How Are Patrols Working Out?

[Thomas]

How are people finding the patrol/opportunity system?

Lately, I haven’t been seeing courier patrols or predatory patrols pop up at all, or even social encounters. This could just be a feature of my time being more limited lately. So, generally:

1.) Are people finding that the opportunity/lookfor system is generating regular roleplay?
2.) How are people doing finding antag?
3.) Is the opportunity/loofkfor system introducing you to people outside your RP circle? Setting up new situations your RP might not create organically?

I’m interest in your thoughts on how courier patrols, predatory patrols, and social patrols are working out.

[Yourstruly]

I’ll be honest: the whole system does not make sense to me (as a new player). I have read the helpfile. I have had it explained. I still don’t get it. And the fact that it may throw me into something I don’t understand with people I don’t know makes me immensely hesitant to use it because I don’t want to ruin someone else’s potentially limited playtime by ending up stuck with someone clueless.

[Valkuk]

I personally am fond of the system, and I am thankful for it because it has indeed made me meet a bunch of people to play with that I don’t think I would have normally, specially given the size of the grid right now, and seeing that sometimes you can see 50 people playing and not a single one on where.

I think it can be confusing or annoying, for sure, but I personally enjoy it, I think once you get used to it it’s a good way to say “I cannot find anything right now, please help”. I actually really like how it interacts with antag and couriers because a lot of times it doesn’t require you to go through the process of having to know the other char very well, or having to figure what the other player wants before hand, and removes some of that “finding” process by simply stating with the opportunities and encitements what you might be looking for in the scene and what might have driven your character there, making it possible to interact even with strangers and make something coherent. Maybe it requires doing some mental gymnastics to explain how you ended up there, but that’s nothing new to Haven, see encounters… Not to mention, you will always see the prompt before accepting and decide based on that.

I think the points that one could criticize or find annoying about it would be, for the annoying, when it gets stuck on giving you the same thing over and over again- Which I get, the system sees “Person A is seeking, and B is seeking, match it” and when rejecting it and waiting a bit, the machine keeps seeing the same thing, but sometimes it’s annoying to be offered the same thing that you shouldn’t take because of how your character is, and having it pop over and over again.
I think something some people have been struggling with as well is when it actually triggers , it’s not entirely reliable to fire off or match people, even when it’s targetted directly at someone… Which normally wouldn’t be an issue if you’re just looking for casual roleplay, after all, if you know the others are looking for the same or you want a particular person, you just go for it without lookfor- But it does get annoying when it comes to certain kinds of events that depend on the lookfor system, namely encounters, patrols, couriers… People might want to make those and having the system be inconsistent about firing can get annoying after a while, if you try to participate in an activity for days and don’t have any luck with it.

But overall, I think it’s a good system, I enjoy it, could definitely use some more polishing, but it’s a new system, I am sure it will improve given some more time.

[Calk]

I find social encounters fairly often if my character is traveling through different boroughs, but it doesn’t seem to work hardly ever if they’re staying put.

[Author]

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