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overland travel is just way to slow

Discussion in 'Release 18 Feedback' started by dorkish, May 28, 2015.

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  1. Sirius Sternwarte

    Sirius Sternwarte Avatar

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    The one thing I would like to see is some better definition of places you cannot walk. I've listed a few places here where it looks like you should be able to go, but there is an invisible barrier that means you have to go another way. I'm happy to hear anyone's comment as to why I should not be able to travel these paths but it should be visibly clearer on the map, for example:
    -from Drachvald to PaxLair on the bay side of the mountain
    -from Solania via the Celestial Swamp directly to the Perennial Coast
    -from Owl's Head to Owl's Nest on the same side of the River Flow (as we used to be able)
     
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  2. Katrina Bekers

    Katrina Bekers Localization Team

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    No matter the speed, someone will complain.

    It's fast? Then the world feels small and lack sense of scale, and would someone think of regional economy?

    It's slow? Then it's boring and useless and I want to rip my eyes with a spoon.
     
  3. Lord_Darkmoon

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    I think when there things to do and experience on the map, it won't feel so slow anymore...
     
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  4. Arkah EMPstrike

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    It only takes a few minuites to get from one end of theworld to the other right now.
     
  5. Arkah EMPstrike

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    They intend to do stuff like that. At the moment they wanna focus on the combat that folks have been waving pitchforks over for a few releases
     
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  6. Brightstar

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    /walk, what's that? I don't think anyone has ever used that on the overworld map. :p I agree the pathways/roads should be more clearly visible (widen the road, change color/pattern and maybe put a street light now and then) so travel can occur a bit faster if using it, however, the speed of movement make sense to me for several reasons.

    First, you shouldn't be able to travel from one end of Novia to the other end in 5-10 minutes or so. It should take you time to travel, therefore plan your traveling accordingly. Perhaps as development continues, horses, flying mounts, spells or portals will be added to make travel a bit less time consuming. Also, more areas of interest should be added to make the travel more interesting. Not just random encounters, but other areas like caves, hidden villages, roaming band of creatures, natural disasters, special events, merchant caravans, places of interest, etc. :cool:

    Also, in an economic view, this will help with the market. Some items will only be made/sold at "town xyz" so crafters/adventures need to plan a trip. Slowing down travel helps create areas of regions, whether it be for resources, types of creatures, places of interest, specific biomes, political affiliations (PC and/or NPC), etc. :rolleyes:

    In general it helps the world seem big and worthwhile to explore. Now I understand those who have limited time to play so they want to move about quickly, so my suggestion is focus on those travel types as quickly as possible. If its via spells - learn that spell first, a horse - save up and buy it first, portals - learn where they're all at, etc. I think what's happened is every has gotten spoiled with the fast movement and /zone command but need to remember those were provided only to help further develop this game and resolve bugs and issues in the game. As the game becomes more complete and grander in size and content, travel time won't seem as such a big issue. ;)
     
  7. rob2

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    I dont like the argument that once there are things to do along the way, the agonizingly slow travel will be acceptable.

    It's ignoring the fact that if I am at point A and want to go to point B, it will be frustrating. There will come a time when you will want to travel between two points and need to do it in a realtive hurry and have no desire to adventure along the way.

    As you're crawling along the roads, you will be cursing to yourself and wondering why you have to put up with it.

    Other games have solved this, and I'm sure SoTA will:

    UO: Recall/gate/mounts
    DAOC: Stable masters/teleport circles
    WOW: Mounts/Hearth/Warlocks/Wyverns/Flying pirateships/Zeppelins/etc ...
     
  8. Ice Queen

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    I'm not sure if it's the intention, but to me if feels like we were slowed down to give the impression the world is bigger than it really is. If that's the case, it isn't convincing to me, it's just annoying.:( That doesn't fix the problem :(
     
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  9. Jens_T

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    I personally find travelling too slow now - for testing purposes / with a world in the building.
    Travelling in the game with all features working / actively playing will require a different speed than during testing. Also as others mentioned faster means of travel (more moon gates, mark/recall, steeds etc.) can be implemented.
    But right now it feels to sluggish to me.
     
