Goblin Squad Member
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Dropping stuff on the ground added all kinds of things in uo. You could put out tables and chairs, throw out food and have a player event. You could drop a book on the ground. You could have a treasure hunt with books and clues. You could throw up a barricade, or candles. It adds a lot. Not bring able to put things on the ground removes so much sandboxy stuff.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Jameow,
I very much agree, and did all those things, but didn't want to get carried off by nostalgia. But you're right. We used to set up tables to make our own booths for player run markets, barricades out of crates during the Shadow Clan invasions of Yew, laid food on tables at player weddings, etc. It was wonderful.
Well even if they didn't want to implement dropped loot, I believe they could still allow players to place tables and chairs, benches and such. Basically allow furniture but not all the other stuff like excess mob loot.
I do hope they allow us to write on scrolls and in books. And either place containers around the world that we can leave scrolls and books in, or let us drop scrolls and books along with furniture.
I bet they could do it without too much hassle. And it would really help RP, guild events, all kinds of fun stuff.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Though I loved all the possible stuff one could find on the ground in UO (I had a character who made his fortune just picking up, reselling, and bartering with what he found around the Britain Bank), Ryan already mentioned in a mount thread that they would not want to implement anything that caused unnecessary server stress.
Personally, I think the ability to drop an item on the ground is huge. From a plot manager perspective, it allows a person to leave an item in a location for others to discover.
It should not be difficult for the devs to make some items immune to the server's object sweeping routines that despawn corpses and the like.
I imagine selling such containers on the GW Store. Many people I would expect to buy them. If my high level wants to twink my new alt I would need a way to get twinkables to him and one way is to put everything in a chest that I leave hidden near where my new alt camped. Log in the twink and grab the chest holding all my sweet gear and coin.
Many guilds would want such chests to create the conditions needed for player designed quests. An LG guild using CE alts to provide opposition for a new member as he tries to retrieve and important artifact in the chest inside a bandit cave as an example.
Such a system would serve the constructive purposes of dropping things while significantly governing related server workload issues.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It should not be difficult for the devs to make some items immune to the server's object sweeping routines that despawn corpses and the like.
I imagine selling such containers on the GW Store.
I really, really like the idea of treasure chests that can be placed at arbitrary locations in the world. I imagine they'd need to limit the total number in any Hex, and would recommend they do so by destroying the one with the lowest value of goods inside first.
[Edit] It also seems prudent to not allow new items to be added to the chest over time. Instead, a character could pick up the entire chest, at which point that particular chest can't be placed in the world again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps the entire chest would have to be picked up and taken to a settlement to be opened?
Or perhaps build a lockpicking challenge into it that results in the ability to take the contents but also renders the treasure chest into a server-sweepable 'corpse', signified as such by its open lid afterward.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It should not be difficult for the devs to make some items immune to the server's object sweeping routines that despawn corpses and the like.
I imagine selling such containers on the GW Store.
I really, really like the idea of treasure chests that can be placed at arbitrary locations in the world. I imagine they'd need to limit the total number in any Hex, and would recommend they do so by destroying the one with the lowest value of goods inside first.
[Edit] It also seems prudent to not allow new items to be added to the chest over time. Instead, a character could pick up the entire chest, at which point that particular chest can't be placed in the world again.
I'd rather see them restrict the placement of new ones than destroy others. Especially doing it by value. Done that way, I could put down a chest and place one or two things into it, then have it immediately vanish because it was the "cheapest".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd rather see them restrict the placement of new ones than destroy others.
I worried that this would be used to game the system and find Hexes that were "saturated" with treasure chests.
I could put down a chest... then have it immediately vanish because it was the "cheapest".
It makes perfect sense to destroy the cheapest pre-existing treasure chest when a new one is placed.
I didn't want the "oldest" chest to be destroyed because then people would simply drop chests with a single breadcrumb in them until all the valuable chests were destroyed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It makes perfect sense to destroy the cheapest [/i]pre-existing[/i] treasure chest when a new one is placed.
