I am glad that the mud is more stable for obvious reasons, but it is hell on the availability of good equipment. I know there are people that think this is good for the mud economy, but I don't remember seeing a Wal*mart in Modrian. If its that good for the economy, then why does the economy struggle so? Probably because if there's nothing to sell, then there isn't an economy at all.

The loading of equipment on mobs and searches etc shouldn't be possible only if there are zero of the particular item in the game. If the mobs spontaneously appear every hour then the items in the zone should do so as well. I would concede a max of say half a dozen or so to cut down on clutter, and again it could be limited to pieces of equipment that are commonly used. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of a billion school-girl skirts lying all over Kiddie Kandy. With the loading of items set up with varying stats, it can take ten reboots before you can find one worth keeping, which lately means three months of reboots, and then the last thing you are going to do is sell it.

Good equipment adds to the enjoyment of the game, and lets face it, thats why we are here. It adds to being able to fight monsters that will give you experience that is more appropriate for your level. When you are a newbie, level 25, and sick and tired of killing halflings because your equipment is laughed at by someone who is level 3, you begin to wonder why you play on Tempus if you spend all your time suffering its tedium and monotony. Most of us will help a newbie out if we can, but regardless of whether or not we know where equipment loads, if its not there then everybody is out of luck. I'm not saying you should be able to get a +10 nuclear sword of flaming death every single time you kill the halfling king, but fair to good equipment should be able to be acquired at a fair to good percentage rate.

I'd also like to see the ring of camel re-appear, and/or the old ring of sustenance. There is nothing more annoying and tiresome than having to see those you are hungry messages all the time, or having to carrying around bread or whatnot. Its fine and all if you want to add a little realism to the mud, but do we really need to add the parts of real life that are the most annoying? My sword broke gotta go fix it. I'm hungry let me go find something to eat. I've gotta use the restroom, uh oh my damroll is zero and I need a clean pair of greaves. I don't feel an item that will fill ya up and quench your thirst is an overpowered item that needs to be removed, reduced in number or requires going into a high gen zone with ten of yer buddies. Its a simple and useful item that should be readily available to all. Many muds remove the hunger/thirst thing altogether, and I think they have the right idea.

So what do you folks think? Would you like to start another character but can't because there isn't any equipment to be found? Did you try to help a newbie but had to say, "Sorry, nothing is loaded. Try back next week." Did you trigger 'satiation' but were just hungry again three minutes later? Give Tempus your thoughts. Don't be shy. Everybody hates me and I'm still here.

… And I'm still in favor of a miscellaneous heading to the realms for posts like this that really don't fall into any of the other categories.

-Wrath of Having a Clean Set of Greaves Handy

I would actually argue that the best eq should be kept scarce like it is when there are not many reboots or crashes. There is a great amount of very good equipment that loads regardless of reboots. Everyone having or being able to replace awesome eq really easily makes that equipment run of the mill and not so awesome anymore.

And no before you say it I do not have any of the really good eq I speak of I'm still reeqing from the last time I lost my set.

I just don't get that concept of keeping good equipment scarce. I have a +10 nuclear sword of flaming death that I like very much. If everybody else had a similar sword it wouldn't detract from my enjoyment of hacking halflings to tiny little bits with it. And I agree that the really, really good equipment, the best there is, shouldn't be readily available and that's why it's in level 30 hell. I just think that if I have a character strong enough to get to and kill the mob that has a certain piece of equipment, then I should receive the spoils of my victory, the equipment required to make playing enjoyable.

I can see the points of Brywing and Wrath on this one.  However I think Wrath has been taking out of text.  Alot of the best eq is located in hard zones.  A matter of fact 99% of the mud is not able to run gith, hell, and heaven.  This is a good thing, however I personally do not run these zones because of the risk involved.  I rather wait for someone else to get the eq so I can buy it.  With this in mind Wrath is right on page.  I could run heaven, then run gith, then run hell twice a day and after a month I may come up with one or two peices of eq.  Maybe if I'm lucky.  With this in mind even the zones that mid gen players can do would have to take a month to get one peice of decent loaded eq with the random stat code.  I do not think the random stat code is the problem but at the least a weekly reboot should be in place.  As for the ring of camel and sus.  I also agree these should be put back in place.  I kow everyone thinks tempus is very big, but it could grow larger.  More zones would be excellent for the game and economy. 

Right on Wrath. It sucks to go run a zone that takes a time investment and then not get anything for your time. I think Tempus could actually benefit from going to the way loot works on World of Warcraft for example.

Make it so that everytime you kill a boss, you get a random item from a list specific to that boss. It would require a crap load of more items being built if you wanted them to be unique to a specific mob; otherwise you could simply have the Gith Queen loading a ruby ring 20% of the time, but maybe 4% of the time she loads up the Thunderbolt of Zeus (to drag an old favourite out).

You would have to make it so that locate object couldn't be utilised to check whether a specific item is loaded. That's not to say make the object !loc, cause once you have it, or lose it on a death, it's useful to be able to see what mob has yer crap.

So yeah, 100% of the time boss type mobs drop items. Just make the items dropped random from a predefined list. That would be awesome.

