Zyrxae

It's an interesting idea, but I'm not quite sure I get the concept behind it. Viscosity is currently determined by the freshness/recency of human movement through the lands. Yet doesn't taking a land's resources also acknowledge human presence in a land? Why shouldn't harvesting resources lower viscosity? Does it seem reasonable that a land could retaliate against people for tapping its fruits? So only land members could decrease the viscosity, but anyone could increase it. What is your conceptual—not your goal but the reasons behind it—basis for not having it the other way around, or only allowing land members to change viscosity, or allowing anyone to alter viscosity this way?

For the first tag, how about simply "Thief!" Anyone with the Thief! tag could be grabbed like a fugitive, as Kyphis suggested, although maybe their punishment shouldn't be jail but the pillory (movelock + throwable rotten tomatoes at Plains of Deceit) "Vigilante" (props to Soothing Sands) would be a good option for the tag of taking back stolen property, possibly including recovering other people's stolen property for them (player A steals from player B and runs away into Golemus, whereupon B asks C, who has GG loyalty, to go after A. C tracks down A and retrieves the stolen item, then returns it to B...or decides to keep it for theirself. The plot can simmer and thicken from there. No one, nadrolski: Make collecting tools—water buckets, candy boxes, herb baskets, etc—stealable shortly after they're grabbed. An expert thief (one with a high "borrowing" skill) might loiter in capitals around the reset and stand a(n un)fair chance of nabbing a tool while some poor citizen is trying to take it.

Samon, I guess I just don't like how RL-based that element of the gameplay is. DOM is an RPG inside an RPG, and it seems like the further nested you go, the less the outside world (irl timing) becomes important. If Players A and B have the same agility and strike player Z in the same phase, with player Z being killable by either of their strikes, roll a six-or twelve-sided die. If the result is odd, A gets the mod; if even, B gets it. If three players strike someone down at the same time, a roll of 1 or 2 gives A the kill, 3 or 4 goes to B, and 5 or 6 to C. In the highly unlikely case of four or more players killing someone at once, roll as above for A vs. B and C vs. D and roll the winners of those against each other until you're down to one.

On the one hand, teamwork is nice..on the other, it doesn't really seem fitting that one person could—hypothetically; this isn't a personal complaint—do the first 99 damage to a character, and then not just one but three other people could come in and get the mod. Why not settle things the old-fashioned way: ingame, with dice? Having Dan screenshot every roll for every kill might not be too much extra work (sorry Dan, at least I didn't kill you)...or better yet, we could trust our game master's word as to how the chips fell.

I've talked to Chewett and apparently the following reputation options are possible: • 'Like' system—what we currently have. You can now view who likes what posts, by the way; thanks Chew! • Positive and negative, transparent rep • Positive only, transparent rep—almost the same as the like system, but you have to click to view who liked what • Negative only, transparent rep • Positive and negative, opaque—what we used to have • Positive only, opaque • Negative only, opaque • No reputation system at all—means what it sounds like. Transparent means you can see how people have voted on posts; opaque means you can't. Options such as making negative but not positive votes transparent or vice versa aren't supported by the forum software. Some discussion has already taken place on this topic, but it's been over a month and people's opinions may have changed. Lastly: I have an opinion about this topic. If you consider this poll biased, say so and we can go from there. A tiebreaker poll could be used in case of a runoff, but that may be unnecessary—we'll see.

Digging tunnels or fixing previously existing/sealed ones.

That sounds wonderful! I'm pretty sure I've messaged the majority of active people at least once in the past year (PMs last a year as of ann. 2153), so this would be a great way to contact pretty much anyone whenever! Wait a minute... (In all seriousness, this could be solved by having search-by-author only look through messages from, say, the past two months.)

Such a module may have been how the Flasks of Liquid Language used to work. If that's so, this could probably be functional. Imagine non-native English speaking players using an in-game item to translate for them. (Babelfish?!) Forum posts, Archives links, player profiles, and Youtube videos get automatically turned into hyperlinked red [Forum Post], [Archives Link], [Jester's Profile], and [Video Link], respectively, but sites literally outside the realm would lose out here, which may not be so bad after all. Edit: Storenow and the wikia could use this type of link; right now they don't get any special treatment.

