My favortie trip was from the Sands of Ro, to Kunark, on the little raft. I loved seeing the Sirens on the rocks, and all the ships that had sunk, sticking out of the water. I say devs should put long boat trips into the game, and give us a choice as to use it or not. I love riding on a boat in MMO's and meeting people. I really miss it.
Whether or not I'm in a game, I tend to react the same way to strangers who try to strike up conversations with me on public transportation - cautious looks and slowly moving away.
Any idea why you do this? What would be the harm of being social? What taught you to be so wary and fearful?
NM, off topic I guess.
I think it's perfectly on-topic road to go down for this discussion. Part of it is just my natural introverted personality, part of it is probably some left-over trauma from a visit to pre-Tram UO leaving me permanently distrustful of other players. I tend to be active on a game's message boards once I've played for a while, but rarely if ever socialize ingame - even when the mechanics of the game go out of their way to put me on a dock or sitting in an inn.
I actually have mixed feelings about waiting for boats in a game. There are times when I like the pause, the downtime that makes me pause and just look around at the scenery. I do like having the opportunity to tip my hat to strangers. But there are also times when I just want to get on with it - when I find I'm spending more of my play time twiddling my thumbs than actually playing. So I want both. I want the world to feel large and disjointed with a feel that a journey across the sea is a great commitment to a journey, but I want each port to offer me adventure-on-demand while I'm there.
Anyhow, I choose the waiting for the boat idea because you can't normally make it right to the location it takes time to get there. The boat while annoying at times to have to wait all the time to get to Qeynos or Erudian, it did make the world feel "somewhat" real. If you just missed the boat, you had to wait a while for it to make it's journey to the other port and come back. If i might bring Rl into this for a moment. It takes time to get to the store, it takes time to get to work. While yes these all suck they are a part of real life and i think the boat idea is a good representation of making the game world seem more real.
Making the game world "real" does not necessarily make a good GAME. Certainly, it will be more "real" if the game include bodily functions? wouldn't you say? Imagine how BAD the game would be if a toon has to go relieve himself/herself every 2 hours. Or, why not make every players have to queue up at banks and the bank teller can only serve one at a time? That certainly would be MORE realistic
You have to realize that most people play games to ESCAPE from the real world. If i want to line up and wait for something, there are PLENTY of opportunities in the real world and i do NOT need it in my game.
Real world is boring. Don't make a game more "real". Make it more fun. I certainly know that some people, like you, want something different. Thankfully not everyone wants to wait wait and wait in a game.
I agree you can join a guild. But that feels cold and distant to me until i actually meet the people and group/fight with them. I don't feel right sometime entering a guild of people and trying to work my way into their hearts (so to speak) I like sometime meeting the people first and getting to know them (this is my personal choice). I know i can do this even with instant teleport but it can make it hard when everyone is just running to their destination. Theres little chance to say hello or to strike up a conversation without people "staring" at you wonder why you are trying to talk to them when they are stopped for 2 second to activate said teleport. If you were at the dock and someone sat next to you. Someone could say hello and the other person would respond to pass the time.
You didn't fight/group with them on the boat ride. In fact, you did NOTHING but talk, which you can do over MSN. And who says i didn't fight/group with people before i join the guild? In fact, I grouped with someone on a group quest, then some dungeons before i join their guild (my first guild).
And you *can* talk to people with being next to them in the game world. That is why there is chat in game. USE IT. I have had conversations with many thru chat. I don't see why you can't do that.
In any case, FORCING people to WAIT is a horribly inefficient way to get people chatting.
My favortie trip was from the Sands of Ro, to Kunark, on the little raft. I loved seeing the Sirens on the rocks, and all the ships that had sunk, sticking out of the water. I say devs should put long boat trips into the game, and give us a choice as to use it or not. I love riding on a boat in MMO's and meeting people. I really miss it.
Seeing it once or twice is great. Seeing it the 1000th time is boring. Giving people a choice is not a bad idea though except if 99% of the people choose not to use it, it is a waste of resource and the developer is better than using the resource for something else.
BTW, there are boat rides in WOW too. For example, there is a boat ride (on turtles, no less) from dragonblight to Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra. The first time is fun but i wouldn't take the boat ride again, again and again.
I support choices. I'm one of those classic gamers that used to like boat rides, but these days I prefer traveling faster. Seeing something new is cool for a few times. But after that, if I want to get somewhere I want to get there. I get the nostalgia, the social interaction. That's why I support choices, leaving boats there for those that enjoy them.
I have notice a big change over the course from EQ to today, in my experience when i was in EQ the best time i had was when i was waiting for a boat and some random person came up that was also waiting for the boat. This began a sort of friendship over the course of 15 mins waiting for that boat. By the time the boat had arrived i changed my plan to help that said person because i wanted to see what his adventure was like.
This in turn allowed him to help me with my quest because we were friends by the time his quest was finished. After about a week of talking to each other, he invited me to his guild.
Now this isn't the normal circumstance but this was one of my experiences. If there had been an instant teleport, then good chance i'd never met that person and made a friend and eventually alot of friend in the guild.
So i'm wondering, is all this instant travel and getting to places quicker really a good thing? Is it truely just about the adventure or the people in the adventure. Personally myself i think the stopping people at points is actually a good thing. But i'm curious on your thoughts on this matter.
Apologies if this has been brought up before but i haven't seen it recently and i don't want to necro any threads.
As gaming has spilled over into the casual side it has brought with it a different type of player. This player started with casual games and then moved into things like MMOs. The problem is that casual games don't take much of a time investment and give you everything you need fairly quickly. They then expected all other games to work this way so they'd get frustrated and quit MMOs where you had to wait 15 min for a boat or take a 15-20 minute run to another town where you might die on the way, end up back where you started, and now have to both run to your corpse and the next town with a penalty to your skills because you died.
So now games make traveling places easier and easier as time goes on. First the boat times were shortened and then instant teleports and then more teleport locations and now games have the "instant teleport to the dungeon where the quest is so you don't have to do anything but sit in a town get a group instant teleport and repeat while you power level."
To me that has taken a lot out of the community and the feel of MMOs for me. I don't like the super casual feel of modern MMOs. I prefered the things took time and you met people along the way and everything was dangerous and death had a price days. But I think those days are gone for good at this point. There is FAR too much money involved in being casual vs having greater depth and slower progression.
