[Anti-Griefing Suggestion] Force item-drop for important one-time item spawns upon player disconnect

[Quady14]

There have been reports of players joining a server, grabbing up Chester's Eyebone and disconnecting never to be seen again and leaving Chester masterless and left to wander randomly for eternity. If we should see content such as the Teleportato or Glommer's flower implemented, they face the same danger, both from intentional griefing and from players accidentally forgetting to drop these items before server disconnect or otherwise disconnecting at an inopportune time.

For any of these cases I believe forcing certain items to be checked in your inventory and dropped as you disconnect from the server would be an effective and valuable feature to make sure the items meant to remain within the world stay within the world. The same concept should apply in most cases for lockable chests if we see those implemented later on. We don't want to be stuck without a teleportato piece because the guy who locked the chest it's kept safe in is offline at the time (though that calls into question if it's a bad idea to move to a new world when some players haven't had time to decide if they want to move on or not, perhaps activating the teleportato should begin a set timer for at least a couple hours so some people can jump on and scavenge anything they'd like to bring to the next world with them).

I realize this means nobody will be able to have permanent ownership over item-bound pets (barring Abigail, who should despawn with Wendy when a Wendy player disconnects) but this may be advantageous, since there has been a lot of past discussion about ownership of pet creatures in DST. Should item-drop for these particular items be implemented it will at least keep those characters engrained as part of the world and prevent one person hogging them over multiple sessions.

[Ridley]

If someone picks up the eyebone and purposely shuts down their game through task manager, would the game be able to check for the eyebone? Maybe the game should check to see if Chester is missing his eyebone, and spawn one at his position. When caves roll about, it might need a few more lines of code though. Anyone who joins with a eyebone gets it replaced with the eyebone ash.

[Quady14]

I guess in sudden cases like a crash or alt+f4 it may be difficult to force it out of the players inventory... Maybe when joining the server next time the eye bone or other important item turns to ash, and as the crash occurs, as soon as the game detects that item's absence from the game world as well as any player inventories, it'll spawn a new one either in its original location, (especially for set piece items like teleportato pieces)close to its last known location where the player carrying it crashed out, or just some new random location.

[rezecib]

I don't think crashes/alt+f4 are any different from the player just disconnecting for this purpose. Either way, what happens is at some point the server figures out the player is no longer connected, and puts their player data into storage. So there should definitely be a window there to drop the eyebone.

[j0e376]

It is possible to spawn a new eyebone with the console and have the chester follow you. But yes, disconnecting with the eyebone is a problem.

[KenzieAudacious]

I definitely love this suggestion. My laptop has been having battery issues and has been shutting off semi-randomly. I haven't left a world without an eye-bone so far, but I'm definitely worried about it happening. I wouldn't want to do that to someone unintentionally or have someone do it to me in maliciousness.

[rezecib]

It is possible to spawn a new eyebone with the console and have the chester follow you. But yes, disconnecting with the eyebone is a problem.

 

Really? Times that I've attempted that previously have not worked (chester kept wandering randomly).

[The Letter W]

I like this solution, actually. Great suggestion.

[j0e376]

Really? Times that I've attempted that previously have not worked (chester kept wandering randomly).

You have to be the host. And yes, it did work.

[tenhags]

Any player who dies or disconnects for any reason should drop everything, like it does on death in the single player game. If it was a crash, then let that player reconnect to the server and start right where they died. Their location on that server could be stored locally on their own system. If no other players picked up their things, they can collect them when they reconnect. The server itself has not lost anything. This totally eliminates grief by removing items from the server. Items should not be transferrable across worlds anyway. This might also handle players who evade PVP through disconnect by putting them back where they were rather than a safe fixed or random location after. I would only store the location for a disconnect though. The server does not need to store the players location, just the items and continue as normal with the player gone.

 

I agree that unique or limited rare items should respawn (random preferred or repeat location) if destroyed in any way.

[Hellkitty]

Similar discussion here: http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/42756-leave-your-stuff-before-quit/

 

As I said in the above link already. I do agree with eye-bone being forced to drop, so it can be shared and used for whoever remains on the server.

 

I don't agree with other farm-able items being force dropped.  It removes incentive to even continue to play on that server, at least for me. If I have to start over I might as well start somewhere new. (If I have a lot of something I make sure to give what I don't need, for others to use. As a personal choice.)

Just my opinion.

If someone wants to somehow make it a mod or something, so if the host decides that is what they want, they are more than welcome to do so.

 

Edit: I think it's great to see people just being nice on their own, rather than forcing them to do so.