[Discussion] Disabeling summons in protectet areas

[tux9th]

When you are so full of good suggestions why don't you fix the bugs then.
Fluffies behavior was changed to be slaves as well. Read and think before writing, otherwise you'll lose your credibility.

[Cassy]

Hey t3st3r =)

Here some details:

So now I would be unable to summon even non-aggro and cute fluffies who were always a fun for years and never caused any trouble to anyone?

Totally understand that *looks at her Fluffy Hat* and also already made this point but there is no other way at the moment.

If you mean that summoned Fluffies don't attack other mobs:
As tux9th already wrote Fluffies will be slaves now too, meaning they will attack other mobs after summoning.

If you mean that Fluffies are peaceful mobs:
Even though Fluffies are usually non-aggro they will become aggressive after being hit and attacking the summoner or other players when the summoner changed the map - every summoned mob does, peaceful or aggressive.

Please keep in mind: this should just be temporary until MadCamel or o11c or maybe someone else "fixes" summoned mob's behavior (see their posts above)

[Chicka-Maria]

Since magic summons are being disabled I'm guessing @spawn command parties will be as well in those areas? People use those spells to fight and have fun with spawn parties that GMs might host, the Gms spawn parties can kill afk players as well.

regards,

[Hello=)]

When you are so full of good suggestions why don't you fix the bugs then.
Fluffies behavior was changed to be slaves as well. Read and think before writing, otherwise you'll lose your credibility.

The fact I admit that "using guillotine is not the best way to cure headache" does not implies I can readily offer other cure from headache. But as for me I would rather prefer to live with headache rather than use "superb solution" with guillotine, thank you very much. Sorry, but inability to cast my favorite fluffies spell I used for years would hardly count as "reward" for reporting this bug. Also bunch of mages now haves a perfectly valid reason to hate me for such bug report and resulting "fix" since it ruins half of fun in game. Needless to say it really discourages me from future bug reports and/or further attempts to point out common issues and annoyances I can find as player.

As tux9th already wrote Fluffies will be slaves now too, meaning they will attack other mobs after summoning.

I dont see why slaves should attack other players on non-PvP maps unless players do something offensive as well (like stabbing monster, using own slaves to attack it, aggravate spell, etc).

they will become aggressive after being hit and attacking the summoner or other players when the summoner changed the map

I fail to undestand what's the problem here. If player provokes monster, it supposed to defend self and it's standard part of PvE gameplay. Since player have to explicitly initiate this action self, it does not allows to kill AFK players, no? So what's the problem with it?

Please keep in mind: this should just be temporary until MadCamel or o11c or maybe someone else "fixes" summoned mob's behavior (see their posts above)

Oh yeah, I remember another story. TMWAthena meant to be some "temporary" server until ManaServ is able to do it. So where is ManaServ, huh? And what are all these mumblings like "Manasource devs do not really care about this server"? You see, the most persistent things in the world are some "temporary" solutions. Whole existence of this world with TMWAthena is a good example of this fact. So I would not take this phrase seriously, sorry .

Since magic summons are being disabled I'm guessing @spawn command parties will be as well in those areas?

.
Oh yeah. Let GMs to feel the same as players. At least it would be fair . Also, server should be unable to spawn monsters on these maps as well, to make "solution" perfect

[tux9th]

I picked this topic up because it seemed to me like summoned spawns are a problem. With the current mob behaviour it is possible to aggravate friendly spawned mobs and make them attack anything on the map, regardless of PvP flag.
GMs and players in game told me that this is a problem and people are being harassed with spawned mobs that way.

About GM spawns:
GMs are still free to spawn mobs with the @spawn command, simply because they do it to make the game more fun. I have never seen a GM who walks up to a player then spawns 5 aggro mobs on him and watches him get slaughtered by those mobs and then does this over again.

Through the voice of the GMs it seemed as this was an immediate issue which should be fixed asap. I asked if it would be a good fix to simply disable the summons for the time being until we have a different mob behaviour. They said it would be fine. We discussed this in the development channel of IRC as well.
That's why I brought this forward and people liked the idea (outside this topic), hence I patched the spells and put it up on the testing server for review and testing.