I support choices. I'm one of those classic gamers that used to like boat rides, but these days I prefer traveling faster. Seeing something new is cool for a few times. But after that, if I want to get somewhere I want to get there. I get the nostalgia, the social interaction. That's why I support choices, leaving boats there for those that enjoy them.
The funny thing about choices is people choose the path of least resistance, especially in an MMO context.
In WoW I can level very fast by doing quest and constantly having the Dungeon Finder going. That way I am getting non-stop xp and getting burst of high xp everytime the dungeon finder clicks me into a group. Do I find that play enjoyable? No not at all. It is overly casual and not the least bit exciting. Plus a failure in the low and mid dungeons is rare so there's no real risk.
I would normally choose to run to destinations, find groups and then travel to a dungeon. Problem is two fold though. First no one else is doing that since the dungeon finder is an option and is much faster. So by adding it, it became instantly far tougher to find groups the regular way. This carries over to the boat example. The odds of meeting someone and starting a chat like the OP talked about is extremely unlikely to happen when players have the choice of instantly teleporting. 1 or 2 people might choose to do the boat once or twice for the back in the old days feeling, but everyone else is instantly teleporting so it kills what made the boat trips exciting for the old schoolers and is no longer an actual choice.
Secondly is the fact that if you "choose" to do things the harder/slower/old school way, you are now forever behind everyone else and can't catch up since your method puts you at a disadvantage.
I often see people make the argument that is you like it harder or if you like a death penalty then just inflict that on yourself so that you have that experience. But the truth is that isn't a real option when the rest of the players can and will do easy mode. It puts you at a disadvantage and puts you at a huge loss for getting groups. It isn't realistic to expect people to put themselves at a disadvantage over everyone else on the server.
So to sum up, there isn't truly a choice. People play the way the server is setup and that's really all there is to it.
The funny thing about choices is people choose the path of least resistance, especially in an MMO context.
You can use optional minigames as spice for taking the slow path. For example, add a "volitile reagent courier" minigame available in each town rewarding you for transporting goods without teleportation or flight. Flesh it out with a secondary skill or reputation that tracks your progress in this minigame and offers its own collection of rewards.
Personally, I often take boats in game just as an excuse to work on fishing skill a little as I go (the unfortunate part being that docks are usually set up to be the least-rewarding place to fish from).
OMG Im so late to the party! But yah, "waiting for the boat" in FF11, fond memories. Although I always wished it was faster then 15 mins. or was it 10?
I love snails. I love every kinda snail. I just want to hug them all, but I cant. Cant hug every snail.
I've always liked a mixture of both slow and fast travel. I liked how EQ did it in the beginning. There were the slow boats which you had to wait for and could take some time, or there was the faster method of porting by druid or wizard. Both fostered interaction with others, the faster method moreso. I met friends both ways.
Later in the life of a game, I don't mind a faster more convenient way of travel like they did with the pok books. There was less interaction, but still a good amount of travel time depending on where you went. Also the fact that it was years into the game, it made it easier for people who have been playing a while.
If I were to have various methods of travel in a future MMO, I would have the slower methods like boats, or trains, etc, and faster methods such as ports to some locations around the world by other players. Then years later, I might toss in a few ports around the world that anyone can use, but not enough to make the player porters obsolete or even the boat ride (which would be like 5 minutes max).
Forced downtime is not the answer to social inadequacy. Between focal points where people will gather, forums, etc - there are plenty of avenues for one to socialize if they so wish.
1That's a bit of a skewed view, though. Your opinion is based on your preference which is to be constantly entertained while you're logged into your game of choice. As some others have mentioned, that's not entirely what an MMO is about.
Forcing people into awkward waiting periods where they may seek to relieve their boredom and stumble upon love...well, is not the answer.
2Where did anyone mention finding "love"? I see you've been a member of these forums for quite a long time so I can probably assume you have a fair amount of gaming experience. I'm not going to presume I know anything about you, but that almost looks like self-projection. Maybe you had a bad experience in the past with an online friendship/relationship?
Then again, I do not play MMORPGs looking to make friends, find a spouse, or the like. Have friends outside of games. If I end up making friends with somebody along the way, fine... but to try to build your social life around a MMORPG is rather sad.
And that's the main reason I hit quote. I'm pretty positive most folks have friends outside of their respective games and gaming social circles. So what's wrong with wanting to meet people in your game and hobby of choice to socialize with? I don't know about you, but the people I know outside of games aren't into gaming. I'm not going to talk with my RL buddy about my character build, or how awesome this raid I went on the night before was. Not only would he not understand, but he wouldn't be the least bit interested.
Back to the first bit of my reply; I mentioned that if you're not looking to socialize so much within the game itself (outside of, perhaps, grouping up now and again) what's the point of even participating in an MMO? Your attitude makes it clear you have a rather strong aversion to socializing within the game, so do you even bother to group or join a guild? If so, is it just to complete an objective and not really give a crap about the folks around you that you're spending X amount of time with? More to the point; "waiting for the boat" gives you an opportunity to slow down long enough to stop and smell the roses, so to speak, where otherwise you'd just be constantly in motion. I mean, I don't know about you or most folks, but when I'm in combat or actively thinking about the task at hand, I'm not much of a typist. I can speak just fine, but that requires I've already found folks to socialize with - something you're averted to based on your post.
Of course, that's not to say there aren't other ways to meet good folks that you have things in common with. My method of choice has generally been through grouping with random folk and then possibly talking with people who show themselves to be competent players. Then again, I've had some really good conversations and met some great folks through the years during "forced downtime"; people I'd not have met otherwise. To each his own though, I suppose.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde
I would imagine that if there were a way for players to run the travel aspect of the game it might actually be interesting. Perhaps you will row travellers across the lake in your slow canoe for little money or in your hard won armourclad for their first born or maybe you will go to the center of the lake and attempt a renegotiation.
If there are some areas that can only be entered by magic, or flight, etc. then some cooperation or investing in certain skillsets might apply. Travelling abilities or skills at the cost of battle prowess and so on.
In other words if there is a pseudo-economy under the surface that runs the transportation sector then allow player characters to engage it and compete. Shrug. Could be disastrous, amusing or quite fun.
