Dungeons after spawn growth tweak

[Maiyannah]

On my old server that I worked on, we made sure to leave hints that a dungeon was high level by placing certain indicators before the actual area with spawns. In POTM, you could achieve this by setting this up based on the dungeons spawn level, basically if a dungeon is on high spawn, have some kind of indicator just before the main area, for example: a corpse of an adventurer laying dead before the cave transition, or a pile of bones, etc. This would help the other way, which would ensure that low levels are forewarned that a dungeon is on high spawn, and can lead to fun RP opportunities, when they see the danger/consequences of entering said dungeon right upfront.

This exists.

Check your combat log when you enter.

[Anarcoplayba]

On my old server that I worked on, we made sure to leave hints that a dungeon was high level by placing certain indicators before the actual area with spawns. In POTM, you could achieve this by setting this up based on the dungeons spawn level, basically if a dungeon is on high spawn, have some kind of indicator just before the main area, for example: a corpse of an adventurer laying dead before the cave transition, or a pile of bones, etc. This would help the other way, which would ensure that low levels are forewarned that a dungeon is on high spawn, and can lead to fun RP opportunities, when they see the danger/consequences of entering said dungeon right upfront.

This exists.

Check your combat log when you enter.

Afaik, only for rangers and druids.

[Maiyannah]

Afaik, only for rangers and druids.

Emma is neither.

[Anarcoplayba]

Afaik, only for rangers and druids.

Emma is neither.

No pc of mine aside rangers and druids in specific locations have a message talking about what exists in a certain location.

[Soren / Zarathustra217]

It's set up per area/dungeon, but I agree that it would be good if we added it consistently - both to give early warning and indication whether it's relevant to visit the place.

[Di Infernis]

It's set up per area/dungeon, but I agree that it would be good if we added it consistently - both to give early warning and indication whether it's relevant to visit the place.

Please , that would be so cool 

[armybrat69]

+1 on this idea as well if it can be done. That would be so cool to see!

[gotesu]

It's set up per area/dungeon, but I agree that it would be good if we added it consistently - both to give early warning and indication whether it's relevant to visit the place.

The idea is good on its own accord and I’d also love to see it.

Though, imho, I dont think this really offers a solution because if you’re already at the entrance of a dungeon you dont really need a message on the combat log to determine the spawn, you can just peek inside and see (This is possible on the vast majority of dungeons). You've already spent the time to gather a suitable party and travel to it so finding it and empty or at lowish spawn will still be as frustrating.

Imho I’d much prefer a solution as one of the following:
1. Make dungeons reach high spawn much faster.
2. Drastically mitigate the different between ‘high spawn’ and ‘low spawn’ so that they actually offer an almost similar (even if not identical) challenge and gain.

If there’s a worry that some characters would farm a place over and over and over again, a script akin to the one that was proposed here that diminishes the spawn for a character that hits the same dungeon too many times in a row can prevent it.


POTM got wonderful dungeons and in my experience of the last several days the recent parameter tweak made enjoying their full capacity almost impossible.

[myrddraal]

He has a good point as well.  Tweaking what the “low” spawn is to be closer to the current “mid” spawn and leaving the current system as it is would also be better than nothing.  ATM all I have heard is that every single dungeon people have been to had been a low / near empty spawn since the recent “fix” of the system.  Even some of the harder dungeons that are typically only challenged by well prepared parties like Blackwatch have been abysmally low spawn.

[Anarcoplayba]

It's set up per area/dungeon, but I agree that it would be good if we added it consistently - both to give early warning and indication whether it's relevant to visit the place.

The idea is good on its own accord and I’d also love to see it.

Though, imho, I dont think this really offers a solution because if you’re already at the entrance of a dungeon you dont really need a message on the combat log to determine the spawn, you can just peek inside and see (This is possible on the vast majority of dungeons). You've already spent the time to gather a suitable party and travel to it so finding it and empty or at lowish spawn will still be as frustrating.

Imho I’d much prefer a solution as one of the following:
1. Make dungeons reach high spawn much faster.
2. Drastically mitigate the different between ‘high spawn’ and ‘low spawn’ so that they actually offer an almost similar (even if not identical) challenge and gain.

If there’s a worry that some characters would farm a place over and over and over again, a script akin to the one that was proposed here that diminishes the spawn for a character that hits the same dungeon too many times in a row can prevent it.


