The sandstorms of yore...

[gfair]

Didn't the board see a vote or thread against all the sandstorms a while back?  Are we seeing a flip-flop, or just the other side of the coin expressed in this thread?

I've seen a lot of sandstorms within the past couple months.

[John]

The thing is... what business does a merchant (just as an example) have doing out alone in the desert? About as much as a ranger does sneaking through the city picking pockets.

I agree with that to a degree. But we're faced with the problem of PCs. Can I hire a guide to lead me from place X to place Y. Yes. Can I hire a PC to lead me from place X to place Y? At best there is only a handful of PCs playing characters with that knowledge. So if I only have unusual hours, I'm screwed. That's the problem. You might have most of the player-base knowing something, but there are only so many people playing characters who would guide you there.

It's like having a crafter, and only being able to sell to PCs. Your screwed because you have to find PCs who want the item, your doubly screwed if you play unusual hours.

What did I vote? Bring em back :twisted: I'm just offering another opinion Also. There might be an IC reason they're not here.

People were complaining about how after 1 or 2 days from reboot Allanak was forever surrounded by a sandstorm. I always thought it was those damn magickers doing it Did I ever get any evidence to come to this conclusion? Nope. Just my overactive imagination.

One change I would like, is if your with a group of people, make it so you can "see" them. Obviously if your "follow"ing them successfully, you can somehow detect them (and I can't see a daisy chain of people holding hands all the way from Luir's to Allanak). So yes, if for code reasons, you can only "see" the person your "follow"ing it would still be an improvement (even if it's only an sdesc and not an mdesc).

I'd also like to see harsh sandstorms not sitting right on top of a city 24/7 (without a damn good IC reason). This is mainly a playability issue. A big sandstorm for an IC day or two surrounding a city? Sure. But I'd rather see them situated more between Luir's and Allanak.

That way you don't have the situation where everyone becomes city folk. Cause that's what happened last time. Everyone started tavern sitting. So if you have SOME area around the city your hunting types can go, then you don't have the situation where everyone tavern sits, but you still need guides.

[sacac]

I played during that time, Made a elf I believe.. pickpocket
Travelled the desert and stole from every city.. Except.. I never made it to another walls after I hit the storm.

So, I picked yes, Because as it is.. everyone either has torches or types out the directions without ever actually being a PC about it. And getting lost as it is..
And the bull about rangers being the esiest to employ.. why do I never get to be a ranger that lives til my few coins run out?

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Didn't the board see a vote or thread against all the sandstorms a while back?

I think the vote concerned the continual sandstorms. The ones I am talking about were not constant. They might have lasted one or two hours real time, but not for days real time.

And it's not so much that I really want to see sandstorms a million times a day, but I certianly want to see them more often, and I want to see them function in a way that puts the ranger in control, IE: The pitch-night sort of sandstorms. If a subclass of any sort got this ability as well, I could see nomads with it.

[Anonymous]

Didn't the board see a vote or thread against all the sandstorms a while back?  Are we seeing a flip-flop, or just the other side of the coin expressed in this thread?

Neither.  You are probably referring to a thread I made about the storms around Red Storm because they seemed to last a little too long for my tastes.  I can't say if it's still the same or not, or if I was just having a string of bad luck.

[ashjpd]

GUILD_MERCHANT  (Character)  


Merchants are the blood which binds the world together, the carriers of desperately needed goods from one land to another. Usually descendants of the old Dune Traders, merchants quickly learn the ways of the desert, the most profitable trade routes, and possess a handy charm for making friends of even the most bitter templar.

Merchants possess the ability to ride animals and pilot the argosies that cross the lands between villages and cities. They are also skilled at assessing an object's value, getting excellent prices from all but the stingiest traders, and noticing every detail around them. Furthermore, they have great talent in many forms of crafting, from simple cups to intricate forms of weaponry.

