Adding to item descriptions

[Avril]

I have role-played wearing feather rings that were half-stripped of their fibes, denting my swords and doing ungodly things to my clothes. I might have enjoyed doing little things like painting little rocks with chalk. I have also played a crafter, and still wish that my character's style could have been expressed in the items I created. I can certainly emote that the stone shield I've designed includes a rough engraving, or that my knotted agafari cane has little rings of numut-vine around it (provided I junk a coded vine to go along with it), but after that point, whether the engravings stay or not is entirely up to the other players. There's simply no way to reflect changes in an item's appearance, or even add a unique touch to something you craft, without going through the tedious process of submitting a completely new item, which, if it were even accepted, would needlessly clog some database or another.

If I were to die, or get stolen from by a person who doesn't emote the whole scene (so I could point out that the sword he's taking has a nasty crack at the bottom of its long hilt), everyone would treat a "venerable" object as brand-new, essentially making it a different item. The potential of uncovering a killer by sifting through his collection of weapons, or recognizing a small wooden dagger next to an old set of bones, is lost when the only things that make items semi-unique are their "bloodied", "sweat-stained" and other flags. Similarly, you can't tell if the item's been worn or used for many years, stretched or bent out of shape, without actually getting an emote from the person holding it.

I'm not sure if this idea has been brought up in the past... What I'm proposing is that everyone gets the power to alter a special part of any item's main desc. Originally left empty, this part would be open for editing by any person holding the item, and yes, "editing" can also mean deleting the whole thing. This means someone could easily destroy an object if he grabbed hold of the item, thus getting rid of any evidence that the item used to be someone else's, for instance. I doubt anyone would do something like this intentionally, however, just as I doubt people are misusing the scribble command (which was considered "on probation" for a long while, as the imms suspected it might be abused).

There's only one other variant of this idea that doesn't involve imm intervention, and that's allowing people to add to the special desc, but not delete entries from it. This has the unfortunate implication that, if you want to repair some dent described in the special desc, the dent will stay there, along with the mention that you've repaired it. This is somewhat inconvenient, though it would get rid of some potential for abuse.

A crafter could easily determine what he's capable of just by working for a while. If he shatters most of his stone rings, he can't place delicate etchings all over them. If he's successfully worked on twenty diamonds in a row, however, he can pretty much assume anything he likes. Self-restraint works well in the case of crafters, as the kind of payers who emote doing backflips with their newbie-level skills rarely, if ever, play merchant-style characters, and even if they did, they' have a lot of trouble writing impressive descriptions to give their items real quality.

I can't help but wonder why something like this isn't already in place. As it is now, a player's items hardly receive any attention outside of typical emotes, and no matter how many times a weapon is used, no matter how many changes take place over an item, such changes are rarely reflected in a person's actual role-play. Crafting talent means nothing more than than a high skill level, and instead of being able to settle for slightly-less-than-unique items, nobles have to wait whole months for their custom-ordered clothing. A shame, isn't it?

[Bestatte]

I can see it now...

edit sword

Please add one line, to be added to the sword's description at the bottom.

this sward is so exxellent u r amazd!

Uh - no thanks. If you have something nifty that you feel should be added to something, I'd much rather let the staff handle the change. It's bad enough that some players would take advantage of that - but twinkage aside (since anything can be twinked) - some folks just plain don't have enough grasp of the english language or sentence structure - or hell, even punctuation, to make their addition legible.

[Agent_137]

I disagree with the argument, "OMG NO IT"LL BE TWINKD."

I think this would add a fantastic level of customization to people's weapons, etc.

No properties are being altered. Just the look. Sounds great.

I'm sure some limits would need to be put in, and that should be looked at. But I think the overall idea is great.

[Anonymous]

It's not a matter of it being twinked, it's a matter of how subjective things can be.  Having staff approve things like this keeps order in the gameworld.

What I might think is appropriate to tag onto a sword may not be.

[jmordetsky]

I disagree with the argument, "OMG NO IT"LL BE TWINKD."

I think this would add a fantastic level of customization to people's weapons, etc.

No properties are being altered. Just the look. Sounds great.

I'm sure some limits would need to be put in, and that should be looked at. But I think the overall idea is great.

Agreed. I think this would rock for crafters. It's not twinkable to the point where it could kill anyone.  

As a crafter it would be awesome if after you finished your raptor tooth throwing knife you could add:

"The knife is etched with a small symbol of a three fingered hand."

Granted you could also use that to:

"The knife glows with the fierce powers of hell fire and will totally kick your stinkin' ass if you get stabbed with."

But, items are junkable...and it wouldn't really kick your ass, as advertised.

