| planes balloons and cars |
|
|
| planes balloons and cars |
|
-Kaedon
- we're running short of item types, and currently have three overlapping item types that provide extremely similar functionality. To wit,
BOAT provides ability for one to walk on water_swim and water_noswim rooms.
GROUPBOAT provides ability for a builder-specified number of people in a group to walk in water rooms, and adds container functionality, with a "hold" so that boats may hold contents. They must be portaged over non-water rooms.
VEHICLE provides the ability for builder-specified number of people to ente the vehicle using a different interface and internal method than the group- and-get method in boats and groupboats. They can be specified for a wide range of terrain types, can use fuel (or not), are not permitted indoors, and have fields to equip a missile weapon with ammunition upon them.
Of the three, vehicles are by far the most flexible, and encompass all functionality of groupboats except the hold. Basicaly, it is a choice there between having a hold and supplying a gun.
The boat item type, however, is the least realistic, and nothing it does can't be done by making a groupboat with room for only one person. Therefore it is a good candidate to go away and free up an item type to be something else entirely.
Aside from the gains in realism for not carrying two large canoes around with you everywhere you go, there are additional things we could do if we had all boats of size unified under a single type, such as making "virtual rooms' of deck space, so that groupboats basically supplied a set of rooms to wander in, board from, have combat in, etc.
Obviously, people dislike having to get a new boat every time they hit shore, but then, the way boats are now they are pretty much taken for granted. The builders woul dhave to supply ready access to boats at every shoreline everywhere, so that it woul dbe a simple matter to cross water when in a hurry. It's a fair amount of work, but really not that bad. Plus it would give a lot more inventory/carry space to players to not need to carry a boat around everywhere. Plus all boats would have hold space.
So, not sarcasm. Some of the imms have wanted to make all boats portage for a long time now, and certainly the idea of merging ITEM_BOAT and ITEM_GROUPBOAT has been around a very long time.
-Ptah
Mandarin
- Wraith
well i think that vehicles should be able to rent with, recall with and such... plus did you notice how little the fuel supply provides? maybe make it so that they add more fuel, (at least half way would be nice with one can) and make the plane/balloon/car able to hold more units of fuel
also, making a long path through the world might be a good idea (such as, WW2 to china or someplace far away) so people would actually make use of the cars oh yeah, gas stations or stores selling gasoline in every area might be nice too
Lagmonster...spends most of his pkill fights blind...
There seem to be two objections to the idea: one related to pkill and blindness, which strikes me as fairly valid; and one related to the supposed difficulty for players if all boats required portaging (and Beam's resultant off-topic post regarding mud difficulty, who it is geared towards, and how pointless it is to suggest anything).
First off, let me state flatly that yes, one reason why I'd like to make boats portage is because I think it's down to a choice between that or removing boats and giving everyone waterwalking. :P It's silly for everyone to be carrying around boats all the time no matter where they are (hey look, ma, I'm in a closet, and I have a ten foot long canoe with me!).
As I stated in my post, if this change were made (which I might remind everyone, is PURE speculation, as it is a tertiary discussion off of the original post) there would need to be a LOT of work done to make boats and seafaring vehicles easily accessible at every coastal area. But that likewise, there's a lot of possible enhancements that could be made, such as a boats with actual "space" in them, etc.
The concern about blindness and boats doesn't seem to be one about boats so much as it would be one about blindness. If blindness has become the be-all and end-all of pkill, maybe it's THAT we need to be looking at, and not a simple change ot item types which could be compensated for by simply loading a dozen canoes in every coastal water room.
Certainly if blind is as predominant a factor in every clanned's character's lives as these posts make it out to be, it sounds like it needs addressed. But I don't think that we should limit the choices we make on boats, or any other issues, because of it.
Lastly, regarding Beam's post... any longterm player can tell you that we do listen to ideas and likewise, we do have firm ideas of our own. We do implement good ideas, and we do point out the flaws in bad ones. The issue of overall difficulty of the mud, or difficulty for newbies versus advanced players, doesn't seem to be one particularly addressed by this topic as a whole... if anything, the primary concerns seem to be related specifically to higher level pkillers (who tend to be the most capable players). If there were boats easily available at every possible location where one might need them, I daresay that the life of a newbie would be much easier. Not to mention that they could carry more equipment if they didn't need to lug a boat around all the time.
To say that all our changes make life as a newbie harder is ludicrous. Most of our changes affect the higher level players most, it is true-- most of them don't even affect newbies at all. Yes, life as a newbie is difficult here, but it is not nearly so difficult as myth has it, or else there wouldn't be such a thing as "level to 5" races with winners who make it in 3 and a half hours.
We DO care whether the mud is too difficult for novices, but find that most often such opinions are conditioned by the experiences on other muds of the Monty Haul variety. Under skill trees, we plan to implement a new XP scale for levels along with a new rent scale which gives newbies much more rent space and a much easier XP curve. We've also discussed for quite a long time now the craftsman skills which give players the ability to make low-stat-boost items specifically for the newbies and lower levels.
I'm getting frankly tired of the negativism that constantly comes across is Beam's posts, which rarely seem to be on-topic for long. If this board is to discuss specific issues, let's try to keep the discussion on topic. If you want to just accuse the immorts of ignoring the needs of players, attempting to make the mud way too hard, etc etc, let's start a new thread for it below, right next to the "All imms are corrupt and out to get players" and the "imms play opposite gender characters in order to get mudsex" threads. :P
Or perhaps a topic on starting your own mud would be in order?
-Ptah
Mandarin...babbling about..nodding to himself...getting senile.
great, now they're gonna mandate ppl to carry compasses now
Mandarin...again, babbling about, nodding to himself, getting senile.
In the case of boats, they are so easily available and so commonly carried around that they are not fulfilling that requirement--they just do not succeed at adding the flavor that they should. Hence the desire to make them do so,by making them more cumbersome to move around, though easier to find.
Let me disagree with Lagmonster, too, and say that wider availability of other types of vehicles, including possibly upping the fuel available, seems to me like quite a viable solution. As far as the planes and balloons getting stuck in midair-- I don't know anything about that, but i know that we woul dlike to make things dropped in aerial rooms fall to the ground, and I bet that it's part of the same problem. :)
I don't think we'd disallow sailing across the Pacific in a Kon-Tiki, but we might make it riskier than using a large boat. :)
-Ptah