Marking runes and travel?

Has anyone heard if we will be able to do something similar to what we were able to do in UO as far as marking rune stones and traveling around the land mass with rune books?

I admit it, I was one of those people that had a library of rune books in my house, some filled with runes to good shops, some to great mining locations, etc. I literally had about 50 or so books of them and it was really super cool that all my friends would come over to my place to use them.

That was a mechanic I had so much fun with and would love to see again.

Has any one heard whether they plan to allow something similar?

 

I brought this up at one of the dev chats in connection with PvP, specifically as it affected the PK/Anti-PK wars. One of the reasons PvP got a bad reputation in UO was that it was too easy to get away with murder. Whack a newbie, recall out, and you were done. There were Anti-PK groups, but unless you were able to catch someone in the act, and interrupt their recall spell, it was actually pretty hard to kill an experienced player.

I mentioned this to Chris Spears , and he agreed that there should be no cheesy easy escape spells like this. PKs will have to evade other players the old fashioned way. I've heard nothing more on this, so we'll have to see what the devs come up with in the way of travel, other than moongates and feet.

 

thanks for the info on this.

 

There are so many systems on the original EA servers and on the freeshards today that solve the issue you describe Owain. "No recall when in combat" "no recall out of dungeon" "no recall when red" and whatever. It should be possible to have recall without ruining PvP..

BUT. I think recall was to "easy" in uo. Players have runes to everywhere and things start to get to easy. I like the idea of recalling, but maybe its cooler when recall and gate travel is a spell that just good mages are able to cast. Not like it was in UO where every char in the game had enough magery to cast recall. Forther there should be some limitations like:

no recall into dungeons.(It should be an adventure to go to shame lvl 4, not just a simple spell)
No recall into cities. (It should be possible to prevent players from entering a city in case of a siege)
and so on...

I think about the "bridge keeper" situation of ultima 9. When u want to go to paws (was it paws?) you need to get pass a troll which was guarding a bridge. If recall is to easy, this situation will only happen to newbies.

 

Session Start: Fri Jun 21 11:11:12 2013
Session Ident: #SotA
03[11:11] * Now talking in #SotA
03[11:11] * Topic is 'Welcome to the official Shroud of the Avatar Chat | www.shroudoftheavatar.com | 6 Forum / Chat Rules: http://ow.ly/maF7w |4 Please Use your Forum username or a shortened version of it. | 7Dev Chat (Inventory Management) - 4LIVE NOW7 - http://ow.ly/mgkk5'
03[11:11] * Set by Lord_Viator on Fri Jun 21 11:01:49
[11:29] <+Chris> We haven't decided if the log book will used for lots of stuff through chapters or if we'll require lots of books
06[11:29] * +Fireangel gets tickled at InsaneMembrane, trying to control the crazy crowd
[11:30] <+Darthan_Haj_MGT470> lol
[11:30] <+Astrobia_DT> Question: click and draging items from the inventory to the world? Will items in the real world from your inventory use a sort of grid snap system or a lose sort of physics based placement (or both)?
[11:30] <+InsaneMembrane> i can do it all of course
[11:30] <+Chris> Ooh, you can see Bill's dungeon in the background
[11:30] <+Chris> Spellbook, log book
[11:30] <+Eternal_Knight> heard those cats InstaneMembrane
[11:30] <+Chris> er, rewind
[11:30] <+AvatarAcid> I gave Bill a wooden sword! it is dangeroud to go alone
06[11:31] * +Fireangel goes to the secret cheat room behind the chimney and gets all the best things for her avatar
[11:31] <+Chris> Quick, rewing the film!
[11:31] <+LordShark> <+Umbrae> @Firelotus - Q: In addition to bags and containers, will we be able to simply hold objects in our hands on the paper doll and show on your character?
[11:31] <+LordShark> ^^
[11:32] <+Eternal_Knight> herd....
[11:32] <+Umbrae> lol Thanks LordShark
[11:32] <+LordShark> Np it's a good Q
[11:32] <+Chris> and yes, there will be gate/recall spells

 

nice thank you for that info Fireangel.

 

You're quite welcome. I'm happy about it, myself.

 

Yet another example of contradictory information from dev chats, which again illustrates the necessity of a design document that codifies this kind of thing.

 

Runes and gates were "a good thing" for getting business to a vendor or helping a friend get to a dungeon..but limiting it the right ways would have to be done, and I'm not sure the game will call for recall/gate I think I'd like to hit beta before something like that is fully decided honestly..maybe that's just me

 

The argument against making these spells as effective as they were in UO is that the dual scale map makes travel faster anyway, so making them too effective in combination with faster long distance travel might make those spells a little unbalanced and makes groups of players more unpredictable in their encounters.

 

Not just you. I'd like to see us get a sense of the ease of moving long distance using the overland map prior to insisting on a need to have insta-travel to where ever we want to go. If it does end up in game, I hope it is either very expensive in some way to cast, has a long delay between uses, or ideally both.

 

I used to have so much fun building rune books to all my favorite mining locations and then dying them the same color as the ore. sorry nostalgia struck me when thinking on this subject

 

When Recall is easy and common no one learns where anything is. When I would ask directions in UO the usual answer was "At the end of this rune."

 

I've been thinking; maybe the right way to balance these kinds of spells is to make them into commodity items. There are currently 24,315 backers currently, so lets say for the beta period we let npcs sell out 50,000 single use gate or recall spells. Some players will horde and try to resell them at elevated prices when npc supply runs out, but as players use these spells the npcs are immediately restocked by the number of spells used.

I'd like there to be some way to buy the spell outright for an elevated price from an npc, but also a random way to obtain it for cheap or free; random distribution with control points at the start is key to balance and fairness.

If we're treating skills and combat like a fighting trading card game, it would make sense for there to be consumable cards for irregular situations, and that players may use these cards in trading and in high level combat strategy. The old school equivalent to the modern recall spell would be something like a 'rope' that would teleport you out of a dungeon, so its not unprecedented to introduce an item like that into an economy.

Just my 2 cents on the subject,

 

Oddball exceptions make for poor game design.

 

Again, I'd like to get a feel for how traveling is..do we ride mounts in the outdoor map? Can we increase a skill to run faster? I think recalls, and hate travel is a bonus..but it should not be as "simple" in UO..work skill to 60, you can mark runes, work skill to 80 you can gate..too simple..

I'd be for a skill involved in magery that you need to work, and is intertwined with the moon phases maybe..say at 80 Rune Stamping Skill you can mark a rune but based off moon phase it could be interfered with to say and send you to a random place a % of the time based off magery/rune marking skill which would just be a basic algorithm..

 

No mounts as of yet, and the overhead map is just a means of getting from point A to point B graphically. You move faster on prepared surfaces, like roads, but if you leave the road and head into a forest, you travel more slowly, which is realistic. No run skill I'm aware of, but encumbrance has been mentioned, so if you are in full armor, you may move more slowly than someone wearing leather buckskin.

 

I've suggested that marked runes can only be used in a Library. No recall or gate out of your bag.
That would at least slow down teleporting and could not be used for fast getaways.

So if I have a suit of armor on and some mage is chasing me, will I need to simply disrobe or will I have to drop it on the ground in order to run faster.
Sounds like mages might have an advantage.

 

Generally you would assume a Mage running around in cloth armor compared to a warrior running around in full plate mail would be quicker no? It also means a Mages take more physical damage so it balanced out that way

 

Split the mage from sternum to navel. The mage will now complain that you have the advantage.