Posted by Kaeos on 08/22
People hate losing all their eq, especially when their
eq consists of 2 new cobras, 2 new trees, and strung items.
These items are hard to comeby and it sucks when
a little crash comes along and the person is a little
overrent.
overrent.
My suggestion is to make at least a one tick warning
just so people will know that they are going to get
all their eq lost if they are over rent. Else,
have a autosave 1/2 tick before the crash so players
can drop eq. I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels
that eq lost from overrent crashes suck bigtime.
In my situation, I acquired a potion and was going to
quaff it when the crash happened resulting in loss
of my hard to get eq. Chances are, I will not come
across most of that hard to get eq.
Pissed atm,
Kaeos
From: Sandra
Wednesday, August 04, 08:30AM
Er, a 1 tick warning? -boggle- You get a Saving... FAILED message
when you save over rent, crashes were made to save equipment
nine out of ten times(Yes there are still sometimes that the
mud will crash without getting the message, but they are
extremely rare), you have 1k prestige rent as a buffer. I think
that we've done an awful lot to prevent players from losing eq
due to being overrent. There's even a warning in help rent
about it. My suggestion is to not use that prestige rent
as anything other than a failsafe device.
Considering that we don't know when a crash will occur,
there's no real way to impliment your idea. Especially when
we have no idea when a 'bad' crash will happen as opposed
to a polite one.
-Sandra
From: Vengeance
Wednesday, August 04, 12:06PM
if uh, i knew a program i wrote was going to crash at
a specific time, instead of having it save the work
in progress, i'd uh, patch the bug so it didn't crash?
here's a novel idea tho many people that lose their
eq to crashes seem to not comprehend...
DONT GO OVERRENT. there's no reason to.
From: Skar
Wednesday, August 04, 12:43PM
Perhaps the save code could be changed, so that if the save fails, it
doesn't overwrite the older (presumably successful) save file?
From: Vengeance
Wednesday, August 04, 01:47PM
that would allow going overrent to be exploited
i could carry around dozens of items,
and just leave em in my house aftwards for retrieval later
From: Infidel
Wednesday, August 04, 02:05PM
Everybody goes over rent, it can't be avoided without a lot of
hassles and even then without a house you're likely to lose what
you drop just so you have a big buffer of rent while checking
out stuff or being given a high rent quest item.
I really think it needs changing, only prob is coming up with
a better way cos this really is too harsh..
How about instead of leaving out the characters eq on failed saves
it instead sets a flag, this can be checked for on entering the
game or even on a random event. If the latter you could have a variety
of nasty things happen to the characters, bandits mug them, meteorites
fall on their heads etc possibly worsening depending how far over
rent the character is, all the way up to a thieving mob stealing
random eq from you, worn or otherwise.
From: Kaeos
Wednesday, August 04, 03:00PM
Yes we do get 1k extra rent, but this hardly works as
a fail save. Because of the 1k extra rent, players will
of course want to use this rent to their advantage.
If the speed limit on the freeway is 50, and we know
cops will ticket you going 60 or faster, most of us will drive
at 55-60.
Well in my case, i was unable to find out if i was overrent.
I was given a vial and was going to quaff it immediately,
when the crash occured. Even if i typed save, to
see if i was overrent, the crash would have eaten
all my eq.
All i'm asking is for less harshness when we go overrent. Many
of us, especially helpful players who are repairing eq
for another, have to go overrent to hold that piece
of eq. In doing so, they are going overrent when the item
is, say, a SSS. Don't think they can do much with their 1k fail save.
See what i mean? A player being helpful is taking
a risk to lose ALL of their eq. Worth it? If
you like to play the odds that a crash won't occur
while repairing someone's SSS. But of course, in my case,
the odds were against me.
Not worth it.
Kaeos
From: Sandra
Wednesday, August 04, 03:12PM
Your failed save happened a few min before the crash, actually.
As I said, there are plenty of things to prevent people from losing
equipment when they're over rent. The simplest, and yes, it is
simple, is to not go over rent. If you're repairing an item, and
autosave, give it back and get a good save, THEN repair it. There
is, and always should be, a risk when going over rent.
-Sandra
From: Tempus
Thursday, August 05, 02:28AM
Is it me or are we all getting lazy
these days. In the old days
when you overrent you lose your stuff
there wasn't no such thing as polite crashes
just crashes. The imms are already
nice enough to put polites in and thats not
enough? come on...give me a break
Tempus Kittredge.
