Rant on Travel

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Satan Himself, Feb 6, 2016.

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  1. Satan Himself

    Satan Himself Avatar

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    The current state of travel is already HORRENDOUS. The inability to easily access your home, your POT, your continent (Novia vs. Hidden Vale), your guildmates, events, and the numerous beautiful towns and scenes that have been built (and will be built) is a damn shame. Zoning is going away and even now has a long cooldowns. /stuck is going away. The current state of travel will worsen after these changes.

    They are introducing new travel methods. I understand the hangout to say that you can bind ONE location, either your house (if you own one) or another location (like a town crier). I didn't get the impression that you could have multiple "runes"/bindings that could take you to more than one location. So we can't have a rune to Kingsport and a rune to our house and a rune to our guildhouse. I hope I'm wrong.

    They intend to add an ability to "recall" to people on your friends list but this is more restrictive than the current /zone system, because in the future someone must be on your friends list to move to them, whereas currently they need not be on your friends list. So if someone's doing an event, and they're not on your friends list, be prepared to walk across Novia for the 666th time.

    The devs have built this beautiful world but they're making it unnecessarily difficult to access. They are forcing us, effectively, to walk from place to place across a map that we've seen a million times, instead of letting us get to the action, to the party, to the dungeon, to the home.

    I understand that travel restrictions are intended to curb "abuse" (one person's abuse is another person's convenience) and exploits. But the devs are so hell-bent on making sure we can't pop around and have fun that they're making us spend TOO MUCH TIME walking around. All of which is compounded by REs and scene-loading.

    I know many of you will disagree, and some will knee-jerk cry "instant gratification", but IMO, for my style of play, the game design with respect to movement is disastrous, and it's worsening.

    I played today for a while and pretty much disliked the combat (another issue - still not fun) and my inability to efficiently move around between the Hidden Vale and Novia, between houses, between the POTs I inhabit, between stores I needed to visit to sell and buy items. The drudgery of travel was stifling and ruinous.

    I came here to play. Not to be frustrated and bored by game mechanics that are SO easy to fix.

    Game killer for me. If I can't move, I can't play. The state of the game otherwise is pretty hard to take but we continue to see baby steps, and sometimes bigger-than-baby steps, in the right direction. But this whole travel system is just a backbreaker, and it's getting worse. Sad to say. :(
     
  2. licemeat

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  3. Dirk Hammerstrike

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    Unable to... resist...

    [​IMG]

    Totally agree with you. Well almost. Ranged combat has been interesting and even fun, as has using a pet in combat.
     
  4. Rufus D`Asperdi

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    Having the equivalent of UO Rune Books will be a game killer for me.

    It only takes 5 minutes to run across the continent.

    There will never be the equivalent of UO Rune Books in SotA as it would kill the regional economies they're trying to set up. This will also likely (hopefully) mean that both the Craftable Focus required for Recall and the Craftable Consumable Reagent required to use it will be difficult and expensive to make.

    Personally, I love what they're doing as I thought UO Rune Books were one of the worst things that happened to UO.
     
  5. Satan Himself

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    Rufus, it takes longer than 5 minutes to get from my house in Beran's Reach to my house in Wizard's Rest. I don't know what game you've been playing but I've been playing SOTA. Let's see:

    Start in Wizard's Rest. Have a Snicker's bar because you know I get grumpy when I haven't eaten.
    1 minute to run to the exit. Oh look there's that tree again.
    30 seconds loading time to overland map (conservatively), doh dee doh
    1.5 minutes across overland map to annoying chokepoint, yay this again
    30 seconds loading time to chokepoint, wow this never gets old pfft
    1.5 minutes to navigate chokepoint IF I don't die, although death may be better than this journey
    30 seconds loading time to overland map, please kill me now
    2 minutes overland map to Ardoris BUT
    30 seconds to load random encounter (which I usually encounter near Ardoris). What fun.
    30 seconds to navigate random encounter (mindless run to gate at the end of the scene). Oh look there's a wolf!
    30 seconds to load overland map. OK now I'm near Ardoris. Click on boat to Hidden Vale. Maybe drowning wouldn't be so bad.
    30 seconds to load Hidden Vale overland map. So much better than the first 3 times. Oh wait, this is the 10,000th time.
    1 minute to Wizard's Rest (assuming no REs which I usually don't have in the Vale). They call it Wizards Rest because the Wizards are so FREAKING TIRED OF TRAVELING.
    30 seconds to load Wizard's Rest. Woot.
    1 minute to walk from Wizard's Rest entrance to my house. Oh look there's that tree again.
    (one full hour to recover from exhaustion and frustration - omitted for ease of computation)

    SO:

    TWELVE MINUTES. Not five. And that's not a full walk across the map. And if I want to go BACK to my house in Beran's Reach? Then it's rinse, lather, repeat, hang self. In this time span I haven't adventured, I haven't interacted with other players, fun has eluded me.

    OK now here's the really important question. Did I enjoy ANY of that "gameplay"? No. And neither did anyone else. Was anything I saw new or unique? No.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 11, 2016
  6. Rufus D`Asperdi

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    I do... I enjoy feeling that the world is large. I've also complained on more than one occasion that the Overworld Map feels too small.
     
