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A former DM's take on exploits ...
lobo0084
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 663 Bounty Hunter
As a former DM, I have to say that the pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons community brings a lot of that 'adventuresome' spirit with them. That same spirit which pushes every dungeon, every room, every simple treasure chest and fight to the very limits (and beyond) of pre-determined guidelines.
What am I talking about? You tell your adventerers that they are in a small inn with two doors, a bunch of tables, an angry looking bartender and an annoyed looking waitress. What's the usual response?
"Punch the bartender."
"Can I hit on the waitress?"
"Do we have to eat something right now? I don't have much gold ..."
"In the such-and-such system, you had to eat every five minutes or die. It was so much better."
"Can I punch him in the face?"
Your wandering crew find themselves in a hobgoblins treasure trove by accident (because, who goes in the front door of caves when they can search for three straight days to find the hidden back entrance), and now proceed to do strength checks to pull every single statue off the way and look under every piece of carpet. All because when they asked if that was all the loot, you said 'maybe.'
Or the troublesome bunch decides that, because you wont' show them your dice roles (and there's no way you just rolled a critical strike against their dumb wizard who only had two HP left and decided not to retreat), that your obviously fudging and trying to kill them. When in fact you've ignored the last six crits just to give the dumb bastids a little breathing room!
I feel ya, Cryptic. Good luck with dungeon design. Players will push every limit you give them. And while it's one of the reasons I don't DM anymore, it's also one of the greatest things about DnD.
So fix the patches and the exploits. Just don't forget that it's only natural for a wizard or fighter with an ability that knocks an enemy back, to look for the nearest spiked wall or hole in the ground to make it more interesting!
What am I talking about? You tell your adventerers that they are in a small inn with two doors, a bunch of tables, an angry looking bartender and an annoyed looking waitress. What's the usual response?
"Punch the bartender."
"Can I hit on the waitress?"
"Do we have to eat something right now? I don't have much gold ..."
"In the such-and-such system, you had to eat every five minutes or die. It was so much better."
"Can I punch him in the face?"
Your wandering crew find themselves in a hobgoblins treasure trove by accident (because, who goes in the front door of caves when they can search for three straight days to find the hidden back entrance), and now proceed to do strength checks to pull every single statue off the way and look under every piece of carpet. All because when they asked if that was all the loot, you said 'maybe.'
Or the troublesome bunch decides that, because you wont' show them your dice roles (and there's no way you just rolled a critical strike against their dumb wizard who only had two HP left and decided not to retreat), that your obviously fudging and trying to kill them. When in fact you've ignored the last six crits just to give the dumb bastids a little breathing room!
I feel ya, Cryptic. Good luck with dungeon design. Players will push every limit you give them. And while it's one of the reasons I don't DM anymore, it's also one of the greatest things about DnD.
So fix the patches and the exploits. Just don't forget that it's only natural for a wizard or fighter with an ability that knocks an enemy back, to look for the nearest spiked wall or hole in the ground to make it more interesting!
"Every adventurer has two things in common: they don't like dying, and they love getting paid. The rest is just semantics." Brecken, famed mercenary of Baldur's Gate
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
Post edited by lobo0084 on
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"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
I honestly don't understand why some people consider pushing mobs off the cliffs/bridges to be an exploit. To die deliberately in a certain point just to respawn at the next campfire is an exploit. To push mobs or to find a path that let's you skip a portion of dungeon - not.
I would say it's because it gives so much disproportionate effectiveness to a few powers and a few classes. Bad design of the classes and powers, bad design of the mobs to be so vulnerable to it, and bad design of the dungeons that they're so much more easily completable using this tactic. Obviously, as it's been confirmed by devs as being intended, it's not an exploit, but imo, it's so bad and cheesy I would never do it anyway, and don't want to party with people who do.
In a FEW dungeons. Agreed, FEW is the key word.
I remember one guy who made some kind of ranger dagger specialist that could literally get like 5 attacks per round at a very low level and was just insane because he knew the rules inside and out and overtweaked his toon. I do believe he met a very nasty beholder that was more or less unimpressed with his daggers :P
he was not the only one, I remember countless cheaters and exploiters over the years, a guy with a weighted d6 that let him get a 6 in every character rollup or every fireball etc, and other rule abuse.
