MMOSide Chat - Do You Like Fast Travel In MMOs? | MMORPG.com

cameltosis

You have to match your convenience mechanics with the game you're designing.

Generally speaking, making your players walk or ride everywhere manually is a great way to connect your players to the game world. That's a very good thing. It gives a real appreciation for the scale of the game and helps with attachment to the world.

However

Walking or riding somewhere manually tends to be time intensive and boring. So, if the rest of the game's design requires a lot of travelling about, then the ratio of fun to boring gets really out of hand. Your players want to be doing to activities that they enjoy, not wasting time just getting to that activity. This is where fast travel comes in.

With all that in mind, I'm in favour of quick travel between major hubs (instant porting), then maybe automated travel between major and minor hubs, then manual from there onwards. But, totally depends on the size of the world. In a small world, then no quick travel at all.

Iselin

Kyleran said:

Iselin said:

I prefer the way WoW does it to the way ESO does. In ESO it's just a teleport but in WoW there is actual travel on the flying mount, boat or whatever.

So you don't use the hearth stone feature, or sometimes kill yourself for a free trip somewhere?

Do you fly or ride to all dungeons or just port there from the queue?

Flying on a Gryphon was fun back in the day but now I prefer the convenience of ESO's way shrines and house porting.

Porting directly to your friends at the way shrine nearest them is a pretty good feature too.

Heck, I even like how ESO's mounts can be jacked to double time it, often encourages me to ride places instead of porting, though it sometimes results in me plunging off cliffs to my death if I'm sight seeing too much.

Of I course I use it. I'm not a zealot

The scenic trips in WoW are just a more old-school change of pace even if I often just alt-tab to my browser or go for a bio, raid the fridge or whatever.

I go AFK in ESO too but them I'm just a random guy staring off into space doing nothing. Those flying mount rides in WoW, especially the long ones, just create natural breaks in the game.

The pile-up of afk players at the destination in WoW tell me I'm not the only one that uses then that way. I'm glad they didn't QOL those out of the game.

ultimateduck

Aeander said:

Yes. A game that relies on inconvenience to function is a bad game. If fast travel and dungeon finders can "ruin" your game, it wasn't good to begin with.

A game that relies on instant travel to every location to function is a bad MMO. If the lack of fast travel and dungeon finders can "ruin" your game, it wasn't a good game to begin with.

What's the point of a living perpetual world that is circumvented with insta travel everywhere? What the point of guilds or a community when you can look at a finder screen and click a "Join" button? Maybe you're playing the wrong type of games?... or maybe MMOs have just gone off course.

Sovrath

Aeander said:

Yes. A game that relies on inconvenience to function is a bad game. If fast travel and dungeon finders can "ruin" your game, it wasn't good to begin with.

It's not an inconvenience if you view it as part of the gameplay.

There is something to be said about actually experiencing the world as the developers made it. Whatever that world may be.

Mendel

I much prefer automated travel like a horse/boat route that you just pay for and ride, like the horse routes in DAoC.  It allows you to move to a destination while allowing the player to attend to real life. 

Instant travel should be used sparingly.  I see Instant travel as 3 distinct types.  The first variation of the instant travel is like the EQ1 Nexus, ports that operate at timed intervals -- there's waiting involved, so it accommodates the need for an /afk.  The second type is a triggered transport, where the player controls when the travel occurs.  This is similar to the various PoK stones, pre-set destinations where you click and go.  The third type is the player-portal, where the activation and destination are entirely determined by a player, i.e., the portal spell.  I would prefer that games incorporate a personal cost (health, mana, money) to use these forms of travel.

Theocritus

I remember in a couple of games though where you run around so much that I think I wore out the W key, especially games that are quest driven, and want you to run around between quest givers/areas constantly. That isn't enjoyable either.

Scot

Slapshot1188 said:

I kind of liked how DAoC had it.  There were horse routes that could take you places swiftly (you could jump off at any time) and you could teleport from your frontier fortress to the other realms frontiers.  Once there it was walking.  Also, it was kind of cool how the teleport was not instant but you had to wait for set times.  This helped grouping as well as you'd start chatting with the other folks on the pad.

It took about ten minutes to ride from the furthest part of Cornwall to the end of the horse route in northern England, can you imagine all the whining in any modern MMO if they had to do that now?

Po_gg

Scot said:

It took about ten minutes to ride from the furthest part of Cornwall to the end of the horse route in northern England, can you imagine all the whining in any modern MMO if they had to do that now?

Well, it takes over 20 minutes on a fast mount to ride from Thorin's Hall to Mordor

Kyleran

Scot said:

Slapshot1188 said:

I kind of liked how DAoC had it.  There were horse routes that could take you places swiftly (you could jump off at any time) and you could teleport from your frontier fortress to the other realms frontiers.  Once there it was walking.  Also, it was kind of cool how the teleport was not instant but you had to wait for set times.  This helped grouping as well as you'd start chatting with the other folks on the pad.

It took about ten minutes to ride from the furthest part of Cornwall to the end of the horse route in northern England, can you imagine all the whining in any modern MMO if they had to do that now?

I used to read books during the ride.