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  10. amaasing

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    But in Witcher 3 you are actually using the same perspective as when you are in a town or in combat. So having something to stop and look at makes sense. In SOTA we are solely on an overland map. Big difference. Now if this game was changed to where getting from one place to another (town to town or area to area) kept us in the same perspective as entering areas, then I don't think the "slowness" would be a much as a issue and then we could have those interesting things to see and do. But as it is now, it's very dull, wasted time walking across the map.
     
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  11. Gamician

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    Some have said it does not take that much time to go from Novia to another. So I did some testing of my own. From Arodris going North and along the West Perennial Trail, Through Vertas Pass and then through Blackblade Pass and up to the farthest I could get North which was Verantis Shardfall took me 10 minutes. And that is not any where near the top of Novia yet. I returned back the going down the East Side of Novia, past Paxlair, Gruenvald Shardfall, Solace Bridge and the East Perennial Trail. That took 11 minutes. That is a total time of 22 minutes. I got lost once by taking a path that led to an area that required me to backtrack. That took another 2 minutes. I encountered no Random Encounters.

    This says if I entered the game with lets say an hour to play. When I entered I wanted to go to Vertas Pass or Blackblade Pass to kill some stuff or work on my experience. I'm leaving from Ardoris. that is where my home is. It takes approximately 10 minutes to get to one of these places. I then fight for lets say 40 minutes and then return to my home in Ardoris. I would have spent 20 minutes just traveling to the place I wanted to go and back home. That does not include getting pulled into Random Encounters. If there are going to be a lot of Random Encounters like some people think then I'm really going to add to my travel time. But for an example lets say I get pulled into 5 Random Encounters on my way and 5 on my way back. Even if I just run through each of then the time it takes to enter the Instance, run through it and and then exit the Instance is probably close to 30 seconds, more or less depending on the type of computer. so 5 +5 = 10 Random Encounters at 30 seconds each or 300 seconds or 5 minutes. So now my travel time is 25 minutes. That does not include me getting lost in the dark or just taking the wrong path. What this all says is that I could easily spend 30 minutes traveling out of the entire hour I had to play. That also says I was never overloaded and needed to go to a vendor at some town and sell or store what I had collected or harvested. That could easily add another 10 - 15 minutes in travel time and selling to a vendor. In other words getting on for an hour would be a total waste of ones time!!
     
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  12. Heradite

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    I liked R17's speed a lot better than in R18. Come on guys, let's not frustrate the players with slow speeds.
     
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  13. Gamician

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    There seems to be a complete difference of opinion on how this game is going to end up being developed. From these conversations it sounds like the following two are most prevalent.

    First – The Overland Map is the Game. The towns and other areas are just places to have houses and use to gather for resources. When complete you will travel the Overland Map at a slow crawl being pulled into Random Encounters every few steps and fighting all kinds of monsters and completing all kinds of quests. In fact it sounds like some believe they will not even be pulled into Random Encounters and will be fighting Dragons and all kinds of things as MINI – ME’S on the Overland Map. In this case I can see where people will not care about how fast or slow one moves on the Overland Map since the OVERLAND MAP will be the GAME. . In this scenario the player has no control over the game and is controlled by the game itself.

    Second – The Overland Map is strictly a way to move from one Instance to Another. To add some excitement and interest, RANDOMLY you will be pulled into different Random Instances where many things are possible. So in this case yes the Overland Map is a HUB. A way to move from one place to another and still feel part of the game. It is not meant to be the Game. The Game is what occurs in the Towns and other Marked Locations on the Map. In this case people want to be able to move from one Instance to another at a decent rate of speed, not take a lot of time to get there. In this scenario the player controls what happens in the game.

    Some people say that it does not take that long to get from one end of the world to the other. That again is a matter of how one experiences time. Just talking about Novia, my experience is that from Top to Bottom assuming, running into no dead ends, rivers you cannot cross or Random Encounters it takes approximately 10 – 12 minutes. And Novia is far from complete. And that is in Daylight when everything is more recognizable. Now to someone who plays 24 – 7 that probably is nothing, but to those who only get possibly 1 – 2 hours a night to play, that is a lifetime!
    For me I am one of those 1 - 2 hours per night players. When I enter the game I usually have a plan on how and what I am going to do for those hours I have. I do not want the majority of that time to be controlled by the Game but by Me. If I had decided earlier that I was going to spend my time Mining Iron Ore lets say, then I want to be able to enter the Overland Map and move fast enough to the Iron Ore Instance. I do not want to spend an hour on the Overland Map traveling slow and being pulled into instance after instance and end up logging out that day because I never made it to the place I had intended on going.

