Recent Alignment/Damnation changes

Ever – ‘how do i fucking know which is demon/devil in imms mind and which is fucking damnable mob :)’

Ever – ‘whats efreeti to do with demons?’

Ever – ‘and how do i, who isnt native english, find that fuck out?’

Druids can detect species on mobs.

Would be nice if imms could add species type to the ‘study’ command also.

btw syrrinian commoners and armourer in theris are still speciated as demons. If this is intentional ok, but I don’t get how they are demons from their descripts or the room descripts.

also efreeti in dweb should be genie-kind, not demon as Toxis pointed out

just out of curiousity, what other affects are species dependent?

-Rub

egad.. damnation only works on some mobs now? Why? That’s like the main opening spell for tanks in groups.. I thought the idea was to encourage groups on slothMUD? So has the same been done to curse?

Yes, Weasel, you have me sussed, I just hate the groups.

Damnation was changed because it doesn’t make any sense that you are damning angels or devils; it’s explained in the spell helpfile. You can still curse them; I don’t see any reason they wouldn’t be affected by that.

Efreeti are indeed not demons and shouldn’t be classed as such. I don’t think we have a “genie-kind” species but I’m sure we can find something appropriate. I’ll have a look at those mis-classified mobs you mentioned and fix them tonight, if nobody else gets to it first.

Yes, Weasel, you have me sussed, I just hate the groups.[/quote:11enrsb1]

I knew it! :twisted:

How about a new skill that can turn mobs towards evil ways (read: demons)? Of course you would have to be of an evil inclination yourself in order to exercise the skill..

[quote:pp3fru2u]Damnation was changed because it doesn’t make any sense that you are damning angels or devils[/quote:pp3fru2u]

It doesn’t make any sense to carry a shield in a bag, or wield a weapon a held low a held high and a shield. It doesn’t make sense to only wear two

rings and no ear-rings!

or how about a query command to use at anything to figure out wtf the imms are thinking and htf to continue playing :twisted:

htf to continue playing :twisted:[/quote:181usggi]

Go to Run, cmd, telnet, open slothmud.org 6101 and enter your username pw, press 1 to enter the game.

Splork

It doesn’t make any sense to carry a shield in a bag, or wield a weapon a held low a held high and a shield. It doesn’t make sense to only wear two rings and no ear-rings![/quote:389ztr22]

It is a pretty silly argument that because there is one thing in the game that doesn’t make sense, we therefore can’t ever use “it doesn’t make sense” as a reason to change something.

I (at least) would like to fix all of those things you mentioned, but disallowing three-handed style or shields in bags would be too disruptive to play, and adding magic earrings is not out of the question, but right now I don’t believe we want an extra slot for balance reasons. Ditto for only-two-rings (although we didn’t invent that one, the original Diku borrowed it from D&D).

I was just yanking your chain Kj. I’m sure we’ll learn to make do :)

I like the fact that its species specific. At least its not totally arbitrary like broadside where some mobs are simply broadsidable and others aren’t.

How bout making broadside work against appropriate mobs and changing the chopper messages to something other than you chop off a limb. How many limbs does a humanoid mob really have? And how many can they really lose and still fight. “Rub’s weapon chops off a piece of the monsters flesh!” or something might be more appropriate.

And yes, I would personally volunteer to check the height/weight flags on mobs to fix broadside, if I was given an imm char to do so.

Nice changes, keep em coming :)

“How bout making broadside work against appropriate mobs "

How bout making broadside work? I try it every time I bring my warrior in groups, in both BH and SS, and don’t think I’ve hit anything bigger than a citizen in town. Maybe I’ve just been really unlucky picking mobs…

I’ve fixed the mobs Jug spoke about. We will look into any mob that is brought to our attn(whether it be for species, size, etc-just let us know).

We went through over 8k mobs when we added species types to our mobiles. I am sure we made quite a few mistakes. Keep in mind however, several creatures fit more than one species type. In these cases the Imms decide which is more fitting. Well in all cases I guess:P

Splork

I can say, probably with certainty, that we are not going through all 8k again to make sure size is correct in regards to broadside. Simply too much work for such a small benefit. Just hand in the mob names using the bugs cmd.

[quote:1yto5bu8]Ditto for only-two-rings (although we didn’t invent that one, the original Diku borrowed it from D&D).[/quote:1yto5bu8]

As I understood it D&D allowed for multiple rings, allowing only that the

magical properties of which did not physicaly contact. (this disallows

wearing 5 rings per hand, but 2-3 is possible). In doing so this also

removed the ability for magical gauntlets (leather was suitable).

My 42 cents.

Ok Ok, I can’t let this one go, you know, if we spend more time reading books we wouldn’t have to argue about this stupid crap (or dare I say program it). Then we could all spend more time on better things, like playing.

Two things in chronological order.

1.The idea of djinn (genies or any other way you care to spell it) and divas (no gang, not Celine Dion) as the evil and virtuous agents of the gods comes from the Persian religious traditions where in good and bad creatures are sent to help or harass people in crisis. They were later co-opted by invading muslim armies as their societies moved across the Iranian plateau (this is why Aladin has a genie).

2.The ideas of good and evil are a great concept (really easy ideas to grasp) and very easy to transport so even though zoroastrianism didn’t last, it did inform another religion we all know and love, judaism, which (as they say) begat christianity. This is where the great idea of damnation comes from, the idea being that since god is on your side (I love how god is always on your side, not anyone elses), if you ask him to damn someone or something he’ll do it, its part of the covenant. This by the way is why you aren’t supposed to say “god damn it” cuz god just might do it (really thats why).

So in a sense damning a demon is unnecessary because they already are damned (and should act accordingly) but it should be very possible to damn an angel, thats part of the whole free will thing god gave people the ability to do (if you believe in god, and the bible, and jimmy swaggert).

As usual I think this change was also unnecessary because its trying to split too fine a hair and just ends up making characters less powerful (something I know the Imms tend to love, but I don’t). Also it just helps perpetuate the already pedestrian alignment system we have in the game (but many of you know my thinking on that so I won’t bore you with it again).There are plenty of things in this game that can be fixed without making every mob immune to decent spells, that’s just frustrating and silly. That being said if any of the imms want my advice on which mobs should be in which category I’d be happy to help.

Oh and I can’t believe I’m actually gonna have to tell you nerds this, but in D&D you can use two rings, if you want to use a third you have to sacrifice an amulet slot and take a feat! enjoy :roll:

Take a feat? Which fuckin version you playing here.

Anything past 2nd Ed is broken.

Just to sidetrack the discussion, I’ll chip in and say that I prefer 3.5 ed to any of the others. They really improved the systems from 2nd ed to 3.0, and 3.5 is only better.

From my earliest memories even with 1st ed AD&D, the rule was only two rings. We did allow people to wear the rings in odd locations (nose rings, ear rings, etc.) but that was probably a house rule.

Charles

d&d 3.0 and 3.5 there is an amulet that lets you wear a ring on it

and at epic levels there is a feat, Additional Magic Item Space, but you don’t have to give anything up to use it

nerds.

