DracoKalen said:Watemper said:@DracoKalen ...Just because you don't find your job fun doesn't mean that other people think the same. For instance, as a programmer there are plenty of phases of programming I hate. Debugging is 70% of the time and I hate it, but going through all of that and figuring out how to get it to work makes that 30% very fun. If I just copied and pasted code and be done with it, it isn't fun at all. Just boring. Same concept with any type of game. Games are much different than entertainment. Games are suppose to challenge some level of skill and perserverance. If you don't have that minimum standard the game brings to the table then you won't have fun with the game period. People who do will have fun with the game because they went through the tough patches of learning the game, which is always annoying for me, and showing perserverance in times that other people would simple refuse to do.
Well I love games. For instance there's a game called "Istaria" came out around 2000. It's the only game I found that had dragons as player characters, you start as a hatchling and in the beginning year or so of the game you started with no armor, while the bipeds had leather/chain/plate hatchlings had the AC of a naked biped. And even with that handicap I still got out there and explored....and died. So I know hard. My masterpiece was a dragon grand hall (You can build out your own lair). The grand hall took me 40 hours a week for 6 months and 3 weeks, that's going to each tiers resource field (T1-T6) and gather stone/metal/essense/wood. Dragging it back to my processing machines, turning the raw material into bricks/ingots/sphere's. Then combining those into sub parts then dragging it all to another machine to make the parts, then to my lair. It wasn't easy or exciting but when the grandhall materialized after all that work I was excited.
I know time sinks very well and when they're warranted I can live with it, even enjoy it. But when they are just introduced with no point, no purpose...no way. Wasting anyones time is...well to put it nicely, just rude.
Just because you don't see the point in travel sinks doesn't mean they have no meaning. I bet you had plenty of travel sinks to gathering that material. They didn't give you some sort of teleport spell that magically teleported you to the place you wanted to go and then begin gathering.
EQ1 had, eventually, introduced this in the Luclin expansion. The portal would auto-teleport every 10 or 15 minutes. I think EQ2 had this as well in a few spots. Standing around waiting 15 minutes is the price you pay for the convenience factor of not having to find a class that can teleport you.
That sure wasn't convenient to death. You had some waiting (I guess 15min was right) but getting back from nexus would take you between 15 and 45min waiting because portals there rotated every 15min. That means your travel was at least 15min (with super luck), and at most 1 hour (with bad luck) withouth even reaching the final area. That's an average of 37.5 min for a shortcut with no class able to teleport you.
I allways found it quite convenient, the bad part was that Luclin's zone were often too good for you to even need to go back to antonica/fayder/odus or even kunark, which means you didn't really need to portal back from the nexus but ran throught luclin.
Tanix said:Point is, if you are in the zone, you should be constrained to all the obstacles you would if it were a zone of your "level". This is consistency in game play.
Do you mean to say that the 20 levels you've gained since you were last in that zone killing Feeble Beetles all your experience, new abilities and improved gear mean nothing and you should still have to slog through a few hundred zero-exp beetles to get where you're going?
Watemper said:DracoKalen said:Watemper said:@DracoKalen ...Just because you don't find your job fun doesn't mean that other people think the same. For instance, as a programmer there are plenty of phases of programming I hate. Debugging is 70% of the time and I hate it, but going through all of that and figuring out how to get it to work makes that 30% very fun. If I just copied and pasted code and be done with it, it isn't fun at all. Just boring. Same concept with any type of game. Games are much different than entertainment. Games are suppose to challenge some level of skill and perserverance. If you don't have that minimum standard the game brings to the table then you won't have fun with the game period. People who do will have fun with the game because they went through the tough patches of learning the game, which is always annoying for me, and showing perserverance in times that other people would simple refuse to do.
Well I love games. For instance there's a game called "Istaria" came out around 2000. It's the only game I found that had dragons as player characters, you start as a hatchling and in the beginning year or so of the game you started with no armor, while the bipeds had leather/chain/plate hatchlings had the AC of a naked biped. And even with that handicap I still got out there and explored....and died. So I know hard. My masterpiece was a dragon grand hall (You can build out your own lair). The grand hall took me 40 hours a week for 6 months and 3 weeks, that's going to each tiers resource field (T1-T6) and gather stone/metal/essense/wood. Dragging it back to my processing machines, turning the raw material into bricks/ingots/sphere's. Then combining those into sub parts then dragging it all to another machine to make the parts, then to my lair. It wasn't easy or exciting but when the grandhall materialized after all that work I was excited.
