Parascol said:I'm not sure if this is confirmed, but I thought I read that there are some ideas, such as offline caravans being tossed around too. A player could utilize a caravan for a long journey while offline. Again, I have no idea if this is confirmed, or if it will make it in, but if they are considering things like this, then they are considering travel time and how it cuts into available play time.
I think if traveling somewhere is taking so long that they need to design a system that actively encourages you to log off and wait for that traveling to be done... then that is too darn long.
I'm all for actively journeying through the game - either on foot, on a mount, or on a flight path. But I don't want travel times so excessive that I'd rather just log off and wait for the journey to be done.
Naunet said:Parascol said:I'm not sure if this is confirmed, but I thought I read that there are some ideas, such as offline caravans being tossed around too. A player could utilize a caravan for a long journey while offline. Again, I have no idea if this is confirmed, or if it will make it in, but if they are considering things like this, then they are considering travel time and how it cuts into available play time.I think if traveling somewhere is taking so long that they need to design a system that actively encourages you to log off and wait for that traveling to be done... then that is too darn long.
I'm all for actively journeying through the game - either on foot, on a mount, or on a flight path. But I don't want travel times so excessive that I'd rather just log off and wait for the journey to be done.
Isn't a flight path the same thing in as sense. You aren't really going on a journey on a flight path. You can just afk and go do something until you reach your destination. Same exact thing as a caravan just you gotta be logged on.
Watemper said:Isn't a flight path the same thing in as sense. You aren't really going on a journey on a flight path. You can just afk and go do something until you reach your destination. Same exact thing as a caravan just you gotta be logged on.
Generally flight paths are just a few minutes long. When I imagine an "offline caravan" system, it would suggest travel times of like 20-30 minutes (IMO excessive traveling) - otherwise, why go through the trouble of logging off?
Naunet said:Watemper said:Isn't a flight path the same thing in as sense. You aren't really going on a journey on a flight path. You can just afk and go do something until you reach your destination. Same exact thing as a caravan just you gotta be logged on.Generally flight paths are just a few minutes long. When I imagine an "offline caravan" system, it would suggest travel times of like 20-30 minutes (IMO excessive traveling) - otherwise, why go through the trouble of logging off?
Offline caravans are more so if you want to log off and your group is in a dungeon then your character can travel with that group that progresses on further into the dungeon. Mainly for your play group and people you know.
I guess what I was getting at is flight paths aren't really a journey. And on the Old WoW content when farming raids for mounts it can take a good 15 mins going from somwhere like hyjal to tanaris. So you can just afk. And you skip a lot of the content doing this so it's a really sad journey if you can call it that.
Watemper said:Offline caravans are more so if you want to log off and your group is in a dungeon then your character can travel with that group that progresses on further into the dungeon. Mainly for your play group and people you know.I guess what I was getting at is flight paths aren't really a journey. And on the Old WoW content when farming raids for mounts it can take a good 15 mins going from somwhere like hyjal to tanaris. So you can just afk. And you skip a lot of the content doing this so it's a really sad journey if you can call it that.
Eeeeh considering how old that "content" is, I feel no obligation to walk on foot and have to fight through mobs just to get to a decade-old instance.
I'm not sure I'm understanding your caravan thing properly... are you suggesting that people use it to log off and when you log back in, you would be at a deeper point in a dungeon without having done any of the work to get there? That seems... really weird and kind of counter to my comprehension of character progression.
Naunet said:Watemper said:Offline caravans are more so if you want to log off and your group is in a dungeon then your character can travel with that group that progresses on further into the dungeon. Mainly for your play group and people you know.I guess what I was getting at is flight paths aren't really a journey. And on the Old WoW content when farming raids for mounts it can take a good 15 mins going from somwhere like hyjal to tanaris. So you can just afk. And you skip a lot of the content doing this so it's a really sad journey if you can call it that.
Eeeeh considering how old that "content" is, I feel no obligation to walk on foot and have to fight through mobs just to get to a decade-old instance.
