Kafuuka

The history of slaves is not a monochrome thing. There have been times where slaves were better of then free men and times when slavery involved lots of early deaths. One of the factors is the worth of a slave. If you have paid a royal sum for your slave, you will not let them die of starvation. Slaves have even been put in charge over entire households. Considering the price mentioned (which we're probably not to take literally), it is likely that she will be worse off free. I always envisioned MD at least as harsh as the real world and there are a lot of people in the real world whose quality of life would increase a thousandfold by becoming slaves to a king. - This is not a defense of slavery but an observation on the existence of the 3rd and 4th world. - Furthermore, if a female member of the family would supervise the household, any and all 'feminist' motives to support freedom are void. [quote name='Asterdai' date='24 August 2009 - 03:40 AM' timestamp='1251078016' post='40138'] Do you not think she belongs to the daughter of the Rajj, as a commodity of the family? [/quote] Why the daughter? The family has more members to choose from. If you assume he is alive, she is not a commodity of the family. One or more members of the family temporarily takes charge of managing his possessions, including slaves, yet they remain his commodities until he returns or proof of his dead is discovered. In the latter case, there is the very painful option of sending her to the next world, to continue serving her true owner there, assuming that he is dead. Or the more humane option of dividing the inheritance.

[quote name='(Zl-eye-f)-nea' date='25 June 2009 - 11:37 AM' timestamp='1245922664' post='34770'] IF success is the achievement of a goal, then at minimum following must be considered: What is a goal? Do we know of the goal? and who made the goal? [/quote] 1. Do we know the goal? Obviously, if we want to be aware of the success, we need to be aware of the goal. Unless awareness is somehow part of the goal, being aware of it does not change whether the goal has been met. I would say that success can exist even if we do not know the goal. 2. Who made the goal? Any person, creature, object or even a concept. We can ascribe goals and perceived success to everything. You could argue that it is us, humans, who invented the goal, but if you agree on 1, then it is not required for the thing having the goal to be aware (of the goal). Without the thing, we would never have thought of its goal, so we did not make it entirely by ourselves. Causality? 3. What is a goal? A set of conditions to be made reality OR a set of conditions never to be made reality. A goal should have either the property of being easily verified if it has been met (success), OR being easily verified that it has become impossible to meet it (failure). It can have both and if you don't believe in infinity, I suppose it always has both. If you disagree on either 1 or 2, you will probably have to add other properties. I doubt you could do without this one though. [quote name='aero' date='23 August 2009 - 10:11 AM' timestamp='1251015065' post='40026'] Success is whatever you want or need it to be. Therefore everything could be a success depending on how you perceive the outcome. Success is a mental construct. Nothing more. [/quote] You could easily extend this reasoning to everything and then you arrive at solipsism. And it is my belief that solipsism should be either ignored or have its own thread.

Everybody tries it ad random first I guess, so it's no surprise some people actually find it that way and do so rather quickly. Some people do win the lottery at their first time playing it, others don't win even after the thousandth attempt. In my case, after solving it a new tab is opened, with the text "Alert, if you solved the puzzle[...]". If there is no pop up, alert, new tab or new window, check your browser settings and plugins? Blocking popups is quite a common feature due to the abundance of pop up spam.

@dst: I haven't noticed any changes in quality nor quantity in the past 200 days. This thread may have appeared recently, the godmodding has existed for a long time. @sparrhawk: "as their role or mind power or actual strength develops" This statement can be interpreted in many ways, one of them being 'at mind power 4, you get an awesome new option for sparkly blue text, called *I cast pown mp3 nooblet*. imo All characters should have a weakness, and the more special powers you have, the more special weaknesses you should have, be it silver or women (i figure those are the most popular weaknesses atm). If at mp3 you decide your weaknesses are silver and women, and you grind a lot and at when you are finally mp6 some new mp3 comes along and it happens to be a woman in a silver bikini... you're screwed. "the player who is actually stronger" just try and make a list ranking all players according to their 'strength' in RP fights. Some characters are smart, others are physically strong, or skilled, some have lots of friends... If my character, a human, were to attack one of the werewolves in the realm, trying to use force alone, he'd die in two lines of chat. Obviously he does not do try it. Being slightly paranoid, he would at the very least carry a silver sword, silver chainmail, a stack of silver crossbow bolts and a bag of silver powder. He'd probably be exhausted because of the burden long before entering the lair too. Not wanting to loose... you should think about that before initiating a RP fight. Obviously someone has got to loose and it is unlikely the other person will want to if you were the one to suddenly initiate a fight. There are no rules about who wins, although I suspect people will consider yielding if the role play was consistent and at least one move was really funny or amazing. Although perhaps we should ask for a new chat function '!roll' to generate a random number; whoever roles higher wins; no retries. And one more thing that puzzles me: what do you do after you win a RP fight? Do you kill the other one and then resurrect him/her? If you are sparring, there shouldn't be such a reluctance to loose, if you are making it life or death, you will have problems every single time you meet the other person in the future. In general I'm not too fond of RP fights, I prefer games were everybody has fun, not where 50% have to loose and swallow their pride.

