5-15 mins of traveling, with 5-15 mins of waiting for the ship/zeppelin/caravan. (if the traveling is loger, then the waiting time should be shorter, the longer the waiting time the quicker the journy should be).
30 minutes or more for traveling is a big "No-No" its a third of your average gaming time, 30 minutes looking for party with 30 minutes traveling to camping spot, thats it couple of pulls and you have to go back to logoff.
It's important to distinguish between travel time to "something interesting to do" and to "anywhere". I have no issues with some content being hours away, on the contrary, but I fully understand the sentiment that there should generally be something worthwhile to do no more than 15-30 minutes away.
BamBam said: F..I hope most of the traveling can be achieved within 5-15 mins. In some cases, It would be ok for me to travel 15-30 mins. ...
That's probably reasonable, but I would go a little longer. I want to be forced to take some epic journeys as well. If my party is parked on the other side of the continent, I want to *FEEL* like they are far away and I want to have to work to get to them.
I would vote 10-20 minutes to get to your party is reasonable. My group would stay on one continent for weeks or months and then we would spend a play-night traveling when it was time to move. We would get food, water, supplies, trek to the docks, sail the ocean, land, disembark, get to the city, head out to the wilderness, get lost, etc. Once we found our destination we would stay there a while but GETTING there was part of the game, not just mashing the attack button all the time
So, again I think 10-20 minutes for casual group meet-ups. I'd like to see 1-2 hours for major travel.
I don't want to be able to zip across to the other side of the world in a couple minutes (except PC porting).
I would like to see what group/dungeon/zone, you join/fight in, be affected by your location. I don't want to log in , and be able to choose to group up anywhere in the world because the time to get there is of no concern. I would like to log in, and be a little more limited, or have to make the choice to use some of my play time to get to a more preferable location.
I want the world to feel HUGE, and that means travel time as much as physical size.
Heh, given that mainstream (mmo’s) SUX at the moment, I would say the longer the travel time the better.
I think we need to draw the distinction between travel time to get to brand new areas and travel time once you are there to get to something to actually do once you are there - assuming you aren't just exploring.
The idea of "quest hubs" is much maligned in this community but in part I feel this is an oversimplification. Having quests able to get you to level-cap very fast is *correctly* maligned. Having a "golden path" that can get you to level-cap (even if not so fast) is *correctly* maligned. Let no one doubt I agree with almost all of us on these critical points.
But having hubs scattered around - perhaps with some quests and tasks perhaps just with amenities like a bank and store and trainers - strikes me as a good thing to have for Pantheon.
Thus - you have finished in an area and want to start a new area. Fifteen-30 minutes or more to get to the new area strikes me as entirely appropriate. Maybe an hour or two. We shouldn't have fast safe travel - this isn't an hour or two of boring nothing-to-do but hug the trees (if you are an elf) travel - it may take an entire play session to travel a significant distance but this may involve ambushes and having to fight through mobs too. Getting from X to Y could take many Dungeons & Dragons sessions back in the day - the game wasn't just "you are at the start of Keep on the Borderlands".
But - and as the ogre said "this is a *large* butt" - that doesn't mean it is wise to have to travel long periods once you are in the new area. Hard to group if every session involves 15 minutes travel plus the time to get a group plus the time to get to a safe place afterwards. To me a hub - not a "quest hub" but a hub - 5 minutes from much of the action makes a lot of sense.
Ideally with scattered mobs even closer so that if someone wants to log on and spend half an hour he or she can just solo those mobs for a *bit* of loot and experience. I like the design of one of the D&D inspired MMOs in development where you have soloable mobs near hubs and dungeons or other group content a bit further away. Something for all playstyles and even the serious content doesn't take a large percentage of your playtime to get to once you have gotten to the zone and settled in.
BamBam said: For me travel time is meaningful and a must have in a game Like Pantheon, but how far are you willing to travel to get to your group location?
For me, the length of time is quite irrelevant because I'm always planning ahead, logging out at or very near where I want to be adventuring the next day and spending as many days there as possible before returning to town. This way I maximize my adventuring to travel ratio.
