Ritleys ideas (Uh oh..)

[Ritley]

Now, after some wild thinking as I walked my dog.. I think we should implement the following things.

New guild - Commoner
New skill - Farming  

Basically, farming will let you grow stuff, and also allow the possibility to play farmers, and many more. Commoners will get this ability.

Basically it'll work like this...

You spot a plant. You use break on it. If you succeed in breaking it, you might not only recieve the fruit inside, but some seeds.

Then you plant the seeds. Using a certain syntax. And then they grow (you have to water them to keep them growing though, all in all the time varies it takes to grow something) then once it's fully grown, you can then either break it to reveal fruit to eat, or just keep it there for prettyness. If you are to do this though, you must water them reguarly. Otherwise they'll die.

Another skill idea: Strangle

Assassins start off with this, and warriors branch it.

Basically, like subdue, but easier to get out of, and it deals constant damage over time. You have to use "flee" to attempt to get out. You cannot use this ability during combat. You could also use this for torture. For instance you could RP out your punching him in the gut instead of strangling him.

One last thing. I'd think it'd be cool to have chopping skills affect how well you mine stuff. Or at least have a mining skill available to commoners. That'd be cool.

Thoughts?

[Cyrian20]

the farmer thing has merit but it can be done already with a little help from the staff, your only going to use the code once in a while anyways for that one.

Now the strangle is an interesting concept, I think with some tweaking that could turn out to be a great idea. No stamina loss though or every newb assassin out there with be subduing people that are completely exhausted so they can kill them (even if they themselves are com exhausted)

[Ritley]

the farmer thing has merit but it can be done already with a little help from the staff, your only going to use the code once in a while anyways for that one.

Now the strangle is an interesting concept, I think with some tweaking that could turn out to be a great idea. No stamina loss though or every newb assassin out there with be subduing people that are completely exhausted so they can kill them (even if they themselves are com exhausted)

Yeah, no stamina loss.

[Cegar]

Isn't most farming in Zalanthas done by slaves?

[Forty Winks]

New guild - Commoner

For this idea, it would be nice to have a bonus to your subguild instead of having the regular skills involved with the current guilds. At the moment, if your character doesn't fit into any of the current guilds, you still have to choose with that'll give you coded abilities that your character might never have had experience with, and you get the coded abilities nonetheless. With a commoner guild, whatever skills your subguild gives you will be boosted to more than what you normally would get or even to the max for the crafting skills, indicating your commoner had lived his life with the limited learning, or had followed under the tutelage of his family in the particular trade. For example, a stonecrafter subguild with commoner guild would have the stonecrafting skill boosted to what a merchant would normally get, but without the necessary subskills and skill branches that a merchant guild would get. A commoner hunter might not have as good of an ability to hunt and use archery as a hunter, but still a better skill at it than a warrior hunter.

New skill - Farming

Basically, farming will let you grow stuff, and also allow the possibility to play farmers, and many more. Commoners will get this ability.

Basically it'll work like this...

You spot a plant. You use break on it. If you succeed in breaking it, you might not only recieve the fruit inside, but some seeds.

Then you plant the seeds. Using a certain syntax. And then they grow (you have to water them to keep them growing though, all in all the time varies it takes to grow something) then once it's fully grown, you can then either break it to reveal fruit to eat, or just keep it there for prettyness. If you are to do this though, you must water them reguarly. Otherwise they'll die.

IMO, I don't think this is a guild that would be of any real benefit to roleplay, and the skill farming would need to have alot of coding to implement the seeds and indication of a new plant, old plant, the coding of the memory of where a plant is growing and not, etc. And what fun would a farmer character provide?

Rather, I think it would be better to have certain places IG where there is indication of a field of plants, and you can forage food to pick up the plants/fruits that the field would provide. So, if you are hired as a farmer, you can pick the fruits/plants and still have fun with your character, and those not hired as a farmer picking the plants there would be deemed a criminal, or whatever.

Another skill idea: Strangle

Assassins start off with this, and warriors branch it.

Basically, like subdue, but easier to get out of, and it deals constant damage over time. You have to use "flee" to attempt to get out. You cannot use this ability during combat. You could also use this for torture. For instance you could RP out your punching him in the gut instead of strangling him.

