Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Friday Feature Errata... Part 2...
We know things change, the only problem is that you don't tell us when they do. We find out in patch notes, stuck in the middle of a post, or not until a week after it went live. If you want to keep ANY players through the launch of World of Warcraft you and the rest of the dev team are going to have to get on the ball. I know I speak for a lot of people I know when I say that if we (the players) don't have a RELIABLE source of information on a semi-regular basis, along with numerous changes which include this PvP death penalty, PvP itself, and even more issues with the game you'll have to consolidate the all your servers into about three once WoW hits the public.
CarLBanks wrote:
What newsletter? I haven't recieved a newsletter.
don't worry about it...
can't believe anything in it anyway!
PlayeroftheDay wrote:
Move on people, as much as you cry you won't get this changed. I'm all for Decay! You know why? Cause you all hate it, that's why!
You are an Armorsmith aren't you?
I hate it, I hate to say that, because hate is a VERY strong word.
Take away decay, all of it....use the insurance system right.
Insure=No Decay
No Insure= DECAY
Simple, right?
ArteL wrote:
CarLBanks wrote:
What newsletter? I haven't recieved a newsletter.
don't worry about it...
can't believe anything in it anyway!
and not saying that as a bad thing against JUSTG.... but as he stated himself... he dosen't have control over the game... what he wants and what LUCAS SOE wants... are 2 different things.... and evidently... we have TH for our in-between to the DEVS.... but then the communication they all talk about breaks down, cause we don't have a voice to LUCAS/SOE (whoever in the hell they actually are)
care to post some email address for us JustG? ? 
yeah... communication and cooperation.
like say, calling every player city on naboo and rori, in every galaxy, "not acceptable".
whatever.
LOL G, frankly this is more BS pie in the sky... What don't you understand about what your community is TELLING you? GET RID OF THE DAMM PVP DECAY NOW! WE DON'T WON'T IT AND NEVER DID! THIS IS YOUR STUPID IDEA, NOT OURS, AND WE ARE TIRED OF YOU TRYING TO CRAM IT DOWN OUR THROATS!
30 some pages in less than 24 hours and you STILL don't get it do you????
Remove the item COMPLETELYuntilyou actually have it figured out and you learn how to communicate with each other. I'm not a DAMM bit sorry for ANYTHING I've said, it's all the truth. If you are tired of us flaming you then do your damm job and fix this broke azz game... What's so damm hard to understand about that...?
You Dev's are so full of BS and bluesky. There's freakin bugs that are inthis game that have been for months and you STILL haven't fixed them. YOUR actions have made us this way!!!! Don't even try to blame us for being upset! We have every right to be and we will continue to be until you fix it, or we LEAVE...
Does ANYONE realize that a master armorsmith can REPAIR armor?
Odysseusa wrote:
Just remove decay on armor and everyone will be happy. It's is simple as that.
So you guys are telling us that if we want to continue being Rebels until Publish 7 comes out that we have to put up with being GRIEFED BY THE GAME?!?!?!?
You simply cannot implement a system that will FORCE PLAYERS INTO PvP and punish those players for participating in PvP!!!!
Please do no push Publish 6 to Live without first implementing the Factional Perk to buy out of decay for 24 hours. You cannot ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY PUNISH REBELS BY FORCING PvP without a way to avoid the grief that is decay.
Absolutely ludicrous. When are you guys going to realize that DECAY=GRIEF=NOT FUN?!?!?!?
/pray God, please let me get into the WoW beta. I know I've thought a lot of mean things and said some dirty words about the DEVs in SWG, but I promise if you let me get in the WoW beta I'll be a nicer person. Thanks.
Would it have killed you guys to post this to the DEs when you had it? Your customers are not the enemy, treat them as a partner and you'll be surprised how much happier things can be.
o Takes away any active buffs
o "Requires" you to reinsure your belongings
o Removes you from the location you were presumably interested in
o Potentially causes embarassment.
I am a big proponent of use based decay. Did I hear you ask how this could be done without putting a big load on the servers? I'd be happy to answer that!
Let's first break our item types down:
Consumables (food, drink, spice, powerups, campsites, traps, and the ilk)
I don't think any decay is appropriate here. You use them, they're gone.
Clothing, non protective
When the item is equipped[0] set a flag to the value of time(NULL). This is the start time. When the item is examined or unequipped[1], and possibly[2] periodically per player, this flag is compared to the current value of time(NULL). The difference, which is the time the item has been in use, in seconds, is scaled by the item's decay rate. For example, if the item's decay rate is 18000, this means that the item decays for 1% for every 18000 seconds of use. After five hours, the item loses 1% condition[3]. In the case of an examine or a periodic check, the item's start time is reset to time(NULL). If the item is being unequipped, the item's start time is set to zero.
Furniture
When someone enters a building[4], the furniture inside has its start time set as above. When someone leaves the building[5], or periodically per player, or examines the item of furniture, the same calculation as above is performed. One would expect furniture to have a slower decay rate than clothing.
Weapons and Armor
These already decay through use. Armor should not, absolutely not, not at all, no way, not not not, be decaying on incap or death. It already decays rapidly from the combat. Give us a break here.
Newbie Melons
These should not decay, rather a new Artisan craftable, the Melon Shrine, should be able to take a Melon and display it with pride, to place at the entrance to a house. The Shrine should be subject to the decay for furniture.
The advantage of this system is that there is no requirement for constant polling of item state. You can do periodic checks if you like, but you don't need to. The item will be updated when it's examined. There's a single function to write that will take an object and calculate how much it's decayed, and that function can be applied to all object types. Except for the periodic checks, this stuff only needs to be implemented when certain already existing events occur. This gives you clear points in the code to add it, without the overhead of adding new events to the system.
If this is NOT as trivial to implement as I have described it, I will have to start worrying about your code design
Of course, just because it's trivial doesn't mean you WANT to implement it. 
[0] An item is equipped if it's put on, or the player just logged on
[1] An item is unequipped if it's removed, or the player just logged off
[2] Periodic checks per player can be done during server idle times. Server's got a few cycles spare? Who's next to be checked for decay!
[3] Condition should probably be stored in two parts, one being the actual condition, the other being the remainder of the last decay calculation, to be added onto the next decay calculation, so you don't lose the 0.003% decays
[4] ... or logs on in a building, don't forget!
[5] ... or logs off there.