What Lies West

[OFaolain]

This thread is really making me want to write up a cohesive feature request for dynamic monsters; in fact, I think I may. I don't know when it would ever be implemented if approved, but I do think it'd make for a really constructive thread and someday benefit more than just Dwilight.

[Indirik]

It might be interesting for Dwilight, but would not be appropriate anywhere else.

[OFaolain]

It might be interesting for Dwilight, but would not be appropriate anywhere else.

I would contend that it would be appropriate for Beluaterra as well, but I do see your point. It's probably a lot of work for something that wouldn't see the light of day in the main game.

[Chenier]

Dump monster spawn points in Chrysantalys, Via, Ruins of Walfurgisnacht, and Balance's Retreat. Turn down all other rogue spawning to normal levels. Make these regions spawn rogues once per week, every week, but in massive numbers. Make rogues travel every single turn when they don't fight a battle.

Swordfell already has walls in Balance's Retreat, an economy, and a very rich region out of harm's way. They could contain the spawn. They don't involve themselves in any PvP anyways. Otherwise, well all hell could break loose, just as it used to be. The eastern realms would once more have to consider the monsters. In the West, the spawn points would make it so holding regions far from them would be easier, and it'd get progressively harder to hold onto regions closer to the spawn points.

Alternatively, it could just be all of the mountain regions. These always were monster hotspots anyways.

Bring back PvE in a high-risk high-reward formula!

[De-Legro]

Dump monster spawn points in Chrysantalys, Via, Ruins of Walfurgisnacht, and Balance's Retreat. Turn down all other rogue spawning to normal levels. Make these regions spawn rogues once per week, every week, but in massive numbers. Make rogues travel every single turn when they don't fight a battle.

Swordfell already has walls in Balance's Retreat, an economy, and a very rich region out of harm's way. They could contain the spawn. They don't involve themselves in any PvP anyways. Otherwise, well all hell could break loose, just as it used to be. The eastern realms would once more have to consider the monsters. In the West, the spawn points would make it so holding regions far from them would be easier, and it'd get progressively harder to hold onto regions closer to the spawn points.

Alternatively, it could just be all of the mountain regions. These always were monster hotspots anyways.

Bring back PvE in a high-risk high-reward formula!

Monster Spawn points? Any region is a spawn point. What you are suggesting is not just a tweak of what exists, but a complete change to the code. "Hotspots" as you call them were never intentionally coded it, they where simply a result of the system and the position of inhabited lands.

[Chenier]

Monster Spawn points? Any region is a spawn point. What you are suggesting is not just a tweak of what exists, but a complete change to the code. "Hotspots" as you call them were never intentionally coded it, they where simply a result of the system and the position of inhabited lands.

"Complete change to code" sounds overly dramatic. It does not seem to me like it would take all that much code to do so.

[De-Legro]

"Complete change to code" sounds overly dramatic. It does not seem to me like it would take all that much code to do so.

Spoken from your vast knowledge of what the current code is and how it works?

[Shulee]

"Complete change to code" sounds overly dramatic. It does not seem to me like it would take all that much code to do so.

Every time I hear a client say something like this I know we're looking at a minimum of 8 weeks and $250K in billing.

[OFaolain]

How is it built programmatically now? Does each region have a % chance on each turn change to get an increase in monster or undead level and then when that level hits a threshold a group spawns?

[GundamMerc]

Spoken from your vast knowledge of what the current code is and how it works?

How then was the amount of monster spawns ramped up in western Dwilight?

[De-Legro]

How then was the amount of monster spawns ramped up in western Dwilight?

There is a whole heap going on there, including finer grained control over how monster groups move.

[Chenier]

There is a whole heap going on there, including finer grained control over how monster groups move.

Yes, the invasion was coded complicated.

That doesn't mean that my proposal would need to be coded complicated. There's already different versions of monster-spawning code that can be re-used, after all.

[Anaris]

OK, this is getting silly.

First, let me get this out of the way, because it is important:

Chénier, your idea is an interesting one, and I won't rule it out.

BUT

Please, for the love of Tom and Great Cthulhu, stop making assumptions about how easy or hard something is going to be to code, especially after someone who actually has access to the code has contradicted your stated assumptions.

I don't care if you think X is going to be something that takes 3 hours of coding, or that Y is something that will take 3 months. When you post stuff like you've been doing here, you just sound both ignorant and arrogant, which is a very bad combination.

There are cases where the amount of work required to do something weighs heavily in the decision as to whether to do it at all, but in almost all of those cases, the change would be a) extremely easy (a few minutes' worth of work, plus maybe some debugging or balancing time), b) extremely hard (completely rewriting major components of the game), or c) something that, in the developers' opinions, is of little enough benefit to the game that it should only get done if it falls into category (a). (And it doesn't.)

So, for that vast middle ground, where things are neither trivial, nor borderline suicidal, nor mostly pointless, the decision on whether or not to do them will most likely be made based on the merits of the idea. (The decision on when to do them might very well be based on how long they'll take, though.)

Thus, unless you have a strong reason to believe an idea falls into one of those categories, don't even bother mentioning how long you think it will take. And if someone who should know tells you it doesn't fall into one of them, please don't argue about it.

Because you don't have access to the code, and thus cannot reasonably assess the complexity of any given task on it, whether or not you personally have the programming skill to perform the task yourself.

[De-Legro]

Yes, the invasion was coded complicated.

That doesn't mean that my proposal would need to be coded complicated. There's already different versions of monster-spawning code that can be re-used, after all.

I'll rephrase. I can quite quickly hack in this functionality however it

• Will not be flexible
• Will not be extendible
• Will not provide useful feedback for debugging
• Will be rigid in implementation such that the system can not adjust spawns in response to measured results. In other words someone will have to be constantly tweaking magic numbers until we hit that sweat spot where the spawns are a challenge but not impossible to beat. Likely even if we hit that spot before the forums explode with complaints about how far off the mark we are, it will need to be adjusted constantly as the infrastructure and capacity of the colonies changes.
• Will be static with no emergent qualities and thus be completely open to exploits by players with the knowledge and time to do so
• Like most quick changes we make, will likely have unforeseen implications.

As this feature is supposed to be about a long term objective and provide fun long term, it was my belief we either do it right or we don't bother at all. The western Dwilight code was simply meant to overwhelm anything and everything thus is relatively simple, balance was simply not a consideration.

[Ossan]

Though I'd point out that when we colonized it all, we had a lot more nobles. Even if we turned back rogue levels considerably down, there's no way Dwi realms could push too far out with current noble levels. The low density would kill any attempts to expand past a few core regions.

Yeah Morek can't colonize anything, and there is no reason why we would except out of boredom I guess. Morek is pretty much the land of honey, I've made more gold in one tax than I did in multiple months last year in Barca. We have lots of regions and estates, come join us non-DWI people!