First of all, why would an assassin know how to strangle and yet not know how to subdue? I think strangle (if implemented) would be a branch from subdue. This is if it is implemented.

Instead of creating a whole new skill of strangle, I'd rather like to see something where you can hit a subdued person for lesser than normal damage, if this isn't already possible. With each hit, it would only be one hit, with lessened damage, and with a lag between each hit. You would also have to type hit each time you would want to do damage, with a chance for the person you are subuding escaping depending on how good your subdue skill is.

One last thing. I'd think it'd be cool to have chopping skills affect how well you mine stuff. Or at least have a mining skill available to commoners. That'd be cool.

You can already mine things without needing a mining skill. Same with cutting down trees. I'm not sure if you improve your cutting or mining skill over time, but this might already be coded in place.

I have nothing wrong with your suggestions, Ritley, despite my disagreement with your ideas. Just suggestions for improvement.

[Hymwen]

Not sure how you want farming to work. You can't really grow crops in the desert or plains, and the few coded farms that exist are just a handful of rooms. Maybe it would be possible if the imms coded a series of fields at these farms which you can rent like an apartment, but then your little farmer will be screwed if you can't log on for a few days. Growing things out in the wilds wouldn't work as even if the crops survived, it would get spoiled by beasts, thieves and vandals.

Damn vandals.

[Angela Christine]

In poor countries it is common for everyone to grow at least a windowbox worth of food themselves.  A potted tomato plant, a couple pots of beans, etc.  Once you recover the initial investment cost of the pots, soil and seeds, the mainance cost of water and "soil enhancers" should be much cheaper than what it would cost you to buy vegetables in the market.  I think parts of Red Storm indicate that people are growing things in containers.

On the other hand, I'm content to let this be a virtual thing.  You can't really live off of travel cakes, not months and years at a time.  So if you are eating nothing but travel cakes perhaps you are getting virtual vitamins from your virtual potted plants, which is why you are not dieing of scurvy?  Is that too far fetched to be happening off screen?


Angela Christine

[jhunter]

I wouldn't mind seeing something like strangle except the longer you stay held the more difficult it should be to break free. It should do stun damage until they fall unconscious, once unconscious it should begin doing hp damage. Also, some items like a garrotte and whatnot that would increase the difficulty to break free and increase the rate of stun damage.

[Maybe42or54]

I'd prefer a gardenening subguild, than a farming skill.

[gfair]

Strangle has been suggested on at least one previous occasion.

There's all kinds of thoughts on this. Strangle, gag, and who should get it and who shouldn't.

Clearly, strangle is an assassin skill, so warriors shouldn't ever get it. But part of the trouble of strangle is that it's just too easy and simple. All you do is tug on the both ends of the garrote as hard as you can, and people who aren't specifically trained on how to combat it will die without any difficulty. And then people will suggest that the skill not make you immediately wanted.

Compare strangle with backstab. Strangle certainly seems easier and requires less precision to achieve death because a deathblow backstab requires immense precision, so to an extent, strangle almost makes sense as a replacement for backstab, but then that makes assassins far more deadly.

I'd support a switch, but not with sure-thing garrote cords. Cords that survive one strangling should be incredibly hard to make, and the life of a cord should be very limited. There simply isn't any material in Arm that could hold up to a life or death struggle.

And then there will be people that try to submit garrote cords covered in obsidian razors, any enhanced-damage garrote should never be submitted because the skill would be deadly enough.

Lastly, strangling someone leaves you with no ability to defend yourself, so you would be terribly vulnerable strikes to the arms/hands/wrists and would have no defense to that whatsoever unless they decided to disengage from the strangle, at which point they are screwed because they have to draw weapons to defend. No easy job when someone is charging at you.

I'd support strangle under these terms, but not much more powerful than this.

[MorganChaos]

I like the strangle idea. Maybe a base stam drain for the strangler, say 5 or 10 and every time they struggle you lose 5 stam. To prevent twink newb assassins.

[Synthesis]

All of these ideas have already been suggested (in most cases, more articulately) in previous discussions.

And honestly, there isn't any use for any of them.

