Walking through characters - new idea

[Yalzin]

OK i know this has been discussed before, and people have said that if you couldn\'t walk through other characters then you\'d have the problem that people could block doorways etc.

But surely the sensible option would be to have players as solid objects (i.e. you cant pass through them) but when you run at them you push them back. That way if someone was in your way and they were not responding you could push them out the way, as in real life - not that i regularly push people out of doorways.

[Yalzin]

oh and just a quick thing i\'d also like to see.

Betting shops.

There is talk of arena fighting and it would be great if you could bet currency on each competitor. You could even have horse races run by NPC horses just to pass the time, or cock fighting and wild boar fighiting. Oh and you can\'t miss out the letting a wild lion tear apart a christian. . . . .ok maybe thats going a little too far.

But what other way is there to blow your hard earned cash?

[Kiva]

Pushing is a great way for a griefer to annoy others. Imagine running through a town, pushing others around just for the fun of it, or pushing some afk person out of town and into the claws of bad monsters where he/she gets killed. Nah, it\'s useless. I think it should just stay the way it is now.

As far as for betting and such, there\'ll most likely be something like that, once proper arenas are implemented.

[Yalzin]

But that would serve the person right for not paying attention and leaving their computer. Or maybe to avoid being pushed to your doom there could be benches where you could sit and not be pushed if you were leaving your computer for any period of time.

My main objection is that it is just so unrealistic and it doesn\'t help the immersive feeling if you can just walk through all the characters. I like to think of the characters of having at least some physical substance if not moral.

[Kiva]

So, you\'re saying that pushing people to death is a good punishment for people who go afk? (toilet visits, phone calls, dinner, ...) Hmm, oh well. That\'s your oppinion, not mine. As for the physical substance... Well, you wont be able to walk through walls like a ghost. I\'d definitely call that substance. And really, I\'d say it\'s more for convenience than anything, that people can walk through eachother. Imagine a marketplace or a popular shop. 100 people buying stuff in a relatively little amount of place. Well, sure that works easily in RL because you can just snake past people and mash your way though, but in PS you can only walk forwards and sideways, so that makes navigation a little more difficult. It\'s not cool to get trapped behind a bunch of people. Then we get back to the pushing thing... Well, if people need to push to get through to where they want, don\'t you think everyone will be pushing eachother around when there are big crowds?

[Yalzin]

Hmm i see your point with the big crowds. But everyone says they want realism, but what is more unrealistic than travelling through other players?? The devs would have to try and avoid places where there might be high densities of poeple, like making marketplaces wide open areas (as they are in real life, because most of us can\'t travel through other people).

And as for the pushing people to their deaths: you\'d only be able to nudge people at hardly any speed at all and it would eb very difficult to direct people.

Also, if there are all these people (or ghosts as they seem to resemble more) in a market place and they can all float through eachother, how are the merchants going to know which player to serve when they all come up to them simultaneously? To be honest i\'d get very confused.

[hook]

*imagines how much fun Kran will have bumping into dwarves and klyros*

[XpYtZ]

Good point and counter point but I have seen it done and it doesn?t work out to well.
Experience A) I wandered into a random shop and while conversing with the shopkeeper about a quest and some new armor I was purchasing I became entrapped by the other characters entering the room. In desperation to leave I asked them to step aside. After waiting about forever I tried to jump over them all only to find that you can?t jump as high as another character. Leaving me stuck until enough characters finished their business for me to escape. However some of those characters were blocked by the ones behind them?It was extremely frustrating and I had to commit suicide to escape. (Only lost 10% of my exp over it though.) oh and the Round time on that was about an hour!

Experience B) I was standing around in a ?safety zone? in a dungeon and another character came and used the Grab/Push command to move me into the normal area. When I returned from the bathroom to my utter shock and amassment I was the dinner feast of three large spiders and a hungry cave lion. Now some might argue that I should have signed out before going to the lavatory or that I was careless in my character placement (to close to the end of the safety zone) but either way it still sucked to die and would not have happened without the command which was necessitated by the implementation of ?block? characters.

Aside from these two points it is actually easier ?now this is just something I read so no flaming?Corrections are nice though.- on a render engine when character can pass through each other. While I am all for realism (I like to hit people and see them break things as they fall, slowly becoming scraped or bruised in the process.) I think that at this point it wont work. Not that it?s a bad idea outright, just wont work.
My Humble Opinion

[Yalzin]

You have obviously had some bad experiences in another game, but there is no reason why we should not try and go one step further and make solid characters work in this one. Maybe \"transport spells\" should be available so if you do get stuck in such a place that you are blocked by other people and have no way of escape you could use this spell to transport to another place without sacrificing anything by quitting or respawning. But I think everyone would agree that these occurances would be rare and so you would only need a couple of spells in your inventory for emergencies.

I know its almost certainly easier to program characters to not react to one anothers presence, but isn\'t it much better if they do?

Im not sure about the \"safe zones\". It could be made easy for everyone by clicking a button that would automatically guide your player to the nearest one (a bar or seating area) so that there is no confusion about whether your player is safe from those dangerous \"player pushers\" who apparents roam MMORPG\'s. That way you wouldn\'t need to wet yourself whilst finding a safe place when you\'re desperate for a piss

[Mordaan]

or pushing some afk person out of town and into the claws of bad monsters where he/she gets killed.

Here\'s an idea I would like to see...there should be some note if a player is afk.  That is, if you know you are going afk you can enter an afk command and it would be noted in your label, or the label could be in italics or something.  That way, rather than wasting time and talking to someone only to guess  they are afk, it would be obvious.  Of course, you would still have to remember to declare yourself as afk.

One step further, it could be automatic after a certain period of inactivity with your client, like msn saying your \"away\".  And it could be automatically cancelled once you move.

As it relates to the topic, it could be made that someone tagged as afk could not be pushed.

(maybe this concept has been discussed before, I haven\'t seen anything)

[Yalzin]

Originally posted by Mordaan

As it relates to the topic, it could be made that someone tagged as afk could not be pushed.

But this would just defeat the point of being able to push players in the first place. What if a player tagged themselves afk in a doorway? No-one would be able to get past. No, a better solution would be to set a time limit like you said and after that time they are displayed as afk and a path is automatically followed to the nearest \"safe zone\". Also to speed up the process you could type a command that would automatically set the person as afk if they did not respond (e.g. if they were blocking your way).

[Zephyrus]

You can push in a game called neocron - it works amazingly well. [/end arguement]

[John_Thazer]

You just have to be able to push people around...how about...you won\'t be able to push people out of \"Safe Zones\"...

[Yalzin]

Yeh thats the whole idea. Hence the name \"safe zones\". That way people could sit and not worry about being pushed around, and this could also be used as a way of regaining health etc over time.

[DepthBlade]

Argh no pushing please, that would be brutal imagine you are playing some sort of instrument in town that you just bought and your playing a nice song and all of a sudden, Yalzin comes over and decks you! I would definately have it out for you then Yalzin