Distinguishing Your Mount

[Voular]

Hello,
I had an idea.. since we already can name our mounts and it sort of sticks and we've had awesome code leaps with tdesc and so on I thought I'd make a suggestion. As it is now, mounts have fixed sdesc but can be titled. In a room however of 10 war beetles you can't tell which war beetle is yours except going "keyword TITLENAME" or trying to distinguish it with something packed on. What my suggestion is that you can same as "title" give your war beetle a customized sdesc. How far we take this is all up to the staffers. Perhaps it can be that a storebought war beetle is simply "a war beetle" then you can "stitle" it to "a dung-covered war beetle". This could be used for any animal, sunbacks and inixes and so on. I would say that this shouldn't be permanent, same as title - but for everyone who uses big clan stables this would really help in the whole everyone losing/borrowing your mount issue.

So instead of:

Code Select Expand


A war beetle is reclining here.
A war beetle is reclining here.
A war beetle is reclining here.
A war beetle is reclining here.
A war beetle is reclining here.
A yellow sunback lizard is reclining here.


We can see:

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A battered war beetle is reclining here.
A three-legged war beetle is reclining here.
A beady-eyed war beetle is reclining here.
A spotted war beetle is reclining here.
A single-eyed war beetle is reclining here.
A fanged yellow sunback lizard is reclining here.


Or something similar?

[LauraMars]

I love this idea.

Please Morgenes please!

[Cutthroat]

This would be awesome.

[Rhyden]

Nice.

[Dahomey]

Or ldesc change?

[FuSoYa]

I endorse the shit out of this.

Brandon

[valeria]

I like this idea a lot, even if it's just something like getting to add one word.

[tortall]

OMG yes. <3

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Hell yes.

[mansa]

As long as 'beetle' or 'mount type name' remains in the sdesc, I see very little difference between this and a customizable ldesc.

Though, -this- is cooler than a one-shot ldesc, as it would stick from room to room during the current playtime the player has.

Obviously, it would reset after the mount is stabled.

Thumbs up!

[Zoltan]

Two thumbs up. God damn it, being in a room with a dozen identical war beetles after a chaotic battle drives me nuts.

[jmordetsky]

Two thumbs up. God damn it, being in a room with a dozen identical war beetles after a chaotic battle drives me nuts.

Yea agreed. Love the idea - that said as an interim measure you can use title. Once you mount do: title Betty or title Rex and then you can use that keyword to target your mount. STitle would be WAY cooler though.

[Zoltan]

Two thumbs up. God damn it, being in a room with a dozen identical war beetles after a chaotic battle drives me nuts.

Yea agreed. Love the idea - that said as an interim measure you can use title. Once you mount do: title Betty or title Rex and then you can use that keyword to target your mount. STitle would be WAY cooler though.

Oh, I -always- use title. The problem is when some people don't. It only takes a few to throw things off. And then there's always the problem when someone hitches the wrong mount accidentally and you take five minutes trying to figure out who has what. It'd be nice to just go :points at ~dung-covered.beetle.

[Tzurahro]

You know, this is pretty sweet.  I know we can add tags (like dusty, or smelly) to object sdecs, so it might even be possible.  Maybe.  Has anyone used the Request Tool to submit this?  Or the "idea" command IG?

[Voular]

Nope. I presented the idea here, for input. I'll send it in through the request tool right now!

[MarshallDFX]

There is a small abuse potential.

*steal mount*
*change mount's sdesc*

What?  No- see?  Looks nothing like yours.

Should it be permanent perhaps?  Or have some timer before it can be changed again?  Or something?  Typo-ing would suck, but still.

[Gimfalisette]

Perhaps purchased mounts could simply have randomized sdescs instead. Give each mount 20 possible sdescs, perhaps with a little difference in rarity between them so some are "cooler" than others, and you get what you get by chance when you purchase the mount.

And/or add in the possibility of getting the mount tattooed or branded to make it unique-er.

I dunno. Mounts are one of those things in game I have little interest in, but I understand the annoying problem of having 10 identical-looking war beetles in the same room.

[brytta.leofa]

Mounts are one of those things in game I have little interest in

         


                                                                                                         

[MarshallDFX]

Mounts are one of those things in game I have little interest in.

Filthy necker.

[Gimfalisette]

Sorry, guys, I don't have much interest in a lot of the typical "ranger" archetype stuff, and I suspect I never will :/ A personal failing, yes.