Elric, I think that's a great idea, but it would take a lot of building. And, in essence, isn't that what has been accomplished (somewhat) with randomized eq stats? 5% of the time, I get a demon faced talisman with 5 damroll, 20% of the time, it has 4 damroll and 75% of the time it has 3 or less. It's the same sort of deal, just with less variety. So, yes, it does suck that sometimes, you trek through all of Gith to find that the ruby ring isn't loaded and there's no spiked silver helm. What I would rather happen (personally) is that it loaded every time, but instead of only having ruby rings load 5% of the time and always having transparent on it, instead they always load and only have transparent on it 5% of the time. That's a lot more coding and reverse designing eq, but I think that would work out much better.

I dig that list of possible objects idea. I've played games like that but never thought about what Tempus would be like if objects loaded like that. Instead of getting an item that has really crappy stats and therefore no good to anybody, you have the possibility of getting a really good item at a low percentage, and other items that may not be what your looking for, but at least of use to somebody else.

can we have them all to be like 30% ish except with stuff like !evil and !good, or !orc, etc. so that even if your character can't use it, maybe ur clannie can use it. ^.^

That actually sounds like a pretty cool idea to me, Cast. What if one out of every 20 Demon faced talismans loaded weren't !bard? That would make loading one pretty damn valuable, especially if it had good stats. What if all eq loaded with random +s on top of their normals !s. If anything, that would boost the economy since people wouldn't want to sit on a bunch of +cleric eq if they have no cleric. Instead, they would have it on auction or even directly talk to someone they know has a cleric. It also might lead to more class diversity. If everyone plays monk and mage, monk and mage eq is going to be scarce, while merc eq might be flooding the market cheap. So, if I'm deciding what new character to roll, I can either make a monk and struggle to find eq and have no one selling eq because it's so valuable, or I can make a merc and get a perfect eq set for only a few mil.

I have been here a long long time. I agree with Wrath and Elric. However allowing certain items to load and have a certain % chance not to have a class restriction flag is obserd. Eq with !bard, !monk, or whatever the flag may be load like that for a reason. If anyone could wear whatever eq they wanted no one would ever need to buy a oedit or quest. Just keep poping eq untill your class can wear it. Just thinking about it for a split second I could eq a bard and have 75% dam redux, 100+damroll and -500 ac is I could wear whatever I wanted too.

I wasn't implying that the only !s would be randomized, Tereus. I said that they would be added in addition to other pre-existing ones. Like, a piece of armor could be !mage !psi and !phy, but if a builder wanted to, they could also make it +knight 50% of the time, +ranger 25% of the time, +merc 20% of the time and +bard 5% of the time. This way, it's mostly good for knights, rangers and mercs can use it less often, and very rarely, it's good for bards. And it's still !phyz psi and mage, so most bards won't be able to use it anyways. Running Gith 20 times to get that ONE spiked silver helm that's +bard is no easy task. Getting one with 3 damroll and high ac apply is even harder. And if things like !phy are used, it makes things even more difficult. Anyways, I think it's pretty cool that bards are difficult to equip. It's a good balance. I don't think, however, that they should be impossible to equip. If you have the patience to run zones hundreds of times for eq, or if you want to pay exorbitant prices to people who happen to stumble across that eq, then I think it's fine to have a super-powered character. After all, people like Crescendo have old eq from before the !bard days in addition to pre-nerf bard hp.

Hum de dum…where to start…hi? How do I still get brought up even though I never play anymore? :P

Anyway, as far as I see it uhhh, random +'s? Eeeeeevil, and heres the reason why, on top of random stats, do you seriously want equipment to be loading with random +'s or !'s, that one time you find a perfect load of your axe of ultimate evil and its + some other class…you're just adding one more variable to screw yourself over when loading loot, yeah that means you may sell it, but I ask you this, who honestly loads eq for the intention of selling it outright? If you were going to do this, you would for certain have to have many items loading on zone resets, not MUD reboots just for the fact that it will be even harder to actually load that perfect piece of equipment for you.

Other than that, fair warning :P Having a character basically in God-mode SUCKS, you want no motivation to play? Thats it right there, why bother making a new character when you have damn near the perfect one sitting in front of you, and no matter what class combination it is, the one you currently have can do it better unequivocally. So be careful what you wish for :). But you know…thats my view, I hate restarting in the first place no matter the circumstance, I know others are different…

Cresendo, the reason y ppl play new characters is because they want to try different styles…

I'm sorry, I dont know if I would keep playing. Again I agree with Cres, Wrath and Elric. They seem to have good knowledge of tempus and what makes it differant then all other muds. For eq to random +class flag would be insane and unbalanced peroid. Even if it took 100 times to run gith, hell, heaven to get those special +class flags I would do it day and night. Cuz again you could build a char that would have -500ac 125damroll and 75% so easy. Everyone could run around with perfect sets of eq, and they all would wear the same thing cuz of eq with !pain and sanc and stuff.

Greetings and salutations,

Please do be noting, now that stability has caught up with a policy that has been in play longer than stability, things are not as equal. The "Wal*mart" of yesterday, ie - the hump that couldn't properly defend themself in order keep their "equip" is no longer open.

As per the "Give Tempus your thoughts. Don't be shy. Everybody hates me and I'm still here."

It reminds me of the United States of America :D

Team America - FUCK YEAH!

I'm well aware that the "third world countries" are currently in control of the geopolicitical landscape of Tempus.

You mail sent your hate-mail to LMH@KMA.com - thanks :D

-C

Randomness!