POTM got wonderful dungeons and in my experience of the last several days the recent parameter tweak made enjoying their full capacity almost impossible.

I do agree that a narrower dungeon spawn would be a nice compromise between static spawn and dynamic spawn.

But I do believe that the message in the dungeons giving hints about it's spawn level would be awesome and, although not a solution, would help to avoid accidents. More than once I enterede the Shipwreck, triggered the spawn and realized after killing some mobs: "Oh, schweiss... not worth it, lemme go back to the Camp".

Is it always necessary? For sure no. Will solve the problem? Also no. But it is good to have more tools to avoid killing other people fun without having fun myself.

[Travburg]

--Another idea is to be able to pay more beggars, or even vistani, and other appropriate NPC's to be able to scout the dungeons spawn levels remotely. The accuracy of the results of such conversations could even be tied to under-utilized skills like appraise or influence (because information has its price). Being able to ascertain the state of a dungeon this way might even be limited to one use per server reset (to avoid abuse). The whole idea here is that most dungeons would have some way to scry out their activity level before travelling all the way there.

This is actually already a thing. Dumitru in the Vallaki Slums, Constantin at the Fishing Lodge and the Rauni at the mist camp provide this info, but it may need to be made less vague.

To my understanding, Madam Vadoma at mist camp also remarks on Dark Lord dwellings as well? Which always obtain high spawn because dms are required to explore them. Any chance those could get removed from her dialogue, so she only speaks about which dungeons are worth visiting? I think that'd make for such a great change.

[hatha]

I would like to throw my two cents in the ring.

As a player who spends an excessive amount of time playing here I'm not personally invested in the spawn levels of dungeons. I know that the XP and loot will come eventually, the systems in place are designed so that progress is capped past a certain amount of adventuring and I know I will hit that if only by the sheer amount of time I spend.

What I am invested in is the happiness and disposition of my fellow players, especially the ones who have less time to dedicate to the server than I do. This change has negatively impacted the experience of the majority of the players I've spoken with, and it leads to folks who are frustrated and in less of a positive mood when it comes to having an RP scene afterwards.

It reminds me of the first few days of an NCE, where everyone is so focused on getting ahead of the their peers that every dungeon is permanently low spawn and the frustration for folks who gets a late start is palpable. This frustration undoubtably rubs off on other people, myself included.

It pains me to see friends making the decision to take a hiatus from the server based on recent negative experiences, and I hope that the development team considers taking another look at the parameters for spawn growth soon.

[Komuccap]

Overgrind of certain dungeons, such as Tejeda seemed rather obvious, to a point where it became the de facto /primary/ source of income for ninjalooters and the primary source of experience for any character below level 15. One can also mention locations such as the fever iron mine in Hazlan, which was almost never highly populated since it's release.

Considering that the server is positioning itself as roleplay oriented, i find these changes proper. This said, one can see how it could impact experience of newer players, that would find it more difficult to acquire equipment of higher quality through dungeoning. A more active DM involvement in such expeditions could solve the issue.

[Duayne]

The problem I've found with the shift is it disproportionally seems to affect EU players AM to mid afternoon, also any change to what people have expected for years at this point would take a while to get used to. Even more so now TDN has re-released so player count will be lower for a while. From further observations of my own, if a dungeon gets cleared towards the end of EU/US etc play overlap, it will not be 'high-spawn' again until that time overlap starts to happen again, and that's if it doesn't get cleared again on a low/low-mid build-up.

[Maiyannah]

Considering that the server is positioning itself as roleplay oriented, i find these changes proper. This said, one can see how it could impact experience of newer players, that would find it more difficult to acquire equipment of higher quality through dungeoning. A more active DM involvement in such expeditions could solve the issue.

Long experience teaches that any proposition of improvement through DM involvement is dead on the vine; DM time is a very limited resource and server population increases have not ameliorated this problem in the slightest; adding more expectation to their workload only further exacerabates the problem through increased burnout.

[Anarcoplayba]

Considering that the server is positioning itself as roleplay oriented, i find these changes proper. This said, one can see how it could impact experience of newer players, that would find it more difficult to acquire equipment of higher quality through dungeoning. A more active DM involvement in such expeditions could solve the issue.

Long experience teaches that any proposition of improvement through DM involvement is dead on the vine; DM time is a very limited resource and server population increases have not ameliorated this problem in the slightest; adding more expectation to their workload only further exacerabates the problem through increased burnout.

