As we reach the end of the month of January, it’s time to publish our soon-to-be routine devlog update!
First and foremost we instated a game-wide ban on all TOR IP addresses. As none of our users currently log in through TOR, it shouldn’t have a noticeable impact. What it may do, however, is cut back on the occasional trolling escapades we see from time to time. They’re unfun to deal with for Staff and players, so we cut off their ability to do so (at least through TOR).
Early in the month it was noticed that we were missing several help files in the commodities section. These were filled out with information on the various herbs, spices, and plants a citizen of Lithmore might encounter.
The old “help player ” command has been updated to “help character ” to better reflect the purpose of the system. It was never a helpfile on the player, after all – it was a helpfile on the character. I can only hope that someday my muscle memory will stop telling me to type in “help player”!
There is a new toggle on the autolist to allow players to turn new note announcements on or off. The toggle is “autonote.” This was created at player request to enable individual spam-squelching.
Another toggle was added to autolist (“autoliq”) to allow players to monitor when other players have decided to liquidate.
The Prestige System is still a work in progress, but we made some big strides in the programming and bug-testing departments. We know it’s a little frustrating on the player-end right now to not know why or how the rating is populated, but we’re working hard on getting everything in top shape. It shouldn’t be much longer before we can test the last angles – that monthly roll-over is almost here.
One of the main Prestige-related systems solidified this month was the additional methods for nobles and other players to generate points and raise their rankings. Wearing a prestige-granting item is now functional and working, for example, and characters older than 30 gain a point simply for being wizened. A new tithing system was created to ensure that characters who go above and beyond to support the Holy Order will generate Prestige by doing so. All this considered, we’re getting closer and closer to a complete, workable system.
Our long-standing troubles with forage timers have been fixed, tested, and resolved. It turns out the issue was that the system was allowing single uses of forage to take away more than 1/3 of the total foraging capacity, so when a room got its third forage use it knocked the capacity into negative numbers. This was thoroughly tested across a couple weeks to make sure that rooms couldn’t be foraged into the negatives, and that the capacity regenerated normally and on time. Rooms regenerate completely after one In-Character week.
The comments on Gambits have been removed to encourage face to face politicking. Player feedback and Staff consensus agreed that the comment trees were serving no purpose other systems don’t cover better (rumors, for example), and removing the need to make one’s viewpoint on the situation known through roleplay.
The view of Noble Project contributors is now sorted in a meaningful order. The highest contributor is at the top and the lowest is at the bottom. While this doesn’t reveal exactly how much IP was invested into the project per person, it does reveal the big-hitters within context.
Lovers of the 59-character culture will be thrilled to hear that we have at last resolved the messy overflow problem with sheathed axes, maces, bows, polearms, etc. If your weapon is still too long for a standard screen width, enter “sheath primary clear” to reset it.