Feature Specification: Encounter System

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Sun May 21, 2006 2:18 am

I think drops should be entirely outside of the encounter system. We can manage rewards through event scripts on creature death. I suspect we'll want a fairly intelligent rewards system that not only uses loot tables to determine what drops should occur but also to possibly enforce the ALFA wealth guidelines. Takes a good deal of subjectivity out of the hands of DMs, which hopefully makes their lives far less stressful (and complicated) than it is today. Just focus on the story telling, DMs.

Fionn · Post by **Fionn** » Sun May 21, 2006 2:20 am

OK, one thing of note. If we tie drops to spawns, and we tie spawns to ELs, and we tie ELs to organic growth.... Certain areas will only be cleanable by uber PCs. Those PCs can also clean everything else. This may lead to the situation of spawn camping near civilization.

Just a thought - gotta run

indio · Post by **indio** » Sun May 21, 2006 2:24 am

Sounds like we oughta get TDawg in here for some Standards commentary at this juncture.

AlmightyTDawg · Post by **AlmightyTDawg** » Mon May 22, 2006 5:10 pm

I don't know that I have a heck of a lot to add to the discussion, mostly cause I'm slightly baffled about the weaving back and forth of spawn and encounter distinctions. As best I can tell, you all are talking about encounter system as a handwaving population management system over the spawns, possibly but not necessarily similarly encompassing a true book value "random encounter" system totally independent of any population statistics. Have I got that?

Onto the matter of drops that I think I was summoned out of my cave in Standards for

. Something I'd like to make clear from the outset is that the recommended builder standards were just a first-pass guess, one that I was hoping someone might take up either by way of Nrrd's spawn system or by virtue of a new server through Testing. We didn't get any, so again, we're sort of stuck on a wing and a prayer. All I'm saying is don't expect those to be a strong correlation with the wealth standards in total.

Because I was operating on a fundamentally different set of assumptions than you got here. I simply presumed that static content was always gonna be a lesser concern, and given DimRets and other systems was theoretically (if not practically) an infinite unknown. So the goal is to lop it down in value to the point that people could only get seriously jacked by virtue of immeasurable farming. For example, presume that with buyback versus gem incidence and so on the conversion rate is about 30%. That means defeating a CR 10 creature is basically about a 90gp venture on average. That means that probably given distribution of mobs maybe the rich ones are about 120gp on average. That's about 140 mobs between 9th and 10th level assuming no expenditure of consumables to rise from average-to-average. Or about 350 CR 6s.

The idea was to embrace that nature of things. But I was building on an assumption of what I saw. Depending on how quick the growth rates are in an encounter system, both in terms of numbers and evolution to higher CR "bosses" you might actually make that a bit more serious than I'd intended. It's all in the rate equations, and how well it's managed by the DMs really.

What I'm a bit unclear on is the distinction of encounter-versus-monster based drops. I'm inclined to side on the per-monster basis without a distinction between static versus DM just because it's more seamless. Plot rewards were intended to be a more drmatic element in terms of wealth acquisition (banking XP "value" for RP XP, quest XP, and so on). One thing I worry about in talk of "enforcing" the wealth guidelines is the idea that once someone hits a given level, nothing drops.

I think you've got be very subtle with that touch. While I wouldn't mind is drastically reducing the "frequency" an outright cessation seems excessively OOC. For example, how do you hand out loot for a bunch of PCs who got XP dropped to nothing because they're partied with someone higher. Unless you try to make the XP-RP connection absolute and allow for the possibility of 0-drops not too infrequently, you're never going to quite get that level of control.

A subtle insinuation of reduced rewards for high characters seems about as far as I'd be willing to go at this point. But loot tables on a universal system, excluding dropping worn gear, with a way to get the value of that dropped gear before applying the tables, seems best to me.

Don't know if that answers the question.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Mon May 22, 2006 6:13 pm

The question wasn't so much what the wealth drop scripts do, but if the drop script should be changed in any way depending on how the creature is spawned. I'm strongly in favor of keeping the drop scripts the same for all mobs, allowing DMs to throw on more if they'd like.

As far as loot cutting back, at most it would be a very subtle thing. I'd really prefer not to even do that, as the default behavior for the spawn system should limit spawns themselves if they get killed off.

Fionn · Post by **Fionn** » Mon May 22, 2006 10:05 pm

We may also update the AI to the point that when it perveives a PC (CR +5) it flees to the nearest AT and despawns. If the lower level PCs are in the front, the mobs may attack until they see their leadership cut asunder by the Ftr15 that had been in the back directing the battle.

My issue is that if we drop wealth to the point you can only get it by killing a lot of mobs, then people will have ot kill a lot of mobs. Since higher level PCs are better at that, then they will be favored to kill off any dynamic spawn points. This means lower levels simply may not be able to find more than 1-2 mobs. This leads to 'spawn camping' behaviour as players wish to 'guard the killing fields' from the higher level players that would simply wade through for GP.

