Rant on Travel

Well.. I for one don't feel very restricted at all.. I don't have any problems getting from point A to point B and taking 2-5 minutes to get where I'm going doesn't bother me in the slightest. Enough said.

 

Quotes brought up as a way to introduce/share points, not specific answers to someone.

The overworld has double the reasons to be a big priority... because it's not just something that could be developed into something awesome, but it's also that in its current state is causing unrest.

This is something i'd go with, but they should be tied to control points being "open" (meaning that they're controlled by a player force) and considering what redfish said; it cost gold, you move faster in your wagon/ship but it is shown on the overworld map, and it's subjected to certain kind of random encounters (much lower chance than walking).

This comes with the assumption that you need to be at your destination to do all that while some of those things should be also part of the journey, and be enjoyed as such.

• If you want to guild (is that even a verb?) you can travel with your fellow guildmates.
• If you want to fight/spellcast, roving monsters give you the opportunity to do so.
• if you want to explore/forage random encounters done right should give you the opportunity.

As unconvenient as it may be, travel is a feature of the game, and the more the game relies on fast travel the less important that feature is. Why removing features when we could try to make them better? Why not focus on pointing out what needs to change to make it less painful and more enjoyable, so it's worth the limited time of many gamers?

I used to have a lot of time to play but it seems to be dwindling over time (i blame adulthood), and even having little time to play i want to spend part of that time travelling, but i want that because i envision the journey as something interesting and meaningful. If it's not, believe me, i'll be the first one in line complaining, but I don't think it's fair to judge what something could be when finished by the state it is when it's on its barebones.

This is it. The Overworld is part of the game, and because of that, what happens in the Overworld should be as interesting as whatever could happen in another scene. All this topic for "unconvenience" arises from the prejudice that "Overworld travel is boring, hence it will be boring in the future" and that's not necessarily true. What if Overworld travel ends up being so awesome that the best way to spend the time while waiting for a certain activity to come up is to hang around on it?

That's the kind of thing i'm pushing for, not just "Sorry you can pop here and there; to support Roleplay/Regional Economies/Migratory birds we need to spend time travelling from A to B". And for the record i do think that (we DO need swallows in SotA... if there's another explanation for all those coconuts in a temperate zone like Novia i don't wanna now!), but the first thing we need to be sure of is that travel ends up being something meaningful, interesting, and fun. And we won't get there by asking Mark/Recall a la UO...

Oh, and i'm not saying that we shouldn't be able to fast travel at all. I find the solution offered by the deves reasonable, and i'm cool with anything that builds up over the concept of the Overworld (like the caravan thing).

 

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away there was an open world sandbox game called Star Wars Galaxies. All major cities like Mos Eisley, Bestine, Coronet had a star port. After the game launched, speeders were added. Eventually, player cities sprang up on Tatooine, Lok, Naboo, etc. Those player cities had small shuttle ports. Travel made easy.

As the game progressed, a huge shopping district sprang up right outside Coronet. Lots of shops selling all manner of item. But the stunning thing was, neither the ability to speed to locations or the transportation system or even the shopping district impacted the regional economies of each town because if you had good items at reasonable prices, people came to visit your shop. Word of mouth = priceless.

So, based on my years playing SWG, I take a different view to the idea that you have to slow travel to a snail's pace in order for regional economies to flourish. Transportation hubs were a wonderful place for RP and for meeting new people, especially since in the big star ports the ships ran on a schedule. If you missed one, you had to wait for another to arrive after a few minutes.

I think a better transport system in SotA AND flourishing regional economies can absolutely co-exist. I just can't subscribe to the belief that they are mutually exclusive. That is why I'm waiting to see what the devs have up their sleeves as far as better ways to move around in SoTA - in the near future and for episode 2.

 

It's a matter of balance, as always is. If it is too hard, or too easy, people don't like. E.g. if the travel time from Soltown to Ardoris was of two earth months, well, that's too hard. If we had a small "cube" with all the world inside, and by just waving our "toothpick +3000" we can kill everything on it, collect all mats and make a new toothpick (+3001 this time), well, that won't work either.

Game designers have to do that, the balance, and it's a very hard job to it do well.

I used to like Ultimas for they, at the time, featured a lot of details. Dialogs, plot, companions, food, day and night, useless stuff around, horses, ships, flying carpets... etc. Most games improve graphics, and cut-scenes. But... great graphics are slow and cut-scenes aren't playable. So I have been "force" to play many nice looking games but worth just 10% of any old Ultima.

To me the wealth of details, the deep of the environment, worth more than graphics alone.

As for traveling time, we can find fixes to that, even without changing the game. Like sleeping near the area to grind, and using the bank nearer to it (or placing a house). Also, some teleport power has been already promised.

 

If you don't have a Solid State Drive, then every random encounter is two more painful scene loads. On my machine a typical scene load takes 24 seconds, but can take much longer. So at least 48 seconds wasted per random encounter. And for what? A bunch of wolves/cows/sheep/skellies etc. Definitely not worth the time wasted. If Portalarium agrees to pay for a new SSD for my machine, I might see things differently.

Yes, they intend to speed these up. You know what would be even better? Make them optional. Those who want them can enjoy them to their heart's content. Those who see them as a frustrating and pointless waste of time can avoid them completely. Everybody is happy*.

