Finding a structure within a lair

[Grundle]

I have recently returned to the game from a hiatus and have been exploring Lairshaping. Since I have a biped plot I am unable to work on my own, and have to play around with contributing to other lairs, sometimes even doing it anonymously without being asked. This has led me to discover that the system in place is actually pretty hard to find a given structure within a lair, because you can't see through the walls to find it when it's selected. It basically comes down to running through the lair, getting lost, and clicking on every unfinished structure you can find, trying to find the one you want to contribute to. You can't simply contribute from the entrance, because you're out of range of the structure you want to work on. I think it's plenty realistic to make someone get close to the structure that needs work, but it's not very user friendly to actually FIND that structure, since there's no display of the lair's "blueprints" in the plot window, there is simply no way to do it.

I don't have a great idea of how to fix this, unfortunately, my only idea is to have a 'beam' of light project from the user to the structure he's selected in the plot window, that he can then use to find it more effectively. This would basically ignore walls and such, giving you a straight line path, but at least it would give you an idea if you have to go up or down, or left or right. Another option would be to actually make the floor on the shortest path to the structure sparkle or glow, but that may be more resource-intensive than the devs want to deal with, let alone hard to program.

Just wanted to get someone's mind thinking about this, maybe they have better ideas than I do. When working on your own plot, or a plot where the owner has shown you the actual physical location of the structure to work on, it's not that bad, but just showing up out of the blue to help out is a pain right now.

Grundle BoulderShoulder
Herak Rimetail

[Xarog]

Aye, that would be nice indeed. I think the easiest solution wuold be to use the current planning blueprint as a base, and let other players see the blueprint of the map, as well as their current location within the lair.

[Star-Fyre]

I made a post about something similar to this a while ago, as I found it frusterating getting lost in a guildies lair while trying to find something... or find your way out.

So, I agree whole-heartedly! My idea was to provide lair maps. Simply put that the planning page become viewable to anyone in the lair.. not just the owner when he/she is in the lair. If the person in the lair isn't the owner, the build/destroy/+/- keys would be disabled.

Not sure on the programing.. but since this isn't really a drastic change (no "new" system/program to impliment, just a change to a current one), I don't think it'd be -too- hard to do, but would make things worlds easier for many folks.