What do you want to see next?

[Joysinger]

antisocial and nosummon flags for mobs.
alternately, or together with that, !summon !teleport !astral !track flags individually

doors that aren't passable

disabling worldwide track/teleport/astral/summon altogether (areawide only for mortals) at least as far as mobs are concerned. i'm fine with players of a group teleporting to other players of their group.

track, summon, teleport abilities for (memory?) mobs

walking into directions where there is no open door shouldn't tell you there's a closed one. (i like abusing this, but i think it'd be better if you had to read room descrips)

nomagicin/nomagicout flags for the entire area (laziness! )

a detect good spell (very low on the list, naturally ), permanent for demons

race-specific and gender-specific eq flags

and lots of things from dive's list would be nice. i don't agree with take away pass door, though and my demons use fetishes. it's just that some of them aren't any good stat wise i mean, so they're not worth getting anymore after you know which fetish does which things. (no offense meant, dive) however, this might possibly be changed if character stats etc. could be made to have more impact on fighting

[kiri]

Slart and I went over what we are going to add by telephone. I'm giving you all the update. First off:

There is going to be a MAJOR change with something HUGE in the next month. It's almost done, but we're keeping it quiet for reasons that will become obvious when it is in testing. Don't worry - you will like it.

Second -- Several of these proposed changes by EB/Joy/DB can be done when we redo area files, which will be the next big project after the surprise one. These changes will include:

Divebomb: *Interactive environments (pull/push/speak/etc)
*Intelligent mobs (mobs that summon/teleport/track/spawn other mobs/run away more than a room and drip blood all over).
*Mobs that fight/use skills of a race - "classed mobs"
*Objects that are enhanced/downgraded based on other objects
*Area-based weather and effects thereof - good and bad
*Modification of regeneration techniques

In the longer term, (meaning not in the next 3 months) we will be willing to work on:

*Improved mob assistance AI
*Improved sneak detection and non-detection
*Modification of how grouping and balance in grouping is done

In the right now, and feel free to give snippets to me, DB, file:
* Suggestions for where to implement race-oriented code for objects (send me vnums even in existing areas and i'll look into doing it)

*Modification of regeneration techniques
- instead of this, I'd like to make drunk make sentences slur and sound funny instead of jumble.

If you can get Alicia to stick around a ltitle more, we need his help on those area-file changes (or at least for him to talk to slart about it).

As to Joysinger:

nomagicin/nomagicout flags for the entire area
-- the builder does this.

race specific eq
-- we have this

[Faustus]

As for race specific eq, yes, we do have it, it's just not used in any areas yet. (I'll go and create a post in the builder's forum so that everyone knows how to create race-specific eq.)

As for areas that will use it, I've got one all set to go in real soon, and it's gonna kick ass... Everyone that finally wants some race-specific eq, <edit>politely petition</edit> the powers that be to finally finish up with spec_kung_fu for mobs so that my area can go in...

[kiri]

Please don't bug the powers that be, or if you do, make it me and not Slart. I'm trying to not have him be overloaded, believe me, he is working on it. we spoke about it just last night.

[Slart]

I'm not sure I qualify as a power that, um, be, but I can tell you I did finally unearth the email, and will be making it top priority next week. I can't say it'll be checked in next week -- it'll depend how testing goes -- but it's my top priority right now. Yes, ahead of the big fun thing that Kiri mentioned. I'm sorry you've been waiting on it so long; I misunderstood you, to be honest, about how important it was to your area the last time we talked about it. I didn't realize until very very recently that it was actually holding up your area.

[Joysinger]

i thought of another thing.

repop flags for special equipment? i know there are ways to make stuff rare, but it'd be cool if you could set special items to only pop every 24 hours or something. at least i think so.

[Divebomb]

Divebomb: *Interactive environments (pull/push/speak/etc)
*Intelligent mobs (mobs that summon/teleport/track/spawn other mobs/run away more than a room and drip blood all over).
*Mobs that fight/use skills of a race - "classed mobs"
*Objects that are enhanced/downgraded based on other objects
*Area-based weather and effects thereof - good and bad
*Modification of regeneration techniques

In the longer term, (meaning not in the next 3 months) we will be willing to work on:

Does that mean we should expect the above in the next 3 months?

In the right now, and feel free to give snippets to me, DB, file:
* Suggestions for where to implement race-oriented code for objects (send me vnums even in existing areas and i'll look into doing it)

It's my opinion that areas should be parcelled out to certain people to be fixed up for not only race-specific equipment, but the above things as well (like classed mobs). And they need to be WIDELY distributed.

If the classing of mobs is done in such a way that "classed mobs" are more difficult to fight, then they should also hold better experience. Then, something like this should be implemented in a single widespread use such that 60% or more of the mobs in existence become classed in some way or another. The same with objects. Most objects could probably be logically restricted to certain classes/combination of classes. Many objects will not, but it's pointless to introduce these changes just for the future or to pick one by one only certain items and report them to be changed at some uncertain time.

But, seeing as to implement that, all area files should be touched and all objects examined, it would be an ideal opportunity to address the balance issue - the situation that objects have pretty much inflated to the point that a mortal can easily reach over 100/100 hit/dam with very little effort.

I can only suggest that a handful of people are given over an area to address the mob and object statistics and flags but not touch the design and description thereby leaving the author's conception in-tact and merely altering the areas for balance.

(of course we also need to decide on more stringent guidelines that must not be exceeded except by quest prizes)

All these changes fall into the "anti-player" category as we have more or less defined it on these boards, however I would like to emphasize implementing a natural reward for classed mobs (xp + gold) as well as whatever bonuses the builder gives via objects.