While faced with a hard life, merchants are often the richest people in any given city-state. The most sure way to find work as a merchant is to travel widely, joining caravans at every opportunity. Whenever he/she can, a merchant ought to find a village's or a city's traders and learn the prices of things there. By compiling this knowledge (knowing true item costs can be invaluable in doing this), the merchant can devise superior trade routes and make a great deal of money.

Now I am playing a merchant right now, and if I might say, I think they know the deserts as much as Rangers do in general. Not every dune and hole and such, but the general way of finding there way around.

"They quickly learn the ways of the desert." Is my favorite part. I am not saying that they would be able to see in the storm, but they would at least be able to make there way through it.

Now, the merchant wouldn't necesarily know every trail and shortcut to certain places and such, but they would know some parts of some of the world. With my character, I chose not for them to know many, even any routes to places in the known world, cause me, as the player did not know them that well. But after a few trips with escorts and stuff, I would see that they could learn quickly from how the guide/escort leads them. I would think they have a keen sense for it.

I did not play arm back when these types of storms were around. Not exacltly sure of what they are, could someone explain it a little more clearly? I suspect that they are your general storm, where "stinging sand swirls about you" and that the go on for 30-50 rooms. Is this correct? If so, then I know they have been around in the most desert of places, like that have been mention in earlier posts.

I think we should think about the system that generates the storms, it is a random weather generator, right folks? I mean, the system chooses when there will be more of them storms, maybe the immortals could change it slightly, or something of the sort? I am not sure, I am not one of them systems/coding type of guys, I just enjoy arm as a hobby while at home.

Thanks.

[X-D]

The storms spoken of would often last for real life weeks and cover most of the world with "Blinding sand swirls around, You can't see a thing!"

[Angela Christine]

I'd say yes to blinding sandstorms, but I think they should have a timer on them so they only last 3 IC hours and not happen more than once or twice per OOC day.  

It is really irksome if you plan a clan RPT and then a 3 day sandstorm strands you in the city.  You can't just put the mission off until the weather clears, because most of the PCs will be "sleeping" then.  You need to schedual a new RPT, days or weeks later.  You can't necessarily find a ranger-guide when you need one.  

Worse is when the blinding sandstorm happens half-way through the mission, and you don't happen to have a skilled guide with you.  (Just being a ranger isn't enough, you also have to actually know where you are and how to get home.)  Then you wind up with the ICly akward situation of a troop of Tor Scorpions being lead around by one of the Byn Runners they brought along as cannon fodder, because that's the only Ranger in the group.  :roll:  If you don't happen to have a ranger in your group you can't move until the weather clears, and you can't log out where you are because you aren't a ranger!

So yes to blinding sandstorms, but restrict them to half an hour or so of real time, so that people don't get trapped in untennable positions.


AC

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I can dig that, AC.

[Twilight]

Okay, I see two things being discussed here, whether you know it or not.

There was a time when sandstorms did not cover the known world.  For instance, if you were on the Salt Flats, or the wastes around Allanak, you would never, ever, encounter a coded sandstorm with the little room emotes as you move.   However, certain zones (2 that I remember) were hard coded to have permanent sandstorms.  There would always be a sandstorm in that zone.  Always.  Now, visibility was reduced to seeing your own room, and being able to look two rooms away in those rooms.  So, yes, you could see.  If you were a ranger in one of these zones, you could always move in the direction you wanted to go in.  If you were not a ranger, if you tried to go south, for instance, you might end up going to go north, east or west.  It only affected the person actually typing in the commands, so you could follow a ranger with no difficulty.  It was also incredibly annoying to get to Red Storm with anything other than a ranger, not a mention a very good way to die if you got anywhere near the Silt Sea with a non-ranger.

When coded sandstorms were put in that spanned all the zones, or shortly before, the spin nature of the permanent sandstorm zones was removed.  This was an upgrade to the weather system.  Sandstorms could be anywhere, and they could have varying levels of intensity.  All the way up to blinding, where you could not see the room you are in, or in any direction.  The only time a sandstorm functioned as a spin room since that change is when it was combined with darkness, which has always had the same spin function, although getting lost is a bit more frequent with darkness.  It has never had, at least to my knowledge, the spin component that the permanent zones had, of and by itself.