The information in Ann. 1200 seems to still be accurate regarding stage II and rewards. Not sure if you're suggesting doing so, but stating all rules of the contest--rewards, stage II requirement, and all prohibited locations on the contest page feels spoilery and generally un-MDish to me, although it seems fitting enough to have an official list of off-limits spots should challenges occur, as they're wont to do. Part of the fun of the heads contest, from what I've remembered and heard recently, comes in trying to guess when Stage II will come and what the rewards will be. Maybe something like: "If you're not sure if a location is off-limits, ask someone older than you whether it is, and in the meantime, don't go there. A good rule of thumb is that if you could walk somewhere on your own when you were Mindpower 3, it's probably fine to be there. For other places, ask, and people will assume good faith." That said.. Locations, -/+: - Sage's Keep Interior is readily accessible enough that HC competitors shouldn't have a problem entering it. It's also a sanctuary. - Fort Inneryard is now open to the public, not sure if it's a sanctuary. + Storm Docks and Storm Ferry (they're right there on the map, not much of a spoiler there) + normally inaccessible Necrovion locations (sevenish that I can think of) + Marind's balcony (ghosts need their privacy) + The Sunny Bedroom + the Dominion. It would be interesting to see the stats rewards scaled as either a percentage of winners' current stats or based on their score or some combination thereof...but that's for a different topic.

Good idea, MRAlyon. —— Very minor copy-editing, mostly adding apostrophes, and updated to reflect VorniC's correction and information from Anns. 1384 and 2375— [spoiler]What is this? This is a CONTEST! First 4 of each group will get a prize consisting of a stats, skill and credits boost and a head trophy medal! First place gets a gold heads medal. What are trophy heads? Every fourth month this contest starts and each player of mindpower 4 or 5 starts receiving Trophy Heads. You can see how many trophy heads a player has in their detail panel when you click their name. If the player has trophy heads you will see a dark dragon head with a number next to it; if that player has no heads, you won't see anything there. How you get heads? Every time you win against a player you get a head from him. If you are VICTORIOUS (read rules when a fight makes you victorious or just winner) you get ALL the enemy heads. While in sanctuary you can attack other players holding heads. If you have no creatures to defend yourself, anybody who attacks you will get all your heads. How is the top calculated? The top is calculated based on your heads score and the heads score is calculated based on your total trophy heads and your online time you spent while having those heads. The score increases from time to time (one score count at about 15-60min, random) with an amount proportional to your head count and only if you are online and in a location where you can fight. Heads get increased only for online players. Players that are not online will lose 5% of score on each count and 50% of their current heads. In stage two of the contest you have to stay online and hold the heads in a predefined location announced on the newslog when the second stage begins. What is stage II of the contest? When one player in each group reaches a certain amount of heads, stage II of the contest comes in. During this stage players can get score only in predefined locations on the map, making it a constant war for anyone trying to hold the heads. This stage is the final stage before the winners are decided and lasts just 24 hours. Because of the penalty a high count of heads gives and the large amount of heads collected in one big ball, during this stage any player has a chance to rapidly increase their score and get in top positions. This is the final decisive round of the contest, but no one says that you have to fight it to win the contest, any strategy is allowed including running away with the heads to prevent others from getting a very high score, it's up to you. What other thing must I know? Each head brings a temporary penalty to the holder making it more difficult to keep them a longer time and increase score. The players with most heads hide in remote locations, go hunt them and take their trophies, don't let them keep the heads too long and gather a high score, they won't come to you, you must hunt them! Also know that you won't get score while in sanctuary areas or inside areas where you can't be attacked. Players that won such a contest once won't be able to win it again, they will appear gray and struck through in the list, and they will not get heads when winning fights against other players holding heads. If for some reason a player will be able to play and win the contest again and make for a medal that time too, they will get a gold heads medal.[/spoiler] I'd add somewhere: To place in the contest, you must have at least 2000 points at the end of Stage II, no matter your ranking relative to the other players. Still wondering: - Did Ann. 1865 invalidate the underlined portion above? - "The more heads you have the more dificult is to hold them because of the temporary skill handicap they give during a fight." —from the normal HC announcement. My heads contest was a year ago; did any recent participants happen to notice anything that might fit this description, either on their profile page or during fights?