I'm not sure I'm understanding your caravan thing properly... are you suggesting that people use it to log off and when you log back in, you would be at a deeper point in a dungeon without having done any of the work to get there? That seems... really weird and kind of counter to my comprehension of character progression.
The discussion about these caravans came about several years ago and the idea was that a player could log out at a city/village/outpost after having bought a ticket (or some token) for a caravan that would be going to some other city/village/outpost. After some set period of time (quite a few hours so that it was not used for quick travel) the player would log back in and be at the destination. Basically you could use the caravan to get from, say, Wilds End to Skargos while you were offline for the night.
Naunet said:Watemper said:Offline caravans are more so if you want to log off and your group is in a dungeon then your character can travel with that group that progresses on further into the dungeon. Mainly for your play group and people you know.I guess what I was getting at is flight paths aren't really a journey. And on the Old WoW content when farming raids for mounts it can take a good 15 mins going from somwhere like hyjal to tanaris. So you can just afk. And you skip a lot of the content doing this so it's a really sad journey if you can call it that.
Eeeeh considering how old that "content" is, I feel no obligation to walk on foot and have to fight through mobs just to get to a decade-old instance.
I'm not sure I'm understanding your caravan thing properly... are you suggesting that people use it to log off and when you log back in, you would be at a deeper point in a dungeon without having done any of the work to get there? That seems... really weird and kind of counter to my comprehension of character progression.
Agreed, not at all how I understood caravns when Brad first talked about them.
More like they would be like bus stops, that you could load up on and ride, (IE like the boats in EQ1) , and if you chose to log off for the night, then when you log back in later, you would be at your destination. Unlike the boat where you'd either be swimming or just still travelling on the boat wherever it was at the time you logged back in.
Many times, I took the boat in EQ1, and had to AFK only to find I missed my stop. :) that sucked.
Trasak said:bobwinner said:*snip*
*small edit* No. An [insert quality of life automation function here] reduces players interaction. The bazaar in EQ's luclin period ruined EQ players interaction. Player interaction is what made EQ great, let's not add elements that ruin this aspect of the game.
*snip*
Bobwinner sorry to use your post as an example as this is a general response a specific group of posters use over an over to shoot down ideas.
I get the point that Pantheon will be way more of a social game than other MMOs and player to player interaction is one of the keys, but how much is enough interaction?
We already have very group centric combat. It also sounds like travel will actually be fairly group centric as well as almost all classes have some form of player versus environment tool. VR has also stated that they want the world to feel big and one of the ways to do that is to limit fast travel methods but often fast travel is really just faster travel as teleport locations are not always all that convenient.
We may even get a crafting system that allows for a very high level of visual customization at which point there might be a joint design window between the crafter and the customer for the look.
But at what point does the player interaction vs needless tedium ratio become not really worth it? From my perspective multiboxing, account wide banks, large number of characters and their crafting classes, and dropped items are king over crafted items all do a lot more to damage player interaction opportunities than a regional automated offline trade function.
Those of you who put maximizing player interaction as a top priorety might want to take up the No-Multiboxing and One character per server banner rather than the anti auction house banner as your return on interaction will be an order of magnitude or more higher.
I echo this post entirely. Not every little aspect of the game needs to be heavily involved with players interacting. At some point to detriments out weigh the benefits.
This is why people that are "ok" with some changes to game mechanics that EQ had say things like "all people want is an eq clone"...
Naunet said:Watemper said:Offline caravans are more so if you want to log off and your group is in a dungeon then your character can travel with that group that progresses on further into the dungeon. Mainly for your play group and people you know.I guess what I was getting at is flight paths aren't really a journey. And on the Old WoW content when farming raids for mounts it can take a good 15 mins going from somwhere like hyjal to tanaris. So you can just afk. And you skip a lot of the content doing this so it's a really sad journey if you can call it that.
Eeeeh considering how old that "content" is, I feel no obligation to walk on foot and have to fight through mobs just to get to a decade-old instance.