Now, I have always thought that the part about rangers always being able to know where they are, in the help file, related back to the permanent sandstorm zones of old.  When getting lost in sandstorms was taken out, yes, they essentially did loose an ability, that only they had (to my knowledge).  It did not seem to be replaced under the new sandstorm weather code with anything.

Now having blinding sands, where you cannot see the room you are in, is different than the getting lost code of old.  Blinding sandstorms still exist.  Maybe a blinding sandstorm should have a spin component, however, it would be just so insanely harsh.  Under the old system, at least you could still see, know where you were, know the dangers of moving, and eventually maybe get back to where you were.  If you added spin to blinding storms, you would take one step away from the steel dragon, figure out the storm is really bad, and probably not every make it back to Allanak until the storm cleared.  Just not playable, considering how long storms last.

I'd rather rangers be able to see the room they are in, even in storm conditions that blind all other classes, as a replacement for what they once had, rather than add back in the spin component.  Thats why I voted no.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Hmmm...

Maybe this would work. What I have been talking about is a manner in which to make the outdoors dangerous without the use of traps and pitfalls and uber gith. I personally say that I would like the spin factor. Certian rooms could simply be defined as no_spin, and that would solve the step outside factor.

I want the newbie killable scrab back, and the sandstorms. When I was playing, I was able to get where I had to go, but I had a ranger. Folks would know not to step outside without a ranger or nomad.

[Twilight]

The thing is, there were only two areas where this code was active before.  Places with permanent sandstorms.  There was still a massive amount of the world that was not impacted, and thus left open for the other players to travel freely.  Adding this in to anywhere there was a sandstorm would be over the top, at least in my opinion.  People live out there in the wilds just fine, whether nomads, desert elves, bandits or whatever, and they are not all rangers, by any means.  Just in select places it is a bit harder, like those places with permanent sandstorms.

In a place like Zalanthas, there are a wide variety of people who have the skills needed to survive in sandstorms of varying intensity.  They aren't all rangers.  The spin rooms, given the frequency of sandstorms under the new weather code, would just be totally icky.

[Summer]

I'd like to see shorter storms, I don't mind how severe they are, or if they turn you around (so long as you can step outside the gates and then back in, our even better, tell from inside the gates). But I really would like to see the time sandstorms go for lessened. Not being able to play for 3-4 hours real time sucks when I can only play for a couple of hours a night. Also, being an Aussie, like John, I don't often have the alternative of tavern sitting unless I want to do it all by my lonesome.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Would you then be in support of adding those sandstorms back into those places, then? At least the one surrounding Red Storm. It wasn't always so bad that you couldn't see the room, but it was typically exceptionally dangerous to try to 'run to Red Storm' back in the day, and I think the storm gave it its own little privacy factor.

[Twilight]

I would be in favor of adding in the turn around factor in the current zones that have permanent sandstorms.  Although, perhaps getting turned around 1 in 5 times or so, rather than 1 in 2 that it used to seem to be (figures approximate).  It would be nice to actually get where you intended to go eventually, albeit with an amount of danger, rather than wander around indefinately.

[Callisto]

We don't need more/longer sandstorms.

What we need is for them to be very short and less frequent, so as to allow more freedom of play, but made MUCH more of a threat when they do come along. The idea of needing a guide across the wasteland should not depend on them being able to walk through a storm without walking in a random direction, but rather on them being able to avoid dangers and acquire food and liquid in dire situations.

When a storm becomes so awful you're blinded by it, your first thought shouldn't be 'how am I going to find a way home from here?', it should be 'how can I survive this storm?'. When something like that rolls in, your fears aren't going to be with making it to Tuluk on time for the subtle bunny hugging convention, it should be of becoming dehydrated or horribly burned by the tiny grains of stone being whipped against your skin with enough force to remove paint from walls.

