Bosses DM summoned

[bhale187]

We've gone over this before, but I thought I'd revive the discussion.

I understand the thought process of limiting the amount of boss gear available. However, the servers that allow for bosses to be fought without a DM summoning them always end up having a higher number of players. I think the only thing keeping RD behind the current server leaders is the lack of bosses that can be fought without a DM online to summon them.

[Pants]

Theres a major problem with this there are groups of people that are always able to play and some that are busy. Which will lead to boss gear being thrown off balance. With the bosses being dm summon you at least have a schedualed time to be on. Meaning you can shift your plans around.

[bhale187]

I hear ya pants, but on the flip side of that argument, those who put more time in game SHOULD reap the benifits of their dedication.

I think the ToI, ToF, soon to be Temple of Earth, and hopefully down the road Temple of Wind should be the only things that are summoned. IMO, the drops from those areas should be reworked (boosted), and only be summoned by and controled by a DM. All other bosses should be boosted up a bit to allow for the standard tricks used to defeat monster AI.

I also think we should implement an NPC at the recall who will notify players which bosses have already been killed this reset. Anyone can talk to the NPC and get a list of the bosses that have already been killed once. That will save some heartache of setting up a boss run only to find you are too late. We can also do an ondeath shout to notify everyone of who just killed a boss like we do with PC and clan NPC kills.

[loki]

Not all Bosses are DM spawned as you are all aware Cyric, Cyclops and numerous other lower level Bosses are there and respawn, I think there is more of a balance, when the DMs are available to do boss runs, as two now reside in Europe and the others in the US. I personally haven't been approached by any group asking to schedule a time/date in order to allow them to do a boss run, so I cannot understand the need to have the bosses on respawn as noone seems that interested in doing boss runs anyway, and respawning bosses would allow them to be farmed for gear, one of the things I have always thought worked very well on this server was the difficulty players have in getting gear, I feel that is one of the things that keeps the players coming back for more, other servers that make it easy for player to gain uber gear easily become dull quickly whereas making things slightly more difficult or more of a rarity make those items more sort after.

[bhale187]

Boss runs are only allowed once every two weeks per clan, so they are planned far in advance. I'd guess no-one has asked you for a run because the clans 2 weeks are not up and/or their next run is already planned with their respective DM.

As for farming, you can't farm them if they are only spawned once per reset and resets are only about once every 10 days or so.

[Dethklok]

It seems like just going around and killing all the bosses after every reset would be too easy. Maybe if it cost money to spawn one without a DM it would be harder to farm gear. Probably just a few million for each, depending on their difficulty and how good their gear is, just so they cant really be farmed to easily. That way, larger parties would spend less per person, but each get less gear than a smaller group would.

[loki]

Surely if the gear were that sort after each clan would have a full calendar of boss runs not just the next one planned, as for paying millions for the chance to do a boss run maybe that could be incorporated anyway in the future, and any clan wanting to attempt a run would have buy player tickets from a DM and only those with tickets would be able to join the run that way no matter how large the party everyone would pay the same, much fairer. Just a thought cant see it happening but you know what Hecate is like!!

[Hecate]

how am I like exactly???
I'm still up in the air about this. I can see it being a bad thing and a good thing.

[bhale187]

Oct 6, 2008 7:10:50 GMT -5 Hecate said:

how am I like exactly???
I'm still up in the air about this. I can see it being a bad thing and a good thing.

That's pretty much where I am at also. I think there is a happy medium, and I think we can get there. We just need to find that middle ground.

The buy a spawn idea sounds good, but I think it would be difficult to implement and also could lead to more farming than a simple once per reset deal. It's fairly easy to amass a great deal of gold, and buying a spawn would likely end up leading to boss runs more often than once per reset. Also there is the issue of players lossing that money when the server crashes during the boss run, and that's the most likely time for a crash out side of epic DM quests.

I still think once per reset for bosses like Spires, Servant, Dis, Maelforn, Arkanis, Spirit King, and the Elf Queen would be reasonable and they don't drop gear that is powerful enough to throw off the balance. I'd just suggest a few changes to each of those bosses, other than the Servant to make up for the lack of DM control to prevent the abuse of AI.

I have a re-do of the SK, Spires boss and a remodel of that Spires final area that I worked up a long time ago, and never got around to getting it to Helm for review and implementing. The 'fixes' for the other bosses I could have done in just a couple days because it will only require a couple minor changes to their natural armor. I would suggest a little more boosting for the Arkanis and the Dis Tower final boss though.

The only one of those bosses that drops extremely powerful items is the Servant, and when you figure in his extreme difficulty along with the fact that he only drops 2 items I don't think that would be a problem. Although I still think Azure Doom needs seriously nerfed.

I really do think this would have a major impact on our population. Right now there is no challenge in RD without a DM. You just grind away, and maybe once every 2 weeks if you are lucky you get to have some real fun of challenging a major adversary. I know I had more fun on RD when we could just log in, put together a multi-clan group and do a boss run without having to schedule a DM.

[bhale187]

Oct 6, 2008 6:19:22 GMT -5 @loki said:

Surely if the gear were that sort after each clan would have a full calendar of boss runs not just the next one planned.

I don't know about the other clans, but Kindred has not had a run for about a month. We had runs planned but they fell through due to scheduling conflicts with Ael'Thas, and more recently the server was down when we were scheduled.