I'm not sure I'm understanding your caravan thing properly... are you suggesting that people use it to log off and when you log back in, you would be at a deeper point in a dungeon without having done any of the work to get there? That seems... really weird and kind of counter to my comprehension of character progression.
I know you feel no obligation. Neither did EQ players. Which is why by the time it got tedious their were things called ports.
Anyways, the caravan idea was coined when talking about people needing to log off when they are in a group. They can decided to be logged off and still have their character, not really there since they are logged off, still be attached to the group, somehow, so when the group progresses further in then you aren't lost from the group when you all log back in for another play session. That was coined in the older streams. They might have changed there minds on that but that was the initial thought process of caravans. Another example was used with raiding. If you are getting on right before the raid starts and don't want to travel all that way, then you can caravan with a guildie and they can get to the raid spot and when you log on you will be at the raid spot without having to rush over there.
Watemper said:Anyways, the caravan idea was coined when talking about people needing to log off when they are in a group. They can decided to be logged off and still have their character, not really there since they are logged off, still be attached to the group, somehow, so when the group progresses further in then you aren't lost from the group when you all log back in for another play session. That was coined in the older streams. They might have changed there minds on that but that was the initial thought process of caravans. Another example was used with raiding. If you are getting on right before the raid starts and don't want to travel all that way, then you can caravan with a guildie and they can get to the raid spot and when you log on you will be at the raid spot without having to rush over there.
Ah, I get it. Not sure how I feel about that... the whole logging off and then being able to log into a different location just... feels weird? Though I guess it's not really any different than being able to, say, summon a player (either via a class spell, an ability available to everyone, or interacting with checkpoint waystones, or whatever) to one's location in a dungeon.
Naunet said:Watemper said:Anyways, the caravan idea was coined when talking about people needing to log off when they are in a group. They can decided to be logged off and still have their character, not really there since they are logged off, still be attached to the group, somehow, so when the group progresses further in then you aren't lost from the group when you all log back in for another play session. That was coined in the older streams. They might have changed there minds on that but that was the initial thought process of caravans. Another example was used with raiding. If you are getting on right before the raid starts and don't want to travel all that way, then you can caravan with a guildie and they can get to the raid spot and when you log on you will be at the raid spot without having to rush over there.
Ah, I get it. Not sure how I feel about that... the whole logging off and then being able to log into a different location just... feels weird? Though I guess it's not really any different than being able to, say, summon a player (either via a class spell, an ability available to everyone, or interacting with checkpoint waystones, or whatever) to one's location in a dungeon.
Yea, it's pretty much a warlock summon in WoW, but not really exclusive to them. Could be an interesting way to make money. If some noobs wants to meet up you can ask a higher level to caravan and pick up everyone and drop them off somewhere when they all log back on.
I like to go camping. It's a taste of the simple life. But when I get a mosquito bite I smear on some antiseptic, I don't visit a witchdoctor.
Of course some 'modern conveniences' can make it into Pantheon without ruining the old-school vision. In fact, some old-school features were purely technical resitrictions and unimaginative and painful.
VR have a tough job deciding what's what, but they will. The bickering and attacks is silliness.
disposalist said:I like to go camping. It's a taste of the simple life. But when I get a mosquito bite I smear on some antiseptic, I don't visit a witchdoctor.
Of course some 'modern conveniences' can make it into Pantheon without ruining the old-school vision. In fact, some old-school features were purely technical resitrictions and unimaginative and painful.
VR have a tough job deciding what's what, but they will. The bickering and attacks is silliness.
Right so are you an RV with air condition and satelite TV and comfy little beds to sleep on, or are you a person that has a tent and kind of roughs it? Because I can tell you over the camping community people would say the RV with air conditioning and a satelite TV isn't camping, but just a vacation. So what defines camping?
But yea, VR does have a rough time ahead in discerning what intentional time sinks actually helped immersion and didn't help immersion.
