A Penny for these thoughts.... on some possibilities mentioned on discord

I've been trying to wrap my head around such a proposal, by using an actual in game example:

I have decided that I have 40 minutes left before I need to leave for work. I have decided to go into the scene Spectral Foothills. My options would be then:

1. I leave my town of Hemut in the Grunvald Region, and I'll now be forced to go through the Eastreach Gap scene to enter the Perennial Coast Region. And then take my horse on the overland map to the Spectral Foothills scene. This process requires me to go through 4 total loading screens (my town to Overland Map. Overland Map to Eastreach Gap. Eastreach Gap to Overland Map. Overland Map to Spectral Foothills.

2. I use the new Mark and Recall system, and recall to the marked Spectral Foothills scene. This process requires me to go through one loading screen (my town to Spectral Foothills).

This in general, I don't see a problem with. This could possibly have very bad effects and experience for New Players however.

 

Yeah, that horse left the stable by R25 or so, but I also like imagining what individual region maps might look like. Also the troll gap would still be open, and you could go around that way.

Hopefully enough people would be encouraged to open the overland gates for 24 hours that even that wouldn't be a problem.

Option #3 (which already works) is if you own a deco teleporter, you can set it to Spectral Foothills (can't select the mine, and it wouldn't have a binding point after the changes), then you go through it. But the teleporter stays behind, so if you usually keep it pointing somewhere for the convenience of others, you have to go back to reset it. I have one always set to Westend (because I have other houses there), and a second that I usually set to Castle Atos when not using it for somewhere else.

Option #3a (if I was going to Spectral Mines) is to set the teleporter to Solania docks and run through the catacombs scene to the back entrance of the mine.

Option #4 (again to the mines) is to bind to the house sign nearest the crypt house, then use a teleport scroll to get there.

Minor down-side: no longer would I be surprised to see that I haven't been to a scene since before they put in zone teleports.

 

they have for a while now.

 

• Too much like UO.
• Too much "do as I say and not as I do, or have done.
• This is a total control issue in limiting gaming freedom.
• I get it that people don't like newbies or new characters hunting around them or in a group with them.
• (For some odd reason some players think newbies using the ankh somehow repulses them or offends the older chrs).
• Yet these are the ways of guilds when chrs are sought to speed their exp progress.
• You all have strived to seek the fastest ways to the top, or to a better chr, restricting others is an elitest thought.
• The "exp rich" get richer and do as the rich do, not wishing to see such low chrs around "their hunting grounds".
• Experimenting with our game should be one of it's alures, not one of it's restrictions.
• Our world map is so small that it can be run all the way accross in under 5 minutes, not including fast travel boats.
• I can never understand why players who have been here long always wish to parent new players with more restrictions, "because they are new players".
• The begining of our game in chr creation has always been our downfall being our greatest short-commings and this wishes to restrict those players even further through added requirements.

The Elite & The Smug about it

• As far as travel, I've never seen a trafic jam and it takes seconds to recal, teleport to friend, or teleport to zone.
• As far as lunar rifts, that's a style, not an answer to anything, as teleports are sold through the coto store in all shapes.
• Maybe a better suggestion would be to want more variety hunting destinations teleports offered.

Parental BS is in the air...

Spring must be coming soon

How much of a jail do we want to make this place?

Maybe a better way of public offer hunting parties is to limit the number of strong chrs to 6 in order to "parent them" into being more inclusive of others ?

 

Unless you're in a different scene mode than the party. Which isn't really a big deal, unless you don't know that's the problem, and thus don't know how to fix it. But, it did cause me to also believe that TTF scrolls didn't work on parties for a long time.

 

League of Legends ("Riot" company with HQ in LA California) 117+ million players.
Farmville ("Zynga" company with HQ in SFO California) 83+ million players.

Expanding our game means competing in these two market shares, which our game is fully capable of doing, as long as we form our hunting game to a deeper agriculture game and not the other way around, and as for hunting areas... get more direct access to all hunting areas without restricting the player.

We need people into our action as fast as possible and into our non-combat immersion as fast as possible.

Too much complication and restriction spoils a game, "as Leage of Legends & Farmville" have proven to the gaming world.

Even aluring as little as .1% away from 117 million + 83 million = 200 million would be a great improvement for SOTA, which has gone way to far into parenting it's players because of it's learning curve "if everything must be done" before gaining player freedom.

League of Legends yearly profits = 1.75 Billion
Farmville yearly profits = 705 Million
~TL~

 

For me it comes down to load screens. The insta teleport items ensure that there is only ever 1 load screen between where you are, and where you're going. And 1 is enough!!

