4Dimensions Forum
General Category => Suggestions & Ideas => Topic started by: Riley on September 13, 2011, 01:48:58 pm
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Btw just want to say... Polymorph was in the game once before... and than was taken out cause I dunno why people thought it was hilarious to actually polymorph everything in sight, especially other players and make them make animal sounds for the duration of the spell cast until it wore off, also they were transformed into I think 1-4 different animal types.
PS.. I miss polymorphing everything in Olde York!
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Does anyone remember why Polymorph was disabled?
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Probably because it was abused.
That's the usual reason why fun fetures get disabled or nerfed.
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I think people might have been polymorphing quest mobs. Just a guess.
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Maybe we can make it an arena only spell or something to add flavor to arena's :)
Prometheus
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That sounds like a fun idea. Would polymorphing a quest mob actually prevent you from doing the quest?
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As long as you attach all the scripts to the polymorphed mob, you should be fine. Just make sure you dont accidentally edit the mob prototypes.
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Though, if I remember right ( I think Polymorph was taken out soon after I started playing) when you (or a mob) is transformed into the animal, you can't talk.. and I would assume a mob wouldn't be able to either. Thus, yes, it could be used to disrupt quests. I know, most quests are sent using %send% %actor% which wouldn't be messed up, but some are also just says - which would.
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Easily rectified. Just allow polymorphs to talk no matter what.
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Easily rectified. Just allow polymorphs to talk no matter what.
What would be the fun of polymorph then?
The original idea behind polymorph was to neutralise the current weapon and armour of the victim (figuratively speaking stripping them naked, although the equipment was saved and was returned to them once the polymorph wore off). In return they'd get some animal attack (probably bite or gore) and a thicker hide (i.e. better ac). They'd show up on the who list and in the room as 'a boar, vaguely resembling to Once', and they would 'speak' in grunts or growls or croaks, depending on what they were polymorphed into.
I think the polymorph races were boar, bear, lion, wolf and toad, and which one you got from the spell was random. I'm not quite sure whether one race was stronger than the others, but that probably was part of the idea. When polymorphed you'd have one chance out of five to become a really strong entity for a while (the lion), and another chance out of five to become a weak toad. The other three races would have been pretty mediocre.
As far as I remember polymorph was taken out because Mordecai wanted to test how it affected players in a fight. So he polymorphed every player on line at the time, and transported them to the Arena to test it. A bit capricious, maybe, but pretty harmless, since you don't really die in the Arena.
Unfortunately he forgot to warn them about it first. And even more unfortunately one of the transported players was a Drama Queen, who felt 'offended' by it and started an endless rant about how degrading it had been, comparing it to rape, and other stupid exaggerations. The ranting went on for days and upset the entire mud, and I guess the imms tired of it in the end and just decided to take it out.
In retrospect it's amazing how many potentially cool features that were disabled, because of various drama queens who'd make an issue about something or other, and blow it all out of proportion.
As for the quest mobs, I don't see that as a big issue, unless some idiot would take it on themselves to go around polymorphing all key mobs, just to stop people from questing. And even then, a simple !polymorph flag in OLC wouöd resolve the problem.
The polymorph feature most likely was just commented out, meaning it still exists somewhere in our code.
I'm all for having it back, since the idea was originally mine. I wanted Circe on Aeaea to have it as a spell, true to the Odyssey story.
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Consider it reinstated next time I'm at the comp.
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Heh - with all due respect to fastness; shouldn't we at least test how it works first?
This is very old code, unless you already rewrote it. :)
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I also noticed that polymorph was remarked or remmed out. We might want to test to on 6004 since that is already a test port before we move it over to 6000 in case of any issues.
Prometheus
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Of course we'll test it before it comes in, I was just stating it'll come in the next patch. If it doesn't seem to work right I'll make it work right ;)
-Once