I always wanted more papers, so I am signing up. ID:114145 you can probably find me idling at the berserkers' way; my profile page is currently used for other purposes... [quote]The quests must be created using available abilities allready owned by the quest creator (no other tools/abilities will be provided). The rewards can be from the things allready owned (items,creatures,coins,tips,other) or aquired by agreements with current RPCs.[/quote] Do we have to offer a reward? The old quest I have running and the ones I was designing were supposed to be fun enough to be their own reward. Never had any complaints (you can read the quote both ways, and it never hurts to check)

Now that you mentioned fate and without going into a debate on fate, determinism and free will.. Consider the butterfly effect: a minor action changes another minor decision later and that one changes a larger decision and such until the entire future changes. Throughout ones life one makes an immeasurable amount of small and large decisions. Each decision we make influences other peoples future, the choices and decisions they will have later on and which will again influence us. A simple choice might lead to two entirely different futures and both of those futures will have choices of their own and will split again and again. (for the sake of simplicity I will ignore the possibility that two branches join again; there to be different paths that lead to the same future) If we take a human, this process will end with the human dying in all branches. Sometimes early, sometimes after a long life, but in all branches the human will die. We can then look at all branches and ask the question: which ones were success and which weren't? We would probably look at the happiness of the person in each branch and thus order them from most happy to most unhappy and give them a number. Going back to the beginning, look at the first time the path splits, and for each possibility, determine the average, deviation, minimum and maximum of all subsequent branches sprouting from that choice. What would you consider the best decision, the one with the highest average, the highest minimum or the highest maximum? Or the smallest deviation? [b]If[/b] you want to divide success into small steps, I suggest each of the decisions to have a small quantum of success or failure, although it is still subjective in that it is related to a final goal: being happy. You'll have to debate on which criteria make a decision better: average, max gain, least loss? You could assign weight inverse to the number of subsequent decisions... Of course in practice this is all random and perhaps even depressing. example: ................start .................| ..............3/.\4,5 ............../...\ ............./\....\ ............/..\2...\ .........4/....\.....\ ........./...../.\....|\ ......../\.....|..|....|.\ .......6.2...1..3..4..5 is going left or right at the first branch better? If you keep going left, you arrive at the best outcome, but if you go right the first time, you'll never end up at a very bad one.

Obviously godmodding not in the least because they fail to state actions as intentions and give people the opportunity to react. I've put funny comments on that behavior in my papers long ago and I've seen others with similar remarks. You are godmodding if: a. Your characters' powers aren't just above average, but so far above average that average looks like a the sun at several light years away: a tiny dot. b. You decide what happens to other peoples characters. This includes not giving them the opportunity to react to things any sane person would do, like a sword being thrusted at them... think about it: would you stay still waiting until it's plunged deep between your ribs, or would you at least try to dodge it? And mind that it's not the first time they're threatened, they won't freeze due to shock. There is one word in the above explanation that can be annoying: average. I really dislike the idea that the majority is right and am more inclined to believe that the majority is a bunch of selfish idiots unable to comprehend the implications of game theory and suboptimal solutions. Luckily we don't have to refer to the players but can look at the AL. I haven't read the entire thing, but how often does a character use their power in it? To me it looks like the realm is filled with powerful magics but the average player is far from controlling it. Instead magic happens to them, for better or worse. Or we could look at the game mechanics: there are spells to temporarily weaken others, silence them... but no instant kill fireball. As for people roleplaying demons, werewolves or vampires... some of them would have to think a bit about the MD cosmology. The sun almost never sets and the moon isn't visible often. But what annoys me most is people that say "my character is a demon" and that's it. If I were to say my character is a human, does that define him? If I were to compare character design to sculpting, determining the race is like choosing your block of marble from a quarry. It is an important step, since if you choose a small stone you'll never end up with a big statue, but if you never take up the hammer you'll end up with a block of raw marble... I think people should be free to choose their race, even if it doesn't occur naturally in MD. When you first start to play this game, you know next to nothing of the realm and it is difficult, almost impossible, to design a character that grew up in this world. The AL does not cover the last century, and one would think that events of less than 100 years ago would still be taught to children growing up inside the realm. This makes it very tempting to have a character that comes from another realm and is (forced to) exploring MD. The question is "why do people play raw blocks of black demon marble?" I fear the answer is "because demons are powerful." Because if they play a demon they can get away with having powers... Similarly I have noticed some people think that being a higher mp level gives them the right to role play silly powers. What do I feel about RP at the moment? 1. godmodders are annoying. 2. people should learn the difference between IN and OUT OF CHARACTER. 3. there's way to much OOC. OOC is infectious: you tell something OOC and someone else has a comment on that and then you need to reply again and before you know it the entire chat is filled with OOC. We have all at some point been guilty of this crime sadly.