I know time sinks very well and when they're warranted I can live with it, even enjoy it. But when they are just introduced with no point, no purpose...no way. Wasting anyones time is...well to put it nicely, just rude.
Just because you don't see the point in travel sinks doesn't mean they have no meaning. I bet you had plenty of travel sinks to gathering that material. They didn't give you some sort of teleport spell that magically teleported you to the place you wanted to go and then begin gathering.
Well some towns had gates (we called them stargates as that's what they looked like) and as an ancient dragon I could fly (Tanix would really hate that). Now of course dragons couldn't get backpacks, instead we had resource disks we made. They hovered, but oh they slowed you down and some you couldn't fly with. Nothing funnier then watching a large dragon flying through the air in slow motion. So it really was not much of a time sink, gathering...now that was a huge time sink, gathering thousands of raw resources at 5 per node. It was almost a relief when something attacked.
@Iksar Yet, time is one of many obstacles that strengthens the depth and challenge of a game. For example, the time in waiting for a rare spawn while killing its PH’s (taking time again). Time is one of several obstacles in this event. Another example is the time it takes to clear a very difficult, high-end raid for an epic drop for an epic quest. Takes time, an obstacle. Other obstacles include having the right gear, needed classes and groups, gear with resists, lots of strategy and some planning etc. Time is an obstacle too.
Watemper said:Just because you don't see the point in travel sinks doesn't mean they have no meaning. I bet you had plenty of travel sinks to gathering that material. They didn't give you some sort of teleport spell that magically teleported you to the place you wanted to go and then begin gathering.
One valuable use for travel time I can see it that your group, once gathered and adventuring in some far-off dungeon, is more likely to stick together as a group and complete the dungeon if it would take a while to get back to town or to go somewhere else. This is likely to reduce the "WoW Effect" whereby a player joins a group, teleports in, gets what they want early int he run and then drops group and ports home leaving the rest of the group to stand around and wait for a replacement. It's also likely to encourage players to get the most out of every adventure.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the argument that "PoP ruined EQ due to portals" simply because by then the world had grown so large that for a non-porting, slow-running class it could take hours to get anywhere without those portals in PoK. Sony may have overdone it a bit but without the portals large numbers of players would not have been able to play if all of their short play time had to be spent running and dodging mobs.
There is a balance. On release of Pantheon there's likely no reason to have portals. Someday as the world increases in size they may become necessary. And, certainly, if I can afford a horse why should I not be able to ride said horse to ease travel? Horses are far less fantastic than bards, druids and wizards...
Syrif said:@Iksar Yet, time is one of many obstacles that strengthens the depth and challenge of a game. For example, the time in waiting for a rare spawn while killing its PH’s (taking time again). Time is one of several obstacles in this event. Another example is the time it takes to clear a very difficult, high-end raid for an epic drop for an epic quest. Takes time, an obstacle. Other obstacles include having the right gear, needed classes and groups, gear with resists, lots of strategy and some planning etc. Time is an obstacle too.
Time does, wasting time doesn't. As in my grandhall example, no time was wasted wating for nothing. It took me about ~360 hours but I was doing something productive most of the time.
Akilae said:Tanix said:Point is, if you are in the zone, you should be constrained to all the obstacles you would if it were a zone of your "level". This is consistency in game play.
Do you mean to say that the 20 levels you've gained since you were last in that zone killing Feeble Beetles all your experience, new abilities and improved gear mean nothing and you should still have to slog through a few hundred zero-exp beetles to get where you're going?
No, your abilties you gained should exactly translate to the difficulties you face. So naturally, if you have to fight a level 10 beetle and your are level 30, that level 10 beetle will be less of a challenge due to its level. That said, the road has no level, the distance you travel today, will not change just because you got older and wiser over time. Your distance, is still the same distance, and while there may be advantages you gain (depending on class and ablility) which may reduce that obstacle of distance, travel remains the same.
