The Mana World Forums

Due to the recent discussion about dark summons killing player characters I came up with a possible solution.

We could disable the summons like some other spells in protected areas. At the moment the only protected areas are Hurnscald outside and Tulimshar South outside and Nivalis outside.

What I would change here is:

First I would extend the protected areas to, Tulimshar Port, North, South, inside and outside, also Hurnscald inside and outside, also Nivalis inside and outside.
Then I would forbid all summon spells in protected areas. (with all I mean all, Light and Dark summons).
The only summons I deem not harmful are maggots. I wouldn't disable those.

What is your take on this and/or how would you adjust my suggestion?

regards tux9th

I'd be sure to shoot back a funny error message like "Your magic has no effect here" .. Maybe a NPC mumbling something about the council of wizards declaring some areas protected.

Hurns and Tulim have at least two exits, but Nivalis only really has one. This could be a problem with an evil summoner near the ferry, so I'd make the path to the ferry summon-free too.

Don't forget Dimond's, that seems more like a small town in a building than anything and should probably be protected. There's no Menhir there so players wouldn't get trapped by summoners outside the door at least.

MadCamel wrote:I'd be sure to shoot back a funny error message like "Your magic has no effect here" .. Maybe a NPC mumbling something about the council of wizards declaring some areas protected.

Hurns and Tulim have at least two exits, but Nivalis only really has one. This could be a problem with an evil summoner near the ferry, so I'd make the path to the ferry summon-free too.

"A powerful magic drains your spell just as it is beginning to take shape!"
that's what it says when you cast magic and it gets aborted.

I don't think that the way to the Nivalis port is a problem. I think it would be worse to disable the summons on that map because then you couldn't kill white slimes with your summons. But let's see what others have to say. This is only my opinion .

Chayenne wrote:Thanks for all the great ideas .
But... Why is it important to make those summons impossible? It was thoroughly clarified that repeated spawn+kill is against the "do not abuse players" -rule and the "do not abuse bugs" rule. Stop restricting this game more than necessary and concentrate on fixing those bugs that are abused. Gms are around most of the time and can and will enforce those rules, as observed in the latest case. I am sure that this game needs more freedom of things that can be done ... not more "hardwired" regulations.
Regards, Chay

I do see your point. But I also got many complaints about this, so I chose to do something. I am intending to bring in even more summons (through astral magic) and those will be strong to and accessible for light mages therefore more people who could possibly abuse this.
I try to see the risk-benefit-ratio. I see that it is problematic to disable those spells, I also see that it's problematic to have it. It's a spread which will not satisfy everyone to the full extent.
For one thing GMs are upset and want a solution for this. I have to respect their wishes too.

I'm waiting for more input and will decide this once I think I've heard enough.

Why do summons target other players at all? With the exception for PvP areas this adds nothing to the game except a possibility for griefing and harrasment.

There is a reason why all summon spells before only have passive mobs. Creating a passive version of a normally aggressive mob is very easy - you just need to copy the line in the mob_db, assign a new ID, change the name ("Wicked Mushroom" -> "Wicked Mushroom Minion"?) and change the aggressive flag.

Crush wrote:Why do summons target other players at all? With the exception for PvP areas this adds nothing to the game except a possibility for griefing and harrasment.

There is a reason why all summon spells before only have passive mobs. Creating a passive version of a normally aggressive mob is very easy - you just need to copy the line in the mob_db, assign a new ID, change the name ("Wicked Mushroom" -> "Wicked Mushroom Minion"?) and change the aggressive flag.

*hopes she understood correctly*
Also friendly mobs turn aggressive hunting other players, we just tested again today :-/

Crush's suggestion sounds better to me than simply blocking all summons spells in large parts of the game (and considering the question again when we add new maps).

Just change Dark Magic to summon non-aggressive monsters.
Alternatively, if Dark Magic is supposed to be evil and aggressive, accept that this changes gameplay.

Frost wrote:Crush's suggestion sounds better to me than simply blocking all summons spells in large parts of the game (and considering the question again when we add new maps).

Just change Dark Magic to summon non-aggressive monsters.
Alternatively, if Dark Magic is supposed to be evil and aggressive, accept that this changes gameplay.

