Qualin tells you, "You asked for me on noble last night?" You tell Qualin, "Oh, yeah." You tell Qualin, "It was just an idea for sorting the 'make character, look around, quit' people from the actual players." Qualin replies to you, "Yea?" You tell Qualin, "A player only gets a file created for them in /secure/save/kills when they actually kill something. The tourists never get that far." You tell Qualin, "So... get a list of players and a list of kill-records. Compare." You tell Qualin, "Do-able?" Qualin replies to you, "Yea." Qualin replies to you, "I was just thinking of how." Qualin replies to you, "Do we need it, though?" Qualin replies to you, "Other than for academic interest, of course." Qualin replies to you, "Did we even come to a conclusion last night? ;-)" You tell Qualin, "Not sure. It would certainly make those stats more accurate." You tell Qualin, "No conclusions, no... :/" Qualin replies to you, "I'll rewrite the script into a python script that can be run at leisure by someone with local access, then." You tell Qualin, "Cool..." Qualin replies to you, "Right now, though, I am working on the final stages of user creation on PyMUD." From afar, you cheer for Qualin. [noble] Malachi: Does anyone know what source nightlings originally came from? [noble] Qualin: What does google say? [noble] Malachi: It says there are 10 billion 31337 ppl with some variation on it as their nickname. [noble] Qualin snickers. [noble] Malachi: I suspect it's been independently invented several times, hence its use to describe severalk [noble] Malachi: types of fantasy creatures... [noble] Qualin: Well, I'm getting a lot of hits on W40K miniatures. [noble] Qualin: Seems to be a breed of Orcs in that game, though. [noble] Malachi: Games Workshop frequently had fairly-obvious outside influences, too. So I'd bet they didn't originate there. [noble] Qualin: I found a few AD&D Forgotten Realms 3rd party references, too. But, again, they probably got their inspiration from someplace else. [noble] Qualin: Tolkien? [noble] Malachi: Considering that we have other AD&D-ish races, that might well be where SI inherited the race from... [noble] Malachi: Not that 'nightling' is exactly a difficult word to stumble upon if you're trying to think up a name for something vaguely creepy. [noble] Yady thinks 'nightling' mostly sounds cute... [noble] Malachi: s/is/isn't/, I think... [noble] Malachi: No... wait, I'm confusing myself. [noble] Qualin: Well, it could be Anime, too. I know SI in its early days had a lot of anime fans, Vash included. [noble] Malachi: Maybe, but I don't see any other obvious anime references in the race list... [noble] Qualin: True. [noble] Malachi is trying to write a proposal for what to do with our race system. [noble] Malachi: Good news: I think we can keep humans. [noble] Malachi: The bad news is that I haven't finished writing up the bad news yet ;) [noble] Qualin grins. [noble] Malachi: Actually, Q, the reason I was pushing you for accurate stats for current players was to see if there were any races with _no_ players. That would make dealing with those races significantly easier. [noble] Qualin nods, and will provide you with them eventually. [noble] Malachi: Thanks, Q. [noble] Malachi: Furthermore, only 4 centaur players have logged in during the past year. So, by that estimate, removing Juggler's race entirely would result in annoying a maximum of 3 other people. [noble] Qualin: Isn't that jess' race, too? ;-) [noble] Malachi: If you mean tananda, she's a pegataur. [noble] Qualin: Ah. [noble] Malachi: Though I agree that it would be hard to justify keeping one but not the other. [noble] Qualin: Certainly while we don't have flying support... [noble] Malachi: It's actually a difficult decision. I mean, I'm trying to think of how to make the mud a better place, but I don't want to alienate the few regulars we have. [noble] Yady thinks it makes more sense to keep centaurs than pegataurs :( [noble] Malachi personally thinks any creature with a 90-degree kink halfway along its spine shouldn't exist without medical supervision anyway. [noble] Qualin: Because one is a fantasy genre creature and the other is a greek myth creature? [noble] Qualin: Well, Malachi, we don't want to rationalise... if we did that, only humans would survive? [noble] Pam: Yeah. Reality has no place on a MUD! [noble] Pam: (This is the response I get when I try to get people to code reasonable