Camping Idea Thread

[Lotion]

If camping does come into existence I would prefer if it can be used to solve a real problem faced by wilderness characters: inventory management. If camping allowed a player to create a secret stash which cannot easily found by other players (search skill?) then I think its existence could be justified.

[Brytta Léofa]

I do not think we should be requiring an expenditure of non virtual in character resources in order to log out in certain situations. Logging out is a purely ooc construct. My understanding of contemporary wilderness quit is that characters with the ability to wilderness quit are able to do so because the character can virtually survive in the wilderness.

Aside from the regen thing, seems like camping is just sharing wilderness quit with PCs who can't wilderness quit. It's no more of an OOC concept than wilderness quit already is.

I'm not a complete fan of the ways we gate wilderness travel (with stamina cost = regen time, with quit locations), but I don't have a better idea either.

[Halaster]

Compiling some ideas, having to exclude some due to code constraints or it going beyond the vision for this skill.

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Proposal:


1) Only someone with the skill can make any sort of camp (sorry mansa).
2) You can make the camp with or without supplies, to different outcomes:


Without supplies:
- designates the room Quit-safe and Campsite, gives small-to-moderate regen bonuses, based on skill (already coded)
- certain areas (detectable with hunt or camping skill) will give a naturally higher bonus


With supplies:
- creates an enterable campsite that gives small-to-high regen bonuses, based on skill.  This means the campsite can persist across reboots/crashes (same code as wagons).
- campsite is set with 1-way exits that you can't move through to the directions outside the camp.  The purpose of this is to let people inside "look east", etc. So if you create a camp in a room with an East and West exit, then inside your camp you'd be able to "look east" or "look west" as if you were outside the camp.
- requires someone with camping skill to keep it running
- how to deal with expired camp but someone quit out inside?
    - when it expires, make the inside a "destroyed camp" that gives no bonuses.
        - can be rebuilt with higher skills
- destroy-able like a tent.  Need a certain offense(?) to do so.  Can't destroy while people are inside logged in
- stretch goal of optional addons, such as a hitching post that gives faster regen to mounts, or fire pit that gives bonuses to cooking


Misc.:
- high winds prevent creation of camps at low skill level
- high winds have a chance to tear down low-quality camps
- multiple people can add to the campsite, increasing duration (to a point) and bonuses (to a point)


Unresolved:
 - what to do with old, destroyed campsites


Thoughts?

[Lizzie]

Regarding the "look [dir]" suggestion:

Room you're making camp in has whatever directions available. Call it all four. NSEW

If you have equipment, you get all the benefits of that, EXCEPT you have to
make camp east

and then you can look east, once you're inside your campsite, to see east.

Reason: if you're inside a tent, you're surrounded on three sides by the walls of the tent. You can look out, and whatever is ahead, in the direction the tent flap is facing.

if you put your camp at a dead end, it's not a big deal. But if you don't, then you have to make choices.

[Riev]

I like the realism angle in Lizzie's response, but it seems like using supplies to make a camp is prohibiting and lessening the skill of camp making.

It seems the idea is that without "supplies", your camp is unlikely to be more than a basic sit-down spot with low regeneration and high chance to blow away in the wind.

WITH supplies, you have a better chance at a more permanent camp.


I think it is just a description thing. If you have a camp made with supplies, at no point should you be "inside a tent". Unless you can add the ability to put a tent in a camp/wagon object in which case, Lizzie's concerns are negated.

[mansa]

* Campsites should be viewable from 2 rooms away, or just 1?
* Supplies are created by high forage / tentmaking / NPC restock ?

[Dresan]

I have two thoughts on this, but generally I don't think the idea is lame but its just not impactful due to the current state of the game. I want to break my feedback into two points, the first being the state of the game with makes a number of skills less impactful and then the skill itself.

1. The state of the game

• Above 50 percent HP  you regen health instantly.
• Under 50 percent, you only need to sleep to regen
• Stamina becomes more of an issue with mounts
• Despite its description, bad weather is annoying but not deadly

I can go on with some additional thoughts on wilderness challenge. However, my point is to try to offer a different perspective.