[Reiloth]

Sorry, guys, I don't have much interest in a lot of the typical "ranger" archetype stuff, and I suspect I never will :/ A personal failing, yes.

what a loser.

Mounts are totally awesome!

...

[jstorrie]

Or have some timer before it can be changed again?  Or something?  Typo-ing would suck, but still.

How about you can only do it when you unstable/summon your mount (or, if a ranger, when you log in with it)? ie, only when the instance of your mount is loaded in-game.

[Dahomey]

There is a small abuse potential.

*steal mount*
*change mount's sdesc*

What?  No- see?  Looks nothing like yours.

Should it be permanent perhaps?  Or have some timer before it can be changed again?  Or something?  Typo-ing would suck, but still.

Abuse would be abuse, same as with tdesc.

However. To fix it, you can have it so you're only able to have the sdesc changed on the default sdesc, and once changed, can't change it until stabled.

[Gagula]

Perhaps purchased mounts could simply have randomized sdescs instead. Give each mount 20 possible sdescs, perhaps with a little difference in rarity between them so some are "cooler" than others, and you get what you get by chance when you purchase the mount.

And/or add in the possibility of getting the mount tattooed or branded to make it unique-er.

I dunno. Mounts are one of those things in game I have little interest in, but I understand the annoying problem of having 10 identical-looking war beetles in the same room.

Personally I like this, except maybe do a total of 60 words, in pairings or triplicate, just so that you don't have 3 smelly beetles, but rather large smelly beetle, dung-covered smelly beetle, and green smelly beetle

[mansa]

I would like to see the core concept extended to objects, too.

[HTX]

Abuse would be abuse, same as with tdesc.

Tdesc simply tacks on a message at the bottom of your description. What you're suggesting is more than that; you are suggesting we can alter a mount's short description, which has more potential for abuse. Though I'd hope by now our playerbase is trustworthy enough not to twink that blatantly, so I wouldn't necessarily say that's grounds to shoot this idea down.

But... How about this: rather than been able to change a mount's sdesc on the fly, how about only been able to choose the mount's short description when purchasing it from a NPC. But in addition, extend the tdesc command to mounts as well. This way, we can have customised mounts, or mounts which don't all look identical (and c'mon, you got to admit it would be sweeeet to see your old character's mount still around ages after said character died), but without the added risk of abuse MarshallDFX pointed out, and while still enabling you to describe temporary changes to your mount's physical appearance.

If something affects your mount's physical appearance so dramatically to warrant a short description change for your mount, such as a limb been severed, this should be done through the request tool (same with character short descriptions), rather than simply giving players the ability to change their character's short description on the fly.

[MarshallDFX]

Just building off what HTX and some others said:  
How about the seller is like a certain tattooist, there is a list of various adjectives/nouns that can be combined into various sdescs, when the mount is purchased.

purchase smelly dung brown beetle

You purchase a smelly, dung brown beetle.

Or something, like that.

edit to note:  having only the approved words right from the seller would stop potentially stupid things like: The pink, streamer-adorned beetle.

[musashi]

Just building off what HTX and some others said:  
How about the seller is like a certain tattooist, there is a list of various adjectives/nouns that can be combined into various sdescs, when the mount is purchased.

purchase smelly dung brown beetle

You purchase a smelly, dung brown beetle.

Or something, like that.

edit to note:  having only the approved words right from the seller would stop potentially stupid things like: The pink, streamer-adorned beetle.

Great idea.

[Gagula]

Aww....but my inix was going to be the prettiest inix ever with the pink streamers and barbie stickers all over it....I mean, it's not like I have to worry about the stickers coming off because it never rai--- feck.

[LauraMars]

The stable code (or -something-) would likely need a rework if we were going to do permanent, one-time-only sdesc changes to our mounts.  The problem with stabling code is that it just pulls the appropriate npc from the database so you get a newly loaded npc every time.  Thus, every npc must be hard coded, and have its own unique sdesc if said sdesc is going to survive being stabled.  I don't know that the imms want the database filling up with hundreds of war beetle clones that only differ from each other by one word?

I might be wrong about this, but that's what I seem to understand.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Yeh, you're right. However, by using arrays, unique instances would not be hard to maintain. There would be some hard coding, but the mounts themsleves would basically stay the same. The array would store info on stats and sdesc, and then load from itself when the stable code was called upon. They would also be able to self-maintain by deleting upon player death. I think it could be done pretty efficiently.