Also, please, "Being a Roleplay Server" means that you stay IC all times, gives your PC personality, depth, story and coherence.

Being an RP server does not mean not dungeoneering. This is a false opposition that keeps recurring: "Oh, less dungeon is better because dungeon is not RP and this is an RP server".

[myrddraal]

Considering that the server is positioning itself as roleplay oriented, i find these changes proper. This said, one can see how it could impact experience of newer players, that would find it more difficult to acquire equipment of higher quality through dungeoning. A more active DM involvement in such expeditions could solve the issue.

Long experience teaches that any proposition of improvement through DM involvement is dead on the vine; DM time is a very limited resource and server population increases have not ameliorated this problem in the slightest; adding more expectation to their workload only further exacerabates the problem through increased burnout.

Also, please, "Being a Roleplay Server" means that you stay IC all times, gives your PC personality, depth, story and coherence.

Being an RP server does not mean not dungeoneering. This is a false opposition that keeps recurring: "Oh, less dungeon is better because dungeon is not RP and this is an RP server".

This basically.  Not everyone can be part of every heavily DM monitored faction and have their progress modified by levels granted etc.  Sitting around doing tavern RP only goes so far as well.  It's also completely uninteresting to players like me.  You will eventually hit a brick wall in some plots, be they personal, AMPC, or DM, where there is not new information available to be discussed.  You also cant just run around constantly doing crimes either if you want to have any kind of longevity.  Some factions like the garda and RVT have much more to do than most of the rest of the playerbase simply by occupation.

Lets also not leave out that most of the tippy top level of dungeons are barely touched simply because you require a lot more preparation to get through them.  One simply does not expect low spawn Sithicus.  Ghastria's church has also become far less forgiving with how the ghosts will dispell your buffs now.  Its not bad that this content is hard, but when the rewards are consistently beaten by easier content, its obvious that people will over farm the easier content.  Tweaking some of the areas like the Perfidus, Blackwatch, Aboleth, Ghastria, and Sithicus to always reward one item of high value would be helpful but I will admit I dont understand the dev side of this suggestion.  If it were possible to have a container with a single high value item drop and all the others remain randomized in loot value and quantity of loot, since I am vaguely familiar that it will roll items until the value has been used up, would encourage more delving into the more dangerous content.  I cant tell you how many times I had been to the barrow of the sleeping king or Malthor's lair and have gotten better loot in the ghoul cabin in west barovia, which can be done at like level 7, which is aggravating.

[Duayne]

To add an example, today during work I have checked Naillat spawn levels 4 times in the past 6 hours. The difficulty has not increased past "you feel slightly uneasy", which has been the message 6 hours ago, and 5 minutes ago when I last checked. It almost seems like they're capped at 'veteran' level with no elites taking over. The growth to server pop seems far too low if this is the intended speed, and reinforces my previous post that EU daytime is extremely affected by this, with growth seemingly frozen when it's in the 20-40 player range.

[Komuccap]

Also, please, "Being a Roleplay Server" means that you stay IC all times, gives your PC personality, depth, story and coherence.

Being an RP server does not mean not dungeoneering. This is a false opposition that keeps recurring: "Oh, less dungeon is better because dungeon is not RP and this is an RP server".

Dungeoneering and constant grind of the same areas on daily basis (as we have seen with Tejeda, for example) are not the same.

[Anthaxious]

The Vistani in mistcamp is supposed to reveal locations of great evil, which one would assume means the highest spawns in the server at that time.

In the past few days, we have explored those places to discover they were indeed not at the maximum possible spawn level. So there is something to be said that max spawn seems to be very rare now.

Perhaps that's the intention of this change. If it was not, then it may warrant having another look at this.

[Eve de Rochefort]

For a lot of folks, the mid-level grind is where things are make-or-break. You've already put in the time to get invested in your character, but you're still not at a point where you can afford to just 'exist'.

There's already a barrier to organizing dungeons:

1. Finding a group.

2. Coordinating times.

3. Travel.

If, after all that, you get to the dungeon and find nothing spawned, what happens?
People log out. People get frustrated. And crucially, they stop planning group outings because there's no guarantee they'll be worth the effort.

That's group play dying in slow motion.

Even if the intent was never for dungeons to be permanently high-spawn, players have spent considerable time coming to expect them to function in a predictable and rewarding way. If they start feeling unreliable, it creates this weird psychological effect where people just assume "this dungeon is broken" and stop engaging with it.

