Poll - Travel [UNOFFICIAL]

Excellent post.

 

The difficulty with travel being dangerous on the overland map is that it requires one being pulled into random scenes.

And the audience here has expressed a certain amount of ire for that happening frequently.

What to do?

 

I generally like travel as-is, and as-planned.

BUT - My pledge comes with two lots and I'd love to be able to get to either of them "quickly." Even if it meant that I couldn't recall through a control point and had to enter it.

If they allow you to teleport to a friend with unlimited uses (allowing for the crafted item) then they may as well let you teleport to any lots you own too. Neither one is any more exploitable than the other. If you can teleport to any person then a $45 (or whatever) pledge gets you a permanent recall point. Just log it on and teleport to it (and some people will).

I'm pretty content to offer feedback to the devs but not having tried it for any length of time without the fast and loose /stuck and /start on overworld map and /zone, I might start to enjoy the world around me more.

I might not! But fast travel can evolve over time as the world grows, I'm not really bothered with any direction they choose to take.

 

So at the moment 56.5% vs an easier travel system.
What dose that tell you @Budner?
Because I honestly don't know.
All that this poll tells me that this seems to be a difficult topic....like pretty much every other topic in this forum ^^

 

Good question. The poll indicates:

1) To varying degrees a very sizable minority of players (43.4%) are dissatisfied with the current state of travel.
2) The majority of players are content with the current/planned state of travel or even want to make travel more restricted (56.6%).
3) More of us favor less restricted travel (43.4%) than the current/planned state of travel (33.1%).
4) A relatively small minority want to make travel more restricted (23.5%).
5) Clearly there is a stark division of opinion on the issue.
6) The issue is important (166 people voted so far and you can see the passion in various threads on this subject).

Probably all of us can agree that:

1) Instancing, whether you like it or not, is here to stay
2) Devotion to developing regional economies, whether you like it or not, is here to stay

IMHO travel could be improved to a more satisfactory level, without creating any or much theoretical damage to regional economies, by:

1) Making random encounters avoidable (this is planned, thank you devs).
2) Improving load times (this will occur over time, thank you devs).
3) Creating a reasonably priced toll system that would enable us to bypass control points (with the added benefit of being a gold sink). With a reasonable cooldown period, and not while overweight.
4) Allowing us to bind or /zone to more than a single location (I propose that you should be able to bind to any house you own (including multiple houses if you own more than one), your guild house, and the entrance to one city of your choice). With a reasonable cooldown period, and not while overweight.
5) Allowing us to recall or /zone to guild members, not just confirmed friends. With a reasonable cooldown period, and not while overweight.
6) Keeping the boat that enables transfer between Novia (near Ardoris) and the Hidden Vale (near Kingsport) but not making us wait for a scheduled departure. EDIT: could also add a small toll to use the boat, a good gold sink). EDIT: could also require not being overweight to use the boats.
7) Allowing us to leave town and access the overland map without having to walk all the way through town to an exit.

IMHO the above improvements would satisfy most of the people who want less restrictive travel, while not unduly impairing the goal of regional economies, and those who want to take more time in their travels can simply opt not to use any of the features mentioned above.

RG says he considers a 40 hour per month player to be a very active player. I personally will probably play something like 40 hours per month. It will be a shame if we have to spend a very large percentage of our limited playing time simply moving in uninteresting ways between place to place, and necessitating a huge number of loading screens, as opposed to maximizing our time in the places where the actual action and fun reside - our homes, our POTs, our guilds, our dungeons.

Ulimately we all play this game to have fun, although that means something different to every person. I believe the above improvements would enable a very large group of us to have more fun that we're currently having, AND not destroy any fun for the group that is content with the current state of travel.

@Chris @DarkStarr @RichardGarriott

 

+1 <3 Well said.

The idea of a physical departure/launch from a boat is appealing to me from an rp perspective, I'm just dorky like that. If that is what was planned, would a departure every 3 minutes be an acceptable compromise?

 

i'd recommend taking the average load time for the scene you are going to, and adding the length of time you are going from point A, to the zone line on the boat. - and using that time.

 

Well, the shorter wait the better, from my perspective. Let's say I play 40 hours a month and use that boat once an hour, that's two full hours of waiting for the boat. On top of all sorts of other travel delays. 3 minutes better than 10 though! 2 minutes better than 3!

Oh, we could also add a nominal toll to the boat as a gold sink.

