The Bug I Love

[Sundo Raca]

certain types of monsters like wolves or bandits should roam, but i see dragons etc as the type who'd stay in one place, away from any company.

The problem i see is that i dont think people will hire mercenaries (as cool as that would be), it would be too much trouble. They would be far more likely to just train their characters, making it all seem a bit pointless.

[Phillibald Sonnenkern]

I welcome everyone to visit the petting zoo Greenbriar in which you can find deer, rabbits sheep and even a pig roaming around IN town and on the fields, in buildings and everywhere, lots of them.

So let this bug get fixed and don't treat it like some sort of feature.

[Achae Eanstray]

rofl... I sort of liked the "petting zoo", guess a matter of perspective.

[Amadi Yusuf Randal]

I really like the situation.

At the cementary. Its much more realistic that in every corner may appear a red skeletton or a necromancer.

In towns, I didnt see more monsters till now.

I like it that you have to pay more attention, cause everywhere may appear some kind of monster.

Non fighters? No problem, running away is allways possible.

I like it!
Its unrealistic that the monsters on gobiath allways are at the same spot.

[Juniper Onyx]

How about a Compromise?

How about instead of 'unlimited Roaming' areas for monsters.....the GM's and Lennier can agree on dividing Gobaith into several 'Regions'.

Divided by mountains, rivers, rocks, hedges, Grapvines and Cerrwiden Trees and other 'natural barriers'.

The regions should be large enough to allow 'certain' levels of Monsters to Roam freely, but 'separated' from other 'levels' of monsters.

A region or two could even be declared 'Safe'.

At each 'entrance', could be a signpost "Beware, There be Dragon's here!" or whatever is the most powerful monster of that region. Then a ‘cross’ or “Fairie Mushroom Circle” (Like was around Trollsbane during the Temple Wars) placed at that entrance to keep NPC’s inside.

An example is posted below:

Yellow = Level 1 “Easy” NPC’s
Orange = Level 2 “Moderate” NPC’s
Red = Level 3 “Difficult & Party” NPC’s



All major settlements are covered by “Safe” Zones. This way, players can choose to leave the safe zone or not. No problems except to move the portal to the Magic Academy to inside a safe zone (Mages know where it is, I won’t tell).
P.S. – Nitram also gets his “Safe” area in SW of Trollsbane.
P.S.S – Nordmark, Orcs and Kallahorn are not safe. But these ‘Guilds’ thrive on Bloodshed anyway, so shouldn’t be a problem. Future Guilds in ‘non-safe’ zones must take their chances too.
P.S.S.S- I recommend the Copper mine and North mine remain in safe zones as shown in the map.

What do you all think?
Compromise?

[Kevin Lightdot]

I don't like the whole 'wall' between areas thing.. it's like.

Oh well there is a random wall of trees here.

Maybe once/if it ever works guard npcs that kill stuff, but that might get in the way of quests and so on.

It's okay if monsters roam a bit further occasionally like they do now on overspawns, but it shouldn't get out of hand, and it doesn't unless there are a hundred server reloads.

But if they roam around all the time it might get quite annoying if you're a relatively weak char training in the graveyard and suddenly you find a magic skeleton blasting at you, or a demon skeleton swinging at your back.
Most ways to loose them are considered exploits of bugs too I believe.

I say leave it as it is.

[Juniper Onyx]

I don't like the whole 'wall' between areas thing.. it's like.

Oh well there is a random wall of trees here.

Maybe once/if it ever works guard npcs that kill stuff, but that might get in the way of quests and so on.

It's okay if monsters roam a bit further occasionally like they do now on overspawns, but it shouldn't get out of hand, and it doesn't unless there are a hundred server reloads.

But if they roam around all the time it might get quite annoying if you're a relatively weak char training in the graveyard and suddenly you find a magic skeleton blasting at you, or a demon skeleton swinging at your back.
Most ways to loose them are considered exploits of bugs too I believe.

I say leave it as it is.

There are random 'walls' of things now. The 'wall' by the Arena, the 'wall' around the Hospital', the 'wall' along the road to Grey Rose......

It's just they serve no purpose, and they could be better used to separate roaming NPC's.

I'm not saying anyone will be happy with this idea, but that's why it's a compromise. The 'new' players and RP'ers get a safe area - Fairly large, and the ones who like roaming get zones of roaming critters.

As far as training at the cemetary.......If you are a weak character training in there, you're stupid IMHO. It doesn't take long to get lost in there and overwhelmed if you're weak. That's a non-argument.

I suggested this map as an 'example', but the true set-up, may place the cemetary in a safe area.

It's a way we all get what we want.

