Locking classes/races

Deider · Post by **Deider** » Sat May 14, 2005 4:17 pm

I know that PrCs can be locked, since it's done on Avlis. But what about the base classes? And how about races?

Say I wanted to build a server called Gnomeworld, where the only race you could choose to play is gnome. And say I wanted there to be no barbarians, for some reason related to the world background. Is this possible?

Curois · Post by **Curois** » Sat May 14, 2005 4:35 pm

I know that JollyOrcs world, Catara, has a quota system in place, where your char is rejected upon creation or entering the world, if there are already too many of that particular race/class. So I would guess that it is possible.

Fifty · Post by **Fifty** » Sat May 14, 2005 4:36 pm

I have heard of worlds where this is done, so it is possible, but I have no idea how.

Kinarr · Post by **Kinarr** » Sat May 14, 2005 5:10 pm

The simplest solution is through scripting. If they create a dissallowed race on character creation, then boot them in OnClientEnter. Use OnPlayerLevelUp to check what class they have selected, then delevel them if they have chosen a forbidden class.

It's also possible to do this with a hak, instead. The gui panel for race selection during character creation can be edited so that only the races you want are available to be selected. Then classes.2da can be edited for any class you want to disable by setting whether or not it is a player class.

Sindol · Post by **Sindol** » Sun May 15, 2005 1:08 pm

On Catara you enter in an OOC area (like the start tent) where you can talk to an NPC to register your character.
- If you don't register, you can't leave the area.
- If there's no "slots" free for either your race or class, you can't register that character.
- During play, even if you're registered, if there's no slots free for your selected level-up class you can't level up in that class.
- Slots are generated based on the ratio restricted vs. non-restricted class/race types. For example: For every 20 non-magic-user characters one wizard slot opens up. Another one: For every 10 humans played, one elf can be created.

We don't do this in the OnClientEnter btw, but in the OnLevelUp and OnTransitionClick (not sure that's the name) for the exit door of the start area. That's because Catara is intending to link up to CoPaP at some time in the future and we don't want players portalling in to register before being able to play. That way we can also track native vs non-native ratio effectively.

Post by **Nighthawk4** » Sun May 15, 2005 2:18 pm

Doesn't that leave the Players' Servervaults full of characters they cannot use? Must be a pain for the Players. Also, it seems a bit harse, letting them go through all of the decision-making process of character creation - only to find the character is not allowed.

If it can be made so the Race or Class is greyed out or not offered - like our PrC - that would seem a much more user-friendly way of doing this.

There is no point in just posting details of Races and Classes which are not allowed - the Players never read the damn rules anyway.

Post by **tindertwiggy** » Sun May 15, 2005 9:13 pm

So could I make 20 human characters, then make my elven wizard?

loki70 · Post by **loki70** » Mon May 16, 2005 5:38 am

tindertwiggy wrote:So could I make 20 human characters, then make my elven wizard?

In order for the system to work, without any major exploits like this, the players would have to be given limited vaults, big enough for a small number of characters. That would truly limit the number of Elven mages on Catara, as opposed to spamming the server vault with waste characters, then rolling the one you really want.

Gairus · Post by **Gairus** » Mon May 16, 2005 6:14 am

You would have to register all 20 and you would look AWFULLY bad on a database check.

Probably ban-worth bad

loki70 · Post by **loki70** » Mon May 16, 2005 6:30 am

Gairus wrote:You would have to register all 20 and you would look AWFULLY bad on a database check.

Probably ban-worth bad

Unfortunately, if the world gets big enough and the player base is large enough, there won't be enough staff to monitor the DB thoroughly enough. And then there are people like NH4, who might actually PLAY 20 someodd characters, depending on their mood. Much easier to do a blanket policy that limits a person to 3 in the vault at a time. If you happen to get a mage type, great. Or if you are one of the lucky few who gets to be an elf, cool. But there are a lot of people that actually like playing humans, and even more that love halflings, so it shouldn't be that big an issue. That and it limits the lag cause by high graphics spells, summons, and glowy sticks.

Sindol · Post by **Sindol** » Mon May 16, 2005 10:27 am

Nighthawk4 wrote:Doesn't that leave the Players' Servervaults full of characters they cannot use? Must be a pain for the Players. Also, it seems a bit harse, letting them go through all of the decision-making process of character creation - only to find the character is not allowed.

If it can be made so the Race or Class is greyed out or not offered - like our PrC - that would seem a much more user-friendly way of doing this.

There is no point in just posting details of Races and Classes which are not allowed - the Players never read the damn rules anyway.

The last line sums it up really. If they don't want to be bother with reading the info on the player information boards (which is really not a whole lot for catara atm) then, yes they're going to lose even more time recreating their character upon finding there's no slots free. Sucks to be hasty.

Oh, and we do clean (and manually unregister) characters that are no longer of interest to play. In the future there will hopefully be some automated system to do this, but at the moment with Catara still relatively small and in beta (open to CoPaP) we can easily manage those requests.

tindertwiggy wrote: So could I make 20 human characters, then make my elven wizard?

Yep, but you'd find a nice mail or PM from an administrator in your box with a request not to do that again. Plus an empty servervault of course. All registered characters show up in the DBase, so it's dead easy to query how many characters one player has and how many have zero (or very low) XP. Remember how Avlis did the same thing to get rid of the mule characters? Not that hard at all to track.