Change to REQUEST (lightwalker skill)

[Davairus]

Old version-- if you request, the item is handed to you by the mob and you sit vulnerable for up to 2 1/2 minutes. you can be pk'd from 100% to 0% while all you can do is watch.

New version-- if you request, the item is placed on the ground and you meditate. you sit for 2 1/2 minutes. you'll get drained and if anyone interferes (anyone else can sac or pick up the object, both of which destroy it), you will be freed from request lag but you stay drained.

Some thoughts...
* thwart a guy requesting by saccing the object. you don't absolutely have to kill him and loot it. remember he begins drained and already missing hp/mana/move, so you have a huge combat advantage to start. he can realy only run or kill you if outgeared
* sac the object before you attack, or he can just grab it and run
* picking up the object for your groupmate will destroy it
* incase you forgot, the drained effect is the same crap that's on illithid shock and unholy strength after-effect, vampire hit by sunlight, etc. Its a huge regen gimp.
* word/summon/gate are disabled during request lag, to make sure you stay sitting there. you are definitely giving the evils a good opportunity to initiate combat on you at a disadvantage. keep that in mind before you request.
* its possible we could make the drained effect disable quaffs and spellcasting, but i havent done that yet. i'm thinking drained is already a bad enough effect. we might want to upgrade it though.
* there's probably some bugs, oversight. help me to squish these.


It should be possible to see that what I am doing is preserving the spirit of request without having something which causes deletes because its free gank / frustrating and makes players view each other in a negative light rather than respectfully following their RP.

[Faelon]

Will out of range sac'ing of items be allowed/encouraged during the request lag? Or is there a way to deal with that? Maybe..

sac sword

A Holy Knight says, "That wasn't meant for you."

A blue aura surrounds a Crusaders sword and the gods do not accept your sacrifice.



Btw.. Hi, I'm back.

[divsky]

I'm not sure I agree with this change myself. I feel like it opens up a lot more avenues for abuse. Low levels can just follow higher level goodies around waiting for them to request and pick up some free equipment. Nor do I like that other players would be able to use this feature to completely deny a good aligned character the ability to reequip following a full loot (keep in mind the entirety of the regal radiance set must be requested). That's not really fun, and would just encourage the goodie to say fuck it and log off rather than reequipping and getting revenge .

Also, I would be pretty annoyed if there was a reboot while I was lagged from requesting.

[divsky]

Another way to abuse this: Lightwalkers can use this to get other lightwalkers to request for them to avoid lag. I'm picturing something like this:

Level 50 Knight to level 35 Knight: Hey can help me request some regal radiance, Ygin is after me and I need to reequip.
Level 35 Knight to level 50 Knight: Oh sure, nobody's in my PK range so that's easy.

Now the level 35 can request everything for the level 50, who picks it up off the ground and never has to worry about lag. Before you never had this problem because the level 35 would still have to wait for request lag to wear off as he would actually have to give the item to the level 50.

[Ergorion]

[Ceridwel]

[Tiqa]

I couldn't find the help file on being drained, but I can imagine and it doesn't sound too good a position to be in.

How come if you are meditating and someone attacks, the attack can't just knock you out of your meditative state?

[Davairus]

Actually I was anticipating and wanted the out-of-pk sac aspect of new request. I'm not a big fan of watching the 3 am requesting with nobody in pk. That is risk free and makes it crappy on rare items. I remember one of my groups having spent an hour doing the ranger lord and some lowbie just grabs the stetson from camo, and that was THAT. So I don't sympathize with thwarted request via sac too much. Everybody else on the game is vulnerable to it.

[Vertas]

That's a valid argument, something that's not fun for you probably is fun for someone else... Falling asleep at a party and waking up and someone drew all over you...

It does make it pretty easy for someone to mess with you... Walk in, sac item... But it breaks the request lag at least, and if shit hits the fan, you have more of a fighting chance than before...

Something that confused me though, do you get drained from requesting? Or do you get drained from the request lag being broken?

[Davairus]

You get drained from requesting. Its to limit the regen. Because requesting is lowering hp/mana/mv but since people regenned it didn't matter.

[Hrimoyan]

Seems to encourage general trolling to me. If you aren't requesting in some far off place, you can forget getting an item. Emerald forest? Nah. Mahn-tor? Maybe. Timaran? Nah. 2 1/2 minutes for basic rares? Doesn't encourage me to roll a lightwalker at all. Instead of rage-deleting from request gank, I'd just rage from the constant derp sitting while watching my item get sacrificed.

[Davairus]

Lets wait and see. I can easily disable out-of-pk sac if I want.

[Davairus]

Also I wanted to add on the topic of fun, since it is mentioned. In general I believe players use the word "fun" in place of the word "overpowered", so I wanted to give you an insight about gaming I've learned. I have in mind a philosophy for the game as follows:

a) It doesn't have things that are neither fun for user or victim. One of the examples of these is unholy strength. I recently removed the "drained" effect from after-unholy (unless you run out of mana) . .. and it will get some further changes. Right now unholy str is not fun to use and obviously, as a victim, its not fun to deal with a dude that has a big damage steroid. So there's no fun to be had there for anyone.

b) Sometimes the "fun" is much too one-sided and that actually counteracts the intent. request (as it was) had another kind of issue, where the fun of killing someone who is helpless doesn't really satisfy for very long, because of the ease, while very frustrating for the player on the recieving end, even though its possible to get level 50 rares. That fun is outweighed considerably by the negative side. so that's why I wanted to change up request.

c) Sometimes a change we make is bad, but happens anyway because the whiners sound off too much and nobody speaks up to defend it (other than the game designer). that happened to hoarding rares on the opposite alignment for example. We should be mindful not to r emove things that are really good for our game just because they can annoy us individually. this is why i ultimately decided to do away with rage deletes... i dont see many people laughing anymore.. more like its "wtf, why did you do that?"

d) In general I would rather stay away from things being unreliable, which you depend on, because thats not fun at all. a good example of this is dirt kick, where if you land the fight goes your way very well, and otherwise it doesnt. (see recent Ygin log). While its counterpart hobble, does much the same thing but is quite reliable if applied properly. The combat skills are all reliable as well and this seems to be a success. I think the save vs afflictive system is at similar fault.. so are defenses (your char may depend on shield block for example, but instead of reducing damage it has a chance to work or not work -- makes it essential to have a big hp pool at 50 incase it completely craps out)... this can lead to some really odd fights. I think these are the kind of changes I would like us to focus on in the future. I think wild attacks make things interesting but I dont think things like that are good to have as the core.

[Fireballer]

Very liked change.