A signpost for routes thats not the neighbor signpost, would make the most sense, something that is specifically for routes at any rate. Having it be tied in with the butler might be confusing as hes already the mailbox plus other small things, that and your house isnt near the signpost. Even if the sign doesnt automatically send you anywhere and is a list type thing , i think something official needs to be put in place for routes
Excellent discussion - I'm looking forward to seeing how this gets worked out. I love the idea of having routes for things besides basic resources. And I love the idea of just being able to go to a random street, as long as it has something of interest on it, and a way to go on to another random or route street!
I think the biggest difference between the two ideas is that the route signpost has everyone belong to a common route together - one spice route to rule them all, sort of. Maybe one low and one high density route. I think this would promote routes as a form of identity expression. "I'm a low density spice and community kitchens kind of glitch."
The butler/regular signpost idea would allow for myriad routes of any one kind, as each person who wanted to start a spice route could. I think this would promote the growth of smaller, more organic communities, but also foster competition between routes and potentially, route members. It would also open up some forms of emergent gameplay as more competitive routes try to attract route users to their circuit.
I don't think one or the other is necessarily better, but they would shape the game differently. You could also allow for multiple routes of one type with the first idea, but one of its biggest attractions for me is that it's no maintenance, randomized, and has no route curators (leaders or owners.)
Ideally we should be able to enter or exit a route and the route self-heals, also ideally routes would have their own listing/sign(or whatever applies) , that is not the home street signpost. And lastly they should not have to be monitored. The needing to be monitored and routes breaking when anyone leaves along with lack of easy joining, are the biggest issues of routes and any way to avoid them would be preferrable
@"Scarlett Bearsdale", now that you lay it out so clearly, there is no reason the two couldn't coexist!
For the resources, you could have the global route, with its own special crafted signpost, that would check by itself how many resources a yard has and only send you to those that fulfil the requirement.
For anything not as easily countable by the game, or anyone who wants to impose a different standard than what the default route sets, you could have some kind of interest groups? collectives?, and when you join a group, you could set one of your signs on the signpost to point to "the group" instead of a specific homestreet. Then when you click on it it will send you to a random group member. The group founder/moderators could remove members from the group (or set them to inactive maybe?) if their yards don't fulfill the conditions and the member remains unresponsive...
ETA: that would also solve the problems of "which sign is used for which route", two routes using #1 sign etc., as the group name would appear on the signpost!
I like the idea of a dedicated sign for routes and the idea that you would have to build them or pay for them in some way and that they be for a specific route. Getting sent to route locations randomly by the sign posts is also an excellent idea. It would certainly help spread out the use. I think that it's crucial that the signs be self healing. The route management was a huge burden on the volunteers and I could see getting easily burnt out.
Attie: I think that's an elegant solution in some ways! And I think you could easily add it to the group admin interface which membership levels meet route criteria, if they also have a signpost.
**Here is the most current version of what I think our best bet for implementing routes in-game would look like:
The Route Signpost is created via the cultivate menu on your homestreet. Critical Elements: - You can use any route signpost you find in anyone's homestreet. Interacting with a route sign allows you to (a) follow it for an energy cost; to (b) join it for an iMG cost and if you meet the criteria; or to (c) like it. Liking allows you to link your own signpost to a route without joining it. The like option costs more iMG the more routes you currently like, while the join option costs more iMG the longer the route currently is. - Signs that are set to a route you have liked are outgoing only and do not bring traffic to your street. Signs that are set to a route you have joined are both incoming and outgoing and can be used to follow the route but also will bring route traffic to your homestreet. - Following routes via signs costs energy. The exact way of determining route structure is open to what is easiest to program, but the key elements that are required are a degree of randomness from the perspective of the route members (so iMG bonuses are distributed evenly over time,) and ensuring that route users are sent to streets they haven't yet visited that day, if any exist.* - Like with other resource nodes, there is an iMG, materials, and work cost to place and build route signposts. Posts come initially with one sign that can be set to "random" or be changed to any route you have liked the same way you change friends on your regular signpost. You can build up to 4 additional signs on the same post for additional cost. Posts are placeable and nudgeable as other street resources are. Signpost itself uses existing image assets (possibly recolour the wood of the post. Maybe integrate an energy symbol indicate the cost of using the route on the top of the signpost.) - The join option is only available on other people's routes signs when you have an unassigned sign on a post in your homestreet and you meet the route criteria. If you have liked the route and you have an unassigned sign, then any route sign will also give you the option to "set blank sign to this route". - To start a new route, use the menu options via an unassigned sign in your own homestreet. The route sign is also where Owners** set or change resource requirements, or link route to an existing group. I imagine it makes mores sense as attie suggests above to manage which group members can join/belong to the group route via group member permissions rather than through the route interface itself. - Route owners can pass ownership to another member when they leave the route. Owners approve the removal of members from the route when they stop meeting the requirements. Owners possibly also approve the addition of members to routes with no requirements. Routes with no requirements can remove members at any time. Owners set the route name displayed on the route signs. Route names would have a character limit and be reportable.
