Disallow logging out in combat online/server settings

Prod

I hope we see this added in future updates, it is a rather large issue with Persistent worlds online servers when players can logout to avoid death.

niv

Even if the Exit button would be disabled, and closing the game otherwise would be prevented (which I think is a bad idea on so many levels); they could always just kill the process or yank the cable.

I think, if you want to stop people gaming the system, you need to script the disincentive on the server side. Anyone leaving combat by logging out could receive a warning, then on recurrence a XP penalty, and so on.

Selphea

If they pull the plug the character still exists ingame and gets wailed on till they die.

Personally I do logout when I get Feared because if I wanted to do nothing but stare at a character running for 10 minutes i'd watch Melody's Escape gameplay videos. If I could do an ingame suicide and the suicide loss was less than 10 minutes of work I would.

From a retention perspective the last thing I would want is for the player to even consider logging off. The carrot vastly outweighs the stick here. If people bit off more than they can chew, the time they spend fighting a losing battle instead of doing something rewarding is already a penalty. The lost opportunity because the boss despawned and took their loot with them is punishment enough.

Now, if they logout in a dungeon or boss room where the aim was to boss camp I'd just record the timestamp, do some math on login and force port the player back to town or the dungeon entrance.

If it was a short duration logout frankly I'd give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they were on wifi behind a wall with a family member downloading questionable content at the same time. Make sure their HP and spells aren't replenished, that's all that's really needed.

If it's to catch level 2 Monks logging off because they started too low to get Weapon Finesse and can't get a good roll on a Dire Rat barely worth a few XP... I don't care how hardcore the world is, that player wasn't cheating, they were on their way off to the next server! There's bigger things to worry about than playing policeman for the 1% of cheater at the expense of 99% legit players

Sylvus_Moonbow

Just make them return to their last point of origin. If they log out in combat, the server is rebooted and they return 3 days later, it simply puts them right back where they were - in the middle of the dungeon. If a persistent world does not do this, it shouldn't be calling itself persistent.

Prod

The issue I have found with players is they are close to death and log out, login to another one of their characters clean the mobs and log back in safe. I am aware we can script a penalty and will probably have to do that, but most mmos will not allow you to logout for a short period after exiting combat, obviously you can kill the game other ways but that is at least more of a inconvenience and probably cannot be done as quickly as just exiting the game normally which might still get you killed.

Prod

@Sylvus_Moonbow I never mentioned anything about the players locations or persistent worlds..so why is that relevant what so ever? The debate is simply logging out to avoid death.

Prod

The problem also with implementing a penalty as well is that there is going to be plenty of cases where people get penalised when they shouldn't for any number of reasons. This could end up either driving people away from the server or just creates another thing for the dm's/server runners to do that takes up their time to fix, getting screen shots and giving them xp back for however many people on a regular basis would probably make you just take the system out again.

FreshLemonBun

If you want a system like an MMO you can inform your players that they need to move to a "safe" location to automatically log out. If they log out outside of the safe area your script can create an NPC copy of the player that exists for 20 seconds unless the player logs back in again. You can then apply the state of the NPC including reduced hit points or death to the player character when they log back in.

Prod

That is the best idea I have heard yet, thank you. Basically that is what I was asking for so if that is already possible then awesome, would still be nice to just have that as a setting in a 2da or something as I am sure most servers would like to use it (I am not sure how much work it is, but I am about to find out I guess

FreshLemonBun

The main issue I imagine, like Niv pointed out, is that you don't want a server (another player) controlling the experience of every other player. The accountability for servers is rather low and you can't force certain ideals on other players if they don't want it. It's not unheard of that a admin gets a bit power trippy whether in nwn, chat rooms, or other private game servers, but thank god players can always opt out any time they want when they want and nobody else controls that.

It should be a feasible system since some death systems do something similar, leaving a corpse copy behind that can be raised and transporting the actual player to an afterlife location. It should be fairly straight forward to do.

Shadooow

Hi, I don't know what type of server you are hosting but I never had much against logging out. It really depends what is your module about. For example, in the module I was DM, epic action loot, if player logged out to avoid death, he would have to wait 5 minutes which was a time of npc despawn. If he wouldn't he would just die again. And time is a resource, those 5minutes could be spent by the same character after respawn more effectively. Of course, my module has very light death penalty, almost no xp just gold which will be there if player goes back. So I never had to solve this. Those who logged out to avoid death were just losing time, it was more efficient to respawn and start over anyway.

So, depending on your design. There are some things you can do to solve this:

1) If there is a boss or keyholding npc, make them despawn after some time. Also make them spawn in way player cannot just spawn them without actual progress of dungeon - this is how dungeons in my module are designed, spawns are set up inside one-way trip doors. Such design however requires easily accessable teleport scrolls or special exit at the dungeon end.

2) Alternatively, you can move player at the start of the dungeon or outside dungeon, if he was logged out for too long. This is quite harsh though as player could just have connection drop so some time limit maybe 10 minutes would be fair.

