Merchant Memory...?

[Thunderhorse8128]

I think this may be a good idea, if you gave merchants the ability to remember a character for however long the character exists and their actions toward the merchants, if you buy a lot from that merchant and that merchant only for the type of things he/she sells and are a longtime shopper you could get a price discount?...lemme know about this...

[9sam1]

voted yes cause i need cheap meds

[Liberate My Madness]

It would probably have to be based on actual monetary amounts that you have given to the merchant/received from them, because if it were just based on # of items bought/sold, you could simply buy a full inventory of the cheapest item and sell them all back.


I wouldn't mind seeing it in game though, for meds and ports.

[thadiusofx3]

obviously a good idea that could make the game better, but won't be implemented for awhile

the first stage will be getting it like old school xenimus, then we can make changes that will make it better

[Thunderhorse8128]

thanks guys

[Necromadon]

Very good idea.

[Thunderhorse8128]

thank you. Another idea I had was to be able to recruit some NPCs and gear them up, level them, and wage war on other armies and your army could have land that they had taken over and turn it into a nation but limit the nation size and army size, and eventually be able to recruit other players into your army and if you were in/built an army you would choose a specific set of colors for your army and when people joined their char colors automatically changed so no one would get mixed up in battle. Of course armies could only contain a few high levels (50+), say 10, 20 intermediate levels (30-40) around 30 average levels (15-30) and from 15- go crazy but an army cap max of 100 players NPCs included. Army strength would depend on morale and leader level so for instance if your army has just lost a battle, their morale would be lower 1 point going into the next battle and if their commander was level 50 their morale would have a leader boost of 5 so their morale would be 4, max morale is 10, and the higher the morale the better your army will fare in the battle. If your leader/commander dies in battle your morale drops one point for that battle only and if and when he rejoins the battle after buying pots and whatnot that morale point will be restored. Generals and lesser commanders will be able to be appointed if the commander in cheif so chooses. Lemme know what you think please.

[Liberate My Madness]

Thunder not to sound like a freak or anything but I live in Odessa new york, really close to you, only mentioning it because its kind of odd and i might already know you living so close lol....

[Tyler]

I thout the first idea was great But the 2nd idea was so so I would like to see that on like Good vs Evil tho. Would be mor likle not fo shor if they guna put good/evil in tho. But i think that would be cool.

[Thunderhorse8128]

Yeah I'd like to see it in this game/Xenimus sometime soon, I think it would be great for Xenimus but if it were programmed into this game I think it would be better.

[figgles]

As for the poll: Waste of code, development time, bandwidth, server processing time, and database entries.

How does one really justify the minor benefits? Let's think about the code for a while:

When you trade with NPC, the game must save your character into a list of customers. If you have already purchased, then the server must load this information into RAM, recalculate the prices, and send them to the client. It is more likely that the server would just load all of the entries for all of the NPCs on startup. Whenever you make a purchase, you must then recalculate the prices once more just in case the price drops after the person purchases. This must be done for each player, for each item, for each purchase. Now, when you leave, these values must be saved, first to a database, then to a persistant medium, such as a hard drive. Every time you talk to a different NPC, you use more disk space (and initially RAM). When a character is deleted, all of the entries for that character must be purged, for each NPC that s/he has ever talked to. This means that you either must keep track of every NPC the character has ever talked to, or manually search through every NPC in the world's database to see if the person has ever talked to that NPC (= slow). If you decide to do time-based deletion, i.e. don't talk to the NPC for a few months and the benefit is gone or lesser, then you must record for each player the level of benefit and the last time they talked. At some point in time, the server would have to still purge entries for people who have zero benefit due to time, either because they do not talk to that NPC often enough, or their character has been deleted. Or, you could keep the entries for each NPC, for every player, and waste disk space and RAM, as well as make new searches slower because there is an increasing number of entries.

And why would we do all of this? So a player can save a few virtual coins.

