The Road Goes Ever On and On

[Xcom]

If you would take the idea farther to make this idea practical you would not only have to rework havens fundamental feature of not having ingame mechanics protecting the players. Like the idea of adding towns that allows safezones or the idea of W1 with outwards expanding rings with outlaws living in the outskirts. You soon realize that you either have to scratch the basics of this game and implement entire new mechanics that changes the game completely.

Yes, but that was my starting premise. It turns out that the link I provided is old so I don't know if it accurately reflects the devs current intentions, but in the chat there is this part...

(14:23:08) <loftar> I consider Haven my forever-project, that much is true.
(14:23:28) <loftar> I would like to make major changes to it, however, so it might not be Haven as you know it.

Maybe people like Haven as we know it, and Haven as we know it + bug fixes sounds like a damn good thing rather than a leap into the unknown, and possibly into a shittier game. I get that. Maybe it would be cool if they froze the game at the current point + key fixes and ran that on a separate server, with the re-worked Haven being a whole different game (and no I don't mean Salem). The thing is though that Haven was constantly changing and developing until Salem came along. It's a work in progress that is kind of the devs experimental play box. I don't want to see people's fun past time taken away from them or trashed, but I also think the game as it stands needs tearing down and building up.

I guess this has to do with the fact I started to play this world and never seen that kind of overhaul. To me its a nightmare playing a game where the rules are constantly changing. I guess what I rather not have is a dynamic world where nothing is sertan. One day starting to build a project to have it completely ruin when some fundamental key feature is altered.

If the game was dynamic like that I would probably turn into a mindless raider like everyone else. Whats the point of building stuff if its going to be washed away every 2-3 months.

Edit: Sorry for coming of as a bit ragish. After reading that quote from loft about nuking haven and reworking it I was kinda disappointed in the future plans of haven. Didn't mean to be so down on your idea.

[Yolan]

Edit: Sorry for coming of as a bit ragish. After reading that quote from loft about nuking haven and reworking it I was kinda disappointed in the future plans of haven. Didn't mean to be so down on your idea.

No I think you've been quite polite.

[Amanda44]

(14:23:08) <loftar> I consider Haven my forever-project, that much is true.
(14:23:28) <loftar> I would like to make major changes to it, however, so it might not be Haven as you know it.

After reading that quote from loft about nuking haven and reworking it I was kinda disappointed in the future plans of haven. .

I think a lot of us are concerned about Havens future due to this - I know I am. Flaws aside, (bugs, certain game mechanics, exploits, etc) we play Haven because it's unique, we stay because there is really no end to what you can achieve and improve and as a reletively small group of players, in comparison to some of the bigger games out there, I think that helps to bind players.

(14:21:58) <loftar> Now I *have* rewritten the basic game engine, and I'm using that for Salem.
(14:22:02) <loftar> I want to use it for Haven, too.

Out of all the quotes I find this to be the most disturbing. I'm just hoping that in hindsight Loftar can see that Salem doesn't work on the same level and that it would be a huge mistake to take Haven down the same path.

Maybe people like Haven as we know it, and Haven as we know it + bug fixes sounds like a damn good thing rather than a leap into the unknown, and possibly into a shittier game. I get that. Maybe it would be cool if they froze the game at the current point + key fixes and ran that on a separate server, with the re-worked Haven being a whole different game (and no I don't mean Salem). The thing is though that Haven was constantly changing and developing until Salem came along. It's a work in progress that is kind of the devs experimental play box. I don't want to see people's fun past time taken away from them or trashed, but I also think the game as it stands needs tearing down and building up.

I understand all of what you are saying and clearly the devs feel the same way you do and there is nothing that can be done to prevent them from doing just that, but change isn't necessarily always a good thing, if you have something that people love and want to invest in day after day, year after year, then it seems foolish to fundamentally alter it, possibly beyond recognition, rather than just tweak and fix.

You could argue that in doing so you may lose some of the current player base but ultimately build up a new and bigger one, but I think we have all seen that that was not the case with Salem, given a choice between a lag-free broken Haven or the new and improved version (Salem), you can see what people chose by the mass exodus from the latter. Not only did our original players return but they brought some Salemites with them.

Anyway, i've just realised that this is probably a derail since it doesn't address your original post Yolan, and I'm sure you have no wish to discuss the failures of Salem and the fears for HnH, lol, so i'll just stop there.

[mvgulik]

Milestones:
Just a little brainstorm from me.

Here is another thought.

We know that super grid lines allows a player to place pavement without being cut off by rivers. Milestones can also be placed along these roads but the issue with them are that.
A. they have a collision box and wont allow a player to drag a cart when using the roads system.
B. Wagons wont work using the milestones either.