[Kevin Lightdot]

As far as training at the cemetary.......If you are a weak character training in there, you're stupid IMHO. It doesn't take long to get lost in there and overwhelmed if you're weak. That's a non-argument.

Not really.. it's a pretty typical game dungeon going from weak stuff(mummies) to stronger stuff(a skelly and a mummy) to even stronger stuff(more skellies), to yet again stronger stuff(magic skelly or human necromancer)
to again stronger stuff(demon skellies) to a 'boss' (lich).

And inbetween this some more weaker stuff to fill up the dungeon.

Just noting :p
Sleep now, guten tag.

[Estralis Seborian]

The map looks interesting. AFAIK, a spawn is set up like this:

ID of the monster
Number of monsters for this spawn
Center of the spawn area (x/y/z)
Radius of spawn area
Minimum time for respawn [s]
Maximum time for respawn [s]

As an example, a mummy spawn in the southern woods could look as followed:

ID of the monster = 101 (mummy)
Number of monsters for this spawn = 2 (pair of mummies)
Center of the spawn area (x/y/z) = -11 21 0
Radius of spawn area = 50 (roughly 5 screens into each direction)
Minimum time for respawn = 43200 (twice a day)
Maximum time for respawn = 86400 (once a day)

If you now place serveral of such spawns all over the map (except into safe zones), you get the desired random effect. Also, spawncamping where you slay dozends of the same monsters who respawn every twenty seconds is not an issue anymore. If somebody really wants to work on this, I am sure a developer can provide more informations and support.

[pharse]

what about waypoints? I am sure the AI can be improved.

[Juniper Onyx]

Thanks Esty,

As I said, we really would need Lennier's support, or someone who can insert the required "Wall" elements before we mess with spawns. It could be done a region at a time, leaving others as they are for now. We could gradually change them region by region over a period of 3 months.

I can work on the Spawn locations and radius' and if I knew 'how' I'd spend the time to insert the natural "Wall" elements myself with Lennier doing the map-updates, I'd be very creative and hopefully the players wouldn't even notice the barriers at all. That would be ideal.

I just want to make sure it's a good compromise to make more 'realistic' monster behaviors.

[Estralis Seborian]

I spent some minutes thinking about this and how other games handle such things like roaming monsters. I came to the conclusion that other games have things like boss monsters, rare spawns of unique mobs and a much higher monster density yet a lower respawn rate. I want to start collecting ideas for special spawns, maybe you want to contribute?

• A drow party invades Vanima once a month
• Undeads leave the graveyard once a night
• A bunch of bandits does an ambush on a random street once a week
• Hungry wolves approach a random town once a week
• Boss monsters get spawned once a day in each dungeon (e.g. red skeleton in the temple, red demon in the graveyard)
• The Fallen rise from the swamp twice a week
• Floating skulls and skeletons haunt mines once a week
• Golems guard the entrances to mines one a week
• Trolls patrol all forests once a month to PK treekillers
• Bees get spawned within the vicinity of flowers and bee hives once a day

[Olive]

I spent some minutes thinking about this and how other games handle such things like roaming monsters. I came to the conclusion that other games have things like boss monsters, rare spawns of unique mobs and a much higher monster density yet a lower respawn rate. I want to start collecting ideas for special spawns, maybe you want to contribute?

• A drow party invades Vanima once a month
• Undeads leave the graveyard once a night
• A bunch of bandits does an ambush on a random street once a week
• Hungry wolves approach a random town once a week
• Boss monsters get spawned once a day in each dungeon (e.g. red skeleton in the temple, red demon in the graveyard)
• The Fallen rise from the swamp twice a week
• Floating skulls and skeletons haunt mines once a week
• Golems guard the entrances to mines one a week
• Trolls patrol all forests once a month to PK treekillers
• Bees get spawned within the vicinity of flowers and bee hives once a day

I'd like to see bandits laying ambushes along major trade routes. coupled with teleporter break downs, and you have some very interesting outcomes.
GOlems dont just guard mines for the hell of guarding mines, and this will just disable the mines for the weaker players while the stronger players wont be affected, all tho to be honest recently this wont matter as we have no 'resource collectior' characters anymore that i have found.

i'd like to see Ent's running around all of the forests attacking people with axes in their hands. i'm sure its scriptable and would make logging in forests a bit more lethal, especially if the tree creeps up on the person and they aren't payign attention until the first blow knocks them 20 feet away

i'm all for bee's spawingin near flowers and such as long as they are NOT HOSTILE. i will give an example. A local orchard in town has raspberry bushes and they are covered with honey bee's the bees are not hostile due to the abundance of food, and thus pose no threat to people trying to pick the raspberries.

