I can see both sides of the coin and i think it really just comes down to personal taste. both ways are totally valid ways of getting from point a to point b. I dont particularly like teleporting ala lobby style games because the focus is always on the destination.
You get a message from a friend somewhere that something big is happening and boom youre there too.
I prefer to form up a group first at a city for example then head out into the game and see what happens.
For me, its more enjoyable to discover cool things as they happen in a group than to discover something by yourself and then summon people to you.
Again its just personal preference. Both styles of play are fine.
yeah, because it would be so bad to travel 2-3 minutes before you arrive at your destination, my god, those are 2-3 minutes that'll NEVER come back
But hey, mate, if that's your thing, hopping around, teleporting all over the world to right at the spot where you want to be, good for you, tastes and preferences differ . My own preference is otherwise.
Two or three minutes? Maybe not so bad. Twenty, twenty-five minutes... different story. I've had travels in WoW take that long. Travel to a flight path. Fly to a major hub city. Take the portal to another hub. Travel to the flight point. Fly to the destination flight point. Travel to where your friends are.
Is sucks.
You need to remember GW2 is more about the community than it is any one individuals idea of immersion. What brings us together faster, working together more efficiently. What makes us reach out to and enjoy seeing others in the open world. If I'm out gathering and a new event spawns, how can I share that experience more quickly with others? The event won't wait for them to travel... it's happening now.
Two or three minutes? Maybe not so bad. Twenty, twenty-five minutes... different story. I've had travels in WoW take that long. Travel to a flight path. Fly to a major hub city. Take the portal to another hub. Travel to the flight point. Fly to the destination flight point. Travel to where your friends are.
Is sucks.
You need to remember GW2 is more about the community than it is any one individuals idea of immersion. What brings us together faster, working together more efficiently. What makes us reach out to and enjoy seeing others in the open world. If I'm out gathering and a new event spawns, how can I share that experience more quickly with others? The event won't wait for them to travel... it's happening now.
We older players remember when travelling took hours. It actually had some advantages but it demands that the players have a lot of spare time.
People with work and family can't really spend that time.
Still, one server without teleportation would solve the entire problem and should be easy to fix, even if I have a feeling ANET wont go for it.
I can see both sides of the coin and i think it really just comes down to personal taste. both ways are totally valid ways of getting from point a to point b. I dont particularly like teleporting ala lobby style games because the focus is always on the destination.
You get a message from a friend somewhere that something big is happening and boom youre there too.
I prefer to form up a group first at a city for example then head out into the game and see what happens.
For me, its more enjoyable to discover cool things as they happen in a group than to discover something by yourself and then summon people to you.
Can't I have both?
Can't I get a message from a friend that he wants me to come over, I run over there, then we hang out and do chains of events, team up with other people, get rolling and doing stuff together, running from one thing to another, seeing how they work together and being led by the game design from place to place.
Then when another friend of mine logs on, I can message them 'Hey, come on over, we're totally having this awesome time running around!', and bam, he teleports.
I don't want to teleport EVERYWHERE, but my friends trump the game, so I'd rather meet them quickly, and then switch back to exploring slow travel.
This also means, on another note, that if my friends call and say 'Hey, let's go to (X location in real life)', unless I'm feeling pretty tired, I'm going to ditch the game.
Friends > Game.
Originally posted by Loke666
We older players remember when travelling took hours. It actually had some advantages but it demands that the players have a lot of spare time.
NO idea why quoting you made it so weird, but I turned it green to differentiate.
I remember why travelling took hours. If long-travel times were just the 2-3 minutes MMO.Maverick was talking about, I wouldn't get so twitchy when I think about flight paths or horse rides.
I should write a nice long big rant on all forms of travel (From teleporting to walking to mounts to flight paths and whatever) in MMOs, and how in general it's one of the WORST developed systems in MMOs, despite the fact it is probably your #2 activity, right after combat. (Maybe #3 if you socialize and use the chat bar a lot)
I say, look to single player RPGs, western in particular. Fallout and TES were very large games, very open. Immense, even. While it was sometimes nice to walk places (okay, not in Fallout, visual design was shit like the landscape) but it also gave a teleportation option. I always used that. It is very irritating to me to have to walk around like that in a land packed with, let so empty, of content.
The most immersive game I have played was Bioshock. But I loathe the term immersive. It's an excuse for putting something horrible in your game from a gameplay perspective. I prefer engaging, how interested and absorbed I am in the game. Bioshock put me over the top. The world was fantastic and complete and it was literally full of so many things. And plenty of things trying to kill me, of course. Yet if I ever needed to backtrack nothing was too far away and there was a hub based quick travel system. I loved that. It was a good game, it didn't sacrifice mechanics and gameplay for the sake of immersion, it built around that. It was a complete and deep world when I wanted it to be and a decent shooter.
