Since the subject of rares comes up pretty often, I've been thinking about it, and had an idea.
How about characters are only allowed to hold one rare of each kind? As in, you can only have one sparkling ring, moonstone pendant, etc.
Rares
I don't think that would work unless we had some more "layers" of rares, as in how we currently have rares and uniques. A lot of the more common and low level rares aren't hard to get, as it is.
The main problem with rares, which I don't think everybody is aware of, and hasn't to my knowledge been looked at much, is that characters are only Rare purged when they log in, therefore there are a lot of rares out there sitting in limbo. The best solution I can think of would be to have some sort of autoprocess that runs at the start of each month, so that characters that haven't accumulated enough hours to avoid a rare purge get purged there and then, not the next time they log on. How feasible that is for Malch to code in I don't know.
I don't think that would work unless we had some more "layers" of rares, as in how we currently have rares and uniques. A lot of the more common and low level rares aren't hard to get, as it is.
The main problem with rares, which I don't think everybody is aware of, and hasn't to my knowledge been looked at much, is that characters are only Rare purged when they log in, therefore there are a lot of rares out there sitting in limbo. The best solution I can think of would be to have some sort of autoprocess that runs at the start of each month, so that characters that haven't accumulated enough hours to avoid a rare purge get purged there and then, not the next time they log on. How feasible that is for Malch to code in I don't know.
If its possible, its the best solution. I think less and less are having TDP syndrome and just shelving characters not understanding that the rares remain on the characters until they re log in.
I havent the foggiest about coding, so i dont know if the trigger can be moved from the current login to the actual hour counter for rare purge.
Doesn't sound hard to fix, code wise, since the rare purge is already implemented. Just do the same played-hours check that is done when the char logs on, but instead on all chars, on the first world shift every month. Not an awful lot of new code to write, if one just makes use of the old code we already have.
And oh, the idea itself is great.
if we dident have rares the pk's would be long and boreing. I like doing decent damage.