Re: Preventing players from repeating quests (Was: Re: CF: Alternate proposal: MARK the power crystals)

[Hwei Sheng TEOH <hsteoh@cs.toronto.edu>]

On Fri, 27 Aug 1999, Raphael Quinet wrote:

[snip]
> > How about multi-player situations, where some in a party has been
> > through the map, but others haven't? How would we enforce this rule
> > for them (and should we bother to enforce it in this case)?
> 
> Indeed, there could be some problems with multi-player situations,
> because only the player(s) entering the treasure room would be
> prevented from re-doing the quest later.  In this case, some members
> of the party would have to stay near the entrance and wait for the
> others to finish the quest.  If the number of players that are allowed
> to enter is decreased by one every time, then the potential for abuses
> is rather limited.
> 
> Hmmm...  It would still be possible to cheat...  For example, you
> could complete the quest with one or several players, without entering
> the treasure room.  Then create a new character, go quickly through
> all (empty) maps, pick up the treasure, give it to the other player(s)
> and then destroy the temporary character that got the mark.  This
> would be a way to avoid the mark on your main character(s).
> 
> Fortunately, there are several ways to prevent that:
> 
> - By making powerful artifacts incompatible with each other, so that
>   even if you manage to get more than one, you would not be able to
>   use all of them.

I think this is good. I personally don't see why a high-level character can't
pick up good artifacts from difficult quests and give them away to his friends
later (perhaps keeping only one or two for his own use). This won't require
tedious updating of objects and maps to add tags, etc., to them; we'll just
check when the player applies something whether that object is compatible with
other items the player is currently applying.

But on the other hand, this may still not be a good solution because the
player could still carry a whole bunch of incompatible artifacts and switch
them as the need arises. This in itself seems OK to me (nothing wrong with
using one weapon to kill an ice dragon and switching to another weapon to kill
a fire dragon) but may allow other abuses (like switching equipment to bypass
the bad side effects of powerful artifacts).

> - By linking quests to each other.  Solving one quest would allow you
>   to enter another one, and at the same time would prevent you from
>   repeating the one that you just solved.  The quests would be
>   increasingly difficult, with increasingly great rewards.  In order
>   to enter the most interesting quests, it would be necessary to prove
>   that you are worthy by having solved some simpler quests.  This
>   would effectively prevent a freshly created character from entering
>   a high-level quest just after it has been cleared by the high-level
>   player(s), because the new character would not have the mark of the
>   previous quests (and chances are that most maps in the previous
>   quests would have been reset in the meantime).

This looks like a very good idea.

> - By making the poweful artifacts instantly attuned to the player who
>   picks them up first.  This could be done by changing the pickup code
>   and adding some tests for the powerful archetypes (maybe they should
>   have a flag for this) or by adding a new kind of marker archetype
>   for the treasure rooms.  That invisible object would mark all
>   objects that are on the same square as soon as a player steps on it.
>   All objects that have been attuned to a player would refuse to be
>   applied by any other player.  Adding a test in the pickup code would
>   probably be the best solution, because the solution involving a
>   marker could be circumvented by using pets that pick up the objects.
>   Note that the objects must be attuned to the first player who
>   touches them, not to the first player who applies them, because
>   otherwise this would not solve the problem of temporary characters
>   entering the treasure room and giving the stuff to the others
>   without applying the object.

How about if the player just wants to pick up something to give to a (perhaps)
lower-level friend? Or should that be `taboo' so that everyone who wants that
artifact has to solve the quest themselves? The second alternative seems
better... so that no one would be able to use any artifact from quests they
haven't solved (they don't deserve to own them).

If this is the way we go, I'd suggest fixing (or removing outright) the
random_artifact archetype, and make every quest have a unique (perhaps
well-known) artifact reward. Otherwise, the player may have already gotten a
particular artifact from a random-artifact quest, and then feel cheated later
when he actually completes a quest that has that same artifact as a reward.

Also, currently the random_artifact archetype seems to generate all artifacts,
from medium-level to very powerful, all based on the dice. This could cause
quests that have random rewards either give an artifact more powerful than the
player deserves (if the quest isn't difficult enough to warrant that reward)
or it could give the player something that isn't much of a reward compared to
the effort needed to conquer the quest, and the player feels cheated.


T

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