Idea for corpse sacing

[Grish]

I mentioned it the other day, and Erwin said the DJ zone might make an item to do something like this, however I will still suggest it.

Generally, this is what you see:

You sacrifice the corpse of a dock worker to your god.
You have been rewarded by your deity.

And unless I missed something you never get rewarded.  What I am suggesting is we implement something to make a small possibility of some random events happening when you sac a corpse.

First of all, the corpse would have to be suitable size to avoid abuse, this could be dependant on the the level, or just a flat number like 1.5mil-2 mil to get a chance at a bonus. In addition you could also make a system where players have to devote to good or evil, and if they sway from their alignment and sac a corpse bad things could happen. Also, could increase the chance of a bonus happening when slaying mobs opposite of your chosen alignment.

Off the top of my head here are some ideas that could be "booned" by your diety

coins
token (would have to be very rare event of course)
heal of mana, move or health (rare event all 3, or even rarer event full restore)
your hunger and thirst decreased 1-3% (this one could be semi common)
a potion of regen, or sanc, or something

other than items other events could take place:
a spell is placed on you, only 1 at a time and can not have another one until it expires, could be special spells of regeneration, spells to decrease satiation, haste or anything.
a blessing which increases your stats, or which would allow you to have higher stats if your gear will take you higher (i.e if you have 24 con worth of gear you could have 24 con)


Thats just some general ideas off the top of my head, of course this same type of system could work with items as well, but it would be a lot harder to govern and control so people dont abuse it by sacrificing a million junk items to get a good buff.

[erwin]

Actually, I was thinking of an item which just reduces hunger and thirst.

Okay..I'm not very sure about getting coins when you sac a corpse, because to my mind, I still think there's a lot of inflation going on, and most older players have tons of money in their bank accounts. I am not sure how the costs of training skills affect players, so I'm not going to comment on getting coins when saccing corpses.

I'd say no for tokens..since to my mind, that's associated with 'quests'.

I'm not sure about the other ideas, depends on what other players and imms think

The thing with saccing corpses is that the bonuses would have to reward people of that tier and level appropriately. You wouldn't want high level players going to easy (newbie zones) and killing mobs just to receive a reward, and depriving newbies of doing quests.

What I was thinking of originally was an item that sets a counter on a player, and checks if the mob killed is roughly equal to the player's power (level, tier).

Each time you kill a mob which is suitable, it increases the counter by 1.

When the counter hits a certain value, say 100, there is a random chance of something special happening which is just hunger, thirst decreasing by a bit. Regardless of its happening, it will reset to zero, and the cycle continues. I suppose if you want something more complicated and rewards different items, it can still be done, setting ifchecks for multiples of numbers / pre-set values of numbers, say a reward if it is a multiple of 500, or a reward if the counter hits 1000 flat and so on.

However, saccing corpses for a reward MUST 'reward' lower level players more frequently than high level players (not that I have anything against them), otherwise, it's going to be terribly unbalanced and will most probably have some repercussions like empty low level zones and so on.

[Kvetch]

I *think* it actually does something, but what would be for others to tell you.  If I *remember* right though, you get like 1 coin or 1 move point back.  It really isn't much, but I seem to *remember* it being something.  If you're wondering about the *'s it's because think and remember are things I rarely do correctly.

Kvetchy

[Virisin]

Last I checked you got 3 move per corpse sac. It's extremely helpful in certain situations.

[Iwku]

My comment might be slightly off topic, but it drives me absolutely insane to go to an area and find it littered with corpses and objects. I actually don't mind the corpses so much as I mind all the stuff stewn about all over the place. I feel compelled to begrudgingly clean up the mess. I'm not that tidy of a person but it drives me crazy. I know that's my problem and other people don't mind the mess.

A little reward of a few movement points or whatever is good; but maybe in addition to rewarding people for sacrificing mobs/items, there should be a punishment for those who litter. I'm not serious, but to those people who dump stuff on the ground and leave it there...please stop littering and keep the world clean. And, to those people who knowingly drop quest enabling items within the quest zone, shame on you.

This message sponsored by 4D Greenpeace dot org.

[Kvetch]

Most of that stuff being left, I believe is from mobs as they decay... they do decay in this mud, right?  But, for some reason objects on the ground don't.  I've mentioned before that I think everything on the ground should have a timer (before you all say it - other than mobs, pc's and those things that are supposed to be there).  I guess it'd be the last of those items that would make it a problem with all of our !display items if all things on ground went poof, they probably would too.

[Grish]

nodnod erwin, good points.

In general the buffs and benifits you would recieve would not be worth the time to try to abuse it. During the normal day you would prolly only see the small heals, maybe a food item or drink item with limited duration and one use to satiate you completly, nothing worth really farming for. But in a rare rare situation (like .05% chance) you might get a good buff, again with a short duration and can not be overriden by another buff. So you could get a lame buff that add +50 to max hp, or you could get a uber +speed, or you could get +10 to strength, whatever it be you would be stuck with it until it expires. More often than not though, you wouldnt see these buffs very often, and yes some anti abuse would need to be in place to prevent abuse. But in general I think the buffs should be good, but not good enough to make people clear newbie zones to get them.

[Fizban]

It does do something. It raises your mv and mana, which is raised depends on the circumstances.

[Molly]

I dislike the littering myself, but I don't think that setting a timer on things on the ground would be possible to code in a reasonable way.
For one thing, how would the code decide which items to purge and which to leave? It's not as easy as just leaving out all objects with no TAKE flags. Some objects are actually meant to be on the ground to be picked up by players, and a timer on those would be really irritating.

Perhaps it would be possible to code it so that all objects in a room would be purged each time the zone resets. But purging things on the ground is a risky thing to do. It might lead to a lot of unwanted side effects, like for instance if a player has just dropped his container on the ground to sort out some things, and then the zone happens to reset before he picks it up again. Imagine the whining!

This is probably more a Building issue than a Coding one

The problem is most apparent in some of the older zones, where all mobs wear a lot of equipment, just for appearance. (Tombstone, and some other Oldwest zones, comes to mind). Back then we thought that humanoid mobs should be fully clothed to look good, and didn't really think of the side effects of genocide. Most of this old equipment is virtually worthless to most players because there are so many better things around nowadays.

One way to deal with it could be to make all low-stat equipment melt-on-drop, like the Newbie equipment already is. But then again - what is useless to one player might be essential to a newbie who just lost everything in a DT, and needs to get something new fast, without much knowledge of the terrain.

I wouldn't even know where to start a massive change like this, especially since there are 12855 unique objects in the game.

Except maybe by drastically removing a lot of reset in some of the most problematic zones. We are continually updating the older zones, and maybe reducing the equipment drops could be part of this process.

[Virisin]

Just make auto-sac default on...

[Molly]

We do have an auto-sac toggle. How hard is it for a player to toggle it on, before going on a killing spree in a zone they already know well?
And as for making it default on, newbie players are the ones most likely to want/need to look at the loot before throwing it away, so that is a bad idea in my opinion.

[Virisin]

Just add a code then that auto-toggles auto-sac on after killing 5 mobs without even looking in the corpse.

[Hesara]

Why not make it, when the corpse decays all the content of the corpse disappears too?

Then you don't need any extra toggles at all.

[Kvetch]

I second Hes's idea.