I am a content developer mostly specialised in mapping. I cannot edit the mob behaviour since I am not trained in C / C++ coding. Thus I make an immediate fix which solves most of the problem presented by my peers. Once we have a change in summoned mob behaviour will be re-enabled as they pose no harm any more.

Now to you t3st3r. You seem to not grasp the situation correctly:
All mobs which are summoned by spells, will attack you (regardless of their nature) if you attack them. If their target disappears, they don't simply stop attacking but attack other PCs and Mobs which are around. This is a problem.

Personal attacks won't make your arguments better or give them more meaning but will make it less likely anyone is going to react to them. Please keep the discussion simple and objective. I do not have any personal issues with you and I am not doing anything with the sole purpose to upset you. Keep this in mind when writing your next post.

regards
tux9th

[melkior]

The GM spawn parties are done differently, though. There's no sense in spawning monsters if no one is around to kill them. The players fighting those monsters are basically defending the AFK players. Not to mention that technically, we could clean up afterwards in a way, doing @revive on dead players. This hasn't been done, of course, but it could be.

Personally, as a player, I'm not a huge fan of spawn parties being done in towns, but I do them anyway, because players themselves seem to like them, and they're the most convenient place for such activities as there's always someone around.

But the main issue that sparked this discussion wasn't the killing of AFK players, but rather targeting newbie players in and around Tulimshar. And as far as I know, none of the GMs do spawn parties there.

I think the cleanest solution to this issue would be to make spawns attack their summoner if he attacks them, but if he runs away, make them disappear. It could be easily explained with something like:

• Summoned creatures exist through the will of the caster
• Once the caster attacks them, they're not sustained by the caster's will, but by their wrath caused by betrayal
• With the caster gone, they have nothing to keep them in this world anymore, and they disappear

I don't know if the server's mob AI allows for such behaviour, but maybe a solution like this should be explored. Of course, I realised that something like this cannot be implemented overnight, but it would resolve the current issue, and still leave players free to use magic as they see fit.

I know the example I provided here is simplified, and doesn't allow for PvP use in PvP areas, but that behaviour could be expanded with adding more flags to the AI of summoned mobs.

Finally, we only had one isolated incident of the summoned monsters being misused. I don't expect to see an epidemic of this anytime soon. Most of the players seem to dislike the use of summoned mobs in that fashion, and those who don't have probably been discouraged by the incident with Ulith (TroLL).

Don't rush into a "fix" which will piss everyone off. There's no immediate threat to the player base right now.

tux9th, I've seen how eager you were to bring in the evil magic, and I'm pretty everyone else was looking forward to the magic expansions, as well. It didn't work out as planned, but most things don't. In an open world, it's hard to predict what players might or might not do. Giving something out only to take it away a week later is a bad policy.

Do you know why #kaflosh doesn't work in towns? Because of me.

[2009-09-18 12:30:48] 009-1.gat(49,33) Delasia : @t Melkior people have asked you to stop because of the lag in Hurnscald caused by rain, i have requested you stop, You have done neither.
[2009-09-18 12:43:57] 009-1.gat(50,37) Delasia : @t Melkior you were warned about the rain
[2009-09-18 12:44:00] 009-1.gat(50,37) Delasia : @kick Melkior
[2009-09-18 12:45:55] 009-1.gat(52,34) Delasia : @t Melkior you were kicked as the next warning step

I kept doing the spell over and over again, because I wanted people to complain. I wasn't just creating lag for others, I was lagging myself — like crazy. The half-baked implementation was causing problems and I wanted the devs to fix it. I have tried talking to them, but that didn't work, so instead, I opted for making everyone miserable until something was done about it.

They took the easy way out. They disabled the rain spell in towns.

I don't want to see a repeat of that. Removing something because no one had time to change how it works is ridiculous. The reason I'm writing this is the fact that these "temporary" fixes end up being permanent solutions as the issues get forgotten or swept under the rug. This whole game in fact is a temporary thing that ended up being permanent. eAthena was just supposed to be a playground to test content before the "real" server was finished. Instead, the devs ended up with a game on their hands. I think it's time to stop fixing things in such a way.

[tux9th]

If you don't want my immediate fix then I won't add one. I thought this was a problem. Maybe I was misinformed.

Don't come to me for a "fix" though. I cannot give you one.

regards

[Hello=)]

I picked this topic up because it seemed to me like summoned spawns are a problem.