I think having a objects with no hitbox should be avoided if possible. If only because it just feels odd (for objects that clearly should be solid.) ... (might work as duck-tape fix though.)

For milestone a other solution might work to.
Giving milestones some range circle (bigger if it already has something like that!), that is used to plot the path(shortest between two Milestones) of the objects traveling along the milestones.
... Image needed I think.

Lets assume these 2 bugs would be fixed making wagons with cows use milestones and have there collision box removed. One would still have to build a 5 000 tile long road to travel a supergrid. Experience have it that greafers in this game can literally put a monkey wrench in your plans and blow up your months of work by simply destroying a single milestone or killing your developed toon while traveling this road. The idea of having this feature in the game is nice and cool but not practical.

A path that is split (by the fact that a milestone is removed from it).
- Should still be usable (up to the last milestone before the missing one.)
- Should be easily fixable. (with or without having to re-build the missing milestone.)
- Not sure if the used name of the path-way should change when a milestone is removed from it. As I think that would give a unfair warning something has changed to the path. (Would not help as robber prevention. They just wait for whatever loot passed by.)

Note: I'm not taking in account whether milestones (or something similar) should be maintained as game feature all together. (as that's also a option.)

[Yolan]

Kind of different topic, but regarding the mile stone issue you can actually design roads so that you can run along them without bumping into the milestone. All you have to do is alternate the side of the road that you place the milestone on, so you are slowly moving on a slight gradient as you progress along the road. Carrying a cart while following a road is hence actually currently possible if it is designed properly.

[SuperNoob]

Carrying a cart while following a road is hence actually currently possible if it is designed properly.

pulling a cart yes
riding a wagon no

your idea to change up the way CRs work would mean people would want to use the quickest travel method possible, and thats not walking.

a side note to your CR suggestion what if they worked in a way that only allows you to warp to another CR within a certain distance(maybe 1 supergrid at a time?)? so regardless of agility you would only be able to go a certain distance with each warp. this of course wouldn't stop you from building more and more CRs between where you are and where you want to go and slowly jump from 1 to the next til you get there(this would also allow you to get farther with less TW). I also wouldn't object to CRs draining authority when used(then again anyone who can get to the CR can use it and some are set up as bridges to allow anyone to use them so that could cause other problems)...

[_Gunnar]

I really like the idea of removing teleportation as it exists now, imo making a worldwide road system should be a megaproject for a faction and not trivial like it is now. of course it needs to be made reasonably hard to grief but i'm sure things can be designed well enough.
also at the moment if you siege a base in any sort of legitimate way people can just move their stuff and chars to another place, we need to be able to blockade!
i dont like the idea of removing hfs, i don't want non-criminals to be able to be killed offline. i'm actually ok if their inventories are accessible at their hf though... anyone without a hearth should not be able to log off though. alt vaults are bad.

[mvgulik]

One big downer, in my view, that should be avoided somehow. And that is the need to use gate-key alts (to get outside your wall without having to carry a gate-key.)

... ... ...

? Time penalty. (Character can be used for some time. Transition time.)
?? what about other jump cases. (Like summoning. As that is also usable as character transportation means.)
??? what about ... summoning a character that is already is in transportation mode.
??? what about ... summoning a character that is already being summoned to some other place.
... O dear.

... RIP: Character got ripped apart during transport by tidal forces ...

--- --- ---

Carrying a cart while following a road is hence actually currently possible if it is designed properly.

I never seen it done/working. But I kinda figured it was probably possible.

[_Gunnar]

One big downer, in my view, that should be avoided somehow. And that is the need to use gate-key alts (to get outside your wall without having to carry a gate-key.)

... ... ...

? Time penalty. (Character can be used for some time. Transition time.)
?? what about other jump cases. (Like summoning. As that is also usable as character transportation means.)
??? what about ... summoning a character that is already is in transportation mode.
??? what about ... summoning a character that is already being summoned to some other place.
... O dear.

... RIP: Character got ripped apart during transport by tidal forces ...

Well I think walls need to be tied to village/personal claims in a sensible way and there need to be permissions for gates that can be set by the owners, instead of keys..
If you followed my suggestion of not allowing chars to log out without a hf the summoning transportation problem is kinda solved, imo.
also lol at tidal forces

[borka]

"Autobahn" in W3 - i think the village at Top was Clockwork can't remember what the one at Bottom was named - Milestones in middle of the paved - wonder if you could use it with wagon - i was too fresh back then so only cart and lifted boat ...