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Fast Travel
Scot
Member LegendaryPosts: 24,439
Take a look at the round table video.
You simply cannot have a world that feels huge and allow players to play with their friends quickly when they want to. In the example given by the designer he was playing EQ and wanted to play with a friend. It took him ages to get to his friend and that made the world a huge place. But they also want to "incentivise" players to play together so they want to put fast travel into the game.
Its either or, you can't design both into your game. They talk about discovering teleport points and only then being able to use them. But with satellite style MMO maps and direction arrows it won't seem like a huge world. Time is key, if it does not take long to move from one city to another the world will seem small.
Comments
Just think of it as going to the store. The store is 5 blocks away. You could walk and get there in maybe 20 mins. O r you could take your car and get there in 2.
Which one are you likely to choose?
Well it doesn't matter. What does matter is that you have a choice. The distance to the store remains the same. So a big world, will still be a big world, even if you have fast travel.
And believe me, you will be glad you have the choice, just as you are probably glad that you don't have to walk to the store everytime.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
You can combine fast travelling with exploration without any problem.
For example, if there is one fast travelling nod at a village, and you want to find your friend into a creepy forest near that village, you take a fast travel to the village, but you have to find your friend. Same to go to a dungeon: you take the nearest fast travel nod, but if you want to finde something specific, you MUST discover it and walk for yourself.
I really don't like the abuse of fast travelling, but I think is posible to combine exploration without taking unnecessary time walking over a road which you have walked over it a hundred times.
I guess we shall all see eh. If i recall they did say there will only be " a handful" of nodes and that there would massive areas to explore around them.
No matter how cynical you become, its never enough to keep up - Lily Tomlin
And then you have people with a real life, who only have a 2 or 3 hs a day to play with friends, even when the game have a gorgeous world, they dont want to lost 2 hr travelling from one point to another to find a friend, or actually play the game.
Agreed, although I like the compromise of making it that one has to visit a location by traveling to it first before they can recall to it, even if that flag is broadly interpreted to simply mean visiting that general zone or region. This allows the players to experience the size of the world while new and then once they've advanced they have a more convenient manner of banding together for leveling or activities.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
But just as the real world, travel to another city by auto takes a good bit of time, and to travel across the country, days. Of course we have fast travel options such as jets, but those come at a cost, they are expensive and we can't take all of our belongings with us. Of course the super rich (who there are very few of) can afford their own personal jet, but for the average Joe, you're going to have to deal with the limitations and plan your strategy around them.
Same thing in game worlds, take EVE for example. There are ways to instantly travel, but the cost is you can't take any of your gear with you. Bank vaults aren't universal, if your gear/ships etc are in one region of space, you have to move them to another, either one at a time, (very time consuming , can take days), or through some other means such as broken down into parts and put into a hauler, or if shipped intact, in a Carrier.
But, like real life, each of these options have limitations and provisos, so your choices do matter and you can't easily just decide to up and move on a whim because there are opportunity costs with that decision.
So overuse of fast travel can be a bad thing, no matter what reason a player may come up with for desiring it.
Human's always seek the path of least resistance and greatest convenience, but that doesn't necessarily make for better game play, sometimes we have to learn to accept and deal with limitations as that is what game play is all about.
As in your original example, while certainly it is more convenient to chose to drive to the store, it probably would be better for our health to walk the two miles there and back again. (in fact, I actually do this for just this reason)
If every feature is designed around easy "god-mode" then you really aren't playing much of anything, you are just going through the motions.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Definitely. Wizard101 and Pirate101 are examples of games that make getting together with others extremely convenient without negating the exploration aspect of the game.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I never got to play UO, but I did play Lineage 1 and they had something called Blessed Teleport Scrolls which enabled a player to set up to 30 "bind-points" in the game world which you could instantly teleport to by burning a scroll.
There was some control around it, you of course had to first visit a location in order to set a bind point, and the scrolls were a drop only item (I farmed the ant caves for hours and hours) and as a limited resources sold for about 600 Adena, which was a decent chunk of change to new players, not so bad for veterans with a decent income stream.
Yet as much as I enjoyed this feature, NCSoft never employed this mechanic in Lineage 2 or Aion, and I never found out why they chose to exclude them. I'm sure it was a conscious design decision / omission and I'd love to know if it was strictly just to slow players down and keep them in the game longer, (or force them to use the expensive transport NPC's which is a money sink of course) or if they felt they somehow spoiled the game play some how.
I think I prefer some sort of blending of slow and fast travel. I recall playing Vanguard at launch, and there really were few fast travel options and I can't say I really enjoyed that, even though it did make the world seem huge and expansive.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Well sure, some games have this sort of design, but should every game be this convenient, just to be more friendly to the time challenged?
It does make things easier, but takes away from some of the strategic design that we find in titles such as EVE where travel time really does impact the universe.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I did not mean to suggest all games should be designed with fast travel. From what I have seen/read so far about EQN, it seems to fit well with the game.
