Personal Attendants as Messengers

[Old Man of UO]

One of the things sorely lacking in the game is a way to communicate with each other while others are not online. A thought that came to mind while reading the FOF is wouldn't it be nice if Personal Attendants could talk to each other (telepathically) so we could send messages to someone else who has one. Let's face it, bulletin boards never worked well.

Have to work out the address thingy, but this would kill two birds with one stone, a real purpose for attendants and a way to leave messages.

 

[Gheed]

I want them to mine for me.

 

[Lynk]

I want mine to follow me around casting greater heal.

 

[MissEcho]

Would it be possible, please, to add some additional functionality to the Personal Attendants?

Feel free to send in some feedback about what you’d like to see, or start a thread on the forums!
-Draconi

You need to be able to add messages that are NOT those in default. When I first heard of the introduction of these I was really excited as I figured I would be able to use them to advertise new things in my shop, new events our player run event group was running. The cupids seem to have the 'code' for allowing player 'text' entry, so this needs to go to attendants.

eg) "Welcome Lord/Lady Smith, check out the new stock on Emporium Jewelry Vendor"

"Welcome Lord/Lady Smith, Scrappers Compendium - Prices reduced on the Emporium scribe vendor!

"Welcome Lord/Lady Smith, EVEvents: Auction on this Sunday, 1pm, check the list on steps"

"Welcome Lord/Lady Smith, Added an A-Z of animals series of runebooks to the Rune Library, row 5!"

"Welcome Lord/Lady Smith, added Runebook on current Live Event for 'Candle of Love' locations, book located on podium at front!"

instead, alas, all I can have is the generic greetings which get pretty old pretty quick and do not impart any useful information.

I would also like to 'park' my attendant in Luna so it can 'advertise' while events are running eg:

"EVE - Casino open now - 8.30-10.30pm, come along for a flutter!"

Obviously the 'spamming' on something like this needs to be 'controlled' so say once every 5 mins it will 'talk' and after 1 hour it will go silent so people can't 'leave' it unattended all day and if the 'owner' logs out the attendant disappears with them. I am sure there are ways to ensure that this isn't abused, but that your attendant can be made to actually be useful.

It would also be nice to actually 'dress' your attendant to reflect a more visual appeal to whatever your attendant is 'doing'. eg) dress it in xmas gear if it is advertising a xmas party, dress it as a shepherd when advertising taming events, dress it as a mage with a spellbook equipped when advertising 'Mage Jewelry' etc. You get the idea.

I unpacked my attendant the first day, took a look at the talking 'options' and repacked it as it was basically 'useless' for anything I had had ideas about in the way I wanted to 'use' them.

The only time I have 'used' an attendant is the 'game' one that lets you roll dice. In some of my player run events when needing participants to 'roll' for place etc this one comes in handy, although that is about 3 times in total since their introduction that I have had a 'need' for this.

 

[Viquire]

I have always wanted Barkeeps and now attendants as well to be able to be dressed in RP form. The best way to be able to do that would be to allow us to dress them as we do with vendors. Why the treatment of physical appearance is so staggeringly different between these types is still baffling to me.

If we need to pay some kind of maintenance fee to make this happen then so be it. More immersion would be worth a nominal cost. I like the cupid style added text idea, but I'm not sure if it would get old or feel like work to keep them updated.

 

[Laina]

Some wonderful ideas here by MissEcho, Old Man & Viquire

Personally I would love to be able to add my own message/greeting and be able to dress the attendant as we do with vendors.

 

[Schuyler Bain]

One of the things sorely lacking in the game is a way to communicate with each other while others are not online. A thought that came to mind while reading the FOF is wouldn't it be nice if Personal Attendants could talk to each other (telepathically) so we could send messages to someone else who has one. Let's face it, bulletin boards never worked well.

Have to work out the address thingy, but this would kill two birds with one stone, a real purpose for attendants and a way to leave messages.

What a cool idea! I too have always found the ability to send/leave a message lacking in UO. This would be a cool way to add some much needed functionality.

What if you could name the attendants like a pet so you could control/guarantee the "address" and allow the "post office" attendant to send mail, perhaps for a small fee, to other post office attendants. Or even allow them to hand deliver the message directly to the recipient attendant/s. Perhaps a name and coordinate registration to assist with delivery. This would make the communication a little less instant and more inline with the UO world. It would even be cool, but technologically impossible/impractical, to see the pony express riders crisscrossing the country side delivering messages.

It makes me think of the droid function in SWG where you could assign a droid to any or all of your structures and command it to fly off and pay your maintenance for you while you continued to play the game. The droid was programmed and actually flew off and was inaccessible during that time. Instead of paying maintenance in this case it would be delivering messages to other massagers.

 

[WarUltima]

Personal Packer (read it right lol)
I think it will be pretty cool if we can use it as expanded backpack storage. Just make it so it dies if the owner die and will be lootable following current looting rules.

