Just a question.

What would people think if mobs that were children were automatically defended by the "Parent" mobs. Such as Merian children.



When talking on killing children.


You say, "So when you are killing the children and so on do their mothers scream
and beg for you to stop?"


says, "I once chased one into a r oom with three Merian women, and none of them said a thing."



says, "Doesn't say much for the Merians."


I think it might add some more realism and make things a bit more interesting.

Well, this goes back to the whole mob-defending thing in general. For the most part, Lusternian mobs don't behave realistically when people are killing their friends or allies. This makes sense from a game mechanics standpoint: if a mob is balanced for a level 50 character to take with some difficulty, two or three of these mobs at once may be deadly. This is one area I've given up the hope of realism in, as the tried-and-true methods of IRE bashing really aren't going to be changed for the sake of realism, especially when doing so makes the game much more difficult.

This change was made in Achaea and people hated it at first, then learned to work with it. It didn't harm bashing terribly but it didn't add too much to the 'realism' since bashers just started taking it for granted after a while.

For those who don't know the details there I'll summarize.

- All sentient mobs are loyal to villages now, so if you attack one all others in the room loyal to that village will defend it
- After you kill enough mobs in an area you get 'hated' satus there
- If you're hated, sentient mobs will go aggro on you
- There's a command called FEELINGS VILLAGES which tells you where you're hated, disliked and so on
- If you stop killing mobs there, they'll eventually forget about you. Supposedly they have other enemies to worry about
- There's an experience bonus on mobs if they have allies in the room. Kill a goblin alone, he's worth X. Kill him in a room with another goblin, he's worth X plus a bonus. Two goblins, a bigger bonus. And so on.

Hm. On reading it, this thread isn't as interesting as I hoped it would be.

So I'm going to hijack it onto something which I regard as more amusing.

Children Mobs

From an IC viewpoint, one difference between players and denizens might be that players went through the portal of fate, and denizens didn't. I'm not sure whether this is a 'truth' or simply a player perspective.. but either way...

I frequently see people RPing pregnancy.. but what happens to their children between the age of 0 and 16? We should have them as.. denizens! Think how much more fun it would be to kill someone's entire brood of offspring rather than their pet!

Also a bad idea. A huge part of the Portal of Fate thing is that you forget your parents, look significantly different, etc. You'd basically have a flavor mob that would follow you around, add potential for you to be grief'd, and disappear upon reaching a certain age. Even if the child went through the Portal of Fate and remembered his parents, who would play the child? You'd have to have some sort of mechanic for insuring that there's a dedicated player behind a character that isn't someone's alt or an uninterested newbie. Player children sit in that little dimension called RP Space, where imaginary items and people can be interacted with. Use your imagination.

Yes. I will admit that ordinarily my humour is blunt and bald. However that is an inadequate excuse for you not to get it when I try subtlety. Or rather, as I wasn't really trying to be funny, it's an inadequate excuse for you to take me seriously when I'm being whimsical. WHIMSICAL LIKE A LITTLE GIRL IS WHIMSICAL.

You're most confusing when you do bizarre stuff like adding a 'u' to 'humor.'

I understand that Matt named that as the reason why people could never have child-mobs in IRE games (killing off someone's kid would cause a fair bit of grief). Anyway, Nirrti & Dia's kid is about 12 now and he's most definitely around. Just takes a little work on our part (creative emoting, I have an alternate desc for Nirrti with kiddo by her side, I keep track of where she's left him to play, etc...), and a little suspension of disbelief on everyone else's (thank you all).

Killing someone elses child is immoral, good for Matt.

And woot for your kid! I've seen a number of Seren do that before, such as Linwe with her kid. It's cute.

But just to note.. Dia and Nirrti's kid.. That has the be.. the evilest of all evil kids! Children of the Corn.. Move over, it's time for Children of the Wyrd.

However, just to note.. When people do RP pregnancy, there is a tendency for it to get out of hand sometimes. There was one instance in Seren where this girl was screaming over CT that she was going into labour. We had to ask her, as politely as we could, to refrain from doing it on the commune aether. CT is not the place to discuss those things!

I like that!

He's not evil. He may have a strange and precocious connection to Mother Night, and he may or may not be possessed by a dark spirit... but he's not evil. We're very much hoping to find someone to play him down the line, he's got a fun little backstory.

When I saw the topic, I thought that we were proposing to create a kiddie mafia. O_O
Like, instead of the Godfather, we get the Goddaughter.

On topic, when I was a wee novice, I was afraid to attack those gnome children, because I thought their mothers would cry for help, which would then bring the gnome guards to attack me. That is, until I found out I could kill those guards easily.

I like this idea. When I think about it, MUDs are the only games I've ever seen where children are kill-able. Never beat up on a little kid in GTA or any of those crazy kill-everyone-in-sight games.

For realism it might be nice a nice thing to add down the track.

So is killing... anyone.

I wish I had done this, it would have been fun to roleplay. Inox is 64, it would take way too much suspension of disbelief.

Age is just a number here with no effect on our characters, you could do it.

What a ridiculous point

Let's look at it this way, some people get attached to things in game. The big debate about thieving isn't usually over losing gold, corpses, quest items or other replaceable items, it's over items of sentimental value like wedding rings that could be stolen. While some people keep a perfect barrier between their feelings and the game (or at least they say they do) others get attached to these things. Now imagine how much more attached they'd get to a child denizen they could set to follow them around, do baby talk, etc. Imagine how they'd feel when such a denizen was harmed. Imagine waht kind of irrational OOC reaction they might have, possibly against IRE. What would the headlines look like ?

I think Matt made a very wise decision there.

Given that, by and large, customisable objects also reset, and given that any 'wedding ring' can be immediately remade by a member of the relevant cartel, I simply don't agree with you. These points are relevant ones in Achaea.. but not half so relevant here. The only thing I can think of that falls under this category are mounts. Indeed, I don't have a single item in Aiakon's possession which I am sentimentally attached to which isn't either runed and thus resetable, or easily replaced.



Sure. That's why it was always a ridiculous idea. Nevertheless, Tael's point is ridiculous because it sounds like he is advocating the RP killing of family members as something which is 'morally' wrong - and this is a cross-over between IC and OOC attitudes. Not only is it not 'morally' wrong for many in-game characters, it's something that happens all the time. Can't hurt Marcalo? Kill his family! etc.