Summary, progress and what's been posted.

Posted by Rufus on 02/04

XP loss:
It was suggested by Teresa that the xp loss upon death be lowered. The exp on death will be re-evaluated when the change to the xp scale is implemented.

Manipulating objects when it's dark/when blind:
This is currently on the coding TODO list, though we're not sure of some of the exact implementation considerations (whether you should be able to remove objects in any slot, only held slots, etc.

Clan-only channel:
We have enough channels already, and chat can be used for anything until an immort deems it necessary that it has its own conference.

Make staff:
Make staff staves and mage-created illusionary weapons exceed the specs for normal weapons. The make staff weapons can reach a quality of five and damage two points greater than their wield-weight (which, under this combat system is significant).

Glowing roots:
The timer has been extended on glowing roots so they do not decay as quickly. Thinking that this wasn't enough, create mages were also given the ability to declare the size of the meal they were creating with the 'create meal' spell.

Spells affecting con:
We've considered making this part of the plague spell (a spell that reduces con like weakness or clumsy reduces strength or dex, respectively). However the plague spell currently doesn't have a timer, and this is considered fairly low-priority, look for it being discussed in the future.

Times games/events etc are run
Currently the majority of immortals live in the united states. Because of this and the fact that most of them work, many on weekends or at odd times games and other mudwide events have to be run at the responsible immortal's available times. We are looking for ways to remedy this and increase online coverage to all hours.

Cooking food other than filets:
Lots of code for little reward, basically, is why we don't implement this. I'm sure with skill trees many of the skills such as cooking will get a bit of an overhaul and may include some more functionality.

The mind req for fight skills:
I think some rather good arguments were thrown in both directions as to whether or not there should be a mind requirement for fighting stats. Actually, as fighters, if we were to take out this mind req, pure fighters could ignore three entire stats, to enhance fighting ability since perception really only influences a few fight skills and adds only a small amount to some of the others. Mages, on the other hand, must carry 40's in 3 stats, 60 in one (though to be as effective a mage as one is a fighter, they need 90 to 100 mind to reap all the benefits plus increase the number of times they can perform spells -- fighters have no cost for the skills they use), plus have enough strength to walk around, truly a mage can give up at most one, maybe two stats, and that's not including a fight stat. For now, the mind requirement will stay, and be re-evaluated when skilltrees proper is implemented, as some of the higher and more sophisticated fight skills will more than likely require higher mind or other combinations of high stats.

Crashes and losing eq:
The only way you should be able to lose eq any more is if you autorent overrent. There are certain circumstances where a corruption in the char list in which case characters are not saved. But there are currently three separate, independantly operating, nearly redunant functions in place to keep people from losing EQ unfairly. HOWEVER, it is up to the player to stay UNDER RENT. In the case that any of these methods should fail, reimburses are not allowed. Losing eq to a bug in the game is often allowed a reimburse, and by that we mean if there is a bug in a mob act or something that causes eq to be lost (the lion eating people's full corpses if they died while he was entranced bug, etc). Anytime you lose eq by what you believe to be a bug, you have the right to file a reimburse request with the adminstration department. They evaluate each case on an individual basis.

Mort reported bugs/suggestions:
We are increasing our efforts to acknowledge and standardize rewards for mort reported bugs (hence things like this post). I personally have gone through my mudmail a few times recently and responded to all suggestions and bug reports and rewarded some of them. Look for policy to be posted sometime in the future on the general guidelines we use to reward such ideas (these guidelines, as of this writing, have not fully been formed).

Perception and its affects:
Since the changing of the fight system and peception losing many of its combat influence, some of this has been added back in. Perception now affects many defensive capabilities (parrying, dodging, etc) and at high ranges also affects ac and hitroll. Some skills (mostly non-fight) have been reworked to include more perception elements. Look for perception to have new skills possibly soon, but definitely with skilltrees. Backstab was also fixed and altered to add more of a perception element.

Dealing with harassment:
The gag and ungag functions have been implemented.

Mobs asking for prerequisites on skills:
Currently the cost and requirements for learning skills from mobs is entirely up to the builder unless there are certain code restrictions forcing a prerequisite. This will be a bit more standardized in skilltrees but if a builder deeps that a given mob would like another skill learned before a new skill is taught, they are free to do so.

Fleeing:
Fleeing hasn't changed in a long time, and probably won't. Most muds are not as stat dependant as this one, and I'm really not sure how most deal with the equations to flee. I won't dish out the exact formula, but dex has quite a bit to do with it, as well as how many exits are in a room.

Strength and the fight skills:
Considering how many strength fighters there are about now, I'm not sure that many agree with the fact that strenght isn't as strong as the others. However we have already coded and are testing a new skill to be implemented sometime in the near future.

Hit tables and how attacks are displayed:
Just a sort of ground rules for how the attack lines look:
1) Hit shots are shown as hits (odd that...)
2) Blocked shots are shown as hits
3) parried shots are shown as misses (hence how you can swing 5 times and hit 0)
4) The 'managed to block an attack from' message will appear only once, regardless of how many attacks are blocked.
5) The parry message will only appear once regardless of how many attacks are parried.
6) blocked shots can still damage eq, but the the shot is effectively blocked by a piece of eq, and no damage is taken from that attack.
7) There appear to be more 'hits' in pkill, though a good portion of these hits are 'blocked shots'. Blocked shots are calculated on a figure that's known as naked ac, which is the natural AC (for players 100) with dexterity bonus of current dexterity, and level. It maxes at about ac 25, which is very easy for high lvl players to hit, even if the victim's ac is -100 or better.

Spell damage:
... is currently under review, though we have come to realize that it may be a factor of the mana cost in the mana cost table as well for ALL spells, not just damage spells.

-Ruf