The Cure For Long and Short Travel Times

[Rindan]

The problem is simple.  The world is supposed to be big.  Unfortunately, the world can't be both big and playable.  Even as things are now, a lot of times the world teeters on the brink of being unplayable when large groups are trying to accomplish a goal that is not easily wrapped up in a couple of hours.  Large groups often times smash realize to accommodate OOC playability by doing things like traveling from Allanak, to Tuluk, doing something, and coming back all in the span of a very short IC time.

If you ever wanted to expand the size between locations, not only would you exasperate the problem already described, but you would make it so that the OOC requirements for traveling puts it out of reach of all but the hardcore players.  If tomorrow it took 2 hours to get from Allanak to Tuluk, many more casual players who need the ability to quit out given a short notice would be out of luck.

In an ideal fairytale land world, I would fix this problem with two added features.  The first feature is simple, the second one is more complex, but extremely powerful and would lead to more realistic group missions and less OOC headaches for leaders.

First, I would drop a lot more kank safe quit points throughout the world.  I would drop them right in the middle of well traveled paths.  I would drop them everywhere.  How much time you can devote to the game in one sitting should not rule where you can travel in my opinion.  I recall I once found a place that had plentiful drinkable water, but had to walk all the way back to the closest city quit out simply because it lacked kank useable quit safe points.  The amount of OOC time you can devote to the game should not be the most important factor in traveling.  In an ideal world, you should be able to spread out traveling from Allanak to Tuluk over the course of days and taking quit breaks.

Second, I would give leaders the ability to act as quit points and move return points of their underlings in certain circumstances.

Imagine this:  You are a Byn sergeant.  You need to run an operation from Allanak to the eastern part of the Red Desert.  Before you leave, you target every person in your group and add them to the current mission with a command something along the lines of, "mission add fred".  "mission list" shows everyone in your mission.  "Mission kick" removes people from the mission.  Anyone added to that list can take themselves off with "mission leave".  You travel out to the Red Desert with 6 Byn underlings.  In the first 30 minutes of the mission, one guy suddenly needs to log out because his wife is giving birth.  He type something like "quit sergeant" and quits on you.  The group moves on.  They run their mission, and like all missions, it takes much longer then you planned.  After four hours one guy finally confesses he needs to quit before his parents kill him, so he quits on you too.

The guy whose wife was giving birth gets back to the game and tries to log on.  When he does, he is warned that his leader is not set a safe quit point and that he will log back in where he quit last and is strongly advised against doing so.  He doesn't log in to avoid being stranded.

After five hours of everything going to hell, you finally finish up the mission.  Now YOU as the sergeant need to quit because "I was up playing Armageddon" is NOT a good excuse as far as your boss is concerned for missing the morning meeting because of sleep deprivation.  So, you hightail it to Luir's because Allanak is too far away and type something like "mission save" at the quit point in the tavern, then quit to catch a nap before work.

Anyone who had already quit has their entrance point set to the tavern and are told that log in point is now 'safe'.  The two guys who quit in the middle of the mission will now log in at the tavern in Luir's if they try and enter the game.  Anyone who has not yet quit can now quit at the Luir's tavern and log back in still apart of the mission.  If they try and quit anywhere else, they will get a warning that doing so will remove them from the mission.  Your men party it up all RL day in Luir's logging in and out of the tavern as they please until you log in latter that night.  When you log in, only three of your men are online at the moment.  You take those men and go back to Allanak.  Once you are in Allanak you go to the quit point in the Byn compound and type "mission end" at the quit point there.  This sets it so that anyone not logged in for the mission has their quit point set to the barracks.  Everyone is kicked from the mission.

If you had died on your way back to Allanak, the mission would have dissolved and everyone would have had their log in point remain set to Luir's.  Hell, if a coder wanted to get fancy, you could appoint a second in command who would take over if the leader of the mission should die.  Get even fancier and give the leader and ability to leave a message for people that log in and out so that he can say something like, "Plan to make the return trip back to Allanak at around 9PM est for those of you who can make it."