These are situations well-suited to being taken care of by your local ranger, his skill in survival against all odds in the most brutal landscapes in the known would should be what makes a ranger* much coveted by mercenaries and merchant caravans alike. This is not going to happen by making sandstorms more inconvenient, it is just going to reduce them to glorified crossing guards, leading people from storm entrance to storm exit, where upon they will revert to their former role as second class fighters.

If you want to make storms more realistic and carry more weight then a minor inconvenience, not to mention make the role of a ranger* more important for what it should be, you need the storms to be FAR less common and FAR more deadly. I'm thinking extreme stamina drain when attempting to move around in a storm and a frightening amount of dehydration while exposed to such a brutal climate, since it would place far more emphasis on being prepared and having someone along able to handle such a crisis. A tent wouldn't hurt, either, provided you're with someone able to raise and secure it in such hellish conditions.

The bottom line is storms that force people to wait around for a long time are not productive to playability, not everyone can invest that extra thirty minuets to wait for the storm to die down. This sort of addition would be nothing more then a friendly reach around for a select few who measure their Armageddon ePenis by how 'hardcore'  they want the game to be.

You want sandstorms? Make sandstorms rare enough and deadly enough that people fear them for what they should be and not for the mildly irritating and overly common inconveniences they are now. Everyone gets a more dangerous Zalanthas, without forcing people with extremely limited play time to tavern sit during Armageddon dead time.

*  And by ranger, I mean your average dune walker or tribal, not the class. Those of you touting your "ranger required" stuff need to remember that 'ranger' is a skill set, not everyone who is a dune walker is going to have the ranger skill set and not everyone with the ranger skill set is a dune walker. I will throw in my support to give the currently ranger-only trait of navigation to a few sub-guilds, if only to blur the lines between classes and offer more character customization.

[Anonymous]

What we need is for them to be very short and less frequent, so as to allow more freedom of play, but made MUCH more of a threat when they do come along. The idea of needing a guide across the wasteland should not depend on them being able to walk through a storm without walking in a random direction, but rather on them being able to avoid dangers and acquire food and liquid in dire situations.

I like this a lot.

Right now sandstorms = "Oh man, now I'm stuck inside.   Guess I'll try to get laid or logoff."

I wish that Sandstorms = "OH HOLY CRAP!"  But only last for 10 minutes or so.

[Hikertrash]

I just thought I'd throw in my two sid.

I think the concern about playability and play time is a weak argument. Concerns over shops times was sloughed off as being "realisitic." I, for one, have wasted a lot of play time waiting for a particular store to open.

But with regard to storms, the notion that long, massive, deadly storms would hurt playability ... "realism" seems to not be a concern. I see a horrible contradiction.  You know what, if you're gonna walk out the gates of a city, it ought to be incredibly dangerous and unpredictable. That's real.

As for playability, I think being forced to sit in one place for a while, a couple of IC days, is a good thing for the RP on ARM ... people get couped up, tempers can run high. I can envisage a sitatuation in which someone is running from Templar X ... but oh no, a massive storm ... that someone now has to keep a low profile while couped up in the city, try to avoid Templar X or those who would report him to the Templarate. Great plots can be generated by periodic closing of commerce due to weather, etc. Independent hunters' food source might be cut off if the weather was bad enough ... gotta rp scraping up some food or sid somehow. Great stuff!

There's a lot of travelling going on as if the roads were interstates - quick, easy and convenient. Over the course of my past couple of characters, I've seen the same PC's at both ends of the Known World. I think that's a shame ... Travel should be harder, riskier, and require more groups (thus more RP).

This playability issue seems a whine considering the inconsistency with which I seen it applied.

[SailorMars]

So yes to blinding sandstorms, but restrict them to half an hour or so of real time, so that people don't get trapped in untennable positions.

I'll just weigh in with a yay to this idea. Harsh weather RP good, in short doses. Some of these suckers lately have been lasting a month in game. Heh, I think after a month-long harsh sandstorm we'd have to be digging Allanak out with shovels.

