Party-Leader visible tag. And more options in "party menu"

[serina]

This proposal is to make a new option toggle in the options menu that allows you to display party leader or not. I mean display that fine gold targetting ring we already have around the @ that leads the party (usually everyone follows 1 character in a party, preferable a warrior or paladin due to high HP. But when you have 3 warriors and 0 paladins, it's kinda hard to figure out who to follow).

If this is enabled, it would be lovely if you had a command in the party menu, P, that could change party leader. Ie. Same way as the add character to party can add people, this option changes who is owning the party (party leader).



Yesterday we had 3 warriors, 2 rangers, 1 rogue, 1 mage and 1 priest. The rogue was forced to lead because it was the only recognizable @ that had enough HP to go in front. Needless to say, the rogue eventually died, and we were in trouble. HAHA!

ZAL

[serina]

On a side note, this opens up for a new item. "Scroll of recall to party leader" this works like a WoR, but recalls you to the party leader instead, so it's not a getaway of any kind, but it's a way to save the poor soul who gets teleported away from the group or the one who falls into a trap door or the one who dies and then gets left behind or the one who goes to town for supplies. My point is that you don't end up in sector [4,4] when your party is in [0,0]

- Some checks should be made. My suggestions are that this scroll can take you to current maxdepth + 100 feet. ie. If max is 400, you can go to 500 with this scroll. This allows those that're "left behind" to catch up safely without it being really exploitable.

- This spell should take the party member to where the party leader was when the scroll is read if this is possible? Because then you can recall to semi-safety without the party having to stop, just takes minor communication within the party to set up.

ZAL

[wortle]

This proposal is to make a new option toggle in the options menu that allows you to display party leader or not. I mean display that fine gold targetting ring we already have around the @ that leads the party (usually everyone follows 1 character in a party, preferable a warrior or paladin due to high HP. But when you have 3 warriors and 0 paladins, it's kinda hard to figure out who to follow).

If this is enabled, it would be lovely if you had a command in the party menu, P, that could change party leader. Ie. Same way as the add character to party can add people, this option changes who is owning the party (party leader).



Yesterday we had 3 warriors, 2 rangers, 1 rogue, 1 mage and 1 priest. The rogue was forced to lead because it was the only recognizable @ that had enough HP to go in front. Needless to say, the rogue eventually died, and we were in trouble. HAHA!

ZAL

I forget, who's idea was this? Well, if not mine I'm going to have endorse it. :) Obviously making partying work better with 5+ people is an area where there's a lot of room for improvement, and this would help a bit.

As for recall to party leader scrolls, I'm not sure they'll go all the way to solving the deep "partying with low level characters is awesome until someone dies and we have to wait 30 minutes to continue" issue that I think is the fundamental problem right now. Might be worth trying out, though. Probably would help, and would be easy to do. (For simplicity you could use a regular WoR item and do a special inscription, @P or something) As for the previously mentioned "dying slows everyone down issue", here's an idea: what if we made scrolls of life cost like 30 gold and be always found in shops? Or give everyone a scroll of life 100% off when they start a new character?

Here's a crazy idea -- group movement mode. You initialize your party in a formation, select "save formation". Then everyone will auto-follow the leader at the preset distance behind. If you don't like where the party is going, you can try moving in a different direction which will somehow snap you out of the party movement mode and maybe cause everyone else to stop running.

Powers-that-be, how do you guys feel about the Party leader, @P on WoR scrolls, and cheap scrolls of life?

[Billsey]

Powers-that-be, how do you guys feel about the Party leader, @P on WoR scrolls, and cheap scrolls of life?

I'd be inclined to implement these types of changes as a DM configurable option via the Mangband.cfg file. That would allow a server to run primarily as a party server and you wouldn't have to worry as much about the game balance for singles. It'd be easy enough at the same time to create the character holding a Life scroll so everyone would pretty much get one free death 'on the fly'. No reason to wait for a dead player to catch up if you can resurrect as soon as the current melee session is done... And a couple of ghosted players could come in handy for a party that serious about diving. :-)

[PowerWyrm]

Another concern about partying is that experience is split equally among party members (if same level). That makes parties take forever to level once a good number of players are on the same level. Maybe add a "party bonus" to xp gained from monsters? (TomeNET has something similar to encourage partying).

[Ashi]

I kind of like that idea to use a targeting ring to flag party members. Just give the leader an option to turn them on/off, and give them a few colours to work with, and there are lots of cool things that they could be used for!

The most basic use would be something like "follow the blue warrior!"


A large mixed-class party might use them to separate front line and back line classes so it can be easier to keep formation...


If the party gets too big, it could split into for example a Red group and a Blue group and both could go different directions... then it won't get mixed up when the two groups cross paths.

[serina]

GO BLUE TEAM!

This is gonna be like SWAT where Morgoth is the bad guy. The red team (a legion of suicidal gnomes) charges in first. Then we send in team blue to clear up all the gear.

Lots of great ideas i here ;)

ZAL

[wortle]

Powers-that-be, how do you guys feel about the Party leader, @P on WoR scrolls, and cheap scrolls of life?

I'd be inclined to implement these types of changes as a DM configurable option via the Mangband.cfg file. That would allow a server to run primarily as a party server and you wouldn't have to worry as much about the game balance for singles. It'd be easy enough at the same time to create the character holding a Life scroll so everyone would pretty much get one free death 'on the fly'. No reason to wait for a dead player to catch up if you can resurrect as soon as the current melee session is done... And a couple of ghosted players could come in handy for a party that serious about diving. :-)

I understand your concern about preserving game balance, but aren't all of these changes pretty much not affecting game balance for single players?

More thoughts on highlighting:
If the MAngband text terminal supports it, highlighting different characters of the same class in different colors would help to better distinguish them from each other.
And yes, having multiple sub-teams with different highlighted colors and possibly leaders of their own could be cool as well. ;)

A related (and somewhat more radical) idea: what if you also had the ability to mark dungeon spaces (without showing actual contents) on the team's view, which could be used to denote the locations of monsters, stairs, tactical points, etc, for other team members to be aware of? This would give mages casting detection a more precise way of communicating with their team members than 'orcs northwest' for example, and might speed up a parties ability to march through the dungeon together by reducing communciation time than "Five spaces to the north, and then you're getting close to the unique". I don't like the idea of this being abused to share magic mapping for example, so maybe we could limit the total number of dungeon spaces marked. Alternatively, we could automatically highlight dungeon spaces where creatures are first seen when casting "detect monsters", without actually showing what creatures are there. (That way, "Orcs northwest" suddenly has a much better meaning for everyone else, and the team can instantly form a plan) Maybe a little radical (and possibly cheesy), but would be not too hard to implement and try out, I think.

[PowerWyrm]

Another idea would be to make mage spells projectable, just like priest healing spells...

[serina]

While we're talking aobut partying and such...
1 month ago we started a party called "paaarty". Today I haven't a clue who were in it. So maybe a feature that allows you to see who's offline in your current party so we can find out when to continue. That'd be nice.

ZAL

[Warrior]

Haha, yes we definitely could use that, Zal. I have a bazillion mid 20 warriors from all our parties.

[Warrior]

I'm resurrecting this because I think we could use a dedicated "Party server" and of course more focus on partying overall.