How do you feel about CLOK's wilderness system?

[Jirato]

I'd like to solicit some feedback on the wilderness system. What does everyone think about it? If you had to choose between a wide open map grid system or a traditional MUD that required traversing a series of interconnected areas all with unique paths which would you prefer and why?

[Noctere]

I don't have much experience with the "traditional" method. What would be the advantages of that?

[preiman]

I like the open system we have now, it makes things feel somewhat different from everyone else, and you really get a sense of exploration and discovery

[Tamsin]

I like Clok's method. I love the maps in Fantasy books and Clok lets me play on one :D

If I could change anything about it I'd let people see more than just 1 room away in every direction though!

[Tangela]

I'm also not entirely certain I understand the question. Could someone briefly outline what the difference would look like from an in-game perspective? Otherwise I'll just leave this one for people who already understand and have a strong opinion.

[Noctere]

I would also appreciate being able to see more than one room away, even if you can't make out the details. We have tried to work on that in the past but ran into some problems. I can think of a few other ways to do it but all of them involve massive amounts of code work. Maybe Jirato can pull a rabbit from his hat and think of an easier way.

[Tamsin]

Tangela, most MUD wilderness are just like the inside of towns, or some place like Ebon pass. I'm not sure how restrictive of movement Jirato is thinking, but it would probably be at least similar to like the inside of Mistral lake as far as navigation would go.

[Bryce]

In CLOK, when you're in Shadgard or Tanglewood or Kildr Dale, you're in an explorable area. There are specific paths you can follow to move around. When you "go wilderness" out onto what might termed an overworld map, you're in the wilderness. You can generally go any direction even if there's nothing of interest there, aside from barriers like mountains or rivers and whatnot. From this wilderness, you GO to portals to get back into explorable areas of interest (GO CANYON or GO RUINS or what have you), where things are more detailed in description but paths through them are more controlled.

A lot of MUDs don't separate between overworld ("wilderness") and explorable areas like CLOK does. It's not that there isn't a "wilderness" in other games, it's just that you don't change travel or map modes or whatever. You never go out to a larger and more open overworld map. All areas are just connected like CLOK's explorable areas.

Think of the Coastal Cliffs area, if you've ever been there. It contains a bunch of different sub-areas that are quite different, but you never "go wilderness" to get from one to the other. They're all interconnected without going to an overworld map. That's what CLOK would be like without its current wilderness system, only on a larger scale, of course. There would be more specific and controlled paths to get from, say, Shadgard to Mistral Lake, probably passing through several other areas of interest on the way, rather than going out to the wilderness and crossing the open (and often detail-lacking) overworld map to get from point A to point B.

[Rakon]

I like CLOK's wilderness system. I haven't played other MUDs for some time, but I have played a few IRE MUDS over the years, and they have more of the linked areas system. Which is okay, I guess... maybe I don't see a huge amount of functional difference between the systems. That's probably not terribly helpful, eheheh.

[Bryce]

My own thoughts on the two options.

Wilderness/Overworld system:
- Makes the world feel both large and small at the time. The map gives you a sense of scale which helps make the world feel big and open, yet also makes the world feel small because getting from point A to point B is often a fairly straightforward and uneventful trip.
- Gives you more freedom to take your own path.
- Can feel pretty cool to explore, particularly when you find something out in the middle of nowhere where nobody ever goes. That's a cool sense of discovery that I think is unique to the overworld wilderness system. With a larger range of open areas instead of controlled paths, it's far more likely that there will be little hidden areas out there that aren't as well-known, which is cool for the explorer types.
- Is either overwhelming to keep adequately supplied with individual room descriptions, or underwhelming in its plainness.
- Makes things kinda awkward when a new area pops up somewhere in the wilderness, and characters have frequented that area in the past but haven't until now known that explorable area was there (ICly).
- I think this may be just me, but with the overworld wilderness system I tend to view the world in my mind's eye mostly from a distant top-down perspective, which makes me feel almost detached in a way from the world. I don't know. It's difficult to describe.

