First Impressions

[ReverentBlade]

Hey guys, so, this is my first post here. My fiance and I have a long history of playing, DMing, and developing on various NWN PWs, and we've recently decided to give Arelith a go. We've been at it for roughly 2 weeks now, and I wanted to give a little feedback on our experience so far.

The Good:

*The module is beautiful. I am beyond impressed at what you've managed with just the basic NWN palette. I can tell that the attention to detail is definitely there. So much stuff to investigate, explore, and examine. It's awesome.

*I'm also very impressed at how much of the server story and lore I've been able to pick up just by paying attention to what NPCs and books say. It's nice feeling like I don't have to be a ten-year Arelith veteran to get involved.

*RP quality has been pretty consistent across the board. Cringe levels are surprisingly low for a PW without a password! Nice!

*People are welcoming and nice. I don't get blown off for being a newbie too often, and some people seem willing to bend over backwards to get newbies set up. Very nice change of pace from some places.

*Balance changes seem pretty well thought out. There's some rough spots, but the server in a pretty good place mechanically.

*Your scripters are genius. The scripted systems are excellent and don't bug out very often. Well done

*IG economy doesn't seem disgustingly over-inflated, at least at low levels. I feel like money has value, which isn't always easy to achieve in NWN.

The Bad:

*The way areas connect aren't always intuitive. I get the feeling if you laid out all the zones on a grid, there would be gaps and overlaps. It's not terribly egregious, but sometimes I can get turned around if I'm strictly relying on compass directions.

*Spelling. Holy hell, does this module have a -lot- of typos. It's "candelabrum", for a single item, or "candelabra" for a plural. There's no such thing as a "candelabruh". Placable and painting descriptions are riddled with errors. My fiance and I both play rather academic characters, so we've taken to reading -every- book we come across...and sadly, the vast majority of them are simply unreadable. You've really gotta take the time to run this stuff through a spell-checker and -then- copy-paste into the toolset. When the module is so polished otherwise, it really does stand out. Breaks immersion with a sledgehammer.

*Monsters waiting on the other side of transitions. It's just sloppy design when it happens. NWN is old and doesn't always run smoothly on modern machines. Having stuff beat on you before you've even loaded in isn't a good thing to have happening.

*Character descriptions. I see tons of people running around without -any- text in their character description. When this server is sooooo hardcore about never breaking character, it's really pretty lame that I have to ask people OOC what my character is seeing IC. I know it's a difficult aspect to police, but I feel it should be written into the rules that having at least an attempt at portraying basic information is required.

*Lack of custom content. Now, I know the HAK argument has probably been discussed into the ground, and I know the team wants the module to be plug and play, so you don't have to download additional content before logging in. Even so, I consider it a pretty big negative. Even a small hak with a couple hundred megs of the clothing,armor, and head basics that have been on the vault for over a decade now would go a long way towards making the place look like it has a little more character. Don't even have to bother with tilesets, placables, or monster skins...you've done great with the basics on those.

The Ugly:

*Your fatigue meter works backwards. Our strategy is to start adventures when our wizard is dead tired, so that he can replenish his spells several times through the dungeon. That's...weird. Fatigue should replenish itself slowly when you're idling or RPing, and decrease when you sit to replenish your spells and abilities.

*Your respawns are -way- too slow. We've attempted to fulfill the archive contract no less than 6 times, and found the halls empty every time. Makes us not want to bother.

*Moving resource nodes out of lowbie dungeons might help with the above. A level 6 character shouldn't have to complete with level 30 foot-traffic to complete their quests. They often leave behind more powerful spawns, as well.

*Contracts don't give enough information. We've still not been able to find the "Bandit Lair" in the Gambler's Bluffs. There's a minimap marker on a door in the cave that -says- "Bandit Lair", but the door is locked. Nothing drops a key. The door cannot be bashed, because your character just stands in place and does nothing if you try. I've been informed that there are alternate routes into this zone, but they take you through areas that are more difficult than the original contract. That is sloppy game design. If certain contracts or dungeons -require- the ability to pick lock or disarm traps in order to complete, the agent should inform the player, so that people without those abilities don't waste their time heading out to a dead-end.

*NPCs spam their dialogue to everyone nearby. We find this -extremely- disruptive to RP. Paxton, the Sergeant, and the bank tellers are some of the worst culprits, because they simply say -so much-. Trying to find the last thing someone said when you're RPing is annoying when someone running around has clicked the same NPC repeatedly and flooded the chat. It's really, really easy to go and set all the NPCs to their dialogue is only visible to the person speaking to them. I think it would be worth the effort. Arelith chat logs are much, much larger than other servers by a huge margin because of the spam. I don't think hearing the automatons repeat themselves forever is very immersive, either.

All that said, we have been enjoying our time here quite a lot Hopefully some of these issues can be considered.

[Irongron]

Some good points here, I just want to pick up on the typo thing. The module iteslf certainly has quite a few unresolved typos which we look at when reported, but I believe what you're refering to are actually player made fixtures. These are items created via a crafting where PCs can name and describe their own objects.

Now aesthetically these are something I often find troublesome; being the person behind making areas I can find it frustrating to see an area I took a long time making pastered with objects, but at the same time there are excellent ones out there.

In this case I often have to weigh up what is pleasing to the eye, against what is the most fun for players, and for many fixture crafting is a great deal of fun, and can facilitate their character's roleplay.