What if health:

• Did not regen outside of campsite, towns and cities. Inside civilized or home tent sites things would still work as current
• Over 60 percent, in the wilderness you can rest in a camp
• Between 30 and 60 percent health, in the wilderness you can sleep in a camp to regen
• Under 30 percent, you need sleep and a bandage to recover in a camp

Sure this would mean sponsored byn sergeants might get bandage as a special added skill but certainly changes the dynamic of venturing out of the games. Those tregil and chalton bites don't hurt, but they would add up over time. Any camping skill becomes less lame but more a important tool in a setting like this.

I feel the game could do more to make exploration a rewarding but challenging experience. Promoting slow death over just encountering something nasty that can kill you before you can flee.

2. The camp skill

I think the skill would serve the current game better if it was broken down like this:

• Basic camp-- This turns the room into a quit room.  No materials and low skill needed. Does not last long. Purpose:RL is important, gives people open to quite the game without OOC quitting
• Decent camp-- Almost no material needed/depends on skill level. Turn the room into a quit room and allows good regen for people. Moderate length of time Purpose: If someone is hurt or team needs rest, this is a good option assuming you aren't staying for more than a RL day or two
• Good camp-- Turns the room into quit room. Regen for people. Protection from weather. Regen for mounts. Some materials needed, including option for camo. Purpose: This is a good option when whether is bad, your mounts need rest and you are going to be staying somewhere for two or three rl days. Camo can be seen from a room away like camo tents.
• Excellent camp. --- This creates a stealth campsite. Both mounts and people can enter, even if you can't see it, just type 'enter camp'. The campsite can be noticed by raider scan . You should get notified of stuff going outside of the camp from inside. Of course regen/protection from weather Purpose: This adds protection from animals more than from people. Some animals would still be able to sniff the camp out or scan it, but they would need to go into the room and begin searching, allowing people to run or get ready for a fight

Again while the stealth of the last option sounds strong,  its mostly protection against some annoying animals breaking the tent before you can turn them into paste. People can still find you if they stumble upon the camp, while you can't peek inside the camp, you can destroy it from the outside. The campsite should take a number of materials with some found only in towns and being used up when creating it. It would not last more than a two to three RL days. This would be mostly to prevent people from playing like hermits in the middle of nowhere all the time, which the game should discourage. 

[Armaddict]

Dresan, you're a savage.  Hardmode wilderness or bust.

I generally will entertain all ideas making the wilderness as inhospitable as possible to make hunting an act of daring and travel an act of necessity.  That being said, there are some points I'd like to respond to!

Did not regen outside of campsite, towns and cities. Inside civilized or home tent sites things would still work as current
Over 60 percent, in the wilderness you can rest in a camp
Between 30 and 60 percent health, in the wilderness you can sleep in a camp to regen
Under 30 percent, you need sleep and a bandage to recover in a camp

The bottom end of that I find pretty extreme.  I can actually be at least tentatively on board with the first parts, because pushing forward while -untreated- wounded is an act of desperation.  It's not a wise decision.

I'd make bandaging more relevant earlier in the wounded process.  I'd make it more relevant to normal maintenance out there, not just for the 'almost dead' scenario, but also loosen those scenarios a bit.  However, I'm guessing this would be far too harsh for the PvE enthusiasts out there, even if I do think PvE should be against the entirety of the environment instead of...just mobs.

It would not last more than a two to three RL days. This would be mostly to prevent people from playing like hermits in the middle of nowhere all the time, which the game should discourage.

I'm okay with them lasting longer than two to three days, even to near persistence, as long as that requires maintenance.  But the real reason why I don't particularly agree with 'discourage remote hermits' is that I'd welcome people trying to beat the challenge, as long as it IS a challenge.  Keep in mind that this can promote content such as caravans and actual, realistic raiding, while also giving that alternate, wilderness play experience that some people crave.  It shouldn't be easy, no, but it's certainly not something I'd put out of bounds entirely.  The concept of certain things being only available in the city is not particularly relevant to me; naturally, maintenance would already require venturing out for 'chores', or importing of goods from cities via caravan already.  I'm pretty certain some would try to ignore that or get around it, but if the wilds are sufficiently dangerous, that turns into a less reliable gamble sort of situation.