[Divebomb]

One more suggestion, made as a separate post so it doesn't get lost....

Mobs that scale with the player they are against. This feature should be automatic such that if a level 6 mobs fights it, it is as difficult for that level 6 as if a level 70 player fought it. It should scale based on group size as well. The idea would be that the better you play your character / the better the equipment you have gained, enhanced, etc, would serve to allow you to have more success against this mob. Also, it would prevent twinking certain special objects by level 50s for level 20s on a regular basis. This idea would need fleshing out, but I want to throw it out there.

I could see an idea like this being mostly useful in the continent or in hero lands or for wide-range built-in quests.

[kiri]

Divebomb: *Interactive environments (pull/push/speak/etc)
*Intelligent mobs (mobs that summon/teleport/track/spawn other mobs/run away more than a room and drip blood all over).
*Mobs that fight/use skills of a race - "classed mobs"
*Objects that are enhanced/downgraded based on other objects
*Area-based weather and effects thereof - good and bad
*Modification of regeneration techniques

In the longer term, (meaning not in the next 3 months) we will be willing to work on:

Does that mean we should expect the above in the next 3 months?

Depends on whether Alicia is around and willing to help Slart with it. You can start the bugging him process, if you wish (Alicia, not Slart).

In the right now, and feel free to give snippets to me, DB, file:
* Suggestions for where to implement race-oriented code for objects (send me vnums even in existing areas and i'll look into doing it)

It's my opinion that areas should be parcelled out to certain people to be fixed up for not only race-specific equipment, but the above things as well (like classed mobs). And they need to be WIDELY distributed.

--This makes me a little wary. I trust certain people to distribute areas to, but you have to realize people vary in terms of reliability and time management... and motivation...

Dive:
If the classing of mobs is done in such a way that "classed mobs" are more difficult to fight, then they should also hold better experience. Then, something like this should be implemented in a single widespread use such that 60% or more of the mobs in existence become classed in some way or another. The same with objects. Most objects could probably be logically restricted to certain classes/combination of classes. Many objects will not, but it's pointless to introduce these changes just for the future or to pick one by one only certain items and report them to be changed at some uncertain time.

Kiri -- I don't see why there should be more classed mobs than unclassed mobs, especially if we plan more changes to mobs in the future that we may want to reserve mobs for. I see classed mobs more like boss mobs than regular mobs. SHouldn't the ratio be the other way around?


Dive --
But, seeing as to implement that, all area files should be touched and all objects examined, it would be an ideal opportunity to address the balance issue - the situation that objects have pretty much inflated to the point that a mortal can easily reach over 100/100 hit/dam with very little effort.

Kiri -- this is all well and good, but this is a longer-term goal that needs much discussion and thought. Balance is by no means an easy answer. It requires all sorts of things, rebalancing of objects, mobs and the code needs to be tweaked (not right away, another long term thing) to fix the player/mob equivalency. This is something we want to see Alicia help with in the longer term, as well. If you "balance" too harshly and too quickly, it can end up f'ing people over instead of adding equal parts good and bad, and people end up hating it and quitting. It needs to be something done delicately, deliberately, and cautiously, over time.

[Luc]

I know this is a late idea but I think its a nice feature. What about a skill that can improve weapon damage? perhaps a sharpen weapon or something like it....I think sharpen that increases the minimum damage of a weapon is a good idea, but to cut down on how great it can be...make sharpened weapons have a nodrop flag and no sellable (similiar to taint) the weapons wont do more max damage, but just hit slightly harder on their weaker hits.

[Stars]

Enchant Weapon is more than enough, imo.

[Luc]

well sure maybe...but not all weapons are enchantable...id like to see some other way to make weapons better besides enchant. PLus im still in favor of weapons that are enchanted becoming nodrop

[Divebomb]

*Built in, highly complex quests (Fetishes are the only one we have)

Suggestions?

Finally getting around to responding to this...

What I was referring to are situations where you can bring a number of items to a particular mob, give those items to the mob and receive an item in return. This could be a one-time thing or it could be a chain of events (bring 4 items to the Witch who gives you the brew to take to the King who gives you the scepter you wanted, etc).

I know there is speco ability to fire an event merely by giving an item to someone (speco fired for receiving or giving on the receiver and/or giver) but it's not easily customizable and it doesn't seem like it could handle a SET of objects.

Other things could be very simple:
1) cast a spell on a mob and it tells you some piece of information
2) Say a specific keyword and it causes a mob to respond or a door to unlock etc - all being part of a series of events leading to a quest prize.
3) Touch a series of no-take objects in a particular order to fire an event

etc

Basically the quest idea builds off of the other ideas.

[Luc]

I really like this idea. Actually having to look around and go to different mobs and do different things....this was partially seen in your Clanghammer area as far as getting to the "power rooms". It was fun and challenging to do so.

[Stars]

I'm doing something similar to this in one of my areas. I use a series of keywords. when you find one keyword for an extra, then you travel back to a room to use the keyword. then you get another keyword and go search where it might be. finally, in the end you get the keyword for a container to open. the problem with this idea is that as soon as one person finds the final keyword, then the challenge is basically over, and someone at some point will give the all the answers out. I like DB's ideas much better.

I'm also doing something similar to this with keys. It is my hope that I can time the keys to disappear after 1 or 2 ticks, making this puzzle very challenging.

There are a number of cool puzzles I would like to do. I'm just waiting to see what will emerge from all of this before I go finish my areas.