Sorry for the previous wording— Creature totems are currently transferable only via ITC, the same as shared tools. Although I haven't tested it, I assume that snowperson totems are also transferable by ITC, thus bypassing the long-standing need to wait for melting season to sell snowmen. (Since totems can't be opened yet, it's hard to test this completely.) To keep snowmen 'special', totems of morphed (frozen) ones could be rendered so that only their creators could re-open the totem. The totem would be an ingredient in the melting process described above. The recipe's product? One snowball creature totem. This way, totems can't be used as a workaround to trade something normally not tradeable, and people could either melt their own snowpeople using the cauldron recipe or give/sell the frozen totems to someone else so that they could do the same.

Although I've logged a huge amount of text in MD so far, I always thought it was a little strange to be able to do so. Not being able to copy and paste chat seems more naturalistic, since we're not all running around with sound recorders or scribbling everything everyone says into a notebook. If we end up not being able to copy chat, acousticremains (which does make sense in-world since it's a spell) would probably become more sought after..

Here's hoping that snowpeople receive a "melted? y/n" key upon totemization, and that frozen ones are untranferrable even by ITC. This way, a totemized frozen snowperson could be an ingredient in a recipe as Maebius suggests. I'd say this is more an example of excess Light hastening a natural cyclic process for entropic purposes. (This is a great example of light being much more entropic than syntropic!) Naturally the actual process would involve a very large amount of heat..good thing we have jars for that. Some sort of containment would have to be devised for the snowperson so that it wouldn't leak during the melting. To ensure that the snowperson heats evenly (if some parts heat faster than others, there could be a significant buildup of steam within the container even as parts were still frozen; the pressure exerted by the steam on the container could cause it to explode and leak water vapor into the air, resulting in a much smaller snowperson once re-slushed and re-formed), a stick/Sculpting Paddle could be inserted into the container whereby those assisting in the melting could stir around poor Fritz or Betty. I'm picturing something like a butter churn, but maybe expandable (made of specially treated skin? Skin comes from grasans, which expand regularly..) and with a hole for the stirring stick.

I used to imagine that dst kept a fantastic, organized record of every item and creature transferred since the logs (and especially the automated Trading Inquisitors) were implemented, and that she had written a program to sift through the data and inform her who wasn't whose alt and who had spent a suspiciously long time not trading with/attacking/casting spells on whom. (The sheer size of a log of all battles leads me to doubt its existence, but the other logs are fair game.) That is, a synthesis of "admin tools" (and MDA logs) aside from the actual alt-checker could theoretically yield a de facto alt checker. But the longer I spend in MD, the easier it gets to spot people's mannerisms, and I agree with Rhaegar that if a person's accounts don't act like separate people, they shouldn't expect to be treated as such. Nicola had every right to form her own opinions of dst's words or actions, but dst also has the right to spot similarities between Nicola's words and Phantom Orchid's—and, rude as it may be, to speak freely of her suspicions. Knowing full well that while dst and No one are not alts, they're close enough friends that they often act in tandem, Phantom Orchid posted what she considered to be a humorous jibe on No one's public log. This was just one splat of mud in a war that increasingly seems like it won't end with anything short of either the banning of each of the involved parties from all of MD on alternating weeks for back-and-forth violations of the harassment rule, or with one or more of said parties leaving the realm entirely.

What's the significance behind this function and mds_is_ctc being designed to return the owner's UID but not their name? It's simple enough to manually find someone's name from their UID, so spoilers/secrets wouldn't seem to be an issue.

Thanks, guys. Been wanting to vent that way for a while. ..Not to derail this topic even more, but one of the nice aspects of a transparent reputation system is that you can express your opinion of a post without obligating the poster to respond on the topic. To make up for veering offtopic: those of you who for whatever reason don't want to watch the video can listen to the audio, which does not relate to ponies.

The catch-all: "We require all posts to be positive, constructive, and on topic." If this were enforced more often, it could get invasive, but that doesn't seem to be much of a problem here. Pissing off your boss isn't illegal, and neither is pissing off people on the forum. But it seems like some people do the latter for sport—they gain their pleasure by siphoning off that of others, daimon/elemental-like. If you decide to target "strong" or "random", fine. Fight the system or rebel without a cause, fine by me. It's when you go for "weak" or "dying" that I'd draw the line.

