Kafuuka

"Indeed Items shouldnt last forever. (Kafuuka once said so too as I recall.)" I've said a lot of things, but I assume [post="27714"]you're referring to this?[/post] (mind you I said mundane items, artifacts should last or be destroyed in epic RP) It seems like there is an outflux now, with the item creating RPCs dumping the items they gather in a world bank / garbage alt. A lot of irony and odd names there... The influx can be taken care off with quests and rewards. When both in and outflux grow, this might give a revival of the once shot down suggestion of a [topic="3539"]quest fund[/topic], only using items instead of credits. Thirdly there's going to be a difference between influx and outflux, caused by [topic="3849"]"collectors"[/topic]. If the collectorflux is a mere fraction of the influx and new items are created often, this would become an ignorable. Personally I would've solved the flux problem by coding (not that I'm allowed to touch the source code), but this solution will give us all more quests to do. [topic="3830"]Items with bonuses[/topic] and consumable, muffin-like ones, would be cool too. Like with spells there should be an amount of creations per month. That would solve the time factor imo. Your character can do the job while you are sleeping. But who would be granted the power to create them? a. RPCs, meaning we'll need more of them b. Regular players, in exchange for one or more wish points and if it fits their role. A dwarf miner fits all stereotypes, a vampire whale hunter however... This allows for a large variety of little creators. Some people would gather herbs, some would mine for iron. Others would melt said iron into bars and finally they would end up with an item creating RPC to be made into something unique (an 'artifact') or made into something consumable. Each person in the chain (safe for the RPC) would have spent a WP on a limited ability. eg A miner can only mine and get a random kind of ore or mineral. If that person then stops playing, someone else could be given the same ability. One objection could be that this implies a WP -> infinite MDS conversion. Thievery and taxes (now everybody is going to make a noble or a thief character) could offset that. The more coins you have, the more likely they can be stolen (I'd prefer it if only coins could get stolen, it would not make sense for a ring or a shirt to be stolen, unless you're really really drunk) and we all know how taxes work. Maybe forbid the 'little creators' from doing quests that reward coins or from doing other jobs? Steady supply versus the other forms of revenue. It's tricky to balance but It could be interesting. And if you add weight to items it'll become even more complex. Which gives something for merchants to have: an increased carrying capacity. And I hope I included links to all related topics. It's not only me that has said a lot of things that might be relevant, and I seem to be typing way to slow once again.. I count 7 new posts since I started... shouldn't have paused to eat cookies...

[quote name='Fenrir Greycloth' post='30155' date='May 4 2009, 06:17 AM']Yes, but the thing is, each item has its own id. It is not set in a limited id barrier either, so I doubt a simple script will be able to check which items are silver coins, and which are not. It is a much more complicated process than it seems to be. The best solution is to change the coin system into a system by itself.[/quote] It can't be that hard, in lolcode it'd look something like: HAI I has coins coins is 0 ItemIdList iz bucket Im in ur ItemIdList itza numba [indent] Iz ItemIdList#numba->name == "Silver Coin' [indent] visible "found a coin!' up coins[/indent] nowai [indent] visible 'found something else'[/indent][/indent] kthx visible coins kthxbye I kinda doubt MD is written in lolcode though... but things like sql are made to do the same with less lines of code. Or if you really want to minimize the code to be written, how about a list of check boxes instead of a pull down menu? That way you could even trade both items and any number of coins at the same time.

From RP perspective the term class is very restrictive. I have no idea what traditional box to put my character in... The option to have your interface change to a healer one, will likely have both advantages and disadvantages that influence the battling. I don't think it will interfere with RP though. Some people get their inspiration from it, others will try to nudge their interface towards the one that matches their character most. Just like with principles: you choose the one you think most fitting, but they don't define you unless you want them to. They also don't impede you from battling, in fact it is quite possible to ignore them completely. I wouldn't advise you to, but it is possible.

[quote name='Udgard' post='30021' date='May 3 2009, 07:24 AM']Just a note , Mur said that items are supposed to be a rare and special thing, not something common and easily obtained.[/quote] Originally there wasn't going to be a currency either but now we have the MDS. I think (hope) that items will be split into commonly available ones and difficult to obtain artifacts. Raw materials should be plentiful, non-magic daggers shouldn't be that hard to get, but a dancing sword is a one of a kind item. This will then result in two kinds of 'collectors': some will try to have the most items and some will try to have the coolest items. If it's about having the coolest items, those should not be needed as ingredients. (I suppose every rule will have exceptions though) If it's about wanting to have the most, it would not impede quests since trading one item for another doesn't change the item count. However, if such a collector knows you need a certain unique yet simple item, you're entirely at his/her mercy. And what's worse: increasing the quantity once will not help. There's bound to be someone that will try to get a monopoly on a commonly used raw material. It might take months to achieve, but that hasn't stopped anyone so far. How about adding weight to items, especially to raw materials? Carry too much weight and you'll be unable to move. Dumping them on alts means they wont count towards the hoarder's item count. It's not foolproof, but it would make things difficult.

