MyNegation said: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.
Meh. Spending half an hour to get to a place where you might spend 40 hours in the next 2 weeks finding groups is nothing. This isn't a hub game. People are going to go out into the world and spend days without returning to a city.
Tanix said: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.
I disagree with that statement. I posted something last year at some point concerning an idea in this regard. Not only do you have access to faster than walk travel (ala DAoC horse routes) but the more time you spend in the zone exploring, gathering, camping, dungeoning, and especially grouping or raiding, the more it should count toward a very slight speed increase through said zone. So if you do everything that the game has to offer in said zone and spend oodles of time there, then you now have a faster horse (public transit vehicle) than someone that just spent a bare amount of time in zone before rushing onwards. Say a horse route is 125% speed of a persons jog, maybe after /played of 24 hours in zone you can increase that to 127% of jog speed. You get more knowledge of zone and experience in that zone which enables you to transition faster through it for the times when you are mearly heading through the zone.
Please do not assume though what my point of gameplay is. I highly doubt we will agree on that even in the barest regards.
Manouk said:
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 don't disagree :) The numbers I used were just for the sake of the example.
Also, that doesn't sound like getting sidetracked. It sounds like an adventure!
Caine said: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.
Agreed as well. We can all express our opinions, and we might differ on the details to some extent, but ultimately we all want what VR has laid out in the tenets for the game :)
VR should welcome feedback. It helps them in at least two ways.
1. We may come up with ideas or arguments they haven't given enough thought to and they may be persuaded. There are a lot of us and we have quite a bit of collective experience.
2. If we disagree with something strongly enough it may persuade them to reconsider. Not to do what we want *because* we want it but to give the plusses and minuses a second look. After which they may keep the original plan but, then again, they may not.
What VR should not do and is not doing is change their plans merely because some of us argue against it - even a significant group of us. Listening to us is *good* - doing everything we ask for is exceedingly *bad*. They are professionals we are fans.
Rather longwinded way of saying I too agree.
Dashed said:Tanix said: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.
I disagree with that statement. I posted something last year at some point concerning an idea in this regard. Not only do you have access to faster than walk travel (ala DAoC horse routes) but the more time you spend in the zone exploring, gathering, camping, dungeoning, and especially grouping or raiding, the more it should count toward a very slight speed increase through said zone. So if you do everything that the game has to offer in said zone and spend oodles of time there, then you now have a faster horse (public transit vehicle) than someone that just spent a bare amount of time in zone before rushing onwards. Say a horse route is 125% speed of a persons jog, maybe after /played of 24 hours in zone you can increase that to 127% of jog speed. You get more knowledge of zone and experience in that zone which enables you to transition faster through it for the times when you are mearly heading through the zone.
Please do not assume though what my point of gameplay is. I highly doubt we will agree on that even in the barest regards.
I don't think pantheon will have automated horse routes to speed travel. The point I am making is that if you speed up travel in a zone simply because it has been explored, you then take away an over all component of play that slows progression. That is, for every impediment, time sink, slow down, etc... this tacks on time to play which over all (if cleverly spaced in various mechanics) greatly extends play time, but is also segregated to balance it out (ie not having your entire progression slowing mechanism lumped into a single mechanic).
Besides, players will gain numerous spells, abilities, and items that can assist in helping speed up travel (reasonably), but these will be constrained to the group based concept of play mostly. Lastly, remember that your example is one that focuses on disposable zones common in theme park games. Take WoW for instance, once you have done alll the content in the zone, you are finished and so the zone is tossed away as a check mark on a list. Pantheon will have layered leveled content. You may be in a zone at level 10, but then again may come back at 20, 40, then 50. So, the content won't be a similar to modern linear content design. Because of this, you want to keep relevance in all forms of play.
Now I think some increase in speed and ability should exist in play, I just think that it should never take away the weight of travel. Travel should always take a significant amount of time, but players shouold be able to see noticable improvements in their travel time through various solutions (ie class spells/abilties, items, etc...). I have no issues with a character progressing (after all it is the core aspect of an RPG), but it should never invalidate the original obstacle as that should always be an obstacle.
One thing I absoultely do not want to see in pantheon is "horse routes" or any form of automated travel similar to DAOC or that of EQ 2.
