Interesting feature, I like the fact that it involves all the mud and all the players to protect their mud. I have though some questions about it:
-What do the aliens loaded DO? Move around the mud zones and kill everything?
-What do players have to do, kill all the aliens? Why? What prize are they going to get? What if they don't kill the aliens what happens?
-Do the aliens keep wandering around the mud endlessly until a bunch of players decide to kill them? What's the point in killing them, what are the extremes if the aliens really invade the mud?
-What is this IDD feature all about? I can't really understand what's it all about.
For a brief answer to the above questions, see the end of the post. For an expanded explanation, continue.
I recommend we start finishing the Alien invasion idea before expanding it into different sagas. We can always do that in future, let's start to see if the players like the IDEA of the invasion and if all the building and scripting work is worth doing. I personally don't like to invest time in things nobody will ever enjoy. If we subtract precious time from our RL's to improve our 4Dimensions world in a way that really helps it.
With that said, let's start organizing the work and the feature details, let's see if players enjoy the idea of this feature and let's get it DONE in a week or two maximum.
I'm glad qsay have been fixed, not that I know this I'm going to make Zedd qsay his spammy shouts, so people not interested in playing the Zedd feature can just turn qsay off and keep idleing at recall in peace.
Actually, the alien invasion is done and it's been tested (and we did find a few things that were abusable once it was in - like more than one questmaster being able to load mobs which ended up in there being WAY too many aliens and no-one killing them - which sucks when you have aggro mobs running around - yes, some of them are aggro, I forget which ones).
The aliens don't actually do anything other than are different mobs for players to kill - if they killed things in the zone they were in, that'd suck as they could probably clean out some of the zones before they were all killed - though not in itself a half bad idea, just reminds me of Molly's response to the wolf/rabbit poker playing comment that'd been made a while back somewhere. (To explain that comment - one of the players mentioned that it was odd to see 2 wolves and 2 rabbits in a room together just sitting there like they were about to get a game of poker going. So the thought was to make the wolves aggro to the rabbits. It seems Molly had already had this thought back in her day and ended up with fat wolves in her zone and no rabbits so on the long scale it wouldn't work, but for a short term like what the invasion should be, it may.)
Some of the aliens load objects which can be turned into Gadwin the Alien Artifactor (yes, I had to look that up) and he gives you quest points for the objects. Before you ask, no, I have no idea what quest points can currently be used for if anything.
If players don't kill the aliens, it's actually up to the questmaster of the game to get rid of them all (by IMM involvement if neccessary) that way you don't have high level mobs running around killing newbies. yes, that has been a problem in the past and we may have to make a feature so if involvement ends without all the mobs being killed, the questmaster can call an end to the invasion and kill them off with one mighty blow. Of course no-one would get the xp that the mobs would have given had the been killed.
The extremes to aliens left behind are me getting a bit heated and finding out who started the quest and didn't finish it. Yes, it now tells me a name so I know - that was another error that got fixed. Also, with a limited number of questmasters I usually don't have to go too far to figure out who it was.
As questmaster the job is to start the quest with enough people on that may be interested in it. Once you know you have interest (by starting the game with something low level and listening to quest/gossip/whatnot) you can load what you need. Use IDD to keep interest going without kicking people out of the feel of the game (yes, I had to push hard to keep that feature that way). And, the final step is to make sure all of the aliens have been cleaned up. The IDD keeps track of the number of aliens, so it shouldn't be too hard and it automatically tells people when the quest is over (also it has an automatic start).
Let me give an example of IDD - I tried to a little bit in the last post, but obviously didn't get all the way. The IDD is really just something in between needing to have the questmaster say something and have it feel like it's from an overall all seeing agency. A little background would be that the inter-dimension defense in interested in keeping the timeline how it is - aliens in the future, indians/cowboys in old west, dragons/medieval time stuff in medieval areas and all the other stuff in prehistoric. Once aliens start invading other dimensions they get involved (of course aliens invading future is just them being away from the planets they're from and trying to take over the area they're invading in which case they would get involved because they're not where they're supposed to be).
Having said that, though, IDD is a mob and as such does not have an intellegent bone in it's body. No matter what background *I* give it, *IT* doesn't care. Thus enter the questmaster. When the quest starts, the IDD will alert people to the start of the quest - that's automatic. Once in a while during the death of an alien, it will send out updates on how many aliens are left - that is automatic. But what it does not do is goad people into playing - that's up to the questmaster, by use of the IDD. I mean, sure, Asmodeus can qsay 'Come on, guys, aliens are invading Sherwood forest, let's go get them!" or, as questmaster he can have the IDD gecho: The Inter-dimension department has found aliens have landed at the edge of Sherwood Forest. The IDD asks that all available adventurers make their way towards Sherwood Forest to rid medieval of this menance. Or something like that. Think of the IDD as the "Men in Black" of 4D - you'll never see them and it's their job to make sure that those people in medieval that see aliens don't ever remember it.
The IDD is just a way to keep everything in character and in feel. Can you imagine the old, crotchty drow Tocharaeh asking for assistance for some aliens that are attacking Legend? Without the IDD that's what you'd end up with. The IDD would let Toch be the questmaster AND lead people into battle (if Tochy felt it is something he'd do in character) OR let someone else lead them as Toch is too enamered with Sarias to get involved (though being Questmaster, Tochy is involved, he just doesn't have to let anyone else know it).
So, now to briefly answer the questions:
1) Aliens are just extra mobs, some are hard, some are easy, some are aggro, some are not.
2) Yes, players kill the aliens - any bonus rewards are up to the questmaster that starts the quest. Kitolani, during the one I ran before it was a feature, was willing to give out a token (don't remember what it was, bronze maybe) to the person that got the most scalps. I spent most of my time scalping mobs for those that didn't have the ability. Which lead to mobs actually loading something that could be given to the questmaster - which lead to Gadwin.
3) Why do you kill any mob? XP. Plus this is a bonus quest that doesn't get run very often. It's kind of like: why do people run after Zedd?
4) Any prize other than XP (and objects from mobs that can be turned in to Gadwin) is up to the questmaster to decide.
5) All aliens should be killed/destroyed upon completion of the quest - if for some reason the Questmaster is unable to have all mobs killed than they can ask for IMM involvment to get rid of the rest of the aliens (though, as said before, I'd kind of like to make a feature where the questmaster can self-destruct the mobs so IMM's don't have to get involved).
6) IDD feature - see above. There is no short explanation to it.