The idea of djinn (genies or any other way you care to spell it) and divas (no gang, not Celine Dion) as the evil and virtuous agents of the gods comes from the Persian religious traditions where in good and bad creatures are sent to help or harass people in crisis. They were later co-opted by invading muslim armies as their societies moved across the Iranian plateau (this is why Aladin has a genie).[/quote:2tbhuzog]

This is true, but we are using D&D djinn and they are elementals, or sort of elemental-people (“outsider with elemental subtype” or something like that). I vaguely think that Muslim djinn are also like people in that they can either be faithful or infidels, and they can go back and forth, but I think I may have just read this in fantasy novels or something, not a reliable source.

Clerics can’t damn angels because angels outrank clerics. Witness the ‘supplication’ spell: the cleric doesn’t say “Angel, come help me”, the cleric says “Gods, please send me an angel” (that’s the supplication) and the gods say “Angel, go help that guy”.

They can’t damn demons for the reasons you say; you can assume that the effects of the damnation have already been factored into the demon’s stats. So there.

Im not a nerd.

I am a gork. (Half geek, half dork). 0% nerdiness.

D&D:

editions 3 and 3.5 of dnd, for anyone who has bothered to try em, are generally better than earlier versions – a lot of effort went into balancing the classes and making things more uniform.

rings:

DND has always only allowed 2 rings (aside from the feat thing) – one per hand. Not because you only have 2 fingers, but because the magical affects interfere with each other if you have more than one on a hand.

damn:

To the original topic, I feel the changes to damn changes the game mechanics of certain areas in what basically amounts to something arbitrarily selected as worth changing. Oh well, no one asked me, I can think of about 20 things I woulda fixed first though.

Broadside:

Fixing broadside, supposedly a key warrior skill, which would be a good selection for looking at race distinctions rather than weight (which is used to make mobs nopush and shouldnt be adjusted). Generally, humanoid, undead, and so on could be broadsided I would think.

Just to make sure … if the mob is a demon, they are already damned?

So they have well have a lower save chance on spells.

If it’s an Angel, u can’t damn but only curse? So they have a little bit of

a greater chance to pass their saves.

Back in the day, ppl always said Damn = 2x Curse. Is this still the case?

The effects of the spell didn’t change. I think it is indeed similar to curse and twice as strong.

And when I said the effects were already factored in, I didn’t mean we had changed the mobs. In general, you can say that demon is damned and therefore has problems, maybe worse problems than you, and that affects his performance. But, he’s also extremely tough, hailing from hell as he does, and probably that more than counteracts any feelings of guilt he might harbor.

Besides (again following the lead of D&D) evil always has more plusses - check out the Book of Vile Darkness sometime. I think in D&D this is because five or six players can put together much better tactics than one DM controlling five or six monsters, so the monsters have to be buffed up to make them challenging. In a MUD it’s even worse, the DM has to write a program to control the five or six monsters.

Broadside:

We now have a flag to make mobs nopush independently of their weights, and thus we don’t have to have wrong weights - so if you see a mob with wrong weight, please bug it and we’ll fix it. We might use weight for other things in the future, so it’s better to get them right.

I think what someone (forget who) was trying to say is that certain areas will basically receive a shift in balance because of this. The Demonweb probably being the best example. A mob like Orcus or Demo has a habit of beating the tar out of whatever is in front of them even with the added benefit of damn. Since you’re now limited to curse, you can expect to take more damage and burn up more of the healo.

Also, to what Leaf was saying, one of the nicer effects to damn was the save penalties. Considering it can make blinds and weakens easier to land it reduces a lot of damage to the tank while the mob is being debuffed, and also makes it more likely that mage spells will hit 2x as hard (ie. not saved).

It also creates something of an additional burden to leaders since they have to keep track of which mobs to damn and which to curse…. or I suppose you could have a d-damner and a d-curser.

Not complaining, just noting what’s changed.

There appears to be much pontificating on why some meanings of

‘damnation’ would have it not affect demons.

…This is all well and good, but the actual, relevant question is: why

instantly make all [large] demons harder than otherwise identical mobs?

The reason people don’t like this is because it is a whimsical

change adding another arbitrary limitation. Here’s a similar idea:

Simply rename ‘damnation’ to ‘fubar’ and then it affects all mobs.

And that change would be equally intelligent.

cast ‘fubar’ demogorgon

Now that’s an avatar spell!

Damnation was changed because it doesn’t make any sense that you are damning angels or devils..[/quote:28r4jbq6]

There appears to be much pontificating on why some meanings of ‘damnation’ would have it not affect demons.

…This is all well and good, but the actual, relevant question is: why

instantly make all [large] demons harder than otherwise identical mobs?

The reason people don’t like this is because it is a whimsical

change adding another arbitrary limitation. Here’s a similar idea:

Simply rename ‘damnation’ to ‘fubar’ and then it affects all mobs.

And that change would be equally intelligent.

cast ‘fubar’ demogorgon

Now that’s an avatar spell![/quote:28r4jbq6]

Now there’s some solid reasoning - change the spellname to fit mud-reality rather than changing mud-reality to fit the spellname, if reality is the sole reason for the change, rather than :

restricting the usefulness an established and very frequently used spell,
making a bunch of mobs harder to take down,
slowing down groups thru increased heals etc,
alienating areas that have been run in the past, because they’ve become less cost-effective now.

..at least changing the name of the spell instead would make sense without detrimentally effecting gameplay.

applaud Mace.

BTW, if over half the votes are against this change, will the coders rescind it?

Alternatively, create a new spell that has the same effect as damnation but works on all mobs that damnation no longer works on.. kind of like an offensive blessing? That would then fit the ‘reality’ reasoning used to legitimize this change. It would also waste leader’s time, but whatever…

ALSO, using the same reality reasoning, casting damnation on a non-damnable mob should NOT cause the mob to engage in a fight because it would not be considered an offensive spell to that mob. Thus if a player casts damnation on a mob and nothing happens other tan the mob raises an eyebrow quizically, then the player knows to use an alternative leading attack.. which could be the ‘offensive blessing’ type spell I mentioned above.. of course all of this is presuming that making gameplay tougher was not the intention of this change…

i’m usually neutral to changes on the mud, but i have to say this

this obsession with mud-realism is getting out of hand.

do ppl really care about the real meaning of the word “damnation”

i mean…seriously, was there any serious need to make that change?

With the amount of debuffing spells we have now, I have no problem at all with the recent change to one spell which affects a a small minority of mobs.

The game has gotten considerably easier over the course of the years. There was a time it took a group to kill the majority of mobs on Sloth. Now most are solo.

I would like examples of areas being alienated Weasel. I’ve watched intently since the change, all of the common exp areas are still being ran, including Demonweb.

Large goups have been running on a daily/nightly basis. If exp is slightly slower, so be it.

Sorry but I don’t see this incredibly tiny change affecting how much fun our game is or the playability of it.

Splork

I wasn’t crying, and I wish everyone else would get a hanky and a Midol

and stfu. Demo got beefed so now it takes 3 tards instead of 2 to kill it.

We still got it pretty easy.

[quote:17r8bz0b]The game has gotten considerably easier over the course of the years. There was a time it took a group to kill the majority of mobs on Sloth. [i:17r8bz0b]Now most are solo.[/i:17r8bz0b]

[/quote:17r8bz0b]

To the old classes this doesnt really seem to apply.

How about the unnerfing of the ’throw’ and ‘backstab’ abilities for normal

peons old classes to have a chance at this.

