Am I the only one who thinks the game is too slow paced?

I don't mean leveling or any of that sort of thing. What I mean is, the Avatar runs way too slow.

To give a little context, when I first played Ultima 7 I played it on a pentium 2, 233 MH, ATI Ragepro, with 64megs of ram. As you can imagine, the game ran super fast. And I absolutely LOVED it! There was absolutely no tedium to the game at all. While retaining all of it's charm and atmosphere. You could walk into a room and see a significant portion of what the NPC was doing on their schedule within a 5-10 second time period. It was so fast it was difficult to double click on them to start a conversation and maybe it was too fast. In any event, Ultima 7 felt big while being on a small map. This was because there was so much to do in the game. Conversely, to me, Shroud feels like it's big because I'm spending so much time walking by empty houses with little to actually do in the game. I just don't have the patience or time to experience the rich systems the game has built already.

In any event, I have a hard time playing RPGs(particularly 3d ones) where the movement is slow and it takes several minutes to walk through a town. I don't care if it's boots of swiftness, or a magical 'gotta go fast' potion like they had in Gothic 1, or even a cheat code for single player just to move quickly like Ultima 9 had. The game just feels tedious to play when I'm moving around towns and areas quickly.

Anyone else feel the game is too slow in this regard or am I the minority?

 

I understand that the new generations don't have patience for much. But this is not an action RPG. This is not a fast paced game. This is a game about exploration and discovery.

 

LOL HI and welcome Sonnington. I'm not sure if you've been here a while or not since the date says 7/14 for the date you arrived here. Well and I know what you mean about the walking and yes it is pretty slow right now. It's not really the game though, we are in development, so content is not in, much of the action that will be going on around us is not in, all the systems are not in. So just an FYI for you which you probably don't need. Right now the action is a lot in the community stuff going on and testing out the systems for development. Oh and no you are not the minority, sometimes it is slow and I just have to find my own fun. Hanging out with others is helpful. If you need help with the hat/mask quest I just did it. So feed back is appreciated and jump on in, and of course if you would like friend majoria and I'd be happy to help in game if you have questions or want to chat. **cheers**

 

He has got a point though.
I looked for a plot yesterday. Took me ages to cover a distance that was no distance at all.
A little bit more speed at least on the overland map would be nice.

 

Already in.
Fill out the air magic & light armor trees. Get Dash, Sprint, Blink and some innate Speed.
Build a "Get There Quick" deck which you switch to when out of combat, consisting only of such spells (and slugs).
Add extra in Focus.

Always use double tap - hold on W to Run wherever you are going.

Other R16 tricks:

Overland ferry, just outside of Kingsport and Ardoris there are galleons which you can click. Which takes you to the other overland map.

Get a lot deed in 3 major NPC towns, most importantly Kingsport or Ardoris for closeness to overland ferry. Use the U zone.

To get out of towns, use the [Esc] [Esc] [Exit] [Start on overland map].


OR:
STOP DRINKING TOO MUCH CAFFEINE.

 

LOL and believe it or not, we are way faster on the overland map than we were early on, sheesh you have no idea how slow we were, but I agree to being faster even now. **majoria chants *more map speed, more map speed** Perhaps that will work lol

 

I did some rough calculations on the size of Novia awhile back based on the Lat & Lon lines on the assumption of Earth standards. Came out to something like about 300,000 square miles or something like that? And people want to walk across it like they're taking a trip to the corner store. I know.. I know.. most players don't think of it that way.. and there's no reason they should.. but I think the current speeds are pretty good right now.

The map itself probably still needs some tweeking to keep decent speeds on the roads but it's a lot better now with R16.. at least I feel like I'm still on the roads (when I am).

 

Just curious, who did you hear that from? Or are you only stating how you would LIKE the game to turn out? Personally, I'm hoping for some good action and willing to bet a lot of other backers are too.

 

Stuff like this comes up and I always have to wonder.. what's the rush?

Lot of us are going to playing this game for years to come.

My observation.. and that's all it is mind you.. is that impatience is simply self-aggravating. You're so busy being in a hurry that you get reckless and inconsiderate of others.. and you can't enjoy what little time you save being in a hurry because you're too busy being impatient for the next thing.

I knew a state patrolman once. He had mentioned people speeding from Seattle to Tacoma that really stuck in my head.. It's normally about a 40 minute drive if you stick to the limit and the roads are clear. Speeders save themselves maybe 2-5 minutes max. And I have to wonder.. do they ever even notice it at the end of the day?

Now I wouldn't suggest purposefully making players wait. I think there's a sweet spot in character speed that you need to hit.. it's not to slow that most people can't tolerate it.. but it's not too fast either that people are zipping across the map like they're using recall from UO. But SotA isn't an arcade game or FPS. Proper pacing is important but I think a lot of players would be well served to not always be in a hurry.