@DracoKalen
Very subjective. So I can technically say time wasn't wasted running from one place to another to obtain a piece of loot, or going to a certain place to exp grind, or even to go to another town to group up with a friend. Since the time to get to the certain place was a pre-requisite. Then there is no such thing as pointless time sinks if you have to travel from point A to point B.
DracoKalen said:Syrif said:@Iksar Yet, time is one of many obstacles that strengthens the depth and challenge of a game. For example, the time in waiting for a rare spawn while killing its PH’s (taking time again). Time is one of several obstacles in this event. Another example is the time it takes to clear a very difficult, high-end raid for an epic drop for an epic quest. Takes time, an obstacle. Other obstacles include having the right gear, needed classes and groups, gear with resists, lots of strategy and some planning etc. Time is an obstacle too.
Time does, wasting time doesn't. As in my grandhall example, no time was wasted wating for nothing. It took me about ~360 hours but I was doing something productive most of the time.
'You make a subjective argument. Time in play is important, this is fact. You saying time in travel is not important is subjective. Time in travel is important period. It is a consistent element of longjevity in play and just because you subjectively think it is irrelvant does not make it so. That is, you agree time is important, you just argue it is unimportant when used in travel (ie a subjective argument).
Tanix said:DracoKalen said:Syrif said:@Iksar Yet, time is one of many obstacles that strengthens the depth and challenge of a game. For example, the time in waiting for a rare spawn while killing its PH’s (taking time again). Time is one of several obstacles in this event. Another example is the time it takes to clear a very difficult, high-end raid for an epic drop for an epic quest. Takes time, an obstacle. Other obstacles include having the right gear, needed classes and groups, gear with resists, lots of strategy and some planning etc. Time is an obstacle too.
Time does, wasting time doesn't. As in my grandhall example, no time was wasted wating for nothing. It took me about ~360 hours but I was doing something productive most of the time.
'You make a subjective argument. Time in play is important, this is fact. You saying time in travel is not important is subjective. Time in travel is important period. It is a consistent element of longjevity in play and just because you subjectively think it is irrelvant does not make it so. That is, you agree time is important, you just argue it is unimportant when used in travel (ie a subjective argument).
Where id I say time wasn't important? Time productively spent is important, wasting time is bad game mechanics.
DracoKalen said:Tanix said:DracoKalen said:Syrif said:@Iksar Yet, time is one of many obstacles that strengthens the depth and challenge of a game. For example, the time in waiting for a rare spawn while killing its PH’s (taking time again). Time is one of several obstacles in this event. Another example is the time it takes to clear a very difficult, high-end raid for an epic drop for an epic quest. Takes time, an obstacle. Other obstacles include having the right gear, needed classes and groups, gear with resists, lots of strategy and some planning etc. Time is an obstacle too.
Time does, wasting time doesn't. As in my grandhall example, no time was wasted wating for nothing. It took me about ~360 hours but I was doing something productive most of the time.
'You make a subjective argument. Time in play is important, this is fact. You saying time in travel is not important is subjective. Time in travel is important period. It is a consistent element of longjevity in play and just because you subjectively think it is irrelvant does not make it so. That is, you agree time is important, you just argue it is unimportant when used in travel (ie a subjective argument).
Where id I say time wasn't important? Time productively spent is important, wasting time is bad game mechanics.
The subjective element is your opinion as it being a waste of time or not.
For everything you claim is a proper spent time, I can find someone to claim it is a waste of time, using the arguments you may use.
Time spent however is finite to a given objective. It is either properly blanced to the objective (ie risk vs rewared, effort vs achievement), but "wasted" is subjective.
So when you say that having long term travel between areas is "wasting time", you are saying that the time spent is unimportant and making a subjective argument.
Again, you may think I am too harsh, require too much time to complete or achieve an objective, but I can take your very "expectations" as to what is "fair and balanced" and find another person who would claim you are wasting time, and promoting bad game mechanics.
Tanix said:DracoKalen said:Tanix said:DracoKalen said:Syrif said:@Iksar Yet, time is one of many obstacles that strengthens the depth and challenge of a game. For example, the time in waiting for a rare spawn while killing its PH’s (taking time again). Time is one of several obstacles in this event. Another example is the time it takes to clear a very difficult, high-end raid for an epic drop for an epic quest. Takes time, an obstacle. Other obstacles include having the right gear, needed classes and groups, gear with resists, lots of strategy and some planning etc. Time is an obstacle too.
