Future Clan Contests

[Molly]

I'm splitting this out from the thread about zoneflags, to start a discussion about possible Clan Contests for the future.

Yeah, I'm cool with the idea now, and like I said with there going to be another batch starting one day, it's not like it's not achievable anymore.

Aside from that..Viri had an idea before about Zone deeds. Essentially, if you are levelling in a zone, any mob within that zone has a small chance to drop a deed. you can then claim that deed for you clan. When claimed your clan gets some sort of benefit, like an interest rate, or something positive. Once a deed is claimed it would then be able to be gotten by another clan after so many hours has passed. What this does is gets clans competing against one another on a continuous basis, since it's an on going competition. Also promotes exploring and going out and getting far away zones deeds. Could make it percentage based or number based, after 10 deeds are claimed clan gets increased clan bank interest, if 20 deeds are reached then clan gets 10% more exp a kill, if 30 deeds reached 10% more gold...90 deeds 1 dambonus max deeds, get clan name added to plaque or trophy for it for in clanhall. And all deeds are reset. So it could be a competition to have all the deeds claimed before all other clans, but everytime another clan claims the zone you lose it, so it could very well take a very long time to win. I know the post is cluttered, but what do you think?

Zone deeds sounds like a good idea, but I need some clarifications.

Let's see if I got it right:
1. Every zone in the game gets a Zone deed.
2. A couple of the mobs in the zone gets a 5% chance of dropping that deed when killed.
3. After one Clan claimed the deed, other Clans will be able to get it too after a delay, but all Clans will keep the deeds they already claimed.
4. Each time a Clan has collected 10 deeds a list of those is exposed in the Clan Hall, and all the Clan members get some kind of reward or advantage from it.
5. The reward increases with the number of deeds collected.
6. The first Clan to collect 100 deeds gets a bigger reward.

Comments to some of the points:
1. Should we launch all the deeds at the same time, or divide them in batches of 10 and announce a list of the deeds available? (Personally I'd prefer batches of 10, to keep the interest up).

2. I'd prefer it if just a couple of the mobs in the zone would get the chance to drop the deed, mostly because it means an insane amount of work to set the drop scripts on every 8486 prototype mob in the game. Unless of course it can be coded. But if so, the deeds might be a bit too easy to get, and we'd have to lower the percentage.

3. I think the only feasible delay would be when the zone resets (coupled with the small percentage chance). At least  I don't know of a way to script the delay. Unless that too can be coded.

4. The Clan leaders would be responsible for keeping track of the deeds and turning the batches of 10 in to an imm. Possibly we should also display the name of the Clan member who got the deed on the list.
So there would be no extra bonus for the first Clan to claim the deed? It can of course be done, but it would be pretty hard to keep track of. The only feasible way would be for the Clan to post on the board when they claim a deed for the first time, and we'd probably have to set up a special board for it in the Clan Office. Only the first post for a zone would count of course.

5. The rewards definitely have to be well thought out and approved by the staff. They cannot be big enough to cause permanent inbalance, and all Clan members need to  benefit from them.

[Loria]

Personally, I think dividing them up in batches and announcing them that way sounds like an evil and clever idea. I vote for that!

I don't plan on participating, (unless I get a lot better at the game than I am now), but I can see this drawing a lot of interest. Kudos to Viri for the great idea!

[Asmodeus]

I don't think an overall 'who claimed it first' list/prize is needed, or they may as well be zone flags.  But that aspect as a little inner-clan competition could be fun... i think it makes sense to keep that aspect in-clan because another clan can always steal from you, and you from another clan.  Not only would there (maybe) be a small prize for the most deeds first captured by a person within a clan, but it would cause more clan members to want to participate.  Of course, thats just a little icing on the motivation cake for the bigger rewards/perks that you get with having lots of deeds on a clan v. clan level.

[Asmodeus]

Oh, also...

There probably should be a clear way of listing which zones have which deeds, and hopefully an easy way of the lists changing as deeds are gotten so that the IMMs don't have to be involved at EVERY step of the way.  If deeds are going to be changing clans on a never ending cycle, thats only going to get annoying to whoever has to manually adjust lists.

Maybe theres a deed case that you can put it in, and as it gets put in the case, a script checks the other clans cases and purges any copies of the same deed?  Also the case could count up the deeds and maybe assist in giving the awards as the numbers got to certain levels.

Did anyone ever say something about clan treasuries making a small percent off of anything bought within a zone of a captured deed?  If Vikings have Elven Metropolis, and someone goes and buys a delicious leaf-shake, Vikings get a percent of that money into their clan treasury?  Maybe thats a useless feature though...

