Over 3/4th's of the critters in DR teach 200 ranks and below, would it be out of the question to make some of these a lot tougher to open up the very small chain of huntable critters in the upper skill range? With all the changes DR has gone through, and especially exp and learning wise, getting to the 200 ranks is multiple times easier and faster than ever before. Is there a need to have over 3/4ths of the progression ladder to cover the rank base that now takes a minimal amount of time to outgrow?

- Erixx

Do we really need badgers, trollkins, goblins, water sprites, and such all in a stones throw of the crossings? Some of the areas could be used to put in some higher level hunting. +1 Erixx

"Burn him! Burn him!" You hear the cries echo around you as everyone in the vicinity suddenly moves away, giving you a wide berth! It goes without saying you'll be wanted for forbidden practices in The Rakash Village.

>>While more diverse creatures on the high end is a great request your numbers seem wildly inaccurate.

Really?

http://elanthipedia.org/w/index.php/Bestiary_Level_List

200 out of 335 critters, not including invasion critters, have up to a minimum requirement of 200 ranks.

It should be no surprise that the critter chain mimics the skill range of the majority of DR when it took days to train out of rats and even a few weeks to break out of goblins.

Skills have a added experience gains up to above 200 ranks where it begins to slow down, this mixed with the massive size of exp pools now, compared to pre exp change and exp drain when logged off, blast through the majority of those critters at a feverish pace. The more ranks you gain the more narrow the options become. Around 500 ranks the options narrow extremely quick to the point of having to gain 300-400 ranks to be able to move up to the next critter.

The point is the creatures in DR do not mimic it's player base any longer. It would not hurt to take some of those, rework them a bit, and open up more options. Would it be a lot of work? I imagine so, but would be easier and quicker than releasing a brand new critter once every few years when there are many that don't get much attention now anyways.

The guilds/magic/combat have all been reworked so why not the things we spend most of our time with? The creatures.

- Erixx

I know for awhile we were keeping individual threads in the specific province folders, detailing the critter ladders, what was missing, what was needed etc.

It got about as much traction as bald tires on a rainy oil-slicked road.

That being said, it's probably the best place for this type of discussion. I would add that I think Crossings and Riverhaven should have a higher percentage of lower circle critters, while Shard & Theren should be slightly skewed toward the middle, with the islands possibly skewed slightly higher. That's just me, though.

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Player of Diggan, Ranger & Halfing of Aesry

>I would add that I think Crossings and Riverhaven should have a higher percentage of lower circle critters, while Shard & Theren should be slightly skewed toward the middle, with the islands possibly skewed slightly higher.

This is just a 'banish the HLC's to the islands' call that is basically how it is now(Hello dillos!)

I don't think that pushing the more skilled players out to the islands or even to any specific province is the way to go. I think there are a few areas that can be reworked.

>Those critters actually cover a wide range of needs for newcomers of all guilds and stat ranges.

Badgers and pothanits < eels same range same general area. also trollkins and water sprites are around the same range.

"Burn him! Burn him!" You hear the cries echo around you as everyone in the vicinity suddenly moves away, giving you a wide berth! It goes without saying you'll be wanted for forbidden practices in The Rakash Village.

While I agree that some of the less used hunting grounds could be converted, there is more to look at than just skill range though. You have your skinning ladders, boxes, undead, bipeds, quadrapeds, and others. Destroying these ladders in the low range just to make high level ladders better isn't a very good solution.

GM's have mentioned that a critter audit needs to happen once 3.0 is ironed out a bit more, and hopefully some info will come out of that to help this situation.

>I still say that every province should have 0-150th level hunting

^absolutely this.

Especially if DR ever gets a significantly larger population.


Blackguard Danoryiel

"Sogan udazama umbunor fau arrazoi inishatu seiremisai. (Only the fallen have nothing to despair)"

>We have so many hunting grounds that just aren't used and could be used to fill in other hunting levels that are lacking.

Yep, agree 100%.