This topic reminds me of this. Sometimes the reverse is true: those in a position to answer newbies’ questions perform triage—they attend first to the questions of those most likely to leave MD for good if their questions aren’t resolved quickly and leave oldbies’ queries for later. Wouldn’t it also be fun to never find out? I still believe Innocence is a unique person, not because the evidence says so but because it can be nice to not read into everything for a change, to accept people as being who they say they are. How so? I am fascinated by the extent to which you base your assumptions of others’ motives off your own experiences/beliefs. (Everyone does this somewhat to varying degrees; you seem to do it very often.) See Maebius’ and Amber’s posts on althood for accounts of other “types”; they’re maybe the most encouraging part of this thread so far. Being told you're not you can really be dispiriting. I came back to MD the December before last and still faced this in August. Worst is that althood can never be disproved, only proven, save by the authorities. (At least things like "Here's a sawdust, now go pass it to Person X to prove you're not their alt. If you say no, then you're definitely alts, because why else would you refuse to do it?" don't seem to happen too often.) You hadn’t been asked because you established your return on the forum before [I saw you] interacting much ingame. Since multiple accounts aren’t allowed on the forum, it’s a great—but not foolproof—tool/sticky giveaway for determining whether someone is an alt. On the flipside, it’s all the more reason to introduce oneself on the forum upon [re-]entering MD. I can’t answer that, but attitudes toward Magistra such as the above can’t have helped much. Overall: I’m torn between agreeing with Menhir that one should not expect even intrinsic reward for freely helping others and acknowledging that LHOs and newbie helpers are human, and thus have limited time and effort to expend showing newbies around. We must find a balance between retaining new players and leaving open the opportunity for old players to explore the realm free of others’ preconceptions. Maybe LHOs could encourage newbies to post a greeting/background on the forum, because the guessing game shows few signs of stopping any time soon.

I agree with John on this one, despite the often-torturous load-time for creatures--this makes creatures feel more like factory-farmed minions and less like extensions of our own minds. Constructively, Why not just have an option for creatures to display as static images rather than flash objects? It seems that the delays come from Flash, which is used to process how faded each creature should appear based on its health, so using static images (maybe 3 images for each creature level--1 for full vitality, 1 for approximately half vit, and 1 for almost dead/dead) could convey almost the same information faster than the 'normal' view. Maybe it's presumptuous of me to dictate the light in which others should view their creatures, but the above seems to me like a fairer compromise between efficiency and mood than the technically expedient but (in my view) soulless method devised here.

Some more

I saw a version of this some years back, balked at the length, then skimmed it for the end. It wasn't very satisfying, but I laughed a bit at the thought of the poor sops who read the whole thing only to be suckered by the corny punchline. This time I scrolled down to check the punch line to see if this was the same story I'd 'read' before. It was, and this time I decided to read the whole thing. (For those on the fence about taking the time to read it, do. It's decently written and just might make you think.) The joke had been on me the first time around. Knowing the ending beforehand freed me to enjoy the journey. So what, it ends with a bad pun? The fun for me as a reader (and I'd like to think for the author, too) came in getting there, and no amount of wacky wordplay can ruin that.

WOW good point. Incentives are such hard things to do right. I assume the moderators would award a warning to each person they decide has caused a topic to descend into flame wars, thereby decreasing the incentive for [a group to gang up to force-close a topic, knowing that only one person among them would be punished].

While I like how BMMO voting encourages votes for MD rather than just clicks on the red links, the silver gift boxes seem fairly fighting-oriented thus far. Would it upset the balance terribly if individual resources (water, lumber, dusts, etc) were to be made available in that shop for several gold apiece? Or would it be better for the flow of items within the realm for things that come from outside MD to be labeled as such, as spellstones were in the past and giftboxes are now? Alos, been wondering: is Top Online MMORPG just a near-clone of BMMO but without the rewards, or did it at one time/could its shop (through which voters can amass 'gold' at the same rate as BMMO) contain rewards akin to BMMO's?