Bounty System suggestion.

I have an idea for a system that would help out with a few problems.
Namely server performance and ninjalooting. Or partially atleast.

I suggest we remove all "A Large Chest" kind of chests from the MOD. You know, those types of chests that respawn when the NPC's respawn.
The chests that would remain then are the ones that spawn only 1-4 items of high value and respawn over time.

Then we would add a bounty on NPC's. A specific (plus small random variable) gold-value given automatically to the nearby PC's as the NPC's dies. The value would be based on the NPC's CR (difficulty).
Very much like XP gain works now, except the gold value is unaffect by the PC's level. Only the NPC's level count.

What would be the benefits then?
There are a few I can think of.

First off server performance would benefit in several ways.

• NPC's wouldn't spawn items in their inventory (only to be moved to the nearest chest).
  
• To gain the gold you would acctually have to kill the mobs (decreasing the ninjalooting).
  
• There would be less NPC's wandering around in raided areas which would decrease the number of heartbeats.

Secondly i think it would help improve the game experience in general aswell.

• Since all chests would be on respawn timers, there is less risk you find empty chest after clearing out an area.
  
• Gold would be split evenly for the PC's fighting in the area (much like XP is now).
  
• These changes would not cripple sneakers ability to fight (like most other ninjalooting preventives do).
  
• There is no economical loss in pure gold when venturing with more players. Since there is no pot to share, but rather a fixed value for every single PC, you would infact gain more gold for your faction when forming parties.
  
• We devs would have more control of the gold flow and value in the MOD (adjust for inflation and such).
  

There are also a few negative sideeffects I can think of.

• The gold would be given to all PC's nearby, even enemy PC's (just like with XP).
  
• It won't fully stop ninjalooting, only making it a less good alternative than it is now.
  
• All of junk loot would be removed. Some of you might enjoy harvesting it and selling it for a profit.
  
• A solution has to be found on how to revamp the Magic Nut system.
  
• A few good items do actually exist in the junk loot, like Life-Giver Cloak.
  
  

All quest items and other such stuff would still be dropped by NPC's in the same old fashion.

What do you guys think?
Do you like this idea or are the any reason (stated above or otherwise) why we should not use a Bounty system?

Please let me know what you all think, including the staff.

-TheMothMan

..

I don't think ninjalooting is all that big of a problem that deserves a drastic change to put a stop to it. Considering how the server is not all too populated (5 players online at the moment, at least 1 is afk by now.)
So why is it an issue if a sneaker hops on and loots the treasure of areas other players probably arn't visiting and wont be visiting before the next reset.

There is a 1 per reset quest on both side that can be handed in only once, first player to get it, benefits from it. Thats a bit similair to ninjalooting, other players are missing out just because another player got it first.
Are you willing to change it so its 1 per/character type quest?

I think sneaking in not killing anything and taking the treasure is a legit thing to do, Bosses used to have TS and it got removed a few updates ago... sort of make taking loot without fighting easier.
There is not much of a difference between going to a place to discover its been cleared out vs going to a place, clearing it out and at the end discovering that there is no treasure. The only difference is the lack of decieption and time wasting, xp is still gained (unless a player dies once or twice trying to get to the treasure... and thats their ability of playing nwn not the fault of other players taking loot).
So a few ooc minutes or an hour was wasted, gaining xp without any gp or item reward... instead of right away seeing no enemys and assuming no treasure, the player decides to go off to another place.

Now, a sneaker following around alllies/enemys and sneaking ahead to take the loot while the area is already occupied.. now thats a bit problematic.. but considering how we have a small community can't we just all agree to abide by that common courtesy rule?
Of course it makes more sense towards and enemy to steal loot from them, heck maybe even ambush them (as long as they arn't effortless...).

The junk loot is useful for starting characters, and some of those items are, as you say, darned useful always. I figure the solution is simple, though: migrate some of them (e.g. the Light Life Cloak) to the other sorts of treasure chests, a few of them either to creatures' inventories (bosses, 'haps?) and/or to a new category of treasure chest (same loot tables as current, but far fewer items), and perhaps even a few of them to stores.

Really, though, I've no quibbles; that should come as no surprise.

removed by poster

I would have to say the same as the above posters. I dont think this is a big issue. We could do some easy changes though. Things like stop random loot from spawning on mobs. This would keep bosses from swapping their axe of axs kicking for a crude dagger which happens now also it should decrease server strain.

I find ninja looting to be quite frustrating when I go out expecting to find loot or make some gold when I get a little bored. I would have no issue with revamping this area as I do not ninja loot nor have I ever. I find it to be a great disappointment when I go to retrieve an empty chest because someone didnt feel like killing all of the NPC's. This occurs a lot, actually and I continuously make the effort so the next person doesnt get the same results.

I would prefer it that the "Junk" loot that we all sell off to the vendors might be dropped on a corpse, versus picked out of a chest. This way you have to take the time and make the effort to get what you are striving for.

I am in favor of changing this.

Sorry for being a bit unclear here.
The main goal with this suggestion is better server performance.
Not to stop ninjalooting per say.

