Will MvP be brought back during Velious?

[fuji]

I may be off a detail or two about this, but does anyone remember that short period of time when you could play as a low level Monster during the Velious era? Is that going to be brought back sometime during the expansion? I just remember it being really fun.

[nerfed]

I don't think that ever made it to live. It was on the test server for awhile though.

[fuji]

I don't think that ever made it to live. It was on the test server for awhile though.

You are correct sir. Did you ever play it?

[Hrist]

that is incorrect, for a period of like a day or so on Vallon Zek a little button with a M was on the character select screen allowing you to play as a lowbie monster. This quickly got removed duo to the massive amount of griefing low lvl players got from uber decaying skeletons jousting them to death.

[fuji]

that is incorrect, for a period of like a day or so on Vallon Zek a little button with a M was on the character select screen allowing you to play as a lowbie monster. This quickly got removed duo to the massive amount of griefing low lvl players got from uber decaying skeletons jousting them to death.

lols. Wish there was a vid of it.

[Humerox]

I seem to remember it making it to live also...for a VERY short period of time, lol. Project M, I think it was.

Don't think the devs want to fool with that though; it's like a game within a game, and I imagine the coding wouldn't be worth the effort.

[dallammarr]

that is incorrect, for a period of like a day or so on Vallon Zek a little button with a M was on the character select screen allowing you to play as a lowbie monster. This quickly got removed duo to the massive amount of griefing low lvl players got from uber decaying skeletons jousting them to death.

lame they removed it but it was known as "Project M" Came out around the same time as luclin or after, on pvp servers only. At the char select screen there was a button that said "monster" you click it and you were randomly spawned in a newbie/lowbie zone as a mob. I loved it when I was a caster mob, Id mem all the spells and go to town lol. You couldnt use any of the chats, but you could kill other NPC's and gain xp lolz. Once you were killed it kicked you back to the char select screen where you could hit Monter again and have some more fun if you wanted. Dont think we will see it here though but would definately be fun.

Heres an article on Monster Missions which replaced Project M, and what happened to Project M... http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/news_article.vm?id=50029&month=092005

[Estu]

Nilbog's stated that he loved Project M (just like everyone, myself included, seemed to) and would like to implement it some time, but not to hold your breath since there are a ton of other things to do that have bigger priority (e.g. bug fixes, Kunark, Velious, etc.).

[guineapig]

Are there any Emu servers out there where Project M (or something similar) is enabled?

[Bigcountry23]

I had made a post about this very topic last october on the EQEMU boards hoping to inspire somone with more back end knowlege to create such a server. No luck so far.

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=29810

[Mountaineer]

Yeah I remember briefly playing a monster on live. Think I was a fire beetle a couple times, and once I think I was a large rattlesnake. I went around KoS lol. Killing quite a few unsuspecting people! lol

[Omnimorph]

MvP was certainly an interesting idea :D It had a novelty feel for a little while. There was something great about stalking newbies... hiding behind cacti and pouncing on them.

[Uthgaard]

Coding it in aside, this would be pretty easy to manually do on a case by case basis in game.

Have someone create a fresh level 1.
Nuke all of the items in their inventory.
#name a_fire_beetle001 (numbers work in pc names just like npc names, they dont display so you could have an army of whatever NPC with the same name)
/be [appropriate syntax for the mob]
#level whatever level
#cast appropriate undispellable gm event buff to tweak stats to match the mob
#setallskill to match the level
Give them a poof-on-death gm event weapon/armor so they can actually hit people

If I get permission to do something like this, I'd be willing to do this once a week or so.

Here were the original patch notes:
http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20011107.html

[Lill-Leif]

Sounds like something you could implement after Velious been around for a while? If you are taking the how-eq-could-have-been-without-Luclin-path.

[Gorgetrapper]

If you can choose where you spawn as one of the NPCs... it seems abusable to the point of getting a guild together to lock down a newbie zone so noone can fight there etc.

[maximum]

I have been trying to find archival footage/accounts of the MvP (Mob play) feature. I remember it didn't last long... maybe a week?

Anyway, I got to play as a goblin in Butcherblock... to be killed by a newbie.

[Bigcountry23]

It lasted a few months on Test, when it was brought to the PVP servers on live it was gone in a week.

[Reiker]

Coding it in aside, this would be pretty easy to manually do on a case by case basis in game.

Have someone create a fresh level 1.
Nuke all of the items in their inventory.
#name a_fire_beetle001 (numbers work in pc names just like npc names, they dont display so you could have an army of whatever NPC with the same name)
/be [appropriate syntax for the mob]
#level whatever level
#cast appropriate undispellable gm event buff to tweak stats to match the mob
#setallskill to match the level
Give them a poof-on-death gm event weapon/armor so they can actually hit people

If I get permission to do something like this, I'd be willing to do this once a week or so.

