Runebook Test Run

"Quality of Life Improvements: This was the main focus of Release 57. Our goal here was to improve moment to moment and daily gameplay. Siege skipping, Control Point skipping, Global banks, removed NPC slowdowns, double XP as the new normal, reduced Roving encounter awareness and other similar changes should all make very noticeable improvements to every Avatars play experience by removing continual inconveniences and slow-downs."
-release notes

It seemed the argument for not having rune books is that it would destroy local economies that the team was striving for. With the death of local economies that is laced in this message above, can we please give rune books a test run? Traveling this world is BORING. Dig into YOUR roots and use what's the best travel option of any game ever. I would play everyday if I could just get on and play where I wanted. Right now, it's a chore and a shame I have to waste so much time loading multiple scenes and running through what is essentially a dull overworld map.

Runebooks would improve the quality of life 10 fold.

If you actually watch this video, I kept the load times as they are in game, meaning I didn't speed them up to make runebooks look better. I am showing how many load screens one can eliminate from the game by using this method. Each scene is 15-20 seconds long before a runebook is used.

 

I'd love to see something like this, personally. I don't know that we even need the same nuance functionality that UO had (Ie, making a rune to a particular point on the -ground- for example) - its less relevant here, since you can't drop the runes on the ground here (like to be adverts for shops and such), and even if you could the instancing makes it less useful.

What would be useful is if you could create 'runes' (or whatever we want to call it in Sota) tied to scene transition points, like the entrance of a mine (to avoid a long walk across Novia, loadscreen, walk through scene to mine, loadscreen), there are many 'scenes within scenes' that this would be useful for.

You could even make it gold sinky to do, or make it a tradeskill that has to be levelled up in order to master the power of the whatever, materials to be gathered to create the link, and so forth, after which point you could crank out links to the scene in question for use/sell. This could be a massive gold sink if done correctly. Like, you have to level runesmithing or whatever. You could require a substantial survey of the (adventure) scene in question to establish the link which creates value for people who have done thorough exploration/research.

Rune Libraries in UO were great things. Be nice if there was a piece of say, PoT deco, that served as the rune-hub-thing (like a public runebook), that town owners/stewards could fill up with potential destinations. Like to sister towns they want to support, particular shops they want to showcase, or adventure scenes provided for convenience.

I could also see individual property "stones" being anchor points as well, so you could create teleport links to 'guild hall', for example, so that entire guild stops making fun of you for getting lost every week, or to all of your own different properties in different towns, or to your best friend's house.

EVENT planners could send runes in the mail with their invitations, no more wandering the scene asking in zone chat where the party is.
Or perhaps a link to your favorite DUNGEON once those are a thing.

As I say, I don't think the system from UO works precisely here, but modifications of it to give the same level of convenience absolutely could. It could be an xp sink, a cash sink, a materials sink for all the stuff that has no use, etc.

 

I think some of the initial steps to encourage people to play SotA (again) that Port have taken in R57 are great, this would really add to the game IMHO. It gives people the choice to port, walk or use coconuts to get to said destination opposed to being frustrated (if you want to port) that none of your 'friends' (yea right) aren't anywhere near where you'd like to go.

I'm currently subbed in a different game having taken a break and believe me the port to player in guild / portals offered are such a boon to my play style as I get to participate in content I want to and not have to keep running back n forth to do what i consider interesting stuff. I get others love the feel of seeing people on the world map and may decide to chat en route, but to force us all down that pathway means less people playing the game as time can be precious to each and everyone of us in different ways.

Limit where you can port to, such as entrance to a zone like @kaeshiva suggests, that way ensuring no one gets passed content that constitutes cheating or manipulating the zone mechanics. Cost wise though needs to be carefully thought out, I mean currently if you decide to port through the control point areas (yes I know that's negated now) it costs 3,000gold each time! yea right I bet the stats on that are minuscule for usage, maybe via reg cost or a low denomination COTO to use a portal would encourage more MMO style players to return / try out the game and then sub or buy stuff to enhance their game and thus help keep the game alive and fully kicking going forward.

 

Love the idea,

we already have a scroll directly to a location ingame now. (teleport do obsidian trial) would love the idea of those specific 'teleport to location x' scrolls which could be placed in a book or something

 

Fantastic job on that mock-up!

 

@reesian

love the idea, personally I would add a "Mark" button in the book against each location space. I don't think there is the need to actually have runes like in UO (no need for all the clutter). I think if the book has a Mark and Recall feature that would be perfect, I don't even think there would be a real requirement to "charge" the book up, provided you have recall scrolls in your pack.

I would love to be able to craft recall books, trade them, put them in libraries for others to use. Maybe patterns for the cover, special runebook dyes.

I also still believe that in all Towns you should be able to Mark exactly where you stand.....it would be great for marking vendor locations and points of interest. I think it should only be dungeons where you can only mark an entrance.

 

Greetings all. I would like to list some of the Travel options I have encountered in no particular order.

Runescape has craft able runes for towns that require different levels of rune crafting. Canoes you can craft, balloons and gliders you can use.
LOTRO has Mounts, some faster than others
GW2 and Skyrim would allow you to travel to towns you have visited before.
WOW has travel guided based on alliance as well as land based and flying mounts.