Food isn't at such a low availability that you can't procure it without recourse to growing it yourself.  Futhermore, where are you getting all this good soil in which to grow your plants?  Around Allanak, there isn't any good topsoil, except that which is guarded by the militia.  I don't think they're in the business of handing out scoops of valuable topsoil to 'rinthers with green thumbs.  And I seriously doubt the Imms are going to implement something that is only useful for the half of the playerbase that plays around one particular city. There are already coded objects that "grow" and produce useful things.  If you RP growing a ginka vine in your apartment, maybe the imms will code you a ginka vine that produces a few fruits every reboot.  That's about as far as I see the farming thing going.

Commoner guilds are a big blah.  Who cares about common commoners?  One of the huge problems with the game is finding capable individuals to do uncommon things--and you want PCs to start doing things that VNPC's are handling perfectly well?  If you want to craft stuff, be a merchant and ignore your other skills.  If you want to scrape around digging up food, create a ranger and only use forage.  My question is:  Why on Zalanthas would you want to play this type of character?  There are so many much more interesting things you could be doing with your time.  Commoners are boring.  Boring, I say!

And strangle...why?  Why would an assassin use strangle when he can perfectly well use sap?  Why would you sit around choking someone when you can instantly knock them out?  The only reasons for this skill would be to implement a workaround for sap, or to make knocking someone out look "cooler".  If the Imms wanted people to be knocked unconscious more easily, they'd make a perfect sap easier to accomplish, not code an entirely new skill!  And as far as coolness goes...humbug.  Knocking someone out with a well-placed blow to the head is pretty damn cool, already.

So, nay I say. Nay.

[Desertman]

There is actually a beautiful farming code in SOI....I played the MUD for a short while inbetween characters, and though overall it bit the big one in my book...The farming code for that game was vastly diverse and an Armageddon version of it would be extremely, and I mean, EXTREMELY kickass. I would love to see some farmers in game. Maybe even set up hovels with a little square of land out behind them in the farming villages that farmer PC's can rent like apartments. But thats a new idea all together. I have seen a farming code in use, and it was the only aspect of the entire game that truly rocked. I would love to see it.

[Angela Christine]

Isn't most farming in Zalanthas done by slaves?

We don't know!   :shock:  

The farming in Tuluk is mysterious.  It must happen, but last time I looked around there wasn't much evidence of it.

Red Storm East has some obvious farming, but since Red Storm is opposed to slavery the farm workers must not be slaves.  Are they city employees, indepent farmers, or tennant farmers?  Who knows, I sure don't.

If you go to the farming villages around Allanak there are very large slave quarters in each village, so obviously a lot of farming is done by slaves.  However there is also a few rooms in each village that mention many houses.  Who lives in the houses?  There are barracks for the soldiers, so it isn't soldiers.  It could be the officers, or maybe templars, but that seems unlikely.  Is this where the skilled workers and overseers live, employees of the state who do work that requires more skill than you get from the average labour slave?  Are they tennant farmers?  Completely free farmers who actually own a patch of farmland of there own in the farm zone?  It is a mystery.  I tell you what, the not knowing burns my toast.

I'd prefer a gardenening subguild, than a farming skill.

Gardening sounds good.  Sort of a small scale vegetable growing thing, rather than large scale vast fields of wheat thing.  Farming is a full time job, gardening can be a sideline or even a hobby.  Container gardening can be done inside the city.

All of these ideas have already been suggested (in most cases, more articulately)  

Aww, you didn't have to be not nice.



Angela Christine

[Ritley]

One: Having the farming skill isn't about getting food to stay alive, but to simply open up more roles.

Two: The strangle ability would be easy to break out of.

[Cenghiz]

If the 'commoner' was a subguild....

I would make a gemmed dwarf vivaduan/rukkian/elkran-commoner instantly. I would have a patriotic focus: "Forming a forest around Allanak, like the barbarians have."
.....
As I said, I would use it instantly with pleasure. But.. how much important is it? How many people are going to use it?

Still, as I said, I will for sure use it if it gets implemented.

[Ritley]

If the 'commoner' was a subguild....

I would make a gemmed dwarf vivaduan/rukkian/elkran-commoner instantly. I would have a patriotic focus: "Forming a forest around Allanak, like the barbarians have."
.....
As I said, I would use it instantly with pleasure. But.. how much important is it? How many people are going to use it?
Still, as I said, I will for sure use it if it gets implemented.

It's not about how many people will use it, but the option to use it. And to simply give the game even more depth.

