Please stop continuing to regurgitate the same stuff while totally ignoring what anyone else says to counter your points. This is a pointless exercise now as it is obvious you are only listening to your own point of view.
If you feel someone has made a legit counter-point to all that I've said, then by all means point it out.
The only person I've blocked is Deivos, and we all know he consistently fails to make any logical or evidence-based points, he's just here to argue for arguments' sake.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
We've already shown other games combining travel with other game mechanics to create gameplay (that's rather literally what a racing game does, for example).
We can see it in the use of detection and tracking mechanics as you stalk enemies and hunt for resources, we can see it in the design of environments in obstacle avoidance and mobs or migratory objectives.
We can see it in how you can chase or be chased and create gameplay in escape scenarios.
We can see it in gameplay of how you artfully bypass defenses and otherwise of a location with stealthy technique.
We can see it in how mounts affect the scope of a game world and different types of vehicles allow for new modes of travel and technique.
And the list goes on.
The statement "The other side is arguing against that focus on deep decisions" is patently false. Reality being, there is a massive swathe of deep gameplay decisions being developed and dictated by the use of travel.
The point of integration was stated rather clearly with combat; "It's only by adding special abilities, secondary effects and the time factor to gameplay that combat gets complex. Attacking a target by itself would be the most tedious activity if it weren't for how integrated it is into the mechanics of the characters and mobs in the game.
So the argument that "adding meaning or feature integration would magically cause a boring thing to be fun" is itself a false argument. Feature integration is the only reason game mechanics have any interest or depth. From combat to travel, it's how many aspects support the tools and how those tools interact with each-other that makes a game. It's not magic taking place, it's design that actually supports the feature set. A good game designer would know that."
You are at least right about one part of your own commentary, it's not a logical line of reasoning. You have very clearly expressed you opinion.
And Immodium, you're not arguing for "fast travel" in the context of moving a bit faster by tuning a vehicle. You aren't going to warp to the finish line by swapping tires, which is the sort of fast travel axe and nariu have been talking about.
This very statement; "Totally agree. When I implied it wasn't deep, I was talking about the other systems outside of travel in those games. You could argue that the systems in some of those games to try and make your car go faster in the garage are deep. However that's promoting fast travel, not slow. So irrelevant.
Spent hours on Mario Kart snes doing those time trials with friends. I'd just try and drift my way through the tracks, looked cooler. "
Highlights that you are talking about enhancing elements of travel itself, not accelerating it to the point of bypassing the mechanic (which is again the fundamental element that drives a racing game). "Fast travel" in the context that's been provided so far means teleportation to locations, not "making travel go faster" as you just implied. Your example is more akin to what I talked about previously with using different vehicles and mounts to affect game scope and pace.
Your example is more of a case of what I described previously using Cadwell's quote as reference, controlling and limiting player mechanics so that there is an element to balance and grow with enabling deeper gameplay.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Please stop continuing to regurgitate the same stuff while totally ignoring what anyone else says to counter your points. This is a pointless exercise now as it is obvious you are only listening to your own point of view.
If you feel someone has made a legit counter-point to all that I've said, then by all means point it out.
The only person I've blocked is Deivos, and we all know he consistently fails to make any logical or evidence-based points, he's just here to argue for arguments' sake.
23 pages in and unless this has been a 1 sided discussion you have about 11 pages of counter points. Read the damn thread and stop ignoring the points made. Because up till now your only argument is "lalala not listening!"
The only person I've blocked is Deivos, and we all know he consistently fails to make any logical or evidence-based points, he's just here to argue for arguments' sake.
Except for the multiple times I've provided links and evidence of my own, cited multiple actual games and mechanics in-use that everyone can see and play which counter false claims made about the genre, and even broke down the linked sources you offered to give counterpoints with full quotes from them to refute inaccurate claims you made about their content.
You not enjoying that I disagree with you and you not enjoying the evidence provided to counter you does not invalidate the logic provided.
And your counterarguments to me so far? You never actually address the content I provide, you simply hand-wave and dodge it in favor of insulting my intelligence multiple times. That is a grave amount of dishonesty on your part and does not achieve the case of being intellectual in the least.
I'm here to correct misinformation. If you're unhappy with that, then learn from what you are corrected on and cut down on the misinformation.
EDIT: Only reason I end up correcting you most of the time is you seem to have zero distinction between your opinions and actual facts. Claiming everything is objective and that you're a messiah of game design does not warp reality into such being the case.
So too being the point about these games and their design. Some people like that this planet still exists, just because the majority are happy to destroy the ecosystem doesn't mean we should belay efforts to change that either. Just because you found a game design that you are comfortable with right now and can say how it is super popular does not mean that other games no longer should exist, the world should stop turning, and progress to stop being made and strived for.
Post edited by Deivos on
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
23 pages in and unless this has been a 1 sided discussion you have about 11 pages of counter points. Read the damn thread and stop ignoring the points made. Because up till now your only argument is "lalala not listening!"
Again, cite something specific. I've addressed basically every point that people have tried to raise, so if your takeaway is my responses have been "lalala not listening" then you haven't been reading.
You need evidence of your claim that I'm ignoring things. Til then, it's just an empty accusation.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There have been multiple specifically cited sources (page 18 for example has five on it), games (as far back as page six has examples that are released and playable), and quotes from even your own links offering counterargument.
That's quite a lot of very specific evidence you've ignored.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
23 pages in and unless this has been a 1 sided discussion you have about 11 pages of counter points. Read the damn thread and stop ignoring the points made. Because up till now your only argument is "lalala not listening!"
Again, cite something specific. I've addressed basically every point that people have tried to raise, so if your takeaway is my responses have been "lalala not listening" then you haven't been reading.
You need evidence of your claim that I'm ignoring things. Til then, it's just an empty accusation.
23 pages worth of discussion...go fucking read them and stop ignoring them.
You address nothing and ignoring EVERY point made by everyone with a differing opinion. If you think I am going to go back over the 23 pages that YOU can just read for EVERY counter point and waste time quoting them because you are too lazy to do so then you can get lost.
