Epitaffy.

[Mandor]

The ability for players to write their own epitaph, similar to a background, but the requirement is level 36.

In the epitaph, they can state whatever they like, how their character progressed and what they felt about it, in game stuff or other stuff like game mechanics, and why/how they choose to play the character, and anything else they like.

[Mahkan]

lol, ever heard of the graveyard?

[Mandor]

1. not everyone uses the forums like a facebook addict.
2. http://abandonedrealms.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5801

There's certainly some people who like to keep their characters secret from their forum identity.

It also means they can write it out without having to go to their own graveyard posts to write these things, which is where the majority of flaming and derailment occurs these days.

[Vhrael]

Yeah, kinda like Mahkan implied, I don't really see a point or use for something like this...

At or above 36, when you condie/delete or get denied, you're automatically getting a Graveyard post. On top of that your character isn't accessible for anybody else to look at in-game anymore (no ingame graveyard or "record of deaths" or anything like that), so it's not like it would be usable anyway. Just wait til they die/delete and have the player post their "epitaph" thoughts on the graveyard thread.

There are a couple of instances of "use" of this function that I could potentially see, but it seems like a big mess of crap code-wise to deal with. The biggest use of something like this would be to allow players to be able to offer insight to their character's choices and play style wihout having to reveal their identity in the forum (besides creating a "ghost" account to post with), but a) if the character sucks or pissed everybody off, it probably doesn't matter what his choices were since people won't care, and b) if it's a really good character, then either the player would like for others to know who they were and will comment in the graveyard anyway or they're going to be content with the "ghost account" posting method.

The only other use I could see for this type of thing is if it were possible to somehow permanently retain the epitaphs in a record-type system accessible in-game, either with helpfiles ('epitaph Txivnezjwo' or something) or maybe a Herald-kept library of records which players could walk into and read scrolls arranged alphabetically, including a way to list the available records.

The problems that I see with such an in-game system are the following:
- Imms would need to approve epitaphs (same as backgrounds and descriptions) to avoid things like "Joe the fire zerker was pwnz0r, he killed evry1 with l33t skillz. w00t!" left behind as epitaphs.
- With an in-game-accessible record system like this, you couldn't get into discussing "playing style" choices (cuz that's OOC knowledge), but simply "why the character made decisions/choices he made" (such as explaining how/why they came to feel a certain way about other characters... especially useful for in-character romances, rivalries/enemies, etc.).
- One of the biggest problems I see with something like this is simply - who wold use it? If you want to find out about a past character chances are (especially in a PK environment) you aren't going to take the time to read about it in-game; you're going to read logs posted on logboards or read the Graveyard forum posts.

Anyway... I probably spent waaaaaaay more time on this topic than I should've, but long story short I don't think there's a reasonable use for something like this as it currently stands. Unless I'm misunderstanding it?

[Mandor]

well if you say its more trouble than worth, you're probably right. oh well.

I guess I have another idea, and a question. Why wasn't the score included as part of the output for graveyard posts, and could this be done? i'd be interested in seeing people's max hp and whatnot. Of course, maybe the point is to keep it from being a free level 50 knowledge farm?

[Tepesh]

well really max hp/max mp is different for everyone where as you may put one or two trains into hp someone else might put 5 or more. so as for knowledge farm doubt it will happen.like Vaelyn his hp could of been more but he put trains into movement instead where as a different h=elf warrior put alot of trains into hp.

Having the score in the graveyard would be nice to see.

[Mandor]

[Davairus]

Well I have no plans to add scoresheets to the graveyard, but you're welcome to post them yourself if you feel like it. We can always look at people's logs for their max hp's,

[Mandor]

not everyone does or can go to the logsites that arent defunct. meh.