Time does, wasting time doesn't. As in my grandhall example, no time was wasted wating for nothing. It took me about ~360 hours but I was doing something productive most of the time.
'You make a subjective argument. Time in play is important, this is fact. You saying time in travel is not important is subjective. Time in travel is important period. It is a consistent element of longjevity in play and just because you subjectively think it is irrelvant does not make it so. That is, you agree time is important, you just argue it is unimportant when used in travel (ie a subjective argument).
Where id I say time wasn't important? Time productively spent is important, wasting time is bad game mechanics.
The subjective element is your opinion as it being a waste of time or not.
For everything you claim is a proper spent time, I can find someone to claim it is a waste of time, using the arguments you may use.
Time spent however is finite to a given objective. It is either properly blanced to the objective (ie risk vs rewared, effort vs achievement), but "wasted" is subjective.
So when you say that having long term travel between areas is "wasting time", you are saying that the time spent is unimportant and making a subjective argument.
Again, you may think I am too harsh, require too much time to complete or achieve an objective, but I can take your very "expectations" as to what is "fair and balanced" and find another person who would claim you are wasting time, and promoting bad game mechanics.
ah..so your putting words in my mouth. When you play a game online, you pay to sit there and do nothing....interesting
DracoKalen said:Tanix said:DracoKalen said:Tanix said:DracoKalen said:Syrif said:@Iksar Yet, time is one of many obstacles that strengthens the depth and challenge of a game. For example, the time in waiting for a rare spawn while killing its PH’s (taking time again). Time is one of several obstacles in this event. Another example is the time it takes to clear a very difficult, high-end raid for an epic drop for an epic quest. Takes time, an obstacle. Other obstacles include having the right gear, needed classes and groups, gear with resists, lots of strategy and some planning etc. Time is an obstacle too.
Time does, wasting time doesn't. As in my grandhall example, no time was wasted wating for nothing. It took me about ~360 hours but I was doing something productive most of the time.
'You make a subjective argument. Time in play is important, this is fact. You saying time in travel is not important is subjective. Time in travel is important period. It is a consistent element of longjevity in play and just because you subjectively think it is irrelvant does not make it so. That is, you agree time is important, you just argue it is unimportant when used in travel (ie a subjective argument).
Where id I say time wasn't important? Time productively spent is important, wasting time is bad game mechanics.
The subjective element is your opinion as it being a waste of time or not.
For everything you claim is a proper spent time, I can find someone to claim it is a waste of time, using the arguments you may use.
Time spent however is finite to a given objective. It is either properly blanced to the objective (ie risk vs rewared, effort vs achievement), but "wasted" is subjective.
So when you say that having long term travel between areas is "wasting time", you are saying that the time spent is unimportant and making a subjective argument.
Again, you may think I am too harsh, require too much time to complete or achieve an objective, but I can take your very "expectations" as to what is "fair and balanced" and find another person who would claim you are wasting time, and promoting bad game mechanics.
ah..so your putting words in my mouth. When you play a game online, you pay to sit there and do nothing....interesting
Being offended and making accusations you are unwilling to validate is not an argument, it is a fallacy.
DracoKalen said:
Don't you see? Requiring countless hours of travel with little to no mitigation of travel time whether trying to get to a new area or back to a zone to recover a corpse or whatever else is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for watching Netflix while they autorun in the direction of zone lines trying to get where they need to. It's a very balanced risk/reward formula to go from one area with little to no value or risk to another place somewhere else that does have value in order to actually engage in risks to group/gain experience...somehow.
/s
I don't think many/any here are arguing for no travel time or possible surprises when in transit but rather that there be some means available as a character grows to keep travel times more consistant instead of a massively growing gap. At low levels a player (generally) doesn't need to go too far to get to whatever they need, maybe a zone or two + a city but they do so with no movespeed buffs (unless a high level is around to hand it out). As the range of zones needed to travel expands suddenly players start getting movespeed buffs. As that range expands ever further to more fringe areas at higher levels, it seems entirely reasonable to allow means to further increase movespeed like with a mount + movespeed buff. Then at the very top you have the classes with teleports.