From: Infidel
Thursday, August 05, 03:15AM
It has nothing to do with laziness, it's about losing hard to obtain
eq and strings that may have taken years to obtain only for it to
be lost at no fault of player whatsoever. That may not be true
in Kaeos's case but it is in others. All I'm asking is for a
reduction in the penalty for your ISP going down or whatever it
may be that can cause this. It would take 10 mins to code something
that would exclude items randomly on failed saves so you may only
lose 1/3rd - 1/2 of your eq rather than being screwed completely.
From: Davien
Thursday, August 05, 05:41AM
Ahhh you lost me there Infidel. You say you want something that
will dropp a random piece of eq from a save until you are under
rent. ok, sound enough idea but it doesn't help the people who
have worked hard to get ALL of their gear strung. Even those with
3 items strung stand a pretty good chance of losing a string. Yes
I think it would be good to not lose gear to crashes, after all
its not our fault the mud crashes, but you know it will happen if
you go over-rent. Think back to the days before Rufus squished the
bug that made the mud crash every 4 hours or so. A couple of years
back, it was very rare to have the mud up longer than 24 hours.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying bring back the good old days at
all, but just to put the current situation in perspective.
They are doing a good job, and they continue to do a good job
and one day the goal of having completly stable code will be
reached, but until that time, lets leave them to use their time
on things that are, in the end, more important than having gear
save over crashes because people ran the risk and lost. Yes it
sucks, but it also sucks when it rains and I forgot my umbrella,
or when I drop my ice-cream when I'm bumped. Actually I doubt I
would seeing I'm lactose intolerant, but you get the idea.
Davien Holyoake.
From: Infidel
Thursday, August 05, 08:52AM
Hmm, no.. that's not what I meant but it could as you said
take your rent into consideration. The point was though that
instead of losing all your eq, you'd lose only some of it,
randomly rather than the last thing you saved with so people
will continue to avoid going over rent as best they can.
I also think you'll find that much less important things are
being worked on than this. My experience with losing eq and
seeing others swearing and so forth on chat when it happens to
them is enough for me to believe this should be high priority.
From: Zheeerlikouv
Thursday, August 05, 09:40AM
why not just lose the one that put you over rent?
Wouldn't that make more sense and solve all the problems?
From: Splat
Thursday, August 05, 11:03AM
No, they want to keep people within their rent limit, if it
were just the last things added to your inventory beyond what
you can save, people would be able to carry around heaps of
vials for pk and there'd be a rush for a chalice every reboot.
Stuff like that anyway.. the current system works but is
in its original raw state which could be built upon to be
so much better.
For eg. rent and max rent could show up in your score by having
a running total as you pick up and drop stuff rather than it be
calculated all together. From that you could have random events
as mentioned earlier or just wondering mobs that will stop you
in your tracks and say 'My, you look overburdoned with all that
equipment, let me help you with that.' and Zoink! The mob
steals an item, taunts you with it and disappears.
Just one example which sticks with the original idea of keeping
people within their rent limit but also becomes an in game thing
that could even be fun at times.
That would take a bit of work however and I can understand if it
were a low priority thing if considered at all but I still think
the current system needs attention bad and at least the simpler
method mentioned earlier should be imp'd.
From: Danar
Friday, August 06, 05:33AM
Well, Splat, you should always know your max rent...
It's not an extraordinarily complicated formula, after all. And I always
try a save after I pick something up so I know if it's gonna put me over.
Really, your suggestion exists already...except for the wandering mob bit.
I'm personally VERRRY much against that. When I -am- overrent, which is
only when I'm running something and I have to carry spoils, I really
really don't want a mob popping up and grabbing one of my strung items. I
would rather lose the gae-bolg or whatever; I'm not gonna use it anyway :b
When I do get hit by an auto-save, I always resave within the next two
seconds, so barring an extraordinarily well-timed crash, I always have a
safe pfile. However, I understand that it's a big problem when you can't
get back and the game can't tell you're LD. I think personally the best
thing would be to tighten LD detection, but I think it was mentioned in a
Q&A that there's not a lot that can be done about that.
so, feh :/
Danar
From: Wrecked'm
Friday, August 06, 09:43AM
Well, I used to save on picking up stuff too, until that is the
MUD crashed between pretyped commands, SAVE FAILED, CRASH, NEKKID!
There's no way to be safe and it's a whole lot worse for people
outside the US, it's a lot more likely they'll lose link and be
unable to reconnect yet everybody still goes over rent, when moving
stuff to sell at a shop, when tforming for others etc. Charmies
or porters of some sort for everyone would help but it's still not
enough.. Anyway the suggestion about a mob stealing from you would
be the worst case scenario, perhaps for being way over rent for a
long time.. Other less severe penalties could be used.
