CLOK BBS

Just thought that it probably shouldn't be too unreasonable to wear a lantern attached to a belt loop or similar. If you're wearing leather or heavier armor, it probably wouldn't even generate enough heat to cause discomfort against your leg/hips

I have...horrible horrible images...

This has been requested, and denied, quite a few times. Don't get your hopes up. Sorry.

Having a lantern or candle attached to a character's helmet or person, handcart, or wagon is one of a list of A.W.T.'s
(Arbitrarily Withheld Technologies) that CLOK players currently have to suffer through.

A.W.T. have in common the fact that there is no credible reason a player should not be able to avail themselves of said technologies when much higher technologies exist in-game. One can only surmise that such an attached light is withheld for the sole purpose of giving an advantage to one guild, in this case, the Elemancer with his Mage Candle.

Other frustrating A.W.T.'s in CLOK include Scales & Balances, barding (Horse armor) for sale to the general public, smoking pipes and tobacco, cookbooks, Sheds and garages as part of player's houses, shopkeepers who conceal what they have in store to sell you when you hold an item in each hand, and undergarments other than socks.

Players have to do an exercise in suspending disbelief when dealing with their lack of these A.W.T.'s.

Kent wrote:Having a lantern or candle attached to a character's helmet or person, handcart, or wagon is one of a list of A.W.T.'s
(Arbitrarily Withheld Technologies) that CLOK players currently have to suffer through.

A.W.T. have in common the fact that there is no credible reason a player should not be able to avail themselves of said technologies when much higher technologies exist in-game. One can only surmise that such an attached light is withheld for the sole purpose of giving an advantage to one guild, in this case, the Elemancer with his Mage Candle.

Other frustrating A.W.T.'s in CLOK include Scales & Balances, barding (Horse armor) for sale to the general public, smoking pipes and tobacco, cookbooks, Sheds and garages as part of player's houses, shopkeepers who conceal what they have in store to sell you when you hold an item in each hand, and undergarments other than socks.

Players have to do an exercise in suspending disbelief when dealing with their lack of these A.W.T.'s.

Kent, you seem exceedingly unhappy lately.

Sorry the game isn't meeting your expectations. Hope you can find it in your heart to stick around.

Wearable lanterns might become the latest addition to the Never List. Any way you slice it, I just can't see how it'd not be horribly impractical. Even granting the "my armor protects me from the heat" thing, I imagine running around, mining, fighting, etc. with a lantern attached to your belt (or anywhere else) is not going to be a good idea. At the very least, it's going to break real quick.

Kent wrote:A.W.T.s

We have lots of reasons for withholding things or making them more exclusive even if the world in general is capable of producing them.
Super Duper Pooper Scooper Biggest Reason Of Them All 1: You're in the Lost Lands. Resources and labor are relatively scarce. Specialized knowledge and techniques are scarce. Schematics are scarce. Specialized tools are scarce. Those who DO have these things tend to jealously guard them for various reasons, including but not limited to:
- they enjoy the benefits of having a monopoly
- they don't want to give away their technologies/tools to those they don't trust or whom could be potential enemies
- they don't have a lot of them to give away
- they know how to do it, but that doesn't necessarily mean they know how to teach it (or want to take the time to apprentice someone)
- they just like being the ones with rare things because they're selfish and jealous
2. It balances out some game/reality differences. In CLOK you can, from scratch, save up and buy a decent house in a week (or less). In reality I think we're well aware how long and difficult a road it is to save up for a home - some people never manage it. Knights were a big deal back in the day in no small part because their weapons and armor were super expensive, and the vast majority of people didn't have the means to acquire them. ("But that was back in the dark ages when conditions were terrible and - oh wait, the Lost Lands is worse.") So when it comes to things that were relatively rare in the real world due to monetary reasons, we sometimes opt to make them rare and exclusive in other ways in CLOK, like only making them available to certain organizations. Why keep some things "arbitrarily" rarer? See number 3 below.
3. Some things we prefer to keep rarer and more special. In CLOK we like to allow people to do a lot and keep lots of doors open, but sometimes this leads people to believe that they are entitled to have anything and everything that anyone else has access to. I maintain that letting everyone do and have everything that anyone else does and has would really diminish the game. You're free to disagree, but I wouldn't like a game like that, and then I would wonder why I was even still working on a game I didn't like, and then I would shut it down.

