I know that everyone likes areas that are close to the astroports. It makes walking from point to point very easy, and reduces the amount of time that people have to jump each other from fighting to getting on a ship. However, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to add areas to the game, because everyone's new area has to be closer to the astroport than everything existing so that it gets noticed. Heck, in a couple of years, it'll be such a problem that areas will be built into the astroports themselves. (Okay, maybe not, but you get the idea.)

I'd like to take some time in the (relatively) near future to repurpose the planets, one at a time, (maybe excluding Arrakis - that place already has a sense of hugeness to it), so that things aren't as clustered.

That is, if the community thinks it needs to be done. Also, if you would, include a planet (or two) that you think this is most prominent on. — Mreh 2010/04/10 17:14

— Unfortunately almost all of the frequented areas are on either GP or Arrakis. Planets like Chapterhouse, IX, Caladan, and Tleilax are practically never used for grinding purposes. Instead of spreading the existing good areas around their current planets, maybe put a few on the neglected ones? — luther 2010/04/10 17:48

— While I agree with you, it's difficult to just “move” an area from one planet to another. Imagine the Harko Tower being on, say, Salusa. — Mreh 2010/04/11 03:17

@luther Mreh's right—if an area was designed with a specific setting in mind, removing it from that setting won't work thematically.

Instead, maybe have new wizzes assigned a planet to code their first areas for. Or given a list of planets that they can choose from. You don't have to “force” them to code—just give them incentives. Like, they can code for wherever they want, but if they want to advance they need to code for one of those planets. Something like that. :) (obviously this idea would take some tweaking…)— Sav/Savannah 2010/04/11

AP clustering is dumb. Who cares if you have to walk 26n…14w…12s, 19w…to get to an amazingly awesome area? I don't. If there were good areas like that on say Caladan, Tleilax, or Chapterhouse…I would for sure walk that far. I could care less how far away I have to run if I get jumped by another player. If you are smart enough you can make it back to the AP before them and get the heck out of there. I think that Caladan/Tleilax/and Chapterhouse really deserve some nice areas.— Extra 2010/04/11 15:34

The other part of the problem (and this is something that I had no control over during the million years that the MUD's been around) is that there is usually only one way to get to a particular place. Obvious exceptions include Arrakis, that Tleilaxu swamp, Salusa's desert, and -maybe- Carthag, but for the most part, there's only one way to get around. I could throw a few days into repurposing a bit of a planet, but would people want that? — Mreh 2010/04/13 04:57

I'm kind of on the wall on this. I think it's important that we have areas that aren't hard to find for people new to the MUD. I don't feel like relearning where all the areas I used to know are but I realize this keeps everyone in the same areas. I'd rather just focus new content or revamped content (like was previously suggested) on unvisited planets. Another possibility would be to decrease the size of the larger planets and add new planets where everything isn't too far from the astroport. That may be embracing the problem but sometimes problems like this are very telling on what players (new and old) prefer (in terms of where to kill). -Linx

Personally I'd hate all planets to be “arrakis”-like, 50×50 grid and have a few enters, ups and downs here and there to get into areas… atm, caladan and ix has the best feel to a planet, they aren't completely tube-like and also tlx has that. Adding 5-7 rooms around GP AP… what would that do? go to the same areas except add “e,e,e,e,e” on aliases to get to that area, so anything wouldn't change, maybe it would change that you could go to gp tower n,n,n,w,w,w,w,w,s,w,n,w,up instead of w,n,w,n… but - is that a REAL change? — cens 2010/04/16 18:25

In my experience, planets that have 'the best feel' to them are much more attractive to the explorers and questers among us. There's a much bigger challenge to finding your way, the same as there is a much bigger challenge to the coder of the planet or area involved. Sadly the reward for exploring is most of the time nothing more than some explorer points, if that. People who have heard me talk about the caladan ocean, or even a smaller project that involved the atreides hq, know that I prefer things to be realistic; and giving a player the sense of being in a real environment instead of something artificial is a tough challenge in a text-based game. But it's a goal that is or should be common among wizards. That being said, I'd rather see that a player has to walk through 20 extra streets and forests and whatnot than that he can access an area right after landing at the astroport. — temujin 2010/04/26 06:34