Shattered Kingdoms

Personally, not a fan of how "hoarding" is handled, and will only bother to think of a way to handle it differently if an admin asks in a PM. Spending extra mental energy on this is useless if it is not on some form of personal level as it is far less likely to get paid to analyze the subject further. (That is my day job now, not doing it for anything less than something I like)

Dobarr was massively "de-hoarded", and removed from a leadership position, because I make the same hours some admins appear to. That is the only salty thing that will be said here, but prove me wrong. I know some admins are very active and I do not mean to sound like I poop on you. You know who you are, no offense is intended, and you are awesome!

I can live with the lost items, but losing leadership without even having access to the forum of the faction I was leading, or the leadership forum, or an email warning of such, or any noticeable warning whatsoever, feels bad. If there is a help file about loosing leadership due to hours, my bad. If attempts to notify me IC were made, sorry, life.

For what it's worth, after getting slapped with the "Hoarder" flag then learning of what it is and how long it lasts after a stupid busy month of work... I won't be logging in for a week, or more. I have next week booked off, planned a bit of SK time, even felt a bit bad about neglecting SK. Now I don't feel bad, just upset, and probably won't be bothered to log in.

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Admins, please don't reply to this post unless it is carefully thought out and 100% Dulrik approved.

Regulars, if you want to add a comment on this specific subject go ahead, but if it is not too much to ask, please keep it brief, and thank you for reading to this point.

New players, please ask questions! Also, thank you for reading to this point!

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When the discouraging red "hoarder" banner goes away, I'll be back in game, for a time, maybe. I'll be lurking here periodically until then.

I’m trying to wrap my head around the whole argument here.
Kyln barely didn’t make 100% hours. I got kicked from leadership and only a few items were lost.
Losing leadership should be a consequence of not making hours. A quick pray or an email to Algorab could get you leadership again fairly quickly. I admit that with my old work schedule, I haven’t been the best leader that I could be. Soli kicked [REDACTED] in my absence though. Together we got a decent cabal list. But what are you wanting here? Some sort of of warning system to let you know that you’re going to get hit with the hoarder flag?

When you have the flag, how does it work? Can you not keep -any- items that you pick up?
You should be able to get items under 400 silver value or or 350 silver value. Or something like that.

I would think it would be beneficial to have some sort of echo stating that you’ve made required hours. But that could lead to logging hours until you get the echo and then logging off for the rest of the month. So perhaps the trigger could come when you’ve exceeded hours by 10 or 15 hours. Just a way to be positive that you won’t be dehoarded.
If you don’t hit the “over-achiever echo” then you’re taking a risk and should expect dehoarding.

I believe, and I’m sure that many players agree, that excluding the Trag bug, the dehoard code is fair. Like I said. I lost a few items and lost leadership, but didn’t get the hoarder flag. But that’s fair.

Your post may have been discouraging me from responding, but.... I'm not really staff these days, I'm a regular.

I've been hit by the hoarder flag in similar situations- acquired some good gear one month, and then one slow month the next strips me of all my decent equipment. It's frustrating and disheartening. Without knowing your character's situation, I think I can safely say that Dobarr is probably not the type of character we were targeting when that code was implemented. There is definitely room to improve the system. And I know that's probably little consolation.

Currently, there is one monthly reset that calculates all the data for hours, leadership, hoarding, etc, and the actions are taken at that same time, so there's not really opportunity to warn and notify ahead of time. To my knowledge there's no notifications sent out for Hoarder, for EQ-dehoarding, for leader-flag termination, or for deletion of inactive characters.

FWIW, there is an equivalent for staff members. Staff have different levels and are expected to meet a minimum number of hours of activity to maintain access to admin functions, and failure to meet those hours of activity results in automatic demotion with no warning. For instance, my character of Yed has been demoted down to level 50, and currently exists only as a 600+ year old ghost with no access to any admin commands. If/whenever I return to active participation in the staff, I will have to actively work to "level up" again.

I would like to see some notification upon first login after dehoarding via the monthly reboot.
Just something that says “thieves have finally found you and have stolen some of your belongings. Additionally your [god/goddess or appropriate NPC faction ruler] have stripped you of your position. Prove yourself worthy of such a position in the months to come. Ooc: you do/do not have the hoarder flag.”

