I think someone brought up a valid point about summoned mobs just hanging out after summoned. They have no reason to just stand there picking their nose, or to just soak up damage from cabal raiders. Would it be feasible at all, to have mobs start walking back to where they came from after a summon? Or maybe even evil mobs turn on the summoner for the presumption of moving them. I do think that the whole, summon everything you can, to stop bards and invokers and crap, is just kind of weak and ooc.

I do think that the whole, summon everything you can, to stop bards and invokers and crap, is just kind of weak and ooc.

I swear in the last few days I've seen the term "OOC" misused a dozen times.

There is nothing OOC about a spell/supplication that moves someone from one place to another.... moving someone from one place to another. It's no more OOC than making your stand in Galadon among a crowd when fighting these classes, which is to say zero OOC.

Or maybe even evil mobs turn on the summoner for the presumption of moving them.

Some NPCs do this already. Summoners quickly learn to summon other ones.

They have no reason to just stand there picking their nose, or to just soak up damage from cabal raiders. Would it be feasible at all, to have mobs start walking back to where they came from after a summon?

An intended drawback of area effects is that they are less specific.

The NPCs may or may not know, ICly, how to get back. Coding a worldwide path algorithm is also ugly and potentially resource-intensive.

But at the end of the day, there are lots of coding projects I'd rather work on. Summon is a useful countertactic that requires both sides to think more than they otherwise would. I see no reason to force a change.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

What about aggro mobs that have tracked someone who then quits out?

At present, they can end up on the main roads racking up newbie kills. I've died to yetis (around Udgaard but not necessarily at west gate), dire wolves (same, and I am not sure, but I think it had camo'd again), ringwraiths, aude (silverwood), orc chief (on road around Tir Talith) etc.

Would you be interested in having these return home if they person they are tracking quits out?

Could this not be a relatively easy thing to code, if so? Something along the lines of:

1. If find no tracks, check to see if player is logged on
2. If not, have him grunt in disgust and hurry off.
3. Then have him reappear in his original spot next time the area he is from repops.

The reason I suggest this is that sometimes people do this as an ooc tactic (and I do mean ooc). They log on one char, lead a mob to a travelled route, and then log on another, and grab loot from those that die to the mob. Also, the only sure defense against dying to aggro mobs like this is to scan every couple of steps. That's not really fun and not really practical when you are talking about something the length of north or east roads.

How would you feel if you were fighting the mob at it's new location, got it to convulsing, fled and rested up, than it repopped half a continent away?

Fighting a mob that has tracked someone somewhere means it now tracks you, thus the player it last fought is still online as you rest and it won't return home.

I'm not sure if a *repop* would be the best idea anyway since it would make manipulating the mobs to replenish their gear easier; just moving the mob back to its point of origin would work better.

I meant if the player being tracked has quit out.

This already exists, to some extent.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Summoning mobs is not OOC. Summoning mobs because you want to prevent someone from accomplishing a goal (be that ranking, a quest, or requesting gear) may or may not be IC'ly motivated, and may more or less be plain old griefing - intentionally manipulating game mechanics for the purpose of detracting from other's enjoyment of the game. An example being people used to summon the kobold chief's daughter to remote places simply to interfere with an old quest.

It's not the summoning that's ooc, it's the mobs standing around there for days and days and days. Even someone totally lost would at least TRY to get home. But anyway I digress, thanks for responding.

<i>There is nothing OOC about a spell/supplication that moves someone from one place to another.... moving someone from one place to another. It's no more OOC than making your stand in Galadon among a crowd when fighting these classes, which is to say zero OOC.
</i>

If its IC for me to summon a mob during an attack, then it must be IC for me to summon mobs ahead of time as a preventative measure. If its IC for me to summon one mob, it must be IC for me to summon all mobs. This suggests that its completely IC for a scion necromancer to summon every single mob in the present to his outer guardian in order to protect his cabal from attacking invokers/zerkers/bards. The only rule you might be able to catch him on is that so many mobs in one room would create spam.

I bet a shiny new copper that this sort of thing would be perfectly okay until someone uses it to completely neutralize the ranking ability of their enemy base.

>I bet a shiny new copper that this sort of thing would be
>perfectly okay until someone uses it to completely neutralize
>the ranking ability of their enemy base.

It would take such a ridiculous amount of time to accomplish this, and a crash/reboot would totally nullify it. There's a crash/reboot fairly often, about once a day lately.

Also, it could all be undone if an immortal popped into one of the mobs and just made it say "How dare you take us from our homes, let's all teach him a lesson" Whereupon 50 mobs attack at once.

Lastly, you would need some sort of rp justification, though I'm sure you could come up with something if this is all you wanted to do. But otherwise you'd have to explain it.

It could happen, but I really don't think it's very likely.

If the summoner were near-hero and knew which mobs to summon then I dobut it wouldn take long to make it really irritating for raiders. I can think of two mobs that, by themselves, might accomplish the task. Throw on maybe 10 "lesser" ones (that would still take a while to chew through, even if they don't do a ton of damage) and I think you'd be good.

