Moboled Soft Blocks, 30 days

[Taziar]

I would like to open up discussions on the new moboled soft blocks since the 30 days from implementation has past.
While I am still not sold on the necessity of them I think I like them better than the alternative to just deleting connections across the map. Another alternative to soft blocks is to use more doors with higher search requirements and occasionally add pick (similar to passgate) to give those skills greater use and create tougher decisions when practicing.

I would like to address the two main issues I see with both soft blocks and then offer some suggestions.

First, The function of them being Sci-Fi air locks has created I think an unforeseen consequence: the uber door trap. I witnessed (3rd person) someone trapping someone else inside the ferry south of Tar Valon and without the ability to escape it essentially became a door trap that does not need to be spammed closed.

Second, the implementation of the Tar Valon ferry mobol wasn't every clean and without any prompts to understand how it worked it has created lots of confusion. The delays create an environment that any over spam sends multiple commands to the mobol and results in lots of error messages and even more confusion.

Tar Valon Ferry suggestion:
Make the ferry like a mini coach, one person only at a time and have mobol auto move people after next tic instead of having the player input commands. Riverboat mobol already has the ability to check for no quit and teleport a person and their mount into a room. Granted, never doing mobol I don't know how hard it would be to cut and paste these functions together but I think something like this would be smoother and have less margin for error. Even a 1 gcs fare wouldn't be unreasonable.

Far Madding Checkpoint suggestion:
To remove the air lock and the associated door trap that comes along with it place a door called barricade and have a similar mobol to the Chachin gate where a player has to call it, have the mobol check for no quit and if clear move player and mount to the other side of the door. This removes the need for an additional room in between and fulfills the same requirements.

Thanks again for Immortals continued attempts to make the game better, it is appreciated. And thank you for listening to player suggestions.

Taziar

[Paj]

I do not like these 'soft blocks' as they take more time than if I were to spam/horse-hop around the soft-block.

If the route is faster/shorter and a soft block is meant to improve keeping PK in the area, then it shouldn't slow down normal folk (no no-quit) from travelling.

My first experience at the south-TV soft-block was horrendous. I reviewed the announcement, moved around the rooms, spammed a few words at the ferryman. No response. Luckily people are still helpful on chats (or maybe just Imms on mortals who knew how it worked).

[Elysia]

Tar Valon Ferry suggestion:
Make the ferry like a mini coach, one person only at a time and have mobol auto move people after next tic instead of having the player input commands.

Applying river boat or coach mechanics would mean mobs such as pets or mastermobs couldn't use it. It was a very, very conscious choice to set it up as is so mobs and groups could still pass. I could've made it /force move someone all the way through, but again, a conscious choice not to do that so people can decide to turn around at every individual step. If you hear 4 DS are at TV westgate while sailing west, I'm sure you'll agree that the ability to turn around and go back east is a good thing.

Forced player moving could also have various problems with getting stuck or bumped into the wrong direction, depending on how it was set up. With the current setup, you can come back from boot, crash or ld and keep going (or turn back) where you left off, no problem.

Imo a slightly harder daily use is to be preferred over the other issues. People will learn daily use sooner or later. After all, people learned to use the ship system too and that is infinitely more complicated.

[Taziar]

Thanks for the response Elysia, what about the inescapable door trap issue that these have created? I saw a master kill an accepted in the ferry because the accepted couldn't figure out the ferry system and chatted questions about it while they were stuck. The master went to the ferry (that was already suppose to be on the river ) and killed the accepted because they were in an inescapable no channel room. This is the most glaring issue I have with this one. I assume the checkpoint is going to have a similar issue.

You are right about people getting used to it, over time it could be accepted as a norm and we could have a long discussion on the benefits of standardization but I digress

Thanks again for all you do!

Taziar

[Sarryn]

Don't like them, and go out of my way to avoid them. I think the mud's map needs shortened up a good bit. There could be majority of zone rooms or whole zones removed or constricted. This mud was more for the 100-200 player days. Now were very lucky to hit 30. It takes to long to get places. Time is the biggest issue for a lot of our players. Life doesn't give you as much as you age. More responsibility and less time. I think certain issues involving time in this game need changed. A good change was the 5/15, which could probably do with a 5/10 honestly. Or at the least a side per side breakdown of numbers currently logged on each. Anyways off track a bit. I really dislike these soft blocks. I don't dislike the idea in essence. The mobol and learning all that jazz not so much. Connections to zones don't need removed. That just makes you have to run around further on the map. Thus more time. In fact not only do there need to be less connections, there should be more. All the while thinking of lessening the massive map we currently have of course.

[Loomis]

Me no like. No elaboration, or suggestions...just not fun.

Loomis

[Razhak]

I dont like the soft blocks because of their delay.

I've never understood this need to slow down the routes between certain places of close off certain routes. The routes you are closing off now are not really much used, but if they are used, they are fun enough. PK near Remen is sparce, but I've had some epic fights around there in the past. This basically ends now in my opinion.

This mud doesnt need mobol slowing things down. The mud is large, but who cares? This gives an edge to people who actually explore outside the beaten track between the major hubs and the major pk zones. Remove soft blocks, leave the rest of the mud as it is, also dont give in to people who are advocating removing zones or making short cut connections. Anyone with a semblance of zone knowledge van spam anyplace with horsehopping (totally possible to horsehop Illian to FD without stopping ever in under 3 minutes tops).

Lazy people can just take the coach.

[Ragyn]

Fairly sure they were put in place to limit the amount of escape routes during pk, also if you have ever had fun pk in garen's wall that must've been more than a decade ago when everyone didn't have a map/zone knowledge of the place and you actually had a semblance of catching more profilic pkers in the zone. Doubt you'll ever be able to kill someone who is somewhat decent at PK in a defensive setup running around those zones. Ama-illian road actually wasn't that bad, with the lack of horseloads it was possible to catch people who were low on vials. Personally I'm neither for or against, though I found the tv-cair slightly annoying, but you can just run through novice zone.

Also I think the no quit might have a loophole as you can still flee into the room, was fighting jalagang on an alt and he fled in there crit and ultimately lived! Twas a sad day had by all.

[Sarryn]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'm one of the faster players via map knowledge. I know it's not hard to get anywhere quick. I do it all the time, on lots of different alts. It's just tedious, annoying, boring, tiresome etc. To the point of people who are decent at living/pk/running/blah. I highly doubt this or doing anything will really affect that. Honestly if some people would chase when those people run they'd probably get a kill. Specially because there probably low hence the running. Generally going to a better spot for them etc. But again muds to big and people, especially certain people are very lazy when it comes to pk. If they don't get there kills super quick they give up.

[Barabbas]

Got stuck in TV block once, took me 5 minutes on chats to get out, and have avoided it ever since, preferring to go the long way through TV to Cairhien and visa versa because it felt faster. I don't like air locks, but have no experience with them in a PK setting.

I would like various blocked routes like Remen area and Amador/Illian reconnected, not for PK reasons but for Exp loops.