Rant on Travel

My understanding is that you will have to run there, but you can recall home.

Also, load times will be faster when as they work on optimizations and as your character gets stronger, you can sprint longer.

Cypher Black

 

I forget what part of running through a field for 5-15 minutes in a video game is fun. Maybe I'll start up WoW and take a stroll through the Barrens for the 2000th time looking for the answer. It saddens me to see such a great travel system dumped for a WoW travel system clone. Local economies are a dream! Get real! Some other rhetoric! Hell no, we won't go! We are the 1%!

 

PvP in ESO (when it worked, that is) used to be referred to as a "horse simulator" because of the amount of time you had to spend travelling from the closest keep your team controlled and the front lines. The game's "white knights" would give someone a lot of grief for making that comment, but it was true all the same.

 

According to Steam I have spent 2,948 hours in SotA. Believe me, the novelty of travel on the world map has well and truly worn off. I suspect that six months post launch that will be the majority view. Yes, the world map is pretty. So are sunrises, but I don't force myself out of bed to watch them. Convenience rules.

Will the new travel restrictions apply equally to all players? I don't think so.
Those with money will have alts in various economic zones and place them all on their friends list. That will give them an obvious advantage. Those who are less financially well off will not be so fortunate.
As usual, the rich will get richer.

 

Even when i don't agree with the OP i understand him. This is a matter of two different ways of playing; some enjoy the journey while others just want to reach the destination. I consider myself on the first group, and the way i see it SotA was, is and will be catered for my group. From my point of view, WoW flying mounts and queued instances took away that feeling of journey, and even when i'm sure lot of people appreciated not needing to walk over to the instance gate to run the daily, i found it boring. Besides, why building the world if it's not going to be used in the first place? That's probably what the Vindictus guys thought, and because of that the game is nothing more than a town from where you teleport to the different instances. Was the game fun? hell yeah! Same as jumping from Orgrimmar to an Instance then back to Orgrimmar and repeat. But even so i missed the feeling of adventure that only a journey can give... And that's one of the reasons i'm here.

If i say i fully enjoy travelling i'd be lying though, because of... well... what am i supposed to say now when i said prealpha? prewipe? prelaunch? whatever, you know what i mean Overworld travelling is not one of the best features of the game at the moment, but it is here to stay, and that's not only because of regional economies but because it's part of the intended experience for the game. And it's one that i want to keep, because as dull as it is right now i prefer to have it, than not having it at all. And from here it will get better, so my experience can only improve.

I think this topic is a matter of preferences, so i'm just stating mine. Sorry if you don't like it because it's unconvenient... because i do like it, and probably for the same reason

 

It would be okay if it was one big, seamless world, but it's an overland map and little minizones, random minizones that force you in. It's rather unpleasant IMHO.
And don't forget the loading screens.

 

I totally understand everyone's concerns with the time it will take to travel, but shouldn't we try the new system before passing judgement. I'm personally not a big fan of zoning, or running across the overland map, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it works.

 

If new ways of travel involves any of the 3 following:

1. Rainbow pooping unicorn
2. Magic flying carpet merchants that let you travel to designated places
3. My spider pig

Each having their own speed differences, i'll be more than happy to travel the map.

 

Why do you feel the need to disagree? Who cares if the time isn't EXACT? The point of the post is the appalling repetitive nature of travel in a modern MMO. Limiting to a single recall is wrong. Your house or houses, and the houses of friends should not count against your recall point. Houses should always be available for recall, this was even mentioned as a benefit of owning a house. You should be allowed to pick at least one recall point not at a house. You should have the ability to buy a few more recall points, perhaps up to three.

Stop being so anal, if something pissed off Budner, its all kinds of wrong!

 

I think this thread needs more emphasis on the loading screens.

They're dead time.
Can't play, can't do anything but wait.
At some point, the screen will also end and then something might jump you, so loading screens are not the solution for the call of the wild either.
This is the price to pay for what?

The overland map that screams "Attention PLAYER, you're playing a game here! And in case your Godzilla avatar wasn't immersive enough, let me throw a 30 second timeout at you!"

 

I do not want ubiquitous fast travel.

Maybe once we get more continents, but one bind location is cool with me.

 

The facts are that this instanced game design is doomed to slow travel time because of scene loading. The plan for regional economies is a diversion. The argument for regional economies supports the acceptance of slow travel. It is undeniable that slow travel and regional economies do not encourage player interaction. They are plans to keep players pigeonholed. It is what it is and it is time for people to stop trying to put lipstick on the pig.