And geuss what, any third person game I have played has never approached that level of engagement from me. MMOs are primarily third person (unless you want to sevearly gimp yourself. The goal should be to provide that experience without sacrificing gameplay) and they suffer from that, in my mind. You're always an outside observer looking in. You're playing a game, everything says so. So I don't really get mounts or flightpaths or taking 30 minuites+ to get someplace. It simply isn't good to force that on players. Time is important, and traveling is not time well spent.
Are there too many waypoints? Maybe. I'd rather there be too many than too little. Have you tried walking to the same place every day? It might be nice the first time. Maybe even a few times after, but pretty soon it gets boring. You know where this is, what happens here, when that guy pulls out of his driveway. What you want is the destination.
As for community building, I'm calling bullshit. Modern MMOs have large populations that move through the game and people play at different times and at different paces. As long as it isn't really grindy, you should meet new people every day you play through leveling content. You may see someone you saw before, but what are the chances that you had any form of contact with them, let alone any sort of meaningful conversation?
And I have no problem with wandering around, I'll probably do some of that myself, foregoing the waypoint system. But when I need/want to go somewhere, I had better be able to get their quickly.
Er, how does traversing an open virtual world ruin the feel of an open virtual world? Instantly teleporting makes a game feel like a game, and ruins the feel of an MMO.
Travel time adds weight to PvP, adds weight to loss in an encounter, adds a feel of size and immersion to the world, and lets people see all the work people put into the game world.
Instant travel makes a world feel trivial, makes the game world itself look empty outside of hubs, instant travel unbalances PvP, ect ect.
Well, YOU might like to gleefully walk for fifteen minutes staring at all the beautiful scenery that they were so generous to include. Maybe you might whistle a little tune and stop to smell the flowers and OMG look over there! A deer! Don't move in case you scare it away. La-la-la-la! Totally immersed in your virtual world. Except you forgot one thing. You ARE playing a game. And those people that are waiting on you to show up so you can all do that group quest, they are sick and tired of waiting on you. And oh noes, your guildies are going to take down that world boss, but you're not going to get to take part, because you're halfway across the world. Should they wait for you? NOT! They are all sick and tired of your pathetic dogf***ing all the time.
Or, instead, I could look for a group in the area I was ALREADY IN. Or instead, if a guild event is scheduled, maybe I can, I don't know, plan ahead and ride to where the event is ahead of time? Yeesh, the WoW generation sure doesn't do well with critical thinking problems.
Er, how does traversing an open virtual world ruin the feel of an open virtual world? Instantly teleporting makes a game feel like a game, and ruins the feel of an MMO.
Travel time adds weight to PvP, adds weight to loss in an encounter, adds a feel of size and immersion to the world, and lets people see all the work people put into the game world.
Instant travel makes a world feel trivial, makes the game world itself look empty outside of hubs, instant travel unbalances PvP, ect ect.
Well, YOU might like to gleefully walk for fifteen minutes staring at all the beautiful scenery that they were so generous to include. Maybe you might whistle a little tune and stop to smell the flowers and OMG look over there! A deer! Don't move in case you scare it away. La-la-la-la! Totally immersed in your virtual world. Except you forgot one thing. You ARE playing a game. And those people that are waiting on you to show up so you can all do that group quest, they are sick and tired of waiting on you. And oh noes, your guildies are going to take down that world boss, but you're not going to get to take part, because you're halfway across the world. Should they wait for you? NOT! They are all sick and tired of your pathetic dogf***ing all the time.
Or, instead, I could look for a group in the area I was ALREADY IN. Or instead, if a guild event is scheduled, maybe I can, I don't know, plan ahead and ride to where the event is ahead of time? Yeesh, the WoW generation sure doesn't do well with critical thinking problems.
And what about the events that weren't scheduled and aren't in the area you are already in?
Er, how does traversing an open virtual world ruin the feel of an open virtual world? Instantly teleporting makes a game feel like a game, and ruins the feel of an MMO.
Travel time adds weight to PvP, adds weight to loss in an encounter, adds a feel of size and immersion to the world, and lets people see all the work people put into the game world.
Instant travel makes a world feel trivial, makes the game world itself look empty outside of hubs, instant travel unbalances PvP, ect ect.
Well, YOU might like to gleefully walk for fifteen minutes staring at all the beautiful scenery that they were so generous to include. Maybe you might whistle a little tune and stop to smell the flowers and OMG look over there! A deer! Don't move in case you scare it away. La-la-la-la! Totally immersed in your virtual world. Except you forgot one thing. You ARE playing a game. And those people that are waiting on you to show up so you can all do that group quest, they are sick and tired of waiting on you. And oh noes, your guildies are going to take down that world boss, but you're not going to get to take part, because you're halfway across the world. Should they wait for you? NOT! They are all sick and tired of your pathetic dogf***ing all the time.