And the coding, despite how it sounds hard, wouldn't be exceptionally complicated. Although this would have to be very low on the priority list.

If the staff wished it, I'd be willing to help code this idea.

[Tlaloc]

I've thought about farming before, and I think one of the biggest problems is a problem with the code: simply put, the game isn't really set up (right now) for PCs to have personal plots of land, which they can grow and tend on their own.

You would have problems with people coming in and stealing your crops while you're offline, and (currently) without immortal support, your crops probably won't go very far.

All of that said, we've made some spectacular advances in javascripting in the past year, and many plants in the wild do many of the things people would be looking for in a PC farmer setup. Perhaps something could be coded up with a sort of "community plot", or land for rent - akin to how apartments are rented out. I imagine with the right sort of working, seeds and things could be coerced to become plants, which might be growable into some form of produce.

I don't think any classes need to be made up for it...you have rangers and merchants, both of whom are really suited to doing this type of thing (especially where digging up the Zalanthan man-eating carrots and potatos and what not come in).

However, if we were going to do this, we would need to do it right: a farmer would have to contend with weeds, bad crops, bad weather, water supplies, diseases, pests, thieves, and any other assortment of complications involved in public farming.

The additional complication arises when you think about Zalanthas itself. Zalanthas is not a world where you have Ma and Pa Farmer trying to make a living off the land. Zalanthas is a world where the Noble Houses and City States own all the land, and Ma and Pa Farmer work for the Houses and/or the City to work the land for them.

[LoD]

Well, here's a suggestion that might solve a bunch of problems.

What if there were farm plots arranged near each of the three farming villages that operated very much like PC housing.  You could "rent" a plot that was just a room behind a locked gate (grounds ICly patrolled by soldiers to discourage thievery) that led to an open field which the player could farm.

Each of the farming villages would then be outfitted to have goods, supplies, and tools required for maintaining the farms so they'd get a little more use.  People are always mentioning how the farming villages hardly get used, and this might be a neat way to get more traffic in and out the door.  Not just traffic, but IC traffic that makes more sense.

So, I'd envision something like:

Dusty Path [EW]
The weathered, chip toothed man stands here, handling farm plots.
The burly, snaggle toothed mul stands here, lazily watching the area.

>rent plot
The weathered, chip toothed man has the following plots for sale:
1> a quarter league plot of hard packed earth for 120 obsidian.
2> a quarter league plot of hard packed earth for 120 obsidian.
3> a half league plot of fenced earth for 180 obsidian.
4> a half league plot of tilled earth for 180 obsidian.

>rent #1
The weathered, chip toothed man gives you a dusty bone key.

>east

Dusty Path [NEWS]
Meandering through the rugged farm, this path leads toward a row of
stunted bone gates, secured with crude locks to keep uwnated visitors
out of the plots.  Hard packed earth can be seen through slits in the
gates, the occasional sprout or growth visible amidst the dusty and
sand.

>unlock north
Ok.

>open north
Ok.

>north

Quarter League Plot
Stretching a quarter of a league, this plot of hard packed earth serves as
a portion of the Highlord's farmland.  Slaves can be seen toiling for hours
beneath the merciless glare of the sun overhead in an attempt to grow
the grains, tubers, and other foods in the city marketplace.  Jagged bricks
of reddish stone line the perimeter of the plot, keeping the fierce winds
partially at bay while a large sandcloth tarpaulin lay against the western
edge for cover during heavy sandstorms.
A few brown clay pots have been left here.

If someone was industrious, you could create seeds, forms of fertilizer, different equipment for improving land conditions and all kinds of fun items that would allow someone to RP out the life of a farmer.  The ability to lead tame animals into your pen for milking or RP labor would also be a grand time.  It'd be quite an undertaking, but I think that the end result would be pretty impressive and add a dimension to the game that isn't presently represented.

-LoD

[Tlaloc]

LoD - that's basically the idea I was kind of suggesting above. I think that would be the best/i] solution, at this time, but remember there's all sorts of associated code to go along with it.

I'm not trying to shut this idea down - I like it. Another thing I've been thinking of were ways to make PCs able to herd animals, so you could become a chalton or tandu herder, raise erdlu, or other things like this. Part of -this- is already available, with buther shops, etc, and industrious rangers...but I'll leave that for you guys to find out and explore on your own.