[Molly]

Umm, I think either me or Asmodeus has misunderstood something - probably me...

The way I understood Xeriuth's post, several clans could hold the deed to the same zone, making them a bit like zoneflags.
But as Asmodeus describes it, there could only be one deed to the same zone, and each time a new Clan claimed it, the ownership would change to them.

Now I am unsure hos it's supposed to work.
I think I'd prefer Asmodeus' way, since it would make more sense logically. Also it could be quite fun if the Clan that holds the deed could automatically collect a small entrance fee from everybody else entering the zone. (The amount would be added to the Clan treasury).

However, it would probably be a total pain to script something like that, but perhaps it could be coded.

First the delay until the deed carrier loads again would have to be determined, and the delay should be at least a couple of days, even if the way the carrier mob loads the deed is a bit random.
 
But with scripts we only have three ways to code in a delay:
- wait # seconds or # Ticks    (would need a lot of seconds)
- wait until the zone resets     (max length for this is 2 hours)
- wait until the mud reboots    (very unsure, could be an hour or 10 days)
I wish there could also be a more exact way to determine a wait in a script, but so far there isn't.

Second there must be an easy way to determine which Clan presently holds the deed. I definitely don't want a system where the imms have to go in and register any change of owner. This has to be automated in some way, or it would be totally irritating for whoever is supposed to keep manual track.

I'll ask the coders what can be done.

[Molly]

I had another idea in the past, a bit along the same lines. I'll post it here to get some opinions.

King of the Clans

This would be a continuous Clan Quest.
One strong mob would be teleporting all over the world, and when found and killed would have a small percental chance to load the King of the Clans crown.

The possession of this item would symbolically make a Clan 'King of the Clans' a bit along the same idea as the Blue Band of Victory.
As long as the item remains in a Clan Hall, the members get certain benefits from it. (Probably some free spells or free teleports).

Only one Clan can possess the crown at the same time. As soon as another Clan gets it and drops it in their Clan Hall, the possession of the title goes over to them, and the other item is purged.

[Xeriuth]

Great thread!

First thing is I love the King of Clans idea, almost exactly how I think the deeds should work as well!

My idea for the deeds was that they would load in a zones, randomly killing mobs within the zone had the small chance of loading the zone deed, the deed can only be loaded maybe once a day, or we could even say, use moon cycles, every new moon deeds can once more be loaded in a zone. Once a clan claims the deed, by placing it in a container in the clanhall, or maybe giving to one central mob near recall (might be easier that way) the mob would global command something like Table Round has claimed the Camelot Zone deed.

If say Chaos get's it next load it would prompt Chaos has claimed the Camelot Zone deed from Table Round.
Perhaps even broadcast a count of how many each clans own. Chaos 3; Sicilians 2; Table Round 1... if 0 it isn't even broadcasted to save spam?

I'm not sure if batches are better than a mass amount. Perhaps even do it as batches, once first batch of 10 is successfully all obtained by one clan, they win that "round" and then there's 10 more, and the first clan to achieve all 20 wins that "round" and receives an award, eventually with more and more deeds, it'll take longer and longer each round because there's simply more deeds, and with other clans continuously "stealing" them away from each other, it becomes nearly a continuous quest, maybe even make it so if the round is won the bonus prize is permanent for that clan. However if any other clan gets that many deeds they still get the buff at the respective level. Any thoughts? Would have to come up with some distinct bonus prizes. I think along the lines of interest to treasury, clan global innate, innate buff of some kind to attack, health, mana, moves, accuracy, evasion, speed, you name it.

Along with this, we could always implement what we planned to in the past and why we made clan entrances, is open clans to anyone? With the deed buff of interest rate it can make the treasury actually worth something. And with the ability to buy clan defenses, such as a mob for defense that attacks any intruder upon entrance, it's levels etc dependent on gold spent, perhaps traps that cause poison, or instant damage to anyone who enters, that are one time usage items, but all costing gold. This will provide a continuous gold sink to a clan especially if they keep getting attacked repetitively, and give people more incentive to play to keep their clan safe. Clans could be flagged arena, so anyone can defend as well.

This of course opens up clan wars, and may even be able to help mud growth in itself. Such as if a clan is 'dead' at what point do we throw in the towel with it and have another clan take it over, like Qualinesti belonged to Dark-Jedi for quite sometime. It doesn't stop the clan from ever coming back, if an interest is shown, but if this clan contest/raid/war features implemented can cut back the clans that are pretty much nonexistent. Perhaps even the option for clans to form alliances is brought back into play. This has many paths it can go, and can start off very fundamentally, and slowly grow, it doesn't need to be fancy by any means at first. simply opening clans and one defense purchasable, whenever time is available more defenses are added, etc. There's so many things to mention and not enough time right now to go through everything or make a detailed explanation, that can come in time if this idea is liked by most... Any thoughts, concerns, questions?