So...socialization, varying travel times and game impacting features in an area that is generally an afterthought. Meh. It might sound too 'sandboxy' for many I suppose.
To me that has taken a lot out of the community and the feel of MMOs for me. I don't like the super casual feel of modern MMOs. I prefered the things took time and you met people along the way and everything was dangerous and death had a price days. But I think those days are gone for good at this point. There is FAR too much money involved in being casual vs having greater depth and slower progression.
What depth? There is no depth in a slow moving boat that does not come for 30 min. I am GLAD those days are gone. EQ is such a drag to play and i played it for 1 year because there is no alternative. The market wised up thankfully.
Anyhow, I choose the waiting for the boat idea because you can't normally make it right to the location it takes time to get there. The boat while annoying at times to have to wait all the time to get to Qeynos or Erudian, it did make the world feel "somewhat" real. If you just missed the boat, you had to wait a while for it to make it's journey to the other port and come back. If i might bring Rl into this for a moment. It takes time to get to the store, it takes time to get to work. While yes these all suck they are a part of real life and i think the boat idea is a good representation of making the game world seem more real.
Making the game world "real" does not necessarily make a good GAME. Certainly, it will be more "real" if the game include bodily functions? wouldn't you say? Imagine how BAD the game would be if a toon has to go relieve himself/herself every 2 hours. Or, why not make every players have to queue up at banks and the bank teller can only serve one at a time? That certainly would be MORE realistic
Okay first off, i'm not sure what the need to rule the discussion is but all i was saying was it allowed the world to feel more like a real world because it has some length to it and everything wasn't instant thats why i put the word somewhat into quotes. It's fine to state your opinion but you don't have completely bash the idea into the ground by doing the slippery slope idea thats going on in the paragraph above
You have to realize that most people play games to ESCAPE from the real world. If i want to line up and wait for something, there are PLENTY of opportunities in the real world and i do NOT need it in my game.
I escape just fine into a world where i kill monsters and can summon magic and ride boats and do alchemy all of which i don't do in real life. I think if i might interject your missing the idea. It's not about the waiting. it's about stopping so you can have social interactions with other people. instead of fighting monsters all the time. These "downtimes" can come in any form i just choose the boat because it was the first example that came to mind.
Real world is boring. Don't make a game more "real". Make it more fun. I certainly know that some people, like you, want something different. Thankfully not everyone wants to wait wait and wait in a game.
again it's not about the waiting it's about the interactions that are possible while you are waiting. Perhaps i didn't make that clear in the first post but there it is. Also i don't care for the thankfully part that again is making me sound just flat out wrong and its counter productive to a conversation. Theres nothing to win here. Theres just ideas.
I agree you can join a guild. But that feels cold and distant to me until i actually meet the people and group/fight with them. I don't feel right sometime entering a guild of people and trying to work my way into their hearts (so to speak) I like sometime meeting the people first and getting to know them (this is my personal choice). I know i can do this even with instant teleport but it can make it hard when everyone is just running to their destination. Theres little chance to say hello or to strike up a conversation without people "staring" at you wonder why you are trying to talk to them when they are stopped for 2 second to activate said teleport. If you were at the dock and someone sat next to you. Someone could say hello and the other person would respond to pass the time.
You didn't fight/group with them on the boat ride. In fact, you did NOTHING but talk, which you can do over MSN. And who says i didn't fight/group with people before i join the guild? In fact, I grouped with someone on a group quest, then some dungeons before i join their guild (my first guild).
Well of course the fighting never took place on the boat it took place after the boat ride, and while yes i can chat over MSN i can't fight monsters with said person, make equipment with said person. I also don't remember saying anything about you not doing these things.
And you *can* talk to people with being next to them in the game world. That is why there is chat in game. USE IT. I have had conversations with many thru chat. I don't see why you can't do that.
Well of course i use chat, thats what this whole discussion is about, two people waiting for a boat and using the chat bar to get to know each other. I can't simply just click a persons name and say Hi. They'll act like i'm some weird person and put me on ignore (this has come form example actually)
In any case, FORCING people to WAIT is a horribly inefficient way to get people chatting.
Okay I'll go from here, perhaps you can promote a better way of doing this? I'm very interested in hearing your ideas here.
One final note: i'm not going to bash you like happens on many forums i'm actually really interested if theres a better idea if you have one. So no need to get defensive on me. The only reason i responded to your post is because i think your misunderstanding the point of the topic
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
One final note: i'm not going to bash you like happens on many forums i'm actually really interested if theres a better idea if you have one. So no need to get defensive on me. The only reason i responded to your post is because i think your misunderstanding the point of the topic
Don't waste your time with nariusseldon. He has a scewed view of things and what he likes and how he does things other people like and do, if you happen not to agree with him then you're flat out wrong and don't know what you're talking about. He realizes that the current market caters to his taste and he will lord over you with that fact for no reason what so ever other than somehow stroke his ego. I'm sure you've noticed by now that if you're not out killing monsters every second, lining up for some dungeon via some match making service, and actually want some depth to your hobby and not just a game, he'll jump all over it.
Just quite while you're ahead, it's not worth the effort man... trust me.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
See it doesn't matter how much time I am forced to spend waiting for something, I am not going to want to talk or befriend people. I already have some friends, I play games with them I don't play games to make friends though, so downtime for me isn't a chance to socialize it is just a waste of time., I mean I have spent 10 or so minutes waiting for boats in WoW, it isn't a large ammount of time and I am not complaining but I have never struck up a conversation with people either. It is like waiting in line or something in real life, I don't talk to people and I really wish they wouldn't talk to me since I don't want to be forced into an awkward conversation.
I agree. Back when I was playing AO and grouping for mega XP, I hardly ever talked to the people I was grouped with, nor did they talk to each other. It was kill, kill, kill and those of us who wanted to, chatted with our friends and pretty much automated our combat. After all, it was just a bunch of lather, rinse, repeat stuff anyhow, very little danger, relatively large reward.
The very first online game I played also had a boat waiting thing in it. It was a MUD I started playing in 1993, well before EQ was much of anything. You basically had to use the boat to get to a certain area. Yeah you could swim or fly there, but you need pretty good swim skill or you drowned and early on only some people can fly and not every character had flight even later on. Plus you had to know exactly how to get there. So people wound up using the boat fairly often.