Stop being lazy and look them up yourself, they are all here.
23 pages worth of discussion...go fucking read them and stop ignoring them.
You address nothing and ignoring EVERY point made by everyone with a differing opinion. If you think I am going to go back over the 23 pages that YOU can just read for EVERY counter point and waste time quoting them because you are too lazy to do so then you can get lost.
Stop being lazy and look them up yourself, they are all here.
I've responded to the vast majority of points brought up -- and quite possibly every point brought up.
Stop ignoring my responses to fabricate this imaginary critique. Read what I said, then either understand I addressed everything or cite specific evidence of my missing something.
Without evidence you have nothing. Cite evidence, or let the issue drop. Vague accusations are meaningless. Cite specifics.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It was already provided with the named games you ignored, the links on 18 and other pages you ignored, and the direct quotations from sources including your own that you ignored, etc.
Evidence and specifics were offered in abundance. Ignoring these things has very much been your bag.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Why would fast travel be better in '7 days to die' rather than slow travel.
Please explain....
Because options are always good.
If you do like slow travel in "7 days to die", you can ignore the option of fast travel. If you do not, use it. It does not take a genius to figure out that having an option makes more people happy.
Why would fast travel be better in '7 days to die' rather than slow travel.
Please explain....
Exploration can be interesting the first time. But not afterwards.
So craftable fast travel nodes would be added to the game with a moderate cost to set up.
Teleport inhibitors would be implemented for PVP reasons (slow-to-destroy game objects which prevent unfriendly players from teleporting to a fast travel node near an inhib.) Few players should be interested in PVP in open world games anyway, as only young or new players should find "I brought more friends so I win!" to be a compelling PVP mechanic.
So those are two simple solutions that would improve just about every survival game on the market by eliminating the excessive (shallow) slow travel from their gameplay.
It skips to the interesting bits; to the content players actually care about (exploring, fighting, looting, crafting, etc.)
Though keep in mind "skip to the interesting bits" is only as interesting as a game's most interesting bits. (7 Days has always struck me as a sub-par survival game.)
Also, it's important that you realize your earlier claims were baseless. This most recent post of yours is obviously a subject change away from the uncomfortable reality that you couldn't find a single example of a point I didn't address (even though your accusation was a sweeping claim that I didn't read or address any point in all 23 pages!) If you realize you can make an obvious mistake in your claims once, it's the first step towards realizing you might be doing that a lot more than just that one time.
(Honestly I imagine there probably is one isolated point somewhere in this giant thread that I didn't respond to specifically. But until you find it and cite it, the vague accusation that maybe such a point exists doesn't exactly take us anywhere interesting in the discussion. I mean obviously I'd just immediately address that one point and we'd be right back where we were: with there still not being any good reason for games to be mostly/entirely slow travel.)
Post edited by Axehilt on
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I only read a few posts. Deep thoughts abound. You'll never get that great MMO feeling back because you already did it. You might get a taste of it for a few weeks, even a few months. After that, it'll taste like stale bread.
Already cited multiple points you failed to address, axe.
And two immediate problems with your solutions.
One, craftable fast nodes directly impacts the game world scale as well as the challenge the game world poses. By circumventing the need to traverse the environment you also circumvent the dangers that are built into survival games specifically to pose challenge. It also bypasses any shifting factors in the environment (such as in the case of 7 Days, supply drops) that are now either stupidly easy to obtain when they should be a challenge, or go wholly unnoticed by you teleporting right past where they spawned.
In other words, problem one is that you just short-circuited a bunch of the game's content with one mechanic.
If the game was designed with fast travel in mind and used a different sort of system where, say, events are seeded right near the player or only initiated as a reaction to the player's presence, then maybe it'd work, but you are talking about re-engineering more and more components of the game in order to satisfy a single feature.
Two, combating the very mechanic you added with another mechanic that is ripe for abuse. An object like that, while offering some depth in it's strategic defense value, also serves as a means to efficiently ruin another person's day very quickly by dropping such a tool in another person's base as a means to limit their ability to move, flee, etc and (since you said it's high durability) consequently pin people in a location that they can no longer participate in the game from.
"Skip to the interesting bits" only works for games that are built using discrete and heavily scripted experiences. In survival games, roguelikes, and many others part of the point of their design is the limitations and tools provided generate depth in the emergent gameplay. Bypassing the intended limitations of a game's tools can and does break a very many things in such games.
There's been a multitude of things you've failed to address and some of them were already called out for people to go check the page numbers to verify. Claiming reality isn't happening is not an argument of a rational mind.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Why would fast travel be better in '7 days to die' rather than slow travel.
Please explain....
Exploration can be interesting the first time. But not afterwards.
So craftable fast travel nodes would be added to the game with a moderate cost to set up.
Teleport inhibitors would be implemented for PVP reasons (slow-to-destroy game objects which prevent unfriendly players from teleporting to a fast travel node near an inhib.) Few players should be interested in PVP in open world games anyway, as only young or new players should find "I brought more friends so I win!" to be a compelling PVP mechanic.
So those are two simple solutions that would improve just about every survival game on the market by eliminating the excessive (shallow) slow travel from their gameplay.
It skips to the interesting bits; to the content players actually care about (exploring, fighting, looting, crafting, etc.)
Though keep in mind "skip to the interesting bits" is only as interesting as a game's most interesting bits. (7 Days has always struck me as a sub-par survival game.)
Also, it's important that you realize your earlier claims were baseless. This most recent post of yours is obviously a subject change away from the uncomfortable reality that you couldn't find a single example of a point I didn't address (even though your accusation was a sweeping claim that I didn't read or address any point in all 23 pages!) If you realize you can make an obvious mistake in your claims once, it's the first step towards realizing you might be doing that a lot more than just that one time.
(Honestly I imagine there probably is one isolated point somewhere in this giant thread that I didn't respond to specifically. But until you find it and cite it, the vague accusation that maybe such a point exists doesn't exactly take us anywhere interesting in the discussion. I mean obviously I'd just immediately address that one point and we'd be right back where we were: with there still not being any good reason for games to be mostly/entirely slow travel.)