things here ;) ) [noble] Malachi: Heh... [noble] Qualin: Well, I think centaurs and/or pegataurs are unique enough to have their existance validated. [noble] Malachi: What do you mean by 'unique', exactly? [noble] Qualin: Half human, half horse. [noble] Qualin: Compare to the 4-5 dwarf races we have. [noble] Malachi: Ah, you mean 'sufficiently dissimilar from the other races on this mud'. [noble] Qualin: Yes, isn't that what 'unique' means? ;-) [noble] Malachi: In that context, it could've meant several things. But anyway, it's clearer now. [noble] Qualin: I mean, I see dwarf as unique enough. but I don't see the 4-5 subspecies of dwarves we have as unique enough from other dwarves. [noble] Pam: Every one of those is from AD&D. [noble] Qualin: But since the only two horse races we have are centaur and pegataur... [noble] Qualin: Possibly we could do away with pegataur because the flying it is meant to allow really doesn't have any use here (yet) [noble] Malachi: Maybe. But of all the centaur-ish races (centaur, pegataur, nuckalavee), the pegataur is the most popular... [noble] Qualin: nucklavee? [noble] Qualin snickers. [noble] Qualin: +a [noble] Malachi: Though, admittedly, none of them are exactly widely-played. Your last search only came up with 8 'active' pegataur players. [noble] Qualin nods. [noble] Malachi: (that's under 1%, by the way) [noble] Qualin: Yea, I figured. [noble] Yady: Just out of curiosity, how many faeries are there? [noble] Malachi: Lots, in comparison... 24. [noble] Malachi: races_new in Q's homedir. [noble] Yady: 24? [noble] Blaze was a fae. [noble] Yady: was? [noble] Malachi: Of course, that's just the people who've logged in during the past year, with no attempts at removing the log-in-once-and-disappear-forever tourists. [noble] Yady nods [noble] Blaze: Oh, well it still says I am in my bio, but immortals don't show race in finger. [noble] Malachi: Oh, and regarding the dwarfs, we hardly have _any_. 8, in fact. Total. I don't think we'd see many complaints if we removed the different subraces, or even nuked the whole race. [noble] Malachi has no particular problem with dwarfs in the game, btw, just the direct AD&D-ripoff subrace types. [noble] Qualin has no problem with seeing dwarves gone, but thinks some form of 'short people' race should exist. [noble] Yady: Hobbits :) [flap] Pam thinks we should keep a dwarf race. Just one, though. [noble] Pam: See flap [noble] Malachi: Well, hobbits/halflings/kender are 'short', but they're usually seen as rather different to dwarfs. [noble] Pam agrees. [noble] Qualin: those 3 are virtually identical, though. [noble] Malachi: Yeah. [noble] Malachi: If we merge them, what should the name be? [noble] Qualin: Halfling or Hobbit. [noble] Pam: Yeah, kender are all AD&D. [noble] Qualin: THe former is the general (A)D&D term... the latter, well, should be obvious ;-) [noble] Malachi: 'hobbit' is the most popular of the three among players. 'halfling', however, is more generic-sounding and less obviously nicked from somewhere ;) [noble] Yady: Hobbits are also called halflings in LotR [noble] Malachi nods at Yady. [noble] Yady: or 'periannath' or something [noble] Yady: (which is then a plural for 'perian'?) [noble] Qualin thinks the motivation should be for the most well-known name. [noble] Malachi grins. [noble] Pam: The point in having this mish-mosh of races was to be 'different' ;) [noble] Malachi laughs. [noble] Qualin: Well, Pam, you'd agree that having 3 virtually identical player races is pointless? [noble] Pam: Certainly. [noble] Qualin: Halfling was first seen in Tolkien, but it was made a house hold name by the first Dungeon and Dragons ruleset. [noble] Vash wonders if the coders are being all racist again. [noble] Malachi: Just advocating full-scale genocide, Vash. [noble] Pam: One thing you might take into consideration - as soon as Vash incorporates the new login stuff and figures out how to make the race change, players will have some time on the game as a generic race before they have to choose. [noble] Vash mourns the countless innocents.. [noble] Malachi isn't doing _anything_ to Yady! [noble] Vash: Yady is not an innocent! [noble] Yady: You're not? Awww... [noble] Malachi: OK, you're not innocent then ;) [noble] Yady goes 'Oops' in a small voice [noble] Malachi: Pam: I think the new login stuff will be rather helpful in that respect. I hope it'll help people make a more informed