I hated it. To me it was one of the stupidest and most insufferable parts of the game. Yes stuff happened like the OP mentions. Sometimes people would sit there and talk. Most times people jsut AFK'd and you felt a little stupid if you tried talking to them. Yeah you had to pay attention to the message that come up to know when the boat was coming and you only had a minute to get on, but alot of people just used zMud and some triggers.
There were certainly people in that game that liked that sort of thing and made exactly the same argument/opinion that the OP states. That is fine and I am perfectly willing to accept it was enjoyable for the people who said they liked.
But what is not acceptable is forcing ME to wait around using a mechanic I have always hated and will always hate, just so YOU can have someone to talk to. That is simply not the way I am put together and imposing on my time and playstyle to fit someone else's is not acceptable.
And it is HIGHLY unlikely you will ever get a game solely or even mostly composed of people who are the type to like boat waiting type things. You can get a game with a significant population who likes it but then you have divided your population into those guys and their bitches.
In most games my opinion is simply you want to talk to me send me a PM I am usually willing to talk to strangers unless I am about to die. But some game forcing me to waste my time on the off chance that some dude is so bored that he does essentially the same thing and doesn't feel bad about it because i must be bored too? No thanks.
From my point of view these games are designed in such a way that those of us who hate this mechanics are forced to take it up the ass for those that to do like and FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. In a social situation you will probably need to compromise or sacrifice your preferences to some degree. Sometimes you need to go along to get along. But this has no basis in that because there are far better options for engaging people in something social.
There are better and less intrusive ways to have this sort of effect. In COH there was a super group called the TaxiBots who hang around low level zones and Teleport low level characters around who don't have travel powers. That is a far better way to socialize, than this stilted forced BS of enforced downtime.
If I want downtime I will take a nap. Forcing me into your notion of acceptable/useful/proper downtime is crap.
People don't go to bars to get xp boosts or entertainer buffs. You go to a bar fun. Socializition through enforced boredom is silly in the context of a game. Yes this happens in real life quite a bit. Often one the greatest impetuses for socializing is sheer boredom.
But this is a game. Enforcing boredom in the hopes of creating more socializing is a bad idea, you make your game more boring. In the context of MMORPG which are grindy to begin with this is espeically bad. People are going to get bored anyway. In fact they will get bored quite often.
So the better option is to make a place that is made for socializing that people feel is a decent place to go when they are bored. Not force me to be your boredom bitch.
One of the issues with the current crop of MMOs is that these places for socializing often serve no genuine purpose but for something practical like forming a group and mainly based on personal goals of attainment more than anything else rather than real socializing. Another issue is that these places have too many people, and become a mob with a mob mentality and the inevitiable juvenile discussion of a mob (adults in a mob will often act like children, don't pretend you are immune). Not something more personal like a bar with 5 people in it.
I recall clearly "waiting for the shuttle" in SWG back in the day, and it was fine. You met all kinds of people, made friends, made enemies, made business deals, joked, and just took a few minutes to kick back on the the way to someplace else.
Also, from the combat aspect, it added some bit of realism to calling for reinforcements.... getting shot up? Better hold out for 10-15 mins until your friends can arrive. None of this instant travel BS.
Then again, SOE got rid of all that because "What's fun about waiting for a shuttle?". Or hanging around in a camp with friends, working on that survival xp. They canned that too, for the longest time.
And they ruined the game by various degrees, until all that is left is what is there now.
And they have paid for their mistakes by becoming the laughingstock of the industry.
"But what is not acceptable is forcing ME to wait around using a mechanic I have always hated and will always hate, just so YOU can have someone to talk to. That is simply not the way I am put together and imposing on my time and playstyle to fit someone else's is not acceptable."
I'm not sure how it worked in the MUD you mentioned but there were other forms of travel (ala druids and wizards in EQ) So it didn't force you to wait for the boat, it did force you to do one of three things
1. Either seek out a druid or wizard.
2. Walk there
Or in the case of it being on another island
Take the boat.
The problem now a days with instant teleport is that for the most part it's an object you click on, say port me to X and your there. It's taking reliance on community out of the game and putting it on the back burner and making the world feel more empty. Sure there are people walking around but they could be NPCs and get the same effect. I like walking through town and seeing people trading with each other and people asking each other for help with travel or simply just talking. If theres no requirement to wait or ask for others for help they won't. In most cases that requirement came in the form of asking others for help because they didn't want to "wait for the boat". I know time sinks in and of themselves "suck" but sometimes they are there to force community involvement, the core aspect of the genre, no matter how much people rather not rely on it.
If i may i think instant teleport is actually hurting the community because theres no need to rely on the community to help if the game does it for you. There needs to be more inconviences in the game that can be made up if people rely on the community to make it faster.
You like your game to be fun thats fine so do i. I like my world/game to be lively and a bunch of people walking around. talking in a chat channel i can't see and basically being NPCs is not lively to me. If i wanted that i could play a SPG and get the same feeling.
So while you may like the fun aspect what is NOT acceptable to me is a cold empty world that no one talks in. I can't remember the last time i saw a person talk in say. The only forms of communication i get are guilds, which doesn't make the area i'm in feel any more lively and world chat and that doesn't compose of "quality" chat material.
TL:DR: There were other forms of travel in EQ other then boats thats was just the only one the game controlled.
You like fun, so do i. I also like a world that feels lively where i see other people chatting and relying on players for things. Which i feel instant travel just kills because it takes away the reliance on other players to achieve.
Final thought: i'm okay with instant teleport if the players have the control while the game controls the slower aspects of the game, i'm not okay with a stone or NPC having basically this power to circumvent the players all together. I do like the idea of that taxi service that was nice they should do more of that in MMORPGs. Bring it back to the community like it was and away from the SPRPG that it's becoming in my eyes. This way people like me get the community involvement while people like you don't have to "wait for the boat"
What are your thoughts on that idea?
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I do not follow how people can complain about instant teleport making the game more like a SPRPG when the simple fact that nothing you do matters - you are doing a quest to save Princess Pea - millions of people before you and millions after you will do the same...
...UO had one of the most straight forward means of instant travel, but the game still felt like less of a SPRPG than those that have you waiting for the boat.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
UO was a different thing in and of itself. Because most of what you did was with the community and thus instant teleport was not a big part of that game. The crafting, the events, the PVPing made you rely on the community alot. It made you have to rely on the community to avoid something bad happening to you. 90 percent of the games out now a days has the community as a secondary thing that you do when your not doing anything else.
