Right now we're faced with an awkward problem. We need to have some way to deliver quests to the player, but our current system clutters the map pretty badly. I've attached some examples of such clutter below.
Beyond just the cluttering problem, we also need to figure out a good way to introduce new quest givers to the player without breaking immersion (oh hey, a new inn just appeared, you should go visit it!). To this end, I would suggest a few changes that make inns act in a similar manner to resources.
I will go through each point step by step.
Inns should only spawn at world spawn:
I find that it breaks my immersion to have new inns and quest points appear out of thin air auto-magically from time to time. I would prefer then that Inns only spawn once. This enables us to control how inns appear on the map through the map generation code, which should also help take care of the clustering problem that I've shown in the above screenshots.
Inns can be improved/co-opted by players:
It's a little weird that new inns are springing up in my "territory" but I don't control them in any manner. Since inns are going to be much rarer (and support multiple quests), why not let the player improve them like other resources for some bonus in prestige/gold. This lets the player integrate the "quest giver" into their empire. Additionally, I would like it if Inns could act as connection points for roads and caravans - so a player can send caravans to an inn, and then onward to another city. This helps establish the view of the inn as a "halfway house".
Inns should support multiple quests:
How often is there only one quest at the quest hub in an RPG? I think it would be useful for players to be able to visit inns and choose amongst quests that they can undertake. There would need to be either a popup or some sort of graphical demonstration that an inn had quests which could be activated. This also lets us show the player quests that they cannot take yet due to adventure level, encouraging them to raise their adventuring level. I am envisioning the inn as a place where people from the kingdom can bring problems which don't necessarily require sovereign level intervention to solve.
Inns should periodically gain more quests:
Not everyone knows that they have a problem immediately, and some people take a long time to go looking for help. I think it would be cool if inns provided a semi-steady stream of quests for adventurers and sovereigns to take. Once again, I view the inn as a place where people come with problems to be solved.
the pic looks like the bar in leasuresuit larry 1
harpo
Bumping this thread, I really like this idea and even Frogboy liked it Although I'm aware that the team is currently focused on fixing a bunch of issues I thought it was worth it to remind you guys of this concept which I think could be really cool!
Also I really would like if the Inns were made similar to how the Shops work for champions, it would add more depth to the RPG side of elemental . I found some screenshots that better represent my suggestion in the first page:
You could make it so when you stepped on an inn you got a screen like this populated with NPCs that gave you quests, or champions for hire. Note that I got that screenshot from a google search just to set an example of my suggestion, I take no credit for that cool looking tavern .
Over all, I've had similar thoughts and wonder why an inn doesn't become part of the empire when your ZoC surrounds it. Couple of things I don't get though is why are there inns in the wilderness to begine with? There are zero cities. There are no roads and I don't even see trails. Any thing not part of your Empire is full of monsters and thieves.
Also, thieves and monster groups can destroy our towns willy-nilly if we don't defend them. How would any inn out there survive let alone find clientele? Where do they get their ale and bread? We are supposed to have trouble feeding our own town for crying out loud and need a, "fertile land tile," to build farms.
From my perspective, they could keep the basic functionality of inns with some of the improvements suggested, use the inn or pub we build for I can't understand why these inns are popping up in hostile, uninhabited areas where there is no food or other resources. For that matter, if there are resources why can't my town use them too?
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