What's  Keeping/Preventing you from the citie

I'm very new to the game, but I have to say that most of the things I have found to do so far, are doable in the wilderness. From exploring, to crafting, to fighting, to skinning and such, it is somewhat more easy to do where it happened. Oh, I explored the town I started in first...

But it is only so big. Before I figured out how to get tinder, at night I very appologetically carried my small kills back to a lit room in my town to skin and butcher them - bad, bad of me, but I made sure to clean up after myself. And I would craft there too, especially at night. And if I am making a lot of something, I carry many loads of the materials back to a seemingly more populated room in town to work on... a room I have most often met other players in. I hope to meet more of course!

So far, I've encountered 7 other players, in about 20 hours of play (And not one has tried to kill me yet, woot!). Four within that one lit room, one beside a message board, and two in the same wilderness room that seems to be part of a major pathway through the world. I am working on spending more time in town, because I -do- want to meet more players. But am I even in the right town to meet them? *laughs*

But in trying to spend more time in town... there is that thing to do issue. Solo roleplay is fine, but not so... interesting as when the game supports it. Like practicing skills, it has the feel of doing something, of playing... There is feedback and a sense of progress. Spending hours in a specific room on the hope of seeing another player, when I have interacted with everything I can find in the room to interact with. I refrain from killing the animals in town, that just doesn't feel right. So I carry in crafting materials, and throw emotes about... and wonder about everything that is in the wilderness that I could be working on, the exciting stuff, like wether I will kill that fox or the fox kill me, or wether I actually can swim across this river yet or had better turn back...

In short, towns seem to offer mostly buying, selling, boards and some few books to read, and a clump of humanoid npcs to react to/emote at. As a newbie, I cannot afford to buy or sell much, and don't know anything to post about really. Oh, and towns offer more hope of maybe meeting another player. But the wilderness... offers everything else, the 'good' stuff of adventure and excitement, of surprises and the unknown. But I haven't played very long, perhaps I just haven't figured out how to get the most out of towns, to enjoy them to the fullest that I can.

When cities are full of people xp'ing off the NPC's its a turn off to stay in that built up area.

Perhaps when we meet someone that we like to RP with, many leave to the wilds and only return to built up areas for equipment, sales and news.

Some other thread.. somewhere.. also addressed something similar to this - that it is virtually impossible to 'live off' (economically or long-term via survival) of towns alone, due to the abundance of necessary materials that the wilderness has to offer for all manner of craftsmen. In fact, it's so easy to live off of the wilderness comparibly, that the incentive to be consistently 'in town' is just that much diminished.

It's a lesser concern though, at least for me. I end up sticking to the wilderness more often because... "outside" is where the PC's are, that's where the PC's congregrate. Were, say... the taverns more populated I would love to use them with frequency.
I suppose it's a pretty vicious cycle I'm perpetuating when I visit to the wilderness for the sake of the neigh-infinite raise in chance-of-interacting-with-someone. O.o...

I have to say that the lack of houses in a populated town is probably a reason most people don't "live" there, so to speak. I think if we were able to purchase housing inside of a city, that people would be a little more interactive. Kind of like how inns have doors with locks on them, you could do the same with a player's room.

Just a thought.

When I played, I always wanted to have a home within the city as well that would function like permanent rooms. Shops do, of course, provide you with a means of storing items, but they could not function as homes by any means. A brief list of some things that come to mind that'd be necessary to draw me into the city for a home instead of living out in a hidden cabin somewhere:

1. locking doors
2. obviously, permanent rooms
3. customizability - be it expanding to more rooms, having different types of homes depending on the city, whatever.
4. one time payments instead of daily rent - maybe its just me, but as a character I could never come across enough money, or make enough stuff to sell, to own a shop for long (or get tricked out in cool gear...*sigh*). If I wanted to do anything but skill grind or mindlessly craft, owning a shop became completely impossible for me, and as this is an RPI, I went with RP over trying to make an actual living.
5. other possible entrances for the cat-burglar inclined

There are certainly more features that'd be nice to see, but I feel like a handful of the above would be bare minimums to make this system work.

I am not certain lockable houses, be they in cities or in the wilderness, would really be a 'good' thing in the sense of increasing the overall quantity of social RP within the mud. Especially if rooms were permanent, and houses expandable, I think players would in twos and threes, friend groups already set, would tend to withdraw from the rest of the world, into these homes... Taking what they wanted to work on, be it crafting or what not, food and drink, and shutting out all the rest of the players, unreacable and not interacting more widely. Almost identical to what happens now, with individual player groups or singles going out into the wilderness to a structure there, far enough out that another finding it seems unlikely, and staying away for great amounts of time. This already happens, but I think housing like that would increase the frequency of it greatly.

There is nothing truely 'wrong' with this, of course. But I find myself thinking of the newbies, that come to us and think they are seeing a mud devoid of other players... I think of the joy I have found, in my many interactions with the other characters mine has encountered... and I find myself wanting the game to grow in ways that promote increased socialization and interaction, not less. Boron said, "I think if we were able to purchase housing inside of a city, that people would be a little more interactive." Yes, but with the city, specifically with the housing purchased... not with each other, with other players.