Time for fast travel?

Well they may be there. I agree though there should be a hangout area that entices players to take a break and smell the roses.

To actually see who is on the map or scene click on nearby players under the stained glass window in the upper right hand of your screen. Some players are in party mode and some are in multiplayer. To see other players make sure you are not in party mode unless you and your party want to the scene to yourself but then switch back so others can see you and you can see them.

I can send you a book that talks about customizing our chat windows too to make it so you don't miss communications from others. Talking in zone talks to the whole map or scene. /z is the command but make sure you have it checked under the blue gear to say hello in zone chat or to hear if zone is saying anything

 

Knock, knock.... hello ?
YOUR immersion will be neither hurt nor hindered - by OTHER avatars using fast travel.
You're still free to walk the land, while others will be able to quickly access whatever area they wish.

 

Yeah it absolutely does affect my immersion. I thought the game was dead and almost came to the conclusion that it is a failure because I hardly saw anyone running around in the overworld, or in the scenes in general.

Heck, this forum seems more alive than the game! It was only today I found out that it's because everyone is exploiting the friends list to teleport around, totally by-passing the overworld. I'm looking at my friends list and I see about 20 friend requests since yesterday from people I do not know and have not spoken a word to.

Now if everyone teleports and never use the overworld then it does affect my experience. How is that hard to understand?

 

Well I am in game and here. I'm actually making timber and boards and chatting at the same time.

 

I'm harvesting wood, cotton, and ores while fighting off annoying spiders and other mobs.

 

+1

...a;though, if people are asking for boats because they want fast travel, they might watch out for that "that run on schedules" bit; a lot of people are too impatient for the lunar rift schedules already

 

Sir I beg to differ, the regional economy I will agree is working fine and dandy if you have paid enough real world money for a front and centre pitch however it's seriously broken if you have a lot deep in a PoT or at the back of a city but were lucky to have again spent enough real money to get a pitch and really bar a few purist explorers who goes and looks say once a month at best?

A counter argument is 'use the town vendor to sell on then' but again why should people be constrained to having to pay a fee for the listing if their own vendor on their lot does the same for free. System is broken and loaded to those who can afford to pay to win, hence my point economy is broken. In UO I could recall to mage vendor and buy stuff easy, I could recall to an interesting spot to hunt / mine etc. so I believe the same can work in SotA where folks leave runes at their vendor to encourage repeat business and attract new.

Lots of things need fixing and there's a clamor to include X Y or Z but one things for sure we'll get a new dance emote for the next telethon *sigh* /sarcasm off

 

...[the regional economy.. I will agree is working fine and dandy if you have paid enough real world money for a front and centre pitch however it's seriously broken if you have a lot deep in a PoT or at the back of a city but were lucky to have again spent enough real money to get a pitch and really bar a few purist explorers who goes and looks say once a month at best?]..

Hmm, I see where you're going but I have to say that I haven't spent any RL money on Housing or Vendors, or indeed to enhance my pace of achievement through the game itself beyond my initial crowdfunding fee (the cheapest option at the time in 2015) and a bag of cotos at the telethons and every now and then to repair my weapons but mainly to show my continued support for the game, especially given we don't pay a sub..

In Mid April I set myself a target to be a property owner, advanced crafter (WIP ) and Vendor. I rented a room and a share in a Vendor in NBM after researching good trading locations. As a result I found a great guy who did a deal with me and so far it is working out well. I also rented an Inn room in (what was) a quiet but developing POT in a promising location as the POT owner's philosophy on how he intended to grow the town (as a non aligned trading hub) appealed to me. This was a longer term plan and I now reside there in my new home with my new Vendor close to Britannia and the town is growing steadily and has a nice populace.

My home, vendor and business was all funded by the igg I have accrued within 3 months by selective gathering, crafting of the gathered resources and trading the finished goods. Three months doesn't see a great deal of time to invest to get to where I've got to so far? It's also been a complete blast. I've visited every nook and cranny of the continent in search of the best resource spots and rarer drops and have discovered so much and had a lot of spontaneous and immersive entertainment.

Forgive me, but a lot of folks on the forums lately and a great deal in this thread, seem to want everything now and to do everything quicker. Many of the features being shouted for are generic convenience features that on the surface seem harmless, but will over time make the game much more generic and less unique. My initial interest in SOTA (having become stale of playing increasingly 'cookie cutter' MMOs for years and each new one seeming more and more like the last one), was piqued by Richard Garriott and Portilariums vision for the game and the stated fact that SOTA would not hold your hand and would be an actual challenge.