Sorry but your entire post scream "I don't understand the point of the game".
Slow travel is not in the game for 'exploration' but because every step you take is dangerous. It is a survival game. Avoiding the very thing that is the danger invalidates the purpose of the game and the design choices made.
You have repeatedly proven that you fail to understand WHY games have slow travel, you fail to understand WHY players enjoy slow travel and you fail to understand WHY travel is an integral part of the over all design process for any game.
Lets try some other games...
Banished. You think it should have fast travel so that your people don't die when travelling to and from resources?
Civilization. Why build roads and railways lines when you could simply have a teleport pad....
Mount & Blade. Lots of slow travel there right. All the while towns and cities are being attacked and you have to actively find the attackers rather then just teleport to them for the 'good bits'.
COD. Fast travel so that you can defend bases easier?
State of Decay. Slow travel here....wonder why they didn't allow fast travel.....hmmm.
Crusader Kings. Just teleporting your troops to the location you want to invade would be easier then building ships and slowly travelling to the location to attack but...
Just a few of the games I purchased, play and enjoy WITH slow travel where the game would NOT work with fast travel.
I get it. YOU don't like slow travel. YOU don't understand how slow travel can be fun. YOU think everyone else should bow down to your opinion.
YOU are wrong. Slow travel can be fun, it can provided added gameplay and it can be essential in certain game designs.
Again, some games are fine for fast travel. But some games are NOT.
Sorry but your entire post scream "I don't understand the point of the game".
Slow travel is not in the game for 'exploration' but because every step you take is dangerous. It is a survival game. Avoiding the very thing that is the danger invalidates the purpose of the game and the design choices made.
You have repeatedly proven that you fail to understand WHY games have slow travel, you fail to understand WHY players enjoy slow travel and you fail to understand WHY travel is an integral part of the over all design process for any game.
Lets try some other games...
Banished. You think it should have fast travel so that your people don't die when travelling to and from resources?
Civilization. Why build roads and railways lines when you could simply have a teleport pad....
Mount & Blade. Lots of slow travel there right. All the while towns and cities are being attacked and you have to actively find the attackers rather then just teleport to them for the 'good bits'.
COD. Fast travel so that you can defend bases easier?
State of Decay. Slow travel here....wonder why they didn't allow fast travel.....hmmm.
Crusader Kings. Just teleporting your troops to the location you want to invade would be easier then building ships and slowly travelling to the location to attack but...
Just a few of the games I purchased, play and enjoy WITH slow travel where the game would NOT work with fast travel.
I get it. YOU don't like slow travel. YOU don't understand how slow travel can be fun. YOU think everyone else should bow down to your opinion.
YOU are wrong. Slow travel can be fun, it can provided added gameplay and it can be essential in certain game designs.
Again, some games are fine for fast travel. But some games are NOT.
Some of your examples work because they actually do travel right.
Banished, Civilization and Crusder Kings travel works as I can do other things whilst my units are traveling. Also you can speed up time because the travel/progression is to slow for some people.
I wouldn't mind seeing that type of travel in an MMO.
Other examples come down to size of game worlds. COD's maps are small. So is State of Decay, I could probably get from one end of the map to the other in around 5 minutes in a car.
I understand slow travel in an PvP MMO as the sense of danger is ever present. But depending on size of worlds I do expect some form of fast travel.
Sorry but your entire post scream "I don't understand the point of the game".
Slow travel is not in the game for 'exploration' but because every step you take is dangerous. It is a survival game. Avoiding the very thing that is the danger invalidates the purpose of the game and the design choices made.
You have repeatedly proven that you fail to understand WHY games have slow travel, you fail to understand WHY players enjoy slow travel and you fail to understand WHY travel is an integral part of the over all design process for any game.
Lets try some other games...
Banished. You think it should have fast travel so that your people don't die when travelling to and from resources?
Civilization. Why build roads and railways lines when you could simply have a teleport pad....
Mount & Blade. Lots of slow travel there right. All the while towns and cities are being attacked and you have to actively find the attackers rather then just teleport to them for the 'good bits'.
COD. Fast travel so that you can defend bases easier?
State of Decay. Slow travel here....wonder why they didn't allow fast travel.....hmmm.
Crusader Kings. Just teleporting your troops to the location you want to invade would be easier then building ships and slowly travelling to the location to attack but...
Just a few of the games I purchased, play and enjoy WITH slow travel where the game would NOT work with fast travel.
I get it. YOU don't like slow travel. YOU don't understand how slow travel can be fun. YOU think everyone else should bow down to your opinion.
YOU are wrong. Slow travel can be fun, it can provided added gameplay and it can be essential in certain game designs.
Again, some games are fine for fast travel. But some games are NOT.
Some of your examples work because they actually do travel right.
Banished, Civilization and Crusder Kings travel works as I can do other things whilst my units are traveling. Also you can speed up time because the travel/progression is to slow for some people.
I wouldn't mind seeing that type of travel in an MMO.
Other examples come down to size of game worlds. COD's maps are small. So is State of Decay, I could probably get from one end of the map to the other in around 5 minutes in a car.
I understand slow travel in an PvP MMO as the sense of danger is ever present. But depending on size of worlds I do expect some form of fast travel.
Well do you agree that there is no place for slow travel at all like Axe and Nari are stating or that slow travel works when designed in conjunction with the holistic design of the game overall?
Do you think slow travel has NO place in ANY game like they are stating or that, as discussed above, certain games are design with slow travel precisely because they NEED that form of travel?
If you examine Civilization and the travel mechanics, while you can speed up time, EVERYONE travels at a sped up time. If only from the tactical perspective, enabling fast travel for an individual unit outside of the time constraints that other units are using would totally invalidate the game and specifically the travel mechanics of the game. That is why some units move 1 square, some 2 and some 3.
There is a reason for this and it is NOT because slow travel is boring.