I dont know as we dont really need anything else. Years ago people suggested making it connected to bank box/stable/food vendor ect basically a portable vendor of your choice which imo would never happen and would quite possible desert the cities even more.

 

[Lady_Calina]

I would really like to see Personal Attendants able to be used as a form of home security. If they are told to stay in a home, they could Detect Hidden to reveal anyone who is not friended/accessed/co-owned.

This way, people wouldn't have to set their homes to Private if they're redecorating, which would come in handy in Luna since you can't set it to Private while vendors are up.

Maybe a little message like "Haha! Found you!"

 

[RoseBlue]

Would be nice to be able to customize their look and dress them like we do for vendors?...

 

[Vexxed]

Ummm... might seem like a silly question but how do you get a personal attendant?? I know they are a token, but I don't see the token as something you can purchase at the owo store and I don't recall ever getting the option to pick a personal attendant token.... so where ?


THX.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

I'd like to be able to set up the Personal Attendand with a custom message, not a predefined one. It would also be great if the message could be different, depending on whether a guild member or non-guild member enters the house.
This way it would be possible to announce (guild) events in-game.

 

[Gem]

Great ideas here...

We have long needed a good message system and personaly attendants as they are now are so lame....

 

[Old Man of UO]

I'd like to be able to set up the Personal Attendand with a custom message, not a predefined one. It would also be great if the message could be different, depending on whether a guild member or non-guild member enters the house.
This way it would be possible to announce (guild) events in-game.

Ya, I also think they should get customized messages. The basic system to do that is already in the programming, but for all NPC's. Developers, and I think EM's can change the messages.

But the problem I see with doing only that is it leaves Attendants with very limited use and doesn't make good use of their potential. My house is in Felucca, along with about half of the UO population. Some half of all houses on all facets are private. I don't get many visitors at all, only friends of my house. So those custom messages do nothing for me and I have no real use for them.

So, I am asking you, what else can they do that more people would find useful?

 

[MalagAste]

I always felt that if the Attendant was left at home they should tell you who all stopped by and if that person had a message for you...... They should be like a speaking Billboard.... when left at home..... they should say when you come home... Welcome home M'Lord/M'Lady.... while you were out..... So and So stopped by and asked when you had last been here... I told him you left about an hour ago.... and he said he'd stop back later...

Wouldn't it be nice if they actually knew when you were out or when you were not "in-game".... and could say.... if someone inquired "I'm sorry but M'Lord/M'Lady is sleeping or currently un-available... may I leave him/her a message or tell him you called?"..... Also would be even nicer if they had some way to communicate with you when someone was at your home.... so that if say you ran some RP shop or something they could alert you no matter where you were that people were at your home looking for you..... That would be extremely handy....

I always thought if you left them home they should do more than just spam some silly message....

And if you put them somewhere like at Brit bank they would say something every couple of min or so.... and maybe you could put runes on them in a bag they could have the option of handing out runes as a much better way of advertising an event or a sale without cluttering every gate and area with runes.....

And I agree they should be much more customizable.... as far as appearance goes.....



And to Lady_Calina...... A good way to know if you have stealthers about in your home is not only to know that you can 100% detect hidden in your home 100% of the time...... which I do often .... but stealthers can NOT stealth past things like talking/noisemaking statues..... windchimes...... or anything of that nature.... so.... if before you deco you make sure to have chimes or statues at your home "guarding" the entrance to your establishment.... as well as using detect on your house before you "release" anything.... and defiantly having your "sound" turned on so you can hear.... NO one will be able to "sneak" in and shoplift while your decoing a public home....

 

[Schuyler Bain]

I always felt that if the Attendant was left at home they should tell you who all stopped by and if that person had a message for you...... They should be like a speaking Billboard.... when left at home..... they should say when you come home... Welcome home M'Lord/M'Lady.... while you were out..... So and So stopped by and asked when you had last been here... I told him you left about an hour ago.... and he said he'd stop back later...

Wouldn't it be nice if they actually knew when you were out or when you were not "in-game".... and could say.... if someone inquired "I'm sorry but M'Lord/M'Lady is sleeping or currently un-available... may I leave him/her a message or tell him you called?"..... Also would be even nicer if they had some way to communicate with you when someone was at your home.... so that if say you ran some RP shop or something they could alert you no matter where you were that people were at your home looking for you..... That would be extremely handy....

I always thought if you left them home they should do more than just spam some silly message....

And if you put them somewhere like at Brit bank they would say something every couple of min or so.... and maybe you could put runes on them in a bag they could have the option of handing out runes as a much better way of advertising an event or a sale without cluttering every gate and area with runes.....

And I agree they should be much more customizable.... as far as appearance goes.....

Awesome ideas as well! I seem to remember using communication crystals to listen in for vendor customers once upon a time. Possibly integrating some of that existing technology into an attendant would work?

 

[hawkeye_pike]

It should be possible to link Personal Attendants with each other to create an own Town Crier system. Could be used for guilds to spread messages.