Now I had an idea about zone leveling in another thread a while back which is similar to the concept you speak of in terms of getting better in the zone. The idea was centered around having each zone have its own skill leveling requirements. So, lets say you enter a winter zone, filled with strong winds, heavy snow, etc... It takes skill and understanding to traverse this type of terrain and so there would be a base run speed connected to the zone. As a player played and progressed in the zone (similar to your example), the player would... [get better at snow travel 123] gain skill progression for that specific zone. This would start a player by a default, very slow in the zone, but allow through time the player to gain advantage in play by improving skills, eventually moving faster through the terrain.
As I said though, none of these features should ever result in a player fast running through a zone. It should be small increases, measurably an increase, but small. Players should ALWAYS seek out run speed spells, ports for travel or weight the time between long distance travel (ie take the boat, run it, find someone with a port? hmmm...). At no point should we see people just blazing through a zone in a minute or so. Even EQ failed in this manner, allowing players to travel too fast over time.
I agree with most of what Tanix said - not all, that would be far too much to hope for ((chuckles)).
((One thing I absoultely do not want to see in pantheon is "horse routes" or any form of automated travel similar to DAOC or that of EQ 2.))
Even Vanguard had some means of instant or rapid travel between known locations so you might as well toss that in there too. As I recall thet was added after release. Then they added personal flying mounts. No I am not saying that since Vanguard had them these things were good - I consider many things in Vanguard to be as good or better a model than original EQ but not this - and they were added after release so I think of them as SoE (Daybreak now) decisions not original design decisions. I may be wrong - they may have been planned from the start.
In any case I disagree that that rapid or instant travel is always bad. I think overuse of it is very bad indeed but there are times when it works well even in a game with Pantheon's design objectives. Let me give some examples. You may even agree with one of them.
1. VR could have travel between continents on foot of course. Think of going from North America to South America - or Europe to Asia. Europe to Africa is a short boat ride. Europe to North America is a quick and easy trip - if you don't mind the cold. Only Australia is actually far from the other continents. My guess is they will take the conventional approach and have a boat ride from the coast of one continent to the coast of another. Or a teleport. The trip will be - the trip *must* be - far quicker than the distance warrents even if not instant. Maybe a chance of something happening (pirate attack or attack by large and aggressive animals). But a cross-ocean trip will with a high level of probability be the type of automated travel you mention.
2. Travel between starting areas. Granted that this does make the world feel smaller and to that extent is bad - but it has the advantage of letting people of different races play together before middle levels (remember that middle levels may be 6 months or a year after character creation). And it does *not* let anyone get to adventure areas any faster - the human starting area may be no closer to the action than the (fill in the name of your favorite race) starting area.
Two ways they can do this without compromising the basic approach which is to make travel slow and the world large. One is to have some or all starting areas on the coast and have boat travel or teleports (see point one above - if they are going to have this at all why *not* have the termini in starting areas?). Another is to have mage or druid travel nexuses in some or all starting areas although the downside here is that it may take months of real world time before druids and mages reach the levels to gain these abilities.
Even those who are most determined to avoid rapid travel seem to agree that there should be mage and druid teleports. Personally I consider this to be irrational - a case of EQ nostalgia trumping committment to a large world. Why is instant travel from X to Y *bad* if you have to pay a stablemaster as in DAOC but *good* if you have to pay or cajole another player (or just create a mage or druid)?
I am not 100% against all forms of automated travel. Boat systems made sense in EQ. What was the solution to get someone to another continent? You could, port them... or they could get on a boat. Where I have issue is with boat travel between the same continent, realistically it makes sense, but in terms of game play, size of the world, it can be a very dangerous precedent. On its face, I am against it because how do you balance the difficulty of a player running from one side of the continent to the other vs taking a boat trip? Hands down, people will ALWAYS take the boat and so the mystery of a long perlious journey to the other side of the continent is removed.
Now porting in EQ allowed people to circumvent travel speed requirements, though in early EQ, it still took time to get anywhere. I mean, you could take the fast track to Qeynos from EC to the Karanas, but you still had to run through quite a bit of territory to get to Qeynos. Even still, if you read my above discussion on the topic, I would like to restrict EQ like porting a bit more (ie requiring all porting of groups to be done AT the spires/rings, not simply to them).
