A new form of teleportation

[Jackard]

We have just formulated an entirely different implementation of teleportation. It's a bit too early to give any details, but after the next dev session we'll hopefully have formulated it better.

how ominous

[loftar]

Please make it something that makes distance meaningful. I want my shipping company, damnit.

To allay some fears and doubts, and surely to inspire new ones, I guess I can report our current line of thought. Please note that anything (and most particularly the details) mentioned is very much open to change and revision.

You'll be able to build, within village authority, points of teleportation (Jorb wants them to look like crossroads signs). Two telepoints will be connected by taking some item from one and walking with it to the other. The usage of a telepoint to teleport to another will cause the following effects to happen:

• A debuff, "Travel Weariness", will be put on the player. Its exact effects are uncertain, but it will be graded, so that a player can have different "amounts" of it. The amount of travel weariness caused by a travel will scale more than linearly with the distance traversed, so that it will be beneficial to travel many small steps instead of one large. If the weariness caused by a travel would exceed the maximum weariness a player can handle (which will probably scale with some stat), the travel cannot be done.
• Our current ideas for getting rid of travel weariness would probably include some intoxicating spirit (so yes, drunkeness will arrive before long) and/or logging out in a bed.
• A travel by use of a village's telepoint would expend authority for that village. Authority will be made to matter more, for various reasons (and even more in the future). To bootstrap that, we'll probably introduce a buff. "Strength in Numbers" (or something), that will be active for all village members when the authority is at 70% or higher, and (maybe) a slight debuff when it's under 30%. Thus, villages will want to manage their authority. Using a telepoint would be a scent-leaving action, so one will need explicit permission by the village in one way or another.
• Even since we introduced the village system, we have wanted to introduce "writs of permission", which village authority figures could craft from something and endow with the permission to do things corresponding to specific scents. A player with such a writ in his inventory would then be able to carry out such actions inside that village's area of authority without leaving scents. The writs would most likely be limited to some time and/or number of uses. Thus, villages could craft and sell travel passes.
• A travel would probably introduce some or another limit on the inventory of the player travelling. Not sure exactly what yet. We've been wanting to introduce item weight for a long, long time, so maybe something related to that.
• Selling travel passes would tie into a couple of new systems of trade we have been formulating, but are even less fleshed right now. They are the matter of another post.

In conjunction with this, the players' teleportation options at login would, of course, need to be limited. Current thoughts are that players can still always teleport back to their hearth, but that it will introduce travel weariness in relation to the distance travelled, but that one can teleport back to one's hearth even if the travel weariness would exceed the player's maximum. He'd just have to get rid of it afterwards to be able to use the teleportation system again.
Probably, we will retain the ability to teleport to the RoB, but that it would require the appropriate amount of travel weariness. Maybe we'll do the same thing with the village idol; maybe we'll remove that option.

[Voideka]

I hope an actual, usable form of long-distance transport is introduced before these changes are made.

[Potjeh]

Something like large boats with a decent capacity would be perfect, eh Jorb?

[loftar]

Something like large boats with a decent capacity would be perfect, eh Jorb?

Eh, Jorb? :)

[jorb]

Something like large boats with a decent capacity would be perfect, eh Jorb?

Eh, Jorb?

Stillar sig, gör den.

[nejj]

Note: There is an 5% change that while using the new method of teleportation, your DNA will become fused with that of a fly.

Bugged characters will not be restored.

[sonerohi]

I actually think this is pretty great. It encourages rest houses, forces more deliberation onto the player as to security (rather than just it being mandatory to make a pallisade), and adds more unique lines of work in as a porter and professional sign-connector ("I'll venture where you can't to connect you to your loved ones!").

[Yolan]

Hmm. It does sound interesting.

[niltrias]

I love the basic idea, but if they have to be built on village authority, we wont have any "lonely wayside inns"
Instead of making it based on villages, how about just making it hard to build and fairly susceptible to decay? Then you could build an inn if you wanted to, but if it is not maintained, especially in areas with higher decay rates, it will disappear quickly?