Or, instead, I could look for a group in the area I was ALREADY IN. Or instead, if a guild event is scheduled, maybe I can, I don't know, plan ahead and ride to where the event is ahead of time? Yeesh, the WoW generation sure doesn't do well with critical thinking problems.
And what about the events that weren't scheduled and aren't in the area you are already in?
Spend 15 minutes getting there? Or wait for the next one? I mean, seriously, if there were so many "unscheduled events" that got announced literally as they started, then chances are you wouldn't have been able to get there anyway, and equal chances of one popping up where you are. Since I can't think of any games that work like this aside from Darkfall, I can't offer more than that.
Er, how does traversing an open virtual world ruin the feel of an open virtual world? Instantly teleporting makes a game feel like a game, and ruins the feel of an MMO.
Travel time adds weight to PvP, adds weight to loss in an encounter, adds a feel of size and immersion to the world, and lets people see all the work people put into the game world.
Instant travel makes a world feel trivial, makes the game world itself look empty outside of hubs, instant travel unbalances PvP, ect ect.
Well, YOU might like to gleefully walk for fifteen minutes staring at all the beautiful scenery that they were so generous to include. Maybe you might whistle a little tune and stop to smell the flowers and OMG look over there! A deer! Don't move in case you scare it away. La-la-la-la! Totally immersed in your virtual world. Except you forgot one thing. You ARE playing a game. And those people that are waiting on you to show up so you can all do that group quest, they are sick and tired of waiting on you. And oh noes, your guildies are going to take down that world boss, but you're not going to get to take part, because you're halfway across the world. Should they wait for you? NOT! They are all sick and tired of your pathetic dogf***ing all the time.
Or, instead, I could look for a group in the area I was ALREADY IN. Or instead, if a guild event is scheduled, maybe I can, I don't know, plan ahead and ride to where the event is ahead of time? Yeesh, the WoW generation sure doesn't do well with critical thinking problems.
And what about the events that weren't scheduled and aren't in the area you are already in?
Spend 15 minutes getting there? Or wait for the next one? I mean, seriously, if there were so many "unscheduled events" that got announced literally as they started, then chances are you wouldn't have been able to get there anyway, and equal chances of one popping up where you are. Since I can't think of any games that work like this aside from Darkfall, I can't offer more than that.
Well those events aren't announced to anybody unless they are close enough to participate, and by the time you ride the 15 minutes there it will have either moved on or ended.
If your friends were doing an event you could just teleport to the closest waypoint and then do it with them, or you can ride 15 minutes and miss it. Gameplay>Immersion.
Er, how does traversing an open virtual world ruin the feel of an open virtual world? Instantly teleporting makes a game feel like a game, and ruins the feel of an MMO.
Travel time adds weight to PvP, adds weight to loss in an encounter, adds a feel of size and immersion to the world, and lets people see all the work people put into the game world.
Instant travel makes a world feel trivial, makes the game world itself look empty outside of hubs, instant travel unbalances PvP, ect ect.
Well, YOU might like to gleefully walk for fifteen minutes staring at all the beautiful scenery that they were so generous to include. Maybe you might whistle a little tune and stop to smell the flowers and OMG look over there! A deer! Don't move in case you scare it away. La-la-la-la! Totally immersed in your virtual world. Except you forgot one thing. You ARE playing a game. And those people that are waiting on you to show up so you can all do that group quest, they are sick and tired of waiting on you. And oh noes, your guildies are going to take down that world boss, but you're not going to get to take part, because you're halfway across the world. Should they wait for you? NOT! They are all sick and tired of your pathetic dogf***ing all the time.
Or, instead, I could look for a group in the area I was ALREADY IN. Or instead, if a guild event is scheduled, maybe I can, I don't know, plan ahead and ride to where the event is ahead of time? Yeesh, the WoW generation sure doesn't do well with critical thinking problems.
And what about the events that weren't scheduled and aren't in the area you are already in?
Spend 15 minutes getting there? Or wait for the next one? I mean, seriously, if there were so many "unscheduled events" that got announced literally as they started, then chances are you wouldn't have been able to get there anyway, and equal chances of one popping up where you are. Since I can't think of any games that work like this aside from Darkfall, I can't offer more than that.
Well those events aren't announced to anybody unless they are close enough to participate, and by the time you ride the 15 minutes there it will have either moved on or ended.
If your friends were doing an event you could just teleport to the closest waypoint and then do it with them, or you can ride 15 minutes and miss it. Gameplay>Immersion.
Or, since these events in your imaginary game world seem to pop up so frequently and end so frequently, you could just wait for the inevitable next one that is sure to crop up, or stick close to your friends if you value playing with them so much, that way either way you're all playing together. I really have no idea what these "events" you're talking about are.