Porygon said:Trasak said:bobwinner said:*snip*
*small edit* No. An [insert quality of life automation function here] reduces players interaction. The bazaar in EQ's luclin period ruined EQ players interaction. Player interaction is what made EQ great, let's not add elements that ruin this aspect of the game.
*snip*
Bobwinner sorry to use your post as an example as this is a general response a specific group of posters use over an over to shoot down ideas.
I get the point that Pantheon will be way more of a social game than other MMOs and player to player interaction is one of the keys, but how much is enough interaction?
We already have very group centric combat. It also sounds like travel will actually be fairly group centric as well as almost all classes have some form of player versus environment tool. VR has also stated that they want the world to feel big and one of the ways to do that is to limit fast travel methods but often fast travel is really just faster travel as teleport locations are not always all that convenient.
We may even get a crafting system that allows for a very high level of visual customization at which point there might be a joint design window between the crafter and the customer for the look.
But at what point does the player interaction vs needless tedium ratio become not really worth it? From my perspective multiboxing, account wide banks, large number of characters and their crafting classes, and dropped items are king over crafted items all do a lot more to damage player interaction opportunities than a regional automated offline trade function.
Those of you who put maximizing player interaction as a top priorety might want to take up the No-Multiboxing and One character per server banner rather than the anti auction house banner as your return on interaction will be an order of magnitude or more higher.
I echo this post entirely. Not every little aspect of the game needs to be heavily involved with players interacting. At some point to detriments out weigh the benefits.
This is why people that are "ok" with some changes to game mechanics that EQ had say things like "all people want is an eq clone"...
You guys just want WOW2, please no.
bobwinner said:You guys just want WOW2, please no.
Aren't you supposed to call us Millennial Hipster Carebares too?
Just because we see the value in balancing different aspects of player interaction and game time spent waiting while not actually playing the game does not mean we are looking for WoW mark 2 or insert some other derogatory insinuation. There is a point where forcing player to player interaction detracts from the actual game play experience for everyone including corner case niche players who believe that everyone needs to go to bathroom in a group or it cuts down on player interaction, see I can make up things too.
The going to the bathroom in a group joke does highlight though that even for the most adamant convenience minimalist there is a point that is just too far. The question is what is your line in the sand.
As I wrote in one of the other numerous "but but QoL..." threads, VR should figure out who represents the bulk of their audience and make that game. If the majority is hardcre, make the game hardcore. If the majority is casual, make the game casual. Both communities are not going to play the game for any length of time, as at least one of them will find it distasteful to the gameplay they prefer.
Every single one of the ideas in the OP is a retread of "make it look srta like EQ, but act like WoW" threads that pop up every single week. The lesson from this is the two communities (casual/WoW, hardcore/EQ1) DO NOT AGREE AND NEVER WILL. Figure out who has biggest population, make them a game. Period.
To start off I will admit that I haven't kept up with all the posts in this thread. I've seen a lot of posts about the flight paths in WoW and how they are supposedly skipping content or whatever (correct me if that hasn't been stated at all and I'm just confusing threads).
I'd just like to say that I feel that the WoW flight paths (along with boat travel) are the most natural means of fast travel that I have seen in an MMORPG. They aren't instant travel, they let you see the progress in distance that you are making in real time. Also, the flight paths in wow vanilla (as I remember it) require you to visit the flight master once before you are allowed to fly to that specific location. There's no breaking the seamlessness of the in-game world while using one of these gryphon taxis at all. You can't fly through and/or skip certain areas since the system requires you to explore said area before you get access to the fast travel option (which is not instant).
In addition I'd like to say that it's gravely unfair to vanilla WoW (as is common practice on these forums and always bothers me since it is a game that I love) to blame it for dumbing down the MMORPG genre in terms of fast travel options. When World of Warcraft came out, Planes of Power had already been out for two years. Instant teleportations, in my opinion, are a worse option than fast, albeit real-time, travel that flight paths constitute. To be honest as a Warcraft fan I've had enough of Warcraft being blamed for ruining the MMORPG genre when in fact many of the things it gets blamed for were in fact implemented first by SOE. I don't like or agree with the current version of WoW or the way Blizzard handles it but please give credit where credit is due and vice versa when it comes to blame (or whatever).
