RE: Tracking in Waterdeep

[Althasizor]

The original bug report can be found here: /viewtopic.php?f=51&t=22852

This is not actually a bug, in that the tracking skill is working as intended. This is definitely a mild frustration that I've felt any number of times since the room was introduced though. It's not just outside of the bank, either - I've been led to this room from any distance through the city, including from just near the south gate while the person I was attempting to track was just over in Ardeep. It's likely a tracking character that spends a large amount of time in/around Waterdeep will run into this at some point or another. Maybe there's a more elegant solution to what this room wants to be?

[Lirith]

I've seen it happens with a couple of other rooms too that are shortcuts to the outside of Waterdeep, but it's less of a problem because there are way to travel through those.

I'm not sure there is a way to stop this from happening with the mezzanine itself short of either allowing a PC to move in those directions (by flying?), or removing the room as a viewpoint.

[Areia]

I designed that room to be a sort of lookout space where, being so high up in the middle of the city, PCs can get a (very) general idea of popular/promanent locations as the city sprawls out beneath their view. There are, as Lirith mentioned, various other rooms with exits flagged as window in Waterdeep, but I guess they do not generally point to so many or so popular locations. My immediate-reaction solution to both keeping the funcionality of the view and fixing the track annoyance might be something like this:

Scrap the exits entirely and instead intercept look to check for north, northeast, east, etc. in $1. If found, mpechoat $n "You see roomname", mptransfer the PC to the appropriate room, mpforce him/her to look in the correct direction, and mptransfer him/her back to the mezzanine; otherwise mpunintercept.

• This should be almost entirely transparent to the PC and any PCs in either the mezzanine or the destination rooms.
• This would require transfering the PC to one room behind that to which the mezzanine now points so that we don't miss looking into that initial room.
• A very small detail might want to be added to the room's desc to indicate, more strongly than it already does, that looking out in these directions is possible, since there will be no physical exits for the PC to recognize immediately?

Lirith, your idea of making them fly exits would maintain the visual, but I don't think, given who uses track, it would ultimately solve the problem (at least not to the rangers' and rogues' satisfaction). Unless of course tracking code takes notice of fly exits. I suspect it doesn't, but it might be worthwhile to test.

I'll give this more thought, too, but what do those who can make sense of the above think of that idea? (Naturally, I'm more than willing to write the scripts myself since I did nost everything else in there.)