You'll need lots and lots of quests... but I look forward to trying to solve them!

[quote name='Synex' post='29928' date='May 2 2009, 01:21 PM']Well it still happens with the other stuff today as well. Even you can help your main account to win a head contest with multies. I think that is not a problem since the game allows it. If you don't want that to happen then a mechanism should be derived not letting them do that [b]And is every thing in MD is multi proof???[/b] No. Therefore that does not matter[/quote] Two wrongs do not make a right.

I think quantity is the bigger issue with items. Having witnessed part of the auctions yesterday, I admit there was more activity than I originally expected, but I still think items are mostly a collector thing. If the quality/power of items is increased, it will increase their collection value. My understanding is that characters in MD aren't supposed to be equal, that there is room for legendary ones, but I consider the following offer an abuse of power: "Trade you my Spell Doc (rare) for your iron nails' Such is not an equal trade. The spell doc is not lost to the one that offered the deal; the same deal can be offered again and again, while people that have an item can only trade it once. I hope this is not how a legendary collector will be born. Quality wise the suggestions are rather powerful, how about some weaker versions? An item could have a limited number of uses, after which it ceases to exist. I have nothing against artifacts with unlimited uses, but right now there shouldn't be anyone with enough coins and wish points to buy one.

what is to stop people from using alts to be certain the right creature gets the right token? it'll have no wins or xp, and low age, but people don't seem to mind grinding.

I have one thing to add about roleplay. There's tons of things you can say about good and bad roleplay, lots of things I've still to discover, but there is one golden rule: Your character is NOT you! In the worst case scenario for your character he/she/it will die (and not get resurrected/become undead). That might actually also be your most glorious and memorable roleplaying event, only if your character were you, you probably wouldn't appreciate it. And now to derail this topic: lets start betting when my character'll die

[quote name='Harion' post='29351' date='Apr 24 2009, 08:27 PM']hence the result, we are in our present quandary which is an economic collapse which better minds might've prevented if those who were on control before just didn't think they were gods and believed so much in the supremacy of numbers and math)[/quote] Actually there were a lot of theories that predicted the crash. One based entirely on math predicted the collapse about five years before it happened and was only half a year off on the date. At the end of the lecture about this prediction, one person in the audience asked the question 'but now that people know this will happen, won't they change their actions to avoid this outcome and make the theory void?' The answer was a single word: 'greed'. You might think that greed, opposed to caution, is an irrational factor, however if you look at it from game theory, it is the rational choice, since there is no way of convincing the other 6 billion people to make the 'safe' choice. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma) And even if there was a way to convince the others, they would have to forfeit a huge amount of short term profits. As long as one changes everything to cash the day before the crash, that person has made a large profit while the ones that don't have debts. It is the logical choice, albeit very selfish. In essence: large amounts of people are rather predictable, even though you can't predict much about a single individual. And back on topic: it's nice to have a confirmation that a periodical reset wont happen, but whether or not there will be a reset has never been stated. I've read the giant post a couple of times and based on what I would do (there goes any and all credibility) and the non-explicitness I'm inclined to think there will be something like a partial reset.

5. This has been mentioned before, although it's not the main issue in [topic="3301"]that thread[/topic]. I don't know flash but I think it restricts access to the users' hard disks. No code that will be executed by a browser should be allowed to write on your hard disk for security reasons. If the game wasn't embedded into a browser, there would be a whole lot of optimizations possible but a whole lot of new troubles like platform dependence and firewall issues would arise too. It's a trade off which is likely to have made the designer pull his hair out on various occasions.. I know I would have cursed choosing flash, last I checked there was only an alpha version for 64bit linux, which makes it as platform independent as c++ imo. [edit] MD works with the alpha flash plugin. Somehow a lot of other flash apps crash though, so the alpha plugin is far from stable. Maybe I am biased against flash, but the platform independence is supposed to be it's main asset. For that matter I don't like java either, they had the same problem for a long time and the language has no explicit pointers! Give me back my memory leak creation tools dammit!

