A moments inspiration that I don't know how hard it would be to code:

For all PC's logged on during a crash, they are granted 4-5 tics of (ghost) status when they relog. That would be enough time to get out of very sticky spots but not enough time to abuse the status to get to places you couldn't otherwise.

It's always a little annoying to be ranking with a group in a place of aggros you can't survive on your own and then have to log in following a crash when you know you're going to eat it (loss of keys, etc..)

What do you think?

My thought would be to add to this that you have a ghostly status but can still attack PC's/NPC's and be attacked by PC's. If you are attacked by a PC, or attack PC/NPS you lose your status just like if you run into an inner guardian while ghostly.

Just a thought,
Aaron

Last I checked, keys didn't crumble over crashes.

Granted, the groupmate that doesn't log back in might be the one who had the key. That's why I'm always the guy with the key!

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

Logging back in, inside maethien or some such nasty area.

Its guaranteed death for anyone unless you all three happen to log in at once (and at the same place, crashes oft seperate you).


Yhorian.

There is a problem with implementation here. In order for this to happen, the server would have to tag all current online chars (when the crash hits), and when the crash hits, it means the server doesn't have the presence of mind to be doing this. Otherwise, it would be difficult to tell who was actually online when the crash hit, and who should be given ghost status when they log back on.

I do have an idea that makes some sense to me though: When the game autosaves, it compiles a list of all the players that are online at the time. This way, the game will remember who was on the last time the game actually saved, IE the state of the game when it reboots.

Once this is used, part of the process of rebooting could be opening that list of players, and adding 2 ticks of ghost to their affects, or even giving them a temporary ability to return home which isn't negated by cursed rooms (to account for crashes that put players into situations that are now certain death). I am unsure how much strain this would put on the server, or on the coders, but it makes some sense to me.

My personal way of dealing with this is to not explore places where I can get caught like this. It works for me since my archetype is the killer, but I can see why situations like this really should be avoided.


EDIT: Another idea would be to return all characters to the "opening" room of whatever area they are in when the server reboots. Instead of saving which individual room you are in when your pfile is saved, CF could simply save the area name, and each area would have an arbitrary room for people to default to. Explore areas might just boot you out to another nearby area.

Really, it would be very simple. Set a flag when they log in and remove the flag when they log out. If they log back and have the flag set, that means the last time they were logged in, the mud crashed. (You'd also have to check make sure their character isn't already in the game due to link dropping and logging back in, but that's an easy check.)

I support the idea.

nt

--Nightshade

it would help with a lot of player frustration over something they have no control over. If it was for a short enough time period 1 or 2 ticks it would not be long enough to cause problems that I think would be worth worrying about.

Sorry wrong reply.

I'm putting off lunch to wait and see how bad I get it when I log back in.

Theres no good RP reason for this. Cant have every player controlled character turning into a ghost all of a sudden.

That said, there's no good RP reason for a crash, either. Or, if you want an RP reason, the planar instability (crash) caused slight planar shifts to all PCs, giving them a ghost-like status for a tick or two.

This is true, But other than player controlled characters belonging to a guild of sorts and being more well known they do not differ from any NPC . So why would it be that only player controlled characters become ghostly?

Why is it then that only player characters disappear entirely when you log out? "The Theran form of Soandso disappears before you."

(And I swear I'm getting the imm tag removed. Didn't know I still had it.)

This doesnt have to be true. But then you would also have to give the non player controlled characters a "ghost" tag also.

I think this is the point where you need to realize that this is just a game not real life, and things dont always have to be equal for players and npc's. We arn't talking about rp reasons for this we are talking about a crash.