Er, how does traversing an open virtual world ruin the feel of an open virtual world? Instantly teleporting makes a game feel like a game, and ruins the feel of an MMO.
Travel time adds weight to PvP, adds weight to loss in an encounter, adds a feel of size and immersion to the world, and lets people see all the work people put into the game world.
Instant travel makes a world feel trivial, makes the game world itself look empty outside of hubs, instant travel unbalances PvP, ect ect.
Well, YOU might like to gleefully walk for fifteen minutes staring at all the beautiful scenery that they were so generous to include. Maybe you might whistle a little tune and stop to smell the flowers and OMG look over there! A deer! Don't move in case you scare it away. La-la-la-la! Totally immersed in your virtual world. Except you forgot one thing. You ARE playing a game. And those people that are waiting on you to show up so you can all do that group quest, they are sick and tired of waiting on you. And oh noes, your guildies are going to take down that world boss, but you're not going to get to take part, because you're halfway across the world. Should they wait for you? NOT! They are all sick and tired of your pathetic dogf***ing all the time.
Or, instead, I could look for a group in the area I was ALREADY IN. Or instead, if a guild event is scheduled, maybe I can, I don't know, plan ahead and ride to where the event is ahead of time? Yeesh, the WoW generation sure doesn't do well with critical thinking problems.
And what about the events that weren't scheduled and aren't in the area you are already in?
Spend 15 minutes getting there? Or wait for the next one? I mean, seriously, if there were so many "unscheduled events" that got announced literally as they started, then chances are you wouldn't have been able to get there anyway, and equal chances of one popping up where you are. Since I can't think of any games that work like this aside from Darkfall, I can't offer more than that.
Well those events aren't announced to anybody unless they are close enough to participate, and by the time you ride the 15 minutes there it will have either moved on or ended.
If your friends were doing an event you could just teleport to the closest waypoint and then do it with them, or you can ride 15 minutes and miss it. Gameplay>Immersion.
Or, since these events in your imaginary game world seem to pop up so frequently and end so frequently, you could just wait for the inevitable next one that is sure to crop up, or stick close to your friends if you value playing with them so much, that way either way you're all playing together. I really have no idea what these "events" you're talking about are.
I'm talking about the Dynamic Events. Anybody who has been following GW2 for a while would know what those are.
I feel sorry for people for who traveling a few minutes is even too much, or who think that if they missed an event because of those few minutes, then that's all the fun they could have had of hours of gameplay in their evening. Imagine that, if they'd logged on 10 minutes later they would've missed the event too and had to listen to their friends' tales and the fun they had never to be experienced again, the horror!
Shrug. To each their own, I guess, instant-gratification ftw.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Er, how does traversing an open virtual world ruin the feel of an open virtual world? Instantly teleporting makes a game feel like a game, and ruins the feel of an MMO.
Travel time adds weight to PvP, adds weight to loss in an encounter, adds a feel of size and immersion to the world, and lets people see all the work people put into the game world.
Instant travel makes a world feel trivial, makes the game world itself look empty outside of hubs, instant travel unbalances PvP, ect ect.
I'm talking about the Dynamic Events. Anybody who has been following GW2 for a while would know what those are.
Ah I see. Well in the case of dynamic events, like I said, they'll happen so frequently you can just catch the next one. If they're super rare things that only happen once in a while, they'd probably just get announced. And it doesn't really make sense for an event to go off and have 100 players just drop in from the sky on it, does it? Kind of ruins the point.
I feel sorry for people for who traveling a few minutes is even too much, or who think that if they missed an event because of those few minutes, then that's all the fun they could have had of hours of gameplay in their evening. Imagine that, if they'd logged on 10 minutes later they would've missed the event too and had to listen to their friends' tales and the fun they had never to be experienced again, the horror!
Shrug. To each their own, I guess, instant-gratification ftw.
Immersion and fun are subjective. If you don't like it don't play it. Its as simple as that. A few people whining about something isn't going to change how the game works.
Er, how does traversing an open virtual world ruin the feel of an open virtual world? Instantly teleporting makes a game feel like a game, and ruins the feel of an MMO.
Travel time adds weight to PvP, adds weight to loss in an encounter, adds a feel of size and immersion to the world, and lets people see all the work people put into the game world.
Instant travel makes a world feel trivial, makes the game world itself look empty outside of hubs, instant travel unbalances PvP, ect ect.
I'm talking about the Dynamic Events. Anybody who has been following GW2 for a while would know what those are.
Ah I see. Well in the case of dynamic events, like I said, they'll happen so frequently you can just catch the next one. If they're super rare things that only happen once in a while, they'd probably just get announced. And it doesn't really make sense for an event to go off and have 100 players just drop in from the sky on it, does it? Kind of ruins the point.
