I like this initiative, thank you for the poll.
I voted in favour of
Improving existing dungeons to make them more exciting, adding more systems/features to facilitate individual player-driven roleplay, and work on reducing lag and increasing stability. Perhaps it's my 5-6 months of play here speaking, but I think there are enough dungeons currently. A few more would be nice, sure, but hardly necessary, and probably a lot more work than tidying up what's available right now.
As for my choices: 1)
Improving existing dungeons to make them more exciting.Please modify the kobold and gremishka caves. This may sound sarcastic but these are definitely some of the ugliest models in the entire game, the encounters themselves are either too easy to fight or too hard (like the chieftain hut) and serve only to punish new players who aren't clued in, with situations that never, ever pop up again in dungeon gameplay later on (like the chieftain hut) and rightfully so.
I would like to see more dungeons which feature humanoid enemies. Bandits, vampires, etc. are a fun fight. It feels a bit more personal when your foe just starts running at you screaming about ripping you to shreds. Ogres are OK for this but aren't a very fun enemy in general on account of their outrageously high, unfitting reflex save and the high stakes for low rewards (cleave = mistakes turn into corpses easier, CR is low for the threat they pose = XP is poor vs. effort involved in fighting them en masse, loot is generally worse even with the help of a rogue than easier enemies nearby that have nothing requiring a rogue). Starting with Bonecrushers (maybe Berserkers), they should also be lootable with a chance to drop some money, weapons, and greatclubs.
This is just a start, but back to the initial point, current dungeons and dangerous areas really could do with a jostling around. How about some more areas which are essentially transit zones besieged by hostile forces that will ambush you? The ogre ambush on the pass, for example, or the bandits on the cliffs in the narrow passage. More of that would be excellent. Wide open areas are great and do not have to be excluded from this. I wonder what kind of performance hit we'd see if there were more bandits roaming around on roads. Infighting is also really cool to come across.
You might find these are potent ways to make areas (which traditionally have nothing of interest except herbs or a dungeon entrance) suddenly come alive, when players know to expect interruptions which can be legitimately threatening (ones that do not necessarily carry the same consequences as MPC encounters, but are a varied PvE challenge to survive). Some of my best experiences in the wild have been the random, unexpected chases and the friends made while cluelessly trying to improvise our way out of a series of events that became less and less survivable by the moment, if only because we dared to come out on top rather than back off.
Seeing bounty targets and high XP bosses improve their defence and unpredictability would do a lot for that side of things too. Why aren't dry liches utterly surrounded by minions? Spell casters that walk around unbuffed until they've already been struck are not very gripping boss enemies. They need a screen of escorts around them so they become active and begin casting sooner. Let's see improved invisibility as a first-cast to upgrade their survivability, and maybe acid sheathe, more reasons for ranged/spell combat are always welcome. Likewise, bounties wandering around in a wider area could lead to their encounters becoming less repetitive, especially if you give them a less predictable variety of NPCs protecting them (bandit wizards and trickery clerics who cast a mass buff or two and then start spamming attack spells?).
2) Adding more systems/features to facilitate individual player-driven roleplay.This got a lot of votes, the second most amount of votes (behind "more dungeons" on the poll) at the time I'm posting this, yet I don't see any posts explaining what players would like to see. I'm curious what people had in mind for this. What do those players who are particularly more a driving force feel they need? Is that appropriate to this topic, or are we talking simple, innocuous features like more & better placeables (candles, carpentry, easels, etc.)? I feel like, right now, we have plenty of support for getting the word out to be inclusive with whatever we're doing, with the printing press in-game, the forums open for IC rumours and fliers, the factions which exist to foster player creativity and give them instant allies they can rely on. I may just be dense and missing the point entirely since I still consider myself very inexperienced, but for how many votes this has, I feel like I'm not alone.
3) Work on reducing lag and increasing stability.I'm new to NWN and this is my first server, only played for about 6 months now. I've watched gameplay videos on servers larger and smaller than this, and my impression is that they have equal or worse performance while having fewer maps available (by the hundreds). I don't know how crashy they are but one thing I don't like about my experience is how I feel like I constantly have to restart my game and interrupt what my group is doing, encouraging others to restart with me if they think it's their time, too. I'm one of the lucky ones and I can sense a crash coming as my game gives me fewer FPS and more stutters when spinning the camera around as I play longer in one session, and when it's about to crash, those effects are at their most extreme. I really don't have any idea what causes it, some say it's universal to the game and we have to wait for Beamdog to optimise more, if that's the case then fine by me.
Tongue in cheek comment about removing HazlanBoosting these two posts, because I agree with everything in them.
Bring the Merchant's Pride Warehouse in the Village of Barovia to life: make it a location for storing & claiming items. That town has nearly all crafting facilities available, but it's a brutal hike to get anywhere to put it in storage.
Please put the male/female coloring mannequins in strategic locations around the world. Dyes are just generally a bear to select/work with in game.
Repeated IC requests for craftable items I hear that just don't seem to exist in game: cloaks, belts, hats, hoods, hide-lineable helmets, slings, shuriken and other more exotic weaponry.
For the tailoring profession: make cotton and linen a little more useful. As it stands, cotton & linen garments are basically the equivalent of dousing yourself in gasoline and waiting for someone to throw a match at you. Sadly, they serve no real purpose and consequently never really see the light of day.
Please let's stick to stating suggestions we would like to see, rather than knocking down suggestions by others. This is a broad topic, and I'd rather it not turn into only about scrolls or otherwise veering from a simple "wish list" into disagreement.
This
Also:
Expanded Blacksmithing smithing system to make:
Lock Picks (Lets give some use to softer metals allowing for more supple picks. I.e Tin, copper, bronze, platinum in ascending degrees of usefulness)
Caltrops
Expanded Alchemy system to make the following:
Bottled Black
Flash Powder
Thunder Stone
Sticking Cloud
Aroma of Curdled Death
Oil of Fiery Burning
Flask of Oil (Grease/Knock Single use)
Grenade
More helm/hood recipes that use secondary ingredients to itemize detection skills
Eagle feathers for spot
Raven feathers for listen
Zweifalk/falcon feathers for antagonize
Owl feathers for stealth
Craftable Poisons
Planet based poisons crafted from herbalism
Creature venom refined from alchemy
Metallic and mineral based poisons smelted and then refined alchemically
Expand Craftable Traps
We have plenty of traps that deal damage but could use some non-lethal type to facilitate a wider range of play style and objectives. For example:
A trip wire trap that KDs its victim. Reflex to avoid.
Traps that trigger darkness, stinking cloud, dispell, wall of fire, etc. Appropriate save to avoid secondary effects.
Traps that functions that function like an alarm spell. Wire attached to bells/chimes/cans. Reflex to avoid it.
Nonlethal traps are such a great idea. Craftable greatclubs?