Aardwolf MUD – PK changes and other updates – Sept 21st 09

PK / PVP Changes:

Several important changes to PK were made in this update.

PK Counter:
There is now a simple PK won/loss counter in your whois. The ‘pkstats’ command provides additional information on different types of PK:

                  PK Wins  PK Deaths
                  -------  ---------
     Raiding            2          1
     Defending          0          0
     Wanted             0          1
     Revenge            1          1

     Total              5         11

     Note: Total is ALL PKs, so will not match the 
           sum of the 4 specific PK types.

PK Below level 200:

Damage in PK involving levels 1-199 has been reduced for *all* types of damage. This is mostly due to PK being over too quickly in those level ranges, making it all about who can get the first big attack in.

The amount of the reduction can be modified online without a reboot and can also be just turned off if necessary. There may be some experimenting to find the right amount that makes sense.

Dodge Skill Changes:

Some time ago, dodges were made less effective when defending from characters other than the one you are in direct combat with (aimed at). The effect of this changed has been halved for all dodges, meaning you should now dodge more often when fighting multiple targets. Note this is all ‘dodge skills’, not just dodge itself.

Tier items carried capacity:

Made a change to item weight capacity at lower levels for tiers. The lowest your number of items can be is ‘base + tiers * 25’. Base is determined by whether or not you have pockets 1 and pockets 2 wish. The maximum number of items you can carry has not changed. Without getting into the math the effect of this is that you can carry more items as a low level higher tier, but it will take longer until your tats start to actually increase the amount because the minimum number is artificially inflated.

Other Changes this Update:

• Fixed a bug in finger that made it case sensitive. This will also fix an annoying bug at login where it says the character doesn’t exist if you accidentially enter the name in caps etc. Same in pcheck.
• If someone gets ‘banned’ from Aardwolf they will automatically be removed from the rankings, lottery and rosters. Imms also now have a command to manually remove any older banned players still in the rankings – please post them to ‘imm’ on personal board.
• ‘Remort check’ wasn’t showing worn items too high level to save with – now fixed.
• New character creation no longer has a ‘roll stats’ option. It’s confusing for new players and everyone is the same by level 25 anyway. The fixed stats are higher than 90% of stat rolls would have been so nobody is losing out (Charneus). Also removed the select Bright or ormal colors from character creation and removed references to ‘ANSI’ color – it just asks if you can see/want color.
• There is a new ‘Email address’ section in character creation. It is completely option, but does also explain why we’d ask for the email address in the first place. Email addresses entered during creation default to private.
• The ‘nosell’ object flag will now work correctly if assigned to regular game equipment.
• Modified the ‘list’ command to use item keywords instead of item description. This resolves the issue where a player can ‘list ‘ and see it, but not be able to ‘buy ‘ because list and buy use different fields. List should have never used description, it also gets messed up by colors etc — keywords exist for a reason.
• Changed ‘skipnext’ so that even if you can’t see the corpse the skipnext is still removed. This fits better with ‘skipnext’ being intended when you want avoid looting only the next mob you kill.
• When a spouse invites you into a manor, you will now see the correct owner name in the “You leave to enter ‘s private manor” message. Before this fix, the code was assuming that the inviter was the manor owner.
• Nothing you can actually use, but just so you know we’re looking at it, imms/builders now have a command to list objects with words in their name that are not in the keywords. Common words and colors etc are ignored. Once this is working fully we’ll do the same for mobs. See ‘help okeys’ if you want more info on how this works.

Silentspell changes:
Made changes to a lot of things affected by silentspell. Silentspell was originally intended to cut down on spam from other people spelling up in popular rooms such as recall, the Aardwolf Hotel, clan rooms, etc. During the V3 conversion it got applied to a lot of things it shouldn’t have – mostly combat related spells. The main changs are:

• If you are fighting (aimed at) someone in a silentspell room, or they are aimed at you, silentspell will not apply – you will see their spells as if it were a normal room.
• Area spells now show in silentspell rooms. Now they are correctly categorized as damage, you will no longer see things like ‘Lasher calls down rains of fire!’ if you have battlespam off.
• Enrage is now seen by others in a silentspell room.
• Dissolve is now seen by others in a silentspell room (Alessandrew) Web and other maladictions will also be seen in a silentspell room.
• Dispel magic didn’t show which spells you removed from someone in a silentspell room, now fixed.
• Silentspell blocked the retreat message and shouldn’t have.
• May still be some things blocked by silentspell that shouldn’t be, or things now showing through silentspell that shouldn’t. Just post them as they come up – easy enough to fix them.