Hoarding

There is this ability I have been wondering about "hoarding", so why is this ability able to be bought in deathmatch but not in invasion gametypes? Is it possible to enable this ability for invasion gametypes as well especially since engineers and medics cant run over the artifacts and merely pick them up. WM and AM's have the luxury of doing that and possibly even stealing artifacts that medics or engineers are already standing on just waiting to get the artifact they desire.

Elite wrote:

There is this ability I have been wondering about "hoarding", so why is this ability able to be bought in deathmatch but not in invasion gametypes? Is it possible to enable this ability for invasion gametypes as well especially since engineers and medics cant run over the artifacts and merely pick them up. WM and AM's have the luxury of doing that and possibly even stealing artifacts that medics or engineers are already standing on just waiting to get the artifact they desire.

I'm a bit confused as to why actually picking up these artifacts was disabled when they're in their pickup state. Doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me unless the goal was to enforce some kind of class exclusivity. Even if that's the case, given WMs can apparently also pick them up freely, and that AMs should already have all those items and therefore gain pretty much nothing... Not to mention that all classes can pick these items up when they aren't in the Pickup state, the whole setup is puzzling at best.

As for Hoarding itself, presumably it was disabled because it's the type of skill that is only useful for PvP play. In a cooperative gametype its sole purpose would be to annoy other players?

I remember a discussion some place and some when way back where there was contemplation about an ability which would allow someone such as a AM to have **multiple** copies of an artifiact, so that instead of it just disappearing, it could be picked up and tossed to someone at a later date. With something like this, I think it would be great in Invasion, as well as the team vs. team games such as TDM or CTF. I have lost count of the number of times I have wanted to have a teammate pick up that dropped item, but it vanished between the time it was dropped and the time that anyone could get there.

Regarding what you mentioned Spacey, I think that's a pretty feasible idea. (Although, in lower waves, it may already be possible to achieve this by tossing one, picking up the other, etc.)

The two issues I have are:

It still creates a "I can use this to annoy other players intentionally" feature, because there's no guarantee that the person who picks up a second copy of an item is actually going to pass it out.

Second, even if the player does pass it out, the social dynamics of the thing means that certain players are going to be getting more benefit from this than others. I'm not trying to point any fingers here but I know that there is a natural tendency for cliquish behavior among players. At least in Invasion, I think it's best to try and mitigate the impact of that where possible. Everyone is on the same team, after all.

So perhaps instead of "Can pickup multiple copies of the same artifact" we could amend the idea to, "If you already have a copy of the artifact pickup you touched, the item's lifespan gets refreshed for 30/60/whatever seconds."

This would make it so that you can keep the items around longer, but you can't actually hoard them. You also can't save it only for your best friend, you save it for whoever on your team gets there first.

One note is that in order to do this without opening up potential for abuse is artifact pickups would have to allow pickups for all characters in their pickup state (otherwise there's another PvP annoyance aspect with refreshing the item's lifespan).

Well, on the pick it up but don't pass it out part... if you think about it, if I as a player have a MWM and walk over another one, it is picked up immediately with no delay, but lost because I already have one. The main exception is that if a LA does not have a summon artifact, they actually have to crouch over it until it goes to disappear to pick it up... that 3+ artifact rule.

Now, on the social dynamics, that exists already. Deny it as we might, to some degree we favor certain players vs. others when it comes to healing, maxing, handing out weapons, or what ever. For example, I will almost certainly favor one of the older time DC players over some young obnoxious kid who constantly chat spams, etc.

Finally, the annoying bit is there regardless... it just would change some.

Spacey wrote:

Well, on the pick it up but don't pass it out part... if you think about it, if I as a player have a MWM and walk over another one, it is picked up immediately with no delay, but lost because I already have one. The main exception is that if a LA does not have a summon artifact, they actually have to crouch over it until it goes to disappear to pick it up... that 3+ artifact rule.

You're right for DC. When I was thinking of potential ways to bug other people via this I was thinking along the lines of the DW Monster Mash servers, where you currently cannot destroy artifact pickups by running over them when you already have that item in your inventory. (Well, this is true for some of them anyway, but eventually all of them).

Spacey wrote:

Now, on the social dynamics, that exists already. Deny it as we might, to some degree we favor certain players vs. others when it comes to healing, maxing, handing out weapons, or what ever. For example, I will almost certainly favor one of the older time DC players over some young obnoxious kid who constantly chat spams, etc.

Yep, and I won't deny that either. But the mechanic I proposed is theoretically unbiased, or at least less biased in a certain way. My major worry for introducing more artifacts into the game is the way that certain high level characters seem to accumulate prestige and lower level players try to ingratiate themselves to them. But this could just be a social dynamic on Monster Mash where is an impossible gap between good high level players and most low level players.