Rant on Travel

Players will quit for a reason, a very important reason: Travel is mindlessly boring. It helps the game tank.

If I do not want to travel I will just play another game. I will go to my steam and see what developers have brought there. A game with fast travel is much more satisfying to adventure in and it will bring me goods and stories while I would still be traveling in SotA. It is not the boredom or regional economies that I am concerned with, it is my entertainment.

 

Seriously guys, I think we are feeling the pain here simply because we are all still on foot. Once we realize the benefits of horseback travel I think these issues all go away. Yes, there will be limitations on runes and recall but there are also like 4 other methods of fast travel and more to come with boats\airships becoming operational.

Lets give the new features a chance before we occupy Austin with "this game sucks" picket signs. Your cart is most certainly and literally put before the horse on this one.

 

You have a long list of things that will tank the game. Where does travel fall on your list? Does it make the top 20?

Then you'll quit. Someone else will quit if the travel is too fast. Such is life.

 

I don't follow your free market comments. Please advise.

Well a lot of stuff blows right now, they're still implementing. The economy is not fully developed. The encounter system is annoying. There's very little "regional" trade. I live in a region that has almost no content created in it yet.

Don't project the current state on the finished state.

 

I like travel in this game. It's really not that bad. I sometimes use /zone and often use /stuck. But that's just me being lazy and it being available. When they're removed (in in /stuck's case changed) I won't have a problem with it at all.

I can't really figure out why we have a overworld map right now since everyone /zone's everywhere.

 

They could reverse that, sure. But then where would we be? We're not trying to compete for the casual game of the year award. We're a niche game that is supposed to support roleplaying. Fast travel doesn't do that. Regional economies do.

Are there enough roleplayers to support SOTA? We'll find out. But the idea that we're going to compete with other MMO like games by making the same mechanics that they have, I don't think that's a good business plan. You either do it better than they do, or you come up with a niche that no one else is doing. Regional economies is a good niche.

 

Quite right and I agree whole heartedly that it has degraded slightly, but this too shall pass. We have numerous dev posts and comments about the planned changes for travel and we are still in alpha. Mounts, a moongate, Runes/Recall, Kindred home zone options, long range ferries in port cities, boats and airship functionality, heck, even blink and run speed increases in the light armor tree.

Being one of the people who has posted in the past with concerns on recreational travel, I'm confident our pleas have not gone unheard and the travel system will improve to more than acceptable levels.

 

@Chris @DarkStarr

If we own two houses will we be able to bind to both, or just one?
Have you considered letting us bind to an additional location, such as a guild house or a town of our choice?
For casting recall, could you expand beyond just confirmed friends and also include guild members?
Would you consider leaving the boat that transports between Ardoris and Kingsport as a permanent feature, rather than requiring us to wait for a period departure?
Can we pay a reasonable (much less than 1500 gp) toll to bypass a checkpoint, via the overland map, rather than having to actually instance into the scene and pass through it?

 

I would love to have a system much like the rune-recall/moon gate system in Ultima Online. I will be honest, I do not care about regional economies. The point of it eludes me. Most of the time, I can only play for an hour or two at a time, so I don't want to spend 10 minutes of that playing time, traveling to places I've been already via the overland map. I'm also a creature of habit, if I start buying items I need from a player's vendor, I will return to that same vendor the next time I'm looking to make a purchase regardless of if the item is cheaper in some other region.

 

Regional economies preserve the usefulness and value of residency in areas of the map that contain rare or plentiful resources. If regional economies go away, you run the risk of 1000 ghost towns because there is no reason to live in remote areas of the map which don't produce unique raw materials and aren't considered "the" center of trade in the game. This is a very very bad thing.

Think Haven, Trinsic, Cove, Mag, Skara and Bucs post Trammel.

 

Any time spent in loading or traveling is time not spent role-playing. Those who want to role-play travelers can do so to their hearts content, no matter shorter options available.
Quite often one has only a few minutes to play before a friend logs off and guild activities especially often rely on everyone just having time in a narrow window. Why take away from peoples together time by making them do chores they could as well do around their home?

 

What your describing is more of a social convenience than it is roleplaying. My favorite fantasy novel series is Dragonlance, and in the first novel the heroes rejoin one another after being apart for 5 years. They'd chose the time and place to meet, swore and oath to be there, and went their separate ways. But the story leaves the reader wondering who will show up, if they will fulfill their oath, or who is still alive. As each adventurer journeys to the meeting place, you hear their story, you learn of what they've been up to, you build a relationship with the characters.

That's roleplaying, and it can not happen if fast travel allows everyone to instantly teleport to their friends and guildmates without any concern for what time or where someone will be. The more you describe your concerns, the more I understand how wonderful this will be. People will have to plan more, make choices, and not get caught up in the instant gratification mode that many MMO's have forced us into.

Yes, I'm looking forward to this. Regional economies and regional friendships. We may actually start talking to one another in these games for once. How amazing that would be.

 

Lets take the travel time out of the Lord of the Rings series and turn it into a 7 minute bedtime story.

 

I like that its a long, perilous journey to get to Rat's Nest. It makes arriving there all the more satisfying an experience

 

It currently takes me less than 7 minutes to walk on the overland map from the farthest western part of the map to the farthest eastern part of the map.

If you wanted to meet up with your friends and you both chose where to meet at, that means the most it's going to take you both is 7 minutes and depending on where you are it will probably take more like 3 minutes. Big deal.

 

Again, most people will simply will go elsewhere. An empty player owned town will feel very lonely for its lord or baron. I guess one can also roleplay there, but who would want to?
If Portalarium is happy with a boring and empty world so be it. I wager that is not what they envision.

 

I'd say a world where everyone can fast travel is boring and empty. Right now we have /zone and I rarely see people walking on the overland map.

I really dislike people giving feedback by basically saying "everyone thinks like I do". Please just speak for yourself. If you personally feel this way, great. Give that feedback. But please don't try to make your position seem more important than it is by adding "most people" in front of it. You don't speak for most people, you only speak for yourself.

 

Yeah the poor fellows were only traveling a few miles but kept having to load scene after scene after scene after scene ......

 

The other way around: People rarely use the overland map because it is mindlessly boring, devoid of anything interesting and overall useless. Taking that ability away will not somehow magically make people like travel any better.

 

I'd make the argument that POTs will be more likely visited by random players, and less likely to be empty, if there isn't fast travel, because people will want to stop by in local towns as they're traveling. If you're just fast traveling everywhere, you never learn your surroundings, never explore anywhere new.

Its like in UO, once people relied on fast travel, only the shops that handed out runes got a lot of visitors.