No wilderness/overworld system:
- Less freedom of movement. You -have- to take the established, hard-coded paths.
- You always wonder what's out beyond the established paths you're being restricted to.
- Tends to make the world on a whole be more well-described and interesting.
- Controlled paths allow for more interesting travel that may require going through dangerous areas, or areas with interesting mechanics like climbing or swimming. When you travel a long way through explorable areas, you feel like you've really made a journey, and feel something like a sense of accomplishment (and pride, thanks EA) when you get to your destination. You explored that route, you overcame the obstacles, you fought your way past/snuck by/ran and dodged through any hostiles along the way. You get to your destination in one piece and you feel awesome. With an overworld map system between areas, chances are you could have just gone around all that without any interesting encounters or travel experiences. You got from point A to point B without any notable experiences. Convenient, but then it's about the destination, not the journey, and I feel that can detract from the experience.

Overall, I see the pros and cons for both. I like them both. I'd be happy either way, but I do lean toward "no overworld map" as for my personal general preference. That said, I have no particular desire for it to be removed from CLOK specifically. Without the wilderness map travel times, I think mounts would become far less relevant, so that might be something to consider.

[Jirato]

Just to note, by asking this, I'm not trying to hint at removing it or anything. I just had a dream about CLOK last night, specifically related to code and engine work. I don't want to go into details since it was mostly under the hood stuff, but it left me to thinking sabout what people actually thought of wilderness.

Also, Noctere, I think we can probably do multi-room peering fairly easily using getattr(factory, exit['destination']) Would be an interesting system to look into. The way I'd see it, is if we did that, it would require the user to be holding a spyglass item, and would induce probably about 5 to 10 seconds of RT. Spyglasses would only be sold on limited merchants and would probably cost a few thousand riln. Limit would be 2 or 3 rooms in any one direction, would not be possible in or through forested areas, or into hills unless the user was also on a hill. Would probably give detailed information for the second room and just vague environment description for the third room (a forest on the horizon, etc).

[Noctere]

Thanks that sounds doable but I was thinking more in terms of the existing compass, right now it just covers one wilderness room in each direction. Although the other idea might be more beneficial to our VI players.

[Jirato]

Oh, I was thinking we were talking about peering rather than larger compasses... Hmm, sounds like a fun rainy day project.

[jilliana]

I think Bryce pretty much covered it for me as well.

To be less related to the questions at hand, however, I am somewhat dissatisfied with some of the mechanics associated with the current wilderness system.

I suppose that's a topic for another thread, though.

[Mafuane]

newbie here! It would be nice to have (with the required ability of corse) a track of where we are on the lost lands map would be convenient, or marking our maps of things we might want to check later possibly? just a suggestion :)

[Bryce]

I am somewhat dissatisfied with some of the mechanics associated with the current wilderness system.

I suppose that's a topic for another thread, though.

I think that's what this thread is for, so let us know what you're thinking.

[Mirazia]

I like the current wilderness system, as both player and GM.

As a player, I am free to explore and die in many horrible ways as I see fit and not be too restricted.

As a GM, I can place things that may or may not make players horribly die in many ways and not be too restricted.

I'm not sure about the spyglass idea, but I can think of a few designs I can make up for you guys to use once the code is in place. The wilderness rooms are supposedly pretty large, I actually don't like being able to see who or what is directly in the next room clearly. I would suggest that people/creatures in the second room could have a vague description? Something like "You notice three moving figures in the distant area." rather than "You notice Noctere, Jirato and a giant spider in the distant area."

[jilliana]

The mechanics about the wilderness system.

I completely get that every room is representative of at least a handful of miles. That makes sense to me.

The mechanic that I have been the most unsatisfied with is the wilderness walking and energy being so strongly associated with encumbrance. This is especially the case with the fact that item weights are not exactly great as far as player-made items. This has been a problem thing for years.

Unless you get those bushcrafting abilities, you're pretty much left in the lurch as to how to get around with a bit of ease. I didn't say for things to get easy, just easier. It stands to reason that our characters are out there so much of the time in all kinds of situations that they do learn to adapt...or would learn to adapt.

Associating traveling more with things like dodge and armor skill makes more sense to me rather than just basing wilderness energy on something that isn't always possible to control. At least with horse energy you can train up riding and it gets easier. That's not the case as far as I understand it with our characters.


There was one other thing but it escapes me now...

Aside from the above, I do like the wilderness system as it stands. It's interesting to explore when the mood strikes and some of the MOB areas, if a bit same in some ways, are pretty cool. I just wonder how people learn about new areas without always exploring...