Fact is, when I look at any system, I do so from a perspective of how I can make the system more risky, more of an obstacle, more difficult, ie a "journey to overcome". The reason is because after all these years of playing these games, the "reward" is irrelevant (not completely, but it is less important in the grander scheme of things), rather it is overcoming the obstacle to which everything of value in play resides. We have seen this proven in modern games where people have little requirements and yet are rewarded amazing rewards. It is meaningless, pointless, and uneventful success.
Now take a very long, difficult and hard journey to which the player begs, borrows, and scrapes their way to a victory, well... the accomplishment becomes the bigger reward. Slow down there folks, I know some of you are going "Yeah, but if I get a crap reward after all that effort, what is the point?" I agree, my only point is that the reward is meaningless if the obstacle isn't a true obstacle. Risk vs Reward balance is still very important. I will admit that I disliked greatly how some EQ rares would drop nothing even though they took hours of camping to get them to spawn. Balance should exist, but that is a different argument in itself.
When it comes to teleports, it is better to have the player engagement than pay an NPC for travel.
Tanix is pretty consistent over several threads on how bending the rules and here and there for sake of convenience eventually will kill the game. Under every topic; from banking, to corpse runs, to Global markets, to travel, everyone just wants this one little thing, because it's silly not to have it.
Content is king. When a company like VR can't create quality content to keep up with the demand of the players, well your population goes down and your game dies. You either keep creating content; Or you design a game that is not designed to allow players to grind through content a crazy ass pace.
Players are the content. When looking for a Teleport, and the player says pay me 10gp or tell me joke, you tell them a joke, you meet a new a friend (from another topic but using it). The interaction is the content. Yes it took longer, but your living in a virtual world. The world and the people are the content. This is why you limit travel and involve players as the game mechanics. At the end of the day you only have your experiences to take out of the game.
When given the tools Players generate the content. Traveling should be eventful.
Brand new to these forums, so jumping into the fray...
As many have stated, the purpose of the travel often dictates its signficance to a sense of accomplishment. An attempt at assigning my value of travel:
Obviously, there's a Venn diagram of these options, such as my adventure party moved to a new part of the world for me while I was offline, that need to be addressed.
My hope is that the travel is considered as part of the cost/benefit just like loot drops, quest rewards, etc.
As someone looking to re-enter the MMO space when this game arrives, I do not want my precious game time, which competes for my time with my family, job, community activities, hygene, etc, to be overwehlmed by low signficance events. I want to be up and running in "adventure mode" within 5-10 minutes of appearing in the world.
Regarding travel, i'm pro eventful travel. an example which some details escape me but the emotions and events remains clear was a journey that saww be go from Kunark somewhere to a raid that involved going through a sirene cave. It took me ages + getting lost in the cave + dying in the cave + losing my corpse. Was it a pain in the ass; YES. Was it hella funny; YES. Did i miss the raid; YES, did my guild laugh at me; YES and did it become a point of bounding; YES!
I remember not leaving the zone where the raid would happen till after the next time one was scheduled to happen. ( I didn't need to leave cos I rage quit for two weeks)
These are the kind of travel dynamics i hope we will see exist. I am intentioanlly not mentioning time, cos time spent does not necessarily equal adventure and this kind of danger can happen on short and long journeys making the world feel alive and encouraging comradery to navigate it.
Even WoW in the early days had this, for instance trying to navigate the jungle zone (strangelthorn?) north to south. It was full of adventure.
What would be awesome in a game like Pantheon would be if a group leaving a city could somehow construct/hire a caravan that they jumped into and allowed one person to do the driving. Like when driving the car the passangers chill chat and drink beers. The driver enjoys the company but concentrates on the road. An added twist could be the possibility of ambushes!
borgy95 said:Even WoW in the early days had this, for instance trying to navigate the jungle zone (strangelthorn?) north to south. It was full of adventure.
Interesting thing about WoW was that on release, travel was VERY SLOW. Blizzard as time went on actually increased the base run speed of players in the game, as well as increasing the griffen speed, etc....
The point is, early WoW had that feeling because travel was slowed to a level where moving any distance was considered "relevant" (not like games today where every person runs at near EQ bard speed to every location). Travel speed, or rather the time to get to an event, location, or area has been and will always be one of the KEY elements of developing player interest, wonder, and aspiration.