Well do you agree that there is no place for slow travel at all like Axe and Nari are stating or that slow travel works when designed in conjunction with the holistic design of the game overall?
Do you think slow travel has NO place in ANY game like they are stating or that, as discussed above, certain games are design with slow travel precisely because they NEED that form of travel?
If you examine Civilization and the travel mechanics, while you can speed up time, EVERYONE travels at a sped up time. If only from the tactical perspective, enabling fast travel for an individual unit outside of the time constraints that other units are using would totally invalidate the game and specifically the travel mechanics of the game. That is why some units move 1 square, some 2 and some 3.
There is a reason for this and it is NOT because slow travel is boring.
Yes. However I've never seen slow travel implemented in a way that is stimulating for gamers. The only reason it was there in earlier MMOs was to keep you subbed for as long as possible. Another mechanic to support this was longer down times between fights and loss of XP. All mechanics to keep you subbed for as long as possible.
These system remind me of lives in older games. You'd get to a point that was challenging, lose your lives and have to start from the beginning again. This mean repeating content you found easy just to get back to the challenging stuff.
Now I can play these games emulated on my PC with a save and they're pretty quick to finish because I'm not forced to repeat.
Constantly having to repeat unchallenging mechanics isn't the way forward. It's a mechanic of the past where resources/creativity was limited.
And I still see slow travel like that in most MMOs.
Well do you agree that there is no place for slow travel at all like Axe and Nari are stating or that slow travel works when designed in conjunction with the holistic design of the game overall?
Do you think slow travel has NO place in ANY game like they are stating or that, as discussed above, certain games are design with slow travel precisely because they NEED that form of travel?
If you examine Civilization and the travel mechanics, while you can speed up time, EVERYONE travels at a sped up time. If only from the tactical perspective, enabling fast travel for an individual unit outside of the time constraints that other units are using would totally invalidate the game and specifically the travel mechanics of the game. That is why some units move 1 square, some 2 and some 3.
There is a reason for this and it is NOT because slow travel is boring.
Yes. However I've never seen slow travel implemented in a way that is stimulating for gamers. The only reason it was there in earlier MMOs was to keep you subbed for as long as possible. Another mechanic to support this was longer down times between fights and loss of XP. All mechanics to keep you subbed for as long as possible.
These system remind me of lives in older games. You'd get to a point that was challenging, lose your lives and have to start from the beginning again. This mean repeating content you found easy just to get back to the challenging stuff.
Now I can play these games emulated on my PC with a save and they're pretty quick to finish because I'm not forced to repeat.
Constantly having to repeat unchallenging mechanics isn't the way forward. It's a mechanic of the past where resources/creativity was limited.
And I still see slow travel like that in most MMOs.
Yes to what part?
And I would refute the 'Ive never seen slow travel implemented in a way that is stimulating for gamers' as I don't think you can make such a blanket statement, especially as there are people in this thread arguing against that premise.
An argument could be made that it wasn't to keep you subbed but was to offer a challenge. I never thought about how much more I would be paying for losing a fight, only how I could overcome the challenge.
And I go back to what seems to be the crux of the discussion. Some people hate it, some don't mind it, some see the reason behind such a mechanic and realise it is a design choice for very specific reasons and accept it as such.
To me, travel is a situation based mechanic and as such needs to be assessed on a case by case basis. Blanket statements to the effect of 'travel is boring to me so it must be boring to you' are just ignorant, especially when I and others provide examples that then get ignored.
And I would refute the 'Ive never seen slow travel implemented in a way that is stimulating for gamers' as I don't think you can make such a blanket statement, especially as there are people in this thread arguing against that premise.
An argument could be made that it wasn't to keep you subbed but was to offer a challenge. I never thought about how much more I would be paying for losing a fight, only how I could overcome the challenge.
And I go back to what seems to be the crux of the discussion. Some people hate it, some don't mind it, some see the reason behind such a mechanic and realise it is a design choice for very specific reasons and accept it as such.
To me, travel is a situation based mechanic and as such needs to be assessed on a case by case basis. Blanket statements to the effect of 'travel is boring to me so it must be boring to you' are just ignorant, especially when I and others provide examples that then get ignored.
I agree that worlds without fast travel can work because single player games can do it. Bethesda games and the Projekt Red's Witcher 3 have deep, interesting worlds with fast travel that me and others choose to use it sparingly.
Can't wait for the new survival mode in Fallout 4 which does add a lot more decision making in traveling or exploring.
This is why at the core it's a very subjective opinion.
And I would refute the 'Ive never seen slow travel implemented in a way that is stimulating for gamers' as I don't think you can make such a blanket statement, especially as there are people in this thread arguing against that premise.
An argument could be made that it wasn't to keep you subbed but was to offer a challenge. I never thought about how much more I would be paying for losing a fight, only how I could overcome the challenge.
And I go back to what seems to be the crux of the discussion. Some people hate it, some don't mind it, some see the reason behind such a mechanic and realise it is a design choice for very specific reasons and accept it as such.
To me, travel is a situation based mechanic and as such needs to be assessed on a case by case basis. Blanket statements to the effect of 'travel is boring to me so it must be boring to you' are just ignorant, especially when I and others provide examples that then get ignored.
I agree that worlds without fast travel can work because single player games can do it. Bethesda games and the Projekt Red's Witcher 3 have deep, interesting worlds with fast travel that me and others choose to use it sparingly.
Can't wait for the new survival mode in Fallout 4 which does add a lot more decision making in traveling or exploring.
This is why at the core it's a very subjective opinion.
Subjective opinion I totally agree. But unfortunately one side of the argument totally dismisses the other sides opinion that slow travel can be fun and essential for some games. No problem with people that do not agree but to totally dismiss it as even existing is just obnoxious behavior.
Sorry but your entire post scream "I don't understand the point of the game".
Slow travel is not in the game for 'exploration' but because every step you take is dangerous. It is a survival game. Avoiding the very thing that is the danger invalidates the purpose of the game and the design choices made.