Enforcing correct spelling on these, or doing any kind of quality control is neither logistically feasible, nor I feel, particularly desirable. We have plenty of players who either do not use English as their first language, or simply have issues with the written word, and all are welcome to play here. I believe it would be unfair and really qutie damaging to the server if we began insisting on perfectly correct English.

Other than that point though, thanks fort the feeback!

[Conversations With Your Car Alarm]

Welcome!

*Character descriptions. I see tons of people running around without -any- text in their character description. When this server is sooooo hardcore about never breaking character, it's really pretty lame that I have to ask people OOC what my character is seeing IC. I know it's a difficult aspect to police, but I feel it should be written into the rules that having at least an attempt at portraying basic information is required.

Arelith operates on a general WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) rule of thumb*. Meaning that sometimes people leave their descriptions blank so you can see what you see and nothing more. I have done this on sneaky types so that there is nothing more than what you see in game. I get where your coming from, just saying sometimes it's with intent.

*I use the word rule loosely here. It's not one of the five rules, but it's something that the server has fallen back on as long as I've been on the scene.

[Iceborn]

Ah, you stumbled with a good collection of pet peeves of the community there.
My personal bane are typos.

Sadly! A lot of the books that you see in game are introduced by players and moved into the matrix, and thus they spawn randomly. But you also see the original, since the devs don't have the time to spellcheck every piece of content that gets into the game.

In the case, I'd argue with Iron here. You don't need a perfect English! But if you are going to write something down that future players will see, you can take your time to write it down in MS Word and spellcheck before parsing it to the game. We all may play for enjoyment here, but that's not an excuse to be lazy about it.

[Ork]

If spelling is immersion breaking for you, come on down to the Underdark.

[Cortex]

If spelling is immersion breaking for you, come on down to the Underdark.

hm

[Septire]

Some good points here, I just want to pick up on the typo thing. The module iteslf certainly has quite a few unresolved typos which we look at when reported, but I believe what you're refering to are actually player made fixtures.

are actually player made fixtures

iteslf

refering

Quality meme. I sent you about a hundred more, btw, check your inbox

[Baron Saturday]

First off, welcome to the server! Awesome to have you both, and I'm delighted that you're enjoying yourselves. Figured I'd respond to a few points made as well.

*Your scripters are genius.

They really, really are. I can barely remember what default NWN is like anymore.

*The way areas connect aren't always intuitive.

Attempts have been made to make a map of Arelith's surface by fitting together areas. While there is a rough consistency, there's definitely places that have gotten a bit... smooshed or stretched over the years as new areas have been added. I tend not to mind this too much, as the alternative would be a very stale surface map.

*Character descriptions. I see tons of people running around without -any- text in their character description.

A bit of a peeve of mine, as well, more so when I see the dreaded "RP for info," but I generally find that players will tend to add something to their description as they settle into the character and the server. We've had a HUGE influx of new players, lately, many of whom haven't played on anything like Arelith before, so I'd suggest just giving people some time.

*Lack of custom content. Now, I know the HAK argument has probably been discussed into the ground, and I know the team wants the module to be plug and play, so you don't have to download additional content before logging in.

You're right that there's been a lot of discussion about the place of HAK content in Arelith. You'll be pleased to hear that Arelith will have HAKs... eventually. Maybe sometime after the server migrates to NWN EE?

*Your fatigue meter works backwards.

The Rest/Hunger/Thirst meters are ancient holdovers, and are generally either despised or ignored. It's a bit of a running joke that all mages are alcoholics, as alcohol lowers rest, allowing them to sleep mid-dungeon. You're not alone in this opinion.

*Your respawns are -way- too slow. We've attempted to fulfill the archive contract no less than 6 times, and found the halls empty every time. Makes us not want to bother.

*Moving resource nodes out of lowbie dungeons might help with the above. A level 6 character shouldn't have to complete with level 30 foot-traffic to complete their quests. They often leave behind more powerful spawns, as well.

Generally respawn rates are all right, but I've certainly run into this problem at the more popular low-level quest spots. In part this is, again, due to the recent influx of new players. You could also be running into Arelith's population script in some cases - some monster populations can grow and spread if unchecked, but if heavily farmed could (possibly - I'm not 100% on the mechanics) get to pretty low spawn rates. Either way, you're probably right that base respawn rates in these beginner areas could stand to be tweaked. These automated NPC quests in general are actually a very recent addition to the server, so there's definitely still some rough spots.

The problem with your idea of moving resource nodes out of low-level areas is that it then works to exclude new characters from participating in crafting. Not sure what other steps might be taken to deal with this aside from increasing the rate at which monsters respawn/despawn in the starting areas.

*NPCs spam their dialogue to everyone nearby. We find this -extremely- disruptive to RP. Paxton, the Sergeant, and the bank tellers are some of the worst culprits, because they simply say -so much-. Trying to find the last thing someone said when you're RPing is annoying when someone running around has clicked the same NPC repeatedly and flooded the chat.

Spammy NPCs have long been a problem. Possibly worse are the ones that spam flavor dialog, though these have been pruned in recent years (Cheers to Batty for nuking the ones in Mayfield's. Nobody cares what Curundu looked like, and the Knights of Benwick aren't patrons of anything anymore because they're all DEAD!). I think there have been suggestions before to have some of these dialogues set to private, especially the Registry Agents'.