The Convenience of Instant Traveling (esp. /home and /tp commands)
I'm not really happy with those /home and /tp commands and I'd like to propose a change or drop of them mainly because it takes away a lot of player experience/joy which I had in single player mode by creating an effective logistic layout to transport items or myself to different spots of interest within my world.
Pros for a change:
In Uncovery's World I got really lazy by just placing my home spot on a central storage point and every time I got a full inventory I just jump back within seconds without effort at all - imho this contradicts the concept of a survival server. By restricting them somehow also the public transportation system would be actually used, people would maybe work together to build inter-lot connections in order to reduce travel times, and so on.
Cons:
Still /home and especially /tp have a good reason for existence, e.g. traveling back from other worlds, if you are stuck or want to invite guests. The current method of traveling is very convenient if not to convenient ...
So I thought about it and would offer the following solutions which still respects the favorable aspects of fast traveling:
(1) Increase the "don't move" time - my suggestions is 30 or 45 secs - quick and easy solution but not my preferred one
(2) Completely disable fast travel - would require a "fair" distributed public transportation systems - for now lots near to the public railroad would be more "valuable" because its faster reachable (there a lots up to 9x100 blocks away from the official railroad)- not a solution in my eyes
(3) Disallow local travel - e.g. restrict /home or /tp to work only if a certain distance between start point and destination is given - e.g. 50 blocks - needs some programming effort - but shouldn't be a problem to include such simple math into the used /home plug-in (at least) - that would a acceptable solution for me
(4) User may create travel gates (my favored solution) such as http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/tp-travelportals-1-4_3-556-568.920/ - here a user must manually build two gates using obsidian and connect them via signs - this would require build rights at the source and the destination point - so you could have local travel gates within your lot and to friends were you got building rights and (I hope) still world travel gates. I admit I didn't test this plug-in yet but it seems promising for me ...
So I would like to hear your opinion/criticism on this matter and any other possible "solution".
Thanks for reading,
Bomb
PS: Sorry for my English - but I hope you get the point.
Um we already have teleports at the spawn that go to certain areas of the map.
But is till like the idea of travel gates but not user lvl but for admin. you can make a epic game with them.
I remember talking about this with some ppl in-game a while ago and a lot of valid points were brought up. I know Uncovery has considered all of this before.
One point that is key to me, though, is that I'm the father to 4 great kids, but I can sometimes be called away at a moment's notice and /home allows me to not have to worry about the travel dynamics of the game during a RL situation.
Just my $0.02.
micko888 said:
Um we already have teleports at the spawn that go to certain areas of the map.
@Micko, if you do not start reading the posts before you write, I recommend you to stop posting at the forums & blog. He wants to have the gates INSTEAD of /tp and in ADDITION to the existing gates.
@Bombenbodo: Thanks for your input. I agree with you and would like to remove the /home etc, too.
To your solutions:
1) increase the limit: The limit is currently to prevent people from running away from mobs. A longer time is possible, but if we do that, we might not reach the effect of making traveling "work" like in single player. We simply make it more annoying.
2) There was in the past the issue that people could not place minecarts on the public railway w/o having build rights on them. Later, I installed the plugin where you could place a minecart with a button, but the system became bugged and I stopped developing it further. I will have to pick that up again. Regarding the distance: Since the inner lots were already given away when I started it, it was difficult to get in contact with each lot owner to agree that a railway should be built across their lot. So it's not something where I can sit down for a some hours and just build railroads (until now at least).
3) I do not want to use custom plugins that touch how the server dynamics work in such an important feature. I do not want to rely on some user who maintains it to stick with the server and update it quickly whenever I need/want to upgrade to the latest craftbukkit/minecraft version.
4) We used to have a function where people could make their home "public" and allow others to travel through their lot. It created so many public homes that I switched it off again. Same with gates. Since it is impossible to limit how many gates people have, it would create a) a map where there are dozens of gates scattered over the landscape and b) an even lazier and more confusing travel. Everyone could ask everyone else to create a gate to their lot. The public area would quickly have 200 gate in it.
My solution is the following one:
a) I will (hopefully within the next 1-2 days) open the "darklands" world which will replace the public area. Fast travel will be disabled there. Playing will be actually harder there than the single player game. You will see, the whole server dynamic will change once this is done.
b) I want to reactivate the public transport on the map. The darklands project goes along with a possibility for everyone to place minecarts on the public transport without even a button, so I do not even have to change anything to the railroad to enable it. The only thing to do then is to build more railroads across other people's lots. I will have to find out which lots these should be and talk to the people for their agreement.
Will the public area be reset and divided into lots?
simmonsrb said:
Will the public area be reset and divided into lots?
I did not make a decision on this yet. Since there are some cool buildings there I do not really want to reset it. I think it can be kept as a community building space and somewhere where new guys can get some basic supplies easily.
Maybe I convert the southern parts into lots, but as I said, no decision taken yet. Since there is not really a shortage in lots, no hurry on this one.
Is there any chance the desert would be reset?
Okay sr. Uncovery
I have another idea for a change that have not been mentioned yet. With the next patch we are going to be able to change spawn position with the help of a bed and then you would no longer need the home command. You could however keep the /spawn to encourage people to get to the spawn and the mall. By doing this you would have to use some kind of public transportation or walk back to your lot after shopping at the mall and you would not be able to instantly teleport home to your storage area when you have a full inventory. You would also be able to get your stuff back after dying, if close to your home, since you would be able to quickly get there from your bed.
I am not sure how the beds as spawns would work in multiplayer but if this would be possible, at least I think this would be optimal.
Thats a good point there Dullahb a good point indeed