[Juliana D'cheyne]

I spent some minutes thinking about this and how other games handle such things like roaming monsters. I came to the conclusion that other games have things like boss monsters, rare spawns of unique mobs and a much higher monster density yet a lower respawn rate. I want to start collecting ideas for special spawns, maybe you want to contribute?

• A drow party invades Vanima once a month
• Undeads leave the graveyard once a night
• A bunch of bandits does an ambush on a random street once a week
• Hungry wolves approach a random town once a week
• Boss monsters get spawned once a day in each dungeon (e.g. red skeleton in the temple, red demon in the graveyard)
• The Fallen rise from the swamp twice a week
• Floating skulls and skeletons haunt mines once a week
• Golems guard the entrances to mines one a week
• Trolls patrol all forests once a month to PK treekillers
• Bees get spawned within the vicinity of flowers and bee hives once a day

I love this idea! IMO for the weaker chars, all NPC's can be outrun... they can also get help if need to go somewhere specifically (which would encourage more RP). The only thing I wouldn't like would be if the numbers are so large, they would ghost a weaker char before they could run but I assume that could be adjusted.

[Vern Kron]

I spent some minutes thinking about this and how other games handle such things like roaming monsters. I came to the conclusion that other games have things like boss monsters, rare spawns of unique mobs and a much higher monster density yet a lower respawn rate. I want to start collecting ideas for special spawns, maybe you want to contribute?

• A drow party invades Vanima once a month
• Undeads leave the graveyard once a night
• A bunch of bandits does an ambush on a random street once a week
• Hungry wolves approach a random town once a week
• Boss monsters get spawned once a day in each dungeon (e.g. red skeleton in the temple, red demon in the graveyard)
• The Fallen rise from the swamp twice a week
• Floating skulls and skeletons haunt mines once a week
• Golems guard the entrances to mines one a week
• Trolls patrol all forests once a month to PK treekillers
• Bees get spawned within the vicinity of flowers and bee hives once a day

Good base idea! But we may need to make a few changes to that. The mines seem to be hit twice a week, which seems like too much. The undeads should be toned down some so we do not have the splitting zombie effect for a few days straight, Floating skulls and skeletons would not belong in a mine at all really. Bees should be the insects and not wasps because they poison. Drow invasion wouldn't really be noticed, so there is no real point to do that, and by a 'bunch' that should be like, two maybe three. And none of this should happen more than one time a day, or have mondays be 'bandit day' and then tuesday 'golem day' every week. It should be a bit more random.

The reason for the changes, is yes, fighting and npc's are fun to find and come across unexpectedly, but the amount and difficulty of those seems more like it will just hinder people going about regular life. Warriors have their place, and crafters have theirs. They should work together, but having the creatures in caves like that would be almost promoting 'master crafter/warrior' mixtures.

[Mairae Auvria]

Actually, I like the idea of the drow's particularly, it may get more characters in Vanima, possibly increase the time they would appear? As far as the other suggestions, I agree, don't have it on a "regular" time as far as the players are concerned, have it random (in other words, don't tell us the schedule).

hinder people going about regular life

I am assuming this is players not interested in changing their roleplay for different circumstances. In that instance, there still would be plenty of places to go and stick to a set routine.

[WickedEwok]

I'd really like the idea. It would spice everything up a little.

But for the whole 'I don't want to be confronted with monsters thing' - Eh?

It would make the mercenaries more necessary, trade would be more dangerous, the whole ressource gathering. Although it's sad, that it has to be done by NPCs and not by players who are willing to spice it up fair and square.

[Estralis Seborian]

http://illarion.org/community/forums/vi ... 549#528549

That map is very valuable to determine areas for random spawns. About the ideas I gave - I made them up during a coffee break and they are not perfect. But it would help more when you post nice ideas of your own instead of sorting out what you don't like. If we have 10 ideas and you post 10 ideas of your own, we have 20 to chose from. If we have 10 ideas and you sort out 5 as "I don't like...", we have 5 to chose from - I guess the the difference is obvious.

[Nitram]

• Bandits who try to trap characters with mules outside town (modified skeleton forst script)
• At set monsters that spawn on completly random places in each dungeon,so the dungeon is monster wise every time slightly different (script exists only some ajustment for the dungeons is needed)

[Ivar Kraftimarm]

• A party of lizards raiding a random part of the coast.
• A pack of wolfes hunting animals at a rabbit or deer spot

how about non-fighting events? like a npc who walks praying from shrine to shrine?

edit: or a trader who sells some things?

[Mairae Auvria]

At set monsters that spawn on completly random places in each dungeon,so the dungeon is monster wise every time slightly different (script exists only some ajustment for the dungeons is needed)[/list]

Would the script also spawn "lighter/easier" NPC's randomly in the north and south east avoiding the areas you wanted?

(I have liked every idea suggested)