"Burn him! Burn him!" You hear the cries echo around you as everyone in the vicinity suddenly moves away, giving you a wide berth! It goes without saying you'll be wanted for forbidden practices in The Rakash Village.

>>This is so true and something the GMs are already aware of and starting to use this situation to better everyone's situation. However it does take time to change up an area, code up new beasts, and give some type of in-game heads up to allow us of these happenings.<<

You don't really need to code up new beasts in a lot of areas. Instead of having multiple critters in an area teach up to 250 ranks, you make one teach from 250-400. In a lot of cases you could simply redo the offensive and defensive skills of critters to make them fill a gap and the same thing would happen.

>>Still need to be QC, still need to have some stuff coded, and then still need a way to let people know of the changes. There may be even some steps I'm missing. Basically I'm suggesting that it may not be as simple as what I'm interpreting your presentation to suggest.

It still seems to me like this should be easier and quicker than creating new enemies from scratch.

>>Still need to be QC, still need to have some stuff coded, and then still need a way to let people know of the changes. There may be even some steps I'm missing. Basically I'm suggesting that it may not be as simple as what I'm interpreting your presentation to suggest.<<

QC would be pretty easy. Does it teach in the range it's supposed to? What new stuff would have to be coded? You need to make a post that says "X critter is now a 200-350 critter instead of 100-200."

I really like the idea of expanding existing critters learning range, I find that sometimes (especially with newer characters) I am constantly looking for the next critter on the learning ladder.

Saying that bumping a critter is easy to QC is speculation and I'm willing to give the GameMaster team the benefit of the doubt on it.


That being said, after 17 years, I think some very excellently coded critters that have overlap in the hunting spectrum could definitely benefit from some re-purposing. Example: beisswurms and reaver/hounds sort of overlap. I know the counter argument is choice, but the HLC group needs some choice to. From the Estate Holder side, I just recently found out there's some kind of frog critter over in Leth. How about making them teach 600-800 ranks? Quiet hunting area, unwashed masses kept out? Where do I sign up?



(I'm joking about the unwashed masses thing..)

<< Logically, doesn't it have to be easier than creating new ones?

The GameMasters themselves have repeatedly stated that the holdup isn't coding things, it's getting it through QA. I'm not trying to lecture to anyone, but I think it needs to be said: When you make any tiny change to a complex piece of code, the entire thing needs to be QA'd from top to bottom. Even a tiny change one place can cause a ripple effect.

Here's an example of real life imitating art:

I am responsible for a group of 110 software engineers, QA analysts, managers, front end specialists, et cetera. We have a software application we've been maintaining for over 10 years. The majority of it has been converted to a process known as TDD/BDD (Test Driven Development/Behavior Driven Development). However there are a couple of core modules that are so old, and so arcane that they haven't been re-written or converted over yet. One of my teams made a change.. a simple one... Just renaming a variable $GETSEARCHENGINENAME to $GetSearchEngineName which is in line with our standard schematic for variable names. It completely wrecked and brought to a standstill our production system because the actual live code module is a black box and couldn't be tested.

You just don't know.

While the QC process can be time consuming and cause delays, it is not the major hold up for creature changes. Simple manpower to scope out and make the changes and/or write new creatures is. That complicates the QC (Since it's the same manpower doing that).

Is updating an old creature faster then writing a new one? Nominally - except consider most of the creatures you're talking about are extremely old. Any proper attempt to work on them would start with a conversion to modern standards, additions of natural shields or special attacks if they were moving up the ladder a long ways, a handful of other technical clean ups plus restating the creature which can be rather time consuming to get balanced right now.

Never mind that many of the old hunting areas themselves have significant flaws in how they were designed that we don't do anymore (Mostly having to do with how they spawn or how we lay out hunting areas to optimize creature movement) so they frequently get revamped as we clean up old hunting areas.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

Personally, I suggest being patient and backing the GM, root for them, cheer them on, and congratulate them for all their awesome work.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

If a GM wants to swing by my place some time I wouldn't be against making them a drink or two and chill out for a while watching a movie or a show or something.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.