some suggestions and observations

[maxpublic]

I haven't been playing very long and no doubt some of these suggestions will meet with heated opposition, but here's my two cents on what I've seen so far:

- factionalism. As it's currently implemented, factionalism has no point. There is no reason to fight folks of opposing factions other than 'role playing', which for most seems to be a pretty weak excuse to pound on those who're well below them in level simply to cause other players grief (the 'okie' style of play - attack those who can't effectively fight back). Perhaps if there were a quest line to acquire a set of artifacts to close or control the rifts?

- pvp. Supposed to be fun, but mostly annoying and obnoxious. Again, this usually boils down to 'hi there 5th level fighter, meet my Black Blade of Disaster'. The vast majority of pvp'ers only attack those who can't possibly cause them harm, and run like babies when anyone of worth shows up. And despite the script, a server disconnect *will* result in xp and gp loss. This has happened to me three times already. Because of this, the only 'faction' I've developed an abiding dislike for is the pvp 'faction'. They do nothing to enhance play, and instead are more like an irritating rash that you just can't get rid of. Especially annoying are the pvp'ers who talk in 'leet speak', e.g., "I 0wnzed u, beeyatch!" - don't we have to put up with these little boys enough in real life?

- weak guards. The guards are too weak. However, I don't suggest buffing them up, but rather allowing the guards to 'call for help' if attacked. Once they call for help, five more guards spawn in - three fighters, a cleric, and a mage. That should give those random raiders some pause for thought before tramping all over a town.

- guards drop expensive items. Guards drop all sorts of interesting goodies that are quite expensive, and it's one of the reasons for attacking them. Remove the drops and you remove much of the incentive for hacking them up in the first place. Also, it's quite easy for a low-level character to follow a battle and pick up the loot, making easy cash along the way (a definite exploit if there ever was one). I know; I made more than a million gold following one battle through Neversummer, subsequently blowing most of it because it was too much of a cheat. But how many people will toss away easy money?

- speaking of drops, you tend to find all sorts of bizarre things on various monsters. I'd suggest the following:

- no drops for animals of any kind
- all monsters drop the armor and weapons they're using, plus some small amount of gold/gems, and nothing else.
- everything else goes into chests and crates

This would be very useful for low-level characters, who could haul back a couple of suits of leather armor and a few shortswords for some much-needed cash, but for higher levels the weight for price wouldn't be worth it; they'd need to go for the chests, fighting their way through the guards and bosses. As for the animals, if you *really* need them to have treasure, put the treasure on corpses where the animals/bugs/whatever spawn; fight off the bugs and you get to loot the corpse.

- mages seem too powerful, but 'nerfing' their spells or putting in a rest timer is, I think, a bad solution. Instead, make a few purchaseable items available that increase spell resistance for fighters/rogues/etc. This is a balance item that the developers of NWN acknowledged was absolutely necessary for these classes; I don't know why this was removed from Neversummer, since all it does is skew the balance. Then maybe we wouldn't hear the obnoxious "bring a mage friend along if you can't hack it" arguments so much (or conversely, maybe we'd also hear "bring a fighter friend along").

- as with NWN and every other module out there, the pure rogue is a bear to play. I don't expect a solution to this. My personal theory is that while NWN was in development one of the designers had his apartment cleaned out by thieves, and vowed from that point on to make playing a pure rogue damned hard. I'm still waiting for the module where I can sneak into an enemy stronghold, clean them out, and sneak back out without killing anyone - and still get a good chunk of experience for it. You know, what a rogue is SUPPOSED to do.

- there's a lot of arguing going on about how you need to multiclass this way or that way in order to make a 'survivable' character. The need to multiclass doesn't show a weakness in class, it shows a weakness in the build of the module. If a pure mage beats a pure fighter every time, something is wrong with the module, not the fighter. NWN is pretty well balanced; if that balance has been destroyed, it's been by Neversummer and not NWN.

- finally, the way shields are implemented is too powerful for all the reason that others list in other threads. But what they haven't covered is that two-weapon users, such as myself, are completely screwed by the new shield rules. Now I know someone will jump up and say "don't use two weapons, then" - but that's a lame-[censored] argument if there ever was one. The shields need to be toned waaaay down, otherwise there will never be a reason to be a two-weapon user other than nostalgia.

I'll wrap this up by saying that despite the points I made above, Neversummer is by far and away the very best NWN module out there - the winner hands-down. Even with the incessantly annoying pvp little boys it's still a kick to play.

Elise

[Shasz]

There's good reason to use two weapons.. extra damage and extra sneak attacks! Just don't be the main tank of your party. There should always be a tradeoff of more offense vs. more defense. I'll agree that the tradeoff gives away a LOT of defense, but maybe a parrying dagger, parrying mace, etc could be made with shield AC bonuses, but less damage.

I don't agree with the warriors not beating mages being a mod problem either. Your average fighter build should *not* beat your average mage after level 12-15 or so. Earlier than that, yes. Now your specialized fighter builds can win, but then you trade some things to do that. But that's a discussion for other topics.

I have a feeling something special is in line for the rifts and controlling them, but they're probably saving that for release as a nice surprise. (Guessing it got / will get tested in closed to preserve the mystery).

On town defense, I had an idea too... let players donate gold nuggets, gold bricks, gold widgets, etc to bulid up the town defense. If you want tougher guards, donate some of that treasure to your town. It would serve to give gold a place to go too and keep the bankrolls down some.

I agree on the faction thing to some extent. There needs to be a tangible benefit to defending one's town. I've mentioned it elsewhere, but maybe a "Factional Artifact" of some sort could be used as a "flag" in a faction-wide capture the flag game. The more artifacts your faction holds, perhaps your team gets some combat bonus, or a boost to XP earned or something during that time period. The artifacts could be useable items with an area of effect bonus perhaps for direct use in town defense, but they need to always drop on death so they can be captured. They also ought to always locate the possesor on the mini map, if that's possible.