Refreshing doesn't seem to work in this case and using page up/down only works if I open the frame in a separate tab. It's not that difficult to work around this bug, but that doesn't mean everyone knows it or looks at the forum for it. I guess this is the most frustrating part of browser games: getting it to look the same on all browsers available.

The ongoing quest page doesn't show properly in swiftweasel (firefoxlike) anymore now that there are more quests listed there. It's all there in the html source, but at some point it gets cut of. It's not difficult to read it there for me, but it might not be the obvious solution for other people. And for sake of completeness: Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope for amd64. [img]http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/7559/screenshotzeb.png[/img]

Quantum teleportation works on particles and uses a trick. If two particles are entangled, actions on one particle directly influence the second particle as well, regardless of distance and not caring about lightspeed. What is seldom mentioned are the conditions for two particles to be/become entangled. So far I have only encountered examples where particles became entangled while they were at close proximity and then were dragged away several kilometers, while remaining entangled and then experimented upon to test teleportation and such. From this I gather a couple of flaws in upscaling quantum teleportation. You must make your entangled particles locally and send them to your teleportation destination before you can teleport there. The only thing that has been entangled so far were particles. Of course you can build molecules with them and in theory a human being... it's just that you would have to be destroyed here and recreated at your destination, which is quite a disturbing idea. The wonderful thing about SF/Fantasy is that they only care about internal consistency. Given the principle of transposition and signatures, the TTD theory seems sound to me. And it doesn't require being destroyed at atomic level, definitely a plus. Although the plasma bit scares me too. Nitpicking: As for gravity having influence on electromagnetism, it does that, but in a very indirect way. Since energy equals mass, everything is influenced by gravity; both particles and waves. Thus a charged particle floating in space, would be pulled towards another mass, resulting in a change of course and hence a change in the electromagnetic field. There is no fixed gravity-electromagnetism function though and large scale systems have a net charge of zero. (large being respective to atom and molecule distances, ie a millimeter is large in this case) Electricity does not cause magnetism... both are properties of electromagnetism and have the same photons as carriers. (Photons are electromagnetic waves, having equal amplitude for electric and magnetic field, but 90° phase difference and both fields are perpendicular to eachother and to the wave itself.)

[quote name='Numerius Felix' date='11 August 2009 - 02:56 AM' timestamp='1249952194' post='39178'] Eep, I'll have to keep thinking now. Slowness is unacceptable! Only one solution? I could swear there were infinitely many. [/quote] There definitely can't be more than 68 719 476 736.

[quote name='Numerius Felix' date='10 August 2009 - 09:51 PM' timestamp='1249933905' post='39163'] I've already solved the Gazebo, but to those who solved it with coded algorithms, is the puzzle P-complete? [/quote] I know an algorithm that is order n³ and it doesn't require jumps/breaks/continues, only simple loops. There is also only one solution for the puzzle, although it is possible for similar puzzles to have multiple solutions. Afaik that qualifies for P-complete.

