The Lands of Arda

SerraAvatar · Site Admin Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 573

I was hoping you would eventually post something^^
So what do you suggest?
Nerfing casters?
Trying to "balance" non-casters and casters?

Some things I have in mind are:
Removal of:
Eregions Might!!!
Greater Mage Armor
Armor of Darkness,
the cleric spell which you can cast several times adding each time +1 dodge AC
Having mobs have 1 or 2 kinds of elemental immunity (dunno how much %) or resistance, up to casters to figure out whcih spell to use.

Things I had in mind before patch .69
only one type of physikal immunity per mob, so you could use different weapons, or favor different areas for your builds.

oulu · Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 188 Location: Finland

Ahem... how are tanks gonna become better if you nerf mages?

I think it is fine now... perhaps add a quest for fighter types where they can get access to a spell sequenser but make it so that clerics and mages cannot have it( way overpowering if they can access to both spell books).

SerraAvatar · Site Admin Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 573

No spellsequencers! Then every class could get everything and builds would matter even less^^

Its not my intention to nerf casters, I just think that some spells which should have never been added could be removed.
And it isnt my intention either to make tanks better, tanks are tanks, no damage dealers.

But there is a slightly unbalance on arda: mobs have lots of physical resistance and nearly no elemental resistance although mages are already killing much faster than other builds. With that stupid last patch its just not possible any more to have the mobs have only one type of phys immunity Sad

oulu · Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 188 Location: Finland

Maybe then remove the physical immunites from mobs?

Ithilsilà · Joined: 15 Feb 2007 Posts: 323 Location: Catalonia

It was more like a rant anyway. The changes would cost too much time to enforce. I think we have to accept how things are atm.

What we could do however is reducing the spawns to smaller numbers. This would help with lag and casters wouldn't be able to drag everything to one place and blast away either, creating even more lag...

Oh and reduce the time we spend resting. I know that can be implented easily from NWNvault iirc. For all lvls the same time.

SerraAvatar · Site Admin Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 573

We surely can discuss that. In late january Ill have finished my diploma thesis and will be disposed to do the changing. So if you want, we can keep on discussing Smile

In new areas I have stopped giving the monsters physical immunities. They have some soak (+20/5 I think) instead and 28 spellresistance to increase their CR a bit. There arent too many possibilities to raise the CR without using the CR adjustment which would be like cheating.

Gupps · Joined: 07 Feb 2007 Posts: 485

SerraAvatar · Site Admin Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 573

The point with little people online is a good one. Although at europeen times, there are always around 3-5 people online in late afternoon until early night.

When you are playing at times with little people online, it will be indeed a prob if we toss down and lessen the defense of casters (make them weaker, as additional intended by the game balance). So the need of a tank for casters might cause some problems if no tank is available, point taken Wink

Correct is too, that new areas should be doable also by non reincs with average arda dropp gear. Thanks for reminding me. I tend to desig mobs for optimized builds with optimized gear. I knew that Ive to toss down mobs on the new area a bit, but maybe Ill toss it down a bit more now.

That doesnt mean than reincs will be bored. As I said, there are 3 hopefully challenging minidungeons on that area as well.

I dont think anything will be changed against the will of players, so its good that you raise your voice.

But if the majority of players feels that improved evasion or hide in plainsight should be removed from items, we ll have to consider that too.

Gupps · Joined: 07 Feb 2007 Posts: 485

Mate,

You cant just go removing things from items.
I would hazard a guess I am far from the only person that builds their characters AROUND items they looted *over a long period of time* and AROUND the MOBS they know exist on arda.

I am really trying to get accross the point some of us have a lot less time to play than others due to real life commitments. We should not be penalised for this. By all means have your rewards for people who play more, in the form of reincarnation but do not penalise the casual player who can only get on for an hour or so every now and again.

If for example you removed ill say expertese from an item (i know its not on anything in arda, but its the only one i can think of at work i know the pre-requisits for). Say i had a character i had purposley made with VERY low intelligence and relativley low AC, with the intention of using this item to gain the AC from expertese on this item.
If im barely able to stay alive on this character as arda is, you remove expertese you are effectivly destroying the character. Even if we take the 20% xp loss and reroll the base stats of the character will be borked and require shedloads of points to be wasted to bang the int up and enable expertese to be selected.