[Xeriuth]

Just a quick thought with how to determine which clans own which deeds. Can flags be applied to mobs, like player characters, and be saved through crashes/reboots? If so say each clan is represented by a variable, 1-10, clan 1 gives flag to Collector, Collector is flagged with the object(deed) given by clan 1 and adds a +1 count to a counter for clan 1, if any other clan gives that same object to collector clan 1 loses a count with -1 and the other clan gets a +1 count along with the name of the clan  given to the collector... makes sense?

Perhaps the collector could have a bulletin board with it, only the collector can write on the board, and a scripted phrase is posted onto the board so the what clan owns what deeds is kept track of on the board, while the count is controlled strictly by the counter script. I might be way off with my thinking, but just an idea.

[virinis]

Mmmm, ok.

First of all I think a few people have gotten the wrong idea about what deeds are and how they would work ideally.

Deeds are similar to zone-flags, but also quite different.

• Every zone should have a deed, and they should all be out at once, not released as batches.
• Deeds should randomly load on any mob within the zone, not a selection. Players should have to get lucky or thoroughly destroy a zone to uncover the deed, not just go around killing the top 3 mobs from every zone when they want to find a deed.
• Deeds can be claimed by either getting the deed from the corpse of a mob, or stealing the deed off a mob. Once a deed is placed in a container in a clanhall, that clan 'claims' the deed.
• Once a zone re-pops, the zone deed is reset on a new random mob in the zone, and is ready to be claimed again (regardless of the fact the deed is still officially claimed by a clan at this stage).
• It would be cool if once a clan owns a zone, they get a percentage of all the shop transactions that occur within the zone, put into their treasury. It would also be cool if clan mobs started roaming zones if they had owned the zone for a certain amount of time. Or if zone mobs became aggro to non-clannies, or became non-aggro to clannies that owned a zone.
• It would be cool if clannies gained slightly increased experience in a zone they owned

These ideas mostly all come from this thread: http://4dimensions.org/forum/index/topic,399.30.html where they are talked about alongside other substantial clan changes that would also be cool.
[/list]

[Molly]

OK, I can see how Virisin's idea could be a fun feature for competitions between the clans.
The questions I have are mostly practical, since I cannot figure out a feasible way to implement some of the details.
And with "feasible" I mean a way to code or script it without me (or some other unfortunate builder) having to put a script on every mob in the game, because frankly that's just more work that I'm prepared to take on. It's bad enough having to produce over 150 deeds...

So my first question goes to the coders:
Can this entire feature be coded instead of scripted?

My second question goes to the scriptors of 4D: I know that some of you are better at complex scripts than I am myself.
Would any of you script experts be willing to take over this task?

Below are some of the points that I have a problem with:

• Deeds should randomly load on any mob within the zone, not a selection. Players should have to get lucky or thoroughly destroy a zone to uncover the deed, not just go around killing the top 3 mobs from every zone when they want to find a deed.

This raises several practical questions, if the feature is supposed to be scripted:

• How do we even determine the choice of which random mob to land on?
• What if the deed loads on a shopkeeper or any other unkillable mob? Or on a mob that cannot be stolen from? How do you get rid of a deed that remains in the zone at the end of the reset time? (A purge script on the deed, triggered by zone reset, would purge the deed even if it's in a Clan)
• Quite a few of the zones consist of several different vnums, since they were built in "100 room batches". (For instance Rip in time consists of 4 different zones, Mother Goose of 3, and there are many more examples). Since this feature will have to be vnum based I see a complication here; it can probably be handled, but means extra attention.
• How do we handle roaming mobs, who don't stay within the original zone? This would mostly occur in the various parts of the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea, since the fish move freely between the zones there. But maybe water zones shouldn't really have deeds?
• Which raises another question; Should animals really carry deeds?

• Once a zone re-pops, the zone deed is reset on a new random mob in the zone, and is ready to be claimed again (regardless of the fact the deed is still officially claimed by a clan at this stage).

• The time between zone resets varies between 5 minutes (in newbie zones) and 2 hours (in the harder zones). Do we really want the deeds to reset that often? (Someone suggested resets dependant on moonphase, which would mean a delay of about one day. Maybe that would be a better way to control it?)
• Should the deed even load every time the zone is reset, so that it's always available, or only let's say 10 percent of the time?