Tanix said:DracoKalen said:Travel time
- Into a new zone. I wouldn't use anything but foot traffic. I want to explore it, I want to clear it of danger.
After that I should have the option if I want to drag my behind through it again.
Which I think is in direct conflict with the tenants of a full and rich game world.
No offense, I respect what you desire, but it is more along the lines of a "quarter machine" event than a living world. That is, as soon as you have paid your due, you want easy access, because, well, you paid right? This is the exact thing I want Pantheon not to be and I can be very honest and clear in this, if Pantheon is that.. I won't play it. /shrug
Except it's not. If you have been through a zone and eliminated the enemy the next time you come back it would be a relatively quiet place to visit. You seem to think auto-pop is natural, but it is an artificial construct put in place so they next group has something to do accomplish. Having to do the same thing in the same place over and over is not rich, it's just plain repititous. If it was a "full and rich game world" there might be another challenge there but the exact same thing is not full or rich. It's just kill rinse repeat........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
When I first began EQ, a RL friend got me into his guild. Everyone was joking around in guild chat one night, and someone put up the challenge to make a Barbarian and run it from Halas to FP with no ports, no buffs, and no deaths.
I took the challenge. New to EQ, I had no real idea of how to pull this off, but they allowed me to use EQ atlas as a guide (This is the old 14" CRT days, no dual monitors).
The challanger advised me not to take the HH route (at the time I was like WTF is HH?), figured when I got far enough to see figure out what HH was, I'd deal with it then.
As anyone who traveles from Halas would know, that first obstacle is the caves into Blackburrow. As blind as a bat running blindly for a good 5 minutes, luckily, never getting agro before seeing some daylight. Lucky me, Blackburrow was fully camped and not many free mobs to agro me, I made it through and to Qeynos Hills.
I check the atlas to see my next locaiton is West Karana, and can tell it's a rvine type zone area, so should be easy to spot and was, with a little skeleton tag along near the end that the guard swiftly dispatched for me, and I made it to W.Karana, then through North Karana and into East Karana. A little zig-zaging around roamers and I made it to the ramp, damn near fell off it.
I zoned into Highpass... HH?? hm, this must be the place they warned me about, so I backed out and checked my atlas.
So back I go through East Karana again, find the Bridge from N to S.Karana, and then I run for what seemed like hours, trying to avoid all mobs, until I finally saw a giant treehouse. Check the atlas and there it is, right by the zone line area. So I find my way to Lake Rathe.
Let me tell you, swimming across the lake is extremely slow with no swiming skill. Again, luckily made it to Rathe Mountains. This one really had me, as my method was study the atlas, for turns and twists and places to avoid....but this zone is like a giant maze, I though I would just run right over the top of the ridges, but you can't, so I followed a wall the best I could, made a couple wrong turns, and damn near walked right into a hill giant. Then goes a Halfling running by me with a cyclops in tow, so I followed him toward the zone line, and made it to the feerrott.
Another tough one to wander through, but again, followed the right side wall, see on the map the Ogres city was on the left side. And I made it to the swmp, Innothule. This one I slightly knew from having dragged through here with some higher members of the guild on a pass though to Oasis from Ferrott port, once I made it to South Ro, I figured I was good, I knew this area well, and proceeed through to Oasis, then to North Ro.
The challenger said they were in the EC tunnel and had 50p for making it. I'm runnign through North Ro, thinking of what I could spnd my 50p on, only to see "You Have Been Slain By Rahotep" within sight of the tunnel.
So close, so far traveled, took me every bit of 3-4 hours that night, but I had a blast and learned so much more of the world than my little low-teens Paladin had seen.
The challanger still payed up, he was impressed I made it that far or even put in that much effort.
Here are a few things I'd like to see when it comes to teleportation:
1) Before any player is eligible to teleport to a location, they must first visit the druid ring or teleportation spire in person and attune to it.
1A) The attunement process could have several prerequisites, depending on how exotic the location is. There could be a faction requirement or a quest that needs to be completed. There could be some sort of deity favor cost where you have to sacrifice items to an altar.
1B) The "event system" could include random scenarios where these spires/rings are taken over by hostile NPC's. During this time, players wouldn't be able to utilize their teleportation abilities. Players would have to travel to these locations manually and then clear them of threats before they become active again.