:lol:

BTW, if over half the votes are against this change, will the coders rescind it?

[/quote:3jm9nvcc]

Short answer: no.

Long answer:

In no way is this mud a democracy run by the players. We often ask for input before making changes that are significant or may be perceived as detremental by players. We do this online and on this forum, but not always both or either. But, at the end of the day, we will make unpopular decisions that we think are the right ones.

In this case we didn’t ask. Assume we said, “We went throughout themud and added higher hitrols and a few other buffs to all Demons and Angels so they are now harder.” It’s the net result, plus some confusion; so let’s move on.

I’ll repeat something I posted a while back. We have made mistakes in the past and will make them again in the future as we strive to improve the game. For now, we don’t think this is a mistake.

Respectfully,

Clink

OK thanks for the straight-up response. It does seem increasing clear from the poll here that the majority of players disagree with this change, but as you quite rightly said ’this is not a democracy’, and considering it’s abso-farking-lutely free for us to play, we can’t expect to have much sway in what happens on slothMUD, unfortunately - that’s one thing that has not changed in the years I have been here - basically if we don’t like the changes, we are welcome to go fark ourselves (if you’ve seen the movie ‘Departed’ you’ll know I meant that in jest).

:twisted:

Yes, the mud is waaay easier to level up now than it used to be, I’ll give you that, but it’s also far more complex, which is good to a point, just don’t overdo it as, imho, while it increases the challenge for seasoned players, it can be information overload for newbies and drive them away - that’s purely theory of course, I have no statistical data to back it up for you.

Please don’t turn this into a reality-based RPG though - I believe that is one of the reasons players keep coming back.

And yeah Splork, Dweb was one of the areas I was thinking of - fortunately there’s been some solid groups running around SS lately, which possibly contributed towards this change.

Yes it applies to old school characters as well. Hell the regen change alone enabled Corum to increase his runs drastically once properly used. The new debuffs help everyone involved in a group, etc.

Im heading out of town for the weekend or i would be happy to go further in depth.

Play the game for more than a month and all of this would be come quite clear.

Splork

Does this mean we cant blind or weaken Autolycos anymore, since in reality he is semi-blind and weak.

Mike

rofl

[quote:6p57mqf0]Yes it applies to old school characters as well. Hell the regen change alone enabled Corum to increase his runs drastically once properly used. The new debuffs help everyone involved in a group, etc.

[/quote:6p57mqf0]

Rofl.

[quote:6p57mqf0]Play the game for more than a month and all of this would be come quite clear. [/quote:6p57mqf0]

No incentive to continue playing. Gaming should be fun, and not a hassle.

Players should be able to pthief without creators shifting into nearbye

mobs to kill the pthieves. 10 minute regens and no pvp?

Dont start me on the ‘sound’ patch.

Sound on a text mud is about as usless as a gun with no ammo.

In general, focus on what makes people happy, and listen to your players.

Dont waste time on things that maybe 2 people will gain enjoyment off of.

Chuckle…

Nobody has mentioned how insanely powerful spells like weaken are, especially in places like the Demonweb. I regularly try to include a necro in my groups simply because its crazy to run without one in large xpish areas.

Something you might consider is that the stronger the mob is, the more effective weaken is as a debuffing spell. From what I’ve seen, it looks like a lot of balance shifts have been made to try to account for this addition.

So yeah, you might not strictly need a tard to run the Dweb anymore, but you’ll probably need a necro.

Nobody also ever mentioned how you needed curse, weaken, slow, blind,and web on demo so he would miss 1 hit (not a round - 1 hit)on me in 3 kills. I don’t have a problem being more realistic , but lets face it most realistic animals/people can’t hit shit blinded let alone all the other debuff we have to use to stay alive.

Alias

As for me I don’t have any problem with new damnation cause I guess it’s kinda warrior’s spell and they use it only in large groups.

But I have some ideas of making spells more realistic:

firewind, downfire and such fire spells - how u can use it on terracotta mobs from CK? As I understand creators use fire to make terracotta people, so it shouldn’t hurt em. There are a lot of mobs that should have resist for some spells (logicaly) but they have not.
putrefy, vamp touch, crimson scourge - u cant use it on ether mobs, u cant use it on golems and other non-flesh mobs.
disintegrate - u cant use it on ether mobs cause they havn’t an atomic structure, also u cant use frostbolt on it cause bolt should just pass through ether. But probably firewind should be great for ether mobs.
cry of the avatar shouldn’t work on deafen mobs and mobs w/o ears.
as i remember dragons should have resist or even be immune to all magic.
unicorn is very pure (don’t sure it’s right word - mabbe clear or virgin) creature and his nature give it ability to avoid being cursed/damned. and again if i remember right it has ability to resonance an offensive spell.

There are a lot of other spells that may be conceive in this way.

There is a point where having to figure out what blast/debuff will actually work on any given mob will be downright annoying.

And “realism” in this kind of thing is totally dependant on precisely how spells work, how hot is the fire from firewind? On what level does disintegrate take matter apart? Does Cry of the Avatars cause damage through the ears, or does it damage directly through pressure and vibration? etc. etc.

Dragons are already immune to a lot, and well, a unicorn might be pure atm, but there’s no reason you can’t un-pure it.

Also, if ether mobs don’t have an “atomic structure”, then why should they care about fire either?

Edd!

[img:29qfhhk8]http://bryanchina.com/morton_salt.jpg[/img:29qfhhk8]

who’s that girl?

:twisted:

Thats the Morton salt girl, cuz when it rains it pours.

Mike

PS Does Edd wonder if this is pure or virgin girl?

Dragons are already immune to a lot, and well, a unicorn might be pure atm, but there’s no reason you can’t un-pure it.[/quote:36xc04g1]

You stop using bamboo shin guards.

You stop using belt of vitality.

A unicorn hates your guts!

You’ve got a good feeling about this fight…

You circle around the unicorn and expertly violate her.

A unicorn gasps in astonishment.

The brilliant white haze surrounding a unicorn flickers and fades away.

You utter the words, ‘yufzxuie’

You gesture dramatically, and a unicorn is roasted in a burning wind.

………………………

Laugh… who says a little more realism can’t be fun? Nothing like a little pyronecrobeastiality to get your day going, right?

Hmm. That does kind of tie in with the whole idea of red tentacles, er, tendrils of mist infusing the body.

that sounds like urotsukidoji

How god could it be all this maniacs play same mud w/ me?

Save the unicorn! Pkill 12345!

Hey Keith, let me know when that one is a corpse. smoke

Hey Keith, let me know when that one is a corpse. smoke[/quote:b6nwqim5]

12345 would be one big stinky corpse…..

just the way you like’m G :twisted:

Hey Keith, let me know when that one is a corpse. smoke[/quote:ryar2jt5]

12345 would be one big stinky corpse…..

just the way you like’m G :twisted:[/quote:ryar2jt5]

And for the real quote

[img:ryar2jt5]http://www.picpop.com/gallery/albums/userpics/hitit_1_05/inconceivable.jpg[/img:ryar2jt5]

Paul :)

Hey Keith, let me know when that one is a corpse. smoke[/quote:3hncl49w]

Ya know, you’re probably the only person I know for whom pyronecrobeastiality could be considered foreplay… before getting into the really hardcore stuff.