And since the runs don't stack up, the missed runs can't be made up. If you miss your run and can't arrange another one with your DM for another week of two you can't have 2 runs next time around. I know Kindred schedules ours for every other sunday since that is the best time for Ael'Thas, but if the server goes down or he can't make it we just miss out.

The current system is built on the best intentions, but it unfortunately still has it's flaws. The last system of each DM could do a run every so many days was also built on good intentions, but some players thought it resulted in favoritism for certain players or clan since those members always seemed to be on when the DMs were on.

[Dethklok]

How would it be more fair if you paid the same regardless of the size of your party? If two people go they each get more gear, and so they should each pay more, while people in a larger party may only get one item each for the same price?

Also i think that Stygis is relatively easy to kill because he only drops one decent item...if you make him harder to kill you would need to make his loot better as well.

The whole paying money to spawn bosses idea was supposed to make it harder to farm boss gear. If they were once per reset, one group could go and kill all 5 or 6 bosses after each reset , which could be as often as every week or less. Charging maybe 5 to 15 million to spawn them would ensure that you could maybe only do 1 or 2 per week, assuming you could farm that much. Besides, farming all that takes a lot of time, and it also uses up gold that would probably be donated to the clan and spent on upgrades. That way it would actually cost the clan something to do more than their one run every two weeks, and you would have to chose between boss gear and better goons/store, not just get both.

[bhale187]

5-15 mil sounds way too low to me. It costs 5 mil+ to craft a good item. A Boss run can give several good items.

Not to mention that you can collect 5 or 6 mil gp worth of items every 10 minutes if you know the right item to collect and the right place to sell it. (that's minus the time spent selling it of course).

I do agree on Stygis's gear, but I'd suggest re-doing his drops to make him more appealing at the same time he gets boosted.

[bhale187]

I think a trial run of the once per reset may be the best way to see if it would work. We could make 2 or 3 bosses spawn once per reset, like Spires, Stygis, and Spirit King for example. Then examine how that goes for a month or 2 or 3. That would give us an idea of how much the introduction of that gear is going to effect the server.

Here's another way to look at it. Currently there is the opportunity for 6 boss runs per month. If you allow for one reset every 10 days average and you put 3 bosses available upon reset that makes for 9 boss runs per month that are non-sanctioned. If you make 5 bosses available upon reset that makes for 15 boss runs.

There is also always the option of random spawn on the bosses. we could give all the non-elder bosses a 25% chance of spawning upon reset. Then you are looking at an average of about 5 boss runs per month with 7 bosses on the list. That will allow for clan-less players to get some boss gear as well, and even reduce the amount of gear coming out every month compared to current availability.

Again, I'm not sure what the best option is at this point, but I think there is a better choice out there than what we are doing now. I like the premise of buying a boss run, but I think it would be better done by turning in xp gained beyond level 40 since the gp system is so easily abused. Not only can you collect massive amounts of gp when are so motivated, but if you set up an NPC to buy spawns, it is also possible to abuse the nwn conversation scripts to get what an NPC offers without paying. You can fudge the gp turn in, but you can't fudge an xp reduction.

[Imhotep]

Oct 6, 2008 14:37:52 GMT -5 bhale187 said:

I think a trial run of the once per reset may be the best way to see if it would work. We could make 2 or 3 bosses spawn once per reset, like Spires, Stygis, and Spirit King for example. Then examine how that goes for a month or 2 or 3. That would give us an idea of how much the introduction of that gear is going to effect the server.

Here's another way to look at it. Currently there is the opportunity for 6 boss runs per month. If you allow for one reset every 10 days average and you put 3 bosses available upon reset that makes for 9 boss runs per month that are non-sanctioned. If you make 5 bosses available upon reset that makes for 15 boss runs.

There is also always the option of random spawn on the bosses. we could give all the non-elder bosses a 25% chance of spawning upon reset. Then you are looking at an average of about 5 boss runs per month with 7 bosses on the list. That will allow for clan-less players to get some boss gear as well, and even reduce the amount of gear coming out every month compared to current availability.

Again, I'm not sure what the best option is at this point, but I think there is a better choice out there than what we are doing now. I like the premise of buying a boss run, but I think it would be better done by turning in xp gained beyond level 40 since the gp system is so easily abused. Not only can you collect massive amounts of gp when are so motivated, but if you set up an NPC to buy spawns, it is also possible to abuse the nwn conversation scripts to get what an NPC offers without paying. You can fudge the gp turn in, but you can't fudge an xp reduction.

A side note: a boss run normaly includes the killing of all npc in areas before the boss zone. This rule stand for a good reason: you need to have a well balanced party to reach the boss. For instance, spellcasters will run out of spells if they aren't escorted by fighters to the boss area.

How to make sure people will fight their way to the boss and wont go invisible? Thinking about giving TS to all npc? That would make rescue missions a bit too hardcore imo.

[bhale187]

Oct 6, 2008 18:26:53 GMT -5 Imhotep said:

A side note: a boss run normaly includes the killing of all npc in areas before the boss zone. This rule stand for a good reason: you need to have a well balanced party to reach the boss. For instance, spellcasters will run out of spells if they aren't escorted by fighters to the boss area.

How to make sure people will fight their way to the boss and wont go invisible? Thinking about giving TS to all npc? That would make rescue missions a bit too hardcore imo.

Minions enroute to SK, Servant, Stygis, Maelforn and Elf Queen already have TS. Only Spires and Arkanis don't have TS minions.