Mostly, in my head, the wilds is a big shift towards a survival game.  The gameplay loops change entirely.  The concerns and activities differ drastically from the in-city loop, where survival is easier, but you have entirely separate minefields to navigate where it is less of a survival game and more of traditional rpg.

Cool ideas though.  Eager to have other people chime in.

[Dresan]

I admit I do like survival and rogue-like games and I routinely play my games in the hardest of modes.

However the reason I am suggesting these new systems is not because I want to turn this into a survival game but rather it is to address some of the gaps when comparing this game to the content of other games.

Please let me explain:

While there have been some effort to try to improve exploration of the game with sim-desert and...sim-spider cave(?), all in all, this is just not a game about exploring, finding loot or completing quests. The times staff decides to reward you, it will mostly be with something that is not controversial like coins. Getting the best gear is all about being friends with a salarr merchant, and for a long time getting the best poison was all about logging in at reboot and buying stuff from a shop.

While the game revamps areas(grey forest, rinth) and add new areas (rooftops) its a slow process which is not very common and is mostly done as a quality of life improvement to routinely visited spots. The map is generally static and I've seen people create throw away characters to just map a section of the game like the silt sea, which they accomplish and disappear. Additionally exploring the game map really only poses three 'challenges', none which really feel that good: 'nasty monster/thing you cannot run away from', insta deathtrap room and finally annoyed staff. 

Other than reading a new exotic room description, there is rarely anything to find or achieve other than losing your character in a cheap feeling way.

The ideas I am promoting begin shifting the game towards one that doesn't kill you in a cheap way, instead its one where you screwed up somewhere and killed yourself....slowly. By making it progressively more challenging the farther out you get, it also makes it easier for staff to develop a reward strategy/policy instead of a punishment one. With seasons maybe going as far as put secret caves that awaken a touched-level spell/mana-regen before collapsing and disappearing forever as an example.

I have more ideas but baby-steps is the best approach. The idea is not to discourage people from venturing out, or make it into hard mode but instead to make the most out of the fact this is a perma-death game, using that to taunt the players when they decide to risk it, but also one where risk and reward can exist in a meaningful way.

[Lizzie]

Last time I paid attention to critters that fled (or that I fled) during combat, I noticed:

They immediately start regenning stamina, stun, and HP. That's no matter where they are. They're usually fully recovered very quickly. HPs they don't regen right away if they're critical or near death, but everything else, within minutes. If you're damaged the same amount at the end of the fight, it takes you MUCH longer to recover.

I'd like to see that disparity adjusted.  One possible solution:

Make it so that you recover a fraction of your damage DURING combat. If a critter is only nicking you 1 hp at a time in various parts of your body, and the fight is taking more than 2-3 minutes, then you should've recovered most of those HP losses by then. A bramble scratch scabs over within a minute once the blood comes to the surface. Those are the kinds of grazes that are causing 1-2 hp damage.

If it's a 10-point hit, maybe you can recover up to 4 points of that during combat. You're still taking on more damage, but each hit comes with a recovery opportunity.  If you get hit twice in the same spot before the first hit recovers fully, then maybe you won't recover from THAT spot.

In other words, provide recovery during combat, and make it based on the location of the hit, the severity, and how often you're getting hit in that spot.

We have bandage code for specific spots now, we have damage code for specific spots, we should have more efficient recovery code for specific spots.

[Dresan]

We have bandage code for specific spots now, we have damage code for specific spots, we should have more efficient recovery code for specific spots.

I like it. I feel this requires it own thread so it isn't lost with the other ideas. Not to derail further but a late game heavy-combat warrior branch skill target skill that allowed people to take advantage of wound locations would be sweet to see.

[Yam]

I've done wilderness camp time with a lot of groups while playing Armageddon. It's great. The fun part of doing that is roleplaying with people. Talking, emoting. Making a scene. Tense vibes if you're in scary territory. The mechanics of actually making a camp, potential bonuses, or whatever are way down on the list of things that facilitate roleplay between people. Multiple people traveling around the wilderness already tends to get pretty time intensive. Adding real life time required to stop traveling, get a quit safe room, or just rest would stretch an already OOC time intensive activity out more. Would it be a good trade? I don't know.