The problem is that all monsters can turn aggressive when summoned. Regardless of how they act normally.

I would consider making normally-nonagressive monsters not attack players other than their master.

Would like to wait for MadCamel's mob AI patch though, to avoid merge conflicts.

o11c wrote:I would consider making normally-nonagressive monsters not attack players other than their master.

Would like to wait for MadCamel's mob AI patch though, to avoid merge conflicts.

Bad for PvP. What about making them attack only players above a certain level? Would that be possible? It could then be applied to all summoned mobs.

Keeping the current behavior when the PvP flag is set would be easy.

Note that this means that if a GM uses @pvpoff, they may still be aggressive for a while longer. But since mobs will disappear after a time, that should be fine.

.:WildX:. wrote:

o11c wrote:I would consider making normally-nonagressive monsters not attack players other than their master.

Would like to wait for MadCamel's mob AI patch though, to avoid merge conflicts.

Bad for PvP. What about making them attack only players above a certain level? Would that be possible? It could then be applied to all summoned mobs.

Crush wrote:Why do summons target other players at all? With the exception for PvP areas this adds nothing to the game except a possibility for griefing and harrasment.

There is a reason why all summon spells before only have passive mobs. Creating a passive version of a normally aggressive mob is very easy - you just need to copy the line in the mob_db, assign a new ID, change the name ("Wicked Mushroom" -> "Wicked Mushroom Minion"?) and change the aggressive flag.

Would it be possible to create an additional mob like Crush's "Wicked Mushroom Minion" with the same characteristics than the current one has, but associating its aggressivity flag with PvP status ?
This way we could have :

• If PvP is off : Mob is not agressive
• If PvP is on : Mob is agressive

If it's feasible, it might solve the problem and do not affect PvP.

Edit :

o11c wrote:Keeping the current behavior when the PvP flag is set would be easy.

Note that this means that if a GM uses @pvpoff, they may still be aggressive for a while longer. But since mobs will disappear after a time, that should be fine.

Sorry, i was writing my post slower than your...

o11c wrote: Would like to wait for MadCamel's mob AI patch though, to avoid merge conflicts.

It's going to be a long wait with my schedule lately. Don't worry about merge conflicts with my branch, I'll take care of them as needed. I'm keeping it synced with the test branch.

I disabled summon spells in protected areas and also extended the protected areas to Tulimshar north, south, port, and also all indoor maps.

This patch should be running on both testing servers.

I disabled summon spells in protected areas and also extended the protected areas to Tulimshar north, south, port, and also all indoor maps.

Holy crap. 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? Oh, someone run fsck on dev's brains!

Oh, I forgot, its TMW devs and overall TMWC policy. In TMW, bugs are virtually never fixed in proper and logical ways (except ManaPlus, 4144 is really pleasant to deal with in terms of bug reporting and getting crap fixed). Devs rather always use some crapwrecked workarounds instead. Frillyar causes lags? Okay, let's forbid it in certain places and yell at mages if they dare to cast it on events. Sure, this crapwrecked stuff easier to do than just rework spell in ways where it would not cause lags! Some monsters misbehave on spawn? Let's forbid spawns. Who cares these pesky players would be pissed off? . Of course, fixing monsters attitude isn't option, right? It would be too logical and too nice for players, isn't it? And of course let's ban those bastards who finds these bugs like you did to Troll (quite noteworthy player who seems to be leaving game thanks to overall sequence of events). Guild code is not perfect? Ok, lets ditch it and set up some moron bot who would try to fix server's faults in some really wrecked and odd ways where it's not even possible to see player is in other guild unless you're in same guild.

I'm even more interested how the hell you would deal with bug in pathfinder code. Would you declare that monster motion is not needed and "you can shot static monsters instead"?

p.s. and then some people are still seriously surprised to learn that as the result quite many people seriously thinking that "opnsource" means "sh*t".

I'm sorry for such a blatant trolling but such ways of "fixing" bugs is not what I like. You basically just fsck'ed up gameplay I loved for years. Yes, I take such "fix" as personal offence. And double shame on me I dared to report bug here just to face such "fix". Grrrrrrah. Seriously, you're not the guys I would complan about headache as you would propose guillotine to "fix" it.