In vanilla WoW, the only means of instant teleportations were by class specific abilities much like in EQ. The only exceptions were engineering trinkets as well as a legendary staff which were respectively hard and next to extremely hard toaqcuire.
Also, VR have stated that in one way or another there are going to be ways of traveling quicker than walking on foot. I don't see how flight paths (or carriages or whatever else it might be) are in any way more immersion breaking than magic portals that separate you from the destination only by a loading screen.
Thanks.
Well I know I will get yelled at, but one is player driven and the other is npc driven. Difference. Also when you ported, you still had to run about 5 - 10 mins to your destination.
Anyways, I pre-ordered WoW when it came out and liked the game up until Cata then quit. Now I am playing BFA and last night was reminded of how cancerous the WoW community is. Played the Warcraft series also. So as fan I never liked flight paths. Of course there are a ton of other things that WoW had in mechanics I didn't like, but flight paths were just another ingredient, imo, to the watered down journey and killed immersion for me.
Watemper said:Well I know I will get yelled at, but one is player driven and the other is npc driven. Difference. Also when you ported, you still had to run about 5 - 10 mins to your destination.
Anyways, I pre-ordered WoW when it came out and liked the game up until Cata then quit. Now I am playing BFA and last night was reminded of how cancerous the WoW community is. Played the Warcraft series also. So as fan I never liked flight paths. Of course there are a ton of other things that WoW had in mechanics I didn't like, but flight paths were just another ingredient, imo, to the watered down journey and killed immersion for me.
I didn't mean my post as intimidation, I can accept that people disagree. I'm not about to yell at you. What I meant with the ports, though, were not the druid or wizard ports (that existed with WoW mages) but rather the Planes of Knowledge. Running 5-10 minutes were required with WoW flight paths as well (during vanilla wow).
Anyway, no offense, I didn't mean to threaten you or anyone else. Just stating my opinion.
Spluffen said:Watemper said:Well I know I will get yelled at, but one is player driven and the other is npc driven. Difference. Also when you ported, you still had to run about 5 - 10 mins to your destination.
Anyways, I pre-ordered WoW when it came out and liked the game up until Cata then quit. Now I am playing BFA and last night was reminded of how cancerous the WoW community is. Played the Warcraft series also. So as fan I never liked flight paths. Of course there are a ton of other things that WoW had in mechanics I didn't like, but flight paths were just another ingredient, imo, to the watered down journey and killed immersion for me.
I didn't mean my post as intimidation, I can accept that people disagree. I'm not about to yell at you. What I meant with the ports, though, were not the druid or wizard ports (that existed with WoW mages) but rather the Planes of Knowledge. Running 5-10 minutes were required with WoW flight paths as well (during vanilla wow).
Anyway, no offense, I didn't mean to threaten you or anyone else. Just stating my opinion.
Oh I wasn't saying you were going to yell at me. I was just hinting that some names tend to come up when mentioning the difference between player driven transportation and npc driven transportation. Anyways, in WoW there were some runs, but not 5 - 10 mins. I have been farming mounts and stuff in the vanilla content and, while porting to some areas would be faster than flight pathing, once you landed at your flight path it was 3min run tops in all the areas I went to. However, flying from Hyjal to Tanaris took like 10 mins of flying, but when landed to me around 2 mins on a mount to get to Onyxia's lair. Teleports, however, are needed by players. In classic, a lot of people never took ports, and since that was the only option of "fast traveling" you mainly ran with SoW to most destinations. When POP came out Planes of Knowledge was introduced, that ruined the game, but that's another story.
Maybe I can work in my head of flight paths being an okay thing if I took out many of the QOL mechanics even vanilla WoW had, but that is rather dicey territory to get into because then there is always an exception that people bring up rather than the norm.
