CD Dungeons

[Deleted]

If you weren't getting hit by dispels before, that means a trapspringer already went through and removed them.  

Excited to try the new Wyvernspur tonight!

[valiea987]

It wasn't? The traps were completely redone last night. There was a dispel trap by the foot of the Lathander temple that hit me against the wall, and the one in that first long tunnel was broken into 5-6 separate dispels, and the skeletal mage just past it was hugged up inside of the dispel trap by the foot of the stairs to the next floor. That was all pretty new for me.

Before, there were only 2 dispels: 1 in the long corridor, and then 1 at the staircase with the skeletal mage -outside- of the trap so it could be attacked without going inside the trap and getting dispelled.

I'll check it out again after the event this afternoon.

Edit: Yup! This place is super different looking. I love the new entry! It is beautifully done. Has a really good flow to it!

[Vincent07]

Yeah, the change should be super noticeable, I redid the place entirely. Spent a solid 9 hours working on it yesterday.

[enarian123]

So I'll be honest when I say, I did NOT read every word of this thread.   Neither am I trying to drag up an argument.    But that said, I read a number of people complaining about build abilities in combat and powerbuild vs rp build.    As far as the cookie cutters go, we have no power builds.    We have some people who have managed to build their concepts better and drive the PC's in their control better, but still no out 'n out powerbuilds.    Yes, some builds are made more around combat then others, but frankly.... this is DND.   Questing involves combat nearly always.    And lastly, when it comes to building, or running a PC to it's peak performance.   It's a matter of learning a few tricks, anyone out there who is unhappy with how their PC performs in given situations that you assumed it should be better in, I'm happy to sit down and help you out with it.   I've helped a few people in the past who had a very solid concept, but as far as putting the concept into a nwn build they had trouble.    So if you have a concept and want it to work in nwn hit me up and I promise we can get it working.    


Also!   If you ever have a group wanting to go out, and are halted due to a lack of lockpick or trapper hit up Elf, I will sit in the back and just do the roguey stuff happily

[trylobyte]

Just something to keep in mind...  There are certain spots in the revamped gnoll dungeon that are made difficult by the sheer number of mobs.  It's not because there are a lot of mobs per se, since there always were, but more of them are spellcasters and that many spellcasters casting in a group that size causes a lot of lag, especially when combined with certain spell effects like a PC casting Crusade.  This can make the fight artificially difficult because you're not just fighting the mobs, you're also fighting the game to be able to react in time.  The bigger the party the worse this gets, and the party I was in today wound up taking a couple deaths because we were having to react to events a second after they already happened.

[valiea987]

Yeah! And it doesn't matter how good your PC is there, the game just can't handle that much well.

[sinisteromnibus]

On my runs there with Voss and groups of 2-5 people I haven't experienced any latency issues or screen tearing from lag or even client instability like what you mention above. Are you certain there weren't other factors affecting it? Like shiny water or grass or something being turned on. The only time I've really experienced something like what you mention is when Rhea is along with us and uses her doll that does the lightning storm effect in the final room where Hogger is. That spell does appear to put some serious strain on the client. However, with our normal duo of Mouse/Voss we have no latency issues whatsoever, and with our less common group of 4-5 with Kel casting Crusades and Words of Faith I didn't notice any problems myself.

It -may- be that (at least with the crusade visual) the party attempting the dungeon was a bit big, and that combined with the spells from the gnoll casters could be causing your issue. I'd recommend attempting it again with a smaller group to verify. Voss runs there often if you want to do an ooc run of it sometime with maybe 4 or 5 people to see if that makes a difference on the stability of your client.

[Deleted]

Hey now!  Rhea doesn't use that doll NEARLY as often as she did.  Mainly because it's harder for me to see the balors to kill them.  

[Fire Wraith]

There is certainly an upper limit on things though where the NWN client gets pissy and slows down noticeably, or worse - it's just a question of where that point hits, and how/why.

[thorien]

Sept 4, 2015 4:10:14 GMT -5 sinisteromnibus said:

On my runs there with Voss and groups of 2-5 people (...)

As far as I remember, dungeons were designed for party of six people within the level range. And group like that may contain four, even five characters that are casting. It would be good to test the limits and spells that are causing it.

[sinisteromnibus]

One person isn't likely to make that big of a difference, but my point with my post is that it simply can't be a problem with the dungeon itself as the conditions that you experienced did not occur for myself or others with a smaller group size...which even based on what you're saying makes the most sense. If you take a 4-man party that is 4 casters into a dungeon that is also filled with casters there will inevitably be a lot of spell visual effects firing at the same time. This is what creates visual lag, chopping graphics, and screen tearing (and can crash your client as well).

Now, if a small group went into gnolls and had these same graphical lag issues then a call to change/fix things on the server side (by cutting down the number of casters in each spawn or altering their spell lists to be less flashy, etc) would be legitimate. However, if the issue does happen to come down to the fact that a group took 4-6 casters all firing off spell effects at the same time in combat as well as the spawns there? Sad to say, but getting rid of the 2 or so casters per spawn isn't going to fix the graphical lag if all the party members are still casting at the same time. It's just the nature of the beast, unfortunately.

As for dungeons being designed for 6 people...I've never heard that, so it's news to me. Not saying you're wrong, but even if this was a group of 6, I don't think you'd likely have problems like you're mentioning unless every member of the party was a caster throwing spells in combat.

[sinisteromnibus]

Also, @belladonna:

That silly little doll blinds the hell out of me every time. It causes some pretty severe lag on Clockwork's rig, but mine handles it well enough. The brightness will get you, though.

[Edge]

It's probably more accurate to say that dungeons are balanced around the stereotypical four-man party of Warrior, Sneak, Priest, Mage, for the appropriate level range. Though Sneaks do kind of get the short end of the stick regardless due to all the undead, constructs, etc. around.

[Deleted]

Sept 4, 2015 11:04:56 GMT -5 thorien said:

Sept 4, 2015 4:10:14 GMT -5 sinisteromnibus said:

On my runs there with Voss and groups of 2-5 people (...)

As far as I remember, dungeons were designed for party of six people within the level range. And group like that may contain four, even five characters that are casting. It would be good to test the limits and spells that are causing it.

The dungeons are balanced around 4-5.  There is a point where the larger groups will start spawning larger groups of enemies, but I believe you have to have 8 or more characters there for that to happen.

[trylobyte]

In any case, we had a 6 man group if I remember (which as I've heard from Vince multiple times is only slightly more than what we should have) and we were experiencing significant stalls and slowdowns.  I know it doesn't happen with smaller groups, but that's because smaller groups equals less things going on, especially if that group doesn't have a lot of casters (Like Mouse and Voss).  But once the group size skews large and/or more casters are present (Or a cleric drops Crusade) it does begin to hiccup.

I simply mentioned it because I have heard Vince express that dungeons are designed for larger parties, but gnolls is now running into a problem where larger parties, if they're a bit caster-heavy, may experience slowdowns and lag.  It's a balancing act, I know, but I wanted to make the design folks aware.