The problem becomes that also now a days the game never stops or slows down for people to not have anything to do thus no base community (A community that doesn't consist of a guild or small group of friends) to flourish. It's gone so far away from community that people want everything to be soloable so they can keep progressing without the community and this just makes me go huh? why do you want to remove the community all together?
Also UO was before MMO really exploded so "people like me" tended to be in the majority and thus instant teleport didn't have much of an effect as we still talked to each other. That simply doesn't happen in games now.
The comment about the SPRG, is because it doesn't matter whatever what I did mattered it matters because in MMO people talk people do things with other people and it happened without your involvement, whereas in a SPRG everything revolves around you doing something otherwise they just stood there or went on their normal route. If random sprites are just walking around in the world doing nothing but go from the castle to the stone and vanishing, it mind as well be a single player game because theres no community to be had outside of the guild.
The waiting for the boat is a symbol i think for inconvience when you don't rely on the community to force community engagement. Which i'm sure some will scratch their heads as to why that can be a good thing. But if everything is easy without the community they won't rely on the community. If the game is slow and inconvenient then people will seek out ways to make it faster and these "ways' i feel should be in the hands of other players.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I think that is where the problem actually lurks. On one hand, we have that sandbox vs. themepark discussion. That discussion normally carries on as if there is nothing between.
Themepark lends itself well to the idea of the SPRPG or CORPG. One does not go to a real themepark for the community, they go by themselves or with friends. It does not matter if somebody else is doing the rides.
So then you have a themepark MMO...
Some people expect there to be a community. Some people are put off by the fact that what they do does not matter (other people are doing the rides).
On the other hand, you have people against sandbox games because they lack direction. You run into the issue that one group working on their direction can spoil what another group is trying to do. Just as much as the themepark, the community gets in the way.
Where MMORPGs appear to work best is actually as single player RPGs or co-op RPGs (where groups of real-life friends join the game)... regardless of whether they are sandbox or themepark.
So how would one make an actual game where community might flourish? You would need elements from both sandbox and themepark, as well as effort from the developers. There would need to be more live events. You need a living and dynamic world... which is missing from themeparks, and is generally not given enough thought with the sandbox.
You want people not necessarily to need people - but you want people to make things easier in some fashion in the end, no? You do not want it to be a dependence - because you will still want to cater to the solo player. But in the end it comes down to an acceptance, that you will not be able to do everything.
MMORPGs, as they stand, do not really foster the idea of an MMORPG. The genre changed... for the most part, we are just spinning our wheels discussing them. They are pretty much SPRPGs or game lobbies...
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
I like walking through town and seeing people trading with each other and people asking each other for help with travel or simply just talking. If theres no requirement to wait or ask for others for help they won't. In most cases that requirement came in the form of asking others for help because they didn't want to "wait for the boat". I know time sinks in and of themselves "suck" but sometimes they are there to force community involvement, the core aspect of the genre, no matter how much people rather not rely on it.
If i may i think instant teleport is actually hurting the community because theres no need to rely on the community to help if the game does it for you. There needs to be more inconviences in the game that can be made up if people rely on the community to make it faster.
Don't know where you get that impression. If you want into DAL or Org, there are plenty of "WTB port to DAL" "LF JC" "LF Enchanter" shouts in the channel.
You do NOT need "waiting for the boat" to requirement people to interact. In fact, waiting with someone is LESS of an incentive to interact (because people would probably watch tv, or play an iphone game, while waiting) than setting up trades and other mechanisms.
In fact, you sentence "i think instant teleport is actually hurting the community because theres no need to rely on the community to help" is highly illogical. How would waiting with someone else (which is the premise the OP is talking about) leads to "need to reply on the community to help"? I don't need anyone's help while waiting.
I do not follow how people can complain about instant teleport making the game more like a SPRPG when the simple fact that nothing you do matters - you are doing a quest to save Princess Pea - millions of people before you and millions after you will do the same...
...UO had one of the most straight forward means of instant travel, but the game still felt like less of a SPRPG than those that have you waiting for the boat.
It is silly to second guess what matter to others. In SRPG, millions of other players also go through the same story too .. does that change the enjoyment?
Comments
My favortie trip was from the Sands of Ro, to Kunark, on the little raft. I loved seeing the Sirens on the rocks, and all the ships that had sunk, sticking out of the water. I say devs should put long boat trips into the game, and give us a choice as to use it or not. I love riding on a boat in MMO's and meeting people. I really miss it.
I think it's perfectly on-topic road to go down for this discussion. Part of it is just my natural introverted personality, part of it is probably some left-over trauma from a visit to pre-Tram UO leaving me permanently distrustful of other players. I tend to be active on a game's message boards once I've played for a while, but rarely if ever socialize ingame - even when the mechanics of the game go out of their way to put me on a dock or sitting in an inn.
I actually have mixed feelings about waiting for boats in a game. There are times when I like the pause, the downtime that makes me pause and just look around at the scenery. I do like having the opportunity to tip my hat to strangers. But there are also times when I just want to get on with it - when I find I'm spending more of my play time twiddling my thumbs than actually playing. So I want both. I want the world to feel large and disjointed with a feel that a journey across the sea is a great commitment to a journey, but I want each port to offer me adventure-on-demand while I'm there.
Anyhow, I choose the waiting for the boat idea because you can't normally make it right to the location it takes time to get there. The boat while annoying at times to have to wait all the time to get to Qeynos or Erudian, it did make the world feel "somewhat" real. If you just missed the boat, you had to wait a while for it to make it's journey to the other port and come back. If i might bring Rl into this for a moment. It takes time to get to the store, it takes time to get to work. While yes these all suck they are a part of real life and i think the boat idea is a good representation of making the game world seem more real.
Making the game world "real" does not necessarily make a good GAME. Certainly, it will be more "real" if the game include bodily functions? wouldn't you say? Imagine how BAD the game would be if a toon has to go relieve himself/herself every 2 hours. Or, why not make every players have to queue up at banks and the bank teller can only serve one at a time? That certainly would be MORE realistic
You have to realize that most people play games to ESCAPE from the real world. If i want to line up and wait for something, there are PLENTY of opportunities in the real world and i do NOT need it in my game.