Basically, what this entire thing does is allow for missions to stretch out for multiple RL days without everything going to hell.  It would now no longer be a big deal to simply quit at Luir's if the mission has gone on long enough and everyone is getting OOCly grumpy.  People can ride along virtually instead of being forced to make multiple trips to rescue people who had to leave for purely OOC reasons.  

Is there room for abuse?  There is a little room for abuse, but probably no worse then the ways you can abuse emote.  Logging the use of the command and restricting it to clan leaders would go a long way to making abuse non-existent.  Maybe throw in the ability for the imms to temporarily give someone the ability to form a mission upon request for special events even if they are not clanned and/or of the right rank.

Speaking as someone who has been a leader in the past, this would kill a solid 90% of the pain a leader on a mission has to deal with.  The worst part about a mission is the OOC mess of dealing with people who need to quit.

[jstorrie]

This has the makings of an incredibly useful feature.

[jmordetsky]

I like it, but I just don't see why everyone doesn't get a universal quit like rangers.

In SOI, any character of any class can quit in the wilderness. It just takes longer. For example a krathi nomad should be able to quit, but there should maybe some hours of prepartion, or hp/stamina/hunger thirst penalty when they come back in.

This seems really cool, but overly complicated for something that could easily be solved by extending quit to everyone. I mean the most annoying thing about the game is that everyone has to run back to the city for every little thing.

I still firmly believe quit should be a global skill, like ride and that rangers would get it at 100%. The better you are, the faster you can quit and the less penalty there is for it.

[Halaster]

I've always thought the same thing as Rindan, in that the world is supposed to be bigger than it 'feels'.  And I've thought it might be a neat idea to expand the distances by basically adding more of the middle grounds between the major cities.

I think adding a lot more quit-safe rooms would be a nice way to help that, too.  The quit sergeant stuff is a nice idea, too (though, fairly complex to implement).

There are several hurdles, though, that would have to be overcome to make it happen.  For one, someone has to build it.  But more importantly, is that I think we'd find ourselves with a more thinly stretched playerbase than it is now, and here's why I think that:

If travel took longer amounts of time, then there'd probably be a bit less of it.  You'd still have plenty of people going around the wilderness near the cities, but they'd come back to town when they were done.  But inter-city travel would drop, I think, and so you might end up having pockets of people that didn't go to the other major parts of the world very often.  In other words, the major areas would become more isolated from each other.  (whether that is good or bad remains to be seen)  Also, people running into each other in the wilderness would probably go down, unless everyone stuck to the main pathways.

The one advantage to this smaller feeling world is that you have more interaction among differing factions.  City-based hunting groups run into desert elf parties more often, conflict between the city-states is more feasible, and so on.

I think you've addressed some of the playability issues in terms of being able to quit out, but there still remains the issues of interaction.

But you don't have to convince me, you have to convince the other staff.  I would love to see the world made a lot bigger than it is and would be one of the first staff to sign up to the project.

[Puppet]

I'd like to see all classes have the ability to log out in the wilderness, but perhaps give them a 30 second delay and log them back in with half stamina.

Something like that would prevent a whole lot of building and/or complex code implementation and accomplish nearly the same thing.

[Nao]

In SOI, any character of any class can quit in the wilderness. It just takes longer. For example a krathi nomad should be able to quit, but there should maybe some hours of prepartion, or hp/stamina/hunger thirst penalty when they come back in.

They also need a tent to camp out there, so basically it's quit in the city only for most people. There -are- lots of quit safe room in armageddon even outside the walls, and even if I spent most of my playtime on rangers, I barely used the wilderness quitting...

[Larrath]

This does have some problems with potential abuse.  Namely, a non-combatant (say, a noble or a secret magicker) could join our Bynners in the mission, quit out in the Barrel, and log back two hours later in Luir's, automagickally avoiding any and all danger from raiders and gith, as well as immediately losing whoever was stalking him.  A man wanted in Allanak for murdering a noble could go directly from the 'rinth to Tuluk.
Or the southern noble could join in with the mission to, say, the Oashi vineyards, and end up in Tuluk, betrayed with no way to prevent or escape it.

