Please remove teleport scrolls

Many of your overly restrictive ideas will destroy the game. I hope the Developers don't go down the path of listening to a vocal few while the silent majority of the player base leave in disgust when the game becomes a miserable chore except for a handful of masochists.

 

That's very close to a personal attack, Greyfox.

If you disagree that's fine. But please consider the following.

Saying "I like teleport scrolls" is not much of a defense against the very real examples I've given in this thread as to how they are hurting the economy. A solid defense would challenge my examples, not just tell me I was wrong for even thinking such a thing. Feedback of "I like it" or "I don't like it" is fine, but it's not very persuasive when we're talking about something serious like how well the economy works. It's more likely that kind of feedback will work when someone is commenting on the looks of a hottub or a new hat.

Just something to consider for all the people that think I'm wrong.

 

I clearly stated why your idea won't work previously in the thread. You can impose rules and the large guilds you are trying to prevent abusing will find other methods. The problem is the common gamer will leave if too many obsessively restrictive gaming rules are implemented. A healthy game needs to be fun.

Take for example a hugely successful game. Fallout 4 has fast overland travel. Once you visit a location you can nearly instantly teleport back. The overland map is not enjoyable after a few trips. Why would anyone want to extent the time a player must spend in one of the least enjoyable parts of the game?

I do believe a 15 to 30 minute timer on reuse of teleport/recall scrolls would be very acceptable.

You seem to think anyone disagreeing is only out for themselves. If you speak nonsense someone needs to call it out, just in case it gains traction.

 

I don't think that restricting teleport scrolls to be more expensive to use is going to cause people not to play the game. Please remember that neither you nor I speak for "the common gamer", so my prediction is as useless as yours. I'll let the developers decide how restrictive to be, I'm just giving feedback that the current level of restrictions isn't working.

4 hours would be my preference.

You seem to think I'm speaking nonsense. I'm very confident that there's nothing that has been said in this thread that would support that.

 

I've started to feel that way as well, nothing personal. I agree with other points of yours on other topics, don't get me wrong. But what I'm seeing more of is trying to combat people gaming the system with suggestions on the extreme other end, which I think is just as bad for the game. I've had my mind changed on several ideas when I see the good and the bad and what people think of as a good compromise. I backed the game as a Baron, close to a Duke so I would hate to see the game turn into something that's too tedious to play on a daily basis unless I'm willing to play 80 hours a week. It'll chase me to single player offline for sure. A very expensive single player game.

Look, it's no secret your very passionate about having a truly functional regional economy and definitely put in the effort fighting for that goal. It's one aspect of the game that should be there but it feels more like it's the only one. I'm not sure I could get into a medieval study of supply and demand as a cog in a really big virtual wheel.

I want the best for the game as well and mostly weigh in on peoples' suggestions as there a lot of good ones. There has to be a way to compromise on this. I can't get behind removing them, making them exponentially more expensive nor having an obscenely long cool down. Could we have something like teleport to lunar rift location or something? Having a spell that does it with a higher reagent cost? I don't know. There are some good thoughts in here. Too extreme in either direction is not going to work.

I wouldn't say I'm a casual gamer but I do have times where I can only play for shorter periods. I feel certain suggestions severely punish that style of play. I wouldn't have backed the game if they said they were aiming for something that would require serious time commitments to succeed in.

 

I think that's reasonable. But it takes me less than 10 minutes to get anywhere from anywhere on the map. In most cases it takes me less than 5 minutes. This is fairly well documented throughout testing.

So if your complaint is that 5 to 10 minutes to get anywhere is too long and you need to cut that down to 2 minutes with a teleport scroll, I don't have a lot of shared feeling towards that point of view. Especially since the point of travel is not to inconvenience you or waste your available gaming time, it's to make a deeper and richer world.

However, I do I understand and agree that friends should be able to meet up relatively easily for the sake of grouping together. So you just gave me a wonderful idea. What if everytime you used a telport scroll you had to join that persons group AND wherever they went you had to go (for the next 30 minutes)? That way people can't game the free ride, but they do get to stay in the same scene and they can't leave the group during that time?