You have repeatedly proven that you fail to understand WHY games have slow travel, you fail to understand WHY players enjoy slow travel and you fail to understand WHY travel is an integral part of the over all design process for any game.
Lets try some other games...
Banished. You think it should have fast travel so that your people don't die when travelling to and from resources?
Civilization. Why build roads and railways lines when you could simply have a teleport pad....
Mount & Blade. Lots of slow travel there right. All the while towns and cities are being attacked and you have to actively find the attackers rather then just teleport to them for the 'good bits'.
COD. Fast travel so that you can defend bases easier?
State of Decay. Slow travel here....wonder why they didn't allow fast travel.....hmmm.
Crusader Kings. Just teleporting your troops to the location you want to invade would be easier then building ships and slowly travelling to the location to attack but...
Just a few of the games I purchased, play and enjoy WITH slow travel where the game would NOT work with fast travel.
I get it. YOU don't like slow travel. YOU don't understand how slow travel can be fun. YOU think everyone else should bow down to your opinion.
YOU are wrong. Slow travel can be fun, it can provided added gameplay and it can be essential in certain game designs.
Again, some games are fine for fast travel. But some games are NOT.
So in a MMORPG with fast travel players are never threatened with death?
'No, that's preposterous Axehilt.'
Oh, so then you are capable of understanding ways that 7 Days could still be a very dangerous world without its excessive slow travel! Phew, that's a relief. I was under the impression you were in an ultra-close-minded mindset and incapable of accepting basic and obvious creative solutions to problems!
Banished is an RTS. That means it literally uses exactly the fast travel I've explained earlier in this thread: the player fast-travels everywhere instantly, while his/her agents do not. The player's available decisions are never limited by his/her ability to traverse the map, because you can flit across the map at will; it's instant teleportation. The player's agents (workers) are the things limited by movement speed. This setup allows the player to seek a continuous flow of interesting decisions (and if that isn't possible and there are frequent times you're sitting there waiting on workers to travel somewhere, then that's just a bad RTS design...it's not like you've brought up Starcraft after all, you've brought up a lower tier game that's enjoyed objectively less success -- and pointing out that games with worse travel enjoy weaker success has been one of my cornerstone points from the beginning.)
COD has no excessive slow travel. You respawn literally within 10 secs travel distance of an opponent to shoot. (Heck in MW2 sometimes it was 0 seconds!)
State of Decay is just another survival game right? Craftable fast travel nodes.
Crusader Kings is another RTS. In seconds I can literally teleport across the entire globe. I might not have decisions to make there because my agents are limited, but I can teleport.
So now hopefully you understand several of the wrong assumptions you've been making. To recap:
Eliminating slow travel is about eliminating excessive shallowness in games. Eliminating shallowness is literally the root of this discussion.
Why is this important? Because of the evidence of what games succeed. Games which are a "series of interesting decisions" (-Sid Meier, creator of Sim City) are nearly always a great deal more successful than those which aren't. Decisions are interesting to players in a way that "watch this run animation for 4+ minutes" cannot be.
This doesn't mean travel can never be deep. If travel itself involves interesting decisions, it becomes desirable gameplay.
However creating deep travel requires substantial effort. This explains why it's not done in MMORPGs, which can't afford to spend time improving travel at the cost of core systems like combat (not to mention all the other stuff that has to be highly polished for a MMORPG to stand a chance.)
Which is why even though travel could be deep in MMORPGs, it isn't. And that's unlikely to change.
Splitting out the player's ability to traverse the world from their ability to affect the world (like the RTS games) is indeed a viable way of eliminating slow travel. And this particular method is why concerns that eliminating slow travel would eliminate game depth are completely wrong: with this method you eliminate something shallow (manual slow travel) while retaining something deep (slow movement of goods, in a game where localized economies are a thing.)
So hopefully now you're caught up in the thread you could've read, to understand why you're wrong and the source of your being wrong stems mostly from you not having read sufficient amounts of the thread to understand my position. Any argument that shallow travel is a necessary evil because it's "integrated" with other systems is simply wrong (that last bullet point explained why, and certainly that's not the only possible solution for eliminating slow travel in pursuit of deep gameplay.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Sorry but your entire post scream "I don't understand the point of the game".
Slow travel is not in the game for 'exploration' but because every step you take is dangerous. It is a survival game. Avoiding the very thing that is the danger invalidates the purpose of the game and the design choices made.
You have repeatedly proven that you fail to understand WHY games have slow travel, you fail to understand WHY players enjoy slow travel and you fail to understand WHY travel is an integral part of the over all design process for any game.
Lets try some other games...
Banished. You think it should have fast travel so that your people don't die when travelling to and from resources?
Civilization. Why build roads and railways lines when you could simply have a teleport pad....
Mount & Blade. Lots of slow travel there right. All the while towns and cities are being attacked and you have to actively find the attackers rather then just teleport to them for the 'good bits'.
COD. Fast travel so that you can defend bases easier?
State of Decay. Slow travel here....wonder why they didn't allow fast travel.....hmmm.
Crusader Kings. Just teleporting your troops to the location you want to invade would be easier then building ships and slowly travelling to the location to attack but...
Just a few of the games I purchased, play and enjoy WITH slow travel where the game would NOT work with fast travel.
I get it. YOU don't like slow travel. YOU don't understand how slow travel can be fun. YOU think everyone else should bow down to your opinion.
YOU are wrong. Slow travel can be fun, it can provided added gameplay and it can be essential in certain game designs.
Again, some games are fine for fast travel. But some games are NOT.
So in a MMORPG with fast travel players are never threatened with death?
'No, that's preposterous Axehilt.'
Oh, so then you are capable of understanding ways that 7 Days could still be a very dangerous world without its excessive slow travel! Phew, that's a relief. I was under the impression you were in an ultra-close-minded mindset and incapable of accepting basic and obvious creative solutions to problems!
