Confusion

[kjartan]

So, when you cast 'locate object' and you hit your limit in number of objects located, for example because you tried to locate "scroll" or something, it says "You are confused." But then, there aren't any actual symptoms of being confused. So, I was thinking it might be nice if you had say 30 seconds of actual confusion, issuing wrong commands, casting the wrong spells, wandering around aimlessly, babbling, etc. Are you guys gonna freak out if I do this?

And then once we have a good confusion effect, it's time for some umber hulks.

Incidentally, I've been fiddling with locate, it now in theory shouldn't show bogus items and yet shouldn't lag the mud, and it has small chances, especially on masterful casts, of giving you some extra info like, I dunno, what continent or zone something's on or even very rarely who has it. I think there's a bug in the who-has-it (which doesn't come up much) that will sometimes say (null), that's fixed next crash or reboot.

[13]

I'm already confused enough.

[12345]

Well... I've been wishing Kj would do this kinda thing for months. Now I'm afraid to answer the question.

Need sleep.

PS. Thanks for the warning.

[blackmore]

Well, I'm all in favor of having confusion code. There are definitely certain mobs who you would expect could hit you with a confusion ability.

I have a big issue with how locate object works - I always have. Non upper level mage primes and non avatars can locate on something like "black-raft" and get a list of leather items, none of which are rafts, because of the way locate object works (it will return the list of items that match the first keyword in the most recent black-raft to enter the game - so if the keywords are leather-black-raft, a list of leather items is returned). I know this has been shot down before, but I don't understand how asking for one list and getting a completely separate list is anything other than a bug.

I dislike the idea simply because it's difficult not to locate too much for most players, depending on what they're locating for.

ps - my explanation of how locate works is purely from experimentation about 5 years ago, if I'm wrong, I don't care.

[12345]

I guess I have a question.

If this code is eventually going to be used for hulks, it's concievable that as a battle effect, you would attack others. If I'm in town and cast locate object and as a result wander around and try bashing the Master Scribe... I think the spell may have to come with a warning to lock yourself into a nice safe place first.

I know you probably don't intend to get crazy with this, but what do you have in mind for effects? I'd certainly like to know I'm not going to end up dead in a safe zone or slapping sashes at the west gate. Being an obvious target for a pthief is pretty low on my list of fun things as well.

Confusion effects could be interesting for quests. I don't think it's quite what they had in mind when they added that line to locate object... but you tend to take things _very_ literally and it might not be such a bad thing depending how it's implemented.

So anyway, there's my initial concerns.

[Wintersdark]

I'd love to see real confusion code go in... Particularly if we could get confusion spells and whatnot too I'd love to see it affect mobs as well as players.

That said... if you do put confusion code in, could you make locate object work a little nicer? IE: Return all the items it finds conforming to at least one of the keywords, so if I, say, locate raft, I'll get EVERY item with 'raft', but if I locate 'leather-raft' I'll only get items with either leather and raft.

Right now, locating 'blazing' will return every item with blazing, every item with 'ring' (even if they don't have blazing!) ect...

As it is, as a non-avatar sort, locate is nearly useless right now for most items, and will ALWAYS confuse you, and at a really high mana cost. Having it actually virtually incapacitate you for 30 seconds as well would be unnecessarily cruel.

[kjartan]

What I really want out of confusion is something that digs bits of speech out of your replay list, and hey maybe other random people's replay lists, and makes you say it. (Hmm, it could also pull random commands out of your history...) Think of the humor possibilities!

Kjartan looks confused.
Kjartan mutters '... some rutabagas ... Ender ... such an ass ... '

Probably it won't be D20's insta-death kill-your-buddies form of confusion.

[13]

actually thats pretty damn funny

[12345]

[quote="*kjartan*":3abauwzf]So, I was thinking it might be nice if you had say 30 seconds of actual confusion, issuing wrong commands, casting the wrong spells, wandering around aimlessly, babbling, etc. Are you guys gonna freak out if I do this?

And then once we have a good confusion effect, it's time for some umber hulks.[/quote:3abauwzf]
Just thought I'd ask, because your initial description sounded a lot more risky... as a player I take my personal safety very seriously. Especially if I'm just looking for a silly spellbook.

PS. Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if your history was filled with comments cursing me out on a regular basis. Love you too.

[kjartan]

Ah but that's the beauty of it, who knows if the "Ender" and the "such an ass" came from the same phrase, or were even said by me?

[Weasel]

buh-bye locate spell

[Avatar]

Actually with the bugfixes KJ mentioned below it sounds like Locate is becoming much more useful.