Edit: Also they did intro the Wizard and Druid having teleporting capabilities. So flight paths as it stands would make those abilities useless, unless the paths are soo few that teleporting is still viable. But who knows. I have given up with what VR has been saying these past few months that I will be playing an immersive game. Now I am just hoping for a fun game.
Venjenz said:As I wrote in one of the other numerous "but but QoL..." threads, VR should figure out who represents the bulk of their audience and make that game. If the majority is hardcre, make the game hardcore. If the majority is casual, make the game casual. Both communities are not going to play the game for any length of time, as at least one of them will find it distasteful to the gameplay they prefer.
Every single one of the ideas in the OP is a retread of "make it look srta like EQ, but act like WoW" threads that pop up every single week. The lesson from this is the two communities (casual/WoW, hardcore/EQ1) DO NOT AGREE AND NEVER WILL. Figure out who has biggest population, make them a game. Period.
VR is making a game to appeal to and targeting the "old school" gamers. An updated old school at core, game. That was the original plan.
I thought WoW Classic is in the works and will be out before Pantheon?? Might be one of the better things that happens to this game & community imo.
Watemper said:Oh I wasn't saying you were going to yell at me. I was just hinting that some names tend to come up when mentioning the difference between player driven transportation and npc driven transportation. Anyways, in WoW there were some runs, but not 5 - 10 mins. I have been farming mounts and stuff in the vanilla content and, while porting to some areas would be faster than flight pathing, once you landed at your flight path it was 3min run tops in all the areas I went to. However, flying from Hyjal to Tanaris took like 10 mins of flying, but when landed to me around 2 mins on a mount to get to Onyxia's lair. Teleports, however, are needed by players. In classic, a lot of people never took ports, and since that was the only option of "fast traveling" you mainly ran with SoW to most destinations. When POP came out Planes of Knowledge was introduced, that ruined the game, but that's another story.
Maybe I can work in my head of flight paths being an okay thing if I took out many of the QOL mechanics even vanilla WoW had, but that is rather dicey territory to get into because then there is always an exception that people bring up rather than the norm.
Then I misunderstood, probably just because your post was after mine and I talked about the same things. I'd agree with you that player-driven transportation is better in general. At least I think so when it comes to community health. I'd assume you played Horde if you got to Onyxia's lair in two minutes, though, and even then I strongly doubt that. In terms of playing Alliance (like I did) it certainly takes more than five minutes to get from Theramore to Onyxia's Lair. Maybe you're judging your times based on the flight paths avaliable, movement speed and level requirement of mounts in the current version of WoW? Anyway, my two points weren't exactly meant to disparage EQ classic or anything, rather I just felt it was unfair that people (in general on these forums and not you) blame WoW vanilla for these things while they were first introduced in PoP before the WoW release and long before a similar system was introduced in WoW (during TBC in 2007). The second one was that I think travel in real-time (like the boats in EQ or indeed WoW flight paths) are preferable to portal hubs. That's speaking of NPC- and/or World-driven sort of "static" transportation. It does make sense to me that certain classes (druid and wizard in EQ I guess?) would have certain perks for instant teleportation as part of their class identity.
Kastor said:Venjenz said:As I wrote in one of the other numerous "but but QoL..." threads, VR should figure out who represents the bulk of their audience and make that game. If the majority is hardcre, make the game hardcore. If the majority is casual, make the game casual. Both communities are not going to play the game for any length of time, as at least one of them will find it distasteful to the gameplay they prefer.
Every single one of the ideas in the OP is a retread of "make it look srta like EQ, but act like WoW" threads that pop up every single week. The lesson from this is the two communities (casual/WoW, hardcore/EQ1) DO NOT AGREE AND NEVER WILL. Figure out who has biggest population, make them a game. Period.
VR is making a game to appeal to and targeting the "old school" gamers. An updated old school at core, game. That was the original plan.
I thought WoW Classic is in the works and will be out before Pantheon?? Might be one of the better things that happens to this game & community imo.
Hehe I mean I will try out Classic WoW. It isn't and immersive game even in Classic, but it was more fun that most of the MMOs including current WoW.
