Suggestion:20090301 Skyscrapers as Navigation Landmarks

20090301 Skyscrapers as Navigation Landmarks

A Big F'ing Dog 16:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion type
Improvement

Suggestion scope
Navigating through the city

Suggestion description

We already have tall buildings in Malton. I suggest retconning some of these to be really tall buildings. There wouldn't be many of these, perhaps only one or two per suburb. Their purpose would be to help people navigate. Urbanites in real life use skyscrapers to get a general sense of where they are. Malton's skyscrapers would be visible from up to ten spaces away, from any place outdoors like so:

You are standing outside the McMullen Building, an imposing yellow-stone building surrounded by a large paved plaza. The building's doors have been left wide open, and you can see that the interior of the building has been ruined for a very long time. In the distance you see the Wilcott Tower 5s1w, the Edwards Tower 1n2e, and the Yeardly Tower 8n4e.

Skyscrapers would only display textually in the outdoor location description, not on the 3x3 map grid.

So if you know the mall you want to go to is just east of Wilcott tower, this would help you get your bearings and go the right way. Note that this helps both survivors and zombies, since both have to walk around the city. This would eliminate the need to check a map in some cases. If you remember where a few important buildings are in relation to a tower, as long as you can see the skyscraper you'd never need a map for those locations again.

Other than being visible on outdoor descriptions, skyscrapers would function no differently than tall buildings, allowing binocular use and suicide.

I'd like to note, in addition to being a useful navigation feature I like the sense of depth this would add to the city. Seeing giant structures in the distance would make the game feel more real than the 3x3 grid of blocks we see on the display.

Voting Section

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Keep Votes

1. Keep Saves the time and effort of checking a map when making trips around the area. As for realism issues, I'm not suggesting a bunch of buildings magically increased in size. Just that we now as game players are able to take advantage of something anyone in a real city would have been doing all along. And these aren't all necessarily Empire State Building sized giant monoliths, but just tall buildings that are noticeably bigger than most Maltonian tall buildings. Height is relative. --A Big F'ing Dog 16:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
2. Keep - I like this. It's not overly powered and it's actually pretty good flavour. -- Cheese 16:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
3. Keep - I actually like this purely for the flavour aspect. There are plenty of resources available to use for navigation but I realise not everyone can/wants to use meta tools so it's helpful and adds to the sense of immersion in the game.--DI Sweeny 16:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
4. Keep - Good flavor, and it won't be a balance issue. --Haliman - Talk 17:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
5. Keep/Change - I think it'd be better with the directions spelled out with complete words and sentences ("9 blocks to the west and 7 blocks to the north" instead of "7n9w", just like with flares). --Midianian^{¦T¦DS¦SP¦} 18:07, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
   • Re True, that would be more elegant and consistent. Maybe to keep the sentence from getting overly long it could stick with "9 west 5 north". --A Big F'ing Dog 18:42, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
6. Keep - It makes sense and detracts from meta-gaming... who would seriously have a problem with that. --Kamikazie-Bunny 19:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
7. Keep - Urban Orienteering FTW! --Blake Firedancer ^{T E RNL? P.I.S.I.T.} 19:16, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
8. Keep/Change - I like this, but I think the 5n2e thing is clunky. I'd rather see it displayed as "a few blocks, "several blocks," "far away," and a general direction. So, in the example above, "In the distance you see the Wilcott Tower 5s1w, the Edwards Tower 1n2e, and the Yeardly Tower 8n4e." would read "In the distance you see the Wilcott Tower a few blocks to the South, the Edwards Tower a couple blocks to the East, and the Yeardly Tower several blocks to the Northeast." ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 20:46, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
9. Keep/Change Not bad, but I'd reduce the number of tall buildings further. Maybe only one a suburb? I don't want this info spamming up my screen if I can see 4 of these giants! --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:19, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
10. Keep/Change - Yeah, I agree, use the same annotation of flares instead of "5n2e". Perhaps towers should be the only building type this applies to. With 293 of them, that's an average of 2.9 per suburb, which seems to be a nearly ideal amount. Affecting all towers and nothing but towers would probably make it an easier transition, too. Additionally, I don't think ruined towers should function as navigation landmarks, and that would likely drop the 2.9-per-suburb average to the "one or two" average that the majority of people seem to favor. That would also would give a reason to ransack towers, since towers generally don't have any good items to search for. --MrKiwi 02:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
11. Keep Can't do any harm, and some players might find it useful. --Explodey 09:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Kill Votes

1. Needs work. There ARE a few factors to consider. Binoculars can only be used from "tall" buildings. Does that mean they can ONLY be used from THESE buildings (or, if not, would they get greater range?)? And how does being IN one of these buildings affect one's view. Also, to have a greater chance of KEVAN implementing it, it would be a good idea to actually indicate WHAT BUILDINGS would be affected by this suggestion.--Pesatyel 03:43, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
   • Re Skyscrapers would function no differently than tall buildings, other than being visible from a distance. So binoculars and suicide would function in both. A skyscraper essentially is still a tall building, but maybe being 25-50% higher than most tall structures lets you espy it from further. Binoculars don't give you a better view from skyscrapers since even if you can see further, it doesn't necessarily give you a better view of the ground or who is walking down there. Of course, if Kevan wants to extend the view somehow that could also work, but I'm not suggesting that here. Which buildings would be affected? A very small number of tall buildings, picked semi-randomly, but spread far apart and distributed at mostly no more than one per suburb.--A Big F'ing Dog 03:55, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Spam/Dupe Votes

1. Spam - Free lunch. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 16:46, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
   • Re More free than say, a map? On another website? Navigation isn't a balance issue. Nobody can get lost thanks to user created maps. But this saves the effort of actually having to open a new page. It isn't a game balance thing at all. --A Big F'ing Dog 17:04, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

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