I think that travel must be significant in Pantheon because travel, like many other elements of play is something that has a large effect on progression speed. When we talk about "meaningful", I think what it is saying is that it is significant in play. If it is quick, it is not significant and it has no meaning. Travel to have meaning must be something people clearly recognize as an obstacle in play, or it won't be meaningful. That means people will need to view travel across long distances as a MAJOR time commitment. Players should have to plan specific groupings to another area over the course of time by scheduling a meet time with friends and then taking travel time over a session of play to get there. It may mean everyone logs and decides to go to another continent and the time it takes to get there may involved a play session or two to get everyone there.
There must also be balance of risk vs reward in travel. That is, there may be a boat to get one more easily from one continent to another, or from one major location to another, but this because it is "easy" should take more time than if someone were to try and take a short cut. For example, lets say you are in town and there is a boat ride that will take you to the other side of the continent. This is an easy task, but... the cycle for waiting for that boat should take a lot of time and if you are to find a quicker route by running and being ported somewhere, it should be very dangerous.
This goes into how I think porting should work in Pantheon, which is a teleport should be powered by locations, not available anywhere at any time. Think EQ, where you have druid rings and wizard spires located in some zone locations (these were the destinations of the ports, you could port from anywhere in EQ). The class that ports should have to actually go to the ring/spire location to make their port spell work (logically within the world it makes sense as porting distances is a major magical feat and so a large focus to draw the power to port would be needed, think how it was to port to Hate where you had to travel to the Oasis spire and port everyone from there to the Plane of Hate).
So, if you want to port, you first need to find the nearest location that has a ring (for druid), or spire (for wizard) and be within that area to cast the spell which would transfer you to another location. Because this is much faster in many cases than taking an easy boat ride, these ports should be placed in more difficult to get to locations, more dangerous locations which balances out the risk vs reward in their use. Also, those port locations themselves should not be immediate safe spots (ie there is still a chance a random mob could path through them and attack you) or littered in every zone.
This allows them to properly balance where they think the druid and wizards fast travel benefit should exist. If you allow people to port from anywhere, then you provide too much ease for people in dungeons or in dangerous locations as well as giving too much chance for cheapening travel (note my suggestion is more restrictive than EQ’s system). That is not to say a group should not be able to port from deep within the dungeon, there are spells like evacuate and succor in EQ which allow the group to port to the zone line of the current zone, so there would be some balance.
Anyway, back to travel specifically. It should take a person without travel speed help, without porting, and without boat rides an ENORMOUS amount of time to get to far off locations. I would think that to get from one side of the continent to the other by running, it should be measured in hours of time, not minutes. This way, you are able to seed all of the abilities that lessen travel time (run speed, ports, boats, etc...) and it STILL takes a long time to travel the world. A travel aid should not eliminate or make travel easy, it should make it less the obstacle it was before, but none the less... still an obstacle.
As for the specifics of those times, that can't be just a thrown out number because the balance between travel must properly fit the environment and world itself. So we can't just arbitrarily say "It should take 3 hours to get from here to there". Some areas should be faster, others slower all depending on the worlds design, the dangers, etc... and those should all be balanced to risk vs reward.
That I think is "meaningful" in travel, and as I said, if travel isn't a major undertaking, then it conflicts with the very definition of meaningful.
Give me a living and breathing world where travel makes sense. An organic world, if I start in a starting city, it because I am safe there, it should be real dangerious to leave. I agree with Tanix on alot of this stuff.
A questing hub and the idea of finishing an area would make make me quit playing before level 10. No worlds on rails, no griffin towers. Raw wilderness would be great. I don't even want to define it, just build a real world and make it dangerious.
dorotea said:I think we need to draw the distinction between travel time to get to brand new areas and travel time once you are there to get to something to actually do once you are there - assuming you aren't just exploring.
The idea of "quest hubs" is much maligned in this community but in part I feel this is an oversimplification. Having quests able to get you to level-cap very fast is *correctly* maligned. Having a "golden path" that can get you to level-cap (even if not so fast) is *correctly* maligned. Let no one doubt I agree with almost all of us on these critical points.
But having hubs scattered around - perhaps with some quests and tasks perhaps just with amenities like a bank and store and trainers - strikes me as a good thing to have for Pantheon.
