Reduced XP awards testing thread

I don't think reducing it past 50% is necessary if the Co8 mods are moved to the end of the game.

I also think the difficulty slider is the way to go, with 70% being labeled as 'very easy' and 35% labeled as 'very hard'. However, I'd also like the difficulty setting to go beyond mere XP reduction... perhaps make the availability of items like the holy longsword/radiant ranseur dependant on it? Reduced loot drops by modifying InvenSource.mes?

 

The slider is an idea, but we have no way of knowing when Agetian will have the time to put it in. With his RL concerns, I don't even know if it would be fair of us to ask him to right now.

Most of the treasure in the game is MOBed in, not generated from InvenSource.mes. Having Front End swap out that many MOBs might not be feasible, and would require a whole lot more work on Agetian's part than just putting in a slider that changed one text file. It would definitely not be fair of us to ask that of Agetian now.

The swamp map where the lotus is is a random encounter, thus the enemies are randomly generated. It could be trolls, or giant frogs, or zombies, or whatever else you get on a swamp map instead of the shadows. Its the luck of the roll.

 

So, if I'm understanding the proposed chain of events correctly:

Party fights Lareth's minions.

Once minions are slain, Lareth emerges from his office and intiates dialogue with the PCs.

Fight with Lareth starts (or not). Lareth's first action is to cast Animate Dead (we could put this in the dialogue, but I think that's kind of cheesy. The dialogue pre-buffs are meant to circumvent problems in the game engine. Lareth would not have oppurtunity to animate his minions before the party killed them, so it should be an in-combat action.)

Fight proceeds as normal, including Lareth asking to surrender/summoning spiders if refused.

Two problems. 1) How do we prevent the undead from attacking the spiders, as Ted pointed out? 2) What happens to the undead when Lareth surrenders? (I believe this latter problem is why we never had Lareth leave his office to join the fight with his minions in the first place.) Could we script a way for them to "run-off" via the dialogue if the party accepts Lareth's surrender?

On a vaguely related note, what purpose is there for the game to have more than 3 factions (PCs and allies, enemies and neutral)? It seems to cause us no end of headaches.

Yeah, I think having the slider effect more than XP awards is more trouble than it's worth. And I realize we have no way of knowing when Agetian would have time to add such an option to the Front End. Maybe in the meantime we could create a patcher like we have for non-TofFEE installs for the party number and level limit?

Yes, I realize this could be abused and someone could figure out how to hack it and set the XP to 1,000% but so what? If they enjoy playing the game that way, let them. I'm more concerned with serious players' enjoyment of the game, rather than the folks that use the console to give their PCs ungodly stats and then whine that they can't level up because they have too many skill points.

 

I think creating a patcher to edit two characters of a text file is a little silly. Seriously, the file that changes the XP award percentage has one working line. The original looked like this

Code:

// combat_rules.mes

{000} {0.70}       ;  Experience multiplier

My version looks like this

Code:

// combat_rules.mes

{000} {0.50}       ;  Experience multiplier

That's it. That is the whole contents of the file. The only working part of it is the

Code:

{000} (0.50)

All the rest are comments. Any patcher made would have to be in the ToEE root directory, and if people can find that they can open the file and edit it just as quick as they could use the patcher.

That can be easily done by creating a new proto entry for a zombie with the same factions as the spiders, and a little scripting wizardry.

Combat stops (or can be made to stop) when the surrender dialog starts. If the party let Lareth leave, the zombies run off with him. If the party has Lareth join, the zombies are added to the party as ai_followers (just like rebuked undead).

You know, we could easily add an alert point to one of Lareth's goons, so as soon as combat starts in the main room this goon runs off and alerts Lareth (ala the bugbear in that other part of the Moathouse). Lareth would then come out and join the battle. It could be scripted that as soon as he does so combat stops and we get the normal Lareth dialog. If combat resumes we would have Lareth in the back, raising dead and casting spells, perhaps even healing some of his goons. Lareth would still only surrender if he drops below 50% hp, and when he does his goons run off.

 

You know, this is the most intelligent idea for this scenario that anyone's come up with for a long time. It's perfect. It's how it's supposed to be, IMO, and how I always played it. It makes that group veeerry difficult to deal with. I wish I'da thunk it. :blush:

 

This would absolutely rock, and would be a real improvement to the end of the Moathouse.

 

or maybe some of his former men turn on him and keep fighting the party as well.

 

Well, I was trying to look at it from the average user prospective. The patcher would offer the options of easy, normal, hard (corresponding to whatever XP values we chose to assign) and implement them, rather than requiring the user to make edits himself. If you don't think it's worth the effort, though, I understand.

As others have said, this sounds absolutely perfect. (We'd just have to make sure his spiders have a faction which match his goons. Though at that point, I'm not sure he'd even necessarily need his spiders, considering he'd still have most of his goon squad with him.)

 

but would Lareth surrender infront of most of his men? He is a coward but he doesn't want the whole world knowing. If he was nigh impossible to kill before most of his men were dead by just being tricksie eg hiding at the back, having a body guard which flanks him (so the PCs can't) and other stuff like that, cos really he should be (one of) the last man standing.

 

I think the xp slider idea is definitely the way to go. The different playing styles of different players demands it- some people rest after every fight, making the game easier, some don't. Some have all 18 stats etc. etc. The slider allows you to adjust as you wish and prevents forcing a change on those who don't want it.

I think this is something we should have whatever is decided on the "Project Delicate Rebalancement" thread, (if it would be easy to add to front end once Agetian has time in the future). Whether on its own it would solve those balance issues, though, still needs more testing-and don't forget you have all that extra treasure which also makes the party more powerful.

If I can get the time to do a reduced xp test, do I need to be installing CMF 5.02 or would 5.01 be suitable?

 

Well, If you start testing you create
a new party. Why would you want to
do this on 5.01? Unless you have a
party already in-game with which you
want to finish off Zuggy.

 

I am against the idea of the slider in any form. I am against install options as well, except with regard to things like Front End which require other software to be installed separately or new content, and even then only if the new content is not easily avoidable.

The idea that we must maintain the standard that the game must be beatable by a absolute novice player who hasn't even read the game manual, and with any party configuration conceivable is ludicrous to me. I could understand that mentality if we were trying to make money from our mod, but I still wouldn't agree with it. Co8 didn't get the standing it has now by making mods to please everybody, but by trying to improve the game.

In PnP D&D you have a live DM who regulates the game to make sure it is challenging but not impossible. In ToEE you don't have that. Instead you have the opportunity to reload saved games, to research and try different tactics until you find a combination that works. Offer people a choice of difficulty settings and you make the player the DM, and in my experience that is a sure fire way to make people bored with the game. This isn't a FPS, where difficulty setting make sense, this is the most true to PnP D&D CRPG game there has ever been, and most likely ever will be unless we make one ourselves. Let's not ruin it by trying to make it all things to all people. Let's not be Atari.

The Reduced XP Award mod should be compatible with any Co8 mod, and even the vanilla game. To test meaningfully you should start a new game though.

 

Its only that Blue pointed out in another thread that 5.02 is effectively a BETA and the official release is 5.0, possibly with 5.01 added in as mostly simple fixes etc (probably to grossly over simplify-apologies if that's not the correct interpretation).

I take it that you are using 5.02 with no problems and would tell me to just use that? I suppose if I try the 5.02 and get problems I can always deinstall/reinstall an earlier version...

And don't worry, if I do an xp test it will be with a new game.