  7. redfish

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    No, its closer to 3 minutes now. Last time I calculated travel time everywhere, it was 4 minutes in a straight line across the map. Just on a short test, travel is about 80% faster, which would make it 3 minutes and 12 seconds.

    Just on a quick test, a random encounter load for me was 9 seconds, navigating to the exit was 9 seconds.

    I think I'm going to map out all the travel times again, just so we have something concrete to talk about.
     
  8. Satan Himself

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    We are apparently not living in the same universe. You walk from Beran's Reach to Wizard's Rest in 3 minutes and I'll name my next born child "redfish".

    Edit: OK I just did my own test. This is walking from my house in BR to my house in Wizard's Rest. Note that I stayed on roads whenever possible and sprinted whenever possible.

    1:15 leaving BR
    0:20 load time
    2:10 to EastReach Gap
    0:20 load time
    1:45 leaving EastReach Gap
    0:15 load time
    0:45 until first random encounter
    0:15 load time
    0:15 leaving RE
    0:15 load time
    0:40 until second random encounter
    0:15 load time
    0:20 leaving RE
    0:10 load time
    0:10 to Ardoris
    0:15 load time
    0:35 to Wizard's Rest
    0:20 load time
    1:05 to house in Wizard's Rest

    Forgetting for a moment that it took NINETEEN separate scenes/load times go get there (!!!), the total time required was, if my math is correct and the scotch hasn't overwhelmed me, 11 minutes 35 seconds which was surprisingly damn close to my estimate in the above post. My computer may load slower, I don't know. But that is out of control.

    11.5 minutes, 19 scenes. To get from house to house. And nothing interesting to see along the way.

    Edit: @Chris @DarkStarr non-scientific evidence that travel is too cumbersome and time-consuming, for your consideration
     
    Last edited: Feb 6, 2016
  9. Womby

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    OK, I'm going to see how long it takes me. I'll report back here:

    9 min 37 sec (using flaming coconuts) to get from Budner's House in Beran's Reach to Budner's house in Wizard's Rest (going through Eastreach Gap).
     
    Last edited: Feb 6, 2016
  10. Roycestein Kaelstrom

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    It goes faster if you wear the two coconuts, though.
     
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  11. redfish

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    Well, that's about the time for a relatively straight path across Novia, like Ardoris to Port Graff, or Vengeance to Bloodriver. You gave a path that's a bit more complicated. Its going to be an added time to go from Wizard's Rest to Kingsport (I think ~30 sec) then going to Beren's Reach takes a bit of navigation. So, I'm not sure how long... but that's what mapping out the times will help with.
     
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  12. Dirk Hammerstrike

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    /me looking forward to the arrival of redfish womby budner jr.
     
  13. Maka

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    I do have to agree that travel right now is very frustrating. I haven't played in several releases because I found it frustrating to never find a lot for my deed. Then I'm walking around today and all I'm finding are player run towns which I couldn't settle in without knowing someone. A lot of the prt templates didn't seem much like towns when I went into them. Just felt sort of lost and not gonna lie, disheartened. Wish I could start in owls head like before. Also having to battle through passes to go places is a bit punishing.. Now back to my usual positive attitude, go sota!
     
  14. redfish

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    @Maka,

    Well a lot of other things will help with that, I think. Like, once we have noticeboards and the like, people can advertise things like locations of shops and prices, and also lot availability. I have a POT that I'm constructing this release; I haven't got it together yet. Once its done, I think I'm going to put some flyers on vendors to see if I can get residents. Something like a noticeboard would be much more useful.

    If travel time is an issue, then its an issue. Personally, I don't believe it is. But I think we should separate a lot of other game issues from travel time, because they have to be tackled independently.

    (Also, we have to wait to see what lunar rifts there are)
     
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  15. Maka

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    Hi Redfish :)

    Maybe something as simple as sign posts to help hose directionally challenged like me to get around! I don't find the travel time so much an issue as just the fact I get frustrated trying to find my way back to owls head or Kingsport.

    I hope your POT is epic.
     
  16. Maka

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    Just a side note...

    Walking through the woods and it says I find something interesting!!! I was super excited and curious about what I found!

    It was a dragon!! I did not find it interesting but my avatar got some intense sprint training getting away.
     
  17. Corazon

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    I am in two minds about this.
    I like the travelling as it makes the game feel like an adventure, which is good for when I'm playing in Single Player.
    But I can see the frustration it will cause in MMO, though I think the implementation of bind/recall is a good compromise. It's not your instant gratification, teleport everywhere option, and it isn't your "Dammit, I forgot to buy some coal, gotta spend the next 15 mins running back over the map" option.
    I may have heard wrong, but from my understanding the rune is able to be made through alchemy, therefore having multiple runes is an option, and also that they are also consumable.
     
  18. Barugon

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    Exactly.
     
  19. Rufus D`Asperdi

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    @Maka, this should help you. It helps me.
     
  20. Maka

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    Thank you, very helpful map. Now I just need to find someone willing to host me in their town lol.
     
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