I like the basic idea, but it also sounds very risky.

I WOULD like to see outdoors quit becoming available to all characters, however, and a movement penalty and some other things (say, being affected by Fatigue for the first three IC hours after logging back in, which would give all sorts of combat and movement penalties) being slapped on those who camped out in the desert.
I am against a hitpoint penalty because someone badly injured could be forced to quit and then log back dead, but movement, hunger, thirst and the fatigue all sound like fair penalties.

Guild-only abilities of this sort are just silly.  We should also let everyone forage for food and water, but give them a significant penalty in doing so.  Down with guild sniffing!

[elvenchipmunk]

I liked Rindan's second idea the most. I think it would really help leaders avoid having to save people who had to log out and stuff. It would also make (IMHO) leaders feel more like leaders, whether ICly or OOCly.

As for making the world larger, I would love to see this, but I just don't think that Armageddon has the playerbase to support a larger wilderness. As Halaster mentioned, people travelling the wastes would encounter eachother even less than they do now.

Making more -kank- quit safe points would be a good thing, I think. There are some quitsafe points that yes, my character can enter and quit out, but not my kank. And so if my uber solo magicker of doom needs to quit out, and he has a kank, he better not have to go into the city to do this (BTW I realize there are places that this is possible, but not enough IMO).

I think most of the ideas mentioned are good though. And I would like to see the ones I mentioned above implemented.

[sarahjc]

I think it's a complicated yet awesome idea Rindan. It would make travel for small kank-back parties a lot easier and allow them to be drawn out over time.  I say Yes! Except for the coding nightmare.


But what about wagons, how would those get dealt with?  A good deal of long distance travel is done with argosies.

[Idealist.]

I don't like it.

All the Pcs that quit on the sargeant just stopped in their tracks and the group moved on without them?
Than all the sudden the group is back in Allanak and all the Pcs log back in to find themselves in the gaj, despite being left in the desert?



Here is my idea. Make tents quit safe.
When you quit out in them, the tent acts like a mount and logs out with you, along with your mount.

If there is anyone else in that tent, then the tent doesn't log out with the first person, but waits until the last person in the room logs out and goes with them.

It keeps track of the Pcs that logged out and adds them to a list.


The next day, every time someone logs in it says "You step out of the tent." When the last person on the list logs in (it may or may not be the last person to log out), the tent appears and can be taken down or destroyed.

[elvenchipmunk]

I don't like it.

All the Pcs that quit on the sargeant just stopped in their tracks and the group moved on without them?
Than all the sudden the group is back in Allanak and all the Pcs log back in to find themselves in the gaj, despite being left in the desert?

I don't think you interpreted the right way (Or atleast the way I did )

From my understanding, the people who quit will virtually ride along with the group, not stop there and magically reappear.

[Rindan]

This does have some problems with potential abuse.  Namely, a non-combatant (say, a noble or a secret magicker) could join our Bynners in the mission, quit out in the Barrel, and log back two hours later in Luir's, automagickally avoiding any and all danger from raiders and gith, as well as immediately losing whoever was stalking him.  A man wanted in Allanak for murdering a noble could go directly from the 'rinth to Tuluk.

If you are to lead someone somewhere and they quit out before the mission starts to even move, then you kick them from the mission and their return point is uneffect.  

As to any other abuse scenarios, it is trivially easily to deal with.  First, this is an ability only given to clanned leaders.  The clan leader is the one who has to add people to a mission and ultimately held responsible for preventing abuse.  This in it of itself should kill off almost all abuse.  Clan leaders are all assumed to be responsible and have an imm watching over their back.  Further, simply recording whenever this command is used and throwing it into a log for a quick glance over by the clan imm should make it pretty easy to spot abuse.  

Or the southern noble could join in with the mission to, say, the Oashi vineyards, and end up in Tuluk, betrayed with no way to prevent or escape it.

