Auto-removal artifact timers

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Domiano
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Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Domiano » Thu 27.12.2012, 12:26

I brought up this topic in the -dev Chanel a couple weeks ago ago. The idea would be to make it so that, upon finding an artifact, it would have a time on the item's "I" page. When that timer hit zero, the artifact would automatically be removed from the player. The time would be relatively long, 4 months or so.
Warrior and Thorbear liked the idea, and Flambard not so much.
We need SOME kind of system to keep life in this game, and currently, dev's checking player activity isn't cutting it. Flambard's preference would be to give the admins greater tools/resources, and keep the ultimate decision on the admins.
I agree that system could work well, but I feel a strict bot system would be better, since it wouldn't be dependent on developer activity, and their would be no "Surprises". If you suddenly don't have your godly artifact when you log back in, you only have yourself to blame.
How does everyone else feel about this?

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Warrior
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Warrior » Thu 27.12.2012, 12:47

I still like this idea but I see Flambards point (IIRC his argument was basically "being evil is allowed" (correct me if I'm wrong (or right!), Flambard).

To make this suggestion more evil (and thereby perhaps luring Flambard in) there could be a random component instead of a fixed timer limit. E.g.

After 1 month of inactivity: 5% chance of artifact "returning to it's Master" (later realized this was from the movies :) ), "Eaten by a grue" or any other text (I used to be able to come up with better texts than this on the fly).
After 2 months inactivity: 10% chance of artifact being reset.
After 3 months inactivity 20% chance...
After 4 months inactivity 40% chance...
After 5 months inactivity 80% chance...

This adds an element of randomness and surprise, which in a way I feel is more in line with the "feel" of the game.

Dunno how others feel about that. The exact numbers can be tweaked of course. But I agree that after 4-5 months, it would be fair to let someone else have a go at the artifact. One could also mix in the artifacts power/level here, to make things more interesting. I think this has been discussed in the past.
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PowerWyrm
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by PowerWyrm » Thu 27.12.2012, 16:03

Depends on what you consider inactivity... If you leave for holidays and come back only to see your character is now unplayable because you lack stats/resistances and you have no way to regain them, I guess you would be really pissed off.

I'm also against "timed" artifacts. Sometimes you don't want to rush your character, and non-veteran players will probably take more than a few months to get the best out of their chars. They should not be penalized from finding an early good artifact.

And remember... You will probably strip a player that has a couple arts to give the chance for players that have dozens of chars and dozens of arts to find more of them. That's why I think the best way is to keep the decision to the admins. A very long period of inactivity should be enough to consider a character as "dead". If you don't play a character but still want to preserve it, just connect once in a while to mark it as "active".

Domiano
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Domiano » Thu 27.12.2012, 23:03

Even though it could cause some characters who only get played, say, once a week (2 hours once a week for 6 months would be over 48 hours) to have to 'rush', it would still be a huge net positive for the community.

And though artifacts would likely go to the players who were the most active, i'm not sure that is exactly "wrong". Everyone should have the same chance for what they put in. With the current system, where devs release arts every once in a while "when they get around to it", the most active players "know" when to suddenly look for more arts. Otherwise, it can be more of a surprise when the new player suddenly finds that Ringil whose timer just went up :)

Ace
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Ace » Fri 28.12.2012, 16:23

Hi there!

First of all great to see activities in the forum! Been busy with life and sorts :)

Anyway if you wanna hear my opinion:
- Best would be if anyone can find his own set of artifacts (i know iam probably alone with this) but it would be remove all the hassle about this at once, and makes the game more fun imho. In return - lower drastically the rarities so it will be really rare to find something :)

- Alternatively, I would remove an artifact after some time no matter what the activity has been. but I can see the pw's point that some chars might become unplayable. So this needs to be thought out some more in guess.

- Maybe there should be an instance reset every few months?

Domiano
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Domiano » Sat 29.12.2012, 15:00

Perhaps we could create a set of not-art items that the artifacts would turn into after a set amount of time? They could still be useful, (thus not breaking as many characters), but they wouldn't be 'great'.
"the Light Crossbow "Cabrugol" +4 speed
"Long Sword 'Wrongil' +4 speed
"The Ring of Powah 'Naryar'" (-3,-3), +1 all stats speed, and some resists (no immunity)
And so on...

(i bet THAT suggestion won't be liked by the devs much though...)

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Flambard
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Flambard » Tue 01.01.2013, 14:10

Zaxx wrote:Depends on what you consider inactivity... If you leave for holidays and come back only to see your character is now unplayable because you lack stats/resistances and you have no way to regain them, I guess you would be really pissed off.

I'm also against "timed" artifacts. Sometimes you don't want to rush your character, and non-veteran players will probably take more than a few months to get the best out of their chars. They should not be penalized from finding an early good artifact.

And remember... You will probably strip a player that has a couple arts to give the chance for players that have dozens of chars and dozens of arts to find more of them. That's why I think the best way is to keep the decision to the admins. A very long period of inactivity should be enough to consider a character as "dead". If you don't play a character but still want to preserve it, just connect once in a while to mark it as "active".
I know it's not very fair, but I agree to this. Some people tend to prepare their characters *for years*, taking huge several month long pauses in between.

