Re: Imm switch.

From: Danhiel Baker (dbaker@harpo.dev.uga.edu)
Date: 03/15/94


VampLestat explains:
| On Tue, 15 Mar 1994, Brett C Helgeson wrote:
| > 	I know someone posted the code that enables you to decide if
| > the person who is about to immort, can immort or can't.
| 
| I cant recall if I posted a bit of code about this or not.  What I added 
| was a simple if check that doesn't advance a player if it would make them 
| immortal.  Its in the routine that checks to see if they have gained a 
| level and then advances them.
| 
| Thus if you want a player to become immortal, you just advance them with 
| the god command.  
| 
| _O_  Ryan L. Watkins                                     vamp@csulb.edu
|  |   Academic Computing Services Cal State Long Beach - Network Support
|  |   pgp key available via 'finger vamp@beach.csulb.edu' or key server

I'm just curious what ppls feelings are towards those players that earn
the exp to Immort but do not wish to.  I personally see little "good"
coming out of such characters - generally they tend to just stick around
and help level their friends and otherwise increase the levels/day rate
of the mud, IMO.  However, I'm not sure what can be done about this.  There
are plenty of ppl eager to make "Killer Areas" to attempt to challenge
these players, but most of the time this ends up being a stat game, where
it doesn't matter how clever the player or area is, but rather who has
the best equip and stats.  And of course the area must have really q00l
and nifty items to tempt the "career mortals" into a life-threatening
situation... and unless you've got *true* item limits, soon enough all
of those 'risk-your-life-for' items start trickling through the
MUD at all levels, as the highest-levs already have a full set of it
and can't use the spare... so not only are they more likely to be able
to "take" that "death area" again, they are now better equiped *AND* they
won't need the equip they get from this run... it's not worth their
while to sell at the shops (not enough money/price too low) so they
auction it or give it to someone who couldn't normally even hope to get 
it...

Anyway, I think you see the (paranoia-induced??) cycle I'm getting at.
At least if the player goes immort you've got a degree of control over
how they affect the mud (so as to keep them from overbalancing it) and
perhaps can steer them towards being productive (coding/questing/building/
whatever).  I have strong feelings on this, but I'm not really sure what
the proper response to the problem is.

*RESTRICT_lev flags on items, so you must be over a certain lev to use it?
*Have lev 25+s that die more than 'X' times die permanantly (or lose con,
or such)?  
*Making items REALLY limited seems like a terribly good solution in my 
opinion, though this means more areas (with trinket-items IMO, to keep interest 
up) are needed in order to keep everyone searching for something new 
and useful.  
*Allowing players to have items 'custom-fit' at a price so that only
they can wear/use the item, and so it'll have a slight chance of being 
improved (either removing/lessening a bad 'A'pply modifier, or adding 
a little to apply_ac or apply_toHit/toDam).  Hmm...yet another complicated
idea that grows on me the more I ponder it.  There could be 'tailors' and
'craftspersons' with various specialities in different areas, and perhaps
paying more could increase the chance of an improvement(items that are of
superior quality/stats to begin with would be harder to improve than normal
or shoddy ones).  The object structure would require changing to allow for
short descriptions to be saved, so that 'tailored_<playername>' could be
added and would save.  IMO items would only be tailorable once, and 
certainly not by other characters if allowed multiple times.  Jeremy has
already mentioned upgrading the number of 'A'pply fields on objs from 2
to 6 in v3.0, so allowing the program to tack on an extra 'A 14 10' to
a tailored pair of boots to add 10 mv points when worn would be easy, as
would be changing an existing 'A 2 -2' to 'A 2 -1' on a tailored breast
late so that it only subtracts 1 from the wearers dex (each of these
simulates greater mobility due to a near-perfect fit) [also note that
the apply-fields *are* saved in the player_obj files, so these changes
will be permanant like they should - making room for one additional
field (the 'tailored for' field, or an empty extra descript used as 
such - the keyword list would be the 'tailored_derkhil' field, while the
extra description itself would remain blank) would be necessary though].
The 'wear' procedure would have to be modified to not keep a pc/mob from
wearing someone elses tailored items [though another implementation of
this could be to just change one of the 'apply' fields to a 'custom'
field, and then only let that bonus apply when worn by the correct
person as named in the 'tailored-for' field, and could even have the
*opposite* of the bonus applied to the wrong users (ie, -10 mv for wearing
the boots above if not the correct player)].  Heck, it's got possibilities,
though it'll take alot of coding.  If anyone would like, I'll put together
a chart of what obj types/wear locations could receive what bonuses/negate
what minuses if 'customized' (which should extend to weapons, obviously!)
*Make sure that exp is split in a group based on player_lev/max_levs_in_
group.  Possibly remove/lessen the 'extra' percentage of exp a player
earns for killing a much higher level mob if they average lev in the group
is higher than the players lev (and especially if average_lev>mob_lev!)
*One 'general note' - make sure that career 30s can't "transfer exp" to
lower lev characters by removing all equip and allowing some lower lev
mob to kill them repeatedly, said mob later being killed by the low lev
player. Yes, this can happen on some Diku versions, and I watched/stopped
players trying this while an Imp on Shine. *cringe, puke*


Hmmm... I think that meets my 'mindless drivel' quota for the day.  I'm
not sure whether I should count the customized items bit towards my quota
total or not... ;)  If anyone wishes to pursue that idea let me know and
I'll help out if ya need/want me to...

- Danny 

+--------------------------------------->
| Danhiel Baker // Derkhil CatSpawn         /) /)     Fade away
| dbaker@harpo.dev.uga.edu                 ( o o )    into the
| dbaker@jb.ucns.uga.edu                    = x =     ethereal grey...
| Work: 542-0123  Pager: 369-2781          m     m    
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