has to give. Plus, this should help with flattening out the mid-game bulge with HB, MR etc., as we haven't made any moves with repositioning all the NC yet and are re-evaluating that idea.)

    In my testing, this has basically cut all NC XP rewards in half.

    The question is, will this be terribly disappointing to players in that your traditionally high-ranking opponents on your ego sheet (slavers et al) will fall in the standings? Or does that not matter so much? I guess in that sense the CR ego rankings will become somewhat inaccurate.
     
  3. Edwin P

    Edwin P Member

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    For me the game experience is more important than the ego sheet, and reducing experience points gained from new content will make the battles more challenging - as my PCs will be much less overpowered.
     
  4. WinstonShnozwick

    WinstonShnozwick Established Member

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    Hey Gaear.

    First off, does CR reflect or change how difficult the opponent is actually in battle?

    And, if it only affects exp gained, definately lower. I think the biggest areas to lower CR is the drow fight in the moathouse respawn quest. And the drow fights in the gnome underground at Verbo NEED lowering, they all give way too much EXP for the time (level 10-12) that I get there.

    I think if you could lower it enough to where you can't level up overpoweredly and the game is hard still, but there are enough chances in the long run to get to level 20, then you've got it perfect.
     
  5. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    No, just the XP award.

    There will be no picking and choosing. Everything NC will be reduced (I do believe the Drow are currently RAW, for what it's worth), while vanilla will be unaffected.

    I've personally always wished 3.5 (at least as seen in ToEE) didn't level so rapidly overall. IMO leveling should be a major milestone, not something that happens every 17 hours game time. (Not to mention the inherant inconsistencies of you leveling in awesome fashion while everybody else just stands still - 60 year old first level fighters who've been in the fighting game for years, mages like Senshock who are supposed to be all-powerful but don't actually rate compared to what you achieved in three weeks, etc.) But I guess that's just a D&D thing.
     
  6. Sitra Achara

    Sitra Achara Senior Member

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    FWIW, you could argue the CRs should be lower than their RAW values, because:
    1. Many monsters still lack special abilities they're supposed to have
    2. The computer AI is dumber than real GMs
    3. Game lacks many ambushes and other situational surprises.

    But, even without the above, I'd still be in favor.

    It is also a better method than reducing the global XP factor by e.g. 1/2, because that would make the early game perhaps too difficult.

    So all in all :thumbsup:

    P.S.
    I am reminded of the Temple bugbears, which, in the protos.tab overhaul, received character levels instead of arbitrary HD (in Vanilla they had arbitrary HD). This automatically bumps their CR (because CR = CL + CR modifier), while they are hardly as tough as their CR would suggest: e.g. the bugbear leaders and bugbear #14174, they are rated CR 10 + 2 = 12 which is 1 CR above the Vrock and 1 CR shy of the Hezrou and Glabrezu.
    I think it's very much justified to bring them down a notch or two, as well.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2011
  7. WinstonShnozwick

    WinstonShnozwick Established Member

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    In that case, yes, I definitely think you should reduce all NC areas in XP amount then.
     
  8. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    I'd be willing to implement this, but I'd need a fairly comprehensive account of it all (which monsters and why, etc.). Are you game to provide that? Anything 'sweeping' scares me, particularly if it undoes someone else's rigorous work. (Kalshane was a very meticulous fellow, and while I'm sure he himself would not maintain that he was without error, I tend to give his judgement the benefit of the doubt.)

    Some concerns that jump to mind are those badass bugbears on Temple 3. They seem like they should have a high CR, but run-of-the-mill bugbear guards, yeah, not so much. And that = vrock stuff does sound pretty bad.
     
  9. chano

    chano Established Member

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    Good thinking Gaear, less xp and less gold so you can't buff up too much at the bazaar of the bizarre.
    I for some reason I always do that and it makes the game a bit too easy.
     
  10. cezmail

    cezmail Gorboth's Rider

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    As much as I love to power up and have those levels with my various parties, I am the first to admit what others have already said. From the snail pace AI, lack of good tactics on many critters, and the over all power you can accumulate in a short amount of time, I will go ahead and say lower the CR and we can see how well the XP race will work out.
     