Many of the initial, arguably stubbornly unhelpful, design concepts (no quest markers for example), have been reworked to appease the popularist view, but SOTA remains unique, but is hanging on to its uniqueness by a thread.

p.s. It made me smile to see the players who continue to enjoy the current design and broadly support the planned development path being described earlier in this thread as 'the naysayers'. We have a name!

 

You're near a big city and so easy to pop in, I wonder if it'd be the same if you were in a PoT nr Drachenfels or somewhere else that's on an island PoT etc. I get you like to explore, me too, but that's in the gaming zone not the total faff that getting across from one side of the map to another which when you've been doing it for 4 years like some of us have is a right royal pain in the bottom.

you just described 95% of my 'friends' list i use purely to port to; someone stated in an earlier post they had to block a player who became a bit stalker ish with his wife, extreme circumstance for sure but in today's world no one should have to be subjected to that type of abuse (that's what it is) but with the current mechanic it's a risk we all take that's totally unnecessary as in all other games you only add those people that are your friends and not everyone and their dog just to get round whats turning into a game killer or at best folks like @Kara Brae not bothering to log in as much as they used to.

@FrostII nailed it, why be against this as an addition, if you don't want to use it, you have a choice not to, however the vast majority of players from the poll as it currently stands seem to want this feature and if we are to get people into the game it's a must have IMHO

 

Nah, you still have places and points of interests running around with others, and even if they do teleport around, if you have your nearby players list open, you can see all the players in a radius around your location, not just visual range. So that really shouldn't effect immersion at all, unless your immersion is "everyone must walk in my fantasy world because things like teleportation do not exist".

 

Once again, as I said before, you'll see people who want it done there way because they think "their way" is the way to play the game, therefore, there can be no other way.
There are a few people who talk about taking strolls & walks through areas and enjoying all the scenic view and say they have "great immersion" from it. So what? I do the same thing when I go to a zone. I look in every location I can for secret stuff and try and knock out all the quests and puzzles there. But you want to know a secret? IT HAD NO EFFECT AT ALL ON TELEPORTATION to there... or from there... and you know what else? It didn't affect a single soul. People still went on with there lives, the sky didn't fall, people didn't all of a sudden snap out of a TRANCE because the had some cosmic connection to the Force-of-knowing-when-people-aren't-playing-their-way... breaking them of their "immersion".

It's just a control issue and people have them aplenty here. There is no real justification to not have more fast travel options other than the few on here who say otherwise. They don't like it, they don't want it and anyone who brings it up, they shut it down and talk about how "hurt" it makes them... instead of actually being constructive and offering additional ways to implement it and have a nice compromise. You could have toggles for all this if you want to run a hardcore game... hell you could play "Ironman" mode if you want and after you die you have to re-roll. But just because you like that does not mean you get to impose it on the rest of the player-base.

The regional market was a nice idea at first but not very good, since it has taken time to make special things for everyone to make it worthwhile going around the map to these areas, when they used to have just clones of the same stuff everywhere so no real reason. It's gotten better but the main hub areas of NPC cities are still where everyone moves around mostly. Usually just quests and wanting to get to a dungeon (if not teleporting) to go through these areas. I've played for years, I don't have to enjoy taking strolls around the world and stopping at every flower to bask in it's glory. I've done plenty of that along the way. Regardless of how you get to a location, you'll still be walking around once you get there... unless you think all movement will be short teleportation blips like Nightcrawler?

Again, this hurts no one at all, in any way other than those with control issues. Why do I need to run 5-10 minutes from Bladewyke to Ardoris, running thru twin troll pass to get there? Done it many times, why should you make people do it every time? There is already a friend's list teleportation system implemented, so how is it going to hurt anyone if they expand upon that? For people complaining about immersion, you want to grow/harvest plants in real time too? How about your wounds? Maybe we should slow healing down to a crawl, yeah im sure everyone would love that too. It's a "game". A game is a form of entertainment meant to be enjoyed. You have to BALANCE the immersive factors with fun factors. You make it too much like reality and it'll become boring, tedious, and repetitive. That's why these little things are quality of life enhancements for the game that make things easier so you don't have to trog through a bunch of repetition and time wasting to get to do what you like and have fun. If you think things that make the game easier are bad, then go back to where I talked about those few who hold back the rest of the player-base because "they think everyone should play like them" and "control issues".

