[MUD-Dev] Locations vs Social Spaces (was: I Want to Forge Swords)

[Sie Ming]

Auli wrote:

> Going back to my original point, limiting travel to encourage a
> sense of vastness to a world simply does not encourage people to
> settle down and call one spot home.

I suppose my statement, "If popping from location to location is too
easy, then people will not settle down and call one location home." 
was not substantiated in any way.  What I probably should have written
was something like, "If popping from location to location is too easy,
then there will not really be any separate locations.

It was not my intention to suggest that travel should be limited in
order to make the world seem bigger.  I was suggesting that if you
want to have the phrase "different locations" have any real meaning in
a game then travel between those locations can not be instant.

Though I have not played The Realm, I would like to suggest that --for
all intents and purposes-- there was really only one city.  That city
was somewhat separated in one sense, but was also completely connected
by teleporters. There's nothing wrong with this, and, as you point
out, there are even some advantages to socializing.

Again, there is nothing wrong with doing it that way, but it means
that you will not have certain activities that center around going
from one place to another.  Lots of merchant type activities center
around the idea that it is profitable to move items from one location
to another.  If you only have one location then you just can't do
those things.

Naturally, if there is only one location where there are any people
(which is how I've been hearing EQ described) then you have the same
problem.  So there is another qualification that I did not consider
before for location to be meaningful to merchants, and that is that
there needs to be people in more than one location.

My own preference would be for most locations to be usable and useful
to as wide a range of characters as possible.  Player age, race,
abilities and so forth are probably not a good reason to limit access
to a location (of course, some locations will be dangerous to some
players).

A question to which I don't have an answer is: How much travel is
needed to make something a distinct location?

> [...] If you were a crafter people always knew where to find you,
> you were always in this shop or that park as long as you weren't
> actively adventuring.  The reason was simple, it was relatively easy
> to get there.

I'm not arguing against it being easy to get somewhere.  I'm just
suggesting that you lose some aspects of "merchanting" if it is easy
to get everywhere.

Si
e Ming
AKA
Lloyd Sommerer

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