*Except those who insist on imposing their world view on others.

 

No SSD yet! hmm, why RAM is not used? I have 32 gigs and it's mostly unused. Can't Portalarium use a RAM cache? The client is not using RAM at all, just 2.1 GB. Caching the overworld map a several town won't make it fatter than 4Gb while making transitions much faster. If they use 20Gb... well, everything should fin in RAM.

 

My tech background doesn't reach game programming levels... but i think random encounters scenario could be somehow preloaded while you move around the Overworld, and that falling into a random encounter makes the game load everything in the scene first (while you're still moving around in the Overworld), then drops you in with minimal scene load.

The same way data of distant zones is preloaded on MMO with seamless worlds, as we approach to certain scenes the game could preload the stuff inside those, making the overworld map part of the "loading time". I'm sure this and other kind of things will be done to improve all this so loading times are drastically reduced.

 

Indeed, at least the overworld map should be preloaded. Returning to the overwold map should not be slower than leaving an artisan station.

 

I may be wrong, but from memory I think the stated minimum system requirement is 6GB RAM. They cannot assume that more than this amount is available, although if it is they could certainly use it to give some people a better experience. It could certainly make life easier for those of us with 16GB or 32GB RAM.

 

I am firmly in the camp that believes fast travel and local economies go hand in hand. I am certain that i will never travel to 50+ PoTs on each side of the map just to see if there are some interesting vendors if it costs me too much time, where as with runes in UO, that was a daily routine to hit multiple vendor spots before i started playing.

 

Just my two cents but I don't see anything wrong with including a function to immediately unload a scene and reappear back on the overland map. Just keep it unusable when you're in combat.

Travel will become easier over time with the implementation of long distance ferries in the new port cities, mounts and runes, plus being able to zone to a home you are kindred to... but then again, this is just like... my opinion, man. Abide.

 

Indeed that is what many people will do if travel is mindlessly boring. I personally will never play a game that makes for a less entertaining task than working: I would either work or play another game.

 

Most and I stress most, not all, modern operating Systems will recognize32gb but only use 16GB of memory. Most of the windows OS that have this "feature" are upgradable to windows 10 for free, but Shroud isn't officially compatible with Win10.... yet...

 

That is a really good point. In UO I accessed the entirety of the map including vendors and I'd regularly refresh my books to add new vendors and drop old ones depending on their inventory and pricing. Thus supporting a number of regional economies, and creating incentive for vendors in all regions to compete for business based on pricing, specialization and item availability. If the vendors in a particular region can't compete, I say let them die along with any protectionist policies. Let us travel freely and support the best vendors. That rewards those individuals who make the effort to sustain the best shops, controls prices, and overall makes the economy (and the game) stronger.

 

And anyone who thinks that making everything - travel, crafting, banking, ...- mindlessly boring will make for a game that people look forward to play must not have given that any thought.

 

In the SOTA model, merchants would bring their goods to market. Customers would not bring themselves to the vendor.

Much like the crafting system, one of the goals of SOTA is to make it so players can't "do it all". Travel will take time for a reason, a very important reason. It helps create regional economies. You're assuming that regional economies are just where stuff comes from, but that's only half of it. Regional economies are also where stuff goes. If stuff can go anywhere, quickly, then it's not a regional economy it's a global economy. That's not the goal.

If you don't want to travel, don't travel. Go to your local market and see what merchants (that do travel) bring there. If no one is bringing stuff to your local market, that creates an opportunity for traveling merchants to create trade routes that bring goods to market. Or it makes exploring a new land that much more satisfying to adventures because they can now bring back goods and stories to the people that don't want to travel and generally stay close to their home.

It's not the destination that you should be concerned with, it's the journey.

 

I am looking forward to the planned changes.
Its time for a /zone and /stuck change.
And its enough time for adjustments, if necessary.

 

RG has been very consistent on this issue. Likewise travel has consistently sucked. If we sacrifice playability for the sake of regional economies, ultimately the regional economies will suffer because there will be fewer buyers. Conversely if we're allowed to travel more freely, the player population will travel to any regional economy that has decent vendors. It's a fallacy that the only way to build a regional economy is to throw up a bunch of checkpoints and make us walk everywhere. All that will do is create 1) frustration and 2) artificially subsidized regional economies that will offer players inferior choices and higher prices. Free travel, free markets, free your soul.

 

Get out your coconuts, Budner, it's a long way to Tipperary.

 

Actually people not wanting to travel would be a great thing because it would open up the opportunity for players to create organized trade like caravans and trading coalitions.

The reason we never see that type of thing in other MMO's (I mean in more than name only) is precisely because everyone can just go to and from with great ease. There's little risk, and travel is very fast. This makes modern MMO economies more like the e-commerce and less like medieval trade routes. You said that there would be "fewer buyers" which is hard to imagine. There should actually be TONS of buyers and fewer sellers. I imagine that Job Orders will be plenty and enterprising merchant players will be happy to fill those orders as best they can. This will drive players to travel more, take more risks, and make the game more challenging.

Will some people never "get it" and quit because they just want instant travel and casual entertainment? Sure. But that's going to happen no matter what we do. The same people are likely to say the game world is too small or they finished all the content too quickly. They have short attention spans and there's not much anyone can do to design around that.