[Bestatte]

Forget the twinkage - which is what I said in my own post...that was more of an aside.

There are too many people who can't spell, don't use punctuation, don't use proper capitalization, have no understanding of grammar or sentence structure, etc. etc. etc.

When you submit an object to the staff for implementation, they look stuff over. Sometimes they'll see errors that need correcting. Without that staff intervention, we could easily see things like:

The nife is glow from evry angle because it has many polish on both sieds.

Do you REALLY want to have to read that kinda stuff? Pardon me if I have higher standards than that. The higher standards are what drew me to Armageddon in the first place. For better or for worse, that means IMM intervention. And even they don't catch all the errors when they have a chance to look.

[Malifaxis]

Okay, this would rule... in theory, it's a very good concept.  I would love to be able to add that my thick baobab helmet has a plethora of tooth marks on it, and a gortok fang sticking out.

But realistically it might take up way too much server space... you have to realize that each of these little 'additions' is technically another game file.  When you look sword, the mud makes a check on the item and throws you the description from the main item file.

But with this, it would have to make a new file for each modified sword.  So this ability comes in, and the first day you have 10 bynners all customize weapons.  Next day rolls around, four Tor do it, and the bynners start in on three pieces of armor each.  Next day, Kadius does it, then some Salarr, then you've got the desert elves and everything else... and before you know it, we've added 2000 more objects to the database that are technically the same bloody object... but since grandpappy once had a nosebleed on this silk shirt, it's not the same silk shirt as that silk shirt over there.

And with the constant amount of modification that could be had, it's really just better, IMHO, to go with the emoting thing.  Yes, there is a possibility that elf X can take your family heirloom chipped obsidian dagger and emote it out that it's a shiny new templar-stab-o-matic... but that's them fucking up, not you.

Again, I'm not trying to shoot this idea down, I think it's a great one, right up there with the old merchant mark idea thread that popped up about six months back... it's just that it's a lot more grand of an idea, memory wise, than might be possible.  But damn if I wouldn't love to see it.

[Sir Diealot]

just typo swords and things with shit descs..And have the imms come down on twink/moron descs..

Problem solved. NEXT.

[Agent_137]

hmm. good angle malifaxis. That's unfortunate, though.

I wonder sometimes what ginka's specs are. . .

[Anonymous]

As a compromise, I wonder if an in-game submission system might work for this.  Some staffer reviews a couple of custom one-line additions a day for spelling, punctuation and appropriateness and after accepting it the desc gets added to the item.

Obviously we are talking about new code and an additional process, but I think this is the best way to go about having some sort of system in place that doesn't involve emailing but also avoids the sort of errors Bestatte alluded too.

[jmordetsky]

What about a high karma class that allowed for this? Or high craft branch that allowed not so much for everyone to customize items but for a select few venerable to write new items.

Now as it works if you have a long piece of bone, you can make a coded "bone sword" with a set mdesc and ldesc. However a master crafter could be give the ability to change the m and ldesc for the same sword, creating a new item.

If you limited peoples ability to do so, you wouldn't have the space issues and a poor grasp of English wouldn't make anyone's "master craftables" very valuable.

The reason I'm so for this I think limiting it to the imms to implement items for high level crafters puts way too much work on an already busy and volunteer staff. This might ease it a bit.

[Anonymous]

What about a high karma class that allowed for this?

Well, having high karma doesn't mean you can spell or have the same idea as the staff about what is appropriate or not in all situations.

[Bestatte]

I should say, that I really LOVE the idea of being able to add marks and little personal touches to things. I just don't see how it could possibly implemented, given the varied capabilities - and inabilities - of players to write them without staff intervention.

That's really my only concern, but I think it's a big enough concern that I'd have to vote no. The drawback would far outweigh the benefit, as much as I like the idea.

[Xamminy]

Malifaxis, Jmordetsky, play nice.  I removed the not so nice ribbing parts of your posts, and would be pleased as punch if I didn't have to see any more of it.  No comments were made on accounts about this.
-Xamminy-

[Delirium]

I should say, that I really LOVE the idea of being able to add marks and little personal touches to things. I just don't see how it could possibly implemented, given the varied capabilities - and inabilities - of players to write them without staff intervention.

That's really my only concern, but I think it's a big enough concern that I'd have to vote no. The drawback would far outweigh the benefit, as much as I like the idea.

Yeah.

Emoting it might not be a perfect solution, but it's still a pretty good one.