2) There should be some sort of reagent cost for the player being teleported. Ideally, this reagent could only be purchased with XP. Wizards/Druids would be exempt from this cost.
I am a huge fan of meaningful travel and I don't think teleportation spells should enable a flippant mindset when it comes to navigating the world. By attaching an XP cost you're essentially trading time for time. If you are attuned to the spire, and it isn't taken over by NPC's, and you have the reagent necessary, then you can make the decision on whether or not you should utilize a teleportation spell. While I can appreciate the history of emergent "Taxi Services" in MMO's, I feel like many players have grown accustomed to having these sorts of things available. It makes the world feel small when you're a button click away from circumventing meaningful travel requirements.
As long as there is an appropriate cost for the action, I think teleportation spells are reasonable. As we know, though, there will be plenty of players offering their services for free, or maybe with an expectation of some sort of tip. It shouldn't be that easy, and it shouldn't be that simple. Where you are in the world, what you are doing, and where you are bound ... all of these things should matter. I want to see a return to the feeling where players can feel far away from "home." This is a core ingredient of the "adventure recipe" that has fizzled away over the years. Getting this right would have a pretty big impact on regional trade markets and that's really important seeing that a flourishing player driven economy is key to Pantheon.
Fulton said:When I first began EQ, a RL friend got me into his guild. Everyone was joking around in guild chat one night, and someone put up the challenge to make a Barbarian and run it from Halas to FP with no ports, no buffs, and no deaths.
I took the challenge. New to EQ, I had no real idea of how to pull this off, but they allowed me to use EQ atlas as a guide (This is the old 14" CRT days, no dual monitors)
Fun story! I swear you took a longer route than necessary. Swear one could go from a Karana Zone into West Commons??? But then its been a long time my Geography is fuzzy. Looking at the world map we have been provided, i suspect we will see such tales emerge once again.
DracoKalen said:Tanix said:DracoKalen said:Travel time
- Into a new zone. I wouldn't use anything but foot traffic. I want to explore it, I want to clear it of danger.
After that I should have the option if I want to drag my behind through it again.
Which I think is in direct conflict with the tenants of a full and rich game world.
No offense, I respect what you desire, but it is more along the lines of a "quarter machine" event than a living world. That is, as soon as you have paid your due, you want easy access, because, well, you paid right? This is the exact thing I want Pantheon not to be and I can be very honest and clear in this, if Pantheon is that.. I won't play it. /shrug
Except it's not. If you have been through a zone and eliminated the enemy the next time you come back it would be a relatively quiet place to visit. You seem to think auto-pop is natural, but it is an artificial construct put in place so they next group has something to do accomplish. Having to do the same thing in the same place over and over is not rich, it's just plain repititous. If it was a "full and rich game world" there might be another challenge there but the exact same thing is not full or rich. It's just kill rinse repeat........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
My issue is not simply the population of opponents within a zone, rather it is that of simply traveling through at the speed of a player.
Take the Karanas in EQ for example. It was predominately a sparsly populated zone, but it was HUGE. It took time to travel through. I think that regardless if you have explored or killed everthing in the zone, it should not result in you being able to easily bypass the travel restriction of the zone.
If you think that is boring, or a snooze fest, I realy can't argue as this is your subjective opinon and if we let such opinions drive game development, what we end up with is... Modern MMOs, the very thing that this game is "supposedly" being developed to remedy. /shrug
oneADseven said:Here are a few things I'd like to see when it comes to teleportation:
1) Before any player is eligible to teleport to a location, they must first visit the druid ring or teleportation spire in person and attune to it.
1A) The attunement process could have several prerequisites, depending on how exotic the location it is. There could be a faction requirement or a quest that needs to be completed. There could be some sort of deity favor cost where you have to sacrifice items to an altar.
1B) The "event system" could include random scenarios where these spires/rings are taken over by hostile NPC's. During this time, players wouldn't be able to utilize their teleportation abilities. Players would have to travel to these locations manually and then clear them of threats before they become active again.
2) There should be some sort of reagent cost for the player being teleported. Ideally, this reagent could only be purchased with XP. Wizards/Druids would be exempt from this cost.