Real world is boring. Don't make a game more "real". Make it more fun. I certainly know that some people, like you, want something different. Thankfully not everyone wants to wait wait and wait in a game.
I agree you can join a guild. But that feels cold and distant to me until i actually meet the people and group/fight with them. I don't feel right sometime entering a guild of people and trying to work my way into their hearts (so to speak) I like sometime meeting the people first and getting to know them (this is my personal choice). I know i can do this even with instant teleport but it can make it hard when everyone is just running to their destination. Theres little chance to say hello or to strike up a conversation without people "staring" at you wonder why you are trying to talk to them when they are stopped for 2 second to activate said teleport. If you were at the dock and someone sat next to you. Someone could say hello and the other person would respond to pass the time.
You didn't fight/group with them on the boat ride. In fact, you did NOTHING but talk, which you can do over MSN. And who says i didn't fight/group with people before i join the guild? In fact, I grouped with someone on a group quest, then some dungeons before i join their guild (my first guild).
And you *can* talk to people with being next to them in the game world. That is why there is chat in game. USE IT. I have had conversations with many thru chat. I don't see why you can't do that.
In any case, FORCING people to WAIT is a horribly inefficient way to get people chatting.
Seeing it once or twice is great. Seeing it the 1000th time is boring. Giving people a choice is not a bad idea though except if 99% of the people choose not to use it, it is a waste of resource and the developer is better than using the resource for something else.
BTW, there are boat rides in WOW too. For example, there is a boat ride (on turtles, no less) from dragonblight to Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra. The first time is fun but i wouldn't take the boat ride again, again and again.
I support choices. I'm one of those classic gamers that used to like boat rides, but these days I prefer traveling faster. Seeing something new is cool for a few times. But after that, if I want to get somewhere I want to get there. I get the nostalgia, the social interaction. That's why I support choices, leaving boats there for those that enjoy them.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
As gaming has spilled over into the casual side it has brought with it a different type of player. This player started with casual games and then moved into things like MMOs. The problem is that casual games don't take much of a time investment and give you everything you need fairly quickly. They then expected all other games to work this way so they'd get frustrated and quit MMOs where you had to wait 15 min for a boat or take a 15-20 minute run to another town where you might die on the way, end up back where you started, and now have to both run to your corpse and the next town with a penalty to your skills because you died.
So now games make traveling places easier and easier as time goes on. First the boat times were shortened and then instant teleports and then more teleport locations and now games have the "instant teleport to the dungeon where the quest is so you don't have to do anything but sit in a town get a group instant teleport and repeat while you power level."
To me that has taken a lot out of the community and the feel of MMOs for me. I don't like the super casual feel of modern MMOs. I prefered the things took time and you met people along the way and everything was dangerous and death had a price days. But I think those days are gone for good at this point. There is FAR too much money involved in being casual vs having greater depth and slower progression.
The funny thing about choices is people choose the path of least resistance, especially in an MMO context.
In WoW I can level very fast by doing quest and constantly having the Dungeon Finder going. That way I am getting non-stop xp and getting burst of high xp everytime the dungeon finder clicks me into a group. Do I find that play enjoyable? No not at all. It is overly casual and not the least bit exciting. Plus a failure in the low and mid dungeons is rare so there's no real risk.
I would normally choose to run to destinations, find groups and then travel to a dungeon. Problem is two fold though. First no one else is doing that since the dungeon finder is an option and is much faster. So by adding it, it became instantly far tougher to find groups the regular way. This carries over to the boat example. The odds of meeting someone and starting a chat like the OP talked about is extremely unlikely to happen when players have the choice of instantly teleporting. 1 or 2 people might choose to do the boat once or twice for the back in the old days feeling, but everyone else is instantly teleporting so it kills what made the boat trips exciting for the old schoolers and is no longer an actual choice.
Secondly is the fact that if you "choose" to do things the harder/slower/old school way, you are now forever behind everyone else and can't catch up since your method puts you at a disadvantage.
I often see people make the argument that is you like it harder or if you like a death penalty then just inflict that on yourself so that you have that experience. But the truth is that isn't a real option when the rest of the players can and will do easy mode. It puts you at a disadvantage and puts you at a huge loss for getting groups. It isn't realistic to expect people to put themselves at a disadvantage over everyone else on the server.
So to sum up, there isn't truly a choice. People play the way the server is setup and that's really all there is to it.
You can use optional minigames as spice for taking the slow path. For example, add a "volitile reagent courier" minigame available in each town rewarding you for transporting goods without teleportation or flight. Flesh it out with a secondary skill or reputation that tracks your progress in this minigame and offers its own collection of rewards.
Personally, I often take boats in game just as an excuse to work on fishing skill a little as I go (the unfortunate part being that docks are usually set up to be the least-rewarding place to fish from).
OMG Im so late to the party! But yah, "waiting for the boat" in FF11, fond memories. Although I always wished it was faster then 15 mins. or was it 10?
I love snails.
I love every kinda snail.
I just want to hug them all, but I cant.
Cant hug every snail.
I've always liked a mixture of both slow and fast travel. I liked how EQ did it in the beginning. There were the slow boats which you had to wait for and could take some time, or there was the faster method of porting by druid or wizard. Both fostered interaction with others, the faster method moreso. I met friends both ways.
Later in the life of a game, I don't mind a faster more convenient way of travel like they did with the pok books. There was less interaction, but still a good amount of travel time depending on where you went. Also the fact that it was years into the game, it made it easier for people who have been playing a while.
If I were to have various methods of travel in a future MMO, I would have the slower methods like boats, or trains, etc, and faster methods such as ports to some locations around the world by other players. Then years later, I might toss in a few ports around the world that anyone can use, but not enough to make the player porters obsolete or even the boat ride (which would be like 5 minutes max).
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
I would imagine that if there were a way for players to run the travel aspect of the game it might actually be interesting. Perhaps you will row travellers across the lake in your slow canoe for little money or in your hard won armourclad for their first born or maybe you will go to the center of the lake and attempt a renegotiation.
If there are some areas that can only be entered by magic, or flight, etc. then some cooperation or investing in certain skillsets might apply. Travelling abilities or skills at the cost of battle prowess and so on.