[JollyGreenGiant]

Let's pretend we have an objects table and an items table.  Right now, you probably have something that looks like this to retrieve an item description:

SELECT I.MDesc
FROM Objects O
INNER JOIN Items I ON I.ItemID = O.ItemID

If you add a third table, CustomDesc (and a column to the Objects table) you get:

SELECT ISNULL(I.MDesc,'') + CHR(13) + CHR(10) + ISNULL(C.AdditionalDesc)
FROM Objects O
INNER JOIN Items I ON I.ItemID = O.ItemID
LEFT OUTER JOIN CustomDesc C ON C.ObjectID = O.ObjectID

If you want to get really fancy, you could allow multiple ObjectID,AdditionalDescription pairs in the CustomDesc table and then flatten them into a single string that gets tacked onto the ItemDescription pulled from the Items table.

To resolve the junk command:
DELETE FROM CustomDesc
WHERE ObjectID = <value>

[edit]
Actual code may vary depending on your database of course, and I make no attempt to say anything about whether or not players should be allowed to add custom descriptions to their items - but this is a way you could do it without having to cram your items table full of junk.  Instead, you would have a CustomDesc table full of junk.

[dolores]

I won't comment on the technical considerations, since that seems well covered, but if we did go with a system where anyone holding the item could edit/clear the extra line, then anyone holding it could correct errors in spelling or grammar. I wouldn't be nearly as bothered by the occasional error in the description of someone else's item (which I'm unlikely to read more than once or twice), just so long as the ones I'm carrying look good to me.

--Dolores

[Bestatte]

What is to stop someone who can clear errors and correct mistakes, from completely rewriting the line to their own preference? The code won't distinguish between the two - a change is a change.

[Kankman]

A ticket system might work:

offer sword usefulnpcguy The sides of this blade are riddled with nicks and scratches

The usefulnpcguy who does that stuff says in sirihish:
"Come back later and check on the progress."

Then immortals could check occasionally while logged on, approve them, and then the ticket it ready..

Its a bit odd and OOC however, it could be a viable way to make it work without getting a bunch of st00p1d crap.

[Larrath]

There is no reason to make such an illogical NPC for it.

Make an edit or whatever command and use it on the item.  The string will be saved but *not* displayed until it is approved by a staff member.  Using this command will log the character/account names, their guild and their crafting level in the skill needed to create the item, if applicable.


This does have the odd wait time, but I think it will be easy for the staff to monitor like this.  It will also be much easier to differentiate between the masterly/shoddy handywork crafts from the various stains or damage or simple adornments.

...Though it does mean the item will just have extra information pop out of nowhere.  Shrug.

[Agent_137]

Drunken post of the night:



Sex.

[Cuusardo]

Drunken post of the night:



Sex.

Why you gotta go derail a post like that huh?  Whatsa mattah you?

[Avril]

Jollygreengiant, while I only vaguely understand what you wrote there (I can't seem to figure out what ISNULL and INNER JOIN would do), I did imagine a separate database for custom descs could be created, each having an ID number that corresponds to the ID number of an object. The look command would get both the normal and custom desc from wherever they were stashed, using that ID number.

Bestatte... If a text gets re-written to sound prettier, but carries the exact same message, I'll consider it a triumph of role-playing when people figure out that the new description does belong to the same old item. If it's a longsword with a scratch on its upper hilt, it's a longsword with a scratch on its upper hilt. Whether the scratch is called "straight" or "linear" is just fluff. Then again, one might argue that the item also includes virtual, subliminal stuff that make it unique, and if the wording changes, those specifics are lost to the viewer. Nonetheless, simple guidelines could be imposed against this sort of thing - such as "don't alter the text unless it's to fix a typo or to show that the object has been repaired, reshaped, etc.".

Now, I'd like to point out that among all the people I've role-played with, very few ever made any typos, and none of them were serious. Maybe it's because my playing times don't let me meet that many American players.  Maybe it's because even they have decent English skills. I will say, however, that if emotes (which aren't normally spellchecked) rarely end up with typos, custom item descriptions will probably receive none.

[dolores]

What is to stop someone who can clear errors and correct mistakes, from completely rewriting the line to their own preference? The code won't distinguish between the two - a change is a change.

Not a damn thing. (Well, except the fact that doing so would make the game less fun, and hence hopefully be self-limiting.) This was addressed in the original proposal ...

I'm not sure if this idea has been brought up in the past... What I'm proposing is that everyone gets the power to alter a special part of any item's main desc. Originally left empty, this part would be open for editing by any person holding the item, and yes, "editing" can also mean deleting the whole thing. This means someone could easily destroy an object if he grabbed hold of the item, thus getting rid of any evidence that the item used to be someone else's, for instance. I doubt anyone would do something like this intentionally, however, just as I doubt people are misusing the scribble command (which was considered "on probation" for a long while, as the imms suspected it might be abused).

--Dolores