Banished is an RTS. That means it literally uses exactly the fast travel I've explained earlier in this thread: the player fast-travels everywhere instantly, while his/her agents do not. The player's available decisions are never limited by his/her ability to traverse the map, because you can flit across the map at will; it's instant teleportation. The player's agents (workers) are the things limited by movement speed. This setup allows the player to seek a continuous flow of interesting decisions (and if that isn't possible and there are frequent times you're sitting there waiting on workers to travel somewhere, then that's just a bad RTS design...it's not like you've brought up Starcraft after all, you've brought up a lower tier game that's enjoyed objectively less success -- and pointing out that games with worse travel enjoy weaker success has been one of my cornerstone points from the beginning.)
COD has no excessive slow travel. You respawn literally within 10 secs travel distance of an opponent to shoot. (Heck in MW2 sometimes it was 0 seconds!)
State of Decay is just another survival game right? Craftable fast travel nodes.
Crusader Kings is another RTS. In seconds I can literally teleport across the entire globe. I might not have decisions to make there because my agents are limited, but I can teleport.
So now hopefully you understand several of the wrong assumptions you've been making. To recap:
Eliminating slow travel is about eliminating excessive shallowness in games. Eliminating shallowness is literally the root of this discussion.
Why is this important? Because of the evidence of what games succeed. Games which are a "series of interesting decisions" (-Sid Meier, creator of Sim City) are nearly always a great deal more successful than those which aren't. Decisions are interesting to players in a way that "watch this run animation for 4+ minutes" cannot be.
This doesn't mean travel can never be deep. If travel itself involves interesting decisions, it becomes desirable gameplay.
However creating deep travel requires substantial effort. This explains why it's not done in MMORPGs, which can't afford to spend time improving travel at the cost of core systems like combat (not to mention all the other stuff that has to be highly polished for a MMORPG to stand a chance.)
Which is why even though travel could be deep in MMORPGs, it isn't. And that's unlikely to change.
Splitting out the player's ability to traverse the world from their ability to affect the world (like the RTS games) is indeed a viable way of eliminating slow travel. And this particular method is why concerns that eliminating slow travel would eliminate game depth are completely wrong: with this method you eliminate something shallow (manual slow travel) while retaining something deep (slow movement of goods, in a game where localized economies are a thing.)
So hopefully now you're caught up in the thread you could've read, to understand why you're wrong and the source of your being wrong stems mostly from you not having read sufficient amounts of the thread to understand my position. Any argument that shallow travel is a necessary evil because it's "integrated" with other systems is simply wrong (that last bullet point explained why, and certainly that's not the only possible solution for eliminating slow travel in pursuit of deep gameplay.)
Subjective opinion I totally agree. But unfortunately one side of the argument totally dismisses the other sides opinion that slow travel can be fun and essential for some games. No problem with people that do not agree but to totally dismiss it as even existing is just obnoxious behavior.
Well do you agree that there is no place for slow travel at all like Axe and Nari are stating or that slow travel works when designed in conjunction with the holistic design of the game overall?
hey ... don't put words in my mouth. First, i never deny there are those (like yourself) who like to walk 20 min in a game.
Secondly, i never said slow travel has no place at all .. i said it should be an OPTION (or fast travel is an option) so everyone is happy.
In fact, why would you ignore this point when it solves all the problems? Do you dispute that options are good?
Well do you agree that there is no place for slow travel at all like Axe and Nari are stating or that slow travel works when designed in conjunction with the holistic design of the game overall?
hey ... don't put words in my mouth. First, i never deny there are those (like yourself) who like to walk 20 min in a game.
Secondly, i never said slow travel has no place at all .. i said it should be an OPTION (or fast travel is an option) so everyone is happy.
In fact, why would you ignore this point when it solves all the problems? Do you dispute that options are good?
Sometimes there is a purpose to slow travel and by allowing skipping of it slow travel's purpose is removed. This is part of what some people don't understand. They say x game should have the features everyone wants, but don't realize that is ruining the purpose of somethings at the same time. One example is as I provided before. The scope (size) of the world is lost. Another is the danger in traveling from place to place. I doubt anyone want's to have a long travel where there is nothing at all unless it fits the area. For instance an open planes or desert might not be teeming with life. Instead the purpose might just be to be able to survive and locate your next destination. This can create a feeling of immersion if done right to provide the player with a sense they are indeed in these types of scenarios. Permafrost is a good example in Everquest. It's hard to see with all the snow cover and darkness. Navigating it can be quite difficult and you might run into a nasty mob at any moment. It might popup out of the blue since it's difficult to see.
Comments
The only person I've blocked is Deivos, and we all know he consistently fails to make any logical or evidence-based points, he's just here to argue for arguments' sake.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
We've already shown other games combining travel with other game mechanics to create gameplay (that's rather literally what a racing game does, for example).
The statement "The other side is arguing against that focus on deep decisions" is patently false. Reality being, there is a massive swathe of deep gameplay decisions being developed and dictated by the use of travel.
The point of integration was stated rather clearly with combat;
"It's only by adding special abilities, secondary effects and the time factor to gameplay that combat gets complex. Attacking a target by itself would be the most tedious activity if it weren't for how integrated it is into the mechanics of the characters and mobs in the game.
So the argument that "adding meaning or feature integration would magically cause a boring thing to be fun" is itself a false argument. Feature integration is the only reason game mechanics have any interest or depth. From combat to travel, it's how many aspects support the tools and how those tools interact with each-other that makes a game. It's not magic taking place, it's design that actually supports the feature set. A good game designer would know that."
You are at least right about one part of your own commentary, it's not a logical line of reasoning. You have very clearly expressed you opinion.
And Immodium, you're not arguing for "fast travel" in the context of moving a bit faster by tuning a vehicle. You aren't going to warp to the finish line by swapping tires, which is the sort of fast travel axe and nariu have been talking about.
This very statement;
"Totally agree. When I implied it wasn't deep, I was talking about the other systems outside of travel in those games. You could argue that the systems in some of those games to try and make your car go faster in the garage are deep. However that's promoting fast travel, not slow. So irrelevant.