I am a huge fan of meaningful travel and I don't think teleportation spells should enable a flippant mindset when it comes to navigating the world. By attaching an XP cost you're essentially trading time for time. If you are attuned to the spire, and it isn't taken over by NPC's, and you have the reagent necessary, then you can make the decision on whether or not you should utilize a teleportation spell. While I can appreciate the history of emergent "Taxi Services" in MMO's, I feel like many players have grown accustomed to having these sorts of things available. It makes the world feel small when you're a button click away from circumventing meaningful travel requirements.
As long as there is an appropriate cost for the action, I think teleportation spells are reasonable. As we know, though, there will be plenty of players offering their services for free, or maybe with an expectation of some sort of tip. It shouldn't be that easy, and it shouldn't be that simple. Where you are in the world, what you are doing, and where you are bound ... all of these things should matter. I want to see a return to the feeling where players can feel far away from "home." This is a core ingredient of the "adventure recipe" that has fizzled away over the years. Getting this right would have a pretty big impact on regional trade markets and that's really important seeing that a flourishing player driven economy is key to Pantheon.
EQ 2 did that, it failed in many ways to eliminate the process of making travel significant. EQ 2's travel I felt to be a shallow replacement to what existed in EQ. /shrug
Pyye said: One thing I want back in my gaming world is discovery, exploration and a world that actually feels huge. I want to see insignificant corners of the world because I am always saying “what if...?” To me, you start off on your own two feet, the have to explore the world that way. I am okay with certain “hubs” that once explored, it saves an hour to get to, yet is still 15 to 30 minutes from potential areas. It comes down to scale to me, if you allow players to cut corners, everyone will, and this jeopardizes scale. This is one of those fine lines where VR needs to be very careful what they “give in” to, because human nature will always take the shortest route and much of the world can become insignificant!
This is why I think making ALL travel, regardless of level, ability, spell, etc... still take a lot of time is important. There are many I knew in EQ who never saw various zones and it was because travel in EQ took time, it was dangerous and what rewards could be gained were often unknown. There were many in EQ who took the path of least resistance, they went to the "hot zones" of EQ, they did not venture out to explore things or take chances due to travel time and dangers in such.
Heck, the aspect that the "bulk" of the player base would go to the "easy" zones was a benefit to those who would take risks and explore. When Kunark was released, most went to camp Karnor Castle and those of us who did not want to sit and wait on camp lines, deicded to go take the risk of exploration. We went deep into zones where most did not. We found dungeons that had interesting mobs and interesting loot as well. We went deep into areas where others would not go because it was not the "flavor of the week". The point is, exploration, travel time, etc... HELPED the players who wanted to take risks while the rest sat around popular easy points to camp. If all the areas we explored were "easy to get to" points, people would have flooded them fast. Travel time and danger plays more of a point than simple "time" as a game play element.
Tanix said:EQ 2 did that, it failed in many ways to eliminate the process of making travel significant. EQ 2's travel I felt to be a shallow replacement to what existed in EQ. /shrug
I'm guessing that you're selectively reading here. EQ2 did one of the four things that I suggested, which is the attunement process. There were no faction requirements or meaningful quests associated with unlocking them. There was a one-time server event prior to KoS that unlocked some of the spires for the entire server but that isn't what I was suggesting. Once they were unlocked, anybody could walk up to them and voila, they were attuned. There were no random/dynamic events that prevented players from using them and there was no XP-cost reagent. The spires/rings could function as a traditional key/flag system. Every player would need to unlock the flag/key individually before they could interact/attune, but even then, it would still cost an XP reagent.
For a high level character, they should be able to get to practically any dungeon entrance they want in around 15 minutes ASSUMING they have a port at their fingertips and have a speed buff that drastically increases their speed. Without ports/speed buffs, travel should still feel burdensome. This encourages everyone to befriend porters and speed buffers.
For a low level character, there should always be a local regional camps appropriate for their level range. If they want to travel to another region's level-appropriate camp, that should be an obstacle that makes the player think twice about trying to make the journey.
For a newbie, it should be next to impossible for long distance travel save for some buffs/ports from a high-end character (or being a twink).
Tanix said:EQ 2 did that, it failed in many ways to eliminate the process of making travel significant. EQ 2's travel I felt to be a shallow replacement to what existed in EQ. /shrug
Once again, VERY NICE thoughts Tanix. Two thumbs high up. Travel needs to be significant, difficult, and time consuming even at all levels. #communitymatters #makenightmatteragain #riskvsreward