Targeting nowhere

[Erisnas]

  Over the holidays I have been wondering about this idea and its uses:  What if we were able to target spots on the ground and interact with them in certain ways?  An example of this might be you target an area and cast a spell to simulate an effect.  The spell would act just as if it were attacking something but wouldn't do any damage to anyone near.  I can really see this being useful for helping RPs since having a visual always helps.  Another use is in the future with bows you would be able to fire an arrow into the ground this way similar to if you missed your target.  I think most would find this useful to simulate RP fights where you could RP the outcome without people accidentally dieing.  I know it is possible since it would basically be a cross between the current targeting system and the mouse walk one. 
   It would, however, need to be activated by clicking something else first.  Otherwise people may have trouble telling whether they are fighting the enemy or the ground.  I imagine the easiest way to do this would be to click the option which then brings up a new cursor and wherever your next click is the system will target.  Hopefully this will allow players to perform more actions without having to do some creative strategies like they do now.  While players could still abuse it to make it seem like they are killing everything and everyone, you would have to expect that plyers would start casting/attacking random crowds of people.

[Suno_Regin]

Wow...I actually like this idea. o.O
I can imagine a few possibilities opening up from that.

[Erisnas]

  I think it will be accepted fairly well since what you might be able to do with it is endless.  Depending on how freelance it is will have to depend.  Hopefully the main purpose is to allow people to look like the are casting spells or attacking an object but aren't.  This would also be useful if it could be expanded that you could use skills with it as well, such as Rping digging in random areas looking for ores.

[bilbous]

I am not sure why you would need to target random spot when you could just allow untargeted actions in the direction of your cursor. Naturally your cursor would need to be over the terrain and not a piece of gui but the current state of affairs where you can only do actions if they are appropriately targeted would seem a little unrealistic. Maybe magic should be like that though I do not think so but certainly you should not need a target to brandish your weapons.

[Velh Krome]

Very nice idea, Erisnas!
That would have improved quite a few situations! Maybe could even help a bit to let other people know whats going on, in case of an rped fight for example, still far away. Then they could react more properly, avoiding or running to support that is.

As this appears to me as much easier to realize than turning the cursor into a 3d-object within the world I am for seconding Erisnas' suggestion!

[ThomPhoenix]

As this appears to me as much easier to realize than turning the cursor into a 3d-object within the world.

Eh, what?

[Velh Krome]

Well.. that 3d-thingie-way is how I think Bilbous meant it, no? A way I dont think would be easy to implement.

[bilbous]

I didn't mean for the cursor to appear in the world just that it would be used to indicate the direction for the actions focus, so that you could hover the cursor over somebody to brandish your weapon at them or send a burst of flame in their face without it actually being an attack or causing any damage. The reason I excepted the gui is to prevent accidental actions while trying to use whichever part of the gui, inventory, options, skills or what have you.

[Caarrie]

this might be a good idea, but there are so many bugs with magic right now, that coding a way to use magic at any time without it affecting you or the target would take a lot of time and effort. If you would like a devs opinion on this and it to put ingame someday put a feature request on the tracker, but i bet this will not be added for years if ever.

[Velh Krome]

Sorry if I should appear to be a bit persistent here:
It once was possible to target the "Crystal" (sky), it also is possible to "Examine" the ground (at least I am sure for the one at the plaza).
Now, as it seems to me there is already something like trigger-points, more or less randomly spread though. Maybe something quite similar as the thing described by Kerol in the Reactive Landscape-thread (hex-fields) could be used for that. With chars having a special attribute, and objects another one, the "spell" would only need to check what attribute the target has, for damage or not.
But maybe I am just thinking too elementary without having much of a clue of the code-stuff.

[Caarrie]

action locations are set by devs, so that you can view and get more info on things, this has nothing to do with this request unless you want devs to add these to each and every object so that you can *look* at them.

[Under the moon]

Select item. /place item, or the correct mouse click would be the immediate use I could see for this as well. One could actually put things on a table -without- having to jump up on said table.

[ThomPhoenix]

One could actually put things on a table -without- having to jump up on said table.

That will already be possible, next release

[Velh Krome]

One could actually put things on a table -without- having to jump up on said table.

That will already be possible, next release

Hm? I tried that out few days ago, with two friends, and we were amazed that it already works now. However, we stood next to a bench and placed items ON it. We came to the conclusion there must be sort of a height-check - nope, no hallucinogens were involved, at least not for me;)

[Zwenze]

We even pinned slags and swords to a wall and it worked well. Placing a beer on a table works now without jumping on the table, but the result is a bit unpredictable. The view seems to play a great role there.