The reality check I’d love to see is on the protect skill. How can one person possibly defend (tank) a group of 20 people who are all attacking the same mob? Its insane.

It really makes the game ridiculously easy too.

Imagine if protection chains couldn’t be longer than 4 players. i.e. Tank+3.

Then every group would be composed of a leader and several tanks. Imagine how much more actively people would have to play.

Actually I heard it through the grapevine that this change is coming soon. :!: Everyone panic :!:

Removal of specularems and protect chains would make sloth a much, much

better mud.

Ooooh! The return of rescue orders?

We can only hope mobs can disengage and the tank has to rescue. :)

The player that is doing the most damage per second should tank the mob.

Chuckle, apparently Diazz doesn’t remember rescue orders either…

Old school method of fighting mobs before protect was put in game. Warriors basically took turns as the tank. Rather effective if you didn’t have a cleric with you. Once mobs started hitting people other than the tank and protection chains were implemented, it became an obsolete tactic, mostly anyway.

Still used very occassionally tho (tanks sharing the damage), although it’s been a while..

[quote:30igue9a]Chuckle, apparently Diazz doesn’t remember rescue orders either…

[/quote:30igue9a]

Oh please. Could you possible spew more bs from the keyboard.

Know what you speak of before you open your mouth :)

[quote:30igue9a]

[/quote:30igue9a]

Protect chains removed random deaths from the game.

Mobs Disengaging made tanking more fun because you had to look out

for your crew. Back in the day, not everyone had a server client to do

tintin on. Wintin simplified this a bit.

That in itself is bullshit, because without the element of a random death,

it made the game far too easy. I had to talk to Pat alot from adding

protects to the original soul code, because it cheeses the game up too

much. He was all for it, I was against it then, and still am.

Chance favors the prepared mind. But there should still be that chance.

Protect chains prevent this.

Hell, out of every mmorpg I’ve played, not one of them favors protect

chains. Why. Because they want their groups to die if a mistake is made.

If the tank cant provide enough threat/taunt to the mob in question, then

who ever is cranking out the most dps, is the mobs higher target, because

if they are hurting it, the mob has to circumvent this. If a mage or a thief

lets loose, and blows the tank order, the mage/thief dies, and the mob

moves on to the next greatest threat.

Sloth is the only game I’ve played online which favors the protect system

rather then have a true tanking setup.

Merely standing in front of the mob should never be enough.

Personally, I think sharing damage often makes a lot of sense, especially in smaller groups. Besides, fighting without getting hit is boring as hell.

So.. with this ‘biggest threat gets attacked’ style of mob play, what’s the point of mages? If they actually use some of their prime power to blast, they get killed - unless they sacrifice a portion of their intended prime eq attributes in favor of gaining AC so they can, err, use their blasting power.. kinda defeats the purpose doesn’t it? This would presumably propel the Warrior or AC-focussed classes up to being the far most important prime class (which it once was here), and/or may encourage soloing over grouping for certain classes, which I don’t think the admins want.. or do they?

Death in this case isn’t random, it’s dependant on how fast a tank can type the name of whoever gets attacked, or how good their triggers are (I still have all my rescue triggers in place). If the point is to decrease botting, AFAIK that is not something prevalent among tanks..

Bottom line: what will be will be. If we don’t like it, then we can leave etc etc blah blah. :roll:

waves - going out for dinner :twisted:

Greater threat.

Is like, warriors have taunts. These specifically increase threat, this increase

twofold with higher warrior dps. Warrior dps is moderate, and gradual. Dps

is damage per second. Since sloth still uses the archaic 12 second heart

beats, its almost moot. But in a different world, dps and threat level abilities

allow the higher ac class to tank. Since heavy armor plate is typically worn

by tanks, they have the best ac. (Scaled down, plate > chain mail > leather

cloth > naked).

Healer classes heal, and buff, with moderate nuking ability. Any type of

damage or healing induced will increase threat level. More super on the

second healing will vastly increase threat. (mob cant kill tank cause cleric

is healing, so attacking this guy instead).

Mages and rogues (also ranged me lee classes), will be doing their dps

(this also includes other warriors who aren’t tanking, but still attempting to

provide threat). This is the damage over time between healing and tanking.

Should the warriors threat level get out done, someones going to get

hit.

Some classes also get threat reducing abilities (detaunts). Which can be

used in between major hits to lessen threat).

In the big scope, if no one out does each other, the kill goes fine (or multi

kills), in which different warriors are tanking individual mobs, with a healer

to each watch over that warrior). In turn the rest of the herd is dealing

dps to a death order, as to which warriors mob gets killed 1st.).

What can go wrong. The chain can break.

Random aggro.

Someone gets to many critical hits.

Healers run out of mana.

Mob has signature ai, to help fool people.

Massive Aoe procs can run everyone out of health.

Mob crits too much, kills a tank.

Someone looses link.

What goes wrong most. A dps class draws aggro, and starts to run around

like a chicken with his head cut off. This means everyone else gets to

chase down the mob in question. This throws off the damage chain, and

is when clerics over healing to draw the most aggro will now come into

play. After this, unless the group (or raid group), is really good then they

can survive, if not, ah well.

Its a long list, as Ive led 100-200 people raids in 6-8 hour dungeons, with

mobs that can take 30-45 minutes to kill. Nothing worse then a dragon

who can wipe out 200 people in 3 minutes. 100 people dieing at once is

sorta funny.

Now days, this style seems almost traditional to me.

The essence of protect is there, assuming that the tank can keep up the

amount of threat over everyone else. But what he doesn’t do, is suffer a

protect chain, ensuring that no one but him will get hit. Each char has his

or her own angle of control to maintain.

If someone step’s over that boundary

Thou art tasty, and go well with ketchup.

Hmm, dangerous night to take a nap apparently.

Sloth added protects after they added code that made mobs hit people besides the main tank. There are lots and lots and lots of muds that still subscribe to all attacks hitting the tank. I have also played many games for consoles where its entirely possible to play a warrior and a caster/archer class where the warrior does less damage but can physicaly position himself between the mob and the archer/caster to protect them and allow them to do the greatest amount of damage. The real threat being that there is more than 1 large mob in the area and no chokepoint, which is somewhat common.

That’s not to say that the mob doesn’t try to get to the one doing more damage, just that often you can use terrain and such to protect them, as well as skills that allow you guard instead of full out attacking. Due to the setup of Sloth, there’s more likely to be a single large mob per room in xpish type areas, and the others tend to stay where they’re sitting instead of running over to assist.

Also, the protect chain as it exists is not foolproof. If your 2.tank doesn’t have a decent AC, they will normally get cut down pretty quick and things go bad from there.

Since muds do a poor job of simulating terrain and the tactics that would normally make possible, the concepts of rescue and protect skills isn’t nearly as outlandish as you make it sound.

If you want to go ranting against a skill, pick something like push. Its ubsurb that a mob can watch someone push their allies away, never to be seen again, and then not be at least suspicious of someone trying to do the same to them. Or guards that never yell for assistance. Or someone running through an area with a warcry that’s heard by everyone, and not catching on eventually.