I didn’t think Kyln got dehoarded when I checked early in the AM on the first. Just logged in to check real quick. Didn’t notice anything right away. The above idea would help in those regards.

But if we can’t implement some sort of “ding. You met hours!” Echo the. We’ll probably just have to deal with the mystery of “how many hours did I have last month.”

After sleeping on it and examining the help file closer, my opinion has changed a bit.

I no longer really care about the leadership thing, and it does make sense that an absent leader would be stripped of their title.

Here is a quote from 'help hoarder':


Went from fully equipped to naked, maybe because almost all high-level items were equipped and the rest of my stuff was store bought junk. That should be re-worded, because it is 100% false the way it is worded now, and I find it hard to believe this is a bug (and if for some reason it is acknowledged as a bug, I'll eat my hat).

I will keep playing once the hoarder flag goes away, it is completely pointless to play now if I can't hold on to anything useful. Probably make a disposable alt or two to mess around with and hope the disappointment doesn't turn to rage over the next little while. Sure am feeling pretty salty right now (at the game, not the people).

Oh, Trosis, about what I "want" here? I want to make a comment or two and maybe educate others that have not been through this experience, or people that didn't even know that this mechanic exists. I don't care if someone thinks I'm wrong, and I definitely don't care to "discuss" changes to what is a system that is probably working exactly as intended unless solicited by someone who can make any such changes. I'm not trying to take a big ol' steamer on you, sorry if the response to your question comes off as an attack, it is not meant to be. I like how you play, you are very active in the community, no hate for you buddy, just a good question that might help to emphasize my feelings at this point on this subject.

You're all good Yed, it is somewhat nice to learn that Imm's live under similar rules as players, even if it seems a bit odd... well, unless Imm's get paid, then duh, don't work, don't get paid.

I think you should just do what people have done in the past to circumvent the system. Log on, idle, not play the game, rack up hours, log off. I know its morally wrong, but people still do it.

The hoarder flag implementation isn't the very best. From what I've seen its hitting people that are going inactive for a while because they have life stuff to deal with. It also discourages them from coming back when they are hit by it. Its like punishing someone and then after they have learned their lesson, punishing them some more. Losing loot is pretty demoralizing as it is.

A better alternative and a more discreet way to do the same thing would be setting the monthly loot recycle to a biweekly basis. At least to make it more of a thorn in the butt for people to keep loot. Opens the door for new players to get new loot that would normally be unavailable. And if players want to reattain their precious loot every two weeks, then more power to them.

Why? A good scenario would be "Person A" has the best loot in the game. Person A is very active between Jan 1st-Jan10th. Then stops playing for Jan and February to be delooted. Person A doesn't get delooted because he racked up enoug hours. He then gets dehoarded March 1st. 1-2 month to be dehoarded is a very long time to keep an item of fun away from the game. Hoarder flag system flag does nothing to fix this problem. It also shames the person and makes the person feel horrible about having an H Scarlet Letter. And if the book Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a precursor to anything, it is that damnation, frustration of guilt, sin, crime and punishment doesn't promote the mental health of a person. Or in this case, the mental well-being of player to move forward and contribute to SK. I mean the concept of a Scarlet Letter is a cool and all... and poetic when implemented into a game like SK, but doesn't necessarily achieve it's intended purpose of making the game better.

Faction leader status is a position that must be earned and maintained by keeping an active role in the faction. Not have enough hours for being faction leader is unacceptable and will only serve to damage the faction or it's potential to grow. Dobarr was hit here for good reason. It stands to reaso, would you rather have an inactive faction leader or no faction leader at all. My personally choice is no faction leader at all is the better choice because if someone wanted to start something new, they can with an empty faction. Also they dont have to deal with an inactive leader that wants to retain his position because power.

No thanks.


Agreed. Acknowledged with not so many words in my reply to Trosis and Yed.

I think your help file quote is speaking of the Thieves Rule of Six. Which is the hoarding check that takes place at logout. Or at login. Whatever.
But I think that’s referencing the need to give away limited items in your inventory, so you don’t log out with more than 6 limited items.
I haven’t read the help file recently. So it’s my best assumption based on your snippet.