If the perception is that dungeons are unreliable, people stop running them.
If people stop running them, group play diminishes.
If group play diminishes, mid-level players start logging in less.

I understand that dungeons were never meant to be permanently at high spawn. But the reality is that the current tuning may have overcorrected. What used to be a reliable part of gameplay is now a gamble, and gambling with people’s limited playtime is a dangerous game to play.

The real question is:

Is the new system making dungeons more engaging?
Or is it creating more frustration than it’s worth?

Because if people log in, can’t find something to do, and log out… well, that's how servers start to bleed players. And from what I'm hearing, some folks are already considering their options elsewhere.

[Phayviel]

From an EU player with no high level characters (highest 14), these changes have made the server just a lot more dead in my playtime. It's harder to find dungeon groups and when it happens, people walk to the place, notice it's a low spawn with zero challenge and either leave or log out mentally. "Oh, it's empty" is not an interesting IC discussion to have several times in row.

And then you walk back, try to find a group again and your playtime is gone. Not personally a huge fan of mist camp either and this leads to more standing around in there. Motivation to log back is very low. I love to rp and talk and talk IC, but fighting is part of the D&D experience and Ravenloft setting, so why make it this difficult?

Walking back and forth is also the worst environment to rp in since people have harder time typing when they're moving.

Sure, there's people who might not see a problem, like actively DM-supported characters and active guilds, but there's other people around too.

[SamDemonium]

Overgrind of certain dungeons, such as Tejeda seemed rather obvious, to a point where it became the de facto /primary/ source of income for ninjalooters and the primary source of experience for any character below level 15.

Considering that the server is positioning itself as roleplay oriented, i find these changes proper. This said, one can see how it could impact experience of newer players, that would find it more difficult to acquire equipment of higher quality through dungeoning. A more active DM involvement in such expeditions could solve the issue.

I agree that the grinding of Tejeda was a problem and possibly even the catalyst for this change, but in the same vein efforts should have gone towards correcting that dungeon beforehand (which I've seen has now happened) ahead of applying a blanket change to spawn growths across all dungeons.

Irrespective of that, the change has now happened and perhaps there was value in it based on clarification from the dev team of it being overtuned in its previous guise, but I will admit it could do with some refinement based on the feedback in this thread and my own experience since the change - even if it involved some minor adjustments to the spawn growths to balance it out.

[Anthaxious]

The DEVs have already explicitly stated their reasons for the change, to summarize, it was due to a prior change that was not tweaked correctly, leading to things being on high spawn almost all of the time.

They believe they have dialed it in now. There's no reason to make assumptions that this was due to Tejeda or anything else, it's simply as they stated, a tweak to a prior change they made that affected the dungeon spawn levels based on server population.

[armybrat69]

For a lot of folks, the mid-level grind is where things are make-or-break. You've already put in the time to get invested in your character, but you're still not at a point where you can afford to just 'exist'.

There's already a barrier to organizing dungeons:

1. Finding a group.

2. Coordinating times.

3. Travel.

If, after all that, you get to the dungeon and find nothing spawned, what happens?
People log out. People get frustrated. And crucially, they stop planning group outings because there's no guarantee they'll be worth the effort.

That's group play dying in slow motion.

Even if the intent was never for dungeons to be permanently high-spawn, players have spent considerable time coming to expect them to function in a predictable and rewarding way. If they start feeling unreliable, it creates this weird psychological effect where people just assume "this dungeon is broken" and stop engaging with it.

If the perception is that dungeons are unreliable, people stop running them.
If people stop running them, group play diminishes.
If group play diminishes, mid-level players start logging in less.

I understand that dungeons were never meant to be permanently at high spawn. But the reality is that the current tuning may have overcorrected. What used to be a reliable part of gameplay is now a gamble, and gambling with people’s limited playtime is a dangerous game to play.

The real question is:

Is the new system making dungeons more engaging?
Or is it creating more frustration than it’s worth?

Because if people log in, can’t find something to do, and log out… well, that's how servers start to bleed players. And from what I'm hearing, some folks are already considering their options elsewhere.

TDN went live again so you will see a flock of people checking it out. Other discords I am in are talking about it. My own 2 cents, the dungeon changes along with a shiny new PW are not helping current player count at certain times. NA myself, so not on all the time to compare.