 

My location is central map an I generally run to everything with the fleet flute. Until tears opened up, I had probably used 5 teleport scrolls since persistence (I recall a lot more). Other the running to Ardoris and the rise which takes me through a pass, I can get to everything in a few minutes.

My biggest complaint was in big city scenes but they fixed most of that with new entrances way back.

So Im generally fine with how the game is now.

This is one reason why I only have a dozen of so people on my friends list and Im really happy about that (Ive declined thousands of random requests).

 

Its really hard for people to understand that players like me rarely come out into muti mode. This past 2 weeks had hundreds of people farming Tears mostly in private mode due to the number of instances needed (and certain poorly behaving guilds moving in and KS'ing group in multi on purpose to be bad actors)

 

This one sentence best describes one of the biggest issues I have seen in our community since I started playing.

 

All great and valid points. However, you’ve identified issues that are plaguing the entire game in general. That is, problems that every market in the game suffers from.

These are not problems unique to or caused by the game’s intended regional market/economy design per se. My point is that the original intent to create regional markets and encourage players to shop locally, under normal circumstances (i.e. without friend’s list teleporting abuse) would have worked for the vast majority of players most of the time.

It’s only that, now, players are upset and no longer happy with the status quo that they feel it necessary to literally “change the game”, so that they can somehow “even” the score on the apparent failings of the system, or to make the game less tedious.

Well, life is not fair. No system is 100% fair to everybody at the same time. It is impossible to design a market that will make everyone happy, it’s just not. Limited prime real estate — who gets to have it? This is not the fault of the game.

Some food for thought:
Many are tired of walking around in the game, pressure developers to add runes to the game. What will be next on the butchering block?

 

Are you really using the “They made me do it” excuse? *sigh*

To that, dear sir, I say this:
It’s one thing to know how to commit a crime, and quite another to commit it”

You see it as a ‘necessary’ evil. I don’t. I refused all the unsolicited friend requests. I will not partake in this madness. My friends list will truly contain those that are friends.

(**wonders if this is yet another virtue test implanted by Garriot!**)

 

How is that bad exactly? It's an added element of fun or quality of life feature to enhance game play, not something horrible or nerfing anything. OP was asking for fast travel as well as making exploration more fun and exciting, something I have said as well.

My ideas for more excitement and exploration from "game features/wishlist section"

BK004 - Add More Excitement & Stuff To Do

Spoiler

I believe we need some of the things seen in other games that offer instant action or enhanced interaction & fun to the game.

Examples are:

1. Group "Lakes", regions/spots within current and future zones that allow for group/mass participation. A lot of the ones in other games do not even make you group, if you're in an area and say a special encounter spawns or a special object starts, like fend off the invaders, put out fires, save villagers, etc... while you're in that sphere of influence. A mechanism keeps track of everyone in the sphere of influence during the time of the event, even if they leave, and records the contribution. Points are awarded for a variety of factors and you could do the same so it's not just a "most damge dealt" situation depending on the scenario. Heals, kills, saves, turn-ins, rebuilding, etc etc all things that can go towards an event reward situation (like rebuilding a town, or saving a town from a dragon attack and putting out fires, finding lost children, saving goods, etc). Then have a list of rewards give out to those in the top as well as some randomly given out to participators. You could even reward a special pool of contribution points awarded that could be used to buy special goods like a lot of games have. I would recommend this only be available in Multiplayer mode in these zones.
   
   
2. PvP hubs, battlefields, scenarios. Would be nice to jump into instant action matches where you have at least 2 sides (perhaps more or even NPC factions/mobs joining in to cause a 3 to 6-way battle). You could use the traditional, skirmish, capture the flag/hill/, destroy base, gather resources, defeat "x" npc, etc for the "TYPES" of pvp battles. As far as where, for now, you could use the existing Shardfall hubs, but they would be instanced only to those participating in "that" battle. Meaning, if I didnt sign up for the match, i couldnt go into any of the modes (multiplayer, party, single player) and see or interfere with the matches. They would all be instanced to the participants of the match that way you could have multiple matches going on in the same areas. ALSO, depending on type of match, there would be different structures and things added to the map for that type of match, like 2 sets of fortified bases for the base destruction match as an example. ALSO, the matches would randomly choose a shardfall location (or future designed maps). Like the above idea, you could have rewards handed out to top players as well as random participants, as well as a special pool of points for purchasing special prizes.
   