Back in the day when the control points required two load screens and a run through every one, and sieges were forced participation, it would literally take 10-12 load screens to get from the town I lived in to where I was going most of the time. This was absurd. There was no risk to me in passing through these scenes, it was just an annoying sink. Getting waylaid by harmless encounter critters that were zero threat to me, that I could always just walk straight out of, etc. did nothing except waste my time.

I don't object to having a bit of journey to interior scenes, for example, having to go through Twin Foothills to get to Elysium mines and other such scenarios, as it only adds 1 extra load screen and, the "journey" part you are at least passing stuff you can kill/harvest. I also wouldn't mind there being more "nested" scenes or deeper nested scenes. I wouldn't even mind if we dialed back some things, like being able to pick which entranc/exit and skipping half the zone. But going back to the era before zone scrolls? Hard no from me. There's simply no benefit to it.

 

so the suggestion is to go back to the early days/uo/uo clone that aria is, or what? great idea /sarcasm

 

With any suggestion you should always ask yourself "Why?" and then weigh up the pros and cons of those answers.
So why would you want to remove teleport to zone scrolls?

Stops new players getting to zones they shouldn't be in? - they have to unlock that scene to be able to teleport so its kinda a moot point.
Stimulate local economy? - that is a horse that is very very very dead.
Immersion? - yes it would make things feel more realistic until you happen to run past the fish head guy who is wearing a tutu and beating a wolf to death with a lightsaber...

Looking through the comments on here I can see no valid reason why removing this would be a good idea.

 

Nope. Forced play will never be a success. The devs need to focus on making an experience enjoyable and/or profitable. That is how you get people to repeat a playstyle.

 

not really forced haha, but makes people either have to run to location, or rely on someone to port is what that comes down to. does not stop anyone like me from just playing solo everything. just not as convenient.

 

People need to stop talking on the behalf of the new & future players, that make no sense... and it's a very poor argumentation.
The next generation of new players can't complain about something that never existed for them, stop reflecting your own opinion through others/future others...

I already shared my opinions about the overland map and the teleport scrolls and still believe that removing the TP scrolls will be very benefit for the game on the long run.
It's true, without lazy fast traveling, things will take longer to achieve but there is nothing wrong about it. If you only have 20 minutes to play SotA, take this time to move your character closer of your destination for being ready the next time you log in. This is not a nerf on the gameplay if its affecting everybody around..

In eve online, going from one side of the galaxy to other side take approximatively 5-6 hours. Im not comparing SotA to Eve online, Im just bringing up the fact that "universe" is so big that people figured out to play around it.
They created tradehubs around strategic locations, created services around abundant resources or lucrative mission chains.. The mainstream is all about decentralized systems

 

With mounts in-game now, the need to scroll around should be greatly reduced.

I would be happy with control points closed again… and leave the fast galleon option… but make it cost something, at least a few gold… and give it a random chance for encounter.

A low effort approach could combine a sailing ship with the plunderer’s air ship from south midmaer… open ocean. Give players the opportunity to fight or lock themselves in a cabin?

 

After reading many differing opinions here, this is what I personally think:

1) the overworld map doesn't give a traveling experience, it feels like a disconnected workaround for tech restrictions.

2) when I was a new player, the overworld map was immersion breaking and out of tone with the rest of the game. I expected to travel through a living game world, not a kind of virtual board game.

3) when I was 2-3 weeks in, the world map was just an annoyance to move from point A to point B. It's no journey, there's no adventure, it's one of the most uninspired walking simulators I've ever played...

4) after I started using teleport to zone scrolls, farewell overworld.

In my opinion, a legit traveling experience is key to keep new players.

So in my opinion the best compromise between current design and proposed change would be clusters of scenes (nested scenes as stated above) accessible from different locations, generally with an interesting hub area in the middle.
Traveling between hub areas with wagons, boats and balloons would be good too.

And as soon as the player explored and conquered the areas, they may start using tele to Zone scrolls...

 

I like our overworld. Lots of games have an overworld map, and for them to get to another zone just open the map and click the location you want to go, then watch a cutscene or loadscreen of you traveling. I like ours better, and travel doesn't take that long.
I like the idea of closing the gates of the pass's again. Maybe put the bypass teleporter guy outside of the gate on the overworld. But we also have the ships near Aerie, Ardoris, Brittany, Jaanaford, Noreach. They just need to add one to the Drachvald area. Maybe Port Graff, since it IS a port. Then we would have a ship to bypass all the passes.
I once had the idea of a town deco 1-way Lunar Rift that takes you to wherever the Lunar Rifts are going, but not back to your town. Just a teleporter that changes location every 8m45s