Rant on Travel

Ya know the big problem I have with going through control point zones? Sure, that scene loading time is a problem, but even bigger is that I find it so hard to resist the temptation to harvest every ore, cotton bush, and tree along the way. Also, skinning and looting every monster that I kill on my way through. Mussssst... loooooooot...

 

I brought up the control zones as a why? At the moment you can just run through them. Seemed more a hassle then anything else.

 

Compromise is always good for a generic game with a generic following... but in a "spiritual successor" to the "ultimate RPG" it can only widen the great divide...

 

I look at it as more of a compromise between those that want to conduct their business in an efficient manner, for example, someone whose sole interest in the game is trading and economy, and those that want immersion and sense of accomplishment.

 

If you are making the implication that I am accusing anyone of lying, your assumption is totally wrong. The devs have always told it like it is. It is the players who believe that regional economies are the cat's pajamas and thus avoid complaining about the slow travel because it is a mechanic that supports regional economies. Avoiding complaining about a mechanic is not lying.

 

Save that Regional Economies are one of Richard Garriott's most talked about features of the game... Personally, I'm dubious, but fast travel other than a limited sense will Not be implemented as it Would destroy a feature that Richard finds highly desireable. That's not coming from the players... that's Richard himself. It permeates the whole game... Just look at the map, and the control points... They divide the continent into distinct geographic regions with obstacles blocking the junctions between them... So, Regional Economies have been a primary design feature of the game as far back as sketching out the map.

 

You have a point, people may put out expert crafting stations for public use. The problem is local storage. One foray killing skeletons and such results in about 1000 stones or more weight in metal scrap. You need a chest nearby to be able to store this scrap or you cannot move. This is just an example of why crafting at home is important. You just can't carry all the stuff you are generating at a remote location.

 

So how will those who don't have a home even be able to succeed....

 

Instead of asking about making it faster/easier... What do you think could make travel more interesting? I think talking about that could give this thread an interesting spin... because discussing preferences doesn't seem to get this nowhere but down to lockdown town U^^ It's as simple as some valuing the feeling of adventure over the convenience of fast travelling, while the others feel the opposite. Both sides are right because there's nothing wrong with preferences, it's like debating which is the best ice cream flavour. Spoiler: is the one i like, of course

So... regarding future improvements, these are the things i remember that are already planned:

• Loading times reduced/performance improved.
  
• More random events, and more polished.
• Roving encounters.
• Travelling ships (with chance of sea events!)
• Normalizing scales of objects (just bringing this up because the GodzillAvatars were mentioned, maybe those get scaled as well)

With all these in place, we'll have smooth transitions from the Overworld to the scenes generated, and those encounters made more meaningful so falling into one doesn't mean just to sprint up to the exit (though i enjoy those now because i have the same problem as Elwin... need to gather'em all! ).

From my point of view, the key to make travel more interesting is in random encounters being meaninful (and interesting and profitable!). What's on the scale here is convenience vs annoyance. It's understandable that there's nothing interesting in travelling through the overworld map atm, so lots of people are complaining, choosing the convenience of fast travel. But what if the experience of random encounters (and the presence of roving monsters in the future) could make the travel worth it? What those two planned mechanics could contribute to make people say "Well time to go pack up, let's start the journey with 15 minutes margin so i'm in no rush and i can enjoy it"?

Also, regarding fast travel, it was mentioned above the caravan idea. In the long run we could have those, being set up between two capital cities of a zone as soon as some players take the control point between them, making road travel faster that way.

 

Ok, but this supposes people know how to get from point A to point B with no overhead map to be their guide. I get lost all the time. I hit dead ends, get turned around, go down the wrong road when there's a fork in it. I had to start using the map at http://www.sotamap.com/ just so I could figure out where things were and how to get there. It's great that some people can move around so quickly. I suspect the majority of players now and the ones who come later *won't* be so fortunate. I'll bet (unscientifically BTW) that the majority of people are going to be like me - dazed and confused and lost in the dark when night falls.

I have never seen @Budner complain. If he has concerns about traveling the map and the upcoming changes, I don't care how many stopwatch tests are done to prove him wrong, it takes MORE than 5 minutes to move to most places in Novia especially at night.

 

Well, I go back to the bank before I get that encumbered. And if I store up a lot in a local bank, so much that it would make me over-encumbered, sometimes I take several trips back to my house to get everything there while not being fully encumbered.