Kent's Gripe List wrote:Scales & Balances

- I think it's safe to say that accurate scales aren't something anyone in the Lost Lands can make on their own in their basement. There's probably not a whole bunch of them being made, and I could be wrong, but I don't see there being a huge market for the things.
- A scale being able to weigh anything of significant size wouldn't be mobile anyway, and I get the feeling you'd be pretty cheesed off that you would be so greatly inconvenienced to not be able to carry it around with you.
- All that said, are we especially against scales? I wasn't aware, although I may have said as much in the past. Probably mainly because of the above reason - people aren't going to be able to carry large enough scales around to weigh their armor or their backpacks or pumpkins.

Kent's Gripe List wrote:barding (Horse armor) for sale to the general public

Not only is it a specialized craft, but it requires a specially trained horse, which is the greater reason it's so exclusive. Now I'm not an equestrian by any stretch of the word, but my hunch is that you can't just take a horse, throw some heavy and constricting metal armor on it, and now have a Horse Plus Now It's Armored And It Can Totally Operate As Normal Despite This Significant Change In Its Weight, Balance, Attire, Scope of Vision, and Comfort, Now Let's Go Kick Some Kiester, Bessie. Armored horses aren't a big thing in the Lost Lands, and never have been. It's a Viali thing, and as many Templar are Viali and the Viali tend to trust and even revere Templar, the Lost Lands Templar are fortunate enough to have access to A) smiths capable of forging horse armor and B) horse trainers capable of training warhorses to wear and operate effectively with it.

Kent's Gripe List wrote:smoking pipes and tobacco

I missed the part where we said we were intentionally keeping this from people. I do recall saying we thought it'd be cool to have in the game but was simply low priority as far as implementation.

Kent's Gripe List wrote:cookbooks

I also missed the part where we said we refused to let anyone have a cookbook or that they don't exist in the Lost Lands.

Kent's Gripe List wrote:Sheds and garages as part of player's houses

Some houses have them, most don't. I think we've sufficiently been over the whole "there's not a lot of room available in towns and the buildings are all packed real close together, so you can't just ask someone to throw one onto your house" thing.
Another reason? People already packrat like crazy and we want to limit that, because it can be detrimental to game performance. "Well that's cause your code sucks!" Yup. I'm not happy about it, either.

Kent's Gripe List wrote:shopkeepers who conceal what they have in store to sell you when you hold an item in each hand

Whuh? How is this a withheld technology? I never even knew that this was a concern until now. I'd normally be inclined to fix something like this as soon as it was brought to my attention as it'd be quite simple to do, but your attitude isn't warming me up to doing anything about it at the moment. It sounds to me like we've moved from A.W.T.s to your own personal "these are things that bug me because they don't work the way I want them to" list, also known as T.A.T.T.B.M.B.T.D.W.T.W.I.W.T.T.s.

Kent's Gripe List wrote:and undergarments other than socks.

I know the playerbase is really suffering from this, and it's hard to slog through the day without mechanics to back up the idea that your character wears underwear. I get upset about it daily, knowing that I can't type "remove briefs" and have that pair of underwear in my hands to do what I will with. It also pisses me off that we can't mechanically do our laundry or have a command to do my business in water closets. But I have hope, because our players are strong-willed and hearty, and they will weather this storm as they have so many others.

FYI, you forgot about loincloths. Acarin will back me up on this.

I'm happy to make undergarments if there's demand for them. Again, though - super low priority.

P.S. http://clok.contrarium.net/img/underwear.png

(For VI readers and people who don't like to click on image links: The linked image is a screenshot of a portion of my to-do list, and circled in red is the entry "underwear")

It's been on the to-do list!

I don't want to get giant blocks of smite thrown at me, but.... I would like to point out that wearable light sources are actually available as a guild-specific thing already...

Fayne wrote:I don't want to get giant blocks of smite thrown at me, but.... I would like to point out that wearable light sources are actually available as a guild-specific thing already...

But those aren't lanterns.

True. Could we possibly see these available elsewhere, or something similar? Or at the very least, let Udemi have something, we're defenseless if we have to carry a lightsource, and we frequently do.

No.

Did you know that torches count as hafted weapons? Handaxe + torch is perfect for spelunking.