Some automation for deleting artifacts from *inactive* characters would be nice to have, but artifacts that tick away irregardless of what you do just sound wrong to me.

PowerWyrm
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by PowerWyrm » Tue 01.01.2013, 15:01

This is why I rarely play TomeNET. Artifacts are reset every two months and I don't have time to play characters to king them in two months. I have a few chars there, none of them have any artifact, cos you can't rely on them to build your character. At this point, artifacts become shop fodder...

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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Billsey » Sat 05.01.2013, 03:56

I think that removing an artifact from an active player is wrong as well. What we really need to address the potential issue of stored artifacts is better handling of inactive characters. Just because a character logs in once a week or once a month doesn't mean they're active. They need to be actually playing the game. Tracking game play could be more easily dealt with if we tracked a characters change in EXP over time (either up or down) and mix that with game turns outside of town. More accurate yet would be to use the concept of player activity vs. character activity along with EXP and game turns. It'd allow us to progromatically monitor for artifact hording via parking with a new character.
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greyshoe
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by greyshoe » Thu 25.04.2013, 05:50

The thought crossed my mind that artifacts on a timer might be a possible way to "free" up unused/stored Arts. But I can see the point of view in which a set time doesnt work for all players. What if there was a way to link Arts to the finder and eliminate the possibility of selling/trading to other characters. In this fashion you either use the Art, or if undesirable for you to currently use and you dont deem it worth the space to store on you, the only way you can rid yourself of it is to sell it to a store and its recycled again. I dont have the understanding of the mechanics involved in such an idea that most of you do. And I can see obvious flaws/loopholes to such a system (Player doesnt pick up item and has another character come pick it up, circumventing the mechanic.). Hoping some of you can see what might make an idea like this work? Also brings up the issue that some Arts "store selling" prices seem a bit low for what the item is.......

Ace
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Ace » Thu 09.05.2013, 19:36

Imho it should be impossible to do anything with arts other than using them, or selling them to shop.
no dropping & trading should be allowed.
Also no muling around to other characters.

They should be "soulbound" so either you live with a blocked inv slot or youll get rid of it.

Everything else will not result in an improvement for most.

Besides, once the the artefacts have been moved ot their new owners theyll stay there. Unless you make "artefacts" more common (findable for every player) there will be always ppl who won't get them and have to rely on egos.

Another suggestion which might be "cool" and remove the taste of not having arts, if a unique drops an excellent / ego item and it's not a real artefact either give it a unique name or append some extra suffix / prefix (like "saurons staff of ... ")

Emulord
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Emulord » Fri 30.08.2013, 18:12

I like the idea of soulbound. It makes early game and midlevel artifacts findable more easily. Players will shopfodder them once they need to upgrade their kit, unlocking them for everyone else.

However, what happens on death? Drop? Drop but still soulbound? Disappear?

Ace
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Ace » Sun 06.10.2013, 09:40

Upon death they should be free to pick up I guess, for the next person to claim it.

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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Avenger » Fri 15.11.2013, 16:37

My favorite way of dealing with a shortage of artifacts is to do what Berendol did on his server - make new, rarer ego and item types to fill the gaps left by unavailable artifacts. I know we already have items like this, but it can be extended even further. The biggest thing I remember from his server were the epic DSMs - Mighty Green, Crystal, and Dracolisk, which provided immunities and larger collections of resists, which help make up for the fact that immunities otherwise only exist on artifacts. We could also have, for example, ego weapon and bow types with a speed boost, because only one person can have Cubragol or Ringil, yet that speed boost from additional slots can be really critical to endgame. We could have rare rings of immunity, which would work similar to the rings of power, allowing a player to sacrifice speed for immunity, but with more availability.

Another suggestion would be to scale up some of the undesireable artifacts. Why do we need to keep boomeranging the elemental daggers, Thorongil, Celegorm, Osondir, etc.? Why not replace the weak arts that no one uses anyway with new, powerful artifacts, that would allow more players to be able to find them? With the way arts can't be housed, or stored other then in players' inventories, this would require players who find artifacts to either switch to the new ones, or return them to the depths for others to find. If, instead of just Cubragol, there were other rare artifact bows with a variety of desireable powers, the game could be a lot more interesting.

The latter solution works best with a relatively small player base(which we have now), since it allows almost any player to find a decent kit of powerful artifacts. However, it would fall apart if our community grew to the point where all the best artifacts were always locked up again. The former solution would still work, though ;)

I really don't like the idea of forced artifact removal - it just feels like the wrong approach. If I find a powerful item, I want to keep it, especially if I'm forced to use it immediately rather then store it to build around it(which I don't particularly like but feel is necessary the way the game currently works). I don't want to risk losing it at some future time. So my solutions focus on making more nice items available to more players, rather then removing them from existing players to be redistributed - when that happens, the core problem is still there, because the redistributed items are now static again, just on a different set of characters.
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Warrior
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Re: Auto-removal artifact timers

Post by Warrior » Fri 15.11.2013, 21:29

Don't have time for a proper reply right now, but maybe you missed this: viewforum.php?f=37

A whole section of the forums dedicated to the noble art of artifact substitutes :)
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