Honestly I think that's a great idea for solving an important problem, being able to maintain the integrity of the regional economy but also allowing friends to meet up freely. I suspect there would be a lot of concern still though because it would stop people from just fast traveling because they wanted to avoid control points or speed things up, just cause.

What do you think? (I'm not being sarcastic here, btw)

 

Baron this is an example of nonsense. You acknowledge someone can travel anywhere in 5 to 10 minutes. Why force a gamer to repetitively travel the exact same 5 to 10 minutes? Game theory states you want your players doing what is more enjoyable the majority of the time. If a gamer has an hour to play a nice would you want them spending 10 to 20 percent of the gaming time traveling? Two minutes to teleport is reasonable.

A teleport scroll doesn't take two minutes. It takes less time and you don't have to monitor the progress, you click and forget. Nice time to stretch or grab a drink while zoning.

Your ideas are laughable restricting people to go where ever the group goes. First the coding involved and secondly forcing someone to be handcuffed all because they wanted to join some friends. This is insanity.

When you have good ideas I'm very happy to support you (Rats Nest). Unfortunately when you have bad ideas you lack the judgement to admit and move on.

Your proposed solutions are far worse than any perceived problem.

 

a bit over board.

The timer of 15-30 is logical and work well.
It doesnt prevent grouping at all or quick travel.
wanna teleport somewhere then recall back, np.
it just prevents the exessive use of super quick regional hopping.

 

I've already agreed with you in this thread. I'm simply putting more ideas out there.

 

So let me get this right. If someone uses a teleport or recall scroll this is abuse? How Obtuse. *shakes head in disgust*

 

I'm sorry, that's not right. Let me set you straight. If someone uses a teleport scroll they won't be late. Which is fine with me but not fine you see, because it really screws up the economy.

Drops mic.

 

So how does this damage /screw up the economy?? As a UO player who had shops in Great Lakes, I constantly would see people teleporting to my shops to buy items... IF your going to state it ruins the economy then show us how it does so because your statement makes no sense until you can prove it damages the economy.

 

OBTUSE! Enough said.

 

As previously stated in this thread, it allows players to jump cheaply around control points that were specifically designed to help maintain the "regional" economies of the game. It removes time from traveling, making it also remove that cost from bringing goods to market.

 

So you get around it by teleporting instead of running through a control point.. There are a LOT of places I go to that I do not have to go through control points to sell things. So you run through the control point instead of teleporting... neither ruins the economy.. Apparently you live in fantasy land where you believe teleporting "ruins" the economy by making people spend a 3-5 minutes running from point to point instead of recalling.. So I also assume that you believe that people taking goods from Novia and then going to say Braemar to sell goods is also ruining the economy.

 

In a "Player Run Economy", the best way to achieve player satisfaction - is to allow them to go freely to each other.
Let the Free Market reign, but make it as easy as possible to get to that market.

Removing the last vestige of reasonable travel here in SotA, would - IMO - be the final death knell for our game.

For people who don't travel much, it won't matter. But 95% of our population TRAVELS A LOT.

 

I should have clarified my last point. It wasn't specific to removing teleport scrolls by itself. I can adapt to most anything. It was more about the cumulative effect of some of the suggestions I've seen. One was to remove reagents from the NPCs. Again, I log in and I need reagents just to get out there and adventure for a bit. I can grab some off the NPC and go. If they're gone, I have to hit a regional public vendor. Hopefully they are in stock and have all the ones I need. Otherwise, I move to the next one. If I really get unlucky and can't find one I really need, off I go to the next town. I know a good spot for them but bah, I can't teleport and I don't feel like having to cross say, 2 control points. I'm lacking the reagents as it is so I'll have to use lower level spells (which I may have dropped levels in favor of the higher tier ones). So I'll stick to regional. I will be pretty frustrated if I spend half my time or more 'shopping' when all I want to do is adventure. Heavier encumbrance was another issue brought up. I don't have a lot of strength being a mage. Well, I guess I could, but for me, a muscle guy just isn't very 'wizardy' so I'd rather not if I can help it. I don't want the game to force me to gain strength like UO did. I'm a tailor so I'll definitely have to keep an eye on what I have vs. what I can gather before going back to the bank.