[Anonymous]

I think the concern about playability and play time is a weak argument. Concerns over shops times was sloughed off as being "realisitic." I, for one, have wasted a lot of play time waiting for a particular store to open.

<SNIP>

This playability issue seems a whine considering the inconsistency with which I seen it applied.

You are comparing 20 minutes of idling or chatting in a tavern to RL day(s) spent stuck inside   of a city.  It's not such a bad thing when/if it afflicts Tuluk or Allanak.  It's a bad thing when you are the only PC playing in a remote location, IMHO.

Shortening sandstorm duration would bring them in line with the same amount of time someone might spend waiting for a given shop to open.

But with regard to storms, the notion that long, massive, deadly storms would hurt playability ... "realism" seems to not be a concern. I see a horrible contradiction.  You know what, if you're gonna walk out the gates of a city, it ought to be incredibly dangerous and unpredictable. That's real.

See, that's what people are asking for.  An element of danger, surprise and unpredictability to be added to sandstorms.  Right now they are more of 'crap, now my outdoors PC can't go outside, I'll have to sit in a tavern now.' event.

As for playability, I think being forced to sit in one place for a while, a couple of IC days, is a good thing for the RP on ARM ... people get couped up, tempers can run high. I can envisage a sitatuation in which someone is running from Templar X ... but oh no, a massive storm ... that someone now has to keep a low profile while couped up in the city, try to avoid Templar X or those who would report him to the Templarate. Great plots can be generated by periodic closing of commerce due to weather, etc. Independent hunters' food source might be cut off if the weather was bad enough ... gotta rp scraping up some food or sid somehow. Great stuff!

Yeah, if there is more than 2 other PCs in your location.

[Dan]

weather
It is a cool day.
The air is as silent as the sand.
Jihae hangs low in the sky.

think Good, can get this caravan there without any trouble.

look east
<near>
nothing
<far>
The edge of a sandstorm heading to the west.
<very far>
All you see is darkness.

think Feck... Sandstorm!

shout (waving his arms around before quickly packing his things to ~kank) Sandstorm, we ride -now-! We can get to shelter before it hits!

A wall of sand washes through the area as a sandstorm surrounds you!

A faint shape shouts, in sirihish, "Too late, get down and take cover, we have to wait it out here!"

-----------------------------


Something like this would be pretty cool in my opinion. Make sandstorms twenty-thirty rooms long and wide, have them come and go just like that.

[Hikertrash]

I like it a lot ...

Yet what I don't get is the impulse to have storms be more harsh, perhaps more deadly ... yet don't let it inconvenience my character who might have to stay in one location for too long.

Seriously, if your character is in a location with very few other PC's and your stuck in a storm, roll with it, solo rp. If you're in that remote a location you're probably used to it. Not wanting to solo RP is another matter and the code shouldn't address that want.

I'm for realism ... for me that means harsher storms ... it also means longer storms in some cases. A storm that lasts 2 IC days, in my opinion, doesn't destroy gameplay ... it will inconvenience your character ... and it should. Tavern-sitting is the perfect and real response to lousy weather ...
I've done it a bunch this winter with all the nor-easters we've been having.

Seems real to me.

[Tamarin]

Geophysically, the harsher a storm is, the less time it will last, because it is one way for a planet to release its energy.  So ridiculously crazy storms should not be able to last for weeks and weeks.

[Agent_137]

Travel between cities should be dangerous, not impossible. You should have a high chance of dying without appropriate skill and preparation.

Spin the sandstorms, make them hurt you, doesn't matter. Just don't make them last a long time.

I actually prefer the idea of killer sandstorms better, but what i really want is just the bolded goal.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Dan, that is a marvelous idea of implementing it. I really liked that.

I think the general concensus is that sandstorms would be great, implemented in a more realistic manner and containing varying degrees of actual danger, not solely because the beasties can creep up on you from a mile away because you can't see.

I also agree to some extent with the subclasses being able to do this same thing. The nomadic subclass is my favorite, and perhaps the hunter one.