In other words if there is a pseudo-economy under the surface that runs the transportation sector then allow player characters to engage it and compete. Shrug. Could be disastrous, amusing or quite fun.
So...socialization, varying travel times and game impacting features in an area that is generally an afterthought. Meh. It might sound too 'sandboxy' for many I suppose.
Ah well, just rambling.
To me that has taken a lot out of the community and the feel of MMOs for me. I don't like the super casual feel of modern MMOs. I prefered the things took time and you met people along the way and everything was dangerous and death had a price days. But I think those days are gone for good at this point. There is FAR too much money involved in being casual vs having greater depth and slower progression.
What depth? There is no depth in a slow moving boat that does not come for 30 min. I am GLAD those days are gone. EQ is such a drag to play and i played it for 1 year because there is no alternative. The market wised up thankfully.
One final note: i'm not going to bash you like happens on many forums i'm actually really interested if theres a better idea if you have one. So no need to get defensive on me. The only reason i responded to your post is because i think your misunderstanding the point of the topic
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I do this every day.
You can still play games how ever you want.
Don't waste your time with nariusseldon. He has a scewed view of things and what he likes and how he does things other people like and do, if you happen not to agree with him then you're flat out wrong and don't know what you're talking about. He realizes that the current market caters to his taste and he will lord over you with that fact for no reason what so ever other than somehow stroke his ego. I'm sure you've noticed by now that if you're not out killing monsters every second, lining up for some dungeon via some match making service, and actually want some depth to your hobby and not just a game, he'll jump all over it.
Just quite while you're ahead, it's not worth the effort man... trust me.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
I agree. Back when I was playing AO and grouping for mega XP, I hardly ever talked to the people I was grouped with, nor did they talk to each other. It was kill, kill, kill and those of us who wanted to, chatted with our friends and pretty much automated our combat. After all, it was just a bunch of lather, rinse, repeat stuff anyhow, very little danger, relatively large reward.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
The very first online game I played also had a boat waiting thing in it. It was a MUD I started playing in 1993, well before EQ was much of anything. You basically had to use the boat to get to a certain area. Yeah you could swim or fly there, but you need pretty good swim skill or you drowned and early on only some people can fly and not every character had flight even later on. Plus you had to know exactly how to get there. So people wound up using the boat fairly often.
I hated it. To me it was one of the stupidest and most insufferable parts of the game. Yes stuff happened like the OP mentions. Sometimes people would sit there and talk. Most times people jsut AFK'd and you felt a little stupid if you tried talking to them. Yeah you had to pay attention to the message that come up to know when the boat was coming and you only had a minute to get on, but alot of people just used zMud and some triggers.
There were certainly people in that game that liked that sort of thing and made exactly the same argument/opinion that the OP states. That is fine and I am perfectly willing to accept it was enjoyable for the people who said they liked.
But what is not acceptable is forcing ME to wait around using a mechanic I have always hated and will always hate, just so YOU can have someone to talk to. That is simply not the way I am put together and imposing on my time and playstyle to fit someone else's is not acceptable.
And it is HIGHLY unlikely you will ever get a game solely or even mostly composed of people who are the type to like boat waiting type things. You can get a game with a significant population who likes it but then you have divided your population into those guys and their bitches.
In most games my opinion is simply you want to talk to me send me a PM I am usually willing to talk to strangers unless I am about to die. But some game forcing me to waste my time on the off chance that some dude is so bored that he does essentially the same thing and doesn't feel bad about it because i must be bored too? No thanks.
From my point of view these games are designed in such a way that those of us who hate this mechanics are forced to take it up the ass for those that to do like and FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. In a social situation you will probably need to compromise or sacrifice your preferences to some degree. Sometimes you need to go along to get along. But this has no basis in that because there are far better options for engaging people in something social.
There are better and less intrusive ways to have this sort of effect. In COH there was a super group called the TaxiBots who hang around low level zones and Teleport low level characters around who don't have travel powers. That is a far better way to socialize, than this stilted forced BS of enforced downtime.
If I want downtime I will take a nap. Forcing me into your notion of acceptable/useful/proper downtime is crap.
People don't go to bars to get xp boosts or entertainer buffs. You go to a bar fun. Socializition through enforced boredom is silly in the context of a game. Yes this happens in real life quite a bit. Often one the greatest impetuses for socializing is sheer boredom.
But this is a game. Enforcing boredom in the hopes of creating more socializing is a bad idea, you make your game more boring. In the context of MMORPG which are grindy to begin with this is espeically bad. People are going to get bored anyway. In fact they will get bored quite often.
So the better option is to make a place that is made for socializing that people feel is a decent place to go when they are bored. Not force me to be your boredom bitch.
One of the issues with the current crop of MMOs is that these places for socializing often serve no genuine purpose but for something practical like forming a group and mainly based on personal goals of attainment more than anything else rather than real socializing. Another issue is that these places have too many people, and become a mob with a mob mentality and the inevitiable juvenile discussion of a mob (adults in a mob will often act like children, don't pretend you are immune). Not something more personal like a bar with 5 people in it.
I recall clearly "waiting for the shuttle" in SWG back in the day, and it was fine. You met all kinds of people, made friends, made enemies, made business deals, joked, and just took a few minutes to kick back on the the way to someplace else.
Also, from the combat aspect, it added some bit of realism to calling for reinforcements.... getting shot up? Better hold out for 10-15 mins until your friends can arrive. None of this instant travel BS.
Then again, SOE got rid of all that because "What's fun about waiting for a shuttle?". Or hanging around in a camp with friends, working on that survival xp. They canned that too, for the longest time.
And they ruined the game by various degrees, until all that is left is what is there now.
And they have paid for their mistakes by becoming the laughingstock of the industry.
"But what is not acceptable is forcing ME to wait around using a mechanic I have always hated and will always hate, just so YOU can have someone to talk to. That is simply not the way I am put together and imposing on my time and playstyle to fit someone else's is not acceptable."
I'm not sure how it worked in the MUD you mentioned but there were other forms of travel (ala druids and wizards in EQ) So it didn't force you to wait for the boat, it did force you to do one of three things
1. Either seek out a druid or wizard.
2. Walk there
Or in the case of it being on another island
Take the boat.
