Fast Travel in POTs, WOW what a mistake

The fast travel in POTs is not good. It reduces all POTs to the lowest common denominator (Shrines and Vendors). Forget about what's inbetween all the fast travel sites because most players will probably never see that content.

But whatever, a few short sighted convenience freaks probably asked for fast travel, and you guys (Portalarium) listened to them and attempted to meet that "need".

Well as a POT owner, I HATE the fast travel.
1. I never wanted it, and I didn't know it was being planned.
2. It ruins the premise of my POT. Completely ignores it actually, while punching it in the face repeatedly. Thanks for that.
3. It's not even fast travel where we the POT owners get to assign points of interest. It's just an arbitrary teleportation to areas that POT owners we'll now have to populate with "stuff" because that's the only place most people will visit.

Look, I'm not saying shame on you guys for listening and responding to some of the POT owners requests. But before you implement something like this in the future, perhaps you could survey more than just a few POT owners and get a feel for how this might impact POTs in general?

Oh and please remove this stupid horrible mechanic from my POT, I don't want it. It's not a feature I signed up for. As a dynamic POT owner I feel I should be able to remove it or opt out of it since it literally destroys everything I intended my POT to be.

 

Before devotionals, I never went into POTs. Now I go in for a blessing.

 

You are assuming that we want to see the POT. I assure you I and many others do not. The ones who do are not affected, because hey...they want to see it. So they will.

Don't try and force me to see it. We will choose not to enter it at all if that is the case.

 

Perhaps the POT owner should be allowed to enable or disable fast travel in their town through the in-game POT management interface or through your account page on the SOTA website.

Would be nice if the POT owner could move the fast travel signs to different locations, and also label them. I had an idea for the movement of static objects such as POT wagons and boats, and fast travel signs within a certain amount of space from their default placement in the POT. This would allow the POT owner to move or turn the object without submitting a service voucher - but what it would really do is set a movement/change marker on the server with a timer. So after 4 hrs (or whatever an acceptable timer might be) the change would take effect. This might prevent potential griefing @DarkStarr mentioned several hangouts/telethons ago. Hope Starr is feeling better.

 

I think the idea for the fast travel was to open up more entrances so that people with merchants would get more foot traffic. Most POTs people walk in look for shrines and look at the vendors near the entrance but hardly visit very deep. (my opinion based on what I see) This now opens the ability for people to get to the other or deeper entrances faster and opens up more market areas . I do agree with Ancev would be nice to control it on or off etc. On another note there is also push to have the ability to bind to multiple houses or chapters houses which is something that came up in some of the questions during telethon.

 

Really?

I mean, if you're not going to enter the POT that's fine with me. But I own it, the casual populace doesn't own it. Don't you think maybe I should be allowed to design it how I want? If you don't like it then just don't go there.

 

Yes, absolutely. For the typical POT I'm sure this whole fast travel makes sense because the only thing worth going there for is player vendors and devotionals.

Well my POT doesn't have either!

It's not designed to attract people for that reason. It's meant to be a place where roleplaying can intersect with pvp. It's not meant to be just another place you go to find artifacts and get a 5% buff.

 

yes, absolutely, port has a mechanism set in place for you to do just that! sounds like you want a static town.

 

Funny, I doubt @DarkStarr would agree. The whole reason it is dynamic is the opposite of that.

 

I personally think the fast travel is a great idea, one of my town members lives out the way, its made it convenient for them. With this new feature I can now develop other areas of my map for new residents when the game gets a full release, thanks Portalarium for adding this feature, its good to see new features going into the game that aids POT development.

 

Heh, you're really angry about it!

There are cases where some sort of fast travel does make a lot of sense and isn't really about being a convenience freak . So for example, I always thought if you have an island POT, you have a lot of docks, and it makes sense even from an RP perspective if someone could have a ferry boat to travel between two docks. But the bigger problem -- and this fits more cases --- is that you have Holdfast-sized POTs in Metropolis maps. So, you might have a coastal template, and your Holdfast by the docks, but start the player out up in the hills somewhere, where he has to walk a few minutes to see the actual town. The ideal solution would be to be able to scale down the map size to the Holdfast, but its not what we have.