If I was on a mission to some place, had to quit, and logged back in to find myself in some place I am absolutely am not supposed to be, I would just wish up.  Yeah, someone could abuse it in this way, but this is such obvious and blatant abuse that any idiot who would try to do this would get caught when the victim notices the something has obviously gone wrong and contacts the staff.  This is on par with someone mimicking the give coins echo with the emote command.  I could technically buy a 10,000 'sid outfit then fake the give coins echo, but it is pretty obvious when the abuse occurs and the victim simply needs to wish up get a remedy.  If a clan leaders was to abuse this to reset someone's quit point to an enemy jail, I imagine the victim would notice, complain, and have that clan leader banned from the game.  

All the Pcs that quit on the sargeant just stopped in their tracks and the group moved on without them?
Than all the sudden the group is back in Allanak and all the Pcs log back in to find themselves in the gaj, despite being left in the desert?

If a PC quits in the middle of a long mission, it is for purely OOC reasons.  ICly, no person would intentionally decide that he doesn't feel like continuing the mission, lie down, and take a nap in the middle of the desert while everyone continues on.  If you are in the middle of a mission that is taking a long time and you need to quit, it is for the purely OOC reason that RL doesn't pause and some times people need to get up for work the next morning or deal with RL emergencies that can't wait two hours for a mission to finish up.

Under the proposed system, these people would quit the game world, but it would it would be assumed that they 'virtually' continue on with the mission.  Once the leader reaches a 'safe' quit point (like Luir's for instance), he could set that as the new quit point.  That is to say, ICly, the leader got to Luir's and told his men that they were going to stop there for a few days.  All of the people who quit and were virtually following along are assumed to have made it safely if the leader made it safely.  Once the leader logs back in and decides to head home, there is the problem that everyone who is apart of the mission might not also be logged back in.  Those people not logged would be assumed to follow the leader home virtually.  If the leader makes it alive, the leader sets the new return point for the people logged out to their home base and then dissolves the mission.

[Puppet]

Well, if that's the case, elvenchipmunk, what would you do if the entire group died while you were virtually riding along with them? Would you die too? That doesn't seem very fair... would you live, even though you were supposedly right there beside them while the 14 bahamet's ripped them to shreds? That doesn't seem very fair either.

[Rindan]

Well, if that's the case, elvenchipmunk, what would you do if the entire group died while you were virtually riding along with them? Would you die too? That doesn't seem very fair... would you live, even though you were supposedly right there beside them while the 14 bahamet's ripped them to shreds? That doesn't seem very fair either.

If the entire group dies, you live, but your return point is either where you quit, or where the last safe point was.  So, if you quit before the action of a mission and everyone dies, you relog exactly where you quit.  It would be assumed that your kanks leg broke its leg and they left you behind, or that you got sick and decided to turn back, or whatever excuse you want to make up.  Armageddon players are creative, I am sure you can think of some excuse why your character wasn't with them.

If on the other hand, if you quit, the mission is a success, and your leader logs out in Luirs instead of your home base in Allanak, and then the next day logs in tries and tries to return to Allanak but dies, your return point would be Luir's.  Again, you can make up whatever excuse you want as to why you were not with the leader when he was killed between Allanak and Luirs.  Maybe you got sick and couldn't ride with them, or got too drunk, or they forgot you, or whatever it is you want.

Is this a perfect solution?  Of course not.  What is the alternative?  If you are in the middle of a mission and need to quit, as it stands, there is absolutely NOTHING you can do.  If you simply must quit then the only thing you can do is follow the leader, go link dead, and hope that your leader dumps you some place safe before your kank runs out of stamina leaving you helpless in the middle of a desert.  Now THAT isn't fair.

Additionally, this solution makes it so that unrealistic things don't happen if your mission is going to take more then one part to complete.  So, if you travel from Allanak to Luirs, stop for a RL day, then continue on to Tuluk, you don't have the unrealistic scenario where when you go to continue your trip to Tuluk and half of your party members are missing because they don't have the time to log in.  Nothing is more irritating as a leader then having an underling quit some place other then your home base in the middle of a mission and having to go pick him up a few RL days latter when he logs back in.

This isn't perfect, but all the alternatives are worse.

