A game cursed with too many idiots?

[old.Foldroll]

Don't know if anyone else sees this as a problem, but I logged into the multplayer lobby, looking to see if there was any other players interested in joining a game I was DMing, but the foul language and spammed insults and arguements put me off.

I did speak to someone with a more rounded vocabulary than just four letter words, who admitted that things degraded to that level every night.

Would be nice if there was a way to /ignore people who haev nothing constructive to say, if there is let me know, I must have missed it.

I came into the lobby to catch the back end of someone spamming that someone else was a F***ING NAZI because he was posting in German.

As long as the chat rooms are full of fouled mouthed children and biggots, I think I will stick to playing private games with the people I know.

While I am not a parent, I can imagine parents taking one look at the conduct of certain people in these chat rooms and uninstalling the game, rather than allowing their children to play.

If you dont fall into the above catagory then please don't take my generalisation as a personal insult.

 

[Nightchill]

Weeeeell, it's ending up that it's not worth playing on servers that allow local vault characters. There'll always be one character thats powered up (whether within limits or not).

Playing on server vault servers you tend to get a group of you playing together that you start to know. Can be fun unless there's 1 person off in the area you wanted to go to, who won't party. It's also frustrating when areas have been cleaned out

Best solution is to start writing your own adventures and DM one! There'll be no shortage of players

 

[old.Foldroll]

I must admit, it is the module writing that attracted me to NWN in the first place, although trying to fit developing the campaign that I want to do into all my other commitments is a problems at the moment (I have spent the best part of a week fiddling with scripts for a henchman!) although I hope to speed things up once I get more familiar with the scripts.

Is there really such a big difference between server characters and local characters? After all there is nothing stopping me building a module that makes any items of loot I want available in an open chest in one room with no monsters.

 

[Nightchill]

And that'd be a local character

A Server Vault only lets you use the character on that one server. So you join say, a jolt Server Vault server, and create a character. You can only ever play that character on the Jolt server. You can't play it anywhere else, so can't do any dodgy modules for cheap items/xp.

A lot of people do just what you say, make a module with all the items, cheap XP, level up to 20, and then go PvP on servers that allow you to use your Local Vault.

 

[xane]

I find it utterly unbelieveable that a D&D game like this is invaded by the "munchkin" mentality, for years the traditional pen and paper enthusiasts have riled against uber-characters, during my tabletop playing days I've lost count of the number of DM godly smites against players who happened to have accumulated one too many +5 Vorpal Weapons.

My own playing philosophy is to create flawed or unbalanced characters, my current NWN SP game is with a Strength 7 Dexterity 19 Halfling, but all too often, as happened with BG and BG2, people re-roll to get 18/18/18/18/18/18 characters and cruise through the levels, as if that was part of the game.

NWN, as a simulation of D&D, is a game to have fun in, but unfortunately the coroporate side of the computer games industry demands a product that appeals to as many people as possible, it has to "toe the line". At the end of the day the default SP game is a simple linear hack and slash job with no real RPG content, its a levelling treadmill designed to appease the Everquest migrants.

Give NWN time, very soon the private games will become the norm, we will see an army of enthisiastic devotees churning out modules and demanding better and greater updates to allow expansion in this arena. Looking at the corporate side I see Bioware pushing out many modules itself.

It is far too early to judge this game, already it has shown it has a different future than the regular RPGs out there.

 

[Mousey]

I have not played much online yet. Nor do I intened to for a while. Like yourselves I encountered the most juvenile of behaviours and language. Like yourselves I hope that the game will mature and that in a few months time the idiotic masses will have moved on.

And yes... I am sure there will be many add ons to this outstanding game.

But it is sad that the serious game player encounters so much low life... perhaps a monthly fee on credit card might drive away the puerile?

 

[Mophead]

I didnt think you could re-roll stats in NWN? Ability selection is point based?

 

[old.Kharos]

I prefer the server vault characters..
Only problem I've met though is that they don't always seem to be saved

I've restarted The Inn of the drunken Skald 3 times now cos the servers been down and my characters not been saved.

As to the L33t HaX0rs, this is a public game...
I don't like the blatent racism, religious offence's or anything else... but equally I let it roll over me as much as I respond to it.
Best answer is really to ignore it imho

But the search is on for good solid servers with server vault characters where cheat sheet characters don't exsist... here's hopeing in the next couple of months more and more will crop up!

 

[osik]

Oh!

 

[old.Foldroll]

Ok, I create my module
Start a new multiplayer game
Enforce legal characters
Allow only server vault characters
And make my module available to the internet

As I have seen, other people can connect to my machine, and play my scenario, but someone sat next to me, using the same internet connection, via a hub and router can only see my game if he connects to a network game, not internet game.

The question is:- Where are the server vault characters stored? They appear to be stored on my PC, and not centrally.

The other question is:- If that is so, how do two people share the same connection, and still connect to a game where the characters are stored on a central server?

 

[Nightchill]

Server Vault characters are stored on the server hosting them. So yes, if you host a game, the characters are on your PC.

If you think about it, making a "central server" wouldn't solve anything. Anybody could create a module with uber items and then play on a different server with it (spoiling it for people there). No difference to the Local Vault then.

 

[old.Foldroll]

That makes sense.

So, the way I can guarentee that no one can play uber characters in my modules is to simply not allow local characters and not write any uber modules.

Can I export those server characters from one server (controlled by me) to another server (also controlled by me)

And if I wanted to create a portal to another module, I guess that would only work on the one server, or with those horrible, not to be used local characters.

 

[Nightchill]

Yup, nothing stopping you just copying the servervault folder across when it's created and putting it on another PC.

I *think* there's a way for other servers to access yours. So using a portal to another server uploads the character when they try to move across. Not got a clue how though

Incidentally, some servervault servers will let you email your local character to them. They then have a looksie and accept/deny it.