[quote:3hzhardm]Sloth is the only game I’ve played online which favors the protect system rather then have a true tanking setup. [/quote:3hzhardm]

Just made me think - why would the admins want this mud to be the same as every other mud? The idea is to keep sloth unique, not make it just like every other MUD out there, or so I thought.. I also thought the idea was to make this MUD enjoyable and relatively easygoing and non-conformist, hence the name ‘Sloth’ ..although the ‘realism’ factors creeping in recently may contradict what I just said. Certainly SlothMUD is more complex than ever, but not so hard as to make it a deterrant.. at least not yet. Realism is not neccessary imho, at least not in this MUD.. if I wanted realism and stupid role playing crap there are many many other options out there, but as far as casual and enjoyable mudding, Sloth is the leader imho. I just hope it stays that way.

At a basic level, what it comes down to is that muds are text-based, and there’s a limit to the level of realism that muds can support. Before you even reach that point, there’s are points where the realism will get in the way of a fun game.

“Its a long list, as Ive led 100-200 people raids in 6-8 hour dungeons, with

mobs that can take 30-45 minutes to kill.”

What game are you playing Diazz?

If you’re thinking about this in terms of dps, you can rationalize Sloth by saying that this is why we use firewind instead of some more powerful magic attack. Does it make sense that a mage’s most powerful spell only takes 25 mana, when the mage is running around with 700? Why don’t we have spells that do 4x the damage for 100 mana? The answer is, of course, that noone wants to hit those dps levels that will make the mob notice you instead of the tank.

In all the normal aspects, I agree with 12345. In a realistic sim, you would be able to position your mages / archers (high dps) behind the warriors so that the warriors can -physically- prevent the target from getting to the juicy mages. The current MMO methods of “taunt” and “threat” are a poor method to simulate combat, and not something I’d like to see migrate to sloth. Our current protect chain does a better job, as we typically like to see 3 or 4 tanks at the top of the prot order - which we could imagine is them forming some sort of a line to protect casters / archers from retaliation.

well explained, thanks Avatar :)

No, neither system simulates it well tanking well.

[quote:2z892p19]What game are you playing Diazz? [/quote:2z892p19]

I currently play WoW, and will be for a very, very long time I feel.

As for where I’ve played, aside from a hand full of muds as well as coding

my own mud for 6 years, UO (2nd age to 4th age). EQ1, EQ2, Shadowbane,

Dark Age of Camelot, SWG, Anarchy Online, Eve Online,

AC1 & AC2.

Ive led a ton of raids on Daoc, EQ2 and large groups on UO. I mainly

play for PvP though. Most of these groups were 50-250 people. After this

running a 20 person group through the demonweb is cake :P

Any time I play a mud, it will inevitably make me play a mmorpg.

[quote:2z892p19]not make it just like every other MUD out there[/quote:2z892p19]

the fact that several sections of the code state that this section was grabbed from x mud code base would suggest its not. Nor the fact that

there are a ton of muds which feature a protect system would render that

most ill-astute theorem illogical.

This does not feed the fact that I still enjoyed sloth while I played, and I

hope keep up what they do. I have issue with some of their polices toward

gaming norms.

But then again, if they change stuff too much, people cry and shit gets

changed more.

heh true :)

There will never be a system that simulates combat well because war is chaos and trying to organize it subtracts from its nature. It doesn’t help that 95% of the things we’re doing are completely fictional abilities. Since you’ve coded a mud, i’m sure you’re familiar with the difficulties of coding positional and terrain based tactics into a room-based fighting system. Tactically, Sloth doesn’t do a bad job at it, though there are always going to be quirks.

This is a great point because the code already exists in game to handle these kinds of things (cept the warcry triggering alarm) and it makes the game a lot cooler. After my new area is complete and goes in, I would love to work on stuff like that. 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.

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:sljxkicz]I mainly

play for PvP though.[/quote:sljxkicz]

So get on the pvp server.

No alarms should be raised when I warcry in an area. The mobs just think Im hungry and forgot my Spoon!. Or you can just make it alarm out and it will be one more skill I wont use.

Alias

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.

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.

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?

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.

[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 :P

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.

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

[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.

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’.

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.

[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.

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

So your saying people shouldn’t communicate.

Forums are for half senseless postings, ramblings and musings.

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.

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.

Also on an MMORPG the admins aren’t doing it for free.

I don’t think you have anything to worry about 13. We listen to the people who know and play sloth. For all intensive purposes, this is Sloth IV. The game has changed more in the last few years than it did from Sloth2 to Sloth3. :-)

I don’t forsee us adding anything game changing for quite some time. Atm, we are concentrating on a few things we feel will help us attract a great deal of new players and at the same time keep them around.

Enjoy,

Splork

full of … 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.[/quote:39or898h]

I hear that.

[quote:3r2yjid5] We listen to the people who know and play sloth. [/quote:3r2yjid5]

So your saying since I’m not currently playing, I’m therefore not capable of

having coherent thoughts and idea’s that render sharing.

Expose your pride and arrogant bigotry more?

No, Diazz i think he was simply saying that you generally don’t know what you are talking about.

because it makes more sense to not listen to people who play, and instead pursue some theoretical ideal of what a mud ‘should be’?

/confused

Actually, I think the main issue being is that text and graphical games are completely and totally different. Among other things, character speed, weapon range, knockback, terrain, obstacles, line of sight, and general mobility on the battlefield. Unless you’ve magically become KaVir and already figured out how to make these things work in a MUD environment, you’re talking about numerous changes that affect the core of the game and how it works.

It’s like comparing apples to oranges, and right now we’re happy with our apples. If we wanted oranges, there’s lots of graphical games we could play.

no I’m not saying that, I’m saying this thread is already full of stupid ass ideas.[/quote:1dfibgaa]

At least its more interesting than the thread about how we generally like you despite the fact that you’re an asshole.

Heh, slightly.

One of the things you should remember juggle is that right now, equipment is pretty much maxxed. There’s not a lot you can put in game that will make people want to run a death area without contributing to the already high eq creep.

That and as far as leaders go, there’s a limit to how much they can learn and keep track of. At the moment, we’re keeping track of solid vs ether, curse vs. damn, blind vs. acid, splork vs. debuff, stab vs. grip, blast vs. chop, the size of the mobs were running, regen mobs vs xp mobs, tank AC, 2.tank AC, thickness of healo, what debuffs the group has available, xp per kill, which mobs need shield/spectrals, dispels and silences, resist webs, fire/chill banes, mobs that demonbind/dispel/reflect/resonance, which areas repop while in them, which mobs summon helpers and what kind, NOFIRE, NOFROST, wandering agros, etc…

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate cool areas, but it’s getting to the point where I need a pretty good reason to want to put in the effort to do so. The best reason I’ve had lately is explorer xp. When running an xp group its a fairly good idea to hit an area and then move to another simply because the drop in xp the second time through is so dramatic. Which makes me fairly unpopular with all the people trying to call pops…. but you pick your battles, ya know?

Yah. Makes it a bit touchy for new leaders too - having to learn the very basics of running a group, which means finding people with the patience to let you explore, learn and cf them occasionally/frequently, create scripts and maps etc., which leads to slow xp runs for a long time. Because more experienced players generally prefer to group with a leader and group that is going to keep things moving (which is quite a fair bias), the noob leader ends up leading noobs to their death in new areas, to be rescued by peeved, experienced players later. (There are of course a number of older, patient players who will group and train new leaders, but the fact still stands.) As leader becomes a more and more specialised and difficult skill, there will be less and less of them.