How do you know how frequently they will happen? If you have a link please show it.
From what we know some will be frequent and some won't. Thay aren't all the same. There is no black and white to this.
And it doesn't really make sense for an event to go off and have 100 players just drop in from the sky on it, does it? Kind of ruins the point.
It's themepark mindset at its extreme end, where you consider an MMORPG not even in the slightest as a fully functional gameworld but purely as a game, and just as in themeparks the rollercoaster is only a few steps from the haunted house and the merry-go-round.
Originally posted by romanator0
Immersion and fun are subjective. If you don't like it don't play it. Its as simple as that. A few people whining about something isn't going to change how the game works.
I play whatever I like and I post whatever I like, and people sniffing or whining about other's presumed whining doesn't change that.
If you crave to be a TP bunnyhopper then that's your thing, GW2 isn't 'your' MMORPG, a lot of different people with different tastes and preferences will play it. As I said before, TP applied moderately I've no problem with that, nowhere has it been said that the extravagant number of TP spots would be this many in the finished game as well. Besides, examples of 'ooh, I missed out the One Event of the whole evening because I had to travel fifteen minutes', is just ludicrous because of its obvious overstating and exaggerating.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I feel sorry for people for who traveling a few minutes is even too much, or who think that if they missed an event because of those few minutes, then that's all the fun they could have had of hours of gameplay in their evening. Imagine that, if they'd logged on 10 minutes later they would've missed the event too and had to listen to their friends' tales and the fun they had never to be experienced again, the horror!
Shrug. To each their own, I guess, instant-gratification ftw.
Immersion and fun are subjective. If you don't like it don't play it. Its as simple as that. A few people whining about something isn't going to change how the game works.
We're not whining or trying to change the game, we're answering the question that the OP put to this thread by MAKING this thread.
Generally, for those who started playing in the MMO Golden Age, those who played for the social virtual worlds, we don't mind travel, because it adds weight to almost all actions in the game world.
For those who started playing MMOs when they became Diablo with a monthly fee, they don't really care about a game world, and they just want more pixels or whatever, and see an MMO as only a game, screw immersion.
I feel sorry for people for who traveling a few minutes is even too much, or who think that if they missed an event because of those few minutes, then that's all the fun they could have had of hours of gameplay in their evening. Imagine that, if they'd logged on 10 minutes later they would've missed the event too and had to listen to their friends' tales and the fun they had never to be experienced again, the horror!
Shrug. To each their own, I guess, instant-gratification ftw.
Immersion and fun are subjective. If you don't like it don't play it. Its as simple as that. A few people whining about something isn't going to change how the game works.
We're not whining or trying to change the game, we're answering the question that the OP put to this thread by MAKING this thread.
Generally, for those who started playing in the MMO Golden Age, those who played for the social virtual worlds, we don't mind travel, because it adds weight to almost all actions in the game world.
For those who started playing MMOs when they became Diablo with a monthly fee, they don't really care about a game world, and they just want more pixels or whatever, and see an MMO as only a game, screw immersion.
I feel sorry for people for who traveling a few minutes is even too much, or who think that if they missed an event because of those few minutes, then that's all the fun they could have had of hours of gameplay in their evening. Imagine that, if they'd logged on 10 minutes later they would've missed the event too and had to listen to their friends' tales and the fun they had never to be experienced again, the horror!
Shrug. To each their own, I guess, instant-gratification ftw.
Immersion and fun are subjective. If you don't like it don't play it. Its as simple as that. A few people whining about something isn't going to change how the game works.
We're not whining or trying to change the game, we're answering the question that the OP put to this thread by MAKING this thread.
Generally, for those who started playing in the MMO Golden Age, those who played for the social virtual worlds, we don't mind travel, because it adds weight to almost all actions in the game world.
For those who started playing MMOs when they became Diablo with a monthly fee, they don't really care about a game world, and they just want more pixels or whatever, and see an MMO as only a game, screw immersion.
I feel sorry for people for who traveling a few minutes is even too much, or who think that if they missed an event because of those few minutes, then that's all the fun they could have had of hours of gameplay in their evening. Imagine that, if they'd logged on 10 minutes later they would've missed the event too and had to listen to their friends' tales and the fun they had never to be experienced again, the horror!
Shrug. To each their own, I guess, instant-gratification ftw.
Immersion and fun are subjective. If you don't like it don't play it. Its as simple as that. A few people whining about something isn't going to change how the game works.
We're not whining or trying to change the game, we're answering the question that the OP put to this thread by MAKING this thread.
Generally, for those who started playing in the MMO Golden Age, those who played for the social virtual worlds, we don't mind travel, because it adds weight to almost all actions in the game world.
