Recent Alignment/Damnation changes

[Weasel]

Hrmm. Now I'm wondering if code is added at times just for the sake of adding stuff because someone can? That ain't good.
I'd like to repeat something I've said before and ask what others think: if an area is becoming popular with groups, shouldn't that be a clue to make other areas more similar to it in one way or another? Maybe I'm imagining it, but it seems that if a certain area becomes popular, that area gets changed or buffed in some way, presumably in order to make groups hit other less-run areas instead. Imho, tweak less-run areas to be more like the popular areas and you'll see more groups - changing popular areas just seems to dissuade grouping.

[kjartan]

[quote="Weasel":3nbemv0a]Hrmm. Now I'm wondering if code is added at times just for the sake of adding stuff because someone can? That ain't good.[/quote:3nbemv0a]
Code usually gets added because someone thinks it would be a cool addition, or someone thinks it fixes something that annoys them. I'm not sure if this is what you mean by "just because someone can" or not. I don't believe anybody is going to bother adding code without some reason for it.

[quote:3nbemv0a]I'd like to repeat something I've said before and ask what others think: if an area is becoming popular with groups, shouldn't that be a clue to make other areas more similar to it in one way or another? Maybe I'm imagining it, but it seems that if a certain area becomes popular, that area gets changed or buffed in some way, presumably in order to make groups hit other less-run areas instead. Imho, tweak less-run areas to be more like the popular areas and you'll see more groups - changing popular areas just seems to dissuade grouping.[/quote:3nbemv0a]
If I took any old area and slapped a 10x xp multiplier on it, it would immediately become popular (both groups and solo, depending on the mobs). So, I should slap 10x xp multipliers on all areas, then? And then do it again, and etc.? We have to consider why the area is popular; if it's popular because its xp/hour-at-a-certain-risk-level is out of line with other areas, then we will try to bring it back in line, which makes it less popular.

[kjartan]

[quote="juggleblood":25fb3iaf]I guess some of this stuff is underused because its newish and I guess there might also be objections from the original builder to have someone else poking around in his original creation.

How hard would it be to get permissions to do stuff like this as a builder?[/quote:25fb3iaf]

Only a few times have I seen proposed changes to areas blocked by the original builders - it almost never happens. For one thing, most of the original builders aren't still around. I would love to see more alarms, more reactiveness to warcry/push, etc. Mostly they aren't there because (1) almost all areas are older than the alarm system, (2) new builders as you suggest may not know about the alarms or how to set them up, and perhaps sometimes (3) new builders want their areas to be popular, and one way to accomplish that is make them not require much thought. I think Splork or someone went through and added a bunch of alarms, but we have a lot of areas so the vast majority don't have any.

One thing we might do with push is make it so pushing a mob out of a room not only increases the "annoyed" rating on that mob, but also on any other mobs in the room he was pushed out of. Then they'd have a random chance of attacking you when you did it, and if you pushed several out the remaining ones would almost certainly attack. That seem reasonable?

[Weasel]

With the push thing, yes it seems a reasonable idea for the sake of realism, but only that. Same for the alarm on warcry. Great, it'll certainly be more plausible, but as Alias said, it may also achieve creating more unused skills, which defeats the purpose of having them in the first place.. Of course that depends on just how sensitive the alarms are, or how likely you'll be attacked for pushing.. that push thing could have a major impact on some areas, depending on your style of play.. particularly for solo running.

[Diazz_Dizazter]

[quote:3sn62uby]So get on the pvp server.[/quote:3sn62uby]

pvp server is still alliance vs horde, they can just attack each other.
its not open pvp like it should be

[12345]

The push thing was meant to be an example. In reality, you'd want to limit the annoyed factor to mobs that are presumably allied and intelligent. A fruit bat might not to much else than fly away if it sees another bat killed, where a guard patrol, who is supposedly more alert towards threats, would be more apt to be suspicious and/or follow and assist. Another factor would be stealth, my thief tended to rely on push much more than my tank.

To be honest, there are currently many areas in the game which rely on clever use of pushing to navigate. Fixing this would effectively undermine those areas.

[13]

[quote:102xtw54]ts not open pvp like it should be Razz[/quote:102xtw54]

[Diazz_Dizazter]

[quote:3jn16hy1] For example in Dweb, caller procs could be added to orcus and demogorgon that cause Marilith and Glabrezu to wander over and assist, with similar caller procs throughout the area and alarms should really be added to the castle on BH and the alchemists should be set alarm_aggressive. [/quote:3jn16hy1]

I had mob hierarchies half done at one time, but never got around to finishing them off.

Basically, the entire zone had to be dead for Lloth to be killed.
Attacking her would bring all the mobs in the web to her assistance.
To prevent group wipes, all the small mobs have to be killed before
moving up to the medium mobs. The mediums will all need to die before
hitting the large mobs. The large mobs have to die before the really big
stuff dies.