I myself love the continual change that goes on, but one of the drawbacks is that the people with high weekly log-on rates end up being worked hard not only by us noobs, but also by some more experienced, but less intensively involved slothers.

I agree Tinct. Most of the time I am extremely reluctant to lead. Mostly

due to exactly what you said. Over half the time I’m not even remotely

interested in teaching newbs, waiting for some dumbass -10 tank who

doesn’t even have a whiner, telling people “no I wont kill the ettin Chief

for you”, listening to the inane chatter that always happens.

:roll:

Of course juggle’s right, however, Aa has been making an honest effort at reform lately. I would advise against giving him a reason to backslide please :)

He wont need a reason, wait and see.

As far as having to remember the intricacies of a mob, thats the fun of the game. I take pride in learning about how mobs react to my fighting style. Its the one thing that sets players apart, mud knowledge.

On another note I think the reason most people dont lead is because they are sick of being abused. I myself have been pretty reluctant to lead due to a rash of abuse. For awhile I actually limited myself to lyme only groups due to low level players joining and not even assisting just following around and collecting a portion of my xp or not listening and taking forever. I quickly learned that lyme is just as bad except it has a higher xp table :P. I know and im sure alot of you know who helps and who is a burden, I say we boycott those punks. One story I love to tell, and I wont mention names.

I was chopping with a fair sized group, x wants to join. We finished a few mobs and Im pretty quick to notice when your mana is full. I ask x to beacon to his mob, no respsonse. Few mobs later I recall x. Approx 15 minutes pass and I get a tell from x asking if we are going to kill his mob. I just laugh to myself and tell em that I asked for that beacon about 50m xp ago and I dont have time to bother with it. I bet if you came back in game with a corpse, next time u might pay attn.

Mike

PS Dont take me wrong I know everyone loses link from time or time, or has an emergency.

Nods Medios.. I wasn’t overly impressed being killed due to lack of heals quite a while back when there were 5 clerics in the group all with mana and all ‘afk’ ..and again in another group where (again as tank) I was killed, and I corpsed out while waiting for someone to raise - again the problem was all the raisers were afk, it wasn’t a group CF or anything. Botting (which is often the equivalent of being afk in a chop group) used to be severely punished, and imho it still should be for excessive absenses, unless previously approved by the leader. You don’t see me tank very often now, and that is one of the reasons (needless deaths), although mostly it’s because I can’t be at the keyboard for extended periods of time for one reason or another (read: I wont join a group if I’m aware I may have to go afk quite a bit myself).

of course there’s many groups where this is not an issue, but when on occassion it is, it’s kinda hard not to notice…

True, I know the feeling. I think the worst I can say is that I was leading a group against mobs that I sometimes solo… the group was about 6 people besides me, decent levels, and we were dying at a pretty good rate. Couldn’t understand it for the life of me. Then 1 person that I know pays attention joined and turned the whole group around.

I’ve noticed my newbie tolerance is higher than most, but honestly, some newbies aren’t nearly as frustrating as the botters.

You aren’t supposed to be botting, even in groups. We want to encourage groups, but not at the price of allowing botters. If you guys have any suggestions for ways we could automatically detect and eject botters in groups, let us know. I am willing to devote some serious coding effort to this, so even if your ideas are pretty ambitious I’d love to hear them. If you don’t want to post something, you can email me at kjartan@slothmud.org.

Honestly Kj, I’ve been racking my brain and there’s very little coming to mind. The 2 problems that I keep running into are that half can be faked with a client, and the other half could be triggered by someone who is honestly afk for an emergency…

The best I can think of is that if you have someone who’s made 3x their current cap and they haven’t typed anything combat worthy, start giving them xp penalties. This would still catch people who legitamately go afk, but considering most will ask if you want them to recall anyway, I don’t think they’d mind taking an hit like that unless you killed them or something.

Other things to check for would be protecting someone who’s not in the room or you’re not grouped with (though this could trigger honestly) for 5 or so minutes. I’d like to say not protecting the person below you if you have the skill… but this is an actual tactic every blue moon.

Being the only character standing in a CF with 90% or more of your mana… but some quests could trigger that.

The ones that don’t even assist are probably the worst… but when I have more than 1 non-protector, I often have them stay out of combat and heal… or do raises/reblinds/respells/etc.

I’ll have to think about that some.

We could deal with honest emergencies by adding an “idle” flag that you should set if you are afk for an emergency. It would prevent you from gaining any xp while in the group; when you’re back, you unset it. We can also make it so the group leader can set it for you.

If you don’t have the idle flag set, then the mud can start trying mercilessly to tell if you’re botting.

If the leader can set it for you… that’d be a great start.

Good idea with the idle flag - and if it’s going to be over X amount of time (say 2-3mins max), the leader should have to approve it.. but again I can think of ways around that.. ie: script timers to turn flag off after 2 mins and back on again a few seconds later. It’s certainly a step in the right direction, and if nothing else will serve as a warning.

The most effective thing was when immorts actually spent time monitoring groups for a while and wiped someone for botting/afk in a group (once they established there was no lost connection etc and it was all beyond doubt and discussed with the perpetrator as not an emergency etc).. I didn’t see any botting at all for quite a while after that, strangely enough… unfortunately this manual monitoring is time consuming, and immorts time is better spent elsewhere. Making an autoscript for could be really dangerous though - I’d hate to see someone pinged for it when it wasn’t really deserved, while others get away with it through scripting. Maybe random checks are the best thing, just to keep people on their toes, and a delevelling for those caught without a legitimate or leader-approved reason.

one more thing with leader-approved idle flag - leaders have enough to do, so perhaps a request system where the group member enters a ‘request for absense’ command and length of time requested in minutes, and the leader just receives a prompt to approve it, then all they have to do is type ‘ok {some argument}’ and the requester gets another message confirming their afk for X minutes.. if the leader does not respond within 30 seconds, a response can be sent to the group member saying ‘disapproved’ or something along those lines..

Hrm, interesting interesting.

First regarding auto-assist: I often automate a lot of things: blinds, curse, damn, assist, etc. I don’t automate heals, and I hate the assist lag when I’m healing. Typically the first 3 or 4 rounds of combat, pre-buffs, see the highest damage to the tank so I try to stay on top of tank hps. I’m just saying that if I’m 1.healer, I normally turn off my auto-assist and focus on healing. That often means that if I’m healing, I never bother to assist.

I’ll try to think of bot-detection-methods too. The “idle” flag seems interesting, but with so many client scripts I still don’t think it’ll be easy to auto-detect bots. I guess a method for the leader to set this idle flag on players is a good idea. That gives a leader some capability to manage idle/slow players short of recall/ungroup. Another issue with afk/idle players is the way it can cf a group with poor protects. Some methods to audit/control protects would be nice.

I guess something like a leader command that automatically clears all protects for group members would be a start. This way the leader could clear protects and tell everyone to check protects, and noone has an excuse (he’s already protected!, my protector hasn’t left, i didn’t bother to look, etc.) Another leader command to automatically set protects down the list (protect down mode) would be nice. That might take care of 80% of the protect issues, more complex groups (non-prot chars, leaders who are also tanks) would still have to fix a couple of the protects, but not so many.