For those who started playing MMOs when they became Diablo with a monthly fee, they don't really care about a game world, and they just want more pixels or whatever, and see an MMO as only a game, screw immersion.
That made me laugh.
Er, why? Most people agree 1998-2003 was the MMO Golden Age, you had massive amounts of innovation, a large number of different game styles, all thriving and successful, communities hadn't gone to hell yet, and new ideas were being pumped out. You can't, with a straight face, claim any MMOs in the last few years were as feature rich or innovative as AC, DAoC, EQ, UO, or SWG.
I feel sorry for people for who traveling a few minutes is even too much, or who think that if they missed an event because of those few minutes, then that's all the fun they could have had of hours of gameplay in their evening. Imagine that, if they'd logged on 10 minutes later they would've missed the event too and had to listen to their friends' tales and the fun they had never to be experienced again, the horror!
Shrug. To each their own, I guess, instant-gratification ftw.
Immersion and fun are subjective. If you don't like it don't play it. Its as simple as that. A few people whining about something isn't going to change how the game works.
We're not whining or trying to change the game, we're answering the question that the OP put to this thread by MAKING this thread.
Generally, for those who started playing in the MMO Golden Age, those who played for the social virtual worlds, we don't mind travel, because it adds weight to almost all actions in the game world.
For those who started playing MMOs when they became Diablo with a monthly fee, they don't really care about a game world, and they just want more pixels or whatever, and see an MMO as only a game, screw immersion.
That made me laugh.
Er, why? Most people agree 1998-2003 was the MMO Golden Age, you had massive amounts of innovation, a large number of different game styles, all thriving and successful, communities hadn't gone to hell yet, and new ideas were being pumped out. You can't, with a straight face, claim any MMOs in the last few years were as feature rich or innovative as AC, DAoC, EQ, UO, or SWG.
Sorry, maybe I should have high-lighted a different part. I agree MMOs should be social but If you want a virtual world then go play sims.
I feel sorry for people for who traveling a few minutes is even too much, or who think that if they missed an event because of those few minutes, then that's all the fun they could have had of hours of gameplay in their evening. Imagine that, if they'd logged on 10 minutes later they would've missed the event too and had to listen to their friends' tales and the fun they had never to be experienced again, the horror!
Shrug. To each their own, I guess, instant-gratification ftw.
Immersion and fun are subjective. If you don't like it don't play it. Its as simple as that. A few people whining about something isn't going to change how the game works.
We're not whining or trying to change the game, we're answering the question that the OP put to this thread by MAKING this thread.
Generally, for those who started playing in the MMO Golden Age, those who played for the social virtual worlds, we don't mind travel, because it adds weight to almost all actions in the game world.
For those who started playing MMOs when they became Diablo with a monthly fee, they don't really care about a game world, and they just want more pixels or whatever, and see an MMO as only a game, screw immersion.
That made me laugh.
Er, why? Most people agree 1998-2003 was the MMO Golden Age, you had massive amounts of innovation, a large number of different game styles, all thriving and successful, communities hadn't gone to hell yet, and new ideas were being pumped out. You can't, with a straight face, claim any MMOs in the last few years were as feature rich or innovative as AC, DAoC, EQ, UO, or SWG.
Sorry, maybe I should have high-lighted a different part. I agree MMOs should be social but If you want a virtual world then go play sims.
Um... or I can play MMOs, considering when the genre was at its height, MMOs were designed as virtual worlds? Besides, the Sims is single player. If you just want a game to collect pixels with a few RL friends, might I suggest Diablo or Titan Quest?
I feel sorry for people for who traveling a few minutes is even too much, or who think that if they missed an event because of those few minutes, then that's all the fun they could have had of hours of gameplay in their evening. Imagine that, if they'd logged on 10 minutes later they would've missed the event too and had to listen to their friends' tales and the fun they had never to be experienced again, the horror!
Shrug. To each their own, I guess, instant-gratification ftw.
Immersion and fun are subjective. If you don't like it don't play it. Its as simple as that. A few people whining about something isn't going to change how the game works.
We're not whining or trying to change the game, we're answering the question that the OP put to this thread by MAKING this thread.
Generally, for those who started playing in the MMO Golden Age, those who played for the social virtual worlds, we don't mind travel, because it adds weight to almost all actions in the game world.
For those who started playing MMOs when they became Diablo with a monthly fee, they don't really care about a game world, and they just want more pixels or whatever, and see an MMO as only a game, screw immersion.
That made me laugh.
Er, why? Most people agree 1998-2003 was the MMO Golden Age, you had massive amounts of innovation, a large number of different game styles, all thriving and successful, communities hadn't gone to hell yet, and new ideas were being pumped out. You can't, with a straight face, claim any MMOs in the last few years were as feature rich or innovative as AC, DAoC, EQ, UO, or SWG.