The above AI system *must* be in place to make sure the mobs do not all fall to higher level PCs. Alternately, DMs must put in enough static enounters to make the whole dynamic system useless.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 3:41 am

Fionn wrote:Since higher level PCs are better at that, then they will be favored to kill off any dynamic spawn points.

Thats been my fear as well. I'm not sure there is any way around this by IC means without a "fear" dimension in our faction system (something which I would really like to have, eventually). Even then stealthed or invisible PCs could get a few kills off before the others fled, but they probably wouldn't be able to get very many. NWN2's pathfinding should be good enough to allow mobs to run away without getting stuck on a rock and killed.

In practice though, I don't know how much of an issue it will be. Higher level PCs should be facing more powerful monsters with more rewards, and if set up correctly the encounter system will not produce encounters which are easy to find. So a high level would have to walk across a lot of area for a single encounter which wouldn't yield him much. I guess he could exterminate a spawn like so, but it wouldn't offer him much rewards.

In current ALFA though, weaker spawns actually seem to give more loot. I think this is from the fear of dropping anything worth much, due to how easy it is to farm standard NESS spawns.

Rusty · Post by **Rusty** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 3:29 pm

AL and I started a new discussion on using population model, some of the text of which is reproduced below. Essentially, we seem to be looking at, initially, a basic reporting function telling DMs/Builders how much of which spawn points have been killed in which areas, thus allowing them to manually adjust spawn levels. Then, at a future point, we would hope to integrate this into a more complex automated system whereby each area would have a 'pool' of a certain number of spawn points which would rise (with time) and fall (with deaths) allowing 'naturalistic' population fluctuation.

(This conversation derived from an earlier conversation concerning non-static-quest static rewards, appropriate guidelines for them, and manageability.)

[16:17] <Rusty> Do we have separate Spawn and Encounter Systems?
[16:18] <Rusty> That seems to be the premise of the Pop Model.
[16:19] <AcadiusLost> simple answer: we have no Encounter System
[16:19] <Rusty> right
[16:19] <AcadiusLost> so yes, spawn system is separate/independant
[16:20] <Rusty> ok, what i thought
[16:20] <AcadiusLost> I believe Encounters was supposed to sit above spawns, adding or reconfiguring spawn points based on population, quest and random rolls
[16:20] <Rusty> yeah
[16:20] <Rusty> that's what i'm getting from what i'm reading
[16:20] <Rusty> i just didn't recall seeing any dev work on it
[16:20] <AcadiusLost> potentially also to generate random encounters during map travel or resting
[16:21] <Rusty> i guess there are two basic approachs to a pop model
[16:21] <Rusty> one is a simple hands-on method
[16:21] <Rusty> by which we would count up spawn activation and deaths in areasa
[16:21] <Rusty> and dms could manually adjust rates, types
[16:22] <Rusty> the other is to have a pool of spawn points which rises and falls over time as they are killed (or not)
[16:22] <Rusty> so the number of orc scouts would slowly rise if they weren't killed for a week, and then slowly fall if they were hit every day
[16:22] <Rusty> until after X spawn point deaths they dont spawn at all
[16:22] <Rusty> running off central DB to avoid mod restart persistency lost
[16:23] <Rusty> (tho i guess that is taken as read)
[16:23] <Rusty> Does that make sense to you?
[16:23] <AcadiusLost> Luckily one builds on the other
[16:23] <AcadiusLost> If we make a DM-configured framework, we can add the dynamic behaviour to it later
[16:24] <Rusty> *nods*
[16:24] <Rusty> right
[16:24] <Rusty> and the former is relatively easy to put in place, i'd think
[16:24] <AcadiusLost> It'll be pretty crude in the first pass - just a set of counters that disable spawn points
[16:25] <Rusty> right; or enable potentially
[16:25] <Rusty> hell, dms can just open mod and repopulate
[16:25] <Rusty> that's what i've always done in nwn1
[16:25] <Rusty> but an IG GUI or OOG Web management is a clear advantage on that
[16:25] <AcadiusLost> may be some complications in managing early on - yes initially they'll be making the increases via toolset I think
[16:26] <AcadiusLost> though will have to consider how to make that jive with the persistency
[16:26] <AcadiusLost> Anything defined in the toolset can potentially end up reset every time the module is

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 3:46 pm

To clarify, my initial intent would be to make the spawn point populations persistent, so that builders/teams can repopulate them as they see fit, but the default behavior would no longer be infinispawns.

Riotnrrd · Post by **Riotnrrd** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 3:56 pm

I plan to get reengaged in this.

My first step is getting up to speed on the new NWN2 ACR Spawn Scripts. I think they might need to be touched up / added to a little bit.

If they work as intended and Spawn Groups can be somewhat enhanced, we have a LOT of flexibility in what we can do.