Location Ability Personal Landmark

Tael

One of the big remaining reasons people use Mudlet and its mapper is that it can be used to chase people after using location abilities.

That's a pretty essential thing for a lot of combat and is one of the few areas where there's still a pretty massive advantage to using Mudlet over Nexus.

We already have a personal landmark system - could we get a personal landmark tied to location abilities that autosets to the room your last room-revealing location ability revealed?

So if someone does ETHER SEEK TAEL and it works and shows the room name, that overwrites a magic personal landmark called TARGET to the room that ETHER SEEK revealed and you can then WALKTO TARGET to try to walk to that room.

If you then do ETHER SEEK TAEL again, it just updates the landmark to whatever room that use reveals and you can WALKTO TARGET to get to that room.

If you do FARSEE TAEL and you're in the area so it reveals the room, it updates the landmark to whatever room it revealed and you can WALKTO TARGET to get to that room. If it reveals an area, it can either set the personal waypoint to that area (I know you can WALKTO <area name>, but I'm not sure if it's possible to set an area as a waypoint) or it should just leave the TARGET landmark alone (i.e., failed uses of location abilities shouldn't overwrite or blank out the TARGET landmark).

Penwize

I think this would be interesting, but something would need to be done about uncertainty.  There are a lot of cases where just knowing the room name doesn't guarantee you the correct room to move to.  For example, any of the rooms in Loreielan's mazes, or the maze under Maim's place, or any subdivision ever, all have the same room names and no way to discern which one a person's at.  Or, similarly, rooms with the same name but in two different areas.  Scry or dragonsense tells you the area as well, but mind sense or something like that won't. 

If this feature targeted the correct room every time, it would be significantly better than the mapper is for this reason, and also remove the tactical advantage of hiding in similarly named rooms.

Dortheron

Tael said:

One of the big remaining reasons people use Mudlet and its mapper is that it can be used to chase people after using location abilities.

That's a pretty essential thing for a lot of combat and is one of the few areas where there's still a pretty massive advantage to using Mudlet over Nexus.

We already have a personal landmark system - could we get a personal landmark tied to location abilities that autosets to the room your last room-revealing location ability revealed?

So if someone does ETHER SEEK TAEL and it works and shows the room name, that overwrites a magic personal landmark called TARGET to the room that ETHER SEEK revealed and you can then WALKTO TARGET to try to walk to that room.

If you then do ETHER SEEK TAEL again, it just updates the landmark to whatever room that use reveals and you can WALKTO TARGET to get to that room.

If you do FARSEE TAEL and you're in the area so it reveals the room, it updates the landmark to whatever room it revealed and you can WALKTO TARGET to get to that room. If it reveals an area, it can either set the personal waypoint to that area (I know you can WALKTO <area name>, but I'm not sure if it's possible to set an area as a waypoint) or it should just leave the TARGET landmark alone (i.e., failed uses of location abilities shouldn't overwrite or blank out the TARGET landmark).

You can WALK TO citymates already and I believe there are minor traits who let you expand who you can walk to. Only target your comrades and allies and you'll be golden!

Tael

Penwize said:

I think this would be interesting, but something would need to be done about uncertainty.  There are a lot of cases where just knowing the room name doesn't guarantee you the correct room to move to.  For example, any of the rooms in Loreielan's mazes, or the maze under Maim's place, or any subdivision ever, all have the same room names and no way to discern which one a person's at.  Or, similarly, rooms with the same name but in two different areas.  Scry or dragonsense tells you the area as well, but mind sense or something like that won't. 

If this feature targeted the correct room every time, it would be significantly better than the mapper is for this reason, and also remove the tactical advantage of hiding in similarly named rooms.

This is a good point I hadn't considered, but is it really a good thing that you can hide in similarly named rooms? That's always seemed pretty cheesy to me. It doesn't make much sense ICly and I don't really see how it provides any really compelling gameplay mechanics-wise.

And it's not like people on Mudlet wouldn't have access to this too - and their mapper would still be able to use fast-movement abilities and calculate unlimited distances and use special exits in ways that the built-in mapper can't. Hell, it'd be pretty easy to adapt the Mudlet mapper to just try the serverside WALKTO any time there are multiple possibilities and use the built-in whenever there aren't. It'd still be an advantage, just an advantage rather than its current status as what amounts to a necessity.

Kiet

It is definitely a good thing that there is uncertainty with similarly-named rooms. ICly it signifies indiscernible rooms, where they'd all be pretty much the same.

Make the landmark guess just like mudlet mapper has to.