Sorry, maybe I should have high-lighted a different part. I agree MMOs should be social but If you want a virtual world then go play sims.
Um... or I can play MMOs, considering when the genre was at its height, MMOs were designed as virtual worlds? Besides, the Sims is single player. If you just want a game to collect pixels with a few RL friends, might I suggest Diablo or Titan Quest?
Comments
I can see both sides of the coin and i think it really just comes down to personal taste. both ways are totally valid ways of getting from point a to point b. I dont particularly like teleporting ala lobby style games because the focus is always on the destination.
You get a message from a friend somewhere that something big is happening and boom youre there too.
I prefer to form up a group first at a city for example then head out into the game and see what happens.
For me, its more enjoyable to discover cool things as they happen in a group than to discover something by yourself and then summon people to you.
Again its just personal preference. Both styles of play are fine.
Two or three minutes? Maybe not so bad. Twenty, twenty-five minutes... different story. I've had travels in WoW take that long. Travel to a flight path. Fly to a major hub city. Take the portal to another hub. Travel to the flight point. Fly to the destination flight point. Travel to where your friends are.
Is sucks.
You need to remember GW2 is more about the community than it is any one individuals idea of immersion. What brings us together faster, working together more efficiently. What makes us reach out to and enjoy seeing others in the open world. If I'm out gathering and a new event spawns, how can I share that experience more quickly with others? The event won't wait for them to travel... it's happening now.
Oderint, dum metuant.
We older players remember when travelling took hours. It actually had some advantages but it demands that the players have a lot of spare time.
People with work and family can't really spend that time.
Still, one server without teleportation would solve the entire problem and should be easy to fix, even if I have a feeling ANET wont go for it.
Can't I have both?
Can't I get a message from a friend that he wants me to come over, I run over there, then we hang out and do chains of events, team up with other people, get rolling and doing stuff together, running from one thing to another, seeing how they work together and being led by the game design from place to place.
Then when another friend of mine logs on, I can message them 'Hey, come on over, we're totally having this awesome time running around!', and bam, he teleports.
I don't want to teleport EVERYWHERE, but my friends trump the game, so I'd rather meet them quickly, and then switch back to exploring slow travel.
This also means, on another note, that if my friends call and say 'Hey, let's go to (X location in real life)', unless I'm feeling pretty tired, I'm going to ditch the game.
Friends > Game.
Originally posted by Loke666
We older players remember when travelling took hours. It actually had some advantages but it demands that the players have a lot of spare time.
NO idea why quoting you made it so weird, but I turned it green to differentiate.
I remember why travelling took hours. If long-travel times were just the 2-3 minutes MMO.Maverick was talking about, I wouldn't get so twitchy when I think about flight paths or horse rides.
I should write a nice long big rant on all forms of travel (From teleporting to walking to mounts to flight paths and whatever) in MMOs, and how in general it's one of the WORST developed systems in MMOs, despite the fact it is probably your #2 activity, right after combat. (Maybe #3 if you socialize and use the chat bar a lot)
I say, look to single player RPGs, western in particular. Fallout and TES were very large games, very open. Immense, even. While it was sometimes nice to walk places (okay, not in Fallout, visual design was shit like the landscape) but it also gave a teleportation option. I always used that. It is very irritating to me to have to walk around like that in a land packed with, let so empty, of content.
The most immersive game I have played was Bioshock. But I loathe the term immersive. It's an excuse for putting something horrible in your game from a gameplay perspective. I prefer engaging, how interested and absorbed I am in the game. Bioshock put me over the top. The world was fantastic and complete and it was literally full of so many things. And plenty of things trying to kill me, of course. Yet if I ever needed to backtrack nothing was too far away and there was a hub based quick travel system. I loved that. It was a good game, it didn't sacrifice mechanics and gameplay for the sake of immersion, it built around that. It was a complete and deep world when I wanted it to be and a decent shooter.
And geuss what, any third person game I have played has never approached that level of engagement from me. MMOs are primarily third person (unless you want to sevearly gimp yourself. The goal should be to provide that experience without sacrificing gameplay) and they suffer from that, in my mind. You're always an outside observer looking in. You're playing a game, everything says so. So I don't really get mounts or flightpaths or taking 30 minuites+ to get someplace. It simply isn't good to force that on players. Time is important, and traveling is not time well spent.
Are there too many waypoints? Maybe. I'd rather there be too many than too little. Have you tried walking to the same place every day? It might be nice the first time. Maybe even a few times after, but pretty soon it gets boring. You know where this is, what happens here, when that guy pulls out of his driveway. What you want is the destination.