Hrm, what was I talking about? The idle flag? I seem to have rambled.

this is dogshit, people just need to recall the bots or leave them at demo.

heh.. yeah, that works too.

Some Aa, others have genuine emergencies (like me) and I’m not about to make a char they’ve got 60 days of playtime on unusable for a misunderstanding because they had to deal with something important, their computer crashes, or the rare instance (like me) where their keyboard’s batteries go dead and they’re scrambling around the house looking for charged batteries.

I WILL set them idle, let them lose 20 mil in xp and not give it a second thought. More xp for me and they’re the one risking death for no gain.

Speaking of which, the idle flag should also disable looting and being included in the split. Also, if the idle flag is set by the leader, it should set so that it can only be UNSET by the leader. That way they actually have to plead their case and can’t just unset it with a client…

I really like this idea :)

For whatever reason, there is apparently sometimes a reluctance on the part of leaders to just demo some idlers. I think we can’t just say “demo them”, everybody is aware of that option and they aren’t doing it.

I don’t have any problem making the leader have to unset the leader-set idle flag, I just wonder if that will make it annoying for the leader because he has to actually deal with it. I guess we could let the leader set it either way, so he has to remove it or so the idler can remove it.

We could make protect skip idlers (i.e. if you are protecting someone with the flag set, you 100% succeed). I don’t want to let the leader just set up the protect order anyway he likes at this point, not even down the list.

I much prefer letting the leader deal with it than trying to auto-detect bots. As has been said, auto-detecting bots can be hard.

So, how’s this sound - if the idle flag is set:

you get no xp
you get no split
you don’t autoloot, nor can you use “get”
people protecting you succeed 100%

Honestly, it sounds good. Probably more to the point, if I have someone sitting idle in the group for any length of time, they’ll get recalled. If I’m constantly tagging the same people idle… I just won’t let them join.

I think allowing them to set their own (and remove if set) flags is a good idea. Recalling is the honest thing to do, yes, but can potentially mess up the protect chain, the occasional person doesn’t have gate to get back, or if you’re in a nogate area, etc. As a leader, I think it’d be pretty cool for someone to say “Damn, I gotta take care of something quick, brb” set themselves idle, and then flag themselves back 5-10 minutes later. They didn’t gain anything while afk, took care of their stuff, and generally did the most honorable thing with a minimum of hastle. I don’t see that needing a punishment. At least not as long as I have the option of flagging them over their flag if I think they’re abusing the system.

And honestly, if the system doesn’t work, I’m sure you’ll hear plenty of suggestions and complaints on the crier :)

Sounds good but for one thing.. the ones who abuse it the most atm are just as likely not to bother setting the flag or advising the leader, so only the ones who are honest about it are going to get penalized..

While this is something we are willing to work on, it ultimately comes down to the leaders-you guys know this. It has become acceptable behavior because you guys have allowed it to get to this point. I said this the last time we had thread, I’ve still yet to be notified once about a botter in a group.

People used to beg to get into a good group that people knew botting was not going to occur. Those who botted rarely were allowed back into groups.

Kick them out of your groups, pkill them, whatever. Just don’t put up with it.

Splork

We are not going to spend our time looking for botters. If I stumble upon one, they will be dealt with harshly. Otherwise, it is up to the leaders and group members to notify us.

I disagree with Weasel( again I know) but botting was at its lowest when annie and others were pkilling botters, flight was removing their protects, groups refused to allow them to join, etc. Those immortals who spent countless hours finding botters should of been building us a new website or adding something fun for our players to abuse because ultimately it gained nothing for Sloth:-)

Which is why I made a point of making it a leader set option. If they don’t want to penalize themselves, I’ll be happy to flag them if I think they’re botting… and see how long it takes them to ask me to unset them. No one who’s actually at keyboard is going to let that fly for long.

@Splork, I’m fairly satisfied with my groups. I rarely have an instance where 1 person is sitting on a ton of mana while the rest of the group is empty. I have been frustrated with someone on occasion, but its fairly rare :)

Why should we trust a leader to set a player as idle when they are not informing immortals now that they have characters whom are botting?

Splork

It’s often two different things to suspect someone is botting and know they are. If you suspect they are, you can ping them and set them idle. At that point, you have a timer. If they come back 2 minutes later and ask why you did that, you can unset them and tell them to pay better attention. If after 15 minutes they don’t mention it, you know they’re botting and can recall them, push them into demo, tell Splork to have a barbeque… whatever.

Its really hard to argue that you’ve been paying attention when you ignored a tell from the leader, haven’t been making any xp or gold for the last 10-15 minutes and allowed yourself to sit at recall and have Splork flay you alive.

It’s also unlikely that person will ever join one of your groups again… ever.

Everyone wins :)

Well you don’t really disagree with me - it was around the same time wasn’t it? or at least the actions of the leaders followed up the wipe of a char (or the other way around) - either way I’m glad it was happening and would like to see it enforced again by leaders, although I’m aware they have a lot to do already without checking for botters, particularly if it’s one of their personal friend(s). As far as immorts monitoring, I totally agree, as I already said - you have better things to do with your time.

Why should we trust a leader to set a player as idle when they are not informing immortals now that they have characters whom are botting?[/quote:14h2avxi]

It’s a mindset.. it’s become accepted or at least tolerated, and the more it happens, I guess others just think “well if they can, why shouldn’t I” and so it goes.. Nepotism might have something to do with it too.. You’re quite right though Splork in your comment above, but hey, it’s something proactive and maybe it will help change the current mindset that going afk/botting is accepted.. which it shouldn’t be.

I think I just confused myself. ( O)(o )

After talking with Splork for a while, I came to understand that I misinterpretted a few things. For instance, when I hear the phrase ‘demo them’ I think ungroup, push, forget about them… standard pkill type stuff. Demo loots, dude is screwed.

It turns out, this is not intended to be quite so cruel. After you kill them, you should rescue and raise them. This encourages them to be slightly more attentive…. chance of shock and whatnot.

I’m reluctant to full out screw someone, so I don’t tend to go that route. The rescue and raise thing is kinda better though. I might start trying that.

Debunking botting….

Aint gonna happen.

[quote:36hs8b0c]So, how’s this sound - if the idle flag is set:

you get no xp
you get no split
you don’t autoloot, nor can you use “get”
people protecting you succeed 100%[/quote:36hs8b0c]

The only way the above would work, is:

a: wait_state(60) after each command.

b: if(idle(ch)) no commands parsed except chat and un-idle cmd.

Now then without a or b:

Five(x) people flag as idle, have a low level lead, give orders to the idle botters.

Boom. You now have a power leveling frenzy, in which 1 person gets xp

and loot, while the rest do the work, and are idle (flagged by leader). And

here I thought this was the exact reason xp chains were removed.

Are the idle people removed from group_gain entirely, allowing those

who are in the group to have a larger share in the xps (in this case,

botting is promoted again, as long as the leader flags you as idle). Or

does isle take the xps out of the total, but the idle xps is not accounted

for to the group, lessening the whole experience net gain by idle(x).

Either way it allows for a shortcoming to the xps, the prior less then the

latter though. Ditto with gold.