Yeah, right.


As for the armies: Whoever suggests training NPCs for an army has obviously never programmed. Especially in an MMORPG. I'm not even going to begin to describe how to do such a feat. That idea is enough programming for an entire game in itself, much less a small facet of a game.

--
The development team will suffer from extreme feature creep if they take every person's "Wouldn't it be cool if...!" idea. Stick to needs to be done: cloning Xenimus, not creating another lame player-versus-player focus online game.

Admins: Perhaps you should incorporate a real RFE (request for enhancement) with rigorous questions to examine any proposal. It would probably filter out some of the riff-raff that gets posted.

Patrick

[Joe M.]

nice sig, figgles.

[Thunderhorse8128]

Sorry im "riff-raff" and no ive never programmed anything before ever, so why dont you take your overthinking brain and shove it up your a$$, I was merely throwing out ideas and seeing if people liked them, maybe you should know what people are like before you criticize them, I have no idea what the hell you said in that reply with all your technical computer language, why you ask? Maybe it is because of the aforementioned "ive never programmed anything before ever". Its not like you're helping by shooting peoples ideas down.

[Ender]

Hey Figgs, I realize you probably do a ton of work, so I'm glad you are finding some time to help us out here and there with advice. However, if you are going to be critical, please take the time to read our forums and become familiar with the project. The PV developers encourage this kind of brainstorming and involvement. Even when someone comes in with absolutely no relevant programming or content creation skills, they've been welcomed. You won't have to search too long to find an example.

[Joe M.]

Figgles has posted a very helpful analysis of the coding effort it would take to implement the idea--which, if it were practicable, would be a good addition to the game--and some good advice to the members of the board. He is helping a lot by considering the proposal the way *any* proposed idea should be considered; he was neither insulting you nor was he "overthinking." Your response does not do you credit, TH, nor should it be rejected.

You have not programmed? Very well, learn from the good advice that has been offered.

And in the future, please keep your temper in check.

Thanks, Figgles. Your thoughts are always well-considered and very much appreciated.

[Joe M.]

Ender--Figgles has known us at Unseen Studios for a long time, and he has always had good advice. The brainstorming is good--it can certainly produce some good ideas--but all ideas must be considered carefully, which is just what Figgles has offered here. I caution y'all not to reject it, out-of-hand or otherwise.

[Thunderhorse8128]

Sorry figgles. had a bad day lol Sorry Joe, and other admins/mods, won't happen again. Promise. Lesson learned.

[Ender]

Joe - I made it a point to thank him for the advice. My comment wasn't about what he said, just how he said it. The same points could have just as easily been communicated without being so condescending. Figgs probably didn't mean any offense, so its no biggie.

[figgles]

All,

My response was a bit too abrasive. Don't fool yourself into thinking it wasn't because I provided a technical reason from experience. After reading the second idea, I went into "die stupid newbie" mode and said a bit too much. It was condescending, it was wrong, and it was harsh. For that I am sorry to all offended parties.

I do still however hold my previous position. Allow me to clarify my reasoning rather than just flatly rejecting it. I understand that it may have been a bit too technical.

Brainstorming is a good thing, however, it tends leads to what is known as "feature creep" if too many voices are heard, where people take a base system and tack on more and more features until the main product is nothing like the original and the new focus becomes the added features, not the original game. A faithful recreation of a game needs to first exist, or the previous flaws of the game needs to be accounted for, as a priority. Remember the law of economics -- you cannot get something for nothing. This takes great effect when planning a game around a timeline.

The merchant memory is an example of what I would consider a healthy idea. It suggests a useful and realistic feature that players find appealing, as seen by the poll. It is up to the programmer(s) to decide whether it is to be implemented. I personally find it something that would be nice but I could not justify the costs of implementing it at this time. Right now, too many people are asking when the game will come out so they can play, so adding features will delay this timeline. If you asked people whether they are willing to accept increased development time of the game for a feature, then they may be less inclined to do so.