 

on your points:
1) is this planned? I hadn't heard that, (but I haven't been paying that close attention, either). Have any indications been given on how? Maybe letting use to "stealthy" skills on the world-map? That would be my recommendation. I think it sounds like fun; I'd like to see more of my skills usable on the world-map!
2) yes, thank you
3) I think that was part of the intent of the mage in the control-points, he just needs to be moved outside the zone to save you the two instance changes, and I think that would address this.
4) Hrm... I kinda have mixed feelings here. I would say any house you own, and ONE guild house (a guild can have multiple guild-houses in the current system, I think), with a town of your designation IF you don't own a house (mostly to keep from disadvantaging the homeless too much). reasonable cooldown and not overweight. Possibly requiring some kind of limited use item.
5) If /zoneing to friends is possible, it should definitely apply to all guildmates too. considering the main point of this (for me, anyway) is to get together for a group to tackle an area, even tightening the restriction to something like half-weight might work... although that might unduly burden archers and mages.
6) They are planning on scheduled departures? I don't think I like that either, unless the departure interval is REALLY low.
7) Yes, at least for non-PvP towns. Unless something happens to make more interesting things happen in towns, I agree here.

 

1) Avoidable random encounters - yes this is planned, but the specific mechanics haven't been shared yet.
3) Toll to avoid control points - exactly. They're getting rid of the mage inside the control points. Something less than 1500 gold would be nice.
4) Binding to multiple locations - yeah one guild house, agree with that. Like a guild HQ. Binding will require some reagents according to the devs, which I'm fine with as long as they're reasonably accessible and reasonably priced, and don't require a high level of skill to cast.
5) Recall or /zone to guildmates - I would happily have to be underweight although I'd prefer a standard of just not being overweight.
6) Boats - yes they have mentioned scheduled departures but didn't give any details re: waiting times. Hopefully just every couple of minutes or so. Although apart from some very weak immersion (IMO) I don't see any point in making us wait at all. The current boats are great.
7) Leaving town directly to overworld map - agree that for PvP towns this shouldn't be an "escape hatch". Good point.

 

I definitely agree that if some kinda spell replaces the /zone command, it shouldn't fail often. Failure rate as a function of distance might be interesting, if they still wanted it to have levels like other skills.

If the boats are at least every 5 minutes, I don't think that's too awful. Any longer then that I think it just unreasonable. If you have to wait around for half a game-day for one, people will rage-quit. Even having to wait the night-cycle in Etceter to use the NPCs is pretty annoying.

 

People will always rage quit ( trust me im one of them ) and if sota by some disastrous chain of events turn in to yet another "insta gratification" mmo im sure a lot of people will rage quit (me included)

that said I have full faith in Portalarium and Sota. Please make it much much harder to travel and please 12 hour boat schedule

 

How can you rage quit twice? You already rage quit and will rage quit again when the game is deeded insta gratification. You can only rage quit once, more than once is an impossibility by definition.

12 hour boat schedule is some nice realism. We need to make the travel time between continents equally realistic. Perhaps three months real time would convert into three days of game time or 72 hours where your character is in transit and unaccessible. Also a random chance at totally losing your character due to a multitude of reasons from disease, sinking, piracy, murder, starvation, suicide, poisoning, iceburgs, alien abduction, sea serpents, time rift, falling off edge of world, shark attack, lovers triangle odd man out, insantity, lots of reasons, overdose, scurvy, rabies, death by falling, lightening strike, cheating at poker and getting caught, duel, bad haircut, infection, food poisoning, old age, beating by random stranger, knife fight, oh a few more, scalping, slipping on ice, broken neck, fire, dying of thirst, poisoning. Well you get the idea.

More realism is better to avoid rage quits. Rage quit would also be a way to die during transit.

So 72 hours your character is unavailble and this only counts down while in game, logged in, with anti macro mechanics. More reason to be happy with three characters per account!

 

Btw, poison is deadly.

 

That may have to become someone's sig.

 

I LOLed. Plus, I'm voing to add perma death on shipwreck, but im going to get in trouble again (1984) if I'm not on topic so...

I really like the suggestion @ThurisazSheol made where the schedule is basically based upon how long the boat takes to leave the scene. One zones out, the next back in.

It's still physical transport in my book and automaticaly restricted based on weight limit. I'm thinking they will likely reenable the mechanic which prevents you from walking at all when you're overweight and out of focus so this specific type of physical travel kind of manages itself.

 

I have very limited playtime on weeknights and rely on /stuck and /zone A LOT I have no intention of spending the bulk of my time trying to get all across Novia on foot, especially since as of this release it now takes several minutes for each scene to load (even random encounters!) (Not to mention the serious lag spikes in major towns and cities which seem to have popped up ) I still prefer some type of Recall spell as an alternative to zoning

 

I like it just the way it is now, a world map would be nice, but using the SotAmap.com is really sweet too... The Dev's plan on having crafted items to use when /zone is removed, so I would like to see that come in first, before debating it further... I'm also hoping the Lunar rifts will still be placed in too...

 

Lunar rifts are kinda Richard Garriott's trademark. I doubt they are going away.