Non-critical enhancements: - By default, when you TP into someone's yard using a route sign, you arrive at the base of the route signpost. But this landing spot can be dragged elsewhere in the yard and placed away from the route post during placement or nudging. This way you could set the landing spot so you arrive at one end of the row of resources, move in one direction to harvest them and then leave via the route signpost at the other end of the row. Much more efficient! -Ideally when you hover your mouse over a route sign, the tooltip that pops up would be the one sentence route description entered by the route owner, or the resource type requirements. - It would be interesting if existing route members could contribute iMG toward the cost of the open spot for the next member to join. So instead of it potentially costing a lot to join a really long route, it could cost a little or nothing if current members help out. Or for medium length routes that want to expand, current members might make it more appealing to join by paying some or all of the cost for new folks. - You can link to your friends yards via these signposts as well as routes you have liked. This satisfies players who absolutely need to have signs to their 20 BFFs. I'm not sure if this type of use would cost energy - I'm inclined toward not, given the cost of building the extra signs in the first place.
*This could be a purely random system, but then the game would have to track which streets on the route you had already visited and take that into account when generating the next result when you next use a route sign. More likey, it could look like a random route order generated every game day, or the game could determine a set order for a route, and use that order until someone joins or leaves, as long as the entry point to the circuits varied for people who are using "like"/outgoing signs. I don't know which is easier to program, and what's easiest on the servers. **I still prefer the term "Curator" here, for flavour, but owner is clearer during these planning stages.
Reflections and Things I Like About This:
- I like that encourages exploration of other people's yards, to find new and more routes because they are decentralized. - I like that you have to contact a route "in person" in order to access it the first time or in order join it. And there would be some emergent gameplay through advertising for individual routes that could be in game via notes or in forums or groups or third party publications like the ImaginatUr. - I like that it promotes the building of small-med sized communities. I like that will give rise to a more dynamic player landscape than having one or two massive routes for each resource would. - I like that it allows for groups of any kind to form a route, and it keeps the randomized structure for these routes, which allows low maintenance, but functional routes. The only thing the owner does is keep streets that are no longer participating in the route theme off the route if they forget to leave. - I like that it costs something extra to gather resources with ease using the route system. This will allow for people who want to use third party resources to build routes to do so, and to have an incentive to do so. It also sends a clear message encouraging us to gather what we can in Ur as well as using homestreets. It would also be possible for the energy cost to vary with the length and average density of key resources on the route, thus making it cost more to use the really efficient routes. - I like that it avoids having to load a menu of all the routes for anyone, instead letting each person collect a manageable and restricted set of routes that works for them, in both size and composition. Since the iMG cost to like routes balloons the more routes you have currently liked, it presents practical limit to how many routes you the server needs to record and display for you when interacting with the menu. Similarly, if the cost to join a route balloons as the route gets longer, the draws on the server for people navigating any one route are also constrainable. - I like that adding the route signpost would take up real estate - less than a regular resource node (I think about half would be good) so if you want to add a lot of them you're giving up that production capacity. And I like choices players can make like that!
Comments
The butler/regular signpost idea would allow for myriad routes of any one kind, as each person who wanted to start a spice route could. I think this would promote the growth of smaller, more organic communities, but also foster competition between routes and potentially, route members. It would also open up some forms of emergent gameplay as more competitive routes try to attract route users to their circuit.
I don't think one or the other is necessarily better, but they would shape the game differently. You could also allow for multiple routes of one type with the first idea, but one of its biggest attractions for me is that it's no maintenance, randomized, and has no route curators (leaders or owners.)
For the resources, you could have the global route, with its own special crafted signpost, that would check by itself how many resources a yard has and only send you to those that fulfil the requirement.
For anything not as easily countable by the game, or anyone who wants to impose a different standard than what the default route sets, you could have some kind of interest groups? collectives?, and when you join a group, you could set one of your signs on the signpost to point to "the group" instead of a specific homestreet. Then when you click on it it will send you to a random group member. The group founder/moderators could remove members from the group (or set them to inactive maybe?) if their yards don't fulfill the conditions and the member remains unresponsive...
ETA: that would also solve the problems of "which sign is used for which route", two routes using #1 sign etc., as the group name would appear on the signpost!
I think that it's crucial that the signs be self healing. The route management was a huge burden on the volunteers and I could see getting easily burnt out.
**Here is the most current version of what I think our best bet for implementing routes in-game would look like:
The Route Signpost is created via the cultivate menu on your homestreet.
Critical Elements:
- You can use any route signpost you find in anyone's homestreet. Interacting with a route sign allows you to (a) follow it for an energy cost; to (b) join it for an iMG cost and if you meet the criteria; or to (c) like it. Liking allows you to link your own signpost to a route without joining it. The like option costs more iMG the more routes you currently like, while the join option costs more iMG the longer the route currently is.