However server performance walks hand in hand with ninjalooting since spawned areas where the NPC's are not killed lags the server.(*)

I want to take steps to either encourage players to kill all the NPC's or give players ways to move passed areas without spawning NPC's (like the new installed road to Ranzington).
I know some find ninjalooting an issue. Some do not. But that's kinda beside the point here, since the "issue" isn't player preference as much as it's about server performance.

The other thing that will help server performance is the fact that the game won't be creating items (treasure) on every single NPC's that spawns and these object won't then be copied into the nearest chest before being deleted again.
With the bounty system there is no tangibale forms of gold or items, until you recive it.
It's all handled by scripts.
Also worth noting is that the script table for all the loot is rather large and houses a few demanding functions. With the frequency these scripts fire, some performance gain will be made here aswell.
Not in the form of slugish lag being removed but rather in overall server load, which helps make the server more stable.

So the performance gain would be two fold.

This is not a question about allowing ninjalooting or not. With this system one could still ninjaloot, but would then "only" gain the treasues from the "spawn-over time" chests.
Boy, we really need clear names to seperate the two different loot-systems.

If these clarifications changes your opinions of the bounty system, speak now or forever hold your peace!

-TheMothMan


*There are a lot of contradicting data about whether or not idle NPC's in areas without any PC in them hamper server performance.
In the absense of any clear facts, I suggest we take the safe road.

TheMothMan wrote:Sorry for being a bit unclear here.
The main goal with this suggestion is better server performance.
Not to stop ninjalooting per say.

However server performance walks hand in hand with ninjalooting since spawned areas where the NPC's are not killed lags the server.(*)

I want to take steps to either encourage players to kill all the NPC's or give players ways to move passed areas without spawning NPC's (like the new installed road to Ranzington).
I know some find ninjalooting an issue. Some do not. But that's kinda beside the point here, since the "issue" isn't player preference as much as it's about server performance.

Why not try a method that somehow emptys an area of its spawns after a certain amount of time that a player is no longer there? Is there a way to unspawn enemys after a certain amount of time if they aren't killed and no player is in the area?
(since from my understanding the issue here is to prevent a bunch of npcs being left alive all over the server...)

Because even if loot is changed to fix the issue of inventory items being put to a chest and that causes lag... the issue of spawns being hit and not cleared still remains...
(if it even causes lag, better safe than sorry as you've stated.)

Edit;
The server just reset/crashed and came back up... within half an hour I experienced a lag spike, 4 cleaven and 1 axfell player online in total. After 1 hour, with 2 cleaven players being afk at the fort... 1 more cleaven player loggin in and training around north/fort and myself and another cleaven at ranzington crypts clearing it out... the server disconnected everyone after a few minor lag spikes.
I'm not sure what that 1 axfell player was doing... I can't imagine a wizard/palemaster goes around ninjalooting/spawning massive amounts of areas.

There must be something besides loot and spawns causing this instability. What little improvement this could/might provide is not all too significant considering the current lag/instability isn't directly conditioned on loot/spawns.
Does it really matter if something is implimented to improve gaming experience if the improvment isn't experienced due to players not staying connected to the server?

Just my 2 cents.

I recently proposed something very similar (read: pretty much identical) to the bounty system on the staff forum. For my part, I had several goals in mind:

1) Lag would be reduced. The loot spawn script is actually fairly intensive when spawning oodles of NPCs at once. Reducing the number of existing NPCs was actually a secondary goal, though it's a worthwhile one too.
2) Gameplay would be simplified. No more carting around oodles of items just because. As an added bonus, the loot that remains has a bit of added value, since there aren't, like, millions of them.
3) Unlike treasure, bounty rewards would not be divided by the number of party members. If a creature is worth thirty gold, then everyone gets thirty gold. Thus party play is encouraged. (Note that Moth may or may not intend differently here.)
4) Since treasure would be tied to creatures, you'd no longer be liable to clear an area only to find nothing for all your trouble. Thus many frustrations are averted.
5) And lastly, verisimilitude! Seriously, why are there hundreds of magical items lying about everywhere?

TheeVals wrote:Why not try a method that somehow emptys an area of its spawns after a certain amount of time that a player is no longer there? Is there a way to unspawn enemys after a certain amount of time if they aren't killed and no player is in the area?

I am (obviously) not Moth, but…

Yes, it’s possible. Ideally, it should be done.

However, the short of it is this: Anphillia Genesis (like most Anphillia modules, really) isn’t designed in such a manner as to make it particularly easy. A well-designed spawn system will clean creatures efficiently as a matter of course. Anphillia uses the default encounters, though, which would require a bit of additional overhead to clean; doing so could potentially hurt as much as help.

I haven't played in awhile, but just reading this suggestion makes me want to play again. I forget how much of a pain in the ass it is to gear a character from scratch, especially when I lean heavily on afk experience to level up due to a 50 hour/week work schedule. It means that gold comes very slowly since I'm not killing as often, and when I do kill and find nothing but an empty chest it's very angering. Everything about this suggestion seems awesome. Add a few of the better items from the crap loot table to the real loot table, increase the frequency of real loot (so that you find 24 gold a lot less frequently), and voila, a recipe for awesomeness.