Spent hours on Mario Kart snes doing those time trials with friends. I'd just try and drift my way through the tracks, looked cooler.
Highlights that you are talking about enhancing elements of travel itself, not accelerating it to the point of bypassing the mechanic (which is again the fundamental element that drives a racing game). "Fast travel" in the context that's been provided so far means teleportation to locations, not "making travel go faster" as you just implied. Your example is more akin to what I talked about previously with using different vehicles and mounts to affect game scope and pace.
Your example is more of a case of what I described previously using Cadwell's quote as reference, controlling and limiting player mechanics so that there is an element to balance and grow with enabling deeper gameplay.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You not enjoying that I disagree with you and you not enjoying the evidence provided to counter you does not invalidate the logic provided.
And your counterarguments to me so far? You never actually address the content I provide, you simply hand-wave and dodge it in favor of insulting my intelligence multiple times. That is a grave amount of dishonesty on your part and does not achieve the case of being intellectual in the least.
I'm here to correct misinformation. If you're unhappy with that, then learn from what you are corrected on and cut down on the misinformation.
EDIT: Only reason I end up correcting you most of the time is you seem to have zero distinction between your opinions and actual facts. Claiming everything is objective and that you're a messiah of game design does not warp reality into such being the case.
So too being the point about these games and their design. Some people like that this planet still exists, just because the majority are happy to destroy the ecosystem doesn't mean we should belay efforts to change that either. Just because you found a game design that you are comfortable with right now and can say how it is super popular does not mean that other games no longer should exist, the world should stop turning, and progress to stop being made and strived for.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You need evidence of your claim that I'm ignoring things. Til then, it's just an empty accusation.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That's quite a lot of very specific evidence you've ignored.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You address nothing and ignoring EVERY point made by everyone with a differing opinion. If you think I am going to go back over the 23 pages that YOU can just read for EVERY counter point and waste time quoting them because you are too lazy to do so then you can get lost.
Stop being lazy and look them up yourself, they are all here.
Stop ignoring my responses to fabricate this imaginary critique. Read what I said, then either understand I addressed everything or cite specific evidence of my missing something.
Without evidence you have nothing. Cite evidence, or let the issue drop. Vague accusations are meaningless. Cite specifics.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Evidence and specifics were offered in abundance. Ignoring these things has very much been your bag.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Please explain....
If you do like slow travel in "7 days to die", you can ignore the option of fast travel. If you do not, use it. It does not take a genius to figure out that having an option makes more people happy.
So craftable fast travel nodes would be added to the game with a moderate cost to set up.
Teleport inhibitors would be implemented for PVP reasons (slow-to-destroy game objects which prevent unfriendly players from teleporting to a fast travel node near an inhib.) Few players should be interested in PVP in open world games anyway, as only young or new players should find "I brought more friends so I win!" to be a compelling PVP mechanic.
So those are two simple solutions that would improve just about every survival game on the market by eliminating the excessive (shallow) slow travel from their gameplay.
It skips to the interesting bits; to the content players actually care about (exploring, fighting, looting, crafting, etc.)
Though keep in mind "skip to the interesting bits" is only as interesting as a game's most interesting bits. (7 Days has always struck me as a sub-par survival game.)
Also, it's important that you realize your earlier claims were baseless. This most recent post of yours is obviously a subject change away from the uncomfortable reality that you couldn't find a single example of a point I didn't address (even though your accusation was a sweeping claim that I didn't read or address any point in all 23 pages!) If you realize you can make an obvious mistake in your claims once, it's the first step towards realizing you might be doing that a lot more than just that one time.
(Honestly I imagine there probably is one isolated point somewhere in this giant thread that I didn't respond to specifically. But until you find it and cite it, the vague accusation that maybe such a point exists doesn't exactly take us anywhere interesting in the discussion. I mean obviously I'd just immediately address that one point and we'd be right back where we were: with there still not being any good reason for games to be mostly/entirely slow travel.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
And two immediate problems with your solutions.
One, craftable fast nodes directly impacts the game world scale as well as the challenge the game world poses. By circumventing the need to traverse the environment you also circumvent the dangers that are built into survival games specifically to pose challenge. It also bypasses any shifting factors in the environment (such as in the case of 7 Days, supply drops) that are now either stupidly easy to obtain when they should be a challenge, or go wholly unnoticed by you teleporting right past where they spawned.
In other words, problem one is that you just short-circuited a bunch of the game's content with one mechanic.
If the game was designed with fast travel in mind and used a different sort of system where, say, events are seeded right near the player or only initiated as a reaction to the player's presence, then maybe it'd work, but you are talking about re-engineering more and more components of the game in order to satisfy a single feature.
Two, combating the very mechanic you added with another mechanic that is ripe for abuse. An object like that, while offering some depth in it's strategic defense value, also serves as a means to efficiently ruin another person's day very quickly by dropping such a tool in another person's base as a means to limit their ability to move, flee, etc and (since you said it's high durability) consequently pin people in a location that they can no longer participate in the game from.
"Skip to the interesting bits" only works for games that are built using discrete and heavily scripted experiences. In survival games, roguelikes, and many others part of the point of their design is the limitations and tools provided generate depth in the emergent gameplay. Bypassing the intended limitations of a game's tools can and does break a very many things in such games.
There's been a multitude of things you've failed to address and some of them were already called out for people to go check the page numbers to verify. Claiming reality isn't happening is not an argument of a rational mind.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Slow travel is not in the game for 'exploration' but because every step you take is dangerous. It is a survival game. Avoiding the very thing that is the danger invalidates the purpose of the game and the design choices made.
You have repeatedly proven that you fail to understand WHY games have slow travel, you fail to understand WHY players enjoy slow travel and you fail to understand WHY travel is an integral part of the over all design process for any game.
Lets try some other games...
Banished. You think it should have fast travel so that your people don't die when travelling to and from resources?
Civilization. Why build roads and railways lines when you could simply have a teleport pad....
