TRAVEL TIME AND PLAY EXPERIENCE

(this is a long post, please read this and all following posts before
response. Respond to the last post in this article to keep threads clean.)

TRAVEL PROPOSAL

Wanderers is extraneous and needs to be removed. Having the last two levels of
Navigator guild performs what Wanderers is doing now, will be more efficient,
and entice players to take all 5 nav guild levels instead of the usual 3. Two
birds with one stone.
This can be done with either a new nav mastery at lvl 4, or recoding of
original spells.

Invisible barriers between continents will also be removed because wanderers
do not exist.

Portals are kept as they are, not accepting eq. This way players can still do
shrine search, reincing, and other travel intensive tasks without frustration.
But they should be removed from major city locations and instead kept at pcity
locations only. This is to prevent extra material from being coded at each
capitol city like multiple guild trainers.
Multiple guild training locations are bad design, because they are simply
there to beat around the bush of the real problem. Just like wanderers. This
idea should be abandoned before it is implemented.

BUT! What will make players want to use ships if all that is removed?

Players used ships already in the old system, and the huge continental sizes
and remote areas of this new map works well with ships already. Instead of
thinking backwards, lets think forwards.. When the new commerce and
inter-continental trading system is implemented, it will entice players to use
ships because of it's in game benefits. Players used ships before and will
continue to do so even if no intercontinental trade is implemented.

Newbies and midbies will still use the NPC ferries (now that they work
realistically)
Keep in mind, you need all 5 navs in this current system to get nav spells to
work for intercontinental means.


This will repair the current transportation problems in BatMUD, and ease
player frustration. Having a more efficient means of travel in a game will let
the players appreciate the inlaid game environment we've all just been given,
instead of being annoyed at it.

Thank you reading.

- blackstar -

Ok, back on topic.

I think you had good points about the design descision and the feeling that its
built to funnel people into ships, as opposed to making ships interesting
enough that people want to use them.

I disagree on the following:
- Naked Portals
They are a big hack to circumnavigate the inheritent pain associated with all
this travelling. They fail to help those suffering the most; thats all the low
level players who don\'t have chests and castle rooms.
They should be removed altogether or another limiting sytem introduced (like
once per boot/per 4 hours/something else).

- Guild Trainers
Its a logical step that guilds would what representation on all the continents.
They get their fees from members do they not? Plus some of the guilds are
currently too removed from civilisation; Reddist wouldn\'t park his arse at
the reaver shrine but I\'m sure he\'d be happy to impart some wisdom on
splitting a shield in two.

Cheers,
Askan