Shattered Kingdoms

Put the rot-timer that exists on sacred items on the more powerful, unique items.

Point system of 0-4, main/alt function, LT for having active alts (up to a cap).

0 - Unlimited
1 - Limited
3 - Rare
4 - Unique

Add a cap of x. Allow players to designate a main (default to any leader flagged). Give main cap bump and alts cap nerf. Add conditions to maintain main/alt statuses based on hour distribution. Players who exceed the cap are marked. Imms can investigate at that point to determine whether or not action needs to be taken.

Automated stripping might be an issue due to complications (ex. You wipe and someone has to log. You grab their stuff) and long trips (You just got out of DS/IC alive and fully loaded. It's 2AM. Quit. Wait. Did you check your item cap?..)

Logging out during a breach has been punished before, I think. Add unique mark specifically for this purpose.

Hours being logged at the inn has too many variables. Are you the only light/dark on with 3+ enemies at any given point? Are you logging those hours exclusively with the same exact people all the time? Can your inn tea party dominate the rest of the playerbase? This also boost some classes while nerfing others, regardless of loot. I guess it makes joining tribunals more appealing.

Maybe it should just go to a monthly vote of who you think is being the biggest obvious hoarder. Everyone throws in an anonymous vote of say.. vermel. If the player gets enough votes, the imms dehoard him of 4 rare items that month.

Assign items a unique code when they are spawned in game. When a player logs off if items have changed hands log in a register. When players report item transfers/hoarders, that might help to be able to clearly check item change-logs.

An alternative, non-MUD-Coded way might be to run a number of imm accounts in the background, scripted to randomly alternate between snooping players identified as problematic and logging all activity. I'm sure you could set this up with ZMUD; running it 24/7 would of course be a bear.

You know, the whole hoarding thing has never been that big of an issue with Smoochy. Mean, how do little items in the game effect the playerbase as a whole? How exactly? Sk's ideal numbers, playerwise, should be 40-50 players per day. It is impossible to suggest these ingame items hold any difference to the total populous. It seems moreso that these already limited items only effect a small majority...

Who really cares about a SINGLE set of Sacred armor when the Mud's numbers are high?

As for item transferring; shame on every single one of you who's done it.

Shame! Shaaaaaaaaammmme~♫

My thoughts on this topic are as follows:

1) Item transferring should be against the rules, and punishable if caught. No question.

2) As for legendary items:

First, I'd like for them to be "legendary". That is, how exactly (take the perspective of a new player) are they legendary? Do they all have an in game legend? Can I look to a helpfile or website to find out what they are in the first place?

I'd argue that all items that meet the criteria of being managed should have an In-character story at the very least. These stories should be things that any player can understand, or find out and aspire to.

Maybe the information is not in a helpfile, but there should be some place in the game which teaches the information: a plaque, statue, book, quest, etc.

In other words, legendary stuff should have a legend.

Now on to the next part, I'm not sure it needs to be more complicated than X days of inactivity = removal of items. I think that may be the state that things are in right now?

Other than that, I'd leave the rest to monitoring. Build a report that watches the activity of the owners of the limited equipment, and check to see their levels of activity. Do not code a limit, but if there is a sense that they aren't owning up to the obligation of making legendary equipment legendary, then as an imm staff remove that piece from them, or initiate a dialogue with the player.

But as for bringing players in, I think you'll go a long way by giving those legendary items some context and evening the field out for both ic and ooc knowledge of the items in question.

For the record, item transferring has always been against the rules and is already punished when caught. The problem is when people "launder" items through a third party. Particularly if the person with the original item changed to the opposite alignment and then kills and loots the mule who used to be his friend, it can be difficult to prove it was a transfer.

It might be that we should just declare that the specific instances of an item that you owned with one character can never be owned by your other characters. In the past this has been difficult to prove, and making rules that are impossible to enforce is a losing game. But if that became the definition, it's possible that code could be written to make it easier to know.

Never being able to hold a specific item would probably just incite more storage/transferring. Can't hold that nice item you had on your last character? Store in on your buddies character so he can give it to your next or just hoard it indefinitely.



Hoarding is a matter of perspective. I have maybe three highly sought items. Before I managed to get my hands on it, you would almost never see it in the game. It's the players you don't see that should be the issue. Like, where has that scripted diamond khopesh been all Dec? At least I'm online and using the items, regardless of whether or not you agree with how it's being used. Don't like it? Come and gank me. I'm probably AFK in HQ all the time, right?

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. If it were to be clarified that owning any specific item that was ever held by any of your previous characters, it wouldn't matter who else has held it in the meantime. Even giving it to your buddy and then killing him to loot it would still be declared to be an illegal item transfer. The problem would be knowing which specific items you had held in the past.

Ahh. My bad. Wouldn't it be too restrictive though? Long-lived characters have probably held a lot of items throughout the lifespan. There wouldn't be enough "good" weapons/wands/staves/etc for people to continue playing sooner or later. Lots of questions come up with this idea, like what conditions need to be met so that items are added to your history and stuff. People would also have to plan ahead of time for the "end game" kits and that sort of leaves the less experienced playerbase at a loss, I think.