I do think that the concept of 50 days without dehoarding is a tough pill to swallow. You might be onto an issue there. But idk if bi-weekly dehoards are the way to go. If you get the Ephaltius armor, but go on vacation for a week (while you normally log 20+ hours a week) you shouldn’t lose Ephaltius’ armor. That’s a strong investment to be wiped in 2 weeks.

But anyway. My suggestions are not as well-received as I would have hoped. So I digress.

Nobody on staff believes the dehoarding code is without flaw. The best I can do as a builder is try to alleviate it by making adjustments to equipment. I will review the dehoarding logs and see if there is anywhere I can make tweaks that will make hour requirements less onerous for players. What you really want is a code solution, but that is not something I can personally provide, and as I am certain everyone is aware by the dates of the most recent code update posts, Dulrik has extremely limited time to tackle code problems due to constraints imposed by life. This is on our list - front and center, along with a number of other quality of life improvements - but I cannot estimate when it will be addressed.

The way dehoarding works when it comes to equipment is that it is based on the hours a character logs in a month and the level of the items in question. Higher level equipment requires more hours to retain. It is not possible for staff to accurately assess if your character is going to be able to retain a given piece of equipment, because the exact figures are opaque even to us on account of how character hours for equipment retention are computed (as described in 'help hoarding'). 'Help hoarder' gives a figure of 30 minutes per day on average over the course of a month as a good rule of thumb to retain items, and if you mix your time between high traffic and low traffic areas, that is likely to work out. Depending on your MUD client, you may be able to get a precise count of your character's hours over the course of a month to see where your hours fall.

What I can do as a builder is look for equipment that is set at an unnecessarily high level. Equipment has level minimums based on material type and item type. Equipment level also dictates what we as builders can put on items in terms of innate bonuses and scripts. Innate bonuses allow a range of levels, but scripts are more limited. If you want a high level scripted spell on a piece of equipment, the equipment needs to be high level. As an example, the dragonette charm from the Adventurer's Guild in Teron is scripted to periodically cast a cure light spell on the wearer during combat, provided the wearer has completed the dragon quest. The level of this cure light is based on the level of the charm itself, which is why I have set the charm to the maximum level for equipment sold in the Adventurer's Guild shop. If I reduce the level of that item, it will in turn necessitate reducing the effective caster level of that cure light. The same applies to consumables.

But, items without scripts, and especially some of the items from older areas in the game that predate a lot of code changes (including the dehoarding code), are set at needlessly high levels for the material types and bonuses that they have. I will find those items and bring the level down as low as I can so as to bring the monthly hour requirements down to what the active and semi-active members of the current player base are able to attain. Where there is a lack of such equipment, I will create some more. For the different types of equipment, adamantite and energy have the highest minimums, and those items will always require the most hours; I don't have much room to work with there. There is a lot of diamond, water, mithril and other desirable material types already set to the lowest levels I can, and I will try to find more in the game that can be reduced. Before anyone asks, this will have no bearing on the items' ability to be enchanted or consecrated.

What this means for you, the player, is that if you have some elite scripted loot and you are unsure of your hours, that is the stuff you will want to discard first, as that is what you will be least likely to keep. If you have identified your items and you know that some of it was of "near god-like" quality when found, then you know it is set at the maximum level and also has the maximum hourly requirements. Those are also prudent to discard if you want to avoid the possibility of the hoarder flag.

Regarding leadership, I suggest you speak to Algorab about all such matters. He will try to work with you and others in the faction to reach an agreeable solution. Algorab is good people and is going to do his best to keep things running smoothly for all involved. As Yed has indicated, he and others on staff have not been able to put in hours of late, but Algorab and I have. I have been primarily doing building work and he has primarily been doing faction oversight, rules management, and trying to field prayers and questions from players. We are longtime members of this community and are doing our best to keep players engaged and happy because this game really is unique and, at least for us, it is worth stoking the embers. Months or years may go by where Dulrik cannot devote a lot of time to the game, but he always finds his way back eventually and shores up the code to make the needed improvements. It's not perfect, but it's SK and if you've been here a while, you get it. It is what it is.

While not the primary thrust of this conversation, I will add that I generally will try to give people who were close to making the required hours a chance to sort of "show up" before re-assigning leader flags.

If someone loses leadership that actually wants it, they can always send me an e-mail and I'll take a look at it, and I'll try to make a decision that works best for everyone.