Good points. I think it's a little funny how the world "hub" has become synonymous with a place where all the quests are, isn't it? I agree that there can and should be waystation towns along the journey with services for players. However, I think there's still a danger to thinking of them as "hubs" from a design point of view. Explanation below. Warning: I have not had coffee yet and thus may not be completely coherent.
Let's assume for the moment that I wanted to go from Thronefast to Faerthale. Based on the current world map, it looks like I'd have to cross 3 or 4 zones to do that. So how long should it take? I think most of us would say that we don't want to be able to cross a zone in less than 5-10 minutes, so, just using simple math, a 30 minute trip on foot from Thronefast to Faerthale doesn't seem unreasonable. After all, we're crossing about half of a continent, right? Likewise, going from Thronefast to Wild's End is probably a similar trip, just in a different direction.
But wait, what if we want to go from Wild's End to Faerthale? That's going to take more like 45 minutes, because the distance is greater. Right?
And what if we're starting in Wild's End and want to catch the boat over to Reignfall so we can visit Syronai's Rest? Oh gosh, now we're talking about a 90-120 minute trip, aren't we. Those numbers get scary big fast.
A lot of games try to design around this conundrum by building "hubs" where players can meet up in the middle. So your starting city might be off in the mountains somewhere, but on your continent there's a big port city that everyone goes to in order to travel around the world. The inclination, in terms of content design, is that players will make their way towards that big port city at a certain level range, and then from there, they'll stay near to that big city, or take a ship to some other, higher level location.
The problem with this design is that the earlier areas of the world, including starting cities, become less and less relevant to players as they progress through the game. This is why "hubs" tend to make the world feel smaller, because everyone is being funneled into the same places. I'm using the world "hub" to mean "a place where multiple paths meet".
I think this is actually something that Pantheon needs to avoid overusing. It's natural to have places in the world where multiple paths intersect, the problem is when you have too few of them. Based on what we've seen and heard, I think it's not unlikely that Pantheon will have 40-50 zones at launch. But if each continent has a single "hub" location, how many of those zones end up really mattering in terms of travel time? Only 3 of them. Because you only care about travel time from your current "hub" to wherever you're trying to go.
So, "waystations" yes, "hubs" not so much. Or at least, if we have them, let's have more of them and smaller, rather than just a few big ones. And let's have starting cities such as Thronefast or Faerthale also be "hubs" so that they stay relevant to players over time. Although that might be an interesting challenge when you want to visit somewhere near Skargol.
Obviously, the downside of doing this is that traveling from one end of the world to the other takes a lot of time. But I actually think that's ok. We shouldn't be able to just pop across the world at will any time we want to. We should have to plan ahead, or take time out to make the journey. That doesn't mean there can't be some shortcuts, but there's a balance that needs to be struck between allowing us to move quickly across the world, and insuring that we still appreciate the world as well.
i'd have to agree with tanix here. in order for us to value something, it must be something difficult to acquire. for example, if everyone got the legendary axe of creation upon logging into the game, is it really legendary?
comparatively, weathered bow of the sky requires you to reach an unknown section of space somewhere above terminus. what do you have to do to you get there? how much time would it take? is the risk of losing your equipment worth it? (the bow allows you to shoot yourself high into sky. guess you should have gotten the boots of slow fall for your new method of traveling. HAHAHAHA.)
extensive travel time to high risk high reward areas is worthwhile. as human beings, we need to relearn to value one another.
thinking about it for a minute, i use to value my interactions and players more when it took time to create a party and everyone drudge through the ordeal. you quickly learn who you want to stay partied with and who you wouldn't want to group with. ever since the instancing auto que business, i could care less who i group with. they could be replaced on a fly. so who cares about my fellow players?
While others have hit on this I will restate it again. Have I been there before yes or no? Let's assume I've been everywhere in every zone, in that case from one end of the world to the other end of the world maybe 30-40 total minutes of travel. This is assuming some nook or cranny in an extreme corner of the zone to a similar nook and cranny in the destination zone. This is also assuming the use of "fast travel" public transport systems. Pure jogging with no fast travel options? Maybe an hour.
Now if the zones are unexplored by me and it will all be brand new- maybe 3-4 RL hours, maybe more even.
Fulton said:I don't want to be able to zip across to the other side of the world in a couple minutes (except PC porting).