  11. valky

    valky Member

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    Agreed, yet if you have a thief - which usually is common - gold isn't a big problem, once you have acquired (read: stolen ^.^) some platinum necklaces or blue sapphires you can sell/steal them endlessly in Hommlet @jeweler. With some points in appraise and ~12 - 14 sapphires you'll get about 10k gold every time...and a thief of lvl 7+ and maxed 'sleight of hand' can only be spotted with a natural 20.

    Though XP can be reduced, one of my parties (6 guys) just 'dinged' lvl 8 and I didn't even visited the temple yet, my other progress is moathouse respawn finished and nulb too. And I didn't abused the rest/spawn xp-grinding that often or nearly none at all. Only if I really needed to re-memorize my spells and if there wasn't a safe-spot around.

    I guess once I can go shopping on the bazaar, the temple will be kinda joke or most parts of it.
     
  12. Picnic

    Picnic Member

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    Hello, I'm new to ToEE and just wanted to say that after playing a bit vanilla and then trying out Co8 I did notice many changes, not only bug fixes :)

    One of the reason could be that they are still people who prefer just play for the first time (like me) vanilla with just bug fixes, or because they don't fancy fan made content. Many cRPG has (Fallout 1/2, Arcanum, Bloodlines, Planescape, Icewind Dale etc.) have separate bug fixes and restorations/custom content. You already offer a version without most of NC stuff, so why not push it further anyway? even if it suppose to be behind a bit to new versions of Co8, there would be for sure many people happy about such release (like me!).
     
  13. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Welcome to the forum, Picnic.

    Sure, a head-to-head will show the differences. My point was that many people who download the standard modpack simply assume it is totally NC-free, and then don't flinch at any of the custom content in it (Moathouse Ambush, etc.). They even sometimes go so far as to state proudly that they would never settle for fan-made stuff while praising our stuff, believing it to be vanilla. I'm not exaggerating. At some sites you'll see "Bah, Co8 sucks, what a bunch of assclowns!" type comments in the same paragraph as comments saying how great the Nulb Rannos/Gremag fight was.

    I understand that, which is why the idea had legs in the first place, but the question is still largely one of priorities and resources.

    Looking at our download stats today, I see that the NC modpack has 87% of our downloads, while the standard one has 13%. Given that, I can't justify devoting a lot of resources to further standardizing the standard while the majority of players wait around for the NC. And given what I said above about many standard players not even knowing, it becomes even less urgent. :shrug:

    Bear in mind you can always play 3.0.4 for a very vanilla-esque type experience. It has almost no new content, but it also has fewer bug fixes. And as I said above, we may yet strip down the standard to barebones one day ... it's just not on the front burner.
     
  14. Sitra Achara

    Sitra Achara Senior Member

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    I'm not suggesting anything overly sweeping. Just two protos, really.


    He himself admitted the protos overhaul could have contributed to the XP increase - see here:
    http://www.co8.org/forum/showpost.php?p=44855&postcount=109

    The Greater Temple bugbears were the boldest example of that, from what I recall. (another good example is the Werewolves, but their new CR is well deserved, while still not being overly high)

    Those are actually the bugbears I'm talking about - the Greater Temple Bugbear Leaders (proto #14346 - they're FTR 10 in Co8), along with Greater Temple Bugbear proto# 14174 (FTR 4 ROG 6 in Co8).
    There's also a quite a few on level 4 (8x #14174, 2x #14346), level 2 (3x #14174 in the big bugbear room, 1x #14174 next to the prisoners), and 1-2 in the new Smigmal/Falrinth scenario.

    Now, sure, they are tough, and deserve a high CR - but how high is too high? As I said, those two protos get a CR of 12, which is more than the Vrock (CR 11). Do they deserve to be considered tougher than the Vrock? I don't think so. CR 10 sounds more like it. All it takes is to tweak the CR modifier in the protos.tab, from 2 to 0 (or 1 if you want to be more modest about the change, bringing them down to CR 11). And keep in mind, there's about 20 of them in the game!


    Do we have any stats on 3.0.4 downloads?
     
  15. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Unfortunately no - v3 and v4 live on Co8's server, which doesn't keep count like ModDB.

    Re: the bugbears, I don't really need to be sold on that, just want to make sure we're being judicious. Your reasons all sound fine.

    In a nutshell, you'd like to see 14346 and 14174 reduced by 2?
     
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