[quote name='Udgard' date='10 August 2009 - 04:23 PM' timestamp='1249914224' post='39146'] IMO, caps are not that bad, even for veterans. Tokens are supposed to add a flavor and uniqueness to combat, not determine too huge a part of the fighting process, so a cap will reroute the strength-farming process to other methods than principle farming, such as the old stats-grinding method. I do like a dynamic cap system more than a fixed cap system though, where the cap is one that keeps on increasing based on things like, for one thing, age and active days, which would give people more value for perseverance, and works for the veterans. [/quote] to put it into maths: a fixed cap: A x / (1 + B x) dynamic cap: [ A x / (1 + B x) ] f(t) progressive: A ln (1 + B x) where x is principle value and t is age/active days. Obviously the fixed cap is the most restrictive formula and progressive the least. Using multiple principles you could go for either f(x) + f(y) or f(x)f(y), the latter giving a considerably lower reward if your principle values are not distributed evenly. Personally I would have different tokens use different combinations of formula, taking into account if they require the principle of balance, time or something else that would justify the combination. eg Balance, light and darkness: A = A' (1 - deviation/mean); if it uses time, use dynamic cap etc. It would require some thinking and code work, but it would require a lot more thinking and experimenting for people to find out how it works, which is something that fits this game. Also the oldest trick to nerf, is to add a negative effect. eg A token that gives initiative but takes away attack. It wouldn't work good with the random distribution, but I doubt people would be sad if random distribution was to disappear. The above are suggestions on how to alter tokens, I haven't got any so I couldn't care less if they are altered... I just like discussions and someone mentioned maths earlier in this thread.

There is a subtle difference between banning alts and discouraging alts. Banning is difficult, perhaps even impossible. Discouraging will have little influence on existing alts. However, right now it feels like alts are encouraged. As if when someone would ask 'who does not have an alt?' and someone would actually dare to raise their hand, people would point and laugh and say things like 'noob'. If this mentality would change, perhaps fewer alts would be created. Alts are encouraged in various ways. I've seen people talk about switching to their alt, saying they were going to make another alt etc. There's been discussions in which 'that is exploitable by alts' was met with 'yeah, but it would take a lot of effort, so let them do it.' Right now there is a mention of Libs army in the AL. The least convincing alt award... People aren't even supposed to hide the fact that they use alts anymore. And everybody knows what alt means. The influence of alts on roleplay varies with the skill of the player. It takes time, effort and planning to develop a character. If you want to play two characters you should have twice the time for it. If you want to play two characters you can be in character a, in character b and out of character. Lots of people mix up in and out of character, so this 'added difficulty' is not to be underestimated. I have often had new characters say hello to me and talk like if I knew them for a long time and then I can start guessing whose alt it is... not that it is that hard. Added to this is alts interacting with each other. This is something I would avoid at all cost - alts being best friends implies they would have the same enemies and work together against them, just try not to make your fights unfair... alts being worst enemies results in fighting with yourself, which is very non interactive - and thus actively ignore everything that might lead frequent interaction between the alts, unless it is totally inconsistent with a characters logic to ignore something. That said, it is possible, but how many people really have [b]both[/b] the skill and the time to [b]fully develop[/b] two characters? I don't even spend enough time on the one character that I roleplay. Lots of people probably roleplay an alt because they got bored on their main... They'll get bored on their alt twice as fast. Quests, HC... this has all been stated before. I do reject the 'two wrongs make a right' kind of arguments. It is not because you can use the same exploit everybody else uses, that it is a good thing. Good uses of alts: sometimes a quest requires interaction with a character that didn't exist yet, so an alt is the obvious solution. I used to have an alt to walk around Golemus in case a quest involved that place and I'd need to know more about it, it was aptly named 'scout' or something. If you are really strict and your character loathes Loreroot, it makes sense to switch to an alt if you do need to get something in that territory. Or if you are stuck in story mode but want your RP fix. Being a MD addict that has so much time they can play three entirely different characters without ever confusing in and out of character knowledge or start to talk to themselves, even if no one else is online to talk with.... well, perhaps it should be allowed when no one else is available. Having MPD. Alts should not be banned, but actively frowned upon until we're all wrinkled. *buys stocks in anti-aging cream*

