My friend list shouldn't be a rune book.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Aetrion, Aug 19, 2018.

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  1. Aetrion

    Aetrion Avatar

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    I think the attempt this game made at stopping teleportation from shrinking the world down to nothing like it did in UO has failed. The friend list has simply been turned into your teleport location list, with people adding absolutely everyone they see, even if they never even intend to talk to that person, just so that their chance of having a teleport to everywhere they want to go is as high as possible.

    This kind of reminds me of Eve Online, where in the original game you couldn't warp to 0km on any object, you had to warp to 15km and fly the rest of the way under thrusters. What did people do? Create waypoints 15km behind every object in the whole galaxy. The entire waypoint system which was created with the best of intentions had been turned into an overly complicated replacement to warp to 0km. The devs tried to stop it by making copying of waypoints take time, which accomplished nothing except anger newer players who didn't have a full set of instawarp waypoints yet, because it put them at a severe disadvantage. Eventually the devs realized that the only way to stop the insanity was to just allow people to warp to 0km.

    I feel like we have the same kind of situation here. The intention of the teleport system was obviously to stop people from simply teleporting everywhere like in UO, and instead allowing them to quickly meet up with their friends only, but the players are instead just putting everyone on the friends list to teleport everywhere regardless. The friends list has become a casualty of convenience.

    So my suggestion would be: Just give people a separate list for teleport locations. This list could even be leveraged to encourage some exploration by making it so that you have to at least visit the location once before you can teleport there, maybe even have it set up so you need to visit a number of landmarks in any given region to gain the ability to teleport there at will. That way we'll get a real friend list back, we'll have stopped the madness of having to add absolutely everyone to maximize your teleporting convenience, and we'll have a system that adds at least a few dozen hours of stuff to do to the game if you want to unlock every possible teleport.
     
  2. Bowen Bloodgood

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    The friends list is entirely optional. If you don't want to use it as a teleport tool or don't want others to use you as a teleport to location then don't. The only reason I accept friend requests from unknown people is because I occasionally run events. I have several other characters who simply deny requests.

    If they argument is "I'd rather have an official list of teleport locations because I'm going to fill up my friends list to use it that way otherwise" then I'd say you have conflicting priorities here.

    The real argument you should be making is whether or not the dev's goals can or are being realized under the current mechanics. Why can't we just teleport anywhere? and why should the devs abandon their goal for doing it that way?

    Simply moving functionality from one list to the other for a greater sense of convenience doesn't seem like a high priority task to me. More work, little gain. A long list doesn't bother me as I can remember who my friends are.

    Personally, if it were up to me, there wouldn't even be teleport scrolls. Problem solved.
     
  3. Steevodeevo

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    Its interesting. I don't understand the purpose of the current system and as always, Port are tight lipped about stuff they want us to work out for ourselves. If the current method is to make us use the Overworld more and face random encounters and explore, then it seems to defy that purpose. If it is for us to make friends, then its futile, I don't talk to 95% of the people I'm friends with, we mutually accept were using each other as teleport points and as a result I do't really have a friends list. It's therefore impossible to make suggestions. I suspect Port want us to use the OW map and also make friends. If we had to visit locations to add them to teleport or complete quest i'd be fine, except I have no idea what they are trying to do.
     
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  4. Lazarus Long

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    I miss /zone
     
  5. The Hendoman

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    it's as if the friends list would be better as a standalone app running alongside, the game would remain more pure, yet people would have the friendaport option if they wanted. and you wouldn't have to see who logs on n off so much

    THE HENDOMAN
     
  6. Gix

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    Remember when they planned on removing the option to “Start on Novia”? Or when they talked about regional economies?

    Remember Lunar Rifts?

    They (or at least Richard Garriott) doesn’t want you to zip around on your friends list or even zone from “private” to “open” mode to grind even more mobs... but they’re not about to risk removing any convienences either.

    If they truly wanted us to teleport everywhere, it would’ve been a basic function of the game and not something players would need a work-around for.

    I say change the ability to teleport to friends and make it so that it teleports you to the closest Lunar Rift and/or Oracle station.
     
  7. Astirian

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    It'd be cool if the lunar rifts had their own scenes near the major locations and you could dial 'em in like the Stargate.
     
  8. Bowen Bloodgood

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    Teleporting to a rift would actually be not too far off from Ultimas as there were ways to basically do just that.

    As for regional economies (one of the reasons given to not be teleporting around everywhere), it was never going to work in a "player based economy" so long as there is no cost in transporting goods regardless of other factors. Even overloaded I can walk from one end of Novia to another in a few minutes.
     
  9. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    I like my teleport list. I don't want friends.
     
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  10. Nelzie

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    I never use Lunar Rifts because the time to wait for them to actually be of use to me is always FAR to long.

    I only use my Friends list in order to skip across scenes that I just don't feel like travelling through, because I don't have 3 to 4 hours to play at a time. When time is of the essence, there's no time to walk all across Novia and then through checkpoint zones, etc., etc.
     
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  11. Gix

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    I believe that was the intent on the pricing to bypass the Control Points.
     
  12. Bowen Bloodgood

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    Well it's all a matter of perspective I suppose. 5 minutes is enough to go from one end of Novia to another including going through control points. So I feel like using up teleport scrolls is a waste of resources if no one is actively waiting for me.
     
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  13. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Thought port said the current system was a result of player feedback wanting fast-travel. Teleporting to friends is better than having 20 million extra seperate items for teleports.

    Friendlist and a teleport scroll is to warp-to-0 as marking a hundred runesfor everywhere is to 15km bookmarks.
     
  14. Cinder Sear

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    This idea would also enable teleport scrolls to be useful in single player mode.. currently there are no friends in spoffline, therefore tele scrolls are completely useless.
     
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  15. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    There was a similar thread about friend list here ...

    My suggestions:
    1. I would prefer a MAGIC SKILL to LEARN how to teleport. Would be great for the AIR Skill tree.
    So it could be possible (for a MASTER) to teleport around without scrolls!

    2. Teleportation should be restricted by
    2.1 RADIUS (a second skill to raise the radius. It shouldn't be possible to teleport between land masses / continents: because we have lunar rifts and boats to keep them meaningful!)
    2.2 FOCUS
    2.3 WEIGHT (I know it has influence, but not depending on distance!)
    --> This would be good for the local economy
    ---> A good reason for the use of horses / donkeys.
     
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  16. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

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    Id love to do away with teleporting to people and rather have a ruin book. For now I use my friends list as the exact same thing. only difference being that I have to pick the closest person to where I want to go rather then directly. there. I think if they did away with teleports completely the game would get pretty busy on the map :)
     
  17. Anpu

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    Well at least on next release (the current QA build), I can now just run anywhere! Don’t need to use teleport anymore! :D
     
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  18. Bowen Bloodgood

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    I know control points in general were meant to stimulate regional economies but having a story (and thus the need for low level players to be able to get through them fairly easily) directly contradicts that intention. So long as the "player based economy" and story were the priorities, regional economies were never going to be.
     
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  19. Curt

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    Could change teleport scrolls so they took you to the town/region they was made in. Would make it a bit regional and still let people teleport a lot.
     
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  20. Gix

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    @Bowen Bloodgood You don't have to convince me of anything; I'm just stating what the devs intended.
     
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