quoting myself for once [quote name='Kafuuka' post='27714' date='Mar 25 2009, 03:45 PM']To keep the economy flowing you'd need both a high influx and an outflux of items; a lot of mundane items should be created and destroyed on a regular basis. This is the best way to satisfy supply and demand, which afaik are the essense of economics. Destuction of items? A sword can break, a potion is consumed etc... Obviously that conflicts with the unique items mindset. The term artifact might help a teensy little bit at combining them, but there's also the overlap with the md shop (potions) etc. I fear it is a trade-off between those problems or the problem of stagnation: all items gathering at collectors. And a lot of code work of course.[/quote] To give you all a nice example of how collectors think and work: "Trade you my Spell Doc (rare) for your iron nails" Currently items are artifacts, not expendable trade goods. The creatures would be a good addition to this since they are recruited and sacrificed on a regular basis and it would work if there'd be a wide variety of non-shop creatures and everybody having access to only a small (and different) section of them, which could happen with the reset/faction thing. I thought there was mention of people starting in different places, so that would take care of the different availability.

well, their cossacks server hasn't got 99% uptime at all

A month ago I made a quest for which I needed a free web host with php and sql. I googled a bit, found one that had good reviews and managed to get the thing working. In the past month that server has had a lot of downtime. I don't check it every day, but I estimate it's downtime is above 10%, which in my opinion is far above acceptable levels and makes me wonder why it has good reviews. So my question is: does anybody know a good free web host with php and sql, that is stable (and preferably not too much forced adds, but I suppose that's asking a bit much)?

[quote name='Lifeline' post='28333' date='Apr 6 2009, 05:47 PM']i said "most roleplay ONLY players" meaning players that rp most of the time and dont use their gaming time to train creatures. or are not willing to spend much time on understanding the game mechanics and gathering wins for their crits to upgrade and thereforce loose very often. i never made a generalization. i see mp4s with over 100 active days that cant even beat the loreroot guards. of course they are unhappy about not gaining entry to loreroot and loosing to most other mp4 because they dont really understand the fighting system and only roleplay. and yes they would care about getting slaughtered because they can never fully heal their crits to even have a chance to win enough fights to upgrade them. and soon after they leave a sanctuary they would loose all vitality again hope u understand better now what i ment[/quote] DOJO? And for an example of how new features would require a reset: introduce a new variable that is exclusively altered during story mode. It would be impossible to retrace the steps the mp5 players made and calculate what value it should have been. (unless every choice you make is noted instead of simply updating the relevant variables and forgetting the path, thus saving disk space) There's countless variations on this theme that would make it impossible to 'convert data', and then there's the factions thing etc. We're having a discussion about a possible reset of which we have little information: why? when? will it even occur at all?

[quote name='Lifeline' post='28316' date='Apr 6 2009, 01:19 PM']most roleplayer only players would most likely also like a reset because they only roleplay and are sick of getting slaughtered because they never build their crits.[/quote] So you assume roleplay purists don't care about the fighting and don't level their creatures, but do care about getting slaughtered? And even if we ignore that minor inconsistency, it is rather easy to avoid the carnage: don't go to the next mp level. Personally, my biggest concern about the reset would be the beliefs paper requirements, at 121 days I'm almost there.. and I could always do with more space; MD really needs to expand its paper factory. But that's enough about what we might lose and who would lose most. What would we gain from a reset? That would depend entirely on the new features for which the reset is necessary. A reset an sich wouldn't improve anything afaik, but it's more likely the reset is a programming requirement due to new features. Sometimes new code just isn't compatible with old code and it's best to throw away the old data. It doesn't seem too wild a guess it's all related to the faction thing, so maybe the question shouldn't be' do you want a reset', but 'do you want factions'?

[quote name='Liberty4life' post='28175' date='Apr 4 2009, 04:10 PM']:s okies... with that i cant tell much, only thing i know is that md doesnt recognizes your browser, that means your browser is sending wrong identification header..... tell me your addons[/quote] or check if other javascript pages detect it right, eg [url="http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html"]http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html[/url] ( or even better: switch to linux )

This is a bit confusing... applications open, close, open again and in the other tread the quest had almost died and such... anyway, best of luck to the new applicants.

