They make it very easy to get from city to city, but they also disencourage raiding due to people hardly taking roads anymore.
I use coaches all day every day on LS.
Also while I like that the doors are gone from most smobs, the times I play I have 0 fear of DS catching me anywhere due to this.
I believe these two changes have made the mud a safe place for most anyone not wanting to PK. Is this intended?
Coaches are bad
Re: Coaches are bad
I agree that there are just too many coaches - we could be more selective about making them a little more regional and dropping off further from cities so you still have to make a little walk, but I don't have any specific recommendations there. You don't want to completely do away with it because LS is pretty far flung and you still want to facilitate getting to raiders. Alternatively, we could always do something equivalent to the no-quit pots for trollocs but for horses instead of a coaching system. Carry oats, fill something available at specific location with the oats, refreshes horses as long as rider doesn't have no quit. Maybe costs the rider some personal moves too.
Always thought our coaching system was sort of a missed opportunity and it'd be funny to have a coach system that was just a long/narrow zone that acts as a 'fast travel' lane between two far flung zones that has the Ways 2.0 code that made it obnoxious to spam as quickly. Also would need something to automatically boot you after a period like the TAR zones. When someone pays to enter it, "doors" to the zone in specific areas open up and can be raided. If someone makes you flee, your flee spits you out in a random room in between point A and point B depending on the room you fled from. I know the miniature zone to facilitate fast travel concept has been implemented in some capacity before for at least one clan, but it'd be more interesting than giving coin to a mob and afking.
Always thought our coaching system was sort of a missed opportunity and it'd be funny to have a coach system that was just a long/narrow zone that acts as a 'fast travel' lane between two far flung zones that has the Ways 2.0 code that made it obnoxious to spam as quickly. Also would need something to automatically boot you after a period like the TAR zones. When someone pays to enter it, "doors" to the zone in specific areas open up and can be raided. If someone makes you flee, your flee spits you out in a random room in between point A and point B depending on the room you fled from. I know the miniature zone to facilitate fast travel concept has been implemented in some capacity before for at least one clan, but it'd be more interesting than giving coin to a mob and afking.
For practical purposes, you generally have less to fear in a door with a group than you do without the doors. Doors discourage raiders and defenders more than anything. There are solo/duo smobbing situations where this isn't necessarily true, but it's easy enough to get picked off as a solo/duo smobber by raiders without throwing doors into the mix.Also while I like that the doors are gone from most smobs, the times I play I have 0 fear of DS catching me anywhere due to this.
Re: Coaches are bad
The longer range coaches, such as FD to Maradon, and Maradon to Baerlon, are relatively fine.
The short range coaches, like Caemy to TV, feel like a bit of a waste.
The extremely chokey road areas of Caemy to TV and FM to Tear make for a very one sided event in most cases. I guess that's kind of the point, but it does work against you when you solo raid and run into a group of 3+ competent PKers doing smobbing.
Anyhow, 90% of raiding nowadays is following a smob group around a zone or so behind them and trying to get enough people interested in coming out so that you have a group large enough to fight them.
My general sentiment on Coaches is that coaches are sort of misused. I don't feel that they are 'bad', but they are definately not 'good' in their current state.
Prykor's vision of how Coaches should be: The intent should be to have a few hub areas (e.g. outside of dog gate, Baerlon, Maradon, Amador) where there are a handful of coach stops near each other to travel to other places, and then the spoke sites such as the other cities (Caemy, Cair, TV, Tear, EF, etc.) that travel only to one of the hubs. This would make it easier to get from one area of the world to another, take a spoke site to a hub, then travel to the hub that has the area where you want to go -- it adds in some more risk as the hub areas are prime targets for raiders to park and wait for prey to come by, but also risk to the raiders as a lot of people can get to the hub area very quickly to rescue somebody.
The short range coaches, like Caemy to TV, feel like a bit of a waste.
The extremely chokey road areas of Caemy to TV and FM to Tear make for a very one sided event in most cases. I guess that's kind of the point, but it does work against you when you solo raid and run into a group of 3+ competent PKers doing smobbing.
Anyhow, 90% of raiding nowadays is following a smob group around a zone or so behind them and trying to get enough people interested in coming out so that you have a group large enough to fight them.
My general sentiment on Coaches is that coaches are sort of misused. I don't feel that they are 'bad', but they are definately not 'good' in their current state.
Prykor's vision of how Coaches should be: The intent should be to have a few hub areas (e.g. outside of dog gate, Baerlon, Maradon, Amador) where there are a handful of coach stops near each other to travel to other places, and then the spoke sites such as the other cities (Caemy, Cair, TV, Tear, EF, etc.) that travel only to one of the hubs. This would make it easier to get from one area of the world to another, take a spoke site to a hub, then travel to the hub that has the area where you want to go -- it adds in some more risk as the hub areas are prime targets for raiders to park and wait for prey to come by, but also risk to the raiders as a lot of people can get to the hub area very quickly to rescue somebody.
Re: Coaches are bad
You're missing a player base for there to be anything to raid. If you find someone out and about it's probably going to be either frustrating because they're slippery or a free kill because they're really new or unprepared. Cities are relatively gentle compared to what they used to be just walk into one of them and announce yourself. Or you could use the several ways there are two have a mob narrate for you. Or you could just do like everyone else and set it up on Discord.
Re: Coaches are bad
I think between hide rooms and coaches it makes things incredibly hard to find people in the wild same side or cross race. I'd be open to getting rid of coaches to remote locations. Make them newbie friendly up to level 30 or below and the rest of us gotta hike it. I think in our effort to make the game friendlier to players we forgot that 99% of us are not new and we've been around for 20+ years. I'd like to see that side of the game reflected again.