Map Size Fixes

[agentlemanloser]

Thoughts?

Everything you have described is the anit-thesis to colonial New England.

Forcing players to travel just gets them killed. The problem is not with making people travel, its with bringing them together for meaningful interactions.

Pistolshrimp, I must disagree. The issue is, as you say, in part bringing people together for meaningful interactions, but I feel you have only one category of "interaction" in mind - trade, or some variation thereof. Conflict is also an interaction, as is the anticipation of conflict, as that also requires the "presence" of another party. So, static natural landmarks provide opportunities for interactions of all varieties. The Natural shrines in my proposal would constitute static natural landmarks, but anything that is not player built and supplies a material advantage is by definition a static natural landmark. In fact, prior to the purity update, the world had a number of these static landmarks - pure water spots were a good example. These fostered conflict and commerce, and could have fostered more had the population been larger (no one to my knowledge built a town on a pure water spot and ensured safe access to everyone who wished, though such a thing could have happened on a smaller map). The other category I propose, which is just the huge player-made structures under discussion here, is clearly intended to push interaction. Indeed, the scribe system JC mentions below is simply a variation on this theme: travel to a known library and "pay" via inspiration to gain skills rapidly. Thus a "pilgrimage" in the secular sense is undertaken, travel encouraged, interaction facilitated, etc.

And, no, I do not feel my read of the necessity of natural, player-made, and random landmarks and events is antithetical to this game, since all three are built into the engine already, or were in the earlier iterations of Salem. The question is simply how strongly to implement each in order to generate the desired player behavior. As it is, natural landmarks have been made nonexistent as a byproduct of the purity change, the player-made versions are barely implemented (though I see that they will be soon), and the random events are largely in the conceptual stage. Moreover, this is a PVP game, one that falls into the same gaming experience category of games like Don't Starve or Dungeons of Dredmor - losing, and the anticipation of losing, is intended to be part of the fun. Hence, traveling with the potential for death is far preferable to a colonial New England in which every player becomes an island unto herself or himself.

[DarkNacht]

Payment? Education wasn't free

Sure but that sounds like it just makes the library a specialized stall. And if the books don't consume upon reading then it goes back to altsploit.

Allow the creator of a library to write books, or find other scribes to write books for them, on a subject likely consuming a small amount of inspiration and BB. Allow people to go into the library with paper, pen and ink and take time 'reading' books on a topic and turn the paper, pen and ink into an inspirational, Notes on [Proficiency], with a chance to get rare particularly good notes base on the level of the proficiency of the writer. After someone reads the books and makes the notes, have an option for the owner to examine the recently read books and get a minor inspirational, Notes in the Margins, with a rare chance of getting better margin notes based on the level of the proficiency of the other person.

[pistolshrimp]

Thoughts?

Everything you have described is the anit-thesis to colonial New England.

Forcing players to travel just gets them killed. The problem is not with making people travel, its with bringing them together for meaningful interactions.

Pistolshrimp, I must disagree. The issue is, as you say, in part bringing people together for meaningful interactions, but I feel you have only one category of "interaction" in mind - trade, or some variation thereof. Conflict is also an interaction, as is the anticipation of conflict, as that also requires the "presence" of another party.
When I said "meaningful interactions" I meant interactions that don't consist of one person seeing a red dot on their mini-map and logging off. This could be a number of things, conflict being at the top of my list.

Your pilgrimage idea only requires a player to visit an area, its a one time action. Yes they may get killed doing it if they don't log out quick enough, but it doesn't foster meaningful interaction. It doesn't force them to fight, or trade, or join a group, etc. The purity nodes are quite different to your pilgrimage sites because they support multiple interactions.

I've even made you a t-chart to show you how different they are!

And, no, I do not feel my read of the necessity of natural, player-made, and random landmarks and events is antithetical to this game

Not necessarily antithetical to the game, tho I might argue that as well, but antithetical to Colonial New England which is an important theme in the game. What pilgrimage sites do you know of from say 1619 - 1776? The shroud of Turin? Saints bones? Really? The number of nails reputed to be from the Crucifixion found in Rhode Island is approaching zero. I'm not pointing this out to be a *****, but help you understand Christianity was imported into New England, there were no holy sites here, there was nothing to pilgrimage to.

traveling with the potential for death is far preferable to a colonial New England in which every player becomes an island unto herself or himself.