The difference is that in P&P the DM can deal with it. The super rule monger who cared about nothing but combat rather than role playing -- all you had to do was kill the character off a few times. Player complains, you just shrug and say "your character is super good at combat so he needed a tougher challenge". The guy with the weighted die was a friend so we laughed it off but I used my shaved d20 on all attacks against him from then on. (shaved, the nearly round d20 cannot stop on some values, mine could not roll less than a 5).
you can say that a Thousand times here and i`m sure it has already been told that much.
but somewhere it seems they`re just not able to pull up some walls
"Young people....." - Erik Lehnsherr
Since traps work on anyone or thing that steps on them, various bosses and mobs are not immune to knockbacks (many, many are), the design is intentional.
glassdoor.com - Cryptic Studios Review
Please review my campaign and I'll return the favor.
Which, of course, is why paper and pen is turn based, hehehe ...
To the argument for cliff pushing: using the environment against your enemies is a staple of DnD, and of good fantasy. Wulfgar takes out a dragon that is well beyond his capabilities by throwing his hammer into the icy roof, causing a stalactite to fall and spear the beast. I love the NW_Legit community, but the guys who are so anti-push aren't players I like to run with. I'm all up for not exploiting campfires or bugging bosses, but the push and pull mechanics are a natural part of the game.
Yes, it gives CW's a lot of power. But that, again, goes back to their capabilities on paper-and-pen. The ability to put a fireball in a huge area was nice, but it's not what made a wizard truly worth fearing. The utility of teleportation, slowing time, changing the ground beneath you into mush, creating illusions ... all of that gave a wizard an incredible amount of power.
I see the anti-push crowd to be more players from other MMO's than players from DnD. I've run under DM's who wouldn't allow players to deviate or get creative at all, and I only ran with them once or twice. The hard-liners who wouldn't allow you to do anything were the type of people who had no creative juices flowing into the game. They read straight from the module guide, they rolled the exact rolls, and they took most of the fun out of the experience altogether.
That was, of course, what I'm mostly saw lacking in MMO. No creativity. No ability to out think the dungeon designers, or as I put it in character terms, 'no ability to out think fate.' That was always the challenge I loved about DnD, not just out rolling the NPC, but out thinking the DM.
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
This 100% two thumbs up to this.
I agree with what you're saying. I am all in favor of pushing enemies off cliffs - it's the other stuff, like using holes in geometry to bypass large sections of maps, intentionally committing suicide to get further, or taking advantage of poor AI to get them to jump to their death that I'm against.
Frankly, I'd love to see the devs intentionally add environmental components that we could use to our advantage - things like the stalagmites you mentioned, barrels of pitch that we could ignite and lure enemies near, undead that are hostile to *all* things near them, traps we could lure enemies to, (or even expand trap disarming to allow us to recover the trap and use them against enemies).
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
Also the kompu gotcha mechanic does not help, making players slaves in a virtual market what still has real capital. Move along, this is not the place to dream.
But yeah, I'm dreaming.
Ultimately it all comes down to this: D&D is turn-based, an action game is not turn-based. You can do things in one mode that you can't do in the other, and vice-versa.
I'd love to have seen someone develop what Troika did with Temple of Elemental Evil, and maybe even bring it into a multiplayer context. Turn-based multiplayer - that would be more like D&D.
However, whatever this game is, it's fun, so I'm not that unhappy with it as it stands.
Agree with more interaction. I'm constantly pushing for dungeon design to include more class-based and skill-based elements, especially random ones which help shake up replayability.
With that said, a turn-based MMO would probably be terribly difficult to manage. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it would be to get players to actually interact in a timely manner, without having over half the players go completely afk all the time and ruining the play for everyone else.
Happens alot on the table, even. Some guys always getting up for a bag of chips, or trying to talk everyone into doing a burger run, or some such.
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
Just thinking about this a bit more. It was interesting how SWTOR handled group conversations. It was pretty well done. You had the same problem of everyone having to commit to a conversation choice, but taking their time.
But I guess the stakes were much lower for that.
Then again, I think even situations where you're upset with someone is kind of good in a way, because it means there would be some communication. The biggest problem with MMOs today, for my money, is the lack of communication in PUGs. From 2004-2008, it used to be the case in MMOs that PUGs were pretty sociable. People would chat away. Nowadays everyone's just grimly silent, and very seldom does anyone pick up on anything anyone says. A turn-based system might re-introduce communication of necessity, which might be a good thing, design-wise.