But I support bank-to-bank transfers to deal with that too, as long as it reasonably takes things into consideration like transfer times and fees. Then, eventually, other things like mounts and pack animals will be better solutions for some people than bank-to-bank transfers.

 

I realize that.... You accused me of saying someone was lying. I did not. I do not know if I can explain it any better.

 

Not saying anything bad about Budner, but he's complained ever since the overland map was introduced.

But, yea, I support a Novia paper map in the game that people could put on their hotbar and use for navigation.

 

The problem is, I can ge behind limited recall stones, but I cannot get behind a recall menu system that basically allows you to instantly go wherever you like, or to use multiple alts to game the system so that map distance doesn't matter.

 

If coat equals use....it should cost a lot thereby making it not the gotto function every time.

 

@Duchess Fionwyn ,

Yea, so I think there should be an in-game map to help people navigate. It would work just like the maps we have of towns in the game. Its an addition that I'm waiting for... but I think they've said they're waiting until they can finalize the map to do something like that.

But the more people travel, the more they'll know their surroundings, though, which is good IMO from a gameplay perspective. The more people fast travel, the less they'll know they're surroundings, which is bad IMO from a gameplay perspective.

 

I enjoy consumption of resources and quasi-realistic game physics. I think fast travel should be difficult if you're encumbered and the weight of resources should be important. I think gold itself should weigh a decent amount similar to UO. It's not about what happens when you're initially travelling to a destination, but what happens after you get there? Are you just travelling for an event to meetup with a bunch of folks? That's easy enough. Or are you travelling to a dungeon, a mine, or another adventuring area to extract resources and gold? Some of my thoughts regarding Sota in the long term are below...

If you're unencumbered, basic fast travel should have a cost but is mostly a non issue, but if you're loaded to the brim with items and resources then it becomes more complicated. I'd like to see magic-based fast travel have range restrictions to prevent the mass propagation of resources across the map, to an extent. Perhaps it takes multiple 'recalls' to get where you're going if you're carrying a lot of weight.

If you plan to make multiple trips to a dungeon or mine, you may end up having to store your resources in the bank of a town you normally wouldn't be travelling to (as the game stands today), then move the resources from there to it's final destination. Or perhaps the towns could eventually have some type of postal/delivery system..and you could select multiple items in your inventory and turn them into a package which could be delivered via NPC or players. The player's encumbrance skill would determine how many packages they could deliver and it would be handled through stage coaches that allow fast travel to other towns.

If your home is in the hidden vale and you've been spending a lot of time in Novia, you could send all of your packages to Kingsport and pick them up later, for example. If something like this were implemented as a convenience I'd also like to go the Oregon Trail route and introduce some possible mishaps in the transportation of goods. Perhaps this would only apply to NPC delivery, encouraging players to get paid for delivering goods (and creating traffic inside of towns that have post office/stage coach, magic teleporters inside of post offices etc). NPC delivery would occur at regular intervals and players could speed up the delivery by making individual trips.

POT owners could also strategically place their bankers, post offices, stage coaches, etc near their town center where their premium lots/vendors are located. This is also where I hope shared lots or market place stalls could be, so lot owners of the town could have representation of their vendors in the town square. I have a few ideas on this including a round robin type of system that allows a player vendors to 'travel' from town to town and they would have to pay a fee to the POT owner every week to occupy market place stalls, etc. Basically think of the Owls Head bank area, except it would be occupied by a 'copy' of player vendors.

So basically - fast travel for players with low amount of encumbrance is easy, the more and more encumbrance that is added requires alternate methods of fast travel - ships, stage coach/post office, teleporters similar to the mage NPC's at control points. (lower the cost for common teleporters) If pack animals are added, then it may be require additional teleportation costs. But pack animals would be able to carry more packages as well.

Just some ideas.

 

Isn't that what they've proposed and outlined in the Hangout of the Avatar on Friday? You would seem to be getting your wish.

 

Its not so much about normalization IMO... yes, some things need to be normalized in the sense that there are currently two sizes for towns, two sizes for trees. But IMO, what they have to work on is good suspension of disbelief. In the end, that won't mean that everything is a realistic scale, but that everything feels "right".

But all the issues you bring up about improving the map is also why I think the map should be a bigger development priority than it is. From a programming standpoint, its always something they can change post-wipe, but then again, I think map travel will affect a lot of the game, and also a lot of balance elements, including the economy.

 

This, exactly this, it hasn't had the priority I think it needs to be the best it can be.

So many little things could be done on it still, like weather, animals and camping to just name a few.