But I also agree that it can cause issues with how the POT owner wants his town designed. Its also the case with how you're made to have a banker and town crier at the entrance, whether you want it or not. Or you have to have certain plant decorations at the docks, etc... It would be great to have more flexibility.

 

Here's how I think the signs should be customizable if they're kept in as the POT fast travel solution in the long term :

- The default names need to be better. 'East Dock' and 'West Dock' over 'Dock 1' and 'Dock 2'.
- We should be able to customize the names of destinations on the sign. Such as changing the name of one destination to "Town center" or another to "Wharfs district."
- We should be able to remove/hide certain destinations from the sign. Some might be inapplicable in the sense that the actual POT is small and there's really nothing for visitors to see at location that the sign is pointing to. If there's only two relevant locations, you don't want visitors given four.
- For the BDF case in the extreme perhaps an option to disable it altogether, although I'm guessing that reducing it to one location would also be okay with him.

 

It's true I'm against this feature. But all statements and quotation were used for emphasis, I'm not "angry".

 

I agree POT owners should be able to customize this feature in many ways and even turn it off, if they choose to. Maybe that is the long term goal and this is just the test to make sure it works. But, I would rather have it in while they add the customization options than not. Running through the same scene once or twice, gets the Oooohs and Aaaaahs. Making people run 1000's of time, not so much on the oooh and aaaah scale.

 

Sure, to each their own. As long as I can turn it off in my POT, I'm fine with other POT owners doing what they want.

 

i hate large city with a small amout of houses...
i went to live in Mediolanum because when entering city..

there are all NPC vendors..
there are Players vendors..
there is the oracle...
there are all devotionals...

i can do all my business in a very small range...

if i want to explore the city.. i have to visit the "castle" of Tristano Sforza, well.. is not a castle, but a big house located on the central hill of the island.. from this house it's possible to see entire Mediolanum market and sea.

there is a small amout of cities like this..

if i can suggest soemething to developers.. maybe can be nice to REDUCE size of these cities to prevent LAG and increase number of object placeable by owner of the city. (to create more differentiation.. standard templates are very boring...)

 

Spoiler: Hiding all the commentary

As fast travel is, in early iteration, it pretty much only allows one to travel to the furthest extremes of the map (entrances to the POT) + wagons and boats areas. In my particular POT since you enter at the docks and the wagons and boats are near eachother it doesn't do much of anything for me.

What I would like is to adjust these signposts so they are at the furthest reaches of my settlement as opposed to the scene itself.

I can understand that your particular template may have some wagons in the centre and it's not ideal because you may have wanted to build an approach to the town from the exterior and force people to pass through the walls to the city.

So lets say "fast travel in pots wow what a mistake" is not true, while granting that it specifically does harm to the vision of your POT. I also think that a majority of POT owners would NOT object to the fast travel tool, though perhaps would not have voted for it as-implemented.

I think it might be easier to get the point across however with less end of the world hyperbole. On reading your post you make me want to disagree with you before I even finish.


When really when I boil this down to your specific case:

"I built a rats nest/maze with a forbidding approach, unique theme and dense layout, and Portalarium just put a teleporter to the middle of my town."

OR even "I built a maze and Portalarium put a teleporter into the centre of it."

Yeah, that totally sucks man and I hope they change it.

Spoiler

And probably you agree with my response to you more when you read the meat of my comment before reading the fluff of my spoiler. I recommend putting up the image of your town and where they plunked down a teleporter and ask if it can be removed.

 

Your solution stands directly in front of you. In your PVP town, have people camp the teleporting destinations. Don't think they'll be fast travelling through it much after that

I never would have thought griefing would be a solution for immersion!

 

Build a wall around the center. You could even deco it as a trap or prison