Sometimes a higher hierarchy would come to the assistance of a lesser being if it was under attack.

Once the area was clean, a bonus xp would get assigned at the end of the
last kill for completion of the zone.

But, I never got it finished, but it figures into how demonic hordes would
function to a lesser degree.

[*juggleblood*]

That sounds really cool Diazz, you should put it on your to do list. If Kj added an npc_in_world mudl function, the xp bonus for clearing all the mobs would be cake cuz you could just put a mudl proc on lolth that checks to see if the other mobs still exist. The xp bonus for clearing the zone would compensate for the increased difficulty of adding the caller procs to the other mobs.

As for push adding to a mobs annoyance factor, it wouldn't make push any less useful than adding the same thing to dispel and study did. If you're quick you could push 2.guard, leave room, splork it, and then go back for 1.guard. It would just add a little bit of skill requirement without detracting from the commands usefulness.

If for realism sake it was made that after the push 1.guard would hesitate a moment and then follow 2.guard to assist his ally, then the command would essentially be nerfed and mass complaining would ensue.

I don't see why people are so resistant to change. The hack and slash genre is really being taken over by graphic oriented mpgs. I think the real draw of Sloth is its sophistication, not its 'slothiness'.

[Alberich]

[quote="juggleblood":37gv8129]
I don't see why people are so resistant to change. The hack and slash genre is really being taken over by graphic oriented mpgs. I think the real draw of Sloth is its sophistication, not its 'slothiness'.[/quote:37gv8129]

Speak for yourself. I've never been one to whine (much) about changes that make sense, or make the game more fun, but Sloths primary attraction for me has always been, and will always be, that you can pop on for 10-20 mins, stab some gold/xps to kill a bit of time in the morning while you drink yer coffee, or run 2man for a few hours in the afternoon while working or catching up on emails. If I wanted an excessivly complex, or realistic, game, I'd probably stick to graphical ones.

[Diazz_Dizazter]

[quote:h01zcow3] If I wanted an excessively complex, or realistic, game, I'd probably stick to graphical ones.[/quote:h01zcow3]

MMorpgs are not any more excessively complex or as much as realistic
then mud's. Actualy the are a bit simpler, due to the single class nature of
which they suffer (I blame Everquest for single class nature actually).

Sloth is a bit nicer skill wise due to the 4 class character setup. The admin
just aren't as nice as how they allow warriors and thieves to operate. I mean
its ok for a Necro to solo a 100 mil mob that kills 8 other avatars who arent
necro, and its ok for a monk to wax through all sorts of stuff. Thief damage
is still nerfed and non casters are still treated like bitches, but ah well.

The only mmorpg which was more complicated was Ultima online, which did
allow people to multi skill which abilities they wanted to do. Most games try
to stray away from the multiclass hybrid, but thats mainly due to the power
consequences of someone having different flavors of abilities.

But UO's hayday ended when they nerfed the original nested abilities and
mechanics which allows players to operate with skill and ownage.

The only difference is that in a mmorpg, there are far more people to
complain to the admin when they do something wrong. They also have a
better chance of having a bad change taken out, due to the amount of
bitching. Their admin have to listen, cause should they not, then everyone
cancels their accounts and finds a new game to play.

edit: the only real difference between muds and online games is the regen
time between killings. 30 seconds for a group to be full, vs how ever long
the mud takes to regen top end.

[13]

this thread needs to fcking die already, it's just getting worse

[Diazz_Dizazter]

So your saying people shouldn't communicate.

Forums are for half senseless postings, ramblings and musings.

[13]

no I'm not saying that, I'm saying this thread is already full of stupid ass
ideas that are likely to result in sloth changing more and for the worse imo.
if we get much more realistic im just gonna go with some real reality.

[kjartan]

[quote="juggleblood":3vl0jwyy]If Kj added an npc_in_world mudl function, the xp bonus for clearing all the mobs would be cake cuz you could just put a mudl proc on lolth that checks to see if the other mobs still exist. The xp bonus for clearing the zone would compensate for the increased difficulty of adding the caller procs to the other mobs.[/quote:3vl0jwyy]
I am probably not going to do that. Right now, it's fairly difficult to bog down the mud using mudl, which means it doesn't need much supervision by me. This is because it's not easy to make a really big loop, and it's probably impossible to make a really big loop by accident. If I added npc_in_world (I assume you mean the array form) you could easily make loops that did some really complicated check on all 10000 or so NPCs, i.e. a 10000-fold loop. A 10000-fold loop by itself isn't a problem; it's executing the contained code 10000 times that I worry about.

If you want to check for presence of npcs and you only want to check in a certain zone, just loop over range( zone low room vnum, zone high room vnum) and check npc_in_room for each room.