Moar Wilderness?

[Geras]

How would people feel about there being a substantially larger amount of wilderness? Like 2-3 times more.

The reason I ask is because when on a previous character, when I was hiding from the Order as a mage I found that the space wasn't really large enough to hide in in the long term. And as someone who played a Knight at a time when the grid was larger, I think having a larger space for cat and mouse games between the Knights and mages is nice for both parties.

It'd also just give more space for interesting things and locations to explore.

If people think it's a good idea maybe we could brainstorm some ideas (like a cave network?!?!?!) instead of leaving it all on the shoulders of Niamh.

[Taunya]

It's already been expanded a bit recently, including new hidey holes, but haven't had a chance to explore it myself yet.

[Myrella]

Feels big enough to me. I know I've likely not seen all of it. Especially most of the old and new hidey holes. Running a thorough Knight's patrol of a single quarter of it is rather daunting.

[Geras]

The fact that these sweeps are possible at all are IMHO a problem. Just look at how quickly escaped mages get caught. You have virtually 0 chance of hiding if you're outed without significant resources.

[Geras]

Like, how awesome would a cave network that spans the NW and SW quadrants and connects to the sewers be? Or a huge 15x15 forest full of bears in the NE? Or a lake with islands in it in the SE?

[Kinaed]

This was on our Staff Talking Point list, and here's the staff take:

About six months ago, this came up. We updated the wilderness then. Following that, about a month ago, it came up again and we expanded the wilderness again, this time with multiple, multi-room hidey holes.

We want mages to have risk endemically built into what they do, and we want knight patrols to not be a wasteful exercise. There are many ways and things a person can do about getting around this particular issue, so the answer is not to continually expand the wilderness zone, but rather for characters to get creative and accept the risk of playing mages when creativity fails. We're aiming for big enough that searching it is unwieldy without some direction, but small enough that you can eventually get through it.

Also, we're out of vnums in the zone.

[Myrella]

We want mages to have risk endemically built into what they do, and we want knight patrols to not be a wasteful exercise. There are many ways and things a person can do about getting around this particular issue, so the answer is not to continually expand the wilderness zone, but rather for characters to get creative and accept the risk of playing mages when creativity fails. We're aiming for big enough that searching it is unwieldy without some direction, but small enough that you can eventually get through it.

I must admit, patrols are god awful boring, and feel like a chore. I never have enough food to search, I have to get off and on my horse over and over to search and/or track. I rarely have a good lead, and am just either systematically going through every room or guessing randomly. Then there's the rooms where you have to find a keyword to 'enter' or some other thing where it's just a total crapshoot. To actually read every room desc and parse it specifically looking for keywords adds a whole other level of complexity on top of everything else, and often it is for naught. I don't want to limit mages/brotherhoods hideout options, but man I wish searching for them and tracking them down was somehow more fun than it currently is. It's arguably what my character should be spending most of their time doing in this game and it is no fun at all.

[Geras]

@Kinky - my issue is it feels like "you have a 100% chance of finding the mage after X" hours right now, whereas I would prefer it to be more like "You have a 10% chance each time you try" even if effectively the expected time to being caught is the same. You can't shift from hiding spot to hiding spot easily unless you're a dick that metagames and only goes between hideouts when the Knights are offline.

To Myrella's point - how do we make things more fun then? I think a bigger wilderness with maybe a lower density of hidey holes would do that maybe? When I was a Knight the grid was larger (I think?) and I know I always enjoyed our "fishing trips."

[Geras]

(I should probably disclose that I last played a Knight in 2003)

[Myrella]

To Myrella's point - how do we make things more fun then? I think a bigger wilderness with maybe a lower density of hidey holes would do that maybe? When I was a Knight the grid was larger (I think?) and I know I always enjoyed our "fishing trips."

I don't know. I got complaints, but I ain't got solutions! I just don't like signing into a roleplay mud to comb room by room with the same commands over and over all by my lonesome. Sure, occasionally knights can pair up, but that's not always an option with such low numbers in the guild. But even on a 2 person patrol, a scene is sort of difficult as it gets constantly interrupted by travel and searching and eating a 13 course ration meal on horseback. I know plots are another way to 'search' for hideouts or fugitives, but I've yet to get anything actionable out of the plot system either. Unfortunately, my best strategy so far is to let the more experienced players do the hard work, and I just mooch xp off the scenes afterwards. So far all the mages I've arrested or captured I either stumbled upon while they were doing something public or obvious.