It still takes longer for a high level without a teleport (and sometimes even with) to go from city to xp granting dungeon than a low level with no buffs to do the same, but the time spent in the no risk and otherwise mindless parts of the journey are lessened.
At risk of reposting ... I tried to address how we might look at the travel and time equation realizing that not all objectives of travel have the same risk / reward in my earlier post. I feel like this is one of those discussions where everyone is violently agreeing with each other but using different words.
The time associated with travel should roughly line up with the reward:
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.
Iksar said:DracoKalen said:Don't you see? Requiring countless hours of travel with little to no mitigation of travel time whether trying to get to a new area or back to a zone to recover a corpse or whatever else is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for watching Netflix while they autorun in the direction of zone lines trying to get where they need to. It's a very balanced risk/reward formula to go from one area with little to no value or risk to another place somewhere else that does have value in order to actually engage in risks to group/gain experience...somehow.
/s
This right here is the line in the sand, what segregates "old school" from "new school" in game design.
You see, having time be a mechanism in play will only force the player to treat the game as nothing more than a side show to which they dismiss, and ignore (ie watch movies while they play the game) and so the only resolution is to give into such and make the game fast travel, easy resolution, easy play because if you do not, some kid will look up cheats online, buy their rewards online and watch TV while they play.
IF the argument is that the player will ignore game play, act like an incessant little half wit who can't stay focused for any given time and so the game should be developed for such low interest half wits, here is my response:
Sorry, they already make mainstream games, I have no interest in playing them.. so why are people here demanding EXACTLY what is OPENLY available in mass on the market?
Iksar said:DracoKalen said:Don't you see? Requiring countless hours of travel with little to no mitigation of travel time whether trying to get to a new area or back to a zone to recover a corpse or whatever else is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for watching Netflix while they autorun in the direction of zone lines trying to get where they need to. It's a very balanced risk/reward formula to go from one area with little to no value or risk to another place somewhere else that does have value in order to actually engage in risks to group/gain experience...somehow.
/s
I don't think many/any here are arguing for no travel time or possible surprises when in transit but rather that there be some means available as a character grows to keep travel times more consistant instead of a massively growing gap. At low levels a player (generally) doesn't need to go too far to get to whatever they need, maybe a zone or two + a city but they do so with no movespeed buffs (unless a high level is around to hand it out). As the range of zones needed to travel expands suddenly players start getting movespeed buffs. As that range expands ever further to more fringe areas at higher levels, it seems entirely reasonable to allow means to further increase movespeed like with a mount + movespeed buff. Then at the very top you have the classes with teleports.
It still takes longer for a high level without a teleport (and sometimes even with) to go from city to xp granting dungeon than a low level with no buffs to do the same, but the time spent in the no risk and otherwise mindless parts of the journey are lessened.
It's called Ports, SOW, and/or a mount.....
But nah we will go with your extreme. Let's just have a teleporter in each area that you discover and just screw traveling..am I right. I mean the developers took time to craft these wonderful zones...lets only see it once.
/s
Did I do good?
So I read some of this, and glossed over some because there seems to be a lot of bickering.
When WoW and FF14 added flying mounts the world felt smaller. I didn't travel the roads anymore, I didn't need to remember to make a left at this tree to get somewhere. Getting back to where I was no longer became a hardship, and thus it removed one more punishment from death.
I don't want to spend all night traveling to a zone, but I don't want instant travel either. One of my fondest memories was running across the Karana's as a level 10. It felt MASSIVE. I was scared. 20 years later and I have that memory still with me.
I'll take long travel times over instant or even short. I loved PoP as an expansion because I raided but it took all the wonder out of the world.
@EppE even with classic WoW comming out soon, many people for it are saying one of the biggest unforseen downfalls was the flying mount. Ruined the game in a lot of aspects that they didn't realize until hindsight. Some with dungeon finders and instant teleportations to dungeons and raids.
But yeah I agree with you. But just so you know once the teleport classes get to their apporiate level then you shouldn't have a massive travel time later on. Just in the beginning.
@Eppe Yep, I agree. Flying mounts were and are a nightmare. The problem with mounts is they just blow all that amazing content away. I really dislike mounts for this reason.