Thinking Too Much...

[trollson]

This is a hotch-potch of ideas while sitting here harvesting, waiting for death-by-cabbage. Various degrees of involvement, and not necessarily thought through to their fullest extent (so no change there...). I don't claim any of them are cool (or any uncool spelling or the word )...

 

Contents

• Dancing by Moonlight.
  
• Curse of the Werewolf.
  
• Temorary Curses.
  
• NPC Spawning.
  
• Keep on Mixing.
  
• Illuminated Signs.
  
• Torch Wielding (Villagers).
  
• Closer Camera Angle Indoors.
  
• The Slight Inconvenience of Dying.
  

Dancing by Moonlight

 

Add moonlight to brighten up the nights a little, and give a monthly cycle to the game. The moonlight would fluctuate over the course of a game month, which would be, say, 28 game days, nicely mapping to one real world week).

 

 

Curse of the Werewolf

 

OK, I see that lycanthropes have been suggested before. My take on them would be as a curse (negative perk):

• Chance of changing, outside at night, dependant on moonlight.
  
• All possessions dropped when changed.
  
• Wolf form run as normal wolf (maybe average stats of character and a wolf).
  
• Revert when either killed or daybreak.
  
• Still get any experience earned in wolf form (A/D).
  

Temporary Curses

 

Like negative perks, but do not bestow any bonus picks, and only last until:

• the character is killed (though this is too open to abuse due to lack of any real inconvenience of death).
  
• pays a suitable donation to a god (or other authority) to have the trait removed.
  

For example: Characters killed by a werewolf may pick up a temporary werewolf curse.

 

 

NPC Spawning

 

In addition to creatures and monster spawns, generic NPC types could be spawned as well. The only form I can think of right now would be Town Guards, who would wander around and attack hostile creatures, keeping the streets safe at night. Players should be discouraged from attacking 'friendlies' though, picking up an outlaw trait (red name and antisocial) on the current map.

 

Guards vs. monster spawns would form a local 'danger' economy.

 

 

Keep on Mixing

 

Without wishing to allow unconstrained mass production; so long as a character has the ingredients and food in their inventory, there should be an option to keep manufacturing (and eating).

 

Only items in the character's inventory would count -- not any in storage or in an open bag. And of course, and other activity would stop it (cf. harvesting), such as refilling the inventory.

 

Not the most exciting activity to keep clicking on Mix a hundred times...

 

 

Illuminated Signs

 

Somebody hang a lantern on those bloody signposts! How long have I spend fumbling around in the dark trying to find the right pixels to click at night...

 

 

Torch Wielding (Villagers)

 

...for that matter, does the illumination model allow moving illumination sources? Could a character wield a torch (as a weapon) to give a bit of light? I guess a torch would do some damage as well...

 

 

Closer Camera Angle Indoors

 

Just a client thing? Make the camera angle tighter, closer, when indoors and underground. I just think that it would give a better atmosphere (more claustrophobic).

 

 

The Slight Inconvenience of Dying

 

Reading some of the forums here, it seems that players expect that their death-bags should be sacrosanct and waiting for them on return from the underworld. So what is the inconvenience in dying?

 

I did consider dying to be a way to get rid of temporary curses, but it would be too easy for a character to unload at storage and type "#suicide" for an instance cure.

 

Death -- you gambled your characters life and lost. So forfeit something.

 

What about experience points? Lose say 10% overall experience, distributed at random over skills. No need to drop levels -- define levels as the highest experience attained instead.

 

[[EDIT:TYPOS]]

Edited May 2, 2005 by trollson

[rasberrybeard]

The town guard sounds just like this one game I downloaded, forget the name, but if you tried to attack someone in the town they would jump you and kill you.

[autumn1983]

hehe UO is that way... but I do like the curses idea...

[Learner]

Other then dropping your items, the werewolf suggestion sounds more like a blessing then a curse for low level players.

 

If you're going to start taking axperiance away when someone dies, why not let them drop a level if they go down? Removing exp without allowing a level drop only delays them getting to the next level while allow the level to drop might actually take somethign away from them.

[trollson]

Other then dropping your items, the werewolf suggestion sounds more like a blessing then a curse for low level players.

158290[/snapback]

 

Maybe, but remember that the player wouldn't be in control -- the Wolf AI (i.e., the server) would. Other players could attack the wolf form as normal (somebody could end up wearing your skin! ).

[Mireille]

Dancing by Moonlight

 

Add moonlight to brighten up the nights a little, and give a monthly cycle to the game.  The moonlight would fluctuate over the course of a game month, which would be, say, 28 game days, nicely mapping to one real world week).

Curse of the Werewolf

 

 

To implement that, the devs would have to implement female nudity first (what's dancing by the moonlight without naked women worth, I ask?).

[trollson]

To implement that, the devs would have to implement female nudity first (what's dancing by the moonlight without naked women worth, I ask?). 

158294[/snapback]

 

Good point... lets vote on it

[giannis]

To implement that, the devs would have to implement female nudity first (what's dancing by the moonlight without naked women worth, I ask?). 

158294[/snapback]

 

 

Female nudity heh? I am all for it..

[kat]

In addition to creatures and monster spawns, generic NPC types could be spawned as well.  The only form I can think of right now would be Town Guards, who would wander around and attack hostile creatures, keeping the streets safe at night.  Players should be discouraged from attacking 'friendlies' though, picking up the outlaw (red name and antisocial) on the current map.

 

Guards vs. monster spawns would form a local 'danger' economy.

Keep on Mixing

 

about that,

it reminds me of the ants how they would just run around "trying" to kill everything in sight (meaning animals and ppl if they were to go into pk areas, that's if they did)

[Learner]

Ant's don't automatically try to attack players unless they don't like you or you are fighting another ant (then any ant close by might help). They do go to PK areas and at time I will have the Ant Hill on PK. The big problem with the Ant Hill on PK maps is that players rarely give them a chance to heal up, so neither the player or the ant gets much exp from the fight.

 

I have toyed with the idea of Ants attacking players with the PK flag set though :twisted: . Just make sure they have lots of food and leave the Ant Hill in the Underworld :twisted:

[Aislinn]

Ant's don't automatically try to attack players unless they don't like you...

158350[/snapback]

What determines that???

[Grum]

The amount of $$ you give to Learner

[Learner]

I won't give out information on how a player affects the Ants karma about them, but attacking Ants is a known offense. The good news is that this isn't fully implemented yet, but the karma is being gathered.

[Aislinn]

I don't think I ever attacked an ant

So they like me then, right???