The problem now a days with instant teleport is that for the most part it's an object you click on, say port me to X and your there. It's taking reliance on community out of the game and putting it on the back burner and making the world feel more empty. Sure there are people walking around but they could be NPCs and get the same effect. I like walking through town and seeing people trading with each other and people asking each other for help with travel or simply just talking. If theres no requirement to wait or ask for others for help they won't. In most cases that requirement came in the form of asking others for help because they didn't want to "wait for the boat". I know time sinks in and of themselves "suck" but sometimes they are there to force community involvement, the core aspect of the genre, no matter how much people rather not rely on it.
If i may i think instant teleport is actually hurting the community because theres no need to rely on the community to help if the game does it for you. There needs to be more inconviences in the game that can be made up if people rely on the community to make it faster.
You like your game to be fun thats fine so do i. I like my world/game to be lively and a bunch of people walking around. talking in a chat channel i can't see and basically being NPCs is not lively to me. If i wanted that i could play a SPG and get the same feeling.
So while you may like the fun aspect what is NOT acceptable to me is a cold empty world that no one talks in. I can't remember the last time i saw a person talk in say. The only forms of communication i get are guilds, which doesn't make the area i'm in feel any more lively and world chat and that doesn't compose of "quality" chat material.
TL:DR: There were other forms of travel in EQ other then boats thats was just the only one the game controlled.
You like fun, so do i. I also like a world that feels lively where i see other people chatting and relying on players for things. Which i feel instant travel just kills because it takes away the reliance on other players to achieve.
Final thought: i'm okay with instant teleport if the players have the control while the game controls the slower aspects of the game, i'm not okay with a stone or NPC having basically this power to circumvent the players all together. I do like the idea of that taxi service that was nice they should do more of that in MMORPGs. Bring it back to the community like it was and away from the SPRPG that it's becoming in my eyes. This way people like me get the community involvement while people like you don't have to "wait for the boat"
What are your thoughts on that idea?
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I do not follow how people can complain about instant teleport making the game more like a SPRPG when the simple fact that nothing you do matters - you are doing a quest to save Princess Pea - millions of people before you and millions after you will do the same...
...UO had one of the most straight forward means of instant travel, but the game still felt like less of a SPRPG than those that have you waiting for the boat.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
UO was a different thing in and of itself. Because most of what you did was with the community and thus instant teleport was not a big part of that game. The crafting, the events, the PVPing made you rely on the community alot. It made you have to rely on the community to avoid something bad happening to you. 90 percent of the games out now a days has the community as a secondary thing that you do when your not doing anything else.
The problem becomes that also now a days the game never stops or slows down for people to not have anything to do thus no base community (A community that doesn't consist of a guild or small group of friends) to flourish. It's gone so far away from community that people want everything to be soloable so they can keep progressing without the community and this just makes me go huh? why do you want to remove the community all together?
Also UO was before MMO really exploded so "people like me" tended to be in the majority and thus instant teleport didn't have much of an effect as we still talked to each other. That simply doesn't happen in games now.
The comment about the SPRG, is because it doesn't matter whatever what I did mattered it matters because in MMO people talk people do things with other people and it happened without your involvement, whereas in a SPRG everything revolves around you doing something otherwise they just stood there or went on their normal route. If random sprites are just walking around in the world doing nothing but go from the castle to the stone and vanishing, it mind as well be a single player game because theres no community to be had outside of the guild.
The waiting for the boat is a symbol i think for inconvience when you don't rely on the community to force community engagement. Which i'm sure some will scratch their heads as to why that can be a good thing. But if everything is easy without the community they won't rely on the community. If the game is slow and inconvenient then people will seek out ways to make it faster and these "ways' i feel should be in the hands of other players.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I think that is where the problem actually lurks. On one hand, we have that sandbox vs. themepark discussion. That discussion normally carries on as if there is nothing between.
Themepark lends itself well to the idea of the SPRPG or CORPG. One does not go to a real themepark for the community, they go by themselves or with friends. It does not matter if somebody else is doing the rides.
So then you have a themepark MMO...
Some people expect there to be a community. Some people are put off by the fact that what they do does not matter (other people are doing the rides).
On the other hand, you have people against sandbox games because they lack direction. You run into the issue that one group working on their direction can spoil what another group is trying to do. Just as much as the themepark, the community gets in the way.
Where MMORPGs appear to work best is actually as single player RPGs or co-op RPGs (where groups of real-life friends join the game)... regardless of whether they are sandbox or themepark.
So how would one make an actual game where community might flourish? You would need elements from both sandbox and themepark, as well as effort from the developers. There would need to be more live events. You need a living and dynamic world... which is missing from themeparks, and is generally not given enough thought with the sandbox.
You want people not necessarily to need people - but you want people to make things easier in some fashion in the end, no? You do not want it to be a dependence - because you will still want to cater to the solo player. But in the end it comes down to an acceptance, that you will not be able to do everything.
MMORPGs, as they stand, do not really foster the idea of an MMORPG. The genre changed... for the most part, we are just spinning our wheels discussing them. They are pretty much SPRPGs or game lobbies...
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
I like walking through town and seeing people trading with each other and people asking each other for help with travel or simply just talking. If theres no requirement to wait or ask for others for help they won't. In most cases that requirement came in the form of asking others for help because they didn't want to "wait for the boat". I know time sinks in and of themselves "suck" but sometimes they are there to force community involvement, the core aspect of the genre, no matter how much people rather not rely on it.
If i may i think instant teleport is actually hurting the community because theres no need to rely on the community to help if the game does it for you. There needs to be more inconviences in the game that can be made up if people rely on the community to make it faster.
Don't know where you get that impression. If you want into DAL or Org, there are plenty of "WTB port to DAL" "LF JC" "LF Enchanter" shouts in the channel.
You do NOT need "waiting for the boat" to requirement people to interact. In fact, waiting with someone is LESS of an incentive to interact (because people would probably watch tv, or play an iphone game, while waiting) than setting up trades and other mechanisms.
In fact, you sentence "i think instant teleport is actually hurting the community because theres no need to rely on the community to help" is highly illogical. How would waiting with someone else (which is the premise the OP is talking about) leads to "need to reply on the community to help"? I don't need anyone's help while waiting.
It is silly to second guess what matter to others. In SRPG, millions of other players also go through the same story too .. does that change the enjoyment?