Rias wrote:

Kent's Gripe List wrote:shopkeepers who conceal what they have in store to sell you when you hold an item in each hand

I never even knew that this was a concern until now. I'd normally be inclined to fix something like this as soon as it was brought to my attention as it'd be quite simple to do, but your attitude isn't warming me up to doing anything about it at the moment.

This request was made in a proper, polite, and professional manner two years ago, and still it was turned down and then forgotten about.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1949&p=10213&hilit=hands#p10213

It was also brought up since then on chat when I knew some GM's were listening in, the only other player input was that they agreed with me. Still, no dice.

Rias wrote:

Kent's Gripe List wrote:smoking pipes and tobacco

I missed the part where we said we were intentionally keeping this from people. I do recall saying we thought it'd be cool to have in the game but was simply low priority as far as implementation.

I didn't miss this part. Over a year ago, there was a customize item event where we could bring an item with a request, I brought either a stick or small branch, and requested it be restrung as a large briar pipe. My intention was to have a mere prop (along the lines of a bedroll...looks cool but does nothing) that I could carry around town in one hand with a walking stick in the other hand. I was told by the GM that I was not going to have that and had to choose a different item to be customized into something else.

An assortment of images pertaining to the initial post topic follows here:









See also http://www.ramshornstudio.com/miners_lamps.htm

How about this?



Or this?

An overlooked or forgotten feature request having to do with an OOC aspect of the ordering system is not an arbitrarily-withheld technology. You seem to make a game of taking obvious OOC subjects and trying to somehow apply them in-character, oftentimes going so far as making comments about them via ESP. Please cut it out. It's not going to make us more sympathetic to your not getting your feature requests fulfilled or bugs fixed, it's going to do the opposite.

Regarding your pipe: GMs are free to choose what they will and won't do with their mechants for reasons both IC and OOC. That you had a personal request for a merchant to make you something turned down does not mean said thing is a taboo and/or intentionally withheld from the game world, smoking pipes or otherwise.

Regarding your candle-hats, you may consider that a true A.W.T. and move on.

Kent wrote:Over a year ago, there was a customize item event where we could bring an item with a request, I brought either a stick or small branch, and requested it be restrung as a large briar pipe. My intention was to have a mere prop (along the lines of a bedroll...looks cool but does nothing) that I could carry around town in one hand with a walking stick in the other hand. I was told by the GM that I was not going to have that and had to choose a different item to be customized into something else.

There could be a number of reasons why this wasn't done and is really up the GM running the merchant. Perhaps they thought it would be too radical of a change for a simple restring, changing an item into something completely different. Or perhaps they thought if they made a smoking pipe that Rias or I would have to code up a smoking mechanic and didn't want to burden us with extra work when we had whatever else on our plates. Just because something doesn't get approved for an item alteration doesn't mean it's flat out not allowed.

I highly suggest posting requests such as this on the BBS instead of waiting over a year and then bringing it up a year later as a "The GMs never do anything" complaint, which is what I'm kinda viewing this thread as.

I love prop items. Just recently I had Locke craft a very special one for someone through the Artisan Purchase Order system. Not sure if they've noticed it yet. :-)

Jaster wrote:How about this?

I now need one of those.

I think it'd be interesting to add the hat-candles to the game, with some balancing features. Such as requiring hats to be cleaned afterwards, the potential to damage the hat through the flame, a random chance for the hat-candle to go out when moving from room to room, increased accuracy against the target in the dark since they have a nice light up there for everyone to see, and of course damage to the hat's appearance if a hat isn't cleaned after the wax has dribbled onto it.

maybe also the chance that you might set yourself on fire, the chance to ignite any coal or other combustibles you find, and a chance that any gas leaks will explode in your face instead of choking you

There is a situation concerning light mechanics that I think is a legitimate concern because it broke as an unintended consequence of another quite reasonable change, but I don't even want to bring it up because Kent complains so much about such stupid, petty crap that I don't want my concern to be seen in the same zip code as his.

Jirato wrote:I love prop items. Just recently I had Locke craft a very special one for someone through the Artisan Purchase Order system. Not sure if they've noticed it yet. :-)

I picked it up today! I give the Western Coalition 5 out of 5 stars, would order from them again! That made my day.