 

Yeah but there are places where the roads don't count as roads no matter how precisly you follow them.
That's what slowed me down a lot.

 

I definitely think the game is WAY too slow paced. I have a liquid lightning mind, and ZERO patience. I need responsiveness.

Even once I've loaded into a zone I keep thinking "jeez, can't you run any faster in that full suit of plate mail, fatty"

 

Yeah that's all good and fine and i understand your meditative approach towards the game but you have to keep the playability in mind.
At least give us horses or something like that. Or a carriage.
Don't get me wrong, i play EvE, i am used to long distance traveling in games. But the overland map speed isn't quite right yet. At least in my opinion.

 

That of course, needs to be fixed.

 

I did suggest it still could use tweaking and pacing is important. It's not that I don't understand people want to get where they're going but I would caution about making things too fast. It's almost like one of those situations where the best compromise is one that doesn't make anyone happy. There's always going to be people want to get some place faster.

If it we make it too fast and/or start allowing easy fast travel options we risk ruining the game's pace. Don't even get me started on people begging for gates and recalling everywhere in UO..

 

LOL Bowen ahhh spoilsport. At one time providing gates was a very lucrative business in UO until it was taken away. I loved the freedom to go where I wanted, and I do understand this is not UO, but it was a thing I loved and also to be able to mark the spot I'd been to, any spot, imagine that, how amazing to have that feature in a game. It was very special. and so nice. I am not asking for it here necessarily, but those were some fun times for me.

 

If someone wants to get someplace slower, they will find a way. In the meantime, OUT OF MY WAY HONK HONK Hemlock passing on the right

 

Let me clarify.
I think the speed might be ok if we wouldn't have such a strange distribution of towns, dungeons and scenes.
I know i know we are pre alpha. But with implimentation of PoTs almost on the doorstep its the time to point this out.
In some places, you stumble from town to town and from scene to scene without even seeing the overland map for longer then it needs to load.
In other places you can run around 10 minutes without hitting a scene at all.
For me that is one of the main points why i am annoyed with traveling as it is at the moment. I have no probem with walking 10, 15, 20 minutes to my final destination if there is at least something to see and do between me and my destination.

 

One of the classic aafrts commercials that sticks in my head was a test of driving at 55 mph and then 65 mph, demonstrating that the time saved isnt worth the speeding : if you haven't read "driving:why we drive the way we do" i would recommend it. Humans really arent equipped for speeds in excess of like 20 mph, our brains just dont work so well with all the variables... anyway

i will re-iterate that there must be more 'linear' quests in store so that you wont have to walk around so much. Right now we are testing blah blah areas will be chock full soon so there wont be the need for a lot of travel with nothing going on. i hope. random battle maps feel like walking is to fast, tho the larger random battle maps are perfect. ravenswood seems perfect speed to travel. Overland is pretty good too. towns suck. they suck my good energy.

I say start Tartusing the houses so they have a Dr. Who effect or something PLEASE!

i wanted to add MY cheats : town one i see who is hanging out and write the name down and abuse /zone
i also /stuck in towns because when i want to leave/enter town, that walk feels TOO long and empty just like u said. i wish they would let us at least /zone banker for now. ah well. So knowing if BmC guys are loitering in owlshead is worth writing down to /zone.

also, like on the right there is an online list of who is on the forums - tough to sort out:but fun to know if you read who is online most, and if you see the forum name active, there's a good chance to /zone to them. I am unwilling to out people *I* zone to who are (imho) on too much 8/

The Hendoman, an easy name to /zone to. Not like moistyev trudor or lord greagior or all those flippin impossible to /spell properly names that are on alot. YOU know who you are.

 

From here
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/release-16-instructions.23496/#post-343298

This was the second pass for the Novia overland map and the first for hidden vale after the Unity 5 changes.
Take a screencam, record your movements, then if you are on the road and still hit a slowdown, then stop, take a bugreport or a /loc so you get the exact location.
If the devs do not get such exact reports it will take longer time and things might be missed.

 

Try cloth and the proper skills

There's even two more speed-boosts you can get. Actually, to be honest, if you are using every single possible speed up there is, I'd be astonished if you took longer than 1 minute to get through a Metropolise sized scene. ^^ You can at least triple your speed, maybe quadruple.
@Net we should give it a try on a 'parcour' style race through Pax Lair in R17!

I'd guess that the roving encounters on the map should help there. As might mounts.

If only we could make that work... if only we had a way to... oh wait! We do! Donate to the mount stretchgoal and have others do the same? I bought a nice person a black foal.