They are, because ability of one player to PK other players without chance to give retribution is wrong, its "griefing" and can make players to leave the game. However, proposed fix also "unpleasant", to say the least.

Through the voice of the GMs it seemed as this was an immediate issue which should be fixed asap.

Because many players started griefing others, abusing bug. I've considered it a heavy gameplay issue, so I filed bug report to forum. Most RPGs would qualify it like this. And from your words it looks like if it's even somewhat worse than I thought.

But btw, from your words looks like if real issue is how server deals with sudden loss of target/caster/etc. Thanks to your words I have been able to figure out some other bugs were a mere manifestation of this (or similar) issue. So there are ways to play nasty pranks on unsuspecting travellers. Now I can imagine even more bugs. Yet I'm afraid to report them for the sake of gameplay, since if they all would be "fixed" I'm afraid to imagine what players would be allowed to do.

Also, I think there should be disconnection delay for characters. About 20-60 seconds, where server helds character on battlefield, even if connection lost or exit requested. Lack of delay on exit allows players to escape dangerous places when things go rough, bypass spellcasting cooldown times, get rid of unwanted effects/spells and do a bunch of other interesting bugging/cheating which should not be possible or at least convenient, actually. Oh, pretty please, do not disable all connections to server to fix it .

Personal attacks won't make your arguments better or give them more meaning but will make it less likely anyone is going to react to them. Please keep the discussion simple and objective. I do not have any personal issues with you and I am not doing anything with the sole purpose to upset you. Keep this in mind when writing your next post.

I guess such "fix" would upset quite many people, not just me. Breaking one part of gameplay to fix another is not what would be warmly welcomed by players. In fact I learned about this topic from another unhappy player. But ok, I would try to avoid personal attacks. And if fact I'm rather unhappy with overall bugs handling in TMW, not this one particular fix and I havent meant to offend you personally, so if it feels like this, I'm sorry about that. For some reason it just seems to be some "default TMWC policy" to handle most of things like this. Thats what makes me unhappy, actually.

I kept doing the spell over and over again, because I wanted people to complain. I wasn't just creating lag for others, I was lagging myself — like crazy. The half-baked implementation was causing problems and I wanted the devs to fix it. I have tried talking to them, but that didn't work, so instead, I opted for making everyone miserable until something was done about it.

They took the easy way out. They disabled the rain spell in towns.

That's how things in TMW are getting "fixed". Same happened to guilds, etc . Oh, and botstacks were "fixed" by disabling autofollow in rules. Yet another "simple fix". Hopefully it explains a bit why I'm so hostile to such "fixes".

[Frost]

t3st3r, I understand you're unhappy with how this is handled.
Can you suggest how to fix the situation?

[o11c]

About GM spawns:
GMs are still free to spawn mobs with the @spawn command, simply because they do it to make the game more fun. I have never seen a GM who walks up to a player then spawns 5 aggro mobs on him and watches him get slaughtered by those mobs and then does this over again.

Aggro mobs? No. Mobs that will leave you with nightmares forever?

Nothing can compare to the horror of falling asleep in a barren cave and waking up in the middle of a field of flowers!

(Since people seem to be fond of misunderstanding, that was sarcasm. If you think that this ruins the humor, then please do something about the *real* problem.)

[Hello=)]

t3st3r, I understand you're unhappy with how this is handled.
Can you suggest how to fix the situation?

I can remember illia quest can track player disappearance, unlike many other scripts (what causes a lot of interesting bugs). Could someting like this be used to remove offending monsters from map? Or there is some trouble on this way? Needless to say proper solution is to handle such cases correctly, not work them around.

[o11c]

Monsters are *nothing* like players.

[Hello=)]

Monsters are *nothing* like players.

But I offered to detect player disappearance and then remove player's minoins from map. Not just it would be logical (it's usual when minions disappear together with master). It also could fix a number of other funny bugs (which I'm not going to report directly, to avoid more similar "fixes" wrecking gameplay and fun further).

[tux9th]

I think we discussed this matter enough and are through.

We will not disable summon spells in protected areas thus no need of keeping this alive. Hopefully we can fix the mob behaviour within a reasonable time frame.

with best regards

tux9th

could a Mod lock this topic please.

[Crush]

Locked.