The problem with Sota from a casual players point of view

Just want to point out one other thing.

Being able to recall never ONCE stopped me from going out and enjoying exploring in UO.

If there is interesting places to go, people will go explore them regardless of travel methods.

If there is no interesting places to explore, people won't go exploring regardless of travel methods.

 

I'll preface this by saying I don't have many friends in the game and never have used teleport scrolls. They almost seem like an unfair advantage, and I wonder what equivalent exists in the offline mode where there are no friends. That's my choice, to not use them of course. Recall scrolls, I use on occasion when I remember to craft them. That said, it's never taken all that long to get from the farthest point of the continent to the other. Load times and passes can be inconvenient, but don't make the world feel any larger from my perspective. It becomes a trek if I wish to go after something specific, but at least the return trip can be quick. The world would feel (to me) too small if every corner could be accessed by simply blinking to a location of your choice. That would eliminate the need for the over world map entirely, if you could bypass it. The over world scale already feels a bit claustrophobic to me, and I know what it looks like even before exploring which is a travel related problem in my eyes. There's even a map, and the only unknown is if I will run into a bandit, skeleton, wolf, dog, etc. Well, even that isn't really unknown. I'll see them a mile off and go around, or I wont. There's no fog of war, shrouding their presence till I run into them. I recall traveling in the older Ultima games, and feeling nervous because you didn't have that great of visibility. You didn't know what was around the mountain, or in the forest.

I also assumed that if the world was difficult to travel, it would be worth making the long and dangerous trips to sell local goods to other far off regions that lacked easy access to resources we had locally, and bring back the exotic goods to sell. That it might help strengthen local economies and drive regional price differences. It seems prices are all over the place, and no real way to determine what a fair market value is. As with many people, I've a vendor and my experience has been very few sales, despite having many dozens of items priced slightly below what I think they're worth. No way to tell if anyone even browses the wares of any of the vendors in town to adjust if it's a supply and demand issue, simply too high of pricing, or more than likely just a lack of traffic altogether. I'm sure there are hot spots once you find them. Public Vendors in key popular NPC cities or highly populated guild POTs, but that seems like a lot of trial and error just to find a way to peddle ones wares or find what you're looking for. Perhaps that's intentional, I don't know. What I do know is my vendor is only slightly more useful than my servant, but admittedly doesn't dress as nice.

I leave my vendor stocked, and hope for the best, but in the meantime what it means to me is that it's easier and less expensive to craft what I need than to try and find someone selling exactly what I'm after at a reasonable price. That may in turn also have an impact on economy. All that to say, longer travel time simply means inconvenience at this point. I could be wrong, but it doesn't feel that too many resources are regional at this point. While waiting for the questing side of things to be complete, there doesn't seem like much of a reason to go out and travel or explore. I find that my routine is to log in to see if anything sold on the vendor (and often to log back out). No reason to craft more at this point unless I'm just hording. It's nice to grind some experience here and there to work towards the harder to reach skills, but that gets tiresome. Lack of goals I suppose. If single player offline doesn't inherently have the same economy issues, I may need to give that a try.

My observation would be that if you're one who fancies guilds and people in general, then your experiences are likely far more positive at this stage in development. I'm optimistic that the devs do read and take to heart whats going on. They data mine and find what people are doing, and probably know what's working and what's not in the economy and game in general. I think things will continue to improve over time; given enough time. At this point I don't even know when the estimated official launch is for episode 1, but that doesn't bother me. There's still a long road ahead I think. Mounts and other features will impact the feel of travel, and who knows what will change over the next year. My fingers are crossed.

 

I am barred by being unwilling to add friends just for the sake of fast travel and by the cost.
If you say I am not arguments would be really appreciated.
Also I wrote in my opening post that it is my perspective. I understand not every casual feels this way, of course this is my opinion. I am not formulating a legal text here, so please relax a little.

 

I agree that with reducing the loading times a lot of what makes travelling so boring to me could be removed. But my travelling includes six times loading, which takes a minute roughly.
In fact I also like the overland map and travelling on it. I believe without these terrible loading times I could live with the current system.
Still the current fast travel mechanic is a power gamer game mechanic and thus still needs some review, imho.

 

So reading the same chapter again and again (travelling the same road) is fun to you also?

 

Well you don't understand my argument.
Why create housing in a place with a disadvantage (a remote place)? Someone is going to live there one day. If everyone should just move away from there, why create housing there at all?

 

Afaik Drachvald will become important and it has the entry to the biggest Gem Mine in Novia.
I live in Drachvald too and because Vauban Pass is hard to pass it's a bit like you are in an outback.
Not the best scenes to develop and allways a long way to go for favorite scenes and places, but i really believe that Drachvald will get some improvement.

