Poll - Travel [UNOFFICIAL]

Great question and topic in its own right!

 

I think travel should be costly. It should be dangerous. Travel across Novia (and even between the Vale) is far too easy and meaningless. Most people back in the day lived out their lives in a single village or if lucky, to the neighboring ones. The hardy, or the foolish, or simply foolhardy were the ones that seeked adventure beyond the horizon. I'd like for travel to feel that way. Instead, what we have is far too easy because /zone and soon /mark /recall. I think those should be distance-limited (and perhaps should not cross CPs). If you want to venture further out beyond the region in which you live, you gotta get past those, or take one of the few Rifts or eventually the hopefully dangerous, treacherous seas. We, as outlanders, new arrivals on in a dangerous foreign world, should be at a major disadvantage than than the locals....yet, we travel with wanton abandon and impunity. I want the feeling of early explorers, of having to stay days or weeks in a foreign region, getting to know the locals there (be it NPCs or PRTs or POTs) and not simply /zone home whenever I feel like it.

 

We very much agree @smack couldn't have said it better.

Took me months in UO before I ventured away from Britain. In Ultimas you had often to spend time also leveling to make sure you could handle the random encounters.

The main problem as its setup right now is that there are player owned towns all over the place, so how can you justify such dangerous regions when low level people might live in a town right next to it.

I would go back to the drawing board myself and often do in my curent job, its a pain yes but sometimes its a necessity.

 

kind of off topic, but:
this also tells me that you would not be opposed to having some sort of "rested" buff if you are within a certain radius of your home?

that would help encourage players to 'live in' the world instead of just 'log in' to the world, you know have a sort of home life as well as adventure life - encourage at least to go home before logging out of the game..

 

I generally agree with you @smack, and hope things do get a little harder. The only real complaint I have with travel is the loading screen, particularly the one to the overland map because you use it so much. If they could cut the time for that screen I think it would go a long way to making travel feel less annoying, but still make is non-convenient.

@ThurisazShole: I don't think I like it within a radius of your home... I mean, it doesn't really make sense. There's no reason you couldn't get rested staying at an inn, but some similar type of rested buff is certainly an interesting idea.

 

good point there. if you sleep on a mattress, as opposed to sleeping in a campsite, you should get the buff.. would you do it for a length of time (15-45 minutes realtime?) or would you do it for the distance from? i think the time would be better than the distance.

 

I've been using the lunar gates for sometime now.

 

That's an interesting proposition. I think there are likely balance issues with that and the same could be said of the adventurous type. Bad example, but those types might thrive in unknown environments and thus a corollary "adventure" buff would apply the further away from home they are. But I get your intent, as other games do the same thing (even single player ones), where sleeping in your own bed gives you a temporary buff vs. sleeping elsewhere. I'm not against it but it would require some further thought and balancing for all play styles.

Yeah, load times definitely need a big reduction and we know @Chris has made it a priority to address over the next few releases. I've suggested this in other threads but what about never unloading the overworld if your system has the memory for it...

Exactly...the quality of the bed/room can also affect the buff. Again, other games have done this too and the more gold you fork over to the innkeeper, the more rested you will be for the next day. Which has me thinking along the lines of what @ThurisazSheol suggested -- does the buff only apply to your actual home? What if you don't own one, but frequently rent from one that you consider your "home"? The feeling of being "at home" would also apply and give you the feels in a way that the buff is intended to apply to.

I think time and distance could apply.

But I would also argue that, along my suggestion of travel being dangerous, any camping in the wilderness (if that's ever allowed), or resting at a shady town (e.g. Bucaneer's Den) or an unprotected town (i.e. no moon tower shield) prone to attacks from enemies (undead, bandits, town sieges), would negate that buff pretty quickly or not give you one due to the anxiety or fear of impending doom / attack at any moment, regardless of how comfortable that bed is you're sleeping on.

 

hehe having had hiked the AT, i can attest it has been known to happen from time to time.

 

I've had to clean up quite a few posts in this thread. Please keep it on topic.

 

Judging from the poll it would appear that most people would prefer a less restricted ability to travel, and I agree with them.

 

Oh my! If only the Devs could have the same thoughts on this matter! I want adventure, and not knowing what or if anything will be waiting for me as I try to move forward down a path I have yet to travel! I think the encounters should be visible AND invisble at the same time. Have some you see and others like say highwaymen that IF you do not defeat them will take a portion of either your money or goods that you may have on you. Could you imagine how cool that would be? You come upon a dead body in the road and if you click on it, it takes you into the same scene the person died in, and if YOU defeat them you get the gold or materials the other person lost to them.
That type of stuff is why I want harder restrictions on travel amongst other reasons as well. Travel should be an adventure EVEN if you have traveled it before. Just because you go down a path once and see nothing or have no encounter, does not mean some nefarious person or being might not be waiting for some poor hapless victim to pass by. Or even a PvP player could choose to go into "Highwayman" mode where THEY are the NPC you face, maybe you do not know their name and if you win the PvP rules would apply, but if they lose some sort of penalty and loss of items also applies (just spitballin here) but you get the idea There are lot's of cool things that could make travel very fun and dangerous or rewarding.

 

Are we looking at the same poll? The majority like it the way it is planned (restricted) or want it to be more difficult. Folks who want it less difficult (The whole purpose of the thread) are in the minority.

Its the trend that's important, this isn't Florida, Jeb.

 

I thought you Americans liked first past the post voting?

 

Lol,you're awesome womby, but i'm a libertarian.

 

That was the thing that immediately came to mind for me, cache that overworld map, and the core problem goes away. Hearing it's being worked on doesn't surprise me in the least. That kind of performance improvement is something that could be pushed off until close to release, so it was. Indeed, it makes sense to push it 'till late because there's less chance of a change negating it's need or requiring the implementation to be different.

Wow, I'm embarrassed to say I forgot about people without houses. Any dynamic of this nature would have to have a reasonable way for them to take advantage of it.

True.

 

Speed is really a seperate issue and folks should try and seperate your feelings when discussing this issue.

It's one thing to say travel isn't fun and feels monotonous, but if your primary reasoning is speed and load screens, there 'are' things you can do.


While I know its not an option for everyone, I think it's appropriate to say as well that it's 2016 and if you're still using a mechanical hard drive, you're doing it wrong. You can get 2 250gb ssd's pretty cheap these days and it's stupid easy to set them up in a raid0 array. Even a lone ssd will outperform most mechanical drives and your load times will halve.

Keep your eyes on slickdeals.com, they usually have SSD'S pop up every few weeks.

 

Guys, stay on topic. Do not turn this into a PVP discussion.

 

Hrm... I don't see how you can come to that conclusion.

The first and the third choices in the poll are for more restrictive travel, as what the devs are currently implementing is more restrictive than current state.

If you combine the votes for those two lines, it's 82 votes (55%) for More restrictive travel vs. 67 votes (45%) for less restrictive travel.

(Ignoring for the moment that this is an entirely unscientific poll with a self-selected pool)

 

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