Here were the original patch notes:
http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20011107.html

This kind of ruins the fun of the randomness of where you start and what kind of mob you spawn as, though. You'd need to have an NPC that runs a similar script (randomly picks which newbie area you'll start in, gives you illusion, debuff, other stuff). The problem with this is the illusion will need to be given in the zone your monster is in. So possibly an invisible NPC in each "m zone" that somehow detects new "m players" and gives them the correct illusion accordingly. Stormhaven had this, only it was an NPC that gave out random illusions (the code for the NPC is available on the eqemu forums). It could be altered to give a specific illusion based on some serverside-flag your character received when you chose to spawn as a monster.

Now, you could just put an npc in each starting area that does all of this (limited only to new level 1 chars) but that would mean a lot of extra non classic NPCs. The only other way I can think to do it is to be based on some non-classic race/class combo. Such as enabling GoD serverside and making all berserkers start in an obscure part of the world next to a player monster granting NPC. Players still won't be able to access GoD zones but I'm not sure what kind of retroactive effect this will have, such as enabling Luclin models (I didn't suggest Vah Shir since that requires the enabling of the Luclin expansion and Luclin models, or Froglok as that requires LoY which enables maps). I've never really played around with server locked expansions. But say for example you start a ogre/troll/barbarian/dwarf berserker, the spawn point is set to the top of Kurn's Tower (impossible to get there by normal means). You hail an npc and receive your alterations, a script randomly assigns you a zone/monster, you're teleported to the appropriate zone, and an invisible npc in that zone detects your arrival, and illusions you accordingly to your server flag.

Seems like too much work to get "right."

Edit: Forgot one important aspect of this. How will you code the pvp portion of this? As far as I know, there's no way for a player to be set as an NPC (could be wrong, just haven't seen it). So the player monster will have a blue PC player name, sort of ruining the surprise that the mob is being controlled by a player. But then how do you allow other players to attack the player monster? You could have the player monster auto-flag PVP, but then the player would also need to be flagged PVP to attack.

[Lucrio40]

I remember when this came to live for a bit. I took a day to try it out. I think the level spread you could spawn as was 1-12. I remember spawning as a Muddite in the Gorge once, and a froglok tad in innothule. Then I got the really fun spawn. A skeleton in Steamfont, level 11. Wiped out a whole group that was camping kobolds nearby and was being a general terror to the whole zone. Some newbie sacrificed themselves and trained a guard on me finally to get me down.

Was good times.

[Messianic]

This is one of those novelty things that would be fun and interesting for about 30 minutes, and then would be incredibly boring and irrelevant.

It could be more fun if expanded, but why create a whole game within a game?

[Uthgaard]

Seems like too much work to get "right."

How will you code the pvp portion of this? As far as I know, there's no way for a player to be set as an NPC (could be wrong, just haven't seen it). So the player monster will have a blue PC player name, sort of ruining the surprise that the mob is being controlled by a player. But then how do you allow other players to attack the player monster? You could have the player monster auto-flag PVP, but then the player would also need to be flagged PVP to attack.

Like I said, coding aside. I was just throwing out the idea that it would be possible to do in-game, manually, just for fun, without implementing an automated process with potential exploits.

To answer your question about the combat, that's all inherent into /be. The target becomes an npc, with the specified model, size, textures, face, clothing, etc. You can even set a level cap, if you choose to. For example, no one over level 10 can come own your fire beetle. They leave a lootable corpse behind just like an NPC, which is why I specifically mentioned nuking all items in inventory and using poof-on-death weaponry.

[stormiejs]

I remember playing this back on the test server. There was a small button on the character select which would start loading you into the game. It would pick a random low level monster and then you would take over it. The highest level creature I got to be was a shaman mob in Kerra Ridge. It was cool to be able to scribe spells, cast them, and have an inventory as an NPC. You were ally with other NPCs so you could not attack them, but you could attack and cast on players. I'm not sure if you actually got experience for killing players, but that would have been funny.

While it was a cool concept, you didn't really get anything to do except jump around, /wave as a skeleton, or other small gimmicks. Who honestly wants to invest into an NPC creature that is going to die in ~10 seconds or a few minutes. On the other hand, who wants to level up on this server against a ton of people griefing lowbies with it? Just look at the R&F forum and try to imagine how it'll work out in this server's community.

Maybe the devs could take a list of volunteers and incorporate this into some sort of GM event, but otherwise it just seems like wasted effort that could go into fixing the server or releasing kunark.

[Estu]

You could indeed gain levels in Project M.

[azeth]

how badass would it be for Project M to give you a .01% chance to spawn as a raid target.

[Bigcountry23]

The best was being a Madman in Oasis. Hanging out in the water near the docks and waiting for somone to Med with like 10% health... hehehe