   
3. Similar to the PvP match idea, make this a party/co-op scenario. You join matches and you get random zones (already existing zones), where you have to solve a delimna. As stated in the first idea, it could be a dragon attack you help fight off with the town's militia or it could be saving a town in danger of being razed to the ground, or fighting off waves of cabalists, or an undead invasion. Same as the others, offer incentive rewards and a special pool of points to buy prizes from.
   
   
4. Old MMO's like Horizon's had areas with the community had to help solve/fix a problem. In Horizons, they would have stretches of land across the map that was "infected"/ plague lands where usually the former inhabitants were killed, pushed out, and their buildings, towns, bridges were destroyed and it took the community to help donate materials, gold, etc to fix a problem and/or push back the plagued area. I believe this could be implemented as well as maybe monthly events and it could affect the world for a while. If players fail, something negative happens and the region is affected and vice versa if they succeed. Participation rewards and incentives should be added as well.

With all these ideas, if implemented, I would keep the prize pools/rewards seperate as to give incentives to do them all. This goes for both handed out rewards as well as the list of prizes/stuff you can choose from for your amassed points for that type of event. This would breathe A LOT of life and excitement into the game.

BK007 - Rare Mobs & Spawns

Spoiler

In older MMORPGs, like EverQuest for example, there would be special or rare mobs, sometimes named, in each zone. I think this could add some spice to the various zones around the world and some excitement to the game in general.

Each zone could have 3-5 rare mobs with different rarities... super rare could be once per day or every 2 days. These rare mobs would have not only a great chance to drop loot (good loot that is), but would have their own very special, unique designed/visuals, loot with tiered rarity of their drops from common to rare in their loot table. For example, they could drop 3 special items each... one would be common, another uncommon, and the main chase item would be rare... if it rolled that it would drop it's own gear instead of "good loot" from the regular loot tables.

This would definitely create chase items for the game and have reasons for visiting various zones and exploring, repeatedly. The incentive drops should match the rarity of the spawn and the rarity of the item, like if a rare mob's special "rare loot" roll is made.

Of course these items should have visuals for decrorations as well for bragging rights and collections. If the journal is ever expanded there could be accomplishments or titles for hunting these rares as well. They could also be tameable, if an animal.

That all would help with the running around and constant exploring but still teleportation would not have any adverse effects on anyone's gameplay or these mechanics. Still doable and those wishing to opt out can "toggle" the options out... those wanting semi-permanent opting out can set it on their account.

 

I did not even know about the “nearby players” window until now. And no, its not a consolation for feeling immersed when I can’t visually see anyone in the overworld or in a scene.

My idea of immersion wrt SoTA is simply that people should use the roads and lands that were made to be used. It would be great if the overworld had lots of players moving about normally in the course of their gaming.

The player population is already low as it is, and lots of people are already using friends list to teleport around. And now if they add rune traveling to the game, that’s the nail on the coffin for the overworld. A part of the game I quite enjoy, and others have alluded, has potential for additional game mechanics, and content. In an earlier version of SoTA demoed by Mr. Garriot, the overworld had a fog of war, a travelling merchant wagon, and even a huge dragon flying around!

 

[QUOTE="
The player population is already low as it is, and lots of people are already using friends list to teleport around. And now if they add rune traveling to the game, that’s the nail on the coffin for the overworld. A part of the game I quite enjoy, and others have alluded, has potential for additional game mechanics, and content. In an earlier version of SoTA demoed by Mr. Garriot, the overworld had a fog of war, a travelling merchant wagon, and even a huge dragon flying around![/QUOTE]

The problem with the overworld is that there is nothing really on it that is worth going there. If there would be stuff to conquer, rare mobs spawning or anything any other game already has had for years it might be interesting. SotA is struggling to create even basic gameplay mechanics. They got the POTs right, I grant them that - but that content is for a minority...

 

I am for everyone being able to acquire a limited amount of runes they could mark wherever they wanted (perhaps 10). Non tradeable account specific. If I find a particularly good vendor in a faraway place that I want to visit many times a week, only a rune solution would overcome the distasteful travel across the world through many scene loads. You gotta believe that such a rune system would benefit the vendors, pots, and especially the later comers who are stuck in far away places. It is crazy that buff quests are situated all over the map requiring single minded traveling to get buffed up for adventuring. The travel to the different scenes is not at this time adventuring. It is a chore that must be accomplished before adventuring and exploring can begin.