There'd be a lot to work out in that kinda system though so I'll
just argue for the simpler method in every 2nd or 3rd item be
excluded from your pfile on failed save. People would continue
to try and avoid going overrent as they do now but it wouldn't
be quite as devestating when they get screwed by the system.
From: LadyAce
Friday, August 06, 10:34AM
There's an angle to this discussion that is missing so far --
the whole reason we have rent limits and failed saves and eq loss.
Yes, it sucks to lose your equipment, I've lost mine, and come close
to losing mine, enough times to know the pain of it.
But why do we have this at all? It's not out of sadism, it's out of
a particular theory of game balance, i.e. since we're a heavily
stat-based/stat-from-eq-based mud, we have to put limits on the
amount of stuff you can carry around, use, etc. You don't ever -have-
to go overrent, you have many options and methods to avoid it, and
you hardly ever are forced to lose eq by the 'not enough time to get
under rent' scenario -- but to remove the risk would remove the
"teeth" from the rent limit. Yes, it hurts, but it's supposed to
hurt.
Over the years, we've reduced a lot of the risk. We're more stable,
we have polite crashes (i.e. if the game can save your stuff before
it dies entirely, it will -- that's what the polite ones are) -- but
now and then, we do have ugly crashes, people lose link, routers go
down.
It's painful to lose all of your stuff, so please don't go overrent.
As for priorities -- this idea doesn't really fit into the prioritizing
scheme because it hasn't been accepted as a project. I know that you
may disagree with the priority scheme that the coders work under, but
remember that our priorities try to accomodate the mud as a whole --
and that means fun details for rp'ers, fun details for explorers, fun
details for gamers, fun details for people who just like to hang out.
Plus there's the reality of the organization that our staff works on
what we're motivated to work on -- what we find fun, interesting,
and worthwhile. It's a combination of these factors -- what the mud
needs and what our brains are interested in, that determines what we
do from minute to minute. And sure, sometimes we have to put our
shoulders to the wheel and do the grunt work, and sometimes we just
play.
-LA
From: Asterix
Friday, August 06, 10:49AM
well,.. i lost all the eqs
on an alt b4 even though i was ooc and had a
successful save b4-hand
and as shasta pointed out, ppl
gets to sit in a clipper ship even though they
have a canoe and they are in ooc too
so wat's the point of going to ooc to
get link dead anyway?
jus wanted to say losing eqs sucks
why not jus make it unable to be overrent totaly
?
From: Infidel
Friday, August 06, 12:15PM
Ok, you don't -have- to go overrent if you level to 12 or so naked
and always have 12k or so free rent free, o'course that's no
guarrantee either as I'm basing that on what I know to be a
relatively safe buffer, too bad newbies don't know that, too
bad that to be competitive in pk one must max out their rent
with +dam etc and unclanned do it anyway, even relying on
prestige rent.. You can't ignore what goes on whether it's
optional or not. A reduction by half in eq loss won't change
what we do but will be a whole lot less painful and also fairer
to those that it's more likely to happen to.
Hell, I'd rather Asterix's suggestion of not being able to
go overrent at all to the current system, it's not possible
to know what an item's worth before getting it out of a
corpse now is it. Face it, we pretty much -have- to go
overrent.
From: Gran
Friday, August 06, 05:16PM
I think that at least a partial solution to the problem
would be to once again allow repairing and trueforming
items that lie on the ground.
I can't see why the prohibition to trueform items on the ground
has been put in in the first place. Sure it's a risk for
whoever requests the trueform to drop the item,
but I think it's a lot better that the person who -requests-
trueform risks losing one item, than the trueformer
risks losing -everything-. To me it seems pretty obvious
that it is the person that -requests- the trueforming that
should be taking the risk, and not
the trueformer that offers the service in order to help.
As for repair, admittingly it would constitute a slight deviation
from reality, but not worse that can be handled.
Better that make the repairers lose all their eq
because the get temporarily overrent wanting to do others a favor
and then their routers happen to die for hours.
We can't make the game 100% realistic anyway.
Just my 2 cents..
Gran
From: Brew
Saturday, August 07, 01:49AM
woops
From: Brew
Saturday, August 07, 01:56AM
Well I mistakenly appended this post
and now I'm going to purposfully append.
You know what a crash is? It's an Act of God
and under Line 5 of Appendix H in the LegendMUD
EQ Insurance Handbook, Acts of God (or Gods) call for
complete understanding that the mud crash is not some
evil plot for your to loose all your EQ and rather you should
go "Oh Darn, I lost my EQ" and call upon your many friends
because we all are nice to everyone and have lots of friends
and have these friends help you in aquiring new items to replace
the ones lost in the Nasty Act of God(s) Crash which if in no way
any of their faults.