Are they going to make currency have weight? I can't remember. UO had that and I didn't really care for it, but then again, they did add large money deeds to be able to make larger purchases without crawling overloaded to the vendor to do it. We'll see, I guess. There are others but now I'm rambling. But I think it's not unreasonable that scenario can happen and that's just 3 suggestions. How much prep time do I need to allot myself before I can actually play? How long can I stay out before having to head back to town if I gather a bit too much leather too fast? I usually don't have to worry about things like this honestly. I mean, I'm not a Sims player but isn't such that if you don't tell them to use the restroom, they'll end up, um, wetting themselves? If that's the level of complexities you like to need to be responsible for, more power to you. There are games for everyone. I myself just assume certain things about my character that they can handle themselves while I'm away. I'm just trying to get a handle on what level of complexity we're aiming for in this new world. I'm definitely looking for more than your average multiplayer type game but that it still be fun because it's still, well, a game.

As far as the idea of teleport into a group and having to stay in it? Honestly, I don't think that would go over too well. I don't have a good follow up to it, it's really just my opinion. I think the whole 'to friend' is where the issue gets tricky. I'm hoping the lunar rifts start to play a part in the world like they did the moongates in Ultima. Although, we'll probably be revisiting this discussion then if you can do the same thing as teleport. Sure, the moon phases kind of lock you into where you can go but the patterns can be figured out over time. I did like the original idea that they had both a source and a destination point both determined by the moon phases. In UO, they were just always present. I can only think of having teleport take to you to a predetermined point instead of to a friend, have a reasonable cooldown and/or make them more costly to make.

 

Just begs the question of why we should even try to have regional economies. I loathe protectionism in any context. Let people roam freely and patronize the best vendors and towns, wherever they may be. Dead horse but this concept of regional economies is a joke. It is not working now. It has not ever worked. The systems that ostensibly support regional economies, like control points, have not improved or been given any meaning in the past 10-15 releases. They remain, bluntly, a no-fun pain in the ass. Meanwhile the longer we play, the more we tire from the tedium of slow travel. Honestly it is like punishment, the travel systems and WASTE OF PRECIOUS PLAYING TIME that have been foisted on us by this elusive, really impossible and misguided goal of REs. The whole thing pisses me off. Designing a game where theory trumps fun is asinine and self-serving. It's like the devs have this righteous stubborness to adhere to fleeting ideas, and are happy to fiddle away while Brittany threatens to burn if they don't change course. The concept of REs has done NOTHING but hurt this game to date. It is long past time to let it go.

 

I'm curious if you're aware that NPC prices for reagents are going up RIGHT NOW based on how frequently and how much players buy from them.

For example, the price of Black Pearl in Owl's Head was 22 gold per last night. While in Kingsport it was 6 gold per. Since there is no control point, this makes little difference really because you can skip over to Kingsport. But what if Kingsport cost you 22 gold per (once our population gets larger)? I hope you can see where this is going...

It would meant hat people would simply teleport wherever they had the cheapest stuff. Which is not in line with how the economy is designed to work. But perhaps you (and others) don't see where this regional economy benefits you. Well for someone people that "TRAVEL A LOT" without paying attention to what's going on and why, it may never benefit them. But for a lone alchemist in a far off city that wasn't lucky enough to get the "good foot traffic spot in Owl's Head", it's going to be very important. Because it means that EVERYONE will have an opportunity to be in the "best spot" at one point or another, and that small time alchemist may see some really good times where he can't keep his shelves stocked because his town just happens to be the place where mandrake seeds are only 4 gold per! And so instead of one guild taking over the entire game's economy, we'll have a much more challenging and single player friendly place to craft and sell goods.

I could go on and on about how exciting this is, but I have a feeling that before you see it, you'll never believe me. Anyway, back on point. That can't happen if people are able to "freely travel" without restriction. There has to be a cost associated with all actions and in this case, the teleport scroll is nearly cost free.

 

Because we don't want to be like the other MMO's where nothing matters and this game fades into the night as just another place the mob went to when it got bored.