I would like to see what group/dungeon/zone, you join/fight in, be affected by your location. I don't want to log in , and be able to choose to group up anywhere in the world because the time to get there is of no concern. I would like to log in, and be a little more limited, or have to make the choice to use some of my play time to get to a more preferable location.
I want the world to feel HUGE, and that means travel time as much as physical size.
This perspective pretty much sums up how I feel about this subject.
Long distance travel shouldn't be seen as part of a regular play session where you find a group and do stuff. Players should be encouraged to 'settle' in a major settlement for a while and find things to do there.
I think the question in the OP isn't broad or descriptive enough.
Where is this group you want to join at? Same zone, next zone? Opposite end of the continent? Or the opposite end of the world? Are you running with or without SoW? Are,you getting a port?
Basing it of normal run speed and If it's truly a "continent" and not an island, then I would hope it will take us nearly a 2 hour play session to cross it. I mean let's compare to even Flight time across the US is 5-6 hours, and that in an airplane.
Now travel from one side of the "World" (if it truly is a world) should take no less than 2-3 two hour play sessions. By flight again from USA to Egypt (approximately halfway across the world) is 20+ hours.it should take lots of time and a couple of layovers.
Of course add speed buffs and player ports could cut all this down significantly.
I'm totally against ANY non player portals in game, as ever one on each "continent" reduces the size of the world significantly. 3 continents, 3 portals and you have reduced the size of the world by two thirds. That to me is no longer a world.
So for the OP.... depends on where this group is.
Dashed said:While others have hit on this I will restate it again. Have I been there before yes or no? Let's assume I've been everywhere in every zone, in that case from one end of the world to the other end of the world maybe 30-40 total minutes of travel. This is assuming some nook or cranny in an extreme corner of the zone to a similar nook and cranny in the destination zone. This is also assuming the use of "fast travel" public transport systems. Pure jogging with no fast travel options? Maybe an hour.
Now if the zones are unexplored by me and it will all be brand new- maybe 3-4 RL hours, maybe more even.
Exploration should have no bearing on how long it takes someone to get through an area other than the basic knowledge of knowing which are the fastest paths to do so. That should be the reward, knowledge and experience, not a magic prize to forego the obstacle of travel because you saw an area. That defeats the entire point in the game play.
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Nephele said:dorotea said:I think we need to draw the distinction between travel time to get to brand new areas and travel time once you are there to get to something to actually do once you are there - assuming you aren't just exploring.
And what if we're starting in Wild's End and want to catch the boat over to Reignfall so we can visit Syronai's Rest? Oh gosh, now we're talking about a 90-120 minute trip, aren't we. Those numbers get scary big fast.
So, "waystations" yes,
My interpretation of all the posts above this is: going full on normal run, with no interference, should take 90-120minutes. I dare say it should take longer. Here is the difference: If I am getting a group, its to go somewhere. The problem is... getting there. I anticipate getting -sidetracked is the wrong word-involved in the area just trying to get to syronai's rest that may lead to sub-quests.. ot officiall quests but other things outside of my original intent. If this is my personal desire (or maybe to deliver mail from some obscure questgiver) then I expect to possibly change group make ups alot of times before I get to the end, maybe one year or two in RL time later.
I may start with a group and everyone is gung-ho but we might get waylaid by bandits and have to find solace in a farm where supplies don't come but once a week by caravan and the caravan tender can change some money, not alot. And *sigh* whelp, the gnolls disturbed something while digging their tunnels and spoiling our crops. You're welcome to sleep in the barn with the crawpigs, but if you hear anything let me know. The crawpigs got wiley once the gnolls showed up. You cant mistake their cry when the gnolls get near-ish. The cats still hiding under the bed since we saw that one skeleton on the horizon *spit* hasn't bothered us while we work, but I keep the door locked at night *wink*. Seer-one-eyes rest you say? I reckon thats... east. Caravan may know.
