My Point of View

[Bogo Rath]

I'm looking at this from the perspective of a dumbass, so speaking for all dumbasses, I found EB to be confusing. Here is why:

1. Never figured out how to enter the arena. I'm assuming you have to go through the fortess, but who knows; my level 8 character died before he could ever make it all the way through. Not sure what the point of that is. If it is to weed out lower characters, then make it so they level up higher than level 8 from the Keeper of Power.

2. Changed the battlefield: I was in the middle of upgrading my levels then the battlefield changed. Another way to put it was I was in the middle of adding my stats and it teleported me to my elemental plane. That was really annoying.

3. Why so many shops? I mean it's not like it's a huge map so why not have one shopkeeper with everything instead of them spread out. Would save time from walking from one to the other and so on. I'm thinking from the lazy ass that lags perspective on this one.

4. Speaking of lag, there was a lot when I was on. It's probably just my machine, but it seemed to lag more than NS North which is the other place I play.

Overall I was pretty disappointed since I never made it to the arena and pretty frustrated when I died a few times trying to make it through the fortress. Please don't take any of my comments personally, remember that this is from the perspective of a lazy dumbass.

[Almuric]

1. Never figured out how to enter the arena. I'm assuming you have to go through the fortess, but who knows; my level 8 character died before he could ever make it all the way through. Not sure what the point of that is. If it is to weed out lower characters, then make it so they level up higher than level 8 from the Keeper of Power.

The transitions are marked with map pins. The fortress is supposed to be a buffer area between you and the battlefield. You can be invaded in your fortress but you have the advantage due to your armor immunities. There has been alot of trouble getting everyone to understand that they starting money is so high because they have to buy the super expensive armor from the dealer to be immune to the damage of your home plane. Every team is immune to their damage type if they wear their armor. Its part of the 'theme".

2. Changed the battlefield: I was in the middle of upgrading my levels then the battlefield changed. Another way to put it was I was in the middle of adding my stats and it teleported me to my elemental plane. That was really annoying.

Map changes move everyone to their home plane.

3. Why so many shops? I mean it's not like it's a huge map so why not have one shopkeeper with everything instead of them spread out. Would save time from walking from one to the other and so on. I'm thinking from the lazy ass that lags perspective on this one.

No explanation for this one. We could have had one shop.

4. Speaking of lag, there was a lot when I was on. It's probably just my machine, but it seemed to lag more than NS North which is the other place I play.

This server has almost no lag at all. I'm not sure why you were having lag issues.

[Genocide]

I'm looking at this from the perspective of a dumbass, so speaking for all dumbasses, I found EB to be confusing. Here is why:

1. Never figured out how to enter the arena. I'm assuming you have to go through the fortess, but who knows; my level 8 character died before he could ever make it all the way through. Not sure what the point of that is. If it is to weed out lower characters, then make it so they level up higher than level 8 from the Keeper of Power.

Your Level 8 character neglected to purchase any armor. All fortress and team spawn points do elemental damage type of that plane. Armor has 100% immunity to that damage type. Buy the armor, you probably didn't thinking you were saving some money for something better.

2. Changed the battlefield: I was in the middle of upgrading my levels then the battlefield changed. Another way to put it was I was in the middle of adding my stats and it teleported me to my elemental plane. That was really annoying.

It teleports EVERYONE on their team to home plane, so that for some reason if players get stuck in a map, they aren't anymore, plus it is sorta a reset button so no one team has posistional advantage at the start of a new map and it signals the start of a new battlearena. If the players were NOT moved, the map would change and everyone that was left alive on the old battlefield would be standing there shouting "Where is everyone, why doesn't somone come and fight me?"

3. Why so many shops? I mean it's not like it's a huge map so why not have one shopkeeper with everything instead of them spread out. Would save time from walking from one to the other and so on. I'm thinking from the lazy ass that lags perspective on this one.