Don't forget that those same mobs are omnivores, meaning they are just as happy to fight the cabal member as a cabal raider, so summoning them will impeded all of your invokers, bards, etc. Hell, no more use of earthquake by your shaman summoner to bring a thief or assassin into combat. No more cone of cold, no more blurry eyes, etc.

I don't need a roleplay justification. I'm summoning these 50 mobs to protect my outer guardian from bards/berserkers/invokers. The immortal staff has already justified this as a viable IC tactic that requires no roleplay whatsoever. I don't need a roleplay reason to bash, the same goes for summoning mobs.

If its an IC tactic and not cheating, I can't imagine any immortal would be able to justify forcing all those mobs to attack you.

You do know that not all immortal intervention in the game is because of cheating, right?

>You do know that not all immortal intervention in the game is
>because of cheating, right?

Of course I do. The question begs to be asked: Why would you punish this necromancer for deploying viable tactics against his enemies? Whether you choose to punish him IC or OOC is not really the point. I assume, of course, that by intervene you mean stopping this activity as opposed to giving him a positive title for protecting his cabal with legitimate tactics.

I feel like you're being willfully obtuse here to try to prove a point by taking the most obnoxious and/or ignorant version of its opposite.

Let me know if I'm wrong and I'll think about trying to explain it.

.

>I feel like you're being willfully obtuse here to try to
>prove a point by taking the most obnoxious and/or ignorant
>version of its opposite.
>
>Let me know if I'm wrong and I'll think about trying to
>explain it.

From my first post, its very clear that I disagree that summoning mobs in defense is an IC tactic. I simply presented an example that would clearly show there's something off with this so-called 'tactic'. You agreed with me by suggesting that intervention would be in order. When I suggested that intervention would be hard to justify because Valg stated the tactic was viable, you called my example ignorant and obnoxious. You then further took a personal shot at me by suggesting that I was being willfully obtuse.

It sounds like you're taking the position of "A little bit is okay, but a lot is bad." I could be misunderstanding you, but if that's the case then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I can't think of another tactic that, when taken to the extreme, is punishable by immortal intervention.

>From my first post, its very clear that I disagree that
>summoning mobs in defense is an IC tactic. I simply presented
>an example that would clearly show there's something off with
>this so-called 'tactic'. You agreed with me by suggesting
>that intervention would be in order. When I suggested that
>intervention would be hard to justify because Valg stated the
>tactic was viable, you called my example ignorant and
>obnoxious. You then further took a personal shot at me by
>suggesting that I was being willfully obtuse.

It's been several years since I was taking logic classes, but I believe what you're doing is called a straw man argument. Calling you on that isn't a personal attack.

Permit me to demonstrate the difference:

Personal attack: You're a dumbass.
Non-personal attack: I think you're pretending to be a dumbass to try to prove a point.

I'm not an especially subtle man. You'll know if I'm bashing you. In this case, I'm not.

>It sounds like you're taking the position of "A little bit is
>okay, but a lot is bad." I could be misunderstanding you, but
>if that's the case then I guess we'll have to agree to
>disagree.

I'm not, necessarily.

I'm taking the position that even 'dumb' mobs may occasionally act as befits their role. Ghaelek the Duergar King may get surly about being summoned from his home. Elven guards may get surly that you're killing elven citizens and try to rally to repel the invaders. The Enforcer of Galadon may come and intervene with you killing battlement guards for practice. Fire giant troops from within Kiadana may surge forth to help you repel the storm giant invaders. None of these events is the norm, but all of them could happen and are not rules issues. In a perfect game, maybe all the NPCs would be vibrant and intelligent enough to do all of these things without prodding them by hand, but unfortunately I need to sleep sometimes.

Frankly, I think the summoning thing is very self-limiting because nearly every cabal has characters who will want to area. You can cripple your enemies up to a point, but you cripple your allies too. I can't begin to tell you the number of times I've seen a character killed by his cabalmate's summoning -- if it's not equivalent to the number of times I've seen someone killed by an enemy's summoning, it's pretty close.

>I can't think of another tactic that, when taken to
>the extreme, is punishable by immortal intervention.

I guess I just don't equate immortal intervention with punishment.

>If its an IC tactic and not cheating, I can't imagine any
>immortal would be able to justify forcing all those mobs to
>attack you.

Didn't you notice I wasn't talking about cabal raids? I was talking about whether someone could summon all of the usual ranking mobs to prevent their opponents from gaining levels.

That said, it's easy to see why it wouldn't work. Almost any mob will attack any necro/ap/evil shaman, so there's your excuse for an imm to make them attack those.

A paladin/good shaman can't justify yanking a whole village out of their homes anyway, let alone every good mob in thera. Maybe the mobs won't attack them, but any imm who notices will probably just wait till the paladin/shaman goes away, then purge the room, if it's really as absurd as having all the mobs there.