Letting players make quit safe rooms or save rooms when they need to is great. Making that take additional time or resources I think somewhat defeats the point. It's okay for the mechanics of camping to be boring because that makes room for the game to play out.

Also isn't part of your reasoning for seasons to consolidate regions and players? This seems like it would encourage the opposite.

[perfecto]

Make it so that you recover a fraction of your damage DURING combat. If a critter is only nicking you 1 hp at a time in various parts of your body, and the fight is taking more than 2-3 minutes, then you should've recovered most of those HP losses by then. A bramble scratch scabs over within a minute once the blood comes to the surface. Those are the kinds of grazes that are causing 1-2 hp damage.

Big fan of this idea, I've always cursed under my breath at whatever I was chasing down when I needed to rest and it got to completely regen to full health and movement during that brief break.

[RheaGhe]

Been looking through the subclasses and classes on the character app, I can currently only find one that camping is currently on(Wastelander.)

I would add it at some level to Caravan Guide, Outlaw, and Outdoorsman, and maybe as a branched skill to Master Chef, Grebber, and Mountaineer.

I would also encourage, as it's not currently on Dune Trader, it to be added to Dune Trader. Branching from Tent Making.

[ABoredLion]

It's also on Bandit.

Not disagreeing with the spirit of your argument though.

[Dresan]

You can basically rename mountaineer to camper or explorer and it would fit. Definately would like to see camping skills in more subclasses particularly this one.

[helix]

Kinda late to the party, but some thoughts:

If camping without supplies gets you a level 0, I would suggest adding other craftable objects that, when crafted in the vicinity of a camp, increase the camp level.

The base camp object takes no supplies - all supplementary objects do take supplies. Supplementary camp objects might also confer other bonuses, like restful shade to mounts, the ability to 'hide' a small camp, the ability to make a camp windproof to a certain point, etc, etc. Imagine them as improvements to the camp that can be utilized and chosen to customize the camp's usefulness to the intended purpose of the inhabitants.

I imagine things like:

Tent upgrades (increase rest/regen)
Restful shade for mounts (increase rest/regen for mounts)
Camo netting (requires scan to 'find' the camp)
Reinforced tie-downs (provides resistance against weather-related damage)

Each of these things could have a level or quality associated with them that provide either more of their usual bonus, or provide their usual bonus to more things. For example, the tent upgrade could either add more people, or deepen the rest/regen bonus.

Take the camp 'level' off of the number of improvements that have been made to the camp (i.e. sum of all camp improvements in the room, etc), and have a maximum number of objects that can provide a bonus at any one time.

[Agent_137]

I missed the point of this. There are lots of ways to get desert quit.  Is this for groups to do expeditions without staff support? To replace desert quit? To make desert quit a convenience for an explorer instead of a requirement? We already have quit OOC, as we should, and it's enough to allow for non-desert-quit folks to safely take on long trips. They just can't live out there indefinitely... which is good.


I can't advise on making a feature more compelling without knowing the design goal.   

[Riev]

I believe Halaster's intention was to make "wilderness quit" something more effective than just being able to quit when necessary. The initial idea turned it from self-only to affecting the room into a temporary quit-safe room for all involved.

In the original posts, he expressed interest in moving beyond just making it a room-targetted quit-safe and instead allow for either expeditions a distance away from "known safe quit rooms" as well as smaller groups of tribals being able to have their own small 'camp' that they can RP around.

[Agent_137]

I like indie tribal having their own home made camp. But those are impossible to start due to the rules being pretty strict on  family/tribe role calls.

Taking a class as a coded tribal without desert quit did suck and was kind of silly.

Staff would presumably already allow for RP'd camp making for a group. But having it be a capability someone can do for others makes it much more practical to pull off routinely.

Maybe this could also support wilderness player clans for whom there's no warehouse option.

I think it's important to have the goals clear in mind when designing a feature, so it can actually serve them and not just hope that coming up with something that seems fairly realistic is good enough. So maybe the above will serve as that. Also Yam raises good points.

It's very easy to be like "oh cool i figured out how to do a thing people have asked for" as a developer, but game owners should be wary as once it's added it's hard to change and remove. I like having a clear goal for what it should do, sharing it so people can suggest details that fit it, and then measuring if it works as intended.