One shop with all those items in the inventory at once...in EACH plane would cause some lag, The shops are broken up to reduce the memory profile of each inventory, some shops inventories are smaller than others. Every time a player requests to open a shopkeepers inventory, the game has to loop through each and every item there to display to the player. This is compounded more when several players access the same shop. So while you are looking at lets say, 120 items, the items will lag and take time to display themselves.
PLUS it allows you to see what you wish to buy quickly instead of contantly flipping through several pages of gear that has no meaning for your character's class. Lastly, the magic shops are scripted so that only mostly pure magic user's can do business there. To deter people from taking 1 level of rogue just for use magic device and buying numerous amounts of spells or wands. ALSO, had to fill the area with ambiance, what do you want a 4x4 area with a shopkeeper and that is your "home" plane"? The area size is 8x8 for each home plane except Water. The shopkeepers help flesh out the atmosphere to give off you are in another plane of existance other than the Prime Material one. Simply put, one shopkeeper and some signs would look and be boring as hell visually. Maybe the shops could get cut down to 1 per plane, then the size of the plane would have to be reduced for the ONE inhabitant of the entire plane, down to the size of a cardboard box. Sure, its quicker, faster, spartan at best, no scenery, no atmosphere, and looks nothing like an Elemental Plane.

EDIT:
Did I mention that Neverwinter Nights still has a memory leak that causes the server to crash sometimes. One shop in each plane that is chock full of permanent inventory plus items that players sell to it that add in the amount of items to be scanned when it is open can crash the server. The reason that a LOT of Persistant Worlds crash sometimes is due to their servers running out of memory because of huge shop inventories. I'e added a script to help reduce the amount of items that players sell back to the shops, but memory usage would jump if we only used one shop. This is a PvP server and the physical memory should be used on the players and their actions as much as possible, not a lot of NPCs and other things that will needlessly consume resources.

4. Speaking of lag, there was a lot when I was on. It's probably just my machine, but it seemed to lag more than NS North which is the other place I play.

The lag is your machine or your link. I regularly get a ping of 60 or lower to that server. The CPU cycles while players are present can be no more than 12% usage. It only uses 3% CPU when no player is on the server. That is all the scripts running on it constantly too. No monsters...only shopkeepers NPC heartbeats.

Overall I was pretty disappointed since I never made it to the arena and pretty frustrated when I died a few times trying to make it through the fortress. Please don't take any of my comments personally, remember that this is from the perspective of a lazy dumbass.


Did you happen to ASK someone online, why the damage was occuring to your character? Probably you were the only player no? Hmm maybe they didn't know the answer to that question as well.
At any rate, I hope I've answered all of your questions concerning your frustrations.

[Madd]

well, im guessing you didn't buy the armor, which protects you form your fort's damage...map changes happen once every game day, so every 24 minutes i believe, so that was just a chance happening that you were lvl'in while it happened...im guessing we have more than one shop cuz otherwise it would be a huge shop that would be laggy when you tried to change the pages...i dunno why it was laggy, you probably live the closest to the server than anybody else(it's in St.Loius)

but anyways, it helps getting the perspective of a dumbass *wink* on this, cuz only like 3 non devs/WN people post here and they know what they are doing, so this might give us a clue to being more user friendly

[Almuric]

Nice answers Geno. Also, as far as the CPU cycles on the server when empty...its actually 0.1% usage. :grin:

[Genocide]

Just a question Bogo, what are the components of your current computer system, I fear your problems will probably come back to your current video card or the lack of CPU clock speed. This is probably the fastest NWN server I've ever played on period.

[Madd]

anybody else think that was weird? 3 responses all within 4 minutes?

heh i just thought that was strange

[Bogo Rath]

Hey, thanks for the info. Seriously. Maybe you could make it a bit more obvious to buy certain armor so dumbasses like me will get the hint.

Oh, and it was just my bad luck it seems on the battlefield change and my even worse luck for having a crappy computer and being laggy.

And I'm a monk, so I don't wear armor.

[Genocide]

Monks are allowed clothing Which is armor,, which is sold in the shops in the form of robes, which mages and archers and some rogue wear. All armor or clothing sold in the shops have elemental immunities on them that are native to their home planes.


Getting damaged for no apparent reason should have been your first hint. Any player online should have helped you with that information.

[Almuric]

anybody else think that was weird? 3 responses all within 4 minutes?

heh i just thought that was strange

We're all trying so be so helpful and such. :)

[Bogo Rath]

Nobody online helped, but you guys did. Thanks, I'll try it again this weekend.

[TFK_Ishamael]

perhaps if u put something in the rulebook, or in the opening conversation about the importance of buying armour first. . .

TFK

[Genocide]

The problem is nobody reads the thing anyways. They don't even pay attention to the conversation of the guy in the front room when you join the server. Impatient. They get a rule book in their inventory and never open it once. TOO many times I have heard people saying "read the rules" and the player says next, "where are they posted?"