 

Loading screens will get shorter with Optimization.
Loading screens will never disappear because the architecture of the server.
In exchange for the loading screens, and the Dual Map Overworld/Scene structure (Which is a direct throwback to the Original Ultima Series) we get:

• The Ability for all players to exist on the same "Shard"
• The Ability to "Friend Match" players so that you will see in-game most often those that you're most likely to want to play with
• The Ability to add/delete/or update individual scenes easily.

This isn't even taking into consideration the stability of what they've constructed (Twenty some months of uptime with no unplanned outtages)

In any event, that ship sailed years ago. It's not going to change.

 

I'm amazed how many arguments around here are based on the assumption that the development team is lying to us.

 

A thousand times this. Hopefully when they get to do some actual "polish", this will be one of those things that gets a significant improvement. Until then it's only going to get worse because they still have some more control point scenes to add.

I'm going to point out here that FFXI (the MMO that I have the most experience with) also has loading times for zones. But not everything is loaded before you can enter an area. In particular, other players don't load until after you can start moving again. (Also your inventory list loads after you enter a zone, but this is due to the memory limitations of PS2 making it not possible to keep that around in RAM.)

I'm sure that this is not unlike the event loop that is painful with low frame rates, that it's some kind of default code that came from Unity or is a first pass at the code that hasn't been touched in months because it works. Dynamically deferring part of scene loading until after you have control again would be a big help to everyone.

 

as i have said before would love to see Rideable horses and boats in the game but wont happen in episode 1 unfortunatley

 

In my opinion, it doesnt matter what time takes to travel from one site to another (5 minutes, 30 or an hour). What is really important is if the travel is rewarding or not, the game can be adjusted to be rewarding but i feel it is not fair to ask the game to be rewarding for every procedural behavior we may incur.

For example, if you are an adventurer trying to get to a far and dangerous location to find the secret book of sorcery (a trainer, for example), with difficult encounters and riddles to solve, after that whenever you use that skill you will feel rewarded.
If you are a merchant trying to sell your local products far away where you know you will get a good price, you will fell rewarded when you get the high profits.

But, for example, if i develop a sentimental interest with a person far away and i don't want/cant move next to her, how can the game make that experience rewarding?

It was announced the implementation of roving encounters on travels in R27, i guess then we will see fine adjustment to make our traveling time rewarding (with all elements in place). Anyway Budner i am thankful for this topic to get attention and be discussed .

 

Why do you have to be personal every time you disagree with someone? You do this every time.

I think travel in the game is fine how it is; that its not slow, its not tedious, it doesn't take forever, it makes the game better. In my view, the modern MMO is the problem. We disagree. You also support global chat, so obviously, we're coming from this from different perspectives. Let's talk about that instead of attacking each other?

Because I disagree, of course if someone gives times that look like twice as long as what they are, of course I'm going to point it out. I timed it to begin with because previously people were complaining that just moving on the map took up to 30 minutes. I was tired of crazy claims like that. I hope you understand I would be, from my perspective.

I just timed a run to get some real numbers. It doesn't mean Budner's wrong, it doesn't mean I'm right. It just means we have something real to talk about. There are things we all agree on, like reducing loading time and making control points better. And yes -- fast travel is still going to exist in the game.

23s - Wizard's Rest to Kingsport boat
17s - Loading screen
59s - Ardoris to Eastreach Gap
17s - Loading screen
97s - Going through Eastreach Gap
14s - Loading screen
127s - Going to Beren's Reach
------------
3:48 - Travel time
48s - Loading screen time
1:37 - Navigating East Reach Gap
---
Travel + loading screens + control point -- 5:93

I experienced no random encounters.

22s - Loading screen into Beren's Reach
9s - Loading screen out of Wizard's Rest
30s - Time to Zone

Along the way, I ran into several other players, who were also traveling. Include Jacob Canaan, who challenged me to a guild duel.

@Womby, I have 5303 hours logged in.

 

To think we... well I guess I speak for myself and a few others here... but to think I joined this endeavor to escape EA and all the big shot companies that think like this...

I'm not turning my back and assume my choices... but the reason I play fantasy games is to get away from this kinds of problems which have rotten my life for so long.

To me its essential that travel be made interesting and we've made I dunno how many pages of suggestions and peer reviewed feedback to help it. Stuff to do on the map, especially for those people who own land, there needs to be a strategic dynamism going on and I think that should have been developped way before 1 on 1 combat was...

 

If you have an hour or two to play and unrewarding travel/loading screens take 20% of your time then fun = less.