• It would be cool if once a clan owns a zone, they get a percentage of all the shop transactions that occur within the zone, put into their treasury. It would also be cool if clan mobs started roaming zones if they had owned the zone for a certain amount of time. Or if zone mobs became aggro to non-clannies, or became non-aggro to clannies that owned a zone.

• I think this would be cool too, provided it can be coded.
  It's beyond my capability to script it. I can see that the vnum of the room where the deed currently is dropped can be used to recognize members of that Clan, but not how to make it global, without putting a script on every mob in a zone.
  But without these extra benefits for the Clan that currently "owns"  the zone, the deeds wouldn't have any real purpose, so it has to be resolved in some way.
  Ideas, anyone?

• It would be cool if clannies gained slightly increased experience in a zone they owned

• See the above point.

[Once]

In order to allow scripting of Virisin's idea you'll need to code:

1) "Clan_owner" as a variable for a zone. Zones need to store which clan owns them based on the deeds. This variable may need to be reset regularly to prevent stagnation. I'd recommend once per "mud year", just to keep things active.

2) A method in dg_scripts.cpp or whatever the hell it's called in your codebase that allows you to read, print, and modify clan_owner for a zone. The easiest way would probably be to have it based off of the world/room functions and just have the %self.clan_owner% call the room's zone rather than creating a zone.clan_owner function to iterate through. Not the cleanest method, but quick, easy, and with very little downsides.


From there it's mostly just a rote task of creating the actual deeds. Time consuming, but better as a scripted activity rather than a coded activity so that people can regularly tweak them without needing to recompile or involve someone with programming knowledge. If clan_owner is done right, scripters could even reset the clan that "owns" the zone without any coding knowledge which would make it easier to refresh for mud wide updates.



---

Consider that my good deed for the month.

[Molly]

• Every zone should have a deed, and they should all be out at once, not released as batches.
• Deeds should randomly load on any mob within the zone, not a selection. Players should have to get lucky or thoroughly destroy a zone to uncover the deed, not just go around killing the top 3 mobs from every zone when they want to find a deed.
• Deeds can be claimed by either getting the deed from the corpse of a mob, or stealing the deed off a mob. Once a deed is placed in a container in a clanhall, that clan 'claims' the deed.
• Once a zone re-pops, the zone deed is reset on a new random mob in the zone, and is ready to be claimed again (regardless of the fact the deed is still officially claimed by a clan at this stage).
• It would be cool if once a clan owns a zone, they get a percentage of all the shop transactions that occur within the zone, put into their treasury. It would also be cool if clan mobs started roaming zones if they had owned the zone for a certain amount of time. Or if zone mobs became aggro to non-clannies, or became non-aggro to clannies that owned a zone.
• It would be cool if clannies gained slightly increased experience in a zone they owned

I am OK with most of Virisin's points about this feature, but I still have a couple of objections or questions.

• I don't think large grid zones like Outer Space (25000 rooms) ir the Mediterranean Sea (1000 rooms) should have a deed.
• Load on any mob? What about shopkeepers and unkillable Questmobs? And should animals really carry deeds?
• What if a Clan claims a deed and then takes it out of the container again, to ensure that it cannot be stolen in a Clan raid? I assume that the Clan only stays as "owner" and get the benefits as long as the deed stays in the container? Ideally there should also be a list that all players could call out, about which zones currently are owned by which Clan.
• Since the zones have such a varying reset time, and since I also think that deeds shouldn't load every other hour, I suggest that we make them load once a day. This could be maintained by setting new moon as loadtime, unless there is an easier way to code once per RL day.
• I'm OK with the Clan benefits, as long as they can be coded. I suggest 5-10% of the shop transactions to be deposited on the Clan treasury. I'm not so sure about mobs getting aggro or non-aggro to non-clannies however. That might mess up some quests, and could also potentially be really annoying - actually it could be detrimental to Newbie or low level zones
• I suggest 10% extra exp for Clannies that own the zones.

[virinis]

Ideally deeds are an interesting thing that anyone can get up and have a hunt for at any time, or they should be. Clannies should be able to go on a weekend mission and capture 40-50 deeds and create a large revenue source for themselves in a few hunting missions. But you want it to be hunting missions, randomload on any mob in the zone, if it's a shop-keeper it's just gonna be hard to get that deed until a reboot or repop or someone manages to steal it somehow. A list of deeds would be ideal as well as which clan owns them.

[Once]

Who makes the list of deeds? Did you want to start by posting a couple samples Virisin, so others can join in and we can maybe get some of the content out of the way for the rest of the team to implement?

[virinis]

The deed for Midlands.
The deed for Mother Goose.
The deed for Enchanted Lands.