As for community building, I'm calling bullshit. Modern MMOs have large populations that move through the game and people play at different times and at different paces. As long as it isn't really grindy, you should meet new people every day you play through leveling content. You may see someone you saw before, but what are the chances that you had any form of contact with them, let alone any sort of meaningful conversation?
And I have no problem with wandering around, I'll probably do some of that myself, foregoing the waypoint system. But when I need/want to go somewhere, I had better be able to get their quickly.
Disagreement Heirarchy
Or, instead, I could look for a group in the area I was ALREADY IN. Or instead, if a guild event is scheduled, maybe I can, I don't know, plan ahead and ride to where the event is ahead of time? Yeesh, the WoW generation sure doesn't do well with critical thinking problems.
And what about the events that weren't scheduled and aren't in the area you are already in?
Spend 15 minutes getting there? Or wait for the next one? I mean, seriously, if there were so many "unscheduled events" that got announced literally as they started, then chances are you wouldn't have been able to get there anyway, and equal chances of one popping up where you are. Since I can't think of any games that work like this aside from Darkfall, I can't offer more than that.
Well those events aren't announced to anybody unless they are close enough to participate, and by the time you ride the 15 minutes there it will have either moved on or ended.
If your friends were doing an event you could just teleport to the closest waypoint and then do it with them, or you can ride 15 minutes and miss it. Gameplay>Immersion.
Or, since these events in your imaginary game world seem to pop up so frequently and end so frequently, you could just wait for the inevitable next one that is sure to crop up, or stick close to your friends if you value playing with them so much, that way either way you're all playing together. I really have no idea what these "events" you're talking about are.
I'm talking about the Dynamic Events. Anybody who has been following GW2 for a while would know what those are.
Gameplay + immersion = fun
Fun > gameplay
I feel sorry for people for who traveling a few minutes is even too much, or who think that if they missed an event because of those few minutes, then that's all the fun they could have had of hours of gameplay in their evening. Imagine that, if they'd logged on 10 minutes later they would've missed the event too and had to listen to their friends' tales and the fun they had never to be experienced again, the horror!
Shrug. To each their own, I guess, instant-gratification ftw.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Ah I see. Well in the case of dynamic events, like I said, they'll happen so frequently you can just catch the next one. If they're super rare things that only happen once in a while, they'd probably just get announced. And it doesn't really make sense for an event to go off and have 100 players just drop in from the sky on it, does it? Kind of ruins the point.
Immersion and fun are subjective. If you don't like it don't play it. Its as simple as that. A few people whining about something isn't going to change how the game works.
How do you know how frequently they will happen? If you have a link please show it.
From what we know some will be frequent and some won't. Thay aren't all the same. There is no black and white to this.
It's themepark mindset at its extreme end, where you consider an MMORPG not even in the slightest as a fully functional gameworld but purely as a game, and just as in themeparks the rollercoaster is only a few steps from the haunted house and the merry-go-round.
I play whatever I like and I post whatever I like, and people sniffing or whining about other's presumed whining doesn't change that.
If you crave to be a TP bunnyhopper then that's your thing, GW2 isn't 'your' MMORPG, a lot of different people with different tastes and preferences will play it. As I said before, TP applied moderately I've no problem with that, nowhere has it been said that the extravagant number of TP spots would be this many in the finished game as well. Besides, examples of 'ooh, I missed out the One Event of the whole evening because I had to travel fifteen minutes', is just ludicrous because of its obvious overstating and exaggerating.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
We're not whining or trying to change the game, we're answering the question that the OP put to this thread by MAKING this thread.
Generally, for those who started playing in the MMO Golden Age, those who played for the social virtual worlds, we don't mind travel, because it adds weight to almost all actions in the game world.
For those who started playing MMOs when they became Diablo with a monthly fee, they don't really care about a game world, and they just want more pixels or whatever, and see an MMO as only a game, screw immersion.
I've been playing MMOs off and on for 11 years now. I've never enjoyed traveling.
That made me laugh.
Get off my lawn!
Er, why? Most people agree 1998-2003 was the MMO Golden Age, you had massive amounts of innovation, a large number of different game styles, all thriving and successful, communities hadn't gone to hell yet, and new ideas were being pumped out. You can't, with a straight face, claim any MMOs in the last few years were as feature rich or innovative as AC, DAoC, EQ, UO, or SWG.
Sorry, maybe I should have high-lighted a different part. I agree MMOs should be social but If you want a virtual world then go play sims.
Um... or I can play MMOs, considering when the genre was at its height, MMOs were designed as virtual worlds? Besides, the Sims is single player. If you just want a game to collect pixels with a few RL friends, might I suggest Diablo or Titan Quest?
No thanks, I'm happily awaiting GW2.
Garvon, are you playing Darkfall or EVE Online? Sounds like they would be right up your alley (unless you aren't a pvp fan).