With recent changes in the looting system, I wanted to address issues with dungeoning in general, that I often hear others complaining about, and an idea for ground works to improve gameplay in general.
So, my idea is to take this 'individual marking' on chests used in the loot system now, and apply it to experience as well.
- When a player kills something in a dungeon, they are 'marked' or tagged, or something, by the scripts, to signify when they started that dungeon.
- That player gains experience like normal for that 'reset' of the dungeon.. I.E. so long as they don't leave and allow the dungeon to reset, things function normally.
- Then, after that, they'd receive no experience for running that dungeon again, for a set number of hours or days. I was contemplating what I'd set this at, and I'd even think 2-3 real life days before you can run a dungeon again (and get XP) might be fair.
Things attempting to gain from this:
- Ability to greatly increase the spawn growth of dungeons, so that they populate faster, thus allowing more people to enjoy dungeons when they want to, as they cannot be "Farmed" by people repeatedly. So a dungeon might respawn in say, 4 hours now, but each character could only run it every few days, whatever time limit was decided.
- Remove/rework some of the spawns of higher level dungeons. Part of why I see 'low spawns' of dungeons is to keep it so that re-running dungeons isn't worth it, you drop spawns to low levels so they don't provide XP, but if we do it mechanically, theres no need for those pesky low spawn situations.
- With both of the above points, dungeons would be at 'higher spawns' more often, perhaps providing a bit more 'horror' and difficulty in the server. Make those higher level dungeons harder, and have a reason to be feared, rather then constantly at low-mid spawn for farming.
Possible Issues:
- Loot. With higher spawns and faster Respawns, loot might have to be 'reworked' a little to avoid a flood of better gear.
- Scripting. Given, I'm not a scriptor! I know basic programming, but have no experience with NWN stuff. So whether something like this would be to complex, or even doable, I'm not sure.