[Lotion]

I would love it if there could be some kind of support for tribal rolecalls in the form of a semi-safe save room. Being able to bring in additional players afterwards would also be so nice, even if it's just to cover a player who flakes.

[Feu de Joie]

I like every one of the suggestions Armaddict put forward, and I like some of the stages and structure of mansa's original proposal.

As far as camp is currently coded, I like it, but do think it could have upgrades and stages/wilderness encroachment/impermanence all make for more things to do and more ways to interact.


I, personally, want more personalization with the camps and their stages/upgrades.

For instance:

Tribals with wilderness quit could generate one room, enterable, near-invisible camps (with a tribal flavor to descriptions)

Half-giants, muls, dwarves, and elves each have their own types of base camps with different descriptions and upgrades. No elven camp is going to have a hitching post, and the strongest of camps are made with the materials a half-giant could easily gather as opposed to puny elven camps. Perhaps you can see where I'm going with the racial differences.

With class and birth location differences, perhaps an outlaw camp has a different look and feel than a nomad's camp. If you're playing an outlaw and your in game friend is a nomad, you could use that nomadic camp as a better front for raiding/outlawry while losing the upgrades it might have in exchange for the disguise of a nomad camp, which could have a fire and cooking spot idk.

Then, once this amount of personalization has been established, we could move on to magicker camps. There is supposed to be an implied amount of power to a full guild magicker or a sorcerer, and that could show better in the camps and upgrades they have. Why couldn't Whira's or sorcerers have roaming or moving camps, where Rukkians and sorcerers boast the most impenetrable camps. All the more reason to hunt down those rogues, we can't have massive stone forts popping up in the wilds, populated by abominations, icly. Seems like it could be a massive draw and real run, oocly.

[Dresan]

I'm okay with them lasting longer than two to three days, even to near persistence, as long as that requires maintenance.  But the real reason why I don't particularly agree with 'discourage remote hermits' is that I'd welcome people trying to beat the challenge, as long as it IS a challenge.  Keep in mind that this can promote content such as caravans and actual, realistic raiding, while also giving that alternate, wilderness play experience that some people crave.  It shouldn't be easy, no, but it's certainly not something I'd put out of bounds entirely.  The concept of certain things being only available in the city is not particularly relevant to me; naturally, maintenance would already require venturing out for 'chores', or importing of goods from cities via caravan already.  I'm pretty certain some would try to ignore that or get around it, but if the wilds are sufficiently dangerous, that turns into a less reliable gamble sort of situation.

After some thought, I could get behind this as long as there is some sort of requirement to setup and/or maintain these things over longer periods of time. Nothing tedious but some effort so camps aren't littered everywhere.

Ideally these camps should allow opportunities for people to RP more easily in the wilderness, particularly those who may just be following someone with wilderness skills rather than having the skills themselves. This should mean that these camps should offer some level of protection again hostile common animals NPCs. Nothing like needing to take a washroom break or needing to log off for a few minutes only to find the corpses of your companions just because they didn't have max wilderness hide or high combat skills.

Unless you are in the most dangerous remote corners of the map, I wouldn't have too much concern giving people more tools to deal with NPC threats especially if it means allowing groups of people more opportunities RP together through different schedules and time constraints. For example, if these camps offered 'hide' at the level of the skill to all PCs and hitch mounts in the camp from most NPC critters but any PCs with any level of scan would still see it from 1 room away. At some point they'll need to leave the camp and face whatever is surrounding them anyways.

[Halaster]

The iteration of camping that's going in on launch is the one I already did, which is it just sets the room to have a camp that wears off after a little while, and you get bonuses to regen in the room.  No camp objects, no maintenance, no materials required.

Due to the crashes we had to deal with for a few weeks, I wasn't able to come back on to the project.  I still intend to iterate on it and make it less boring than the current implementation, it's just gonna take a little while.  It's a thing tho, and there will be benefits for now!

[Dresan]

The iteration of camping that's going in on launch is the one I already did, which is it just sets the room to have a camp that wears off after a little while, and you get bonuses to regen in the room.  No camp objects, no maintenance, no materials required.

Which classes or subclasses will be getting the skill? Or is it just a command (like tent and campfire) that everyone can do at the moment?