Announce #5381 Discussion

From  : Makarios, the Meticulous

To   : Everyone

Subject: Artefact pets

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We've just made a change to artefact pets.


Historically, we've always been against the ability to have a pet deliver items at range (this is

one of the few things we specifically disallow as reaction options). There are a lot of reasons for 

this, but unfortunately pets have not really kept up with the modern game: with the ability to tie a 

pet's movement into a mapper and immediately move it across the world to a determined location, it 

became possible to sidestep this limitation with this combined with the TELL PET GIVE functionality.


One of these two things needed to change, and we settled on removing remote give instead of

restricting remote movement. Consequently, you can no longer TELL your pets to give items to players 

if your pet is not in the same room as you.


Penned by My hand on the 9th of Phaestian, in the year 869 AF.


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Howdy all,


With this recent change, my butchery service has come to a close! Which is unfortunate, but whatever.


I was hoping to ask the Admins directly what prompted this change, and if it were at all related to the IDEA I put in about artefact pets and corpses.


If the issue is that artefact pets could hold player bodies and deliver them at range (Which is something I totally did), I definitely agree that it should be changed, but not as a whole PET GIVE change functionality. How to fix this would be to disallow player bodies from being given to pets, or just partial-banning PET GIVE <BODY> to X at range.


If the issue was that artefact pets are godly and can effectively act as a bank where you may store corpses with zero chance to drop them.... This.. also does not change that interaction. An easy fix for this would be to have artefact pets drop corpses when the owner is killed, and disallow the owner the ability to TELL PET GO <DIR> while they are on the Sphinx cooldown, or not at perfect health.


If the issue was that people are able to deliver small items to others.. this also doesn't.. really change that. As individuals can simply now pay 500cr to buy a whistle and send said items irregardless.



I'd just really like some clarification as to what caused this recent change.

Comments

  • I don't see a problem with this, other than you now need to take 10 seconds to leave the city and interact with somebody. How does that in any way shut down any merchant activities at all?


    (Party): Mezghar says, "Stop."
  • This was a needed change and is in line with what was already in the help file, though probably not enforced until it became an issue:


    "Pet reactions cannot be used to deliver items to other players, like the mail

    system or Chivalry falcons. Pets may bring items to you, if someone else gives

    them something. Pets also cannot be sent directly to other adventurers' rooms."


    Pets being used as corpse storage are unaffected, it just means that the owner has to be in the room to interact with the corpses, which seems like a fair tradeoff.


    Like you said, an artefact exists for sending small parcels, and the mail system can also be used.


  • It's entirely asinine to have untouchable corpse storages in the first place, but let's just keep adding convoluted solutions to avoid addressing the actual problem.

  • That would require some form of potential loss, and we all know how eager people are for that.

    image

  • ShirszaeShirszae Santo Domingo

    I think the actual solution would have been to make pets not hold corpses in the first place. Pets delivering stuff had no real impact other than this.

    As it is, immortal pets holding corpses remains the same problem as ever.

    And you won't understand the cause of your grief...


    ...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.

  • edited September 2021

    I would be surprised if this change was specifically to address corpses rather than to conform to the very old (decades old?) rule that pets can't be used to deliver things. It's been in the HELP PETS for as long as I can remember, even if the reality was somewhat different.


    I don't see a huge problem with pet corpse storage either, simply because the urn contest isn't open pk anyway. That is, I don't see why people who don't want to quit mark just for a contest should have to lose corpses when they die when they're already at a disadvantage. I would understand the frustration if there was an open pk contest that involved corpses but as is it just seemed like an equalizer.


    It's an odd time for it to come up as a necessary change when the contest as a non-pk contest wasn't really designed to be a contest of ganking for corpses while the actually open pk xpevent contest doesn't require you to keep corpses at all.

  • That's kind of where I'm at @Farrah .


    It seems like it's a roundabout way to start dealing with corpse storage (I dislike it for the simple fact that it's a pay in mechanic to keep corpses post death and have them accessible and not lose them when defiling)... but hit other areas first that didn't necessarily have to be hit.

  • That is almost the opposite of what I said.

  • It's literally nothing to do with corpse storage. They just don't want people with a 6 line mudlet script instantaneously replicating falcon deliver via artefact pets that is both faster, safer and more flavorful than the equivalent in-game means for doing so. Deliver makes you wait a few seconds, pet walker scripts can immediately traverse the entire continent you're on in a single batch command send with the way things work now.

  • It can be both. It *should* be both.

    Being able to pay to have an untouchable and uninteractable corpse storage for defiling/revive control on top of the numerous ways to avoid dying just exacerbates the worst parts of group conflict.

    The urn contest may have thrown this into the spotlight, but it's still a dumb mechanic because there's no counterplay beyond "welp, no sense fighting that group, they have all of Annwyn in their pet hamster and can have a worldburn ready to go before the defense gets mobilized".