"just to be more friendly to the time challenged"
That's not why devs create it. It has nothing to do with "time challenged" players and everything to do with providing constant fun for the people paying to be entertained by your service. The type of travel is wholly dependent on the game. EVE work with limited fast travel (jump drives, cynos, clones, etc) but would probably be negatively impacted from fast travel on the scale of something like UO or even LOTRO for that matter. The same is true of many MMOs involving territory control and world PVP. However, a game designed around PvE or social gameplay often benefits more from travel systems that allow players to connect faster, increasing the amount of time they are playing in rlateion to the amount of time they are trying to get to play the game.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
yes and you already have a million of mmo's out there wich apearantly your not playing.
Let me and others around here have mine, you already have yours.
Not every game has to be catered around your convienience, you already have been catered for.
I think you may be losing sight of the fact that these are games, not chores. It could be that I'm simply not seeing where you're coming from, so help me out here.
A player wants to join his friends for an activity (dungeon run, player venue, guild meeting, etc) in EQN. What do you see as the value to the player of monetary or time blockers to them doing so?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
OK I see your point, fast travel really does work well in PVE scenarios and as EQN will likely favor that design it does seem like a good candidate to have some elements of it. (hopefully it won't be over used)
I am currently playing a DAOC shard, and in PVP the travel times make perfect sense and are key to the strategy, but every time my guild wants to go to some far away PVE place it's aggravating to know there is a 10-20 minute travel time just to get there. (which most of us work around by making sure one of our few bind points is located in the far away lands)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Nor you. I think you should take your own advice and pick one of the millions of MMO's catered for you.
Im sorry but thats not up to you. MMOs have fast travel because players want them, EQnext wont be a game for a core group of players, it will have fast travel.
Well most recently having played Fallen Earth, I will use that as an example.
Travelling between bunkers could only be done if you had already travelled to that bunker, as seems to be the case here
There were limited bunkers in each map. You couldn't always fast travel to your exact destination, generally you had to hoof it a ways too. Anyway, when I first started the game I completely ignored them. I said to myself I want to see what this world has. Plus I enjoyed riding my mount.
But the time came when I was in a clan and you are trying to help fellow players, that are far away. It was at this point I realized I had neglected the fast travel and had no good way of joining up. (Actual game travel could take up to 30 minutes depending on location) I eventually had to retrace my steps and go to get the bunkers activated.
Aside from that, I only used it when I felt it necessary and it did not seem to diminish the world size in any way to me. But I think someone else mentioned, that rather than prevent socialization, I feel it enhances it. No one likes to wait for groups and if you are helping lower level players they are generally in different areas than you will be.
That's the problem I have with MMO players these days. It all seems to be an all or nothing proposition. My way or the highway!. If people want a game to be difficult they should have the means to make it difficult. And for those that like to have it relaxed, they should have the same options. To say that a game should not have something because it makes it too easy or too hard strikes me as stupid. And fast travel is a players choice. Simple as that. If you don't have the willpower to not use it, that is your problem. But if you are using it then you probably feel it is necessary. Why take the choice out of the players hand??
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
MMo's are not just another form of entertainment. They Can be / Have been / Should be something deeper.
You should not just dungeon crawl trough an MMO you might asswell remove the entire world then put us all in a lobby and make it Diablo-3 but in a wow format. Fairly lame right? its exactly what we are doing nowadays tho.
tell me so you come online you hook up with your friends and your all in the same city you want to do a dungeon (open non instanced) so you set out to it. you take a fly path for 5 mins because your in the capital (you could have made camp in the town near the dungeon but lets say your in the capital) you end up in that town and then you have to mount up or run with a speedbuff along some trail or in the wilderness for 10 mins. so your total travel time 15 mins how much would that hurt in your 3 hour evening? not alot does it?
You might even come across intresting things like players in need of help being overun by their mobs etc.
5 times out of 10 i did something completely diffrent from what we set out to do back in the day. and you know what? that was FUN. alot of fun. yes we did not grind for that day but we had fun doing whetever else we did.
Harsh travel times are so very much exaggerated....
problem is there arnt any. There are no MMO's with rulesets of old. Because the dumb masses get their panty's in a bunch because mob x is too hard for them.
Trust me if there where such games (and yes in know EQ is there but its changed beyond what it was to cater new folks etc) i would be playing it. Alot of people here on this board want a NEW (the eye wants something asswell) game with old rulesets. and trust me compared to the millions of themeparks youl like it.
It's 15 minutes that my players aren't enjoying the content of the game.
If the person's goal is getting to their friends, getting overrun by mobs isn't necessarily fun, rather an obstacle not only to that person, but their friends who are waiting for him.
Each time someone pitches long travel, they almost always bring up the activities that happen along the way, which makes me think they really don't want long travel times but rather more unpredictable occurrences in their gaming to liven it up.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
no loktofiet. those 15 mins are spent chatting with your group socializing and in those 15 mins you could come acrros a ton of diffrent things.
It's not you getting overun its other people. you decide to help them out tip the scales. anyone would in a game with a harsh death penalty. dying would be a sin. youd like the be helped out in that situation asswell.
and yes we want more unpredictability.
instanced dungeon grinding is the most boring thing ever. you do the same thing the entire time. I can still dream all of WoW's dungeons i know the fastest way to get trough when to use heroic leap or charge when to taunt etc. That my friend becomes a chore.
i still don't get why people would rather "grind"an instanced dungeon then "grinding"and open dungeon where alot more random things can occur.
Are we still talking about EQN here?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
obviously not as EQnext will be littered with fast travel.:)