This is brilliant. So short of the idle flag actively recalling the now idle person

this leaves much to assume. So unless you physically add about 200

exceptions to interpreter.c (which is a small hassle), your giving free

reign to those who would knowingly bot, and would now let them get

away with it, provided they get nothing in return? Obviously an idle

person who was afk (by the game or by the leader), would have no

reason to have use of ANY of the commands in the interpreter, except

possibly rent and save.

Option 2: Monitor input of key strokes, to see who is there and who is

not. While almost viable, it is not. Merely stating a reverse of mxp that

checks for keystrokes is a keylogger, this would be in bad form for a

mud of any caliber to allow. The mud merely interprets the data sent,

(correct me if Im wrong), but it really doesn’t distinguish between data

sent from the keyboard or from the client. So short of a true client side

check, the data is just that, data, and the mud works with it. And lets

face it, anything that allows checks and balances from the client side

that is physically connected to the mud’s inner core IS breachable.

Option 2.5: F-secure method. Reversed mxp keylogger, but on a secure

client side configuration. Great. Now the mud-box has to fuss with the

encryption and decryption of data being received, and sent, meanwhile,

theres that 20 person group in on SS to consider. Meaning a bigger cpu

and more flops to get used. Also more lag, whee.

Option 3: Allow only raw telnet access. No one would play unless players

were allowed to add a limited amount of actions, substitutes and counters

into their pfile (this would require pfile support and in game coding to pull

off). Once again. Unlikely, because its forcing players to have no options

except the ones you give them. Players usually dont like this. Players like

options. Unless of course they live in a dictatorship…oh wait…nm.

Option 4: Design a Sloth only client, which disallows certain instances of

actions were pliable. Wintin.net comes close, but still allows for some huge

and hellacious scripts to be written to bot like there is no tomorrow. Then

again, unless something cool comes out of it, players again arent given

choices on what they like client wise, wintin, zmud, tintin or which ever.

(not like anyone uses telnet with any gusto).

Option 5: Nothing changes, status quo remains mute. Players will bot,

and the immortals wont care unless the moon is blue and someone gets

caught with their scripts in action.

Ok, so idle person gets no exp as discussed, but make it so the rest of the group just gets the normal exp as if the idle person was still there, that way it cant be abused.. furthermore, it would actually encourage the leader to ungroup the idle person if they were idle too long, as it’s wasting exp that the rest of the group could benefit from otherwise… sound like a good plan?

In circlemud there is a built in function that tells the imms how much time has passed since each player entered a command, I imagine the same function is available in Dikumud. How about that function being used to put up a flag against a player (Idle 1, Idle 2 etc) who hasn’t touched the keyboard in a minute so the group leader can more easily spot botters and deal with it according case by case.

Dennis

Hmm, I shall now go look up circle mud code.

Notorious Bots:

Turbo

Charsi

Apollo

Nomic

Adam

Merlin

Impz

Sarge

[quote:2ejvntyo]

Five(x) people flag as idle, have a low level lead, give orders to the idle botters.

Boom. You now have a power leveling frenzy, in which 1 person gets xp

and loot, while the rest do the work, and are idle (flagged by leader). And

here I thought this was the exact reason xp chains were removed.

[/quote:2ejvntyo]

Yes, of course we wouldn’t allow this. The xp share of the idlers would just go away. The gold share would not go away. If you want to power-gold some newbie, you could just, you know, give him a bunch of gold.

Also, if an imm notices a group full of people with the idle flag set, we would tell the leader to cut it out. You still aren’t allowed to bot; but if the idle flag is set we would view it as not such a big deal, since you aren’t benefitting yourself.

[quote:2ejvntyo]Option 2: Monitor input of key strokes, to see who is there and who is

not. While almost viable, it is not. Merely stating a reverse of mxp that

checks for keystrokes is a keylogger, this would be in bad form for a

mud of any caliber to allow. The mud merely interprets the data sent,

(correct me if Im wrong), but it really doesn’t distinguish between data

sent from the keyboard or from the client. So short of a true client side

check, the data is just that, data, and the mud works with it. And lets

face it, anything that allows checks and balances from the client side

that is physically connected to the mud’s inner core IS breachable. [/quote:2ejvntyo]

We’re in line mode; we can’t monitor keystrokes anyway. We can only monitor lines. We aren’t going to change that, which does away with most of your other options.

It is a common thing on these boards for people to assume that we will implement something in the most idiotic way possible. We usually don’t.

Heres my point. Killing a bot then spending my mana to raise them is pretty counterproductive in my mind. I have to waste mana to kill them, then waste mana to raise them. Hell I never knew we could pk bots or I woulda been whoopin ass a long time ago. I better never hear anything from an immortal cuz im gonna start knockin heads. Heed this warning, bot in my group and die.

Mike

:twisted: excellent

[quote:3l41sexq]Heres my point. Killing a bot then spending my mana to raise them is pretty counterproductive in my mind. I have to waste mana to kill them, then waste mana to raise them. Hell I never knew we could pk bots or I woulda been whoopin ass a long time ago. I better never hear anything from an immortal cuz im gonna start knockin heads. Heed this warning, bot in my group and die.

Mike[/quote:3l41sexq]

ROFL! KILL’EM ALL!

Cry Havoc, and let free the Dogs of Botkilling!

Pk’ing bots is likely the only way they could stop bot’s.

Detecting and timing the commands that the mud receives from a player doesn’t help, most of us have clients that automatically send 5 - 10 commands per fight anyway.

Regarding the pkilling (demo trip) for bots, I agree with Medios that this is a waste of time and mana. Rather than that, I’d just recall the person and tell Splork that we caught the person botting in a group. The bot likely loses 5 levels, and your group continues to cycle.

Myself, I’ve always preferred to just recall the bot / afk person and send them a tell to rejoin when they are ready to play. I don’t often lead, but I do often recall people who don’t fix protects. I’ve often borrowed a recall before a fight, then used it immediately to recall someone. Then I ask the person above if HE is ready to fix protects. You don’t have to be the leader to use recall scrolls, and most groups will applaud when you recall someone who’s obviously not paying attention.

Now I’m thinking that this whole idle-flagging system we were talking about really just duplicates the effect of a recall, so why bother. The only benefit of it over a recall I can see is that it gives the leader some timer that lets him see how long he has thought this person is idle… but not fixing protects is also a pretty good indicator there.

Does anybody see some benefit to the idle-flag system I had talked about over the current system of no code support at all, but the leader can recall the bot?

One of the main things imho was taking away exp from those who don’t deserve it.. if idle flag can do that and a leader can set it while not messing up protect chain then maybe a good idea.. if the culprit continues to be afk, then they can take time to stop and recall them and have group fix protects when it is convenient.

Perhaps this discussion alone has raised awareness enough to have players be a bit more honest about it in future though.

I say don’t waste the time on the bot system, and just let us kill the bots :evil:

[quote:1h79ajde]messing up the prot system[/quote:1h79ajde]

after recalling a bot, I like to encourage the people to fix prots.

Splork and I have difering opinions on this. Then again, I have my own views on almost everything. We seem to agree that it depends on the leader more than anything. We also seem to agree that anyone who would use such a thing is already either recalling, pkilling or simply disallowing bots from their groups.