So, the end of the world is getting close, and we'll all have to prepare for it.
I've got a letter from Nilk, who wanted to deal with it from a roleplay point of view, which I think is an excellent idea. This will be carried out in a different thread.
But Nilk also had some very good practical questions, mostly connected to RP aspects of the game which I tried to answer as well as I could. But I wasn't always able to give a strange reply, since things that affect the game balance will first have to be discussed an decided by the Staff.
However, it made me realise that a lot of details still need to be solved, and that probably many other players have questions they want answered. So this thread is meant to post questions and practical suggestions about the code change, and when possible we'll give a direct reply, and in other cases take it up among the staff to reach a decision.
I'll start out by copying Nilks questions and my comments to them.
Feel free to add your own questions and suggestions to the thread.
Question:
Will players be able to keep their age? (It would be a problem RP-wise if the age was suddenly set back to 17).Comment:
I see no reason why players shouldn't be allowed to keep their age, whether it's for RP or bragging reasons, since I don't believe age affects any other stats. Hopefully this can be achieved by not deleting the characters, just setting them back to level 1, which means they would keep their age, but lose all their other stats. So you'd have to reroll your char, choosing Class and stats, but the name would be protected.
There is however a possibility that the characters will have to be restarted, to get their other stats right, in which case the age would have to be set manually, i.e. you'd have to ask a senior imm to do it for you. This means that there might be a technical problem, since this has been tricky to do in the past, But Anubis is a good coder, so hopefully he'll find some easy way to either let the characters keep their age, ot to make it easier to set it manually.
I suggest as a preliminary precaution, that you write down your age, and ask other Roleplayers to do the same.Question:
Relationships, marriage etc. Can this be somehow carried over in the new code? (Would totally break rp otherwise).
On this subject what about wedding rings? I know these cost tokens and the problems that have been aired about items that cost tokens, on the pwipe thread, but surely these can be carried over? If they have stats then these can be removed, but would be nice to keep the script on them, to tele to your partner.Comment:
Relationships should carry on as before. It might mean, codewise, that you'd have to remarry, but that's a simple procedure that any senior imm can help with, and unless you specifically want it, there would be no reason to go through the ceremonies around it.
Personally I think that you should get to keep your wedding rings (meaning that someone would have to load them for you). They do give an advantage, but it's not big enough to be particularly unbalancing, so I think we could load them without a fee. But this is something that I have to clear with the rest of the Staff first, so I cannot promise outhand.Question
RP award points, will these be carried over?Comment:
Again possibly a technical problem, otherwise I don't see why not. If it's possible to set the chars at level 1 instead of recreating them, it would probably also be easy to keep the award points. Otherwise they too would have to be restored manually. (The main problem with that would be to make sure how many points you have, but the old pfiles will probably be kept, at least for a while, so it would be possible to check).Question:
Other true rp items, awards, throphies etc. will they stay or go?Comment:
We have discussed this within the staff, and the concensus is that these items should be kept, even if they have stats. You'd need an imm to load them, of course.Question:
Clans, will they keep their crashproof rooms?Comment:
Clans will be kept, with their current leaders. Most likely all the members will have to be enrolled again, as they create, and that means that the CLs will have to lower both the admittance level and the fee temporary, but that shouldn't be a big problem.
We haven't discussed the Clan Houses yet within the Staff, but my own opinion is that even if all other crashproof houses have to be rebought with tokens, the Clan Houses could be restored for free. (Just the houses, of course, not the content). The motivation for this is that Clans are good both for RP and for socal interaction, and having a crashproof house will make the clans more important and prestiguous to join.Question:
When will Seekers no longer be seekers in the code? Now they leave seekers after their first remort, but seeing remorts will be gone, at what level will they be expelled from Seekers in the new code? Surely it can't be idea that they remain seekers forever, what's the point otherwise of having the Loners as non-clan?Comment:
This is a code issue that I think only Anubis can answer. There must be a stage where you have been around long enough to not be considered a newbie any more, but whether that stage is level 10, 20, 30 or 40 in the new code I cannot say, because I don't yet know how quick the progress will be. (Most likely it will be a lot slower than today, if remorts are being disposed of).Question:
Houses, is it that they will still be there, but no access until you buy them back? Comment:
The houses themselves will still be there and so will those of the containers that are reset and not just loaded. They will however not be crashproof until they are repaid for with tokens, and all the other content will be gone. This means that anyone can enter them, not just the owner and their house guests. That could actually be interesting, and I think there will be some touristing among the players to view what the interior of the houses of different prominent players looks like.
As for the token fee to make the houses crashproof again, we will most likely give a discount for already existing houses, but exactly how much is something that we have to decide within the Staff.Question:
If we have to buy them back, to keep the worries about inflation at bay. I have an idea, if it is possible to code, those who want to keep houses on the re-create, can do so, but will have a negative token balance for the cost of the house. Comment:
I don't think that we'll allow a credit, but, like I said, a discount is probable.