Thank You, Have a nice day.
-Brew
From: Typhoid-Mary
Saturday, August 07, 03:19AM
Well said, Gran.
Typhoid-Mary
From: Cornix
Saturday, August 07, 04:51PM
Brew- it's not always easy to get together a group to
go re-eq'ing. Just about all of my friends here live in different time
zones than me, so it's often like "hey, wanna go help me kill whoever?"
"-yawn- sure, just...let...me...rest my eyes for a minu...-snore-" Frustra
Frustrating, even. Sure, it'd be great to be able to quickly and
reliably go on re-eq runs with friends, but that's not always possible.
And either way, it sucks to lose strings because your router goes kaflooey
From: Brew
Saturday, August 07, 05:18PM
Strings are rather easy/hard to come by
they come a plenty with them nifty Imm games, all the planned
ones in the LT and the spontaneous
ones that happen with passing Imms
Granted I've played 3 games of recall tag in my entire
legend experiece (almost everygame that has been run while
I've been on) and a few trivia's (that I did horrible at)
I realize these games are sometimes hard to make.
That's why LadyAce hands out tokens/coupons aplenty for the LT
meaning you write a little diddy for the nice paper and she greatly
rewards you. The more you write (and the better you write) the better you
ahem.. the better your chances are at getting a nifty coupon
and ofcourse you can make large numbers of money runs to get the cash
to buy auctioned coupons (or offer bids)
and I know plenty of people that give their hard (or not so) earned
coupons and strings to DT victims.
Yes, you may have had a full set and now, thanks to the
luck of a game, and someone elses generosity you only
have 2. Well Shucks...now you have something to do on the Mud, doncha?
Get EQ/cash/strings to get back to the way you were.
-Brew (who is often not bored)
From: Tarn
Sunday, August 08, 07:29AM
Bringing this thread back to Gran's post, I'd like to say
that I agree with him.
Currently, as this alt, I have plenty of rent free, but it wasn't
always the case, and isn't the case for all my alts.
Why should I put my hard-earned strings and my eq set that
took time and effort to build, at risk in order to do
a favour for somebody else?
I've seen tformers or repairers go over rent and lose link
before while helping others, and it really isn't fair on
the repairer or tformer. Repairers and tformers are providing
a service that they don't have to provide, they are doing
something for others on this mud. I thought helpfulness
was something that was to be encouraged here, not discouraged.
Personally, I happen to like the idea of being able to
mend, repair or tform something that is on the floor and
not in your inv.
Tarn
From: LadyHunter
Monday, August 09, 05:29AM
When I tried to raise this point in a discussion on chat
Tarn, I was told that the change was done in response to
some players' request. Well I just wonder if the players
who did the request were the one who actually did the trueforming
and repairing? And did it occur to anyone that it is rather rude
to request a change that would put people that are actually doing
the requesters a favor in jeopardy of getting overrent and losing
-everything- through no fault of their own just because the
requesters don't want to risk losing -one- item?
I was told that "You can't have it both ways". Well actually
despoite what has been implied
I am not so stupid that I don't realize that. My point
is however that I think the majority of
the trueformers / repairers agree that it is more fair
for somebody requesting a favor to take the risk than
for somebody doing a favor.
Finally, I'd just like to point out that the
immortal who argued the "You can't have it both"
ways" thing was extremely rude for no reason at all,
at least none I could see. As anyone who followed
the discussion can testify, I wasn't rude,
I wasn't pushy, I wasn't insulting. Surely,
I said things that not everyone liked, but I
did believe it my right to say what I think.
I also believed it my right to be critical
to the arguments offered by the immortals
and to present my objections.
However, if I keep a polite tone of conversation
I expect others to do so as well. I don't
think being an immortal in itself gives
anyone the right to be rude for no valid reason.
I have always respected the immortals on this
mud and have always thought they are doing
a great job. Neither have I ever been disappointed
until this time. Not disappointed in the
immortal's disagreeing with me, of course,
that would be only stupid, because - I thought so
at least - we have all the right to disagree with
eachother without for that reason stopping
being civil to eachother.
No what I was disappointed in was the unfair
and totally uncalled for rudeness of the immortal
in question.
We are often told that when we present a case to
an immortal the results will often depend on
how polite we are. I accept it, it does stand to
reason. But doesn't that mean the immortals should
be polite too?
