Alternate Locations

Suggestions
1

This is from the perspective of a new user (me) finding his way around.

After learning about the Knowledge tab I started browsing shops but quickly found that it was very inconvenient to reach them, or to find portals to get there.

This is a suggestion which I believe should be computationally feasible yet extremely useful, particularly for newcomers with limited mobility.

Any beacon should be allowed to store 3-10 “Alternate Locations.” Ideally as many as possible without straining the server. Perhaps a larger capacity if the beacon is responsible for a larger number of portals. This is the way I propose they work:

  • When someone is looking for the beacon or shop or map location near that beacon, and sets that as their destination, the system currently just points directly to that destination.
  • In my proposed system, the system will first look to see if any of the alternate locations is closer, and instead point the compass in that direction (or perhaps a differently colored alternate compass, showing both directions)
  • Users have an incentive to correctly identify locations of relevant portals to help people find their beacon.

Concrete Example:
Suppose you are looking for my beacon at Storis II -1642N 1200E 67Altitude
One alternate location I will add to my beacon is Biitula 1074N -528E 66Altitude, which is a portal in Enjoy Divinity that goes nearby my beacon.
Another will be Circarpous I -1418N -1983E 60Altitude, which is a portal in TNT New Nixia that goes to Enjoy Divinity
Along the same lines, I might add Biitula 1384N -1121E 70A, in the Portal Seekers Hub.

Now, if you are on Biitula or Circarpous you will obviously have an easy time finding a good portal to Storis II… the system will point you in that direction. But it doesn’t stop here! Because the other involved beacons also will have alternate locations. TNT New Nixia might include a number of their portals from Circarpous to other worlds, and the same applies to PS. So on other worlds, the system would point you to the relevant portal on those worlds.

So now if the system is willing to explore the nodes within some distance (maybe 3-4 portal hops) the system can find a quick way to my beacon from any of the connected worlds. Basically recursively: Where is A? Go to B. Where is B? Go to C. Because A has marked B as an equivalent location, and B has marked C as an equivalent location, and C is the closest leaf to the user. Obviously if you are already close to A then you just get pointed to A, since A is closest.

I am vaguely aware that others have proposed that Boundless have a more sophisticated pathfinding algorithm taking into account portal physics or that the community offers an app, but I think this is a good balance. When users provide a small number of nodes to populate the graph (small number compared to every cell in every world) it’s easy to do the pathfinding server-side.

A better way might include the already-existent portal token system (instead of manually entering inexact coordinates), but would require that anyone can interact with a portal and get the necessary portal token to add the portal token to their beacon’s location inventory.

4 Likes
2

I like this.

Maybe a possible solution would be to, besides a beacon title, they could have a description too.

That way, you can store alternate locations or even detailed instructions on how to get to the beacon.

3 Likes
3

I have seen prior posts where people have hacked their way around this in clever ways, trying to include as much info as possible in their beacon names. I think it would indeed be helpful if people could have beacon descriptions. An automated compass would be a complementary solution to the same problem and could certainly coexist. Beacon descriptions have merit of their own, aside from the pathfinding problem.

1 Like
4

Well, why don’t just assign the wrap option when you click the store you want to go ?
Since same planet travel only cost you like 100c which is very cheap, It will be a lot more convenient for players to click to wrap to the store they want. Currently, it still cost me a lot of time when I am trying to find out the shop locations which I am not sure where they connect to the hubs or which hub. I think instead of marking the location on the UI, wrap there directly will be a lot easier for either new players or experienced players.

2 Likes
5

Agree with OP
The devs could also let us have beacon subtitles visible only in shop scanner, to add destinations

1 Like
6

I think you can disable warp on your beacon so you may not be able to always warp to the inside of the shop. But it would be nice to be able to warp to a nearby area anyway.