[Dalmeth]

Why not make a room with a tent in it a quit-safe room?  Wouldn't that bypass the reason why you can't make a tent quit-safe?

EDIT : Assuming a ranger could quit there too.

[Jherlen]

We already do have mobile quit points - they're called wagons, and I think more groups should make use of them than happens right now.

I also think people besides rangers should get a wilderness quit skill. It shouldn't be ideal, but it should be possible.

Adding more quit safe rooms to the wilderness is never bad either.

I'm just not sure how much I like the idea of people being able to automagickally teleport from place to place just because their leader is running around setting quit points. If you quit on a wagon, at least everyone knows where the wagon is. Wagons are also a lot less mobile than Sergeant Amos and his kank.

Yes, staff could catch abuse of this, but they'll still have to get a report and take the time to look, and I can think of several different scenarios besides the ones mentioned here that this command could be abused.

[picklehead]

I really like this mission idea. I don't think giving everyone the ability to quit out in the desert solves the problem that the mission idea does and I don't really think it's an ability everyone should have besides.

That said, it's almost always frustrating when you are leading a large group on a long trek because inevitably, one or more people will need to log out before the mission is done. I always feel obligated when this comes up to seek out the nearest quitsafe that I know of so that people can attend to their RL needs/responsibilities, but it's a real pain (and unrealistic) that I then have to go back later on to recover these people who, realistically, should have been with the group the entire time. Or worse, they log into the game in this area that might not be well-known to them and there's bad things all around that kill them in a few short moments. These sorts of scenarios just don't make IC sense.

Thinking about the example of the guy who quit out because his wife was giving birth and then wanted to come back in, I think the mission leader should act as a mobile quit/spawn point.. if you quit out and come back an hour later you should be able to log back in and continue riding along with them (granted that the group is in an area that allows for the presence of a mount). Afterall, the assumption is that these players who have to quit out are virtually riding along.

If the mission leader finishes up and logs out in a tavern, I think the entrance point should probably be the last mount-friendly room the leader was in (most likely right outside the tavern), since obviously you're not going to want to be logging into the tavern riding your kank.

I think this is something that should probably be limited to clan leaders and those who email in with a good reason for needing it (ie. independents who run large operations of their own). I think limiting this ability to clan leaders and those who have been granted the special priviledge will eliminate most abuse you'd encounter. Also, the fact that only a small group of people would have the ability would make it easier to monitor.

[proxie]

I would love to see a few things. Don't know how feasible they are though.


1) Kank drawn carts. Not wagons. Carts. Little, inexpensive things, but with more power than your average PC and more carrying capacity than a packed kank. Perhaps with the ability to enter it and quit. But with the knowledge that if the game crashes, then you could be stuck with nothing but a kank when you log back in and must presume that your cart was torn apart by a storm, raiders, gith, whatever while you were logged out.

Also could be damaged when you're not in game, so you COULD have it torn apart by any of the above.

2) A sleeping roll object. Moderately expensive but with a limited number of uses, sold by Kurac, that bestows the rangerly quit ability on people, with lag. The movement/stamina penalties sound good too for those who aren't rangers and so not used to sleeping outside. Maybe even craftable by experienced rangers and merchants.

3) More wagons. Cheaper wagons. Wagons that can be owned by more than just uberly rich PC's. I've wanted to play a travelling merchant, a tinker type that rides around with a hold of random goods that I open up and sell.  But with wagons as pricey as they are, that's not really realistic right now. A broken down thing that just barely runs, has horrible lag, but will get you from one pillar to the next, given enough time.

Just a few ideas.

Proxie

Oh! And I still want to fish in the silt sea!

[IntuitiveApathy]

Is this a perfect solution?  Of course not.  What is the alternative?  If you are in the middle of a mission and need to quit, as it stands, there is absolutely NOTHING you can do.  If you simply must quit then the only thing you can do is follow the leader, go link dead, and hope that your leader dumps you some place safe before your kank runs out of stamina leaving you helpless in the middle of a desert.  Now THAT isn't fair.

