[Poll] Dropping items anywhere: Throwing stones in a living world. [UNOFFICIAL]

I am very pro on this subject. If a carpenter wanted to grief me to drop items on the ground so I couldn't move I would just move them away and tell him to get a life. As long as he could not do it to me in his home. to trap me. But he would have to be pretty quick to do so. I'm sure there will be a help/stuck option in the game.

Being able to stack items could be an issue though , maybe someone wanted to be a griefer and not let someone enter there home. Just like in UO on the free shards I play you put a object you can't walk through all 125 stones in a box. Then you double click an axe and click the chest or box the items are in, and you have a blocked off home. But he can just jump over the walls or if it is in front of the door he can wait for them to decay or move them all. Can I change my vote to just"PRO"?

One option is to have objects you can't walk through fill up a lot of backpack space another
is to have a fast decay rate in the game world. Another is to not allow that to happen at all.

From the amount of attention these polls get compared to the amount of backers worries me a little. Are all the backers going to be showing up in this world, will we be sorry later for asking this question now?

 

I Agree ...

Drop what ever you want on the ground . Give it a short life if not picked up say 3 mins. The one dropping didn't want it , the one picking it up did , What's the big deal.

 

too many words

 

I think being able to place things on the ground is very important. What made UO special is the interactivity with the world.

It is still the only game I can think of where you can make a chair, place it on the ground, and sit on it.

Also the decay timer needs to be sufficiently long - 3 minutes is laughably short. It would be pointless implementing the feature with that length. It needs to be more like 60 or 90.

 

Yeah , longer time would be nice for role players to decorate a popular town with and nerd out. Placing items you can't walk through in a breakable box (125 stones in UO) and having them "stacked" is the only negative. Lets say I din't like the rich prick with the Lord of the Manor castle and I blocked his doorway, that would suck.

Although in UO, factions used this to their advantage to set up an EQMS bomb strategy like in the Shadowlords base.

 

If they make it so you can simply destroy the blocking furniture on the ground by hitting it with a weapon then that would solve many of the problems and probably make murder by cherry cabinet more trouble than it is worth.

 

Got a good solution for that. Destroying a destructible container that obstructs movement full of items creates a small container with those items that doesn't (like a pouch). No concern about losing items or being blocked.

 

Or you could just make it so only the lot-owner or kindred can drop items on the lot.

 

Streetsweepers can pick up items in towns on regular rounds
NPCs could be triggered to pick up items over a certain value or that meet other requirements

Furthermore, if corpse-decay occurs after a period of time, the items previously on the corpse should drop to the ground to be collected by passers-by

There will a trade mechanism so you don't have to put trade items on the ground and risk their theft

In a house, I think it should be determined by ownership/decoration settings

Do we need a failsafe? Say, if too many items were placed in a location, the game would consolidate them into a container object such as "a pile of stuff"

 

While there are some interesting ideas - I can't help but feel you miss the point of placing things on the ground. Sure, people can drop junk that other people can pick up but in my mind - and in UO - that was not the primary purpose.

Basically in UO you could craft say - benches or chairs, and set up a little meeting area ANYWHERE. Even in a dungeon. You could create a stage or host a picnic or create a barricade out of crates or any of a hundred other things. The system allowed endless creativity and allowed you to interact with the world rather than just feel as though you were floating on top of it or lived in a giant dolls house with fixed features.

That is why I find this topic important. More so than most things.

*edit* they already have a system in place for placing things. Things placed in a public space (that is - outside a house) should decay (a 60-90 minute decay timer is reasonable - anything shorter makes the system somewhat less useful), and blocking items should be destroyable so you can't kill people with cupboards or something.

 

Quoting to agree with this.

Create designated 'Civic Areas' where players are free to drop whatever they want (thereby allowing impromptu player-run gatherings / markets / festivals etc) - but ownership of those items cannot be transferred without using the normal trade mechanic. That way people could interact with the items, but they won't be able to steal them or take them outside the boundary of the Civic Area. Edit: I know this would be very restrictive for some.