- Signs that are set to a route you have liked are outgoing only and do not bring traffic to your street. Signs that are set to a route you have joined are both incoming and outgoing and can be used to follow the route but also will bring route traffic to your homestreet.
- Following routes via signs costs energy. The exact way of determining route structure is open to what is easiest to program, but the key elements that are required are a degree of randomness from the perspective of the route members (so iMG bonuses are distributed evenly over time,) and ensuring that route users are sent to streets they haven't yet visited that day, if any exist.*
- Like with other resource nodes, there is an iMG, materials, and work cost to place and build route signposts. Posts come initially with one sign that can be set to "random" or be changed to any route you have liked the same way you change friends on your regular signpost. You can build up to 4 additional signs on the same post for additional cost. Posts are placeable and nudgeable as other street resources are. Signpost itself uses existing image assets (possibly recolour the wood of the post. Maybe integrate an energy symbol indicate the cost of using the route on the top of the signpost.)
- The join option is only available on other people's routes signs when you have an unassigned sign on a post in your homestreet and you meet the route criteria. If you have liked the route and you have an unassigned sign, then any route sign will also give you the option to "set blank sign to this route".
- To start a new route, use the menu options via an unassigned sign in your own homestreet. The route sign is also where Owners** set or change resource requirements, or link route to an existing group. I imagine it makes mores sense as attie suggests above to manage which group members can join/belong to the group route via group member permissions rather than through the route interface itself.
- Route owners can pass ownership to another member when they leave the route. Owners approve the removal of members from the route when they stop meeting the requirements. Owners possibly also approve the addition of members to routes with no requirements. Routes with no requirements can remove members at any time. Owners set the route name displayed on the route signs. Route names would have a character limit and be reportable.
Non-critical enhancements:
- By default, when you TP into someone's yard using a route sign, you arrive at the base of the route signpost. But this landing spot can be dragged elsewhere in the yard and placed away from the route post during placement or nudging. This way you could set the landing spot so you arrive at one end of the row of resources, move in one direction to harvest them and then leave via the route signpost at the other end of the row. Much more efficient!
-Ideally when you hover your mouse over a route sign, the tooltip that pops up would be the one sentence route description entered by the route owner, or the resource type requirements.
- It would be interesting if existing route members could contribute iMG toward the cost of the open spot for the next member to join. So instead of it potentially costing a lot to join a really long route, it could cost a little or nothing if current members help out. Or for medium length routes that want to expand, current members might make it more appealing to join by paying some or all of the cost for new folks.
- You can link to your friends yards via these signposts as well as routes you have liked. This satisfies players who absolutely need to have signs to their 20 BFFs. I'm not sure if this type of use would cost energy - I'm inclined toward not, given the cost of building the extra signs in the first place.
*This could be a purely random system, but then the game would have to track which streets on the route you had already visited and take that into account when generating the next result when you next use a route sign. More likey, it could look like a random route order generated every game day, or the game could determine a set order for a route, and use that order until someone joins or leaves, as long as the entry point to the circuits varied for people who are using "like"/outgoing signs. I don't know which is easier to program, and what's easiest on the servers.
**I still prefer the term "Curator" here, for flavour, but owner is clearer during these planning stages.
Reflections and Things I Like About This:
- I like that encourages exploration of other people's yards, to find new and more routes because they are decentralized.
- I like that you have to contact a route "in person" in order to access it the first time or in order join it. And there would be some emergent gameplay through advertising for individual routes that could be in game via notes or in forums or groups or third party publications like the ImaginatUr.
- I like that it promotes the building of small-med sized communities. I like that will give rise to a more dynamic player landscape than having one or two massive routes for each resource would.
- I like that it allows for groups of any kind to form a route, and it keeps the randomized structure for these routes, which allows low maintenance, but functional routes. The only thing the owner does is keep streets that are no longer participating in the route theme off the route if they forget to leave.
- I like that it costs something extra to gather resources with ease using the route system. This will allow for people who want to use third party resources to build routes to do so, and to have an incentive to do so. It also sends a clear message encouraging us to gather what we can in Ur as well as using homestreets. It would also be possible for the energy cost to vary with the length and average density of key resources on the route, thus making it cost more to use the really efficient routes.
- I like that it avoids having to load a menu of all the routes for anyone, instead letting each person collect a manageable and restricted set of routes that works for them, in both size and composition. Since the iMG cost to like routes balloons the more routes you have currently liked, it presents practical limit to how many routes you the server needs to record and display for you when interacting with the menu. Similarly, if the cost to join a route balloons as the route gets longer, the draws on the server for people navigating any one route are also constrainable.
- I like that adding the route signpost would take up real estate - less than a regular resource node (I think about half would be good) so if you want to add a lot of them you're giving up that production capacity. And I like choices players can make like that!