Penwize

Seems to me that a lot of these places with similar names are named so because ICly, the surroundings ARE supposed to look the same.  If you scry someone and you see a room in a maze around them, you won't just instantly know which part of the maze they're in and exactly the path to take to get there.

Taking advantage of that is pretty compelling, honestly, in terms of hiding from being chased or using the uncertainty to your advantage.

Sena

Aren't certain rooms (like mazes and other secret places) already excluded from the pathfinding? So that part shouldn't be a problem.

Kez

It's a really good idea.

Melodie

Would definitely put another foot in the grave for mudlet. I am totally ready for the day I can switch to the website client, there's just still a couple of major blockades holding me back.

Penwize

Sena said:

Aren't certain rooms (like mazes and other secret places) already excluded from the pathfinding? So that part shouldn't be a problem.

Some of them yeah, but not all of the ones with identical names.

I also sort of assume there's a reason why certain locating abilities only tell you the room name and not the area name of people for this sort of case.

Tael

Kiet said:

It is definitely a good thing that there is uncertainty with similarly-named rooms. ICly it signifies indiscernible rooms, where they'd all be pretty much the same.

I really don't think that's true. I think that's a pretty hard argument to make when rooms also have descriptions.

If that were the case, you'd expect those to all have the same descriptions, which the vast majority don't. A significant majority of the rooms with the same names have clearly distinct descriptions and there are even many places that have totally incidentally similar names that can't possibly be there to represent confusion.

Most of the rooms with similar names are clearly just coincidences (in the case of distant rooms sharing names), builder laziness, or to make it easier to get around (every room name showing what road you're on for instance). I really can't see any builder sitting down to design an area and purposefully naming all the rooms along a street the same to represent some kind of "confusion" or so that people wouldn't be able to as effectively scry people standing on that street. In more esoteric areas sure, but it seems like an incredible stretch to suppose that the vast majority of shared room names involve some sort of intent like that.

Penwize said:

Sena said:

Aren't certain rooms (like mazes and other secret places) already excluded from the pathfinding? So that part shouldn't be a problem.

Some of them yeah, but not all of the ones with identical names.

I also sort of assume there's a reason why certain locating abilities only tell you the room name and not the area name of people for this sort of case.

So you think that the designers intend to represent characters being confused about the location of rooms that are in totally different areas? Like when a Mhaldorian cloister with a completely different description and on the opposite side of the continent from a Targossan cloister share the same name, that's to represent that someone could be confused as to which was which?

I'm not convinced, but I can at least kinda sorta see the idea that nearby rooms with the same names might be named that way to represent some uniformity and thus maybe confusion (though again the descriptions usually make clear that they're not ambiguous), but that stretches to the breaking point when you're proposing that the reason some location abilities give the area is because rooms with the same name on opposite sides of the world, built at totally different times, with totally different descriptions are supposed to be ICly ambiguous and the abilities in question are supposed to be the only way of disambiguating them.

Kiet said:

Make the landmark guess just like mudlet mapper has to.

Okay but how?

Which room should the landmark get set to in that case?

You have three options that I can see:

1. Have scrying give room numbers and then allow people to WALKTO room numbers. Except this can't happen because walking to room numbers has already been repeatedly denied and because it would entail searching the entire room database on every scry to find all the rooms with the same name.
2. Design some system that lets you choose between the rooms somehow for scrying. This would entail the same massive database search and would also involve building an overcomplicated system that appears to ask you to choose between identical alternatives ("It showed they were at Ereptor Street. Would you like to walkto Ereptor Street or to Ereptor Street?") since admin still don't want general players interacting with room numbers. And of course having to build that system makes what is otherwise a relatively simple idea less likely to be implemented.
3. Choose one of the rooms at random, which again requires the database search and would result in completely unintuitive behavior.

The proposal was intentionally a simple one: just set a landmark to the scry location and let the existing landmark system take care of the rest.

And, as Sena points out, that already inherently exempts places like mazes and secret areas (in a way that's even stronger than having to guess which room number they are too). There can still be places where it's possible to hide - it's just silly when those places include two rooms along the same street that are both called "Ereptor Street." or two rooms that both happen to be called "Inside a small hut.".

The idea that there's a strong IC justification or a compelling mechanical reason for people to be slightly harder to walk to because they're standing in rooms that incidentally have the same name seems like an awfully hard sell, particularly compared to how much this relatively simple addition would benefit people who don't play using Mudlet (i.e., making IRE's game more playable for players who are using IRE's own client, which seems like a reasonable goal).