  • I don't really view most conflict as centering around acquiring the corpses of those you kill. It would be just as easy to have someone hold corpses in the safety of your home city. And if you're taking so long to mobilize they are raising a shrine and using worldburn, corpses dropping on death is irrelevant since they aren't dying. I think it is one of those instances of people being mad about one thing (open pk marks not being corpse pinatas in a non-pk event) and making it into more than it really is.

  • I don't particularly care about the urn event since I'm not participating. You obviously don't want to lose your Profit box of corpses.

  • I'm not sure who is having their pet batching 300+ movements in 1 command.


    These are outliers, and could very easily have been punished, and should have. Fixing that could have literally just been changed to "Your pet can only move 2 rooms / tick." and return a "Give me a second to catch my breath!" tell back.


    Corpse Storage has a multitude of bad connotations. Like.. If every corpse I get in group PK instantly goes to my artefact pet that cannot be killed or stolen from.. Suddenly, a lot of revives mid-fight are taken entirely out of the equation. If my side wins, I can still tell my pet to give the corpses to my allies if I am still a soul.


    In cases where people were being hit a corpse pinatas: See, Mezghar attacking a random Eleusian on an outer island because "She hit the denizen I attacked." (When logs show the other way around)... That Eleusian lost all of the corpses they had hunted because someone decided to be a dick about things. If artie pets are just immortal barriers that stop people from getting corpses (whether for sentimental reasons or otherwise)... then maybe we shouldn't be having a Corpse Party every time someone dies that was hunting.


    It'd certainly cut down on the 150+ lines that happen whenever you kill someone that's been rageblade bashing. >_>

  • edited September 2021

    Honestly I don't see this change as anything about corpse storage in pets outright. Maybe if someone used the pet to remotely pass corpses for defiling, but that's the only speculation. My guess is its to make things like falcon deliver/the artie for remote mail, the shared box thing actually have a purpose.

  • It has nothing to do with corpse storage. It’s fixing the pets to be in line with the systems that are in place, from what I was told. The remote delivery artifact, falcon delivery and mail systems exist for a reason and they want them used rather than pets.

    That walker script does exist and it’s been used quite a lot. I don’t have an issue with the corpse storage either, it makes no difference in anything in the majority of cases.





    Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
  • KresslackKresslack Florida, United States

    Seems as if due to scripting, the nature of custom pets was being utilized in a manner inconsistent with their original intemt; specifically being used either as untouchable storage units, or mobile delivery services. All this change really does is bring them in line with the restrictions they were already intended to have.



  • edited September 2021

    I did use a mapper script for pet delivery of stuff for ages and while RP wise it's a bit of a bummer to no longer have this option, I have no reasonable objections to the change. Truth be told, I never even realized that this was something frowned upon. Somehow I must have missed that part in HELP PETS. But yeah, makes sense that they don't want other forms of delivery devalued.

  • Here I was using a reaction on my pet to send Petunia to ppl like a chump.


    Should'a injected a ton of code to just auto-walk her to them.

  • I'm surprised that this thread exists. This change was great. Artie pets in general are pretty lame, but this functionality was particularly weird. Just hope people who bought pets/add-ons for this purpose get refunded.

    I hope other cheat-code crap with pets (like using them to balancelessly track people's location/movement) get looked at eventually too. Saying this as an owner of a fully tricked out artie pet :).

  • For those without an equivalent script to move your pets, here's a very basic one. You'll need to manually add/remove lockArea's depending on where you're enemied to as below, but otherwise, slap this into a Mudlet alias like ^pwalk (\d+)$, use the mudlet mapper's 'rf' command to find the room number, then do 'pwalk 696969' to instantaneously shuffle your pet across the continent to any room you can access without teleportation.


    mmp.lockArea("Eleusis", false, true)
    mmp.lockArea("Cyrene, the City of", false, true)
    mmp.lockArea("Targossas", false, true)
    mmp.doLock("sewer grates", true, "enter grate")
    mmp.clearpathcache()
    local canwalk = mmp.getPath(mmp.currentroom, tonumber(matches[2]))
    
    if canwalk then
      for i, p in ipairs(speedWalkDir) do
        send("tell pet696969 GO "..mmp.anytolong(p), false)
      end
    else
      echo("Can't get there for some reason. Try unlocking?")
    end
    mmp.doLock("sewer grates", false, "enter grate")
    mmp.lockArea("Eleusis", true, true)
    mmp.lockArea("Cyrene, the City of", true, true)
    mmp.lockArea("Targossas", true, true)
    
  • Damnit. I've been manualling Rital's RP since he was born. Guess I'm a scrub like @Aegoth

  • Manualing combat and curing, fine. But manualing RP? No matter how oldschool you are, nobody's got time for that shit.

  • This one confuses me, because I mentioned it in my original pet order with Arinikus, because it has worked via tells for like 8+ years?


    ally Individual

    tell individual to tell arinikus the special phrase that would cause him to jump into their room. (which only works with my allies)

    tell arinikus to give that person something, or wait for arinikus to tell me that person gave me something (which can not be gold because of the triggers)

    summon arinikus back, and unally individual.


    But, now I have a custom silver whistle, so I just mail it instead of ordering things.

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