choice, anyway. [noble] Pam nods. [noble] Malachi: OK, so 'kender' is right out, and 'halfling' is slightly preferable to 'hobbit'. [noble] Malachi: Insert dissent here: [noble] Qualin: Silence, n.: A form of agreement. [noble] Pam grins. [noble] Malachi: Woo! ;) [flap] Pam: afk [noble] Malachi: On a slightly different note, it'd be cool if the races we eventually end up with all played a bit differently. Like suanmi with their firebreathing ability or pandas with their melee-only combat. [noble] Qualin agrees. [noble] Cymric wodners how he turned out to become a pegataur all of a sudden... [noble] Malachi thought of giving the large carnivore races a 'maul' command. A bit like 'scourge', but for melee attack. [noble] Qualin: THe equine races could be getting a kick attack. [noble] Malachi: Heh, I kinda like that. [noble] Qualin: Dwarves high resistance to magic/psionics. [noble] Qualin: You'd have to take into account how much extra stats they get compared to humans, though. [noble] Cymric ponders writing out balancing formulas and then running a multidimensional optimiser to solve them... [noble] Cymric sniggers quietly and goes back to lurking [noble] Malachi ponders a ratkin "run up trouserleg" attack. [noble] Qualin snickers. [noble] Qualin: Balance would have to be re-thought on some races, though. [noble] Malachi: Yeah... [noble] Cymric: I suppose it is too easy to create races with, say, one or at most two strong points, and one or at most two deficiencies? [noble] Qualin: The point is that many races would have stuff added to them. [noble] Cymric: in a methodical fashion, I mean. it was mentioned that panda's are good at melee, for example. [noble] Qualin: So balance would have to be re-though for these races. [noble] Qualin: Eg., in Malachi's earlier idea, a race like the wemic would get a maul attack. [noble] Qualin: There's nothing complicated about it. It's just a job that someone needs to do in an environment were the only critical resource is the work force. [noble] Cymric snickers [noble] Cymric: you should addquote that [noble] Qualin smirks. [noble] Cymric: it's just that I've always been led to believe---so correct me if I'm wrong---that balancing is extremely hard. [noble] Cymric: there were issues with Magic: The Gathering, there were issues with Diablo 2, there were issues with a number of other best-sellers. And those have people with full-time jobs working on it. [noble] Qualin: Well, I think it's hard for mostly the same reasons something like testing is hard... it's difficult to find someone how'll actually enjoy doing it... hence you get someone who is doing it because it has to be done... the end result being a job done, but not as good as it could be. [noble] Qualin: Well, balancing PvP is extremely hard because there's only one way to test it and most companies don't have the resources for it, so they release something which they think is suitable, well-knowing that after thousands of different people have played it, exploits will surface. [noble] Qualin: In any PvP game, the players will be paying beta-testers. [noble] Qualin: But last I checked, SI wasn't a PvP game. [noble] Cymric finds the subject fascinating [noble] Cymric: so you're saying that Pv-nP is easier to handle...? [noble] Qualin: Yes, the computer won't care if it's being mercilessly defeated with no chance of winning. [noble] Cymric snickers. [noble] Cymric: if you put it like that... True. [noble] Qualin: Of course, there are some PvP games which only appear unbalanced on the surface, but are really just a matter of vastly different skill-levels of the involved players. [noble] Qualin: Most console fighting games are good examples of this. (Tue Nov 19 00:39:20 2002) Pam: So, was anything actually decided? Or is the discussion to be continued later? (Tue Nov 19 00:39:46 2002) Qualin: I think it served mostly as inspiration for Malachi's work. (Tue Nov 19 00:39:56 2002) Pam: That works. (Tue Nov 19 00:41:06 2002) Qualin: At some point he will present his ideas in a collated fashion that we can all comment on, even those who might not be active on the day it's posted. (Tue Nov 19 00:41:22 2002) Pam: $N nods. (Tue Nov 19 00:42:56 2002) Qualin: Or at least, that's what I'm assuming. (Tue Nov 19 00:43:52 2002) Qualin: At least, he asked for some extra details to races_new in my homedir, so I'm guessing he plans to use them for something. (Tue Nov 19 00:44:06 2002) Pam: $N agrees.