3) Or penalty. I hate penalty, but you can remove all buffs from player, you can also put 100% spell failure and other penalties preventing combat removable by rest (if resting is even possible).

4) Best solution would be to make players copy. This istricky as normally OnClientLeave fires after player is out (not sure if this was´already changed in NWN:EE now) so you would need nwnx to get OnClientLeave fired when player is still valid to copy him or completely workaround it by maintaining PC copy each minute or so in some system area and spawn it when PC exits (his HP at the time of logout are known). This would simulate most MMO's logout behavior. This is probably only solution if your server has harsh death penalties and you want to make sure player doesnt avoid dying as the previous options deal rather with progress in dungeon than this).

NeverwinterWights

Another option not sure if already mentioned, you can check via script to see if a player is in combat in the OnClient exit. If so then when someone tries to log back in with a different character, that one could be ported to a waiting room. That would prevent the exploit you mentioned above. Or if they log back in with same character that character has to go to the waiting room. Could apply to any of that CD keys characters. Something like that. Got quite a few options.

Nicoen

Let's not force conventions on everyone, for something that can be fixed for the specific case where it's a problem. Punish people who do it on your server and they will stop doing it, that has been the way it's been done throughout the years. By making it a permanent thing for NWN you'll end up punishing people for whom it doesn't matter(singleplayer for example).

loudent

I can't imagine wanting to play on a server where the idea of death was so severe that I would spend the time to log out, log on with another (presumably higher level character), clear the dungeon to my previous location and then log back in with the original character. You're death penalty should cost about as much time as that process.

In all incarnations of my PW characters always log back in where the logged off at the HP level they logged off with + any conditions/effects. Their spells/and feat uses are cleared. If they wait till a hard server reset then they get sent back to their bind stones.

However, I also provide a recall ability usable once per day that sends them to their bindstone. Death is "punished" with some xp debt that they must pay off before advancing again. They don't lose anything.

birdman076

This was the ongoing issue when NWN was at the height of popularity and most if not all server hosts were guilty to some degree. While I understand fully because I've done my share of creating and hosting its difficult to take the "like it or leave it" stance when you are trying to populate a server without standing in the server alone. Not everyone is going to see eye to eye and its been a growing experience through the years to wrap my head around that when footing the bill financially to host as well as man hours to build/script/etc. I've been playing again (just playing for now) and its been a pleasant experience thus far and I for one would very much like to keep it that way so the community grows and continues to grow and flourish. I guess my point is: Let people do what makes them happy unless it becomes destructive to your community, hardware, etc. Whats the point of policing people into your box? If people login and have fun they will stick around.

NWN had/has enough long running issues with content, group infighting and all the other issues that come with a "community", lets not bring back the biggest killer of all "Force feeding rules". Just my $.02, not trying to start an argument so please don't take it that way.

FreshLemonBun

Variety is good and you can make a strong argument that designing for popularity tends to use unethical techniques. I would suggest that anyone that considers using more extreme rulesets to consider their options and go ahead knowing the further they stray from appealing to common denominators the smaller their potential audience.

That said some games are praised for being unforgiving and even in the most forgiving version of D&D character death tends to be permanent without magic. So harsher rules than the NWN defaults is not necessarily bad design.

voidofopinion

loudent said:

I can't imagine wanting to play on a server where the idea of death was so severe that I would spend the time to log out, log on with another (presumably higher level character), clear the dungeon to my previous location and then log back in with the original character.

I was asked by one server owner to make high level players fear death because they were cheesing there way through PVE and PVP content which had a bleeding effect on RP.

If death is meaningless then adventure is meaningless.

We used a simple timer with a small xp/gp penalty death system before and the problem was that players always just took the hit and got right back into the action.

After much trial I figured if they wouldn't respect death then they would learn to respect time. So I made a series of ever increasing, ever more complicated, ever more monotonous set of mazes linked to player level that the player would respawn into.

Low level players could be in and out in a minute or two but 30+ would be a 10-15 minute affair.

There was no perma haste and spells were not reset on death so if you died... you had no other choice but to take a walk.

If you wanted to get back to playing your character then you either had to complete the maze or wait for the server to reset.

Players began to take death very seriously very quickly. There were lots of complaints but these were always met with "Then don't die..."

Some people threatened to quit but no one actually did.

Instead we had an uptick in RP as people made low level characters to hang around in town with because they were not ready to face the maze and get their main back.

After a month or so, being terrified of dying became the norm. And when we put in the new system is was greeted with cheers and much rejoicing.

Heavy XP penalty with potential level loss above 10th level.
No GP penalty.
Scaling wait time with a 5 minute cap.
Teleport to the underworld with a 3 screen walk to the nearest fast travel.

Players loved it. They had a healthy respect for death penalties. They embraced the new system because it seemed light in comparison. We had a ton of new RP characters made. New stories were told. Most of all we never had the problem again.

Operant conditioning is a powerful tool.

I'm sure there are still people who hate my face with the fury of a thousand suns for wasting hours and hours of their life. But I look at the whole thing as a massive success.