I am sorry, I didn't intend it to be quite so long :(
Respectfully
LadyHunter
From: Skar
Tuesday, August 10, 10:19AM
If you are over rent during a polite crash, you don't lose your
equipment, even the stuff that's putting you over rent. If you are
over rent during a nasty crash, you don't lose your equipment, so
long as you have a good save file.
It's only when your save has failed that you're in any danger of losing
your equipment and strings, and then only when there is a nasty crash.
Given the way the system works now, I'm surprised that there aren't
already pkillers or others running around with vials and chalices that
put them over rent. So long as they make sure they re-save when the
automatic save fails, they are statistically in good shape. You can only
lose your stuff when you have a failed save followed by a nasty crash.
Of course, if you've given your stuff to a mob or dropped it on the ground
you're going to lose it unless the crash was nasty and your save file was
good.
I'll continue to take my chances going over rent when tforming items.
From: Gran
Tuesday, August 10, 01:27PM
Skar, technically you are right and I am not so worried
about nasty crashes, as you said they rarely happen. But what
if somebody gives you an item to repair or trueform, that item
puts you overrent and then you lose your router long enough
to be autorented? For us overseas players it's not any
far off improbable idea, it's the crude reality we live in!
You say you'll take your chances getting overrent when trueforming.
It is your right, as it should be! There is nothing to stop the
person who requests tf or repair to -ask- if they should give you
the item or drop it. Then if the trueformer/repair -wants- to take
the risk, that's entirely up to them. All -I- am saying is that
the other possibility - trueforming and repairing items on the
ground - should be offered too, because it stands to reason - at least
to me! - that it's up to those who request the service to take
the risk, not the ones who -offer- the service.
Gran
From: Skar
Tuesday, August 10, 01:41PM
Well, we all have different opinions. Mine is that I hate to try to fix
something with the keyword 'leather' or 'shield' and waste mana on some-
thing lying on the ground. Then you have to dispose of that item, if it
isn't owned.
Once upon a time, I lost a bag with two coupons in it when I dropped it
to free enough rent to try something new and a mob picked it up and
promptly ate it. With all the scavenger mobs in the game, I'm really very
leery of dropping stuff now.
Then there are the players that will come along and snatch something up
from the ground, because things on the ground are typically discards.
These are probably some of the reasons it was changed it the first place.
From: LadyAce
Tuesday, August 10, 05:21PM
If you're in the overseas situation, why not pick an item
of yours that you can stand to possibly lose, and trade items
while doing the tform? Pick something high rent, easy to get,
etc. -- enough to put you underrent by 2k or so. Then just
trade back after the item is all fixed up. In "the old days"
when we crashed a lot, people traded items when they did tform,
if they were worried.
Just an idea :)
-LA
From: Gran
Wednesday, August 11, 04:22AM
Yes, LadyAce, and it is so we have to operate now
to accomplish at least reasonable safety :) Still,
apart from the fact that even this in't an absolutely
safe procedure, it means once again that the trueformers
and repairers have to go through extra trouble just because
they want to do others a favor. I am sorry if I sound persistant
again -cough- but to me it seems conceivable that it is the
requester of the service that should be primarily exposed
to the risk, not the people who are kind and friendly as to offer
the service :)
After all, noone is preventing the trueformer/repairer and the
requester to make a deal meaning they will actually take the item.
All -I- mean is that it should be their decision, not something
that is if not directly forced at least imposed on them.
Gran
From: LadyAce
Wednesday, August 11, 07:37AM
The change was made in response to player complaints, and if you look
at the numbers, they had a point -- the chance of losing an item by
putting it on the ground, the annoyance of tforming items with the
wrong keywords which are on the ground (and now, perhaps even owned
items on the ground), etc. is much much higher than the chance that
you'll lose eq due to tform, or that split second when you're trading
items. Heck, if that item trade time is so dangerous, why not drop
the item you want tformed, the tformer gives you their eq, and you
pick up the eq again?
This is a case where we responded to an overwhelming flood of player
complaints and ->actual item losses<- and changed the code in a way
we don't like to normally do (messing with victims and targets is
bad news). If people start losing eq left and right because they
tformed an item, we'll surely reconsider.
-LA
From: Infidel
Saturday, August 14, 11:09AM
Hmm, a lot has been blamed on 'player requests' lately yet no
players have stepped up to defend their views, either they
have changed their minds or it just aint true.
From: Seth'
Sunday, August 22, 06:58PM
here's an idea, I lost so much eq due to crashes and I'm pissed just
as much as Kaeos is. How about when a crash comes about the mud auto-
junks the highest rent piece of eq you have to make you go underrent.
Hey, it's better to lose one item than to lose em all, right?
President Seth
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