[quote name='Guybrush Threepwood' date='08 August 2009 - 08:09 PM' timestamp='1249754950' post='38998'] If you're going to have a couple RPCs review the quest anyway, how is that much different than just getting an RPC or RPCs to sponsor your quest? But yeah, having the entire public vote on a quest seems like a bad idea considering that alts are abusable as it is. Too much RPC involvement will defeat the purpose. On the other hand, being as potentially abusable as it is it does seem like it would have to be monitored somehow. One possibility would be to have RPCs watch over a quest and then allow that person an amount of autonomy if it goes well. [/quote] [quote name='Udgard' date='09 August 2009 - 08:07 AM' timestamp='1249798050' post='39008'] It came to my mind as well, but after thinking aout it more, the centralized rewards resource will allow people more option to pick from when choosing what rewards to give. When a quest's sponsor is just one RPC, the rewards will mostly be limited to either a WP or that certain RPC's spelldoc (which becomes useless once someone has obtained it once). And also, the reviewing process will only need to be done once by each member of the committe, then the reward can be given to the winners directly. It seems to me like a much more time efficient method for quests that involve a large amount of winners. Having 20 people searching for a time to meet an RPC to claim their reward is a bit time consuming.. [/quote] The difference is that it is more centralized and efficient. Players do not have to contact every RPC until they find one that is willing to sponsor them. RPCs that don't want to review/sponsor will not be bothered by those pms anymore. RPCs don't have to provide the reward themselves, which might make them more likely to approve a quest. As mentioned there will be a wider range of rewards. The rating of quests will be more consistent too. And finally the RPCs aren't required to be active after a player finishes a quest. It would not be the first time for me to finish a quest and be promised a wish point but never to get it. There is one that I know I'll never get, and one that's only been due for two months yet... but then again the current record for slow rewarding is 6 months. I understand that there are personal circumstances, but that does not decrease the frustration for me. The person who made the quest shouldn't be too happy with it either.

[quote name='Muratus del Mur' date='08 August 2009 - 02:53 AM' timestamp='1249692790' post='38945'] An other idea i was thinking of doing later, when wish shop will be more complete. A central resource with rewards of all kinds, where quest makers, non-rpc including, can pick rewards based on previous rating for their quests, and use rewards from this resource FREELY to give to other players for solving their quests. [/quote] I like the idea but I would change the requirements. Quests vary a lot in quality and quantity. To extrapolate based on previous ratings isn't going to give accurate estimates. Instead the quest for which a reward is wanted should be reviewed. The obvious choice is to have a couple of independent reviews from RPCs. Some sort of entrance requirement based on public vote wouldn't hurt to keep the RPCs from doing overtime. 1. Player makes a trial quest, which is rated by everybody that tries the quest. 2. Player makes a quest for which they want to give a reward and submits this. 3. Three RPCs independently review the quest and report how much they think the reward should be, if any. 4. Player runs the quest and distributes rewards; RPCs monitor the process. 5. Jump to step 2. If at any point in the above scheme the outcome is negative, go back to step 1. Why make it three independent reviews? I am sad to say it but I don't believe in RPC objectivity and having multiple opinions should decrease the odds of subjective reviews. Since it should not be the same three to review all quests and there is an entrance requirement, I don't think the workload will be that high. Practically I'd suggest a list of submitted quests that all RPCs can see. They can then decide if they want to review any of them and quests that have been reviewed three times are removed from the list. Maybe include a button to indicate which quest is being reviewed, just in case 4 people start doing it at the same time.

[quote name='Firsanthalas' date='07 August 2009 - 12:23 PM' timestamp='1249640622' post='38903'] Personally, I don't see why we shouldn't be able to exclude players from quests. For example, if I find people cheating in a quest, why should I allow them participate in other quests? [/quote] Seems fair to me, but what will stop them from using an alt to solve the quest? Denying quests for personal reasons doesn't seem constructive to me. Instead of allowing a person with a different opinion to see something you made and perhaps get a more positive opinion of you, you invite those people into disagreeing even more. It is entirely human to respond in kind; denying quests to those who deny you. At the end of such an escalation, both parties will be exhausted and look like fools in the eyes of neutral observers. In this kind of battle you cannot win, you can only cut your losses.

[quote name='Shadowseeker' date='07 August 2009 - 01:39 PM' timestamp='1249645180' post='38907'] Or you just skip algorithms and thinks for a bit with paper and pen and take a few hours.. Depends on what you want to do, can you code faster or calculate faster. [/quote] The algorithm I use is only 20 lines long in c++, while it does over 22 015 calculations. Which is next to nothing for a computer; it solves it instantly. Out of curiosity I wrote a brute force algorithm once. Even with some optimization and a dual core computer I estimate it takes 7 hours to solve the puzzle. Personally I'd suggest coding, with that amount of calculations it is very easy to ruin it by being sloppy. And I don't recommend trying it at random, although rumor has it someone did find it that way.

