Scripted Trade Routes.

[VanillaPudding]

These are all passingly dangerous trips, and would provide opportunities for brigands and highwaymen that don't involve ambushing whole companies of adventurers preparing for quests.

Finally, perhaps the information could be tagged into EFUSL for DMs to see data on, and act on this information to change the gameworld, reward diligent PCs, think of plots, and so on.

Yes please.

[EfUA_undercover]

Kinda like this idea, especially when it brings people to wander the server instead of standing at the typical places, group up, quest, go back, rest, stand in typical place.

[Divine Intervention]

I actually really like the idea as well as getting people exploring it provides a ton of RP potential.  Merchants organise caravans and hiring mercenaries who are actually doing mercenary job work.  PC bandits with interesting targets to hit rather than just looting peoples gold/potions.  On that note if this was implemented a secret "Black Market" dealer for goods would be cool if criminals and bandits robbed caravans they'd need somewhere to sell.

[Iron Oligarch]

I will bump this with an additional suggestion: smuggling runs for criminals to undertake, and law enforcers to stop. As an example:

- Taking illicit Mist-related substances from Gull Rock to a "pusher" camped in the sewers beneath the Dominion.

And, in response to Snoteye whose post I missed:

Technically, apart from the party support do you foresee this as being  different from a regular delivery?

/Doesn't build quests.

Apart from the party support and lack of a level restriction, not particularly. The major difference between these "trade route" quests and "delivery" quests is the distance between the starting and ending points, as well as the increased danger that one encounters between them and the larger reward one would get for completing them.

Jayde Moon's suggestion is another valid option, but I am not certain if the shop's gold cap could be increased for specific items. If it could not, one would have to buy twenty, thirty knick-knacks at a time; this would clutter up PC inventories and be a pain to unload at a shop. It is still a reasonable suggestion that might involve a good bit less work than setting up quests, however.

[Mort]

Tried this.

Region to defend for resources.

Bringing resources (ore) from the mountain to the city.

Most people didn't bother or they did when no one was on, or it was just lame and boring.

Lots of problem with it or how people will treat it in general. I did picture in my head lots of awesome scenarios that people could do without any DM but there needs to be -clear- incentive for and against these trade routes beforehand and lots of scripting must be done for it to work.

It can't be done with simplicity if you want it to work the way you envision this and I doubt anyone at the moment is willing to script this, so good idea, but not feasible in the foreseable future.

[Staring Death]

Tried this.

Region to defend for resources.

Bringing resources (ore) from the mountain to the city.

Most people didn't bother or they did when no one was on, or it was just lame and boring.

Lots of problem with it or how people will treat it in general. I did picture in my head lots of awesome scenarios that people could do without any DM but there needs to be -clear- incentive for and against these trade routes beforehand and lots of scripting must be done for it to work.

It can't be done with simplicity if you want it to work the way you envision this and I doubt anyone at the moment is willing to script this, so good idea, but not feasible in the foreseable future.

There's a reason why the defendable regions are not used. There's little visible benefit to it.

[Thomas_Not_very_wise]

Now, if defending these regions gave a minor income to all factions members, say, 2 gold every IG hour...

[Drakill Tannan]

It's not just that. IMO the thing is that it is not very amusing to defend them. You walk in, click a placeable, then walk out. By defending you mean defending them from other factions who are vicously trying to... er.. defend it too.

Perhaps if when reaching the area, you had to clear a large amount of enemies to actually be able to claim it, and ocacionally, enemies would invade teh area again and you got a message like "You've lost controll of X area" etc...

[Sandstorm]

There's a reason why the defendable regions are not used. There's little visible benefit to it.

This.

I controlled the farms for several weeks, and formed a faction around defending it, and saw no benefit at all. In the end it just got boring and tedious to control a region that gave no benefit, would randomly be taken away by a lone wolf spawning somewhere in the area, and other 3 person factions would just randomly take and ignore.

Running stuff from one place to another seems more interesting, because you're not defending a flag somewhere, but moving from place to place. It may have been boring to chill in the mountains and fight endless spawns of orcs for no real gain, but it might be more cool if a team had to get ore and got a reasonable reward for it. But I think the real impetus is the 'reasonable reward' and 'feeling like a faction' part, not the 'imaginary conflict that everyone knows won't happen' part. If conflict does come, that should be the ++ to it, not the sole reason.

IMHO.

[TheMacPanther]

While I love Iron Oligarch's idea, I think that Jayde's is far more feasible and would be more akin to an actual trade route.

I would be all in favor of seeing things like "A box/bag/crate of salmon" sold at Gaeseric's camp each with different weights and values to be bought by a merchant in the Docks/Zig. This could also work with corals and the like that could be bought on the other islands or found in appropriate quest areas.