Yes, that was the scenario I described, though perhaps not clearly enough. I drop a chest with some newbie gear in it. Twenty seconds later, someone else drops a chest and mine vanishes, because newbie gear is cheap.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes, that was the scenario I described, though perhaps not clearly enough. I drop a chest with some newbie gear in it. Twenty seconds later, someone else drops a chest and mine vanishes, because newbie gear is cheap.
Ah, I did indeed misunderstand you. I agree that it would suck to drop a chest in an effort to create an RP hook for new players and have the chest disappear.
I was trying to solve a problem, but my solution doesn't really solve it, since it's just as easy to identify saturated Hexes by dropping two chests and seeing the first one disappear.
I agree that it's probably better for the system to notify the player that the Hex is saturated with treasure chests and not allow the chest to be placed.
Yes, that was the scenario I described, though perhaps not clearly enough. I drop a chest with some newbie gear in it. Twenty seconds later, someone else drops a chest and mine vanishes, because newbie gear is cheap.Ah, I did indeed misunderstand you. I agree that it would suck to drop a chest in an effort to create an RP hook for new players and have the chest disappear.
I was trying to solve a problem, but my solution doesn't really solve it, since it's just as easy to identify saturated Hexes by dropping two chests and seeing the first one disappear.
I agree that it's probably better for the system to notify the player that the Hex is saturated with treasure chests and not allow the chest to be placed.
Among the many ways these chests could be used as a RP tool, one way I was pondering was this.. Lets say I wanted to create a scavenger hunt for any wanting to participate. I write out a detailed first clue laying out the rules and location of the first item. I make say 5 copies and place them into chests, then distribute these chests around 2 hexes. Then I make up some flyers did hang them on BBs in settlements and taverns. Th chance of my chests still being there for players to claim are fairly slim if them chests are dependent on value.
I'm not sure of a system that would cover all possibilities. Player made quests may rely on placing an item along with a scroll or book within a chest and just waiting for someone to happen along and discover the quest materials.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Good thought, Nihimon.
Another is to permit only X number of chest to exist unopened at any time. Then when one is found and emptied it has a finite time to remain before vanishing. When it does vanished GW sells the next, perhaps to the highest bidder or to the next accepting player in a waiting list..
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Goblin Squad Member
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Talk about resurrecting old threads...
I'm curious if Goblinworks has ever really considered the ability to drop things on the ground, or not.
It's been 1.5 years since this post started and stopped, and we are now much closer to a minimum viable product. Do we know if the game's technology/platform will allow for such a thing? If it does, are there any considerations to implement such a thing?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Everything persistent has to be tracked by the server in the open world data. By putting many things in a container only the container has to be tracked. The contents can be in that container's data table and needs to be accessed only when someone opens it.
The ground in any given area could be a specialized container. first in, first out, with developer (or settlement) assigned number of slots, so that when item "51" is dropped, item "1" is pushed out the bottom.
Of course, that leaves you open to the following scene:
John: "Eric, I've dropped the +1 sword here so you can use it to help"
Eric: "I'm on my way"
Richard (drops fifty copper coins on the ground) "oops....."
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Goblin Squad Member
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Having to spawn a wealth of trash on the ground of settlements, even if just player settlements, will dramatically increase the bandwidth costs. Even if most of the visual data is stored locally. And that much information eats away at the RAM.
It'd be nice if items stuck around for a few minutes, to allow people to just drop rewards, throw items at bandits, and discard items to be picked up by random passers by.
But they should eventually despawn.
A workaround might be inside buildings, if interiors are instanced. Theres's less going on all at once in most buildings, so it's possible to have items stick around much longer. And that allows you to place furnishings, throw down little RP things, and the like.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Talk about resurrecting old threads...
I'm curious if Goblinworks has ever really considered the ability to drop things on the ground, or not.
It's been 1.5 years since this post started and stopped, and we are now much closer to a minimum viable product. Do we know if the game's technology/platform will allow for such a thing? If it does, are there any considerations to implement such a thing?
Take a look at this thread, there are a couple of GW responses.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think anyone has given the OP props for the title of the thread yet, so I'll do so. Props.
Happy Birthday to the GRROOOUUUNNDDD