Before I even say anything, I want to say that Rindan has proposed an elegant solution to a longstanding problem that tends to make significant group activities in the wildnerness -very- difficult to achieve.  When they are pulled off, players often spout about the fantastic fun they have, so it's a great pity that they can't happen more often.  Rindan's 'mission kick' idea is the first idea I've seen that directly addresses the problem with a simple, abusability-controlled system.  It could really go a long way towards enhancing the playing experience for many types of characters.  Plus it would allow Halaster to have less guilt when he fantasizes (like many of us) about a 'bigger-feel' world, as the descriptions have sold us on.

I was with a travelling group once that had a player have to go link-dead for an extended period of time, when we were nowhere near a quit room.  We struggled for a time, trying to make IC excuses to play around it.  Finally, we decided on using commands with OOC justifications to accomplish what we figured should be the IC consequence: that is, this character should be moving right along with us, whether under his own steam, or assisted by the group.  We continued moving and when the character got tired, we subdued-dragged him out of the room, threw him back in so he ended up sitting and resting, then subdued-released him so he would stand up again in order that we could get going.  And of course we had to keep doing this every time it was necessary to rest the character.  It was a completely ridiculous situation that we had to resort to completely ridiculous means of coping with and we all had to turn blind eyes to it OOC'ly in order to maintain some semblance of IC consistency.  

Anyway, I just wanted to give an example of a 'bad option' that people have to resort to to highlight that Rindan's solution is by far superior.

[bloodfromstone]

This is a really good and well thought out idea, in my opinion. It's always a pain when someone has to leave in the middle of a outdoor run, and I've often made up OOC excuses for not joining in on such activities because I wasn't sure if I could devote enough time to it.

[Maybe42or54]

If the group starts out with 10 people and 3 people log off and the rest die, do the three logged off die? Probably not, they got "away" then?

No. I hope not.

Wagons are too goddamn expensive and incredibly risky.

Tents are expensive also, but easier to get for the poor mercenary companies.

[jhunter]

Honestly I'd rather see the distances actually extended by the addition of some rooms and the addition of more quit safe rooms that you can get a mount into. Maybe make it possible for all guilds to quit out in the wilds instead of the additional quit safe rooms. Something along those lines would be preferable to me.

And yes, I agree that wagons are far too expensive and I think that there should be some really small and crappy ones available for pcs to purchase at the bottom end, moving on up to the grand and expensive mothers that we often see in the game.

[Angela Christine]

I'm not against Rindin's idea or other ways of codedly making it easier to quit on missions.

However, sometimes it is possible with imm assistance.  I remember one time before a big wilderness mission an imm appeared (Dyrinis, I think) and told us that quit rooms would be provided for people that needed them, but those rooms would be in the sewers.  At this point I am thinking "we are so screwed."  Sure enough, it turned out to be a loooong mission but I don't know if anyone took up the sewer room offer, because I was the first to die!     Anyway, if something urgent comes up in RL and you have to quit unexpectedly it may be worth while to wish up and see if they will help you out.


Angela Christine

[Agent_137]

tents have trouble being made quit-safe because you can put them in your backpack and carry around everybody. lawl.


So making the room with a tent in it quitsafe isn't bad work around, as long as you add the other suggest complications for non-rangers quitting out. (stamina cut, hunger, thirst, etc.) Requiring a tent would be another on the list of "complications" for non-rangers. And I like it.



the only issue i have with rindan's idea is the moral hazzard of this:

You are only virtually with them if the mission is a success. If it is a failure, you weren't virtually with them.

This also leads to a big discrepancy of "who's where" when considered from an IG perspective.

Also, while a well crafted idea, I bid you luck convincing some coder to tackle it, ever.



Now, i find the "nonranger" quit solution superior because it makes for cleaner virtual to coded transitions. If some one has to quit out, you have the IC reason right then and there why you leave them behind. Alternatively, you could all just quit out there and log back in later, as you like.


Granted, this doesn't solve the "picking the stragglers up again at a later date" issue, but it sure solves the "going linkdead with a whispered prayer" issue.