All of these are great ideas but other than UO did any other Ultima have an instant travel option other than Moongates? LB has his reasons for limiting fast travel and some have been discussed. One being exploring and another being economy. In Large games like WOW, GW2, LOTRO, and others that are heavily populated it is not that big a deal. But in small communities fast travel means death or ghost town status. And while I envision being able to make rune stones I could hand out to people to come visit my nested town I know when I stop handing them out my traffic would decrease.

IMHO the only way to have fast travel and promote exploration and local economies is to have a limited number of places, entrances only, and a learning curve to craft the busy cities. So like specialization limits you to 2 you could have all the Lunar Rifts and 5 additional Runes out of all the places you could craft. A quick swap on your set of 5 could be done like the deck swap which would cost time, focus, and maybe coins but you could have a Rune set for vendors, a set for favorite combat scenes, and a set for guild homes and guild mates.

 

This is what you are searching for I think...

 

More like..............



EDIT: Nobody is stopping anyone from walking around......I actually don't care how anyone want's to play. That being said there is no reason why the game can't be made more fun and less frustrating for the average and typical gamer.

 

Well even if I may not use a rune system like I do not use the scrolls it still seems reasonable to discuss about mechanics that others would like to have and so I would like to add some short ideas.
To make it most easy to implement I would suggest to use as much as possible of the already existing mechanics/items…maybe by adding a rune book and minor changes to the way scrolls work as the current teleport mechanic was an interim solution from the start.

The book could look like the example @reesian has shown but I do not know if we need to know the exact coordinates. I guess the scene-name (Brittany, Kingsport,...) and the destination-name (the name of the lot owner, the name of the NPC-tavern,…) would be more sufficient. Additionally I would suggest to add a third line with the possibility to add some short personal notes…maybe just 50 letters to add some info’s like “smith, every Friday new gear”.

Depending on the type of book you get 5 to 10 possible destination slots. E.g. everyone starts with a simple 5 slot rune book, but there is a more advanced 8 slots book craft able or a 10 slots book in the addon store and those books could be traded (and stolen) to share some unique destination with others.

Maybe rune books could be managed like card decks. You can have multiple books in your inventory but just one is active and you have to switch if you want to use the runes in another book…so to say the runes in a book are inactive until an avatar is making a magic connection to the book.

I think there should be also a possibility to erase runes but I’m not sure if this should be free of any charge…maybe a Coto could be needed or a special alchemistic potion...

Recall scrolls would change/extend their effect. By using a recall scroll everyone can mark every lot as destination point in his rune book. Additionally the devs add this possibility to e.g. the skull poles at scene entrances to make even uninhabited regions a possible destination. Maybe they could even add some special markers at interesting PoI like an NPC tavern within a dungeon or something similar.

Teleport scrolls would be needed as indirect reagent you just need to have in your inventory. You open a rune book, klick on a slot and one teleport scroll is used to reach the choosen destination.
If the devs have the possibility to measure distances maybe the costs could even change depending on the distance.
Destination in the same region = 1 teleport scroll
Destination in a bordering region = 2 teleport scrolls
Destination still on the same continent = 3 teleport scrolls
Destination on a nearby continent = 5 teleport scrolls
Destination on a distant continent = 10 teleport scrolls

 

i probly wont care either way, but if there were rune book, i know for a fact i would see less people traveling on the overworld than i do now, which is not really something i want. Also it already seems near pointless to have mounts other than for looks, this would make it even more pointless.

But most people also just teleport everywhere they want with scrolls already so i dont see a reason why not, as long as it costs money to use them enough so that its still viable to walk places.

 

With the removal of requiring passage through control points, it doesn't take very long to traverse the entire continent. There is no need for runes, runebooks, or even teleport scrolls anymore. If the mount stretch goal is ever fulfilled, it would further reduce the time required to travel.

The distance between locations and the time required to travel between them and from the entrance of the scene to your final destination is an integral part of the design of the game. If you're finding this particular experience lacking, then it's a design opportunity for the team to solve.

Rather than removing travel entirely, what would make travelling from one destination to another more exciting for you, specifically? Rare spawns? More and better treasure chests?

 

Yes we need rune books, even if it cost a million gold or a few 100 coto's. Having to endure the loading screen 7-10 times to get where I want to be is not a positive aspect of this game

 

Agreed. The overworld is already fast travel. The runebook argument makes perfect sense in a sceneless game, but the fact that (especially with control points and sieges out of the way) you can get ~95% of the way to your destination (the other ~5% being inside the scene) within 1-3 minutes is fast enough.

 

We still need teleport scrolls. When episode 2 comes out there will be a new land so your 1-3 minute to get anywhere is moot. People are asking for teleport scrolls to be removed but when the boats arrive on a schedule to the new lands people will be back here crying we need again. Just leave them as they are.

 

Simply my opinion.
No runebooks. No equivalents.
All the arguments for and against have been made countless time over the last 5 years. I won't regurgitate them.
I remain opposed to the destruction of overland travel.

 

+1000

 

If it were so, I'd picture a very high skill level for runecraft and recall to rune, that way, you've earned it after having traversed the map on foot or via moongate (sorry, Lunar Rift) for X hours play. That way, only the veterans can fast travel (they've seen it all, and *earned* it) but the newbies have to run around and explore the charms of the world an bump into each other, and have das adventures and so forth.