The second proposed idea however does not easily fit into either a) implementation of the game or b) fixing a major game shortcoming. That system in itself can represent an entire game. Some MMORPGs are only player-versus-player. That idea is an extension of the player-versus-player MMORPG to include NPCs in the player-versus-player gameplay. In short, this feature could delay the game from coming out for another few years, which most people will find highly unacceptable.

As far as I know, Karl is the only one actively developing this game. If you consider programming time as a limited resource, like money for example, it is much easier to budget its use for something that will get the most value for your money. In this case, I would consider things such as character creation, movement, combat, and overall game stability to be of better value.

Patrick

[Thunderhorse8128]

I see where you're coming from now, sorry Patrick.

[Liberate My Sadness]

wow Nick, Liberate my Madness is Ryan and Im Jared....ryan u have 2 be the stupidiest kid for not knowing that was nick, i knew right away as i saw name and where he was from

[Zappy]

As for the poll: Waste of code, development time, bandwidth, server processing time, and database entries.

How does one really justify the minor benefits? Let's think about the code for a while:

When you trade with NPC, the game must save your character into a list of customers. If you have already purchased, then the server must load this information into RAM, recalculate the prices, and send them to the client. It is more likely that the server would just load all of the entries for all of the NPCs on startup. Whenever you make a purchase, you must then recalculate the prices once more just in case the price drops after the person purchases. This must be done for each player, for each item, for each purchase. Now, when you leave, these values must be saved, first to a database, then to a persistant medium, such as a hard drive. Every time you talk to a different NPC, you use more disk space (and initially RAM). When a character is deleted, all of the entries for that character must be purged, for each NPC that s/he has ever talked to. This means that you either must keep track of every NPC the character has ever talked to, or manually search through every NPC in the world's database to see if the person has ever talked to that NPC (= slow). If you decide to do time-based deletion, i.e. don't talk to the NPC for a few months and the benefit is gone or lesser, then you must record for each player the level of benefit and the last time they talked. At some point in time, the server would have to still purge entries for people who have zero benefit due to time, either because they do not talk to that NPC often enough, or their character has been deleted. Or, you could keep the entries for each NPC, for every player, and waste disk space and RAM, as well as make new searches slower because there is an increasing number of entries.

And why would we do all of this? So a player can save a few virtual coins.

Yeah, right.


As for the armies: Whoever suggests training NPCs for an army has obviously never programmed. Especially in an MMORPG. I'm not even going to begin to describe how to do such a feat. That idea is enough programming for an entire game in itself, much less a small facet of a game.

--
The development team will suffer from extreme feature creep if they take every person's "Wouldn't it be cool if...!" idea. Stick to needs to be done: cloning Xenimus, not creating another lame player-versus-player focus online game.

Admins: Perhaps you should incorporate a real RFE (request for enhancement) with rigorous questions to examine any proposal. It would probably filter out some of the riff-raff that gets posted.

Patrick

Actually i think you could just add one row to the sql db and then make it so every time you buy somthing from that merch number goes up and then add a few if then statements saying to - from the price of the merchent.

[JSunJShineR]

pointless because onyl thin people buy r port scrolls, maxies, meds, transies. eventualy they will be free... because you buy so damn many of them at high lvls.

[Karl G.]

Yeah, but at low to even mid levels they're very expensive comparatively...how can this be solved?

[thadiusofx3]

Item prices based on level, but to a certain point?

say... level 30 cutoff, and anything below that is relative to the level 30 cutoff (25/30 = 83%)

lets say a med costs 1.3k

level 30+ = 100% price 1300 gold
25 = 83% price 1079 gold
20 = 66% price 858 gold
15 = 50% price 650 gold
10 = 33% price 429 gold
5 = 16% price 208 gold

The problem with this and reason it can't be implemented is that you can just make a level one and give him gold and get meds for your high level for uber cheap