Rant on Travel

It ts amazingly ironic to me that you are seemingly unaware of the fact that regional economy is exactly what will keep residency high in player owned and npc towns. Its known that new travel features are incoming and we are now complaining on a forum before those features are even released. You need to understand that unnecessarily fast travel means the dissolution of that regional economy. It is the bread and butter of the in-game player economy, the #1 preservative for player owned town ROI (fun) via continued residency and a major factor in Portalarium's future revenue generation from the PoT related features in episodes to come.

 

I like the overland map. It needs some work, but that's why we're still working on it.

Using your logic we'd have no map at all and just /zone directly to anyone. I'm told facebook is a lot like that. I don't play that game though.

 

I didn't say you were the only one.

I said you don't speak for anyone but yourself. You are saying "most" and you're apparently basing that off of 200 steam reviews. How does 200 steam reviews represent most of the people that might play this game?

 

I have zero interest in regional economy. It would be good riddance if we got a better game instead. Regional economy might benefit PoT owners but not having any PoTs would have been better as well

 

Exactly. The little guy could get highly frequented without a need to spent thousands of dollars for a high priority in picking a house or for a player owned town. No need to get a questionable renter-landlord relation with all rights for the lord and non for the renter either. All of this would be good riddance.

 

You simply don't comprehend the goals obviously. More than half the towns in UO were abandoned because of instant travel and no regional economy.

Apply your thinking in Shroud and youd have 200+ abandoned player owned towns and 30+ npc towns. Yes, lets make that sacrifice so you don't have to spend 3 minutes on an overland map.

 

Yes, one of my favorite parts of the recall system in UO was the ability to advertise my vendors and drop them at the banks all over the world. I was just as excited at finding runes on the ground which I had no idea where they would take me. That was seriously fun exploration. Also, finding a very cool point of interest to take friends and lovers to for hanging out or a date was a great thing. I am hoping our world will be that vast eventually, where there are so many different and fun places to discover, that marking them on a rune would be the only way to ever find them again

Keep fighting the good fight Budner! Recall and Mark were and are epic features from days of old!

 

No idea what that has to do with anything we're talking about. How does a regional economy hurt "the little guy" exactly? How does fast travel help the "little guy" exactly?

 

Sure. I would prefer that scenario over the drawbacks of the current proposal. I do not care for player owned towns either =)

 

Well, we'll be able to advertise in SotA, too, and it'll be a way to drive business. Hopefully, we'll have things like noticeboards and not have to rely on vendors. But there will be thousands of shops in the game, and I doubt you'll visit them all. They'll also get random passerbys who are just stopping in on their travels.

And yes, it was bad that it was the only way to get traffic, and it was bad you would zone to a shop and not even know where in the heck you were.

 

I have to admit that this was 70% of my time spent in UO in the last three years I played. Good times.

 

Are you forgetting Luna? Luna was the "main" town, not Britain, not moonglow...

The ONLY reason new player vendors popped up in remote areas is because of the addition of a seach feature which allowed the in-game search of all player vendors instantly. It had nothing to do with instant travel and the only reason anyone gated people to their vendors is because there was no local foot traffic.

 

Instead of just plummeting into random encounters, can't there be a confirmation box? Like "you see something ahead" or "you hear noises coming from before you" and a "do you want to A) check or B) evade the scene".
For people in a hurry, this will work wonders and I can guarantee you that most people most of the time would pick the ignore option, and for several reasons.

• The scenes are always the same
• The small area is always the same
• It's basically a small hunting ground when you might just want to unload loot at the bank
• It's not even engaging if some skeletons lie around somewhere or some wolves wander about in the distance

And last but not least

• The loading screens!

I read that one reply of the player with 9 or 13 seconds of loading screens and I must say I envy you.
This game doesn't even look particularly good even by 2012 standards (and this is 2016) and all the scenes might just sit in RAM somewhere to be used later (I got 16 gig, enough to host a city without hampering my gameplay normally), so I wonder why I have to load the same things sometimes 3 times in a row and why it always takes way over 30 seconds for me.

 

Let's explore that for a minute.
A regional economy can mean a few things, but let's presume it means that each main city (Resolute, Aerie, and Ardoris) is geographically isolated, and that travel between them is extraordinarily difficult, fantastically expensive, inordinately time consuming, or nigh impossible for a single player.
If that's true, then what this feature has accomplished is reducing your target demographic. When people realize that they can't travel between these areas, they either won't play to begin with, or will simply stop playing the moment they realize it, and leave a negative review. Why? I can only have one character, and I cannot see more than one third of the content in the game that I paid for. (As of July 28th, 2016)

So, let's presume each main city is NOT geographically isolated, and that travel between them is possible, say merely running through a pass, so it takes a few minutes for anyone over adventure level 25.
Now you've got no regional economies in any meaningful sense. You might have regional resources, but that's a completely different topic. Why have the mechanism, then?

The consequence of permitting travel (at all) between these economic regions? All the ineffective restriction mechanisms will either annoy & frustrate existing players or drive away new players, and at the same time, not enforce regional economies at all, even a little bit.

And all of the above is setting aside the ability for a single player with two accounts to fast travel trivially around the world using crafted consumables. Unless you remove the ability for people to fast travel to their friends, which would again, reduce the target demographic appeal.

 

While I am personally opposed to almost all teleportation, which is an argument in and of itself, the real sticking point is whether insta-travel can coexist with regional economies. I see a regional economy having most locals wearing iron because it is plentiful nearby and inexpensive. Another region copper, another with expensive metals but cheap agriculturals. It may work, it may not work, it may, as was combat, be tweaked and polished until it does.

Whether anyone wants or likes the idea is beside the point. Regional economies were always part of the plan and the Devs intend to implement it. Instead of repeatedly voicing the same opinions to the same people, I suggest y'all offer some insight on how fast travel and regional economies can coexist.

 

The Devs have already changed their minds on many things due to player feedback. I am confident it will be the same here. Agra pointed out nicely above how travel would have to be much more restrictive even to create truely regional economies. So why not abandon that idea altogether?

 

Unfortunately, the devs plan to allow /zoning to friends (but requiring a craftable component that costs gold to make) I too have big concerns about this being exploited.

 

What "local economy" does is, it makes you run around more and adventure less.
All the while your decay ticks your skills away.
Hum.

 

This entire post is nonsensical since it is based on the idea that its impossible to travel, when its not. Resources are, for the most part, regionalized to promote traffic and residency to those areas and to promote trade between the regions as they share common needs that cant be found in great quantity locally. If you can get any resource, anywhere, its UO all over again with absolutely no incentive to go to remote locations on the map for residency.

 

The only ways I can imagine it being possible are worse than simply not having it at all.
What do I mean by that?
You could, by throwing a lore-bomb at the howling zealots, do something like say "iron cannot be teleported out of it's originating economic region" or some such thing, but to me, that's far worse than the supposed threat of a global economy.

I'm glad I made my point. Regional resources mean nothing with fast travel. Regional economies are an illusion with fast travel.