The Mana World Forums

Crush wrote:Why not turn it into an NPC?

melkior wrote:Alright. One more thing to discuss: a long, long time ago, the Tree could do something semi-useful. It could heal people, when they asked nicely. It's easy to get back that functionality, in fact, it's already there, only turned off.

Now, obviously, I've been thinking about bringing that back, but with a caveat: since I consider the Tree to be a source of amusement, nothing else, it wouldn't heal every time it's asked to. Sometimes it would ignore the person completely, sometimes it would answer with a cheeky remark or an emote. For the sake of the discussion, let's say there's a 10% chance the person asking would get healed. This percentage is, of course, easily adjustable.

Now, I know this is a touchy subject, as it would be an AFK activity where the character could gain something. IMO, that gain would be pretty insignificant as the Tree would get XP only during (or after) spawn events in Hurnscald. Apart from that, it would further its magical skills, but that's not really something useful for a bot that's standing the whole time in Hurnscald, is it?

Now, I'd like to hear thoughts about this both from the players and the TMWc. For players, again, this would just be an additional amusement, not something really useful (at least that's the way I see it), so, do you even want that? I also welcome the thoughts of TMWc members as they are the ones who would need to approve this functionality.

melkior wrote:

Crush wrote:Why not turn it into an NPC?

I thought you already did, years ago.

Crush wrote:

melkior wrote:

Crush wrote:Why not turn it into an NPC?

I thought you already did, years ago.

I did it for Manaserv, not for tmwAthena.

.:WildX:. wrote:I like the idea, but wouldn't this cause people to spam until the tree heals them? Can that be avoided?

• Confused Tree is wonderfully amusing and wonderfully popular.
• It's sometimes useful to redirect some futile argument in town.
• Any benefit to the Tree would be vanishingly small. Give me a stack of bug legs and sulphur powder or logs, and I'll hotkey the spells and max out magic experience very quickly. There's no XP from healing a respawned character.
• I haven't seen anything similar to this as an NPC. When someone creates such a thing, we can consider that.
• The proposal doesn't seem to benefit any particular people over others. People already get healed after they respawn in town (although the "serial pukers" tend to get ignored, much like in this proposal.)
• I love the innovation and fun attitude of this, and would like others to be inspired to contribute too.
• We can always decide that this isn't working, and change something.

Frost wrote:Yeah, I like it.

Avenn wrote: I hate that tree, its nothing persolnal so my vote go to kill it i can change my mind if i could burn it from time to time

Reid wrote:Hurnscald needs some attractiveness, but it could be better to write it as a NPC instead of a bot...

Chayenne wrote:I like your tree very much too Melkior. :
But...

Chayenne wrote: I am sincerely concerned with its current status. As of right now, you - Melkior seem a little too "protectuous" ( if that is a word ) about it. I have witnessed you asking another Person ( my husband in game) to not spam the tree, which he still finds disturbing, since he never meant to do any harm, he just liked the jokes, read them and wanted to hear more. If he had actually spammed the server would have taken care of that.

Chayenne wrote:Also do I not see why a single player should be provided the right to maintain his "own" bot in town, that doesnt mean that confused tree wouldn't make a great NPC.

Furthermore would NPC status grant the ability to look into the trees code - which you, Melkior sadly refused to reveal, though politely asked. ( You assumed that your code could do severe server damage if in the wrong hands)

Chayenne wrote:Aaand I am not comfortable with Melkiors "reading the logs to adjust the tree", since it is quite likely that somebody assumes the tree to be an actual NPC and maybe acts different towards the Tree than to a real Person. As of the language learning part, that could be done by someone officially assigned to that job, to maintain transparency in the game.

Sorry for the long post - but I really wanted to point out that something that behaves like an NPC should be an NPC in this Open Source Game with Open Sources and rules that acquire for everybody.

Like TMW, friendly bots should be free software.

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