[quote]Please be warned this Paper contains my opinions. They may/probably will offend you because they, in all probability, concern you or your friends. You have been warned. Enjoy![/quote] Probably the worst disclaimer ever. [quote]I mean hell, if I were a child and saw a maxed Grasan, I would probably shit myself.[/quote] But if you were a grasan child, you'd say 'hi gramps, can I have some humon flavored candy?' If I remember the children thread well, the problem is people roleplaying child birth and then having a parent-child relationship with their alts, which is about as genuine as having two alts fall in love. And the children should stay babies for a long time, depending on their race. Hybrid children in puberty should be fun to watch though: give them a book on biology and explain what a mule is and can't do. Apologies: genuine apologies do exist. Sadly a lot of people say 'I am sorry... but [it's all your fault and I'm not sorry at all, actually I'm mainly saying I'm sorry to prove I am morally superior to you]' That sucks. Generalization sucks too. Overly nice people: Characters can be nice all the time, they'd just die really really fast. Turning the other cheek when being stabbed is not something Darwin would recommend. There's no danger in being nice more often than being rude though. Actually, being rude all the time is a bad move too. Unless you are powerful enough to make an enemy out of everyone... godmodding? Lame RP: having an original concept is good, but not falling into godmodding is a lot more important in order not to ruin the good concept. Overall, people are likely to be offended because of the disclaimer and generalization. The way you put it, you expect everybody to be a source of irritation to you, or at the very least to have close friends that are 'at fault'. Of course generalizing things will help a lot to meet that expectation. I have a small list of common RP errors in my beliefs papers, no one ever complained about those. Few people probably read it, but I think the main difference is that I wrote it as a guideline; not a rant. I tried to keep things light and funny, while adding enough argumentation and persuasion. Just maybe some people will actually read the whole thing and learn from it. That is its raison d'être.

[quote name='dst' date='02 August 2009 - 10:53 PM' timestamp='1249246422' post='38572'] One question: is this "game" really played? [/quote] On occasion, I haven't been active that much recently; blame the season. I did log a part of the conversations that were relevant on my part. Those are 38.2 Kb of raw text, maybe that gives you an indication of how "big" this is? I have no idea how active other people are though... it wasn't my idea to bring this to the forum and it doesn't seem to have made any impact either.

[post='37471']I stick to my earlier idea:[/post] add one more form to the (Q) paper editor, that allows people to input a small comment on what they edited, or leave it blank if it was only a small edit. Whenever a paper is saved, store this comment and the time at which it was done. Next to the announcements, forum, free credits... links, add a new one that displays a list of times when people edited their (Q) paper and the comment. It's simple stupid, yet efficient. Players don't really need more information than who made a new quest recently. (and it should be ridiculously easy to program.) While quest solving and designing are related, I don't think that all people that are good at one are also good at the other. Having to buy an announcement feature will reduce the quantity a lot. If the above suggestion is followed, it could be easily extended for hatelists too; afaik that is the most likely place to find a non RPC quest. I'd prefer to have a Q page though.

It was not my intention to bring this to the forum, but perhaps that can be turned into an advantage. More sleep, less alcohol will probably help. Meanwhile here's two things that immediately caught my attention: [quote name='Leucretia' date='21 July 2009 - 03:30 PM' timestamp='1248183020' post='37590'] [characters that are] Minors...get with Kafuuka and introduce yourselves and mention that you would like to join his plan to break the adult code. [/quote] I'd rather people would not suddenly try and roleplay with Kafuuka using meta information. There is a very small amount of characters that know Kafuuka is up to something. I have deliberately spread information slowly because it does not make sense to 'raise an army' in a single day. (Real life made it easy not to be tempted into speeding things up anyway.) I wont stop you from stalking Kafuuka or other people, but I do expect people to separate in and out of character knowledge. [quote] This should be great fun! Just remember, keep it clean and fun. We do not hurt people or say things that should not be said.... [/quote] And I quote: Windy gives Asterdai an evil look Asterdai: "what!?" Windy: "If you break the code, I will cut your throat, my love."