 

Really like your post!
I can tell you that as someone interested in purchasing stuff I just can't get myself down to look through all the vendors everywhere. The trial and error is such a huge turn off. The crafting system is so diversified that if you are a crafter you will need very specific materials. Without talking to other crafters, which you cannot do through vendors you have only really the forum to turn to for doing this kind of trade. This is why I argue no fast travel hurts the economy. If people are unable to meet easily then how is the current crafting system ever going to work out properly? Finding the people to do trade with ingame currently is not easy.
Back in the old UO days I would travel and search for vendors, but then again there were great vendors everywhere, probably because the crafting system was much simpler and I played an average 4 hours a day.
Also regional economies need as you stated only regionally available items. Since this is not the case, why have regional economies? The current regional economies are meaningless without only regionally available crafting materials! No one will ever like to go to the outback if there is nothing interesting there. I think crafting ressources only available by region should be implemented asap.

 

Why implement regional economies first without providing the means to really have regional economies?
At this point, imho, the devs should really start pushing regional economies or stop the hurdles connected to it. Right now we have the bad without the good.

 

I assume local economies where tied to the ability of guilds controlling areas with the CPs.
Imagine those germans in drachvald conquering vauban pass and keeping it safe, thus generating more traffic in their area etc.
Building a castle there for their guild and occasionally defend it from a siege etc...

The way CPs work now is not really fun or meaningful.
Things like that are missing in this game.

 

Exactly. But why then force us to enter cps if they do not really have a function currently?

And trust me Vauban pass under the protection of the good people of Drachvald, would be as safe as if Lucille herself watched over it.

 

Can't blame them for not having a finished game yet... however if we would know that sth like this is planned, we could just wait until they are complete and not wonder about a current system which seems totally useless. Dont want to spoil dev+ content... but R38 is disappointing in that regard as it doesnt solve the meaninglessness of the CPs. It just manifests a boring useless system.

 

I don't blame them for the cp function to be unfinished.
But I do kind of blame them for forcing us to enter the cp scene right now.
Because the cp has no function plus regional economies are not completely implemented.
The cps are a means to a goal, the goal is not there but the means are. This seems pointless.

 

I agree with you. The things is CPs were at some point planned as guild controlled areas.
Unfortunately the game took a direction where player interaction is avoided because it could be "toxic", and lead to a world without player impact... aside from POTs which are just a time sink for deco divas.

 

Different things happen each time. So yeah, it doesn't always need to be a new road to be exciting, besides fast travel is skipping the roads altogether. poof youre in Rivendell, poof youre in mordor, poof youre back in the shire.
When everyone's teleporting around, there's no chance for spontaneous player interaction and little reason for devs to develop interesting npc interaction.

 

The way it is right now there is 0 player interaction. Back in UO you asked the person if there is a red guy around... or maybe you want to hunt in a group? Not necessary here.

 

Are you using the current methods of fast travel? I am not.
I am not against a world without fast travel, but the travelling with the loading screens, entering meaningless cps, non existing regional economies is a little bit strange. And the no fast travel should apply to everyone equally.
The travel were something exciting happens is not yet implemented (cps), so at the moment it is like reading the same chapter again and again.
So if you are against fast travel then, why not be completely against it? We have fast travel currently. Only thing is how it is implemented. So the thing you dislike is already in the game. I cannot understand why the current implementation, which is a power gamer game mechanic, imho, does not bother you.
Also travelling for trading purposes is not equal to exploring. When I have to make a purchase I want convenience, when I want to explore I take the time to explore.
Most people do not like to commute to work but like to travel for their holidays. If you make buying stuff in the game a chore people will dislike it and that is, I believe the case here. Just thinking about the effort I have to put into looking for vendors causes me to not even consider doing it.
I once made the effort to search for a skill trainer in Drachvald. It took me two hours to find: Nothing.
What a great joy, what wonders of exploration. That's why I stick travelling to Ardoris. I really don't feel like searching for stuff so long with the result of finding nothing. That is worse than working, that is work that ends in failure. The opposite of fun.

 

Drachvald has no Maple Wood (beside rowing encounters, but that's a bug i guess).

 

There are more ways to interact with players; trading, team up for adventuring, guidance new players, etc. There is always something more beyond just pvp.

I noticed you are always talking about UO references. I really wish the best to all those still waiting to find the UO successor here.

 

I deleted a whole Paragraph @Vallo because i feel he and some others wont ever get it beyond playing war and become a matter lol.
They should play UO on a Pre Trammel Shard or Darkfall or whatever and dont blame people for beeing creative and able to do more with the environment but "pew pew i own you and do matter".
I reported the "deco-diva" btw
as i read this as an affront.

Sorry @Vallo Frostbane you are just a bit one eyed and have a unilateral fixation as you seem to be not able to emphasize other playstyles or if you just blame them.