2 Likes
7

Personally I like that you can only warp to somewhere that you’ve already been or that you’ve used a location token on. I find that to be a meaningful limitation but I understand others may not agree. Whereas my suggestion is basically something that removes a computational limitation–certainly the community could create a website that does this pathfinding for you and people could submit alternate locations to such a website, but it would be better to be built-in to the game.

Basically just want the in-game compass to be better, and I am suggesting a computationally feasible way to do that.

2 Likes
8

I agree with this point on most of content, but not shopping part. Its really cost a lot of time when I want to find out some rare items I need especially specific color of blocks which won’t show on the shopping UI. In this case, I need to check a lot of stores in a lot of different planets. Sometimes it take me hours to find out the item I need, and sometimes after hours of seeking process, I still can’t find the item I need.

2 Likes
9

I totally empathize :slight_smile: and facing this problem myself is what motivated me to come up with this solution. I think using the existing portal system is preferable to me but I empathize with the motivation for direct warp.

10

The problem of color of blocks is something where I’d like the Knowledge tab UI to be better about showing details like Forges and Colors but that’s a whole other complaint.

11

I agree for sure with this one. Color search would be amazing!

1 Like
12

I feel its very hard to achieve, since we have so many colors in game for a most block items, and our shopping UI is very small.

Also the idea you bring up, I think you are missing one very important point which is shopping UI only show the item on the current planet. So if you are in Biitula, you won’t see any shop in storis II. As result, even applying the system you mention above, you still can’t find out the items you need in other planet. I am not sure, I understand your concept correctly or not because its a little be complicated for me to understand. Correct me if I am wrong about this part :slight_smile:

Also now day most people choose “Mall” to host their business, and most mall are so freaking big. It takes very long walk to “just checking if they have the item I need”. At least for me I am not very enjoy this process, and feel its kind of unnecessary.

1 Like
13

I’m new here so I am likely missing many points.

My experience thus far has been even when I look for a shop on the same planet I would like the compass to show me which portals to go through to avoid walking. I have actually walked 2000m to get to a shop, which is fun, but I would have avoided it if I knew which portals to go through.

Agreed that for shopping, as a separate issue, you might ask the devs for a unified shopping UI (or whatever people are doing with the Shopping API). But in this case I’m thinking about any case where you somehow got knowledge of a location (offworld or same world either through coordinates, a friend telling you, the knowledge tab, shopping search same world).

14

I am not very sure why devs release the shopping system base on each planet, but I guess its because of the server limited. Base on what I know, each planet considering as one server, so it makes a lot of sense that shopping UI only show the item in current planet you are.

For experienced players, I think they just need to adding the description on shopping UI, for players to write which hub their shop connect with. But for “New players” and “Returning players”, description won’t help a lot because most of them don’t know what is portal seeker, ultima hub, TNT hub.
Without a mentor explained portal system to new players, I think its very hard for them to understand how the hub work and where to find those hub.

This is the reason why I suggest to adding wrap option when player click the shop they want to check. It help new players to find out the item they need and increasing chance to entering those major hubs (because most shop connect to those major hubs).

But the problem is new players need to know how to use the shopping UI on knowledge tab. I currently find out a lot of new players don’t know how to use shopping UI.

For me, the current shopping UI is fine because better than nothing. But I think it can still be better for players to save their time to avoid those unnecessary procedure and investing their time on the contents they enjoy more.

15

As a new player I don’t like paying 100 coins per warp – another reason I prefer a compass+portal solution, or maybe free warps for first 7 days. I think some new players have an easy time earning coin but not all.

2 Likes
16

I think removing the 100c warp cost for your current planet/1 blinksec - or just remove it for any warps on the planet your home beacon is on - would be good for the NPE. For myself at least, probably the same for most long-terms I’m suspecting, that 100c fee doesn’t limit my warping around at all, but to newcomers could be a real obstacle at times - only see upside to removing it. Especially as new players might set up their place pretty far from a portal hub… usually awhile before a player is ready to set up portals, and access to a hub is huge. With free warps on the planet, would allow jumping to one from your base for free at any time.

2 Likes