All the people who have commented so far about equipment restringing have all made very excellent comments.
A few of my own thoughts: 1. Who should do the restringing, and why even have restrings at all? > > Thomas Hughes: > > I resolved this issue by allowing mortals to submit a request for a > > restring... I suppose I can say that different MUDs call for different situations. Personally, I prefer and encourage players to restring their equipment. It reflects not only who they are as a player, but also reflects who they are as a person. It's also amazing how interestingly it is used for roleplaying. Can string food to fit your needs (I.E. a cleric may choose to restring magic mushrooms to be personal little consecration bread discs and he gives those to people, and if they eat them in the same room as him, he will 'act on behalf of his God' and cast heal on them.). Or you can string stock chairs to be piles of leaves or snare traps and pretend you are caught. Just two out of infinite possibilities. Your imagination is the only limit! The place I work for used to have IMM-only restrings and, while that did allow for total control, it was very frustrating for both parties if the restringee was new or indecisive. Also, it does require there to be an immortal of sufficient standing to be there, ideally, at all times. In mortals' hands, it's their fault if they screw up their string--it'll cost them another 250,000 gold to fix it, and they can spend however long they want on making them, and can change their strings however and whenever they wish. 2. Quality control Interestingly, it was not OOC string characteristics or offensive words that I was most worried about when introducing mortal restringing. Abuse of items, such as stringing inferior goods to look like expensive ones, or 'duping' tokens was the main concern I had. Since introduction, this happened one time involving tokens, so tokens obviously are now not allowed to be strung. But it is amazing how maturely and rationally the players have treated their ability to string objects. Sure, some of it is downright ugly or excessive (matter of opinion, of course), but some strings are jaw-droppingly gorgeous and, as mentioned above, help immerse people into their character's persona. I myself like having the choice of what my equipment looks like, and restring my players' equipment. 3. What fits the bill Obviously no two MUDs are alike! Some are heavy or pure RP and 'caliber rifles' would be a downright transgression. In instances like that, obviously a permissive restring system is not an option. Other MUD owners may simply not like the potential headaches. Thomas's way works well for him; other people have figured out what works best for their situation. And isn't that what every MUD owner strives for? To find that balance of 'what is best for my players' and 'what is best for the game'? It is a tedious and sometimes frustrating process indeed, but seeing those :)'s over global channels and those notes saying, "Hey, thanks! This is so cool!" makes it all worthwhile. -- Jeremy Hill ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dale Kingston" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Thomas Hughes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "ROM" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 6:19 PM Subject: Re: Snippets page updated > Well on the mud I've been on for a few years now, we have two ways to > string. We have a mob that will do strings. Costs 50 glory and any mortal > can go to him to do it. You can also go to an immortal and have them do it. > Now if your worried about inapropriate things. You can also do something > like the mob. And then do work filters like str_infix(string, "butt") And if > they try using any of those words just have it kick them out. If you do that > tho remeber to use something to strip the color off the string. So it's > looks at words not {RB{ru{Rt{rt{x :P > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Thomas Hughes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 5:02 PM > Subject: Re: Snippets page updated > > > > > 11/27/02 > > > Snippet 3: Mobstring (C file). This snippet allows a certain mobile to > > restring objects > > > for players. To just drop into your box, you will need to add an ACT > flag: > > > ACT_IS_RESTRINGER, or you can change it to whatever fits your MUD best. > > Quite easy to > > > change this into needing no mobile at all. > > > > This is something I'd like to discuss, just to get a general feel from the > > community on it. My general experience is that its a bad idea to just let > > mortals restring stuff on their own, because they will end up restringing > > things that are entirely inappropriate (offensive, not accurate > > descriptions, intentionally concealing). Though, the alternative of > having > > to call down an immortal for every little restring also seems a > > little...annoying. > > > > I resolved this issue by allowing mortals to submit a request for a > restring > > (pick the item, type out all their strings, and then submit it) to the > > immortals, who will see a copy of what's being requested, and then they > can > > either approve or reject the request (not edit it). If its accepted, the > > restring is done automatically, and the item is given to the mortal. If > > rejected, the immortal must give a reason and the item is returned to the > > mortal unchanged, with a note saying why. > > > > Doing it this way you can retain some level of control over restrings to > > make sure they're not being abused, while automating it enough to make it > so > > requesting restrings is not tedius and time consuming for immortals. > > > > Does anyone else have thoughts or comments on this issue to further refine > > the concept? > > > > -- > > Thomas Hughes > > > > > > -- > > ROM mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://www.rom.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rom > > > > > > > -- > ROM mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.rom.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rom