Mount & Blade. Lots of slow travel there right. All the while towns and cities are being attacked and you
have to actively find the attackers rather then just teleport to them for the 'good bits'.
COD. Fast travel so that you can defend bases easier?
State of Decay. Slow travel here....wonder why they didn't allow fast travel.....hmmm.
Crusader Kings. Just teleporting your troops to the location you want to invade would be easier then building ships and slowly travelling to the location to attack but...
Just a few of the games I purchased, play and enjoy WITH slow travel where the game would NOT work with fast travel.
I get it. YOU don't like slow travel. YOU don't understand how slow travel can be fun. YOU think everyone else should bow down to your opinion.
YOU are wrong. Slow travel can be fun, it can provided added gameplay and it can be essential in certain game designs.
Again, some games are fine for fast travel. But some games are NOT.
Banished, Civilization and Crusder Kings travel works as I can do other things whilst my units are traveling. Also you can speed up time because the travel/progression is to slow for some people.
I wouldn't mind seeing that type of travel in an MMO.
Other examples come down to size of game worlds. COD's maps are small. So is State of Decay, I could probably get from one end of the map to the other in around 5 minutes in a car.
I understand slow travel in an PvP MMO as the sense of danger is ever present. But depending on size of worlds I do expect some form of fast travel.
Do you think slow travel has NO place in ANY game like they are stating or that, as discussed above, certain games are design with slow travel precisely because they NEED that form of travel?
If you examine Civilization and the travel mechanics, while you can speed up time, EVERYONE travels at a sped up time. If only from the tactical perspective, enabling fast travel for an individual unit outside of the time constraints that other units are using would totally invalidate the game and specifically the travel mechanics of the game. That is why some units move 1 square, some 2 and some 3.
There is a reason for this and it is NOT because slow travel is boring.
These system remind me of lives in older games. You'd get to a point that was challenging, lose your lives and have to start from the beginning again. This mean repeating content you found easy just to get back to the challenging stuff.
Now I can play these games emulated on my PC with a save and they're pretty quick to finish because I'm not forced to repeat.
Constantly having to repeat unchallenging mechanics isn't the way forward. It's a mechanic of the past where resources/creativity was limited.
And I still see slow travel like that in most MMOs.
And I would refute the 'Ive never seen slow travel implemented in a way that is stimulating for gamers' as I don't think you can make such a blanket statement, especially as there are people in this thread arguing against that premise.
An argument could be made that it wasn't to keep you subbed but was to offer a challenge. I never thought about how much more I would be paying for losing a fight, only how I could overcome the challenge.
And I go back to what seems to be the crux of the discussion. Some people hate it, some don't mind it, some see the reason behind such a mechanic and realise it is a design choice for very specific reasons and accept it as such.
To me, travel is a situation based mechanic and as such needs to be assessed on a case by case basis. Blanket statements to the effect of 'travel is boring to me so it must be boring to you' are just ignorant, especially when I and others provide examples that then get ignored.
Can't wait for the new survival mode in Fallout 4 which does add a lot more decision making in traveling or exploring.
This is why at the core it's a very subjective opinion.
'No, that's preposterous Axehilt.'
Oh, so then you are capable of understanding ways that 7 Days could still be a very dangerous world without its excessive slow travel! Phew, that's a relief. I was under the impression you were in an ultra-close-minded mindset and incapable of accepting basic and obvious creative solutions to problems!
- Banished is an RTS. That means it literally uses exactly the fast travel I've explained earlier in this thread: the player fast-travels everywhere instantly, while his/her agents do not. The player's available decisions are never limited by his/her ability to traverse the map, because you can flit across the map at will; it's instant teleportation. The player's agents (workers) are the things limited by movement speed. This setup allows the player to seek a continuous flow of interesting decisions (and if that isn't possible and there are frequent times you're sitting there waiting on workers to travel somewhere, then that's just a bad RTS design...it's not like you've brought up Starcraft after all, you've brought up a lower tier game that's enjoyed objectively less success -- and pointing out that games with worse travel enjoy weaker success has been one of my cornerstone points from the beginning.)
- COD has no excessive slow travel. You respawn literally within 10 secs travel distance of an opponent to shoot. (Heck in MW2 sometimes it was 0 seconds!)
- State of Decay is just another survival game right? Craftable fast travel nodes.
- Crusader Kings is another RTS. In seconds I can literally teleport across the entire globe. I might not have decisions to make there because my agents are limited, but I can teleport.
So now hopefully you understand several of the wrong assumptions you've been making. To recap:- Eliminating slow travel is about eliminating excessive shallowness in games. Eliminating shallowness is literally the root of this discussion.
- Why is this important? Because of the evidence of what games succeed. Games which are a "series of interesting decisions" (-Sid Meier, creator of Sim City) are nearly always a great deal more successful than those which aren't. Decisions are interesting to players in a way that "watch this run animation for 4+ minutes" cannot be.
- This doesn't mean travel can never be deep. If travel itself involves interesting decisions, it becomes desirable gameplay.
- However creating deep travel requires substantial effort. This explains why it's not done in MMORPGs, which can't afford to spend time improving travel at the cost of core systems like combat (not to mention all the other stuff that has to be highly polished for a MMORPG to stand a chance.)
- Which is why even though travel could be deep in MMORPGs, it isn't. And that's unlikely to change.
- Splitting out the player's ability to traverse the world from their ability to affect the world (like the RTS games) is indeed a viable way of eliminating slow travel. And this particular method is why concerns that eliminating slow travel would eliminate game depth are completely wrong: with this method you eliminate something shallow (manual slow travel) while retaining something deep (slow movement of goods, in a game where localized economies are a thing.)
So hopefully now you're caught up in the thread you could've read, to understand why you're wrong and the source of your being wrong stems mostly from you not having read sufficient amounts of the thread to understand my position. Any argument that shallow travel is a necessary evil because it's "integrated" with other systems is simply wrong (that last bullet point explained why, and certainly that's not the only possible solution for eliminating slow travel in pursuit of deep gameplay.)"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
obnoxious behavior