[MUD-Dev] I Want to Forge Swords. [Another letter to game designers]

[Madman Across the Water]

"Koster, Raph" wrote:
>> Batir wrote:

>> Well UO sounds like probably too much instantaneous travel.

And this is a frequently echoed complaint. Or at least, was back when
I was playing. The moongates got pretty much no use aside from
newbies.  This has changed now, at least, as more "stops" were added
to the moongate "subways"- places that one could not easily or at all
Recall to.

> As a side note, originally, some of us opposed having moongates
> either, because of the reduction of travel time. We were told that
> they had to be there. We then pointed out crowding issues and
> slowdowns that would occur if they were placed in cities (their
> traditional location), so they got moved outside of the cities.

Not that it really adds to the discussion, but the moongates'
traditional locations were definately outside the cities. I don't
think there are any Ultimas at all where they were within the cities,
unless you dug up moonstones in V or VI and moved them there. The
world of VII was small enough that they were just about in the cities,
I guess, but not in the other ones.

Anyway, I'm setting up a UO emulated shard, and the way I decided to
manage travel is as follows:

Mark, back in the Ultimas, only worked on the Virtue Stones. So you
were limited in how many locations you could have marked. Now,
something like that doesn't directly translate into multiplayer, but I
decided to go with the simplest case. Mark marks a location into the
fabric of your being. Casting Recall returns you to that location. You
can't Mark inside dungeons or in other special locations (other
planes, for instance).

There is a spell, "Mooncall", which takes you to the nearest moongate,
and the moongates act like they did in Ultima VII, where the direction
you enter from dictates which one you come out of. (For those who
don't know, there are 8 moongates.) Finally, a higher school of magic
introduces the Gate Travel spell. However, this school will not be
introduced for some time, which means I'll be able to gauge how the
players seem to prefer travel to work. Will I allow those who labor to
the point of earning this school of magic to this level of proficiency
the ability to be the Travel Gods? Most likely, it will work as Raph
said they had planned to do in UO- runes are consumed in the
Gating. But I get to put off that decision until that point in the
plot.

I also have the advantage of not being massively multiplayer. Having a
playerbase in the dozens to hundreds makes certain things a lot easier
than having thousands per server. ;>

Adam Burr
Madman Across the Water (POL and elsewhere)
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