Adventuring in groups

[Velax]

My adventurer on Dwilight is currently travelling around hunting monsters with a friend of his, another adventurer. We occasionally come upon a group of monsters (usually with an alpha) that neither of us can handle and we thought what a good idea it would be if adventurers could hunt together, as in two or maybe three adventurers taking on the same group at the same time.

How it would work mechanics-wise...well, there are a number of ways. Perhaps it would be like a unique item trade or a duel, only instead of "Gertrude has challenged you to a duel of honour till surrender" it would be "Gertrude wishes to hunt group X of some monsters with you. Do you accept?" And if you accept, assuming you both have enough hours, you would take on the group with an increased chance of success due to there being two of you.

Another way could be the ability to make other adventurers your "buddy". If both adventurers agree, then all hunts conducted by either buddy, as long as they're in the same region together and they have enough hours, would be done together. Being buddies would be permanent until one adventurer manually ends the partnership.

Rewards would be split, with unique items handed out randomly (the winner could always just give it to his partner if he wanted).

[Shizzle]

I like the idea.

However, firstly Tom/the Dev's usually say "BM is about the nobles, we don't want to improve the advy game", and secondly, they usually say "BM is about the nobles, we don't want to improve the advy game". :/

[Jhaelen Irsei]

I like it too

It's not a dramatic change in the way people play advs, it's just enhance teamwork among them

[songqu88@gmail.com]

As well as an entirely new layer of code to account for how a shared hunt calculates time among the partners, whether hours are subtracted for both equally, how to resolve simultaneous activity, whether one partner can get wounded in a shared hunt even if he never logged on afterwards.

[Anaris]

Actually, I have some ideas for how adventurers might be able to hunt together now, based on some other changes that have happened in the game code.  It's not a huge priority, but it is something I'm thinking about.

The tricky part, as usual, will be in balancing it properly.

[Velax]

Ah, I'm glad the idea is being considered. There are always issues to be worked out, as Artemesia said, but I don't think they're insurmountable.

[egamma]

As well as an entirely new layer of code to account for how a shared hunt calculates time among the partners, whether hours are subtracted for both equally, how to resolve simultaneous activity, whether one partner can get wounded in a shared hunt even if he never logged on afterwards.

Something similar to the dueling code or item purchase code could be used--Ned offers sue a group hunt for 2 days, sue accepts, Ned then takes sue along on hunts, and they split what they find in some manner. Sue's player doesn't even have to log on for two days--very handy for a weekend of RL camping. Or, Sue's player logs in and can cancel the hunt, rest, etc.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

That's great and all, but what I'm having trouble imagining is how we deal with the situation in which Ned and Sue are both on, are sharing hunts, and are both acting. Do we calculate hours separately? Hunts separately? Unless we're running some strange universe where an individual as we know them to be defined can be in two places at once doing two separate things, that's going to be weird.

So in such a situation, one character might have to be "disabled" for the duration of the shared hunt. Well, I guess that could work since there are doubtless many people who could be no happier than to let someone else do the work while their adventurer just hops on for a ride.

[Shizzle]

Create hunting parties. The leader travels around and hunts, the rest is just riding piggy-back. Followers can set a max exposure to risk (stealth, medium, high or max risk). It would take the fun away from the followers, in my eyes, but that's up to the players. And the followers have their hands free to RP

And groups won't get too large, because a given region can only spawn X monsters (and bounties).

[Anaris]

I think what Shizzle describes is one of the two ways it can work.

The other is that no one has control over the hunt once it starts: each advy just sets their preferred tactic, and when everyone's there and the person organizing the hunt tells it to fire away, it runs through as many groups as it can.  Potentially starting from a given group + hash, so as to avoid having to start from scratch.  As it goes through, it just racks up the hours and fatigue, and each advy that runs out of hours or has too much fatigue drops out automatically.

[Shizzle]

Well, instead of getting different groups, you could just consider giving a bonus to any hunter's sword and advy skill if there's other advies in the same region? Might be easier to code?

Then you wouldn't need a lot of mechanics, and there's no fuzz to invite people to join your gang or anything. You'd increase communication between advies because they would like to stay in groups. If course the bonus should decrease depending on the amount of advies in a region.

E.G.

Tommy is in Region. Advy and Sword skill 25%. He hunts like normal.

Kevin enters Region. Kevin has skills at 50%. Both Tommy and Kevin's skills receive a bonus of 50%.
==> Tommy: Sword and advy skill 37%
==> Kevin: 75%

Jean enters Region. Skills at 10%. All players receive a bonus of 25%+12.5%= 37.5%
==> do the math yourself

You could further improve the code by giving the presence of a strong advy a greater bonus than the bonus given by a weak ady. And of course the variables and everything are way to basic in this example

[egamma]

Requirements for joining a group: 12+ hours and fatigue less than 3.

I like the "run through groups" option, although there should be a way to set the initial monster/undead and high risk/low risk settings.

Would there be less fatigue for group hunting? Presumably it would be easier than hunting by yourself.
Would it be easier to find monsters/undead? I could go either way with this--a larger group would make more noise, scaring away monsters, but maybe undead don't care about that, or are attracted even.