To keep the economy flowing you'd need both a high influx and an outflux of items; a lot of mundane items should be created and destroyed on a regular basis. This is the best way to satisfy supply and demand, which afaik are the essense of economics. Destuction of items? A sword can break, a potion is consumed etc... Obviously that conflicts with the unique items mindset. The term artifact might help a teensy little bit at combining them, but there's also the overlap with the md shop (potions) etc. I fear it is a trade-off between those problems or the problem of stagnation: all items gathering at collectors. And a lot of code work of course.

[quote name='dst' post='27704' date='Mar 25 2009, 09:55 AM']No, it's not . I have submitted the solution 3 months ago and still no reward.[/quote] I second that. Solved it sometime in december, mailed it and never got a reply.

[quote name='Grido' post='27351' date='Mar 18 2009, 04:27 AM']a fund? people are rewarded with credits for making quests? is your idea? or that those who've made quests can give out credit rewards from this ''pot'' of money?[/quote] I meant the second one. To have your quest recognized, being able to give something to the ones who solve it and thus have more people try it, is already a nice reward for the creator. I'm aware that not every quest should have a credit reward, some are too easy, some are too hard. (eg. the one in my hate list right now is way to easy.) [quote]i'd say no to both due to explotation of the system[/quote] I don't see how this is exploitable. [b]No credits are created [/b]by it. Maybe if people were to use alts, voting for free credit then donating them to the fund and using their main character to do quests for credit. But that would have an extremely low revenue: In the time one person solves a quest, dozens of other people might solve it too, so you'd have to vote and donate a lot more than you could get in return. You should also actually solve the quest within the time limit (or worse, competing to be among the first who solve it), while excessively clicking vote links and changing your ip (i assume those sites do check your ip, if not they're being noobish). I'd like to think people are not crazy enough to do that kind of thing. And even if they were, It shouldn't be too hard for the comity to outsmart them. [color="#4169E1"]Small remark here: the sites are noobish DST[/color]

This idea is merely a combination of 2 recent announcements: 1. Credits need to flow more, by using 'funds'. 2. Those who aren't rpc's should be able to reward people for completing their quests. += Quest fund. Rewards could easily be varied according to difficulty. If there's a small comity for rating, approving and rewarding the quests, it would also be less random. Equally difficult quests should be equally rewarded after all.

I think something went wrong with the recent additions to the chat. It often gives the following message after sending a message to the live chat: --------------------------------- Error: SyntaxError Err description: undefined Err number: undefined Err message: invalid flag after regular expression Ajax response: <br /> <b>Warning</b>: ereg() [<a href='function.ereg'>function.ereg</a>]: REG_BADRPT in <b>/home/magicdue/public_html/ui/navigation/ajax.chatmsg.php</b> on line <b>39</b><br /> document.chatmsgform.msg.value=''; do_refreshchat(); ---------------------------------- I didn't test this extensively, but combinations of * and ( seem to increase likelyhood of getting the error message. The game doesn't break or freeze, it just spews out the error message and then goes on fine. I'm not the only one getting the errors and I use swiftweasel (firefox derivative).

Kafuuka Hunter/Cook/... Why? Every expedition needs some snobby born optimistic brat who's probably useless in combat! At least he's got table manners and would survive a fancy dinner with the king.

[quote name='Necromantia' post='25787' date='Feb 22 2009, 05:43 PM']Hi, I am not sure if this is known already. But because of the recent actions taken by Manu to lower the server load, I will just let you know. Delete or move if you know this and the solution to it already. Currently the "Live Chat" and the "Players in this location" part poll the server every couple of seconds to get new chat messages and get updates on new players in this location or if some player left the current location. But also very often there is no new message or no player joined or left and the poll causes unnecessary server load. A less load intensive approach would be to use some kind of messaging or listener-like methods. With these methods the clients get only updated (and therefore cause server load) when really something happened (new chat message, player joined or left current location). For example someone types a new chat message and sends it to the server. The server knows all people in the current location and sends them a message that contains the actual chat message. Some server load is caused for the text message. But when the next 20 minutes no one types a chat message, then also no server load is caused. As I don't know the server software/architecture which is in use, I can only explain on this high level. But if you are interested in some assistance you can simply contact me via PM in this forum. Cheers, Necromantia[/quote] Technicly you'd still need to send PING request so that the server knows who is still online and whose internet was disconnected. Something i did wonder about was if there's any way to permanently store images on harddisk, I get the feeling this doesn't happen (even if they're cached, cache is cleaned rather often) and images are a lot worse for bandwidth than plain text requests. I suspect most browsers will treat this as a security issue though.