As for junk items, bins are the obvious solution. Players / NPCs can then have the task of processing the waste for resources (encourage recycling!)

These are probably not things that can be achieved for Episode 1, but would be cool to see in the long run!

 

Ashlynn [Pax] oh i totally agree with you. i was just addressing some of the concerns i heard from other people. for me, it is completely about interactivity, truly inhabiting the world, and i would like to see as little regulation on it is as possible for maintaining a healthy / enjoyable gaming environ.

I can see how clean-up protocols could interfere with the persistence of player creations. hopefully we can find the right solution that will not require an unrealistic amount of manual maintenance.

 

Doesn't solve the problem off the lots though.

Not enough constructive words.

We don't know much about how the death a looting mechanic will work at this point. But from what they've proposed so far I don't think player corpses will be left with many items on them. Still the idea that when a corpse decays the items fall out into the world to be processed by the system is interesting, particularly when it comes to monster corpses.

 

BARRICADES:
I think with a proper weight and crafting system, the fear of being barricaded is far lessened.

Weight:
The weight thing has been discussed already - Make furniture heavy enough that you can't carry a great wall of china cabinets in your pack
Crafting:
Since in SOTA we'll need to be near crafting tables to produce finished goods, we won't be able to bring a bunch of wood to the site and craft a wall on the fly.. Unless you dropped a crafting table..
(Crafting Tables should be an exception, and only be drop-able on lots and in homes, I think)

With the ability to destroy objects, that aren't on someone's lot, with a proper weapon and the ability to pick up objects,
barricades would still be possible to build, but difficult to do.


ROLEPLAY:
'Civic Areas' (As mentioned above - where ppl can place objects freely but for a fee) Is a great idea and should be developed further...
This would be a way for people to place items for a purpose, without the worry of people breaking or stealing their furniture..

When dropping an item in these areas, players could choose to have the object interact-able by others or not. (locked-down).
(Finding a way to stop people from creating barricades in these areas now becomes tricky..)

Item decay in these areas, as in any other, are a factor.. Do the items only stay placed as long as the player, or group is still in the area? Logged-in? etc..



As far as dropping stuff anywhere else in the world, I still am in the belief that we should be able to..

I like the street sweepers NPC idea.. Lower-Class wandering NPCs could also pick up objects..
Would also be cool to see Critters or Birds Swoop in and steal smaller items.
Tho automatic decay should still be in play.

I like the idea of unlooted items on dead mobs falling on the ground once their corpses decay.

 

Would not the fact that the material for crafting a table weigh just as much (or more even) than the finished object eliminate this as an issue ?

So, you drop a crafting table in the middle of a battle, you are still going to need haul all the ingredients around to make something.


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I guess you could have a crew of players get together to ferry materials to the crafter. But in that case, they might as ferry the final product and eliminate the middleman entirely.

 

It would indeed..
I was thinking carrying the table itself, but I would hope that they will be HEAVY as well.

 

Just wanted to take the Civic Area idea a little further...just like in real life, an event or gathering would naturally be organised by a group of people. The group that pays the fee to lease the Civic Area would also have the ability to manage the operation of that area to prevent disorder (ie. a security team).
Imagine someone stacking tables in front of the walkways at an E3 Expo. Do you think they would last long? No, the security teams or stall managers would notice the offender and put a stop to it.

In the context of SoTA, event managers could have the power to remove any unwanted items lying around regardless of who owns it. And seeing as the system would allow for interaction with other people's property, the managers would have the power to delete the barricading / stacking / spamming etc. and evict them from the Civic Area if need be.
HOWEVER, if the event is all about creating the coolest barricade or stack of crafting tables, then everybody wins

 

Realistically yes any item you craft should require MORE weight in materials to create. I do hope they follow that rule. Carrying a log, carving in into a pole and having the pole weigh more then the log after you are done carving is just ludicrous for example. So yeah crafting on the spot should not allow you to create more to dump then you could originally carry.

 

Maybe since we can jump now, barricades won't be as big an issue anyhow.. :/

 

"Ack, a bench! Oh wait, I can just jump over that."

"Hey, who deployed the Armoire ?"