My group may change and I may get caught up in other stuff, I may have a new group the next day because the other members want to do somehting else, or I may be alone for some time until I meet others wanting to check out the gnolls or to get to Syronai's rest. By that time that mail will be mouldy- heh- but it would be so, such a thing, if after I delivered the mail I heard(read) the heartfelt /humorous/cryingly sad/sparklingly intruiguing/perception triggered clues/stories/ Lore from all that mail that I would not know of unless I delivered that mail. Could also backfill places where I've been like maybe that skelly that old farmer saw was the farmers first son, tragic accident, still trying to finish plowing the back 40. Died so quickly he never got to be put to rest unless....(you know what I mean)
And then 3 months later one of the players in the original group comes back to the farm looking for me and waits for the caravan to head east- maybe catch up with me, or not (we woud be chatting of course)
*Edited, added postscript* One more instance I thought was meaningful travel was getting stuck in an area. Say there is no fast travel except a one way port found in an obscure part of a newbie city, to the gmome area. One way. Only useable by levels 1-20.
I equate this to some higher levels taking me through scary blackborrow where I died alot and could not see, to Halas. There were other people here! and outside in the white where even at night it was easier to see and no casters. I got alot of PuGs because I was a caster but.....no malachite. There was no merchant in halas at the time that sold malachite. I was too young to try to make it back through blackburrow even to buy malachite, and the higher levels that brought me through were already elsewhere and doing other things. So I was trapped in Halas with others my level until I got old enough or found others old enough to go back through blackburrow as a group and out to qeynos and beyond. I spent 6 weeks in halas, it was great! never used an elemental except in emergencies because I only had 4 malachite with me, casted ALOT and built up my melee skills 'cos I had to do something to add to the fight even if I was out of mana. I didnt feel comfortable while the barbarians were going at it and I had to sit out to med. Imagine a young WAR transported to gnome area? only the weapon he has for the next, how many levels untill he can march out and return home. By the time I had a group that wanted ot go, we got provisions and fought our way through blackburrow form halas- they were all LB and green by then! and we crawled back to the other side. I felt uber. Ran and got a ton of malachite and couldn't wait to show them what the elemental could add.
BamBam said: For me travel time is meaningful and a must have in a game Like Pantheon, but how far are you willing to travel to get to your group location? I hope most of the traveling can be achieved within 5-15 mins. In some cases, It would be ok for me to travel 15-30 mins. In order to get to that special place, if I know I have some hours to spend. I hope to see a meaningful infrastructure that links the map together cleverly, without making the game Feel small. So a balanced between time used and accability of portals, ships and other travel systems. Let me know what you think
Most travel time in 5-15 minutes would require that by yourself you could fast travel to anywhere in the world.
IMO fast travel should be a benefit to one or two classes tops, just like resurrections, high hit points, high dps, etc are benefits to others.
This is one of those questions that there will always be disagreements over. I’d rather the company just decide internally what they want to do and stick with it, rather than asking the players. IMO player feedback does not always benefit the game. In many cases it can ruin it. The vocal minority can quickly change a game.
((So, "waystations" yes, "hubs" not so much.))
We are, not shockingly, on the same wavelength here. I used "hub" to mean more or less precisely whay you mean by "waystation". Not one of a very small number of major cities or crossroads for the entire continent but a safe place to log off, ideally with some useful NPCs around, not far from most of the major dungeons or landscape leveling opportunities for one or maybe two zones.
bigdogchris said:IMO fast travel should be a benefit to one or two classes tops, just like resurrections, high hit points, high dps, etc are benefits to others.
This is one of those questions that there will always be disagreements over. I’d rather the company just decide internally what they want to do and stick with it, rather than asking the players. IMO player feedback does not always benefit the game. In many cases it can ruin it. The vocal minority can quickly change a game.
Agreed. Concidering how hard VR has fought to get to this point, I believe they will stick to their guns on the game tenents.
I'm with Tanix. Travel has to be a meaningful obstacle. And if you think a few minutes is a significant obstacle.. one has to question why you are interested in a game that is going for the spirit of old EQ ;)
If travel takes a very long time, runspeed enhancements and especially group teleport classes are not just convenient, but critical. Fostering relationships with players that can provide that sort of thing because a very very good idea. If your just down a timespan measured in minutes if you don't get help, who cares? Add to it making the world feel really small. Before they dumbed it down and made it a theme park, EQ felt freaking huge. I liked that. Hell before I got travel spells I remember taking an hour or two and one hell of a dangerous run to get from Kelethin to Qeynos. Made getting those travel abilities feel awesome.