[quote name='Shadowseeker' date='20 July 2009 - 03:44 PM' timestamp='1248097476' post='37539'] total of 100? make it 240 I think..rough number, but I'm positive it's about that number total. [/quote] And how many of those aren't already spent? And how many of those that are still available would people be willing to spend on a gamble? I'd appreciate it if people were to answer those questions instead of just giving me negative reputation points. My estimate of what would be left for gambling is about 10 wishpoints. Starting with over 200 distributed points, in the next few days half of them will be spent on access, xp resets and creatures. And then people will hold on to the remaining points for really cool and tangible rewards that might be released in the future. I doubt more than 10% will gamble with their points. And given the possibility of adding a previously spent requirement... I don't think reviewing 10 wishes is going to take that much effort and after the initial ones, it will take a while for the 'daring' people to get new points; to the point some might argue that it is going to be so infrequently used it might as well not be implemented.

My main concern is that wishes should be unique, while the wish shop makes them generic. To actually make an unique wish should cost any number of wish points greater than zero. Some wishes are small, some wishes are big, some are impossible. The way I would design it, there could be four possible outcomes such a gamble: 1. Your wish is granted. 2. Your wish is conditionally granted: you get a vague description of what you must do and upon meeting the requirements it gets granted. This might include sacrificing more wish points. 3. Your wish is ignored. (you do get notified of this though) 4. Your wish is interpreted wrong and you now live with the consequences... if you are still alive that is. The more you ask for in your wish, the more likely you end up with a bad effect. Personally I would also reward originality. Also it seems like so much fun to think of wrong interpretations and considering who will get to have this fun, this makes an excellent persuasion to implement it. I don't think it will take that much time to review, since this feature is not going to be used daily. There are not that many wish points given yet, a lot are probably already used and how many people would take the risks? You could loose more than just a wish point.

[quote name='Harion' date='19 July 2009 - 08:03 PM' timestamp='1248026606' post='37483'] starting and ending quests is not integrated into the game i don't mean the quest itself but only joining one. like, on the quest page a button can be clicked to start the quest and then a new page opens up for the quest to be read. starting the quest should automatically list it on your "ongoing quests list" which should also be coded into the game (currently, we have no way of tracking our quests except by writing it down on the notes page) likewise, a button to quit the quest should also be added. coding this kind of quest system into the game also allows quest creators to track players doing their quests. we also may do away with those: send me a pm if you want to do this quest and instead have it automated. anyone who wants to start the quest get the info they need by clicking the start button. filtering players that can do the quests can also be done.[/quote] I disagree. It is not too much work to keep track of which quests you are doing yourself, using memory or pen and paper. You'll need them if you want to solve some of the more difficult quests anyway. [b]IF[/b] a quest maker wants to keep track of who started his/her quest, the private mail method works for everybody. The update does not work for everybody for ladder quests because you'd naturally use the RPC items to track quest progress. Tracking can be useful in experimenting with quest design, but then you would really want to track it from beginning to end and not just get the success rate. Obviously if you don't want to track anything there is no need for a pm nor a button at all. Furthermore an 'ongoing quest list' would, in my opinion, break roleplay immersion. My characters' primary ongoing quest is to survive. Next on his agenda are having fun and thwarting an evil conspiracy. There are already people that refer to their papers like their character is walking around and handing people they never met nor know if they are literate, a copy of their diary. If we add an ongoing quest list, people will refer to it in character, while most quests are out of character, unless you are roleplaying a time loop where different people happen to intercept the same coded message and solve it in the same way the previous group did. I do not know much about the MD code, but programming what you suggested seems like a lot of work compared to what I suggested. The ideas aren't mutually exclusive so this isn't the most weighty argument. And the necessary code for the ongoing quest list gets even more complicated if one player has multiple quests running at the same time (there are at least 2 RPCs doing this). The cleanest programming solution I can think of would largely favor giving only RPCs the ability to make quests that can appear on your ongoing list. (The reasons are security and overhead.) This would make quest-making even more exclusive. As for voting and commenting on quest quality: the only ones who might know enough about a quest are the ones that actually finished it. If I heard correct, getting a dozen people to try your quest is considered a success for an unadvertised 'fun' quest. If people only bother going after rewards their comment on a quest will be plain: 'yay I got it' or 'booh the reward isn't good enough.'