You cannot move the goalposts, it took some people a very long time to get a single lv 40 character and even longer to kit them out.

I bit my lip on the xp change, as i kinda agreed with Aule in that the xp requirements can get a bit silly for a casual player to reach 40. The changing/removing of feats from weapons is just not the right way to go.

*Sigh* The items you talk of are only overpowered on reincarnates and people with lots of forged gear. Ive an archer with a bowguard she gets leathered bad and ive a druid with cracks bracers that dies everywhere.

Stop trying to balance professions out and accept that certain professions have strenghs and weaknesses?

Maybe try a mid level boss like a naz with a lv 30-40 character such as a fighter type build without forged armour using normal drops you would have got by the time you reached him so no cracks bracers ect, it really gives you an idea of how much we actually NEED many of the items you talk of changing due to been overpowered (cracks, bowguard ect)

~massive blud / slashing damage, hellballs, ruin, curses, mind spells

SerraAvatar · Site Admin Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 573

oulu · Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 188 Location: Finland

I'm against all kinds of nerfing. Again loss of IE would only be bad for fighter types and those who have not that many items since you can protect yourself from nearly everything with energy immunity spell. Casters can cast it 5 times protecting theirselves even from hellball. But hardly any basic fighters have enough azaers to protect them selves from all five with everyone casting disples too.

Arda is hard for dexers anyways so why make all it harder.. making rogues need to take sd lvl denies fighter or wm lvls of them and life becomes harder. I know it can be worked around but anyways.

Arda is fine as it is now. Everyone came back because they knew what they would get. Lets not make such changes that would make some of the old and devoted players leave

SD and rogue/monk levels anyway are a route to Epic Dodge which is one of the best feats available. Too bad arda is not too friendly for dexers to see those classes used. Also the Hips helmet is ugly Razz

So lets concentrate on fixing the bugs of the moment and making non caster builds more enjoyable.

__________________________________________________________

A suggestion.... On a server i played while arda was down had improvements for dex builds. It was making epic feat Blinding speed usable. At the moment it is cast haste(10) 1 x day. Now on the other server it granted 2 extra attacks, movement speed increase and 20 bonus to reflex saves. I know this is too much for arda but we can discuss if we want to implement it as a nerfed version. It requires 25 dex and 21st lvl.

My suggestion
-------------------------------------------
Blinding Speed of arda:
Req: 25+ dexterity, 21st lvl

Adds one attack per round while the feat is active. Feat lasts 1turn / dex modifier and is usable once / day.

--------------------------------------------
25+ dex requirement almost makes it unreachable for those whose main stat aint dex. Surely it is achievable with some kind of rdd combo but it has some other weaknesses to cover it. This would be great improvement for dex melee builds and for ARCHERS.

SerraAvatar · Site Admin Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 573

Exavior · Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 309

Just my 2 cents.

Arda does not need to be harder. It's hard enough.

If you've got all the gear then arda is easier. I don't have all the gear, and I find it bloody hard sometimes. I also have no time to play these days, so it would be very annoying to find changes suddenly happen. It's a private server so we're not going to get new people on there, so making it harder to solo would be a bad plan. We can't all be on the server at the same time.

Cheers

Sir Nathan Ayloud · Vala Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 22

And that's what i call the WoW syndrome.
Back when Arda was still Arda i don't remember anybody ever talking about tanks, and roles of the classes in a group. The vast majority of the people built their characters geared towards soloing and we were all happy about that. Stop trying to bring the nerf hammer to arda. It's just fine as it is.
Hell if you're a tank and you think the mage spells are op roll a hybrid. That's the beauty of NWN if you think the other classes are getting too much love take a few levels in there, plan your toon. Clerics get too much ac? Roll a cleric/fighter/wm you'll slash through things like hot knife through butter. Mages are getting too much love? Try a pally/sorc/rdd build. I got one of those in arda, 32 str and charisma. lvl 9 sorc spells with time stop and everything, crazy high ac, and thanks to high charisma and divine might he hits like a freight train too. Remember people, it's arda not Warcraft, you don't have to stick to a class. Go hybrid and have fun. Smile