    I understand the other side of this issue. If that is the game they want to play, then great. But I do not want to be forced into that style of play. To me an MMORPG is all about players making their own decisions, not some god (Dev) from above deciding everything I should do that day. So for me the more choices I have the better. If they want to provide a switch like they have for the English Word Translation under the Town and location names then that is fine with me. That way people can decide whether they want to travel slow or move a little faster. If moving slower means you get pulled into more Random Instances than I’m fine with that too. Point is give us a choice.

    I would like to see the Devs explain just which of the two styles of game play they are trying to accomplish.

    To me. The choice should be determined by how many people are you going to bore to death and leave or quit playing vs. how many would leave if the speed on the Overland Map were increased to R17 levels.
     
  14. Aimend

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    Regardless of what the game will be someday....it's not someday right now. /zone has been nerfed into oblivion and movement speed on the overworld map is painful. There's nothing in the game at this point to make the slow movement speed worth the time sink.

    This is pre-Alpha. It shouldn't be painful to get from place to place right now. The movement speed last release was fine. This feels a lot slower. It needs some improvement.
     
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  15. Sirius Sternwarte

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    Even back in the days of UO, hypothetically just say you had a character with no ability to Recall and no easy access to gates / other transport, if you only had an hour to burn you could have just camped right at the pass. You could have just hidden behind a rock, set up a campfire, flipped out a bedroll and safely logged right there..
    Why did you have to go home at the end of the previous session? Did you go back home each time you ended a session in Ultima 7/8/9 / Diablo / Torchlight etc?
     
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  16. Beli

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    my two cents, over world travel is to slow. could be bumped up a bit.
     
  17. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    I'll have more to say once I calm down, but for now - suffice it to say - I completely agree with damn near everything Gamician says in this thread.
     
  18. Lord_Darkmoon

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    You are forgetting 3:
    Overland map and instances/scenes are equal. You travel around on the overland map and have roving encounters, some of them even being story-related and giving you quests. Some instances may even be only visible during certain constellations.
    Another thing: SotA is not a typical MMORPG. It is a Selective Multiplayer RPG with a single player (offline) part. So you also have to consider those gamers who are in the game for the single player part. Those are expecting something different from the game, namely story, exploration, quests... For those, the overland map is much more than just a map on which you travel from A to B, it is an equal and important part of the game as you can explore it and get quests on it.
    As Portalarium has to consider those gamers as well they have to adjust certain elements of the game to them.
     
  19. Jens_T

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    These are good points.

    Having played most Ultimas and several other RPGs from the 80's / 90's I always found the freedom of exploration a "real" world enticing. The ability to just wander around and discover new details was a strenght of the U6-U7 / UO games and a much welcome improvement over Ux-U5.Spending lots of time wandering around trying to evade trouble adds a lot to the experience. In the old (<U6) ultimas overland travel was more a thrill of surviving if you went into the "high level" areas.

    With regards to SotA - I believe if the overland map gets more details and ways of interaction with the world (players, quests, combat- and non-combat encounters) having a slower travel speed is ok and adds to the immersion. However, as long as overland travel it is just "get from A to B" with the odd combat encounter on a standard map it's rapidly becoming non-value-add to be slowed down.
     
  20. redfish

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    It shouldn't even have taken that long, unless I'm misunderstanding the trip you took.

    I mapped out Novia in terms of time -- see this thread -- and I'm sure this is near accurate because I went on same the paths multiple times with a stopwatch,
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/travel-time-in-real-numbers.27634/

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    I have mapped out Ardoris to Vertas as being 4 min 16 sec.

    Its never going to be as much as 10 minutes to go anywhere with the travel time as it is in the game right now. Probably, at most, 5 minutes give or take when the whole continent is opened up. But that would be travelling across the whole continent.
     
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