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The boats from Hidden Vale to Novia need tolls.

Discussion in 'Release 26 Feedback Forum' started by Grave Dragon, Feb 22, 2016.

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  1. Satan Himself

    Satan Himself Avatar

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    WAY too much in my opinion. 100-200 makes more sense, based on the game's current difficulty in obtaining gold and item prices, seems more reasonable. Agra's right that nobody will pay 1500. I'd like to see stats from Portalarium showing how often that toll was actually paid - I gotta think not many times (which was clearly their intent).

    I really don't mind tolls, and gold sinks are good for the game. Just make them reasonable.
     
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  2. Alexander

    Alexander Avatar

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    The OP was mostly focused on fast travel between Novia and the Hidden Vale, and why there should be ship fees. Personally, this really won't solve anything. People with a large amount of money won't be discouraged from repeated travel back and forth, but it will discourage new players and those that don't have a lot of gold to throw around. It also will discourage those same players from exploring the smaller Island surrounding Novia. On that basis, I am opposed to paying fees for ship travel. Concerning the Magician Teleport, I remember reading it recently, in connection with Teleportation scrolls, but I could be mistaken, or it may have come from a 'non-official' source. Either way, I see no reason to keep them. Out of all of the control points out there, only two of them have them that I know of (Brightbone pass and Eastreach gap, and any other I missed), and they are easy enough to just run through them, except as a new player who would have difficulty running through. These same new players also wouldn't have the gold to afford the fast travel option. So, it makes no sense to have them.

    Edit: Just to note, charging a large fee will only discourage new players and those with little gold, and charging small fees (for those small Islands), will discourage no one and ultimately serves no purpose.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2016
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  3. Grave Dragon

    Grave Dragon Avatar

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    That IS the current fee on all Control points, so whether you feel its too high is beside the point.

    Since no scene and no physical travel option is available, you pay the same toll. It's that simple.

    Why should this be cheaper or easier for 3/4s the player population?
     
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  4. Grave Dragon

    Grave Dragon Avatar

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    I have to pay a toll when I'm a new player to get to my own town, or if I don't want to pay a toll I have to level and earn gold to buy plate armor so I can survive the travel through the CP just to get to my home.

    It's no different.
     
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  5. agra

    agra Avatar

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    Currently, the boats are free. It's not population specific. There is no favoritism. I would prefer it stay that way.
    And a scene is possible, it's just that Portalarium has opted not to have one, for presumably very good reasons.
    The dream of enforced/isolated/100% regional economies and no fast travel is dead, in my opinion. Teleportation is going into the game on Thursday.
    Adding un-fun punitive mechanics, imho, are not going to gather a larger demographic to an already niche title.

    My impression from your posts, Grave, is that you want completely isolated, mechanically enforced regional economies and no fast travel. The mechanics outlined, currently, between now and July 28th, 2016, guarantee that's not going to happen. If my impression is incorrect, ignore my comments, I'm mistaken, my bad.
     
  6. Xi_

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    can't get on my boat with your flippy floppies with out a charge .....

     
  7. Noric

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    I don't see what gives you the authority to make statements like this. If the two situations are not identical - then devs have the ability to arbitrarily define variations. This is not a bug report you are talking about - its an unimplemented feature and your own opinion as to how it should be applied.
     
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  8. Black Orchid

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    Agree with you the fee on control points may well change before release but they should be all consistant. for this to be the case we should have to pay for ship travel for definate otherwise makes no sense. I have put forward a few options for a free way to do it if you dont want to pay with risk . thinking of ships there is also for example a ship between etecter ,port phoenix and aerie which also skips control points . so to keep consistant if no charge for boats they would have to be free to. people would just not use the control points if that was the case.

    I am not a big fan of control points and i agree we dont need alot of restricted travel. I for one like the idea of moon gates aswell. zoning is not right though as this is not a realistic way of travel. Aslong as travel is done properly it will make things better for everyone.
     
  9. Satan Himself

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    Don't know how hard this would be to implement, but the toll could be calculated as follows:

    Toll = 2% of the gold you own up to 1000 gold pieces
    So if you had 1000 gold, relatively new player, you'd pay a 20 gp toll each time you use the boat.
    200 gp if you had 10,000 gold.
    But capped at 1000 gold (for players with 50,000 gold or more).

    Just an example but perhaps a decent formula for a progressive tax/toll. Could apply this to control points as well.
     
  10. Black Orchid

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    Trouble with paying less for ship travel is people will allways take the cheaper option ie boats if there cheaper than control points making that control point redundant
     
  11. Grave Dragon

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    The current plan setup by portalarium would be exactly what you described except that there will be fast travel options for recreational travel.


    I totally understand why everyone is against this plan but a stable SotA without 200 Player owned Ghost Towns requires properly functioning Control Points. Allowing two regions which obviously should be seperate to travel freely puts the residents at an advantage over other players who dont live in such an expansive region and a central market is born.

    This plan can work to maintain foot traffic and residency in all regions of the map, but it has to be done right and it has to be consistently enforced or it all falls apart. That is fully evident right now with Owls Head having the only at capacity public vendor in the game.

    Tripling prices in Owls Head isn't a good solution because the main concern is player commerce, not NPC commerce, this is after all a player economy we are talking about.

    The price to take the boat MUST be enough to encourage people to trade, buy and sell in their own region. I didn't pull 1500 gold out of the air, that's the price to get through ALL other control points instantly.

    Once all the CPS are in place, I'll need to go through 3 to get from my home to Owls Head (If it were RL, Id be able to see the freaking island from my keep) and while I know I have friends there I visit and I buy recipes there, it's worth it if it preserves the housing market of player owned towns in Drachvald all the way out to Elysium.

