Pathfinding river travel as an alternative to Charter Stones

[NotJimmy97]

I'm sure there are some non-trivial challenges associated with adding pathfinding to the game, but I think that pathfinding along rivers could serve as a solution to the current situation where all trading and travel happens by use of teleportation w/ CHA alts.

What I propose is adding some sort of waystone that has to be constructed along a river where people on boats can interact with it. The idea being that you can type in your ally's waystone code and then the game will draw a movement path along the river network in order to guide your rowboat/knarr to your ally's base as fast as possible.

There are some other features that would have to be added as well. The waystone system can't operate like the current road system, since people will troll traders by leaving walls of rowboats and throwaway claims to stop someone's knarr and cancel the pathfinding. You'll need to be able to restart the pathfinding if, say, your boat is blocked or if you stop for a moment.

What a system like this could add is a form of meaningful travel/trade whereby people need to actually pack their belongings into boats and face the risk of maybe getting ganked by highwaymen. However, a system like this is disadvantageous as well since it adds a new barrier to trade, which is already rare enough in this game.

What do you guys think?

[Granger]

You can already build a trail of along the water and boat along it.

[NotJimmy97]

You can already build a trail of along the water and boat along it.

That's not quite what I'm suggesting though. I think it would be better to have just two nodes that automatically connect together through pathfinding w/ some sort of code.

If you got rid of charter stones and only allowed people to build trails along water, trade would nearly disappear.

[Granger]

You can already build a trail of along the water and boat along it.

That's not quite what I'm suggesting though. I think it would be better to have just two nodes that automatically connect together through pathfinding w/ some sort of code.

Indeed: Ideally the game should play itself.

[LadyV]

Well with the new map system you can place markers. Maybe there could be a function to set marker as destination and you get an arrow like when in party. Beyond that though I dont see a need to encourage bot travel.