Distinguishing Your Mount

[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.