To restate my entire point again, traveling and hermiting are not opposites.

[agentlemanloser]

[/quote]Your pilgrimage idea only requires a player to visit an area, its a one time action. Yes they may get killed doing it if they don't log out quick enough, but it doesn't foster meaningful interaction. It doesn't force them to fight, or trade, or join a group, etc. The purity nodes are quite different to your pilgrimage sites because they support multiple interactions.[/quote]

Well, to be fair, the specific pilgrimage system I suggested would require single visits to an area per character, not per account, and if the game becomes as lively as the developers no doubt want then I would hardly call these one-time actions. But, I don't really think that a one-time action is itself somehow inherently problematic: even the scribe/library system JC proposes would fall into the "seldom" section of your helpful chart. A robust game would have multiple systems in place that encourage mobility, some intended to be seldom, even once per character, and others intended to be regular, to the point even of grind. All games are developed with these dynamics in mind - they must be, since the purpose of game design is to steer and encourage certain kinds of behavior.

That said, you might be overly-focused on the specific example I used, that of a pilgrimage system; the meat of my suggestion revolves around the role natural, player-made, and random landmarks and events play in encouraging mobility. Frankly, the shape the implementation takes doesn't matter as much as the outcome. That said, I'm not entirely convinced of your objections to pilgrimages.

[/quote]Not necessarily antithetical to the game, tho I might argue that as well, but antithetical to Colonial New England which is an important theme in the game. What pilgrimage sites do you know of from say 1619 - 1776? The shroud of Turin? Saints bones? Really? The number of nails reputed to be from the Crucifixion found in Rhode Island is approaching zero. I'm not pointing this out to be a *****, but help you understand Christianity was imported into New England, there were no holy sites here, there was nothing to pilgrimage to.[/quote]

I thank you for attempting to refine my understanding of Colonial Christianity, but I assure you it is entirely unnecessary. I understand that New England had remarkably few Catholic relics on offering in 1776 . . . although in other parts of the country such things were not completely unheard of, as monasteries and missions tended to keep collections and, by the mid to late 1800s such relics were more common (and, just to point out, we are being a bit Euro-centric here).

So, I concede your point, but I also feel you are massively overstating the importance of the Colonial New England theme in the game, insofar as you seem to be suggesting that anything that falls outside of the 1619-1776 historical window has no place. This is a very weak position, since this game is also built around Cox's Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, a largely fictional work written in the early 1900s, not the late 1600s, and not at all restricted to the Northeast. If anything, this game is loosely set in a fantastical version of a mythological New England, and as such a great many liberties can, have, and will be taken (note the Lovecraftian masks). So, while this is very much away from the point of map size and experience of map size, I don't really feel it productive to think about the game as too tied to historical reality.

And, of course, historically all of the "relics" were hoaxes, so I don't really think it matters how many would or would not be in New England. Con men have been selling relics forever, here as well as elsewhere. It is also worth pointing out that there will be more than one religion in the game, and, if Hawthorne and other early American writers were correct, the sacred sites of the less-than-virtuous were quite plentiful - one need only walk into the savage wilderness.

[/quote]To restate my entire point again, traveling and hermiting are not opposites.[/quote]

The need not be diametrically opposed, certainly, but I was speaking about different play styles, one of which is encourages and one of which needs to be encouraged more using multiple systems.

Finally, I do not believe forcing travel would lead to players being killed - that seems to be rather either/or reasoning. But, if that is a concern, would it not be incentive to form protective groups for traveling, thus encouraging the community interaction you want?

[pistolshrimp]

Meh, our discussion is getting off topic here. I will point out a few last things, and if you would like to continue our debate we can do it PM style or open a new thread to debate the importantance of colonial new england it its relation to Salem. Trust me, I could go on for a long time about it if you would like to go that route, it could be fun.

JohnCarver has not suggested a scribe system, but simply mentioned he was working on that idea without going into further detail. Therefore it wouldn't fall any where on my Helpful chart.

My agruement is and will remain that getting people to travel does not mean that they will interact with each other. A thousand places to visit on the map will people interact rather than logging off when they see someone in the woods. That's teh question I've been trying to get you to answer... how does your suggestion make that happen?