Should timers on artifacts be removed?

[Xeriuth]

Simple question: Should timers on artifacts be removed?
Please reply with your justification to your answer.
Thank you!
-Xeriuth

[Xeriuth]

I vote yes for these reasons.

Artifacts did not have timers when I first started playing and this had many benefits.
Artifacts were perzable, and old players were allowed to keep their old perzed artifacts which was an unfair advantage for a time. However that was fixed with new code that made all perzes like what they were perzed from, giving all perzed artifacts timers, causing them to poof too.
Artifacts were also a commodity. They fetched high prices, tokens or coins and gave a market to the mud. There was actually something to buy and sell amongst the players. If tradepoints could be traded too that would be a good thing because it'd allow there to be something else for a player based market.
Arti's can be hard enough to load as is. If implemented I suggest all artis would be removed that are currently out, and let the hunt be on for people to load them. And get the market started. Any other thoughts?

[Kvetch]

Until there is some other way to get highly wanted, very low loading eq off characters that never play, I'm all for keeping timers on artis'.  The fun is having the artifact IN the game, not on some character whose player never plays because they got tired of the game for some reason or other.  Otherwise people complain that X never loads and we end up bumping up the load # of X and soon everyone has one.  I'd rather keep the load limit low which keeps the artifact wanted because if everyone has one.. it's not an artifact.  But if it never loads - it's also not worth even putting in the game. 

I'd vote yes, only if there was some way that everyone could agree on to get certain eq off characters that are never played (and this would include them having said eq in their containers in either their houses or clan houses). 

[Xeriuth]

Perhaps there could be an alternative type of timer. A coder would have to chime in on this.. Simply have timers only activate when artifacts are offline. Such as 1 month of straight logged of time, if logged back in timer resets. Once timer hits 0, one more arti of that kind can then be loaded. To prevent hoarding in crash proof rooms, just add the flag to all artifacts that prevent them from being put into bags and melt on drop. The only exception to the offline timer and artifacts counting towards the maxload are if they are perzed.

With an artifact overhaul, again, do you also think the stats should be reassessed. Many of them were changed and made absolutely horrible for how difficult they are to attain.. Thoughts?

[Molly]

And how do we handle players that use alts as packmules for rare equipment?

[Xeriuth]

Simply, if they go inactive it all poofs. Nothing will stop hoarding in itself. If the person stays active no harm. It ends up making artifacts a commodity, if there are people who actively get the artifacts because then people who dont have the time to look for them and try to load them, simply buys them. This is how the economy worked in old port I thought it worked great. Yet there was no safeguards then, safeguards of which I already proposed. If anything the safeguards will improve them overall due to there being limitations.

[Jason Orsini]

remove the timers.

[horus]

If timers are used as a solution to hoarding, then they should be removed. It is not the right solution to a problem that exists on a lot of muds. All this does is punish the active players and their enjoyment of the game all because of the inactive players.

Secondly, because of timers, the artifacts have become overly valued, which encourages hoarding. If the hoarders know that they can get the items any time they want instead of worrying about maxxing them out, they will keep a few of the items, instead of keeping many items stored. We remove the timers, the artifacts are easier to get (although its still tough to get them, since they are low percentage loads), less hoarding.

[Kvetch]

See, my problem isn't with hording, it's just with players going inactive for months/years and that item still being counted because we don't clean out our old character eq list (though it seems after so long, someone can create a character with your old name and get your old eq... - someone may want to check in on that unless it's been changed recently).  I'm all for the buying/selling of stuff, but I also know that someone's going to sell something that you need a flag to actually use it and that's just wrong.    But.. let the buyer beware.

Kvetch

[virinis]

There already are 2 timers, ONLINE_TIMER and OFFLINE_TIMER (not actually sure what they're called), Mord made them to try and deal with exactly this, but never coded them properly. Basically he wanted it so that some items could have short ONLINE_TIMERS, like keys etc, and some could have long OFFLINE_TIMERS like artifacts.. Don't think it ever worked, I think timers are gay.

[Xeriuth]

So then, all OFFLINE_TIMERS need to simply be modified to refresh whenever they are logged in with. Also, flags to prevent storing in crash proof rooms and melt on drop. This will prevent any hoarding also that could bring items out of use because they are in someones house that stopped playing also prevent them from never being loaded from being offline. Simple fix? Lets get a coders input?

[Prometheus]

Or we could add a third timer for artifacts only which make the artifact go poof after a certain amount of time has passed which would prevent active players from losing artifacts but those who aren't active those artifacts go poof. I personally never cared for off-line timers but that was the reason Mord put them in to prevent hoarding. My opinion is I don't really have one yet.

[Xeriuth]

So far 6 votes cast, 4 from players in favor of timers being removed, and 2 from immortals who say it could lead to many of the old problems..
If implemented how I have mentioned, by making Offline_Timers refresh upon log in and have them poof after a certain amount of time offline. Also make all artifacts melt on drop and unable to be put into containers. This will prevent them from becoming non accessible due to inactivity as well as discourage hoarding. Hoarding of course can still happen but if that player ever goes inactive, all their hoarded belongings head back to the pool and can be reloaded again, the hoarder loses his/her/its stock pile with nothing to show for it.

Once again the perks are that it re-open that aspect of the economy and also will fix the problem of the fairness factor from long ago that oldbies still have perzed artifacts while new players have no way of getting them.

While at this, I also think artifacts stats need an overhaul. Considering how difficult some of them can be to get, their stats are majorly lacking. For instance, a jade carving of a man, that loads on a fairly strong mob, that is fairly hard and can be dangerous to get to, has the Stats: +2 to Damroll, +30 to Maxhit, -10 to Spell Defence. Considering the difficulty of one getting this item to load and two that there are many many other way easier hold items to obtain that are better, I'd say this would be one of many to get a bit of a boost. Just a thought. What does everyone else think?

[virinis]

You could make it so artifacts are untimered, and have great stats to begin with (i.e. when you find one initially), but as soon as an artifact hasn't been equipped for a kill for over 1 week, they lose a random statpoint, cumulatively. Once a player hasn't killed a mob wearing their artifacts after 10 weeks, the artifacts would have lost 10 statpoints. Once they have no statpoints left they go poof.

[Jason Orsini]

and if you come back after 1 week and 2 days and notice, that your item has lost,
say f.ex. 1 hitroll, if you then go and kill again, the item regain the stats lost?