    I'm not playing the bad guy here, I sincerely think you don't understand what's at stake. If the CPS fail, regional economy fails, 60+% of PoTs become ghost towns because there is NO reason to live there other than what the Governors create through RP.

    That's a VERY conservative 60%. And if 60% of the PoTs fail, the game fails because noone is going to want to play, let alone pledge to a game littered with useless unmanaged and unpopulated towns.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2016
  12. Grave Dragon

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    People will just park gold on an alt and travel free.
     
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  13. Ancev

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    I never pay 1500g I just run through. Maybe if it was 500.
     
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  14. Grave Dragon

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    They could just bolt through one between HV and PC as well but they don't want to be hassled.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2016
  15. Xi_

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    we should be able to use balloons for overland travel, bypassing boats and control points lol.
     
  16. Satan Himself

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    You're right, since it's not a fool-proof solution let's not do it. Much better just to tax the crap out of a currently free system and make it harder than ever to travel.:(
     
  17. Spoon

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    Ah. Then there is indeed a misunderstanding.
    I am not the OP.
    Read my posts again and you'll see that my stance differs from that of the OP. Your argument in no way refute my view since you base it on a counter versus the OP's stance.
     
  18. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    Lunar rifts ought to be free and transport anything I can pick up and trundle through with.
    If I am heavily laden and at reduced movement rate, monsters provide all the control that is necessary.
     
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  19. Aimend

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    I think everyone is too focused on fixing problems that don’t actually exist yet. OP accurately points out that we have 200+ ghost town POTs, but potentially inaccurately assumes that regional economies will fail because everyone wants to go to a central market location in the area of a boat.


    Why is it assumed that a fully stable SotA with, theoretically, a much more active community will still desire a central world market?


    Right now we have ghost towns with empty vendors on almost every property. Of those vendors that do have wares for sale, I’d say 75% of them have random pledge junk. The other 25% have gathered or craftable wares. I know in my own experiments with vendors in a POT, I rarely saw/see sales.


    If players are on more frequently, more players are on, more resources are available to all regions (because we can’t forget that there are whole regions without areas to gather/hunt), and more vendors pop up in POTs – why would someone want to travel (for example) all the way to Owl’s Head from Beran’s Reach for their needs? Not to mention – there should be a general desire to support fellow guild members in guild-based POTs.


    I think before we start proposing additional taxes on people (especially 1500g taxes without a way to avoid it) we should actually see how regional economies work with a fully functional player base. And 1500g is way too high. I don’t know ANYONE who pays the mage at control points. I also don’t know anyone who, right now, maintains a bank account above 5000g in my group of friends and guild besides me.


    I feel like all people propose lately are constant additional taxes, be they gold-based or mechanic-based. I don’t understand why we can’t come up with positive reinforcement for the desired outcomes as opposed to constant, laborious punishment. Regional economies are great. Complete isolation is not. Most people want the ability to travel in a reasonable way. Many people want the ability to socialize with other guilds and players outside of their specified regions. As evidenced last night, an overwhelming majority of players want to be able to attend large events and the constraints of the game itself are challenging enough….let alone a tax to get to the lag/instance/crashfest….


    We are all also really used to going to Owl’s Head. People are creatures of habit. The changes to /zone should start rewiring what player habits are…. Maybe we should wait to see how this plays out before choosing to bog players down even more.
     
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  20. Ancev

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    If there are any player owned fast travel methods in the future such as using wagons, balloons, boats etc I'd like to see associated costs for the owner. The balloon requires fuel and can be possibly shot down (random event) and it costs gold and materials to repair it.

    In some of my previous posts about post offices I mention 'mishap' check points where you might be able to fast travel, but you might face oregon trail scenarios on the legs of the journey. These 'mishap' checkpoints probably need a better name... they wouldn't always be bad but they might take up time.

    One method to address this would be putting a durability factor on boats, wagons, etc .. when they're broke, they can't be used and must be repaired requiring the services of carpenters, blacksmith, etc.

    So I wouldn't mind paying fees for fast travel options, or maintenance costs for my own personal fast travel methods. But I haven't been paying 1500g to go through a control point so far. And is there any benefit to me paying 1500g to the mage at the control point other than time savings? Over the course of time if I've paid him 15k or 150k gold what does that get me? A discount on his shop in the future? Maybe he hands out a treasure map or some other random trinket after awhile.

    I'm basically in favor of imperfect fast travel. There are all sorts of things that can happen at sea and long journeys by land. If this is handled through the random encounter system, then I'd like to see a large variety of scenarios to keep things interesting. If it's the same thing all the time.. meh! Perhaps it creates a little trail on the overland map as you're 'fast' travelling and you're able to skip through some of the random/roving encounters similar to walking the overland map in the future. But if you're travelling by wagon or balloon, it's bound to be more complicated than if you're a single person on foot because if it's a group of bandits and you're on foot you might be able to stealth by. If you're in a balloon you're just floating there, but what would be cool is if you could see more interesting things than a player on foot - like a large patch of strawberries or nightshade, collectible flowers, or other cool stuff. The goal would be trying to navigate to the cool stuff and trying to avoid the encounters that could bring down your balloon, while navigating to your final destination (or just going back home because you're almost out of fuel, etc). So perhaps 'fast' travel by balloon is more of a fun leisure trip, than something designed for speed. Perhaps you'd actually be able to see some of the roving encounters before you're confronted with them to try and avoid them, unlike players on foot who would have to deal with them directly.

    This sort of travel might encourage traffic to POTs as well, perhaps if the town has a NPC crafter it would show a fuel icon so folks in balloons know where they can refuel. (assuming balloons can exist on the overland map at all...just some ideas)
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2016
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