Tael

Put another way: If the alternative were a system identical to Mudlet's, I would say "Sure. Fine. Whatever.". I still think it's silly to make people guess between most rooms that happen to share names, but I really don't care that much.

But walking to room numbers has already been denied, there's no obvious way to implement it without making players interact with room numbers (which several things have been denied for already), it would entail a significantly more complex addition to the game, and it would involve searching a list of all the room names in the game every time someone scries.

Even if you don't think this idea is perfect, it's a damn sight better than the current situation where you're just screwed if you want to chase anyone because you have to remember all the room names in the game.

And that's the current situation. The current situation isn't the one where everyone is using Mudlet and has access to its mapper. That's not the appropriate point of comparison. Mudlet isn't the only client or even the official one and the game shouldn't be balanced around assuming you're using its mapper, just like the game moved away from assuming people had third-party curing systems.

Sena

Tael said:

Choose one of the rooms at random, which again requires the database search and would result in completely unintuitive behavior.

Personally, if it's not going to find the exact room then this would be my preference, although with the addition of limiting it to the right area (which could potentially speed up the search as well, though I have no idea what things are like behind the scenes so it could just as easily make it slower). I'd also prefer if it had a notice of some kind that there's some uncertainty when it finds multiple rooms with that name in the area.

Antonius

Penwize said:

I also sort of assume there's a reason why certain locating abilities only tell you the room name and not the area name of people for this sort of case.

It's certainly possible that there's an intentional decision made by the coding/design team to balance amount of information versus the speed of obtaining that information, but I seriously doubt it considering the majority of these abilities predate (by quite some margin) the complex pathfinding scripts, automated chasing, etc. that exists now.

Halos

Haha when Targ was first founded all the rooms on the tiers of the Heart of Dawn were just c/p'd one after the other and had the exact same name (as placeholders I guess), so you'd get

Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
(Party): Sothantos says, "Where are they."
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Northern Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Northern Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.

And it was the most unhelpful thing ever until they got changed

We still have to deal with 'Approaching Targossas' which ppl love to exploit to this day.

Antidas

Halos said:

Haha when Targ was first founded all the rooms on the tiers of the Heart of Dawn were just c/p'd one after the other and had the exact same name (as placeholders I guess), so you'd get

Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
(Party): Sothantos says, "Where are they."
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Northern Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Northern Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Dawn.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.
Your guardian angel reports that Jhui has moved to Terrace of the Faithful.

And it was the most unhelpful thing ever until they got changed

We still have to deal with 'Approaching Targossas' which ppl love to exploit to this day.

Don't forget "Anost"

Halos

and "Shornwall"

gdi, can we just shallam the lower city and put the harbor at the base of the cliffs please and thank you

Melodie

You can't just Shallam all your problems under the proverbial rug, Halos.

Antonius

If we could just make the damn cliffs a series of down exits rather than that winding path I think that would be enough.

Ahmet

Antonius said:

If we could just make the damn cliffs a series of down exits rather than that winding path I think that would be enough.

Or bring back the wormhole from top to bottom :>

Antidas

Alternatively, we could just finish constructing the damn city, change a few room names, and not have any more "An open construction site" rooms. Its been under construction for forever!

Halos

Melodie said:

You can't just Shallam all your problems under the proverbial rug, Halos.

YES I CAN >:[

Antidas said:

Alternatively, we could just finish constructing the damn city, change a few room names, and not have any more "An open construction site" rooms. Its been under construction for forever!

Let's blame Eleusis.

Klendathu

Mix the hair with some mortar, get some bricks, job done.

Linton

Not sure I like this. It's similar for additions like Directory, or even for things like tuns that we would all hate to lose now. Just feels like while we are all thinking about how great these additions are, we didn't notice what we might potentially lose at the same time. If the argument is that the feature is already provided by some client, then I guess might as well.

Tael

Linton said:

Not sure I like this. It's similar for additions like Directory, or even for things like tuns that we would all hate to lose now. Just feels like while we are all thinking about how great these additions are, we didn't notice what we might potentially lose at the same time. If the argument is that the feature is already provided by some client, then I guess might as well.

It's a feature already provided in a stronger form (aside from similarly named rooms) by a popular client and combat is incredibly onerous without it unless your opponent is nice enough to never run away.

Aerek

Even so, I can't say I want to see the game move more in that direction. Good auto-follow scripts are incredibly obnoxious.

Tael

Okay, but that cat is already out of that bag. It might be nice if it weren't, but it is.

The question is not whether it's possible to chase people like that, it's whether you're using Mudlet. And it isn't like it's some rare, occasional Mudlet script, it's the basic mapper script.