Time for fast travel?

See the above post with spoilers ^^
It's doable and you can still have teleporation. Teleporting isn't going to kill a game, if anything it'll probably keep more people. Just need group activity hubs and things to do as well. You don't physically have to make everyone else walk along a road so you feel like you're not alone. The overworld map has long been a problem but like I said above, those things could be implemented and people would have compelling reasons to run around the map. Hell, let people harvest in overworld map like they did in UO, looks similar enough

Also, if you're just wanting more social interaction or wanting to see others do stuff, every friday there are parties, there are monthly events and such, just keep an eye on the events calendar and section of this forum and friend everyone there when you attend.

 

Same here.

 

@Brugas pretty much sum's it up ^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

Lots of digression in your reply, but I’ll address what I believe are your main points:

1) Re: Control
Who is asking for change here? I’ve accepted the game as-is.

2) Re: Harms no one
That’s your opinion. My opinion is such a change may appear benign, but has significant implications on the dynamics of the game.

3) Re: Realism/simulation
Sure, some games require your character to eat periodically too. It’s a design decision. I didn’t decide where this line is for SoTA, but I don’t have issues with what they’ve come up with. I don’t feel the manual traveling in the game is unreasonable or unacceptable at all. In fact, I welcome it with glee. Bring on more walking!

In general, I trust Mr. Garriot’s game sensibility. If he thought it would be a good idea to allow players to be porting around the world at will I think it would have been part of the game from the beginning.

 

@Woodchuck
Such as ?

 

read the thread?

 

Certainly an interesting discussion.

Worth noting we already do have fast travel.....it's just that it isn't implemented well (in fact i'm pretty sure that fast travel to friends wasn't actually intended to make it through to launch). My view is that it should be implemented properly and correctly in a way that the richness of the game is enhanced. A view which i'm sure the majority agree with.

 

Even if that were so... I'd like to see your research... A Forum poll isn't a proper sample... this isn't a democracy.

 

Indeed mate. Good topic, struck a lot of chords clearly, lots of passionate heartfelt views, clearly a lot of people love this game or at least the potential of it, and everyone has their reasons for what they are arguing for. It occurs to me (other than we have gotten away a fair bit from your OP), is that it may be premature to throw around proposals for world travel and accessing distant instances as the Devs haven't yet taken us to where they envision us to be yet.. We may be speaking in ignorance.

I was trying to root out some of the links on the Forum to RG's demo videos and concept maps of New Britannia. When you study them it's clear Richard envisaged the Overworld as being 'the' games hub, the cloth map in RPG terms, or the 'playing surface' in sports parlance, so the Overworld is crucial to the vision. There's a really old concept map which is essentially like a 4x RPG map similar to AOW with loads of events and triggers on it. A later one is more refined and animated with fog of war and has roaming creatures and events. It looks a bit like a Mount & Blade map in some ways. I suspect the latter is closer to the vision and the lack of events and detail on the current OW map is just a matter of code efficiency, programming time and money.

If the Overworld was teeming with events, instances, daily quests, seasonal harvests, special events etc, would we all wish to teleport so much? and if it were like this, and full of folks moving along the roads, wouldn't it be fun and worthwhile? And when you have had your fill, mount your horse, or, whatever means of OW transport comes along..

... We know we are getting Mounts (if we fund them) and we know the Devs are working on the Portal system, we hope also to have boats and scheduled boat services. So my point is, shouldn't we simply wait? Maybe Messrs Garriott, Long and Spears have it all in hand and a solution more elegant than we can envisage, and maybe its like runes on steroids for the runes fans

 

Fast Travel already exists... by using the Friends' List beyond what it was intended for.
Why carry runes when you can render your friends list completely ineffectual by adding everyone you see to the list?
now, everyone sees someone logging on or logging off every 12.3 seconds, because they have at least 100 people in their friends list.

Personally, I think they should just add a rune book, so you can scribe locations (or scene entrances) that you can teleport to. That would leave the Friends List for what it is supposed to be used for...keeping in contact with people that you've actually taken the time to speak to/hunt with.

 

The overworld map is fast travel.

 

Screw fast travel. Give me less time looking at load screens and less hitching in a dungeon with more than 4 avatars.

 

I haven't suffered hitching in the game in over a year, you sure this isnt your rig? Here's a 3 hour long stream of Tears full time with 8 people.

This is my client at 3/4 4K resolution with another client open at 3/4 1080p (crafter in my basement) as well as OBS running streaming the video to Twitch.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/273950126

 

I'm a casual player, never played any UO game, and I'm all for any solution that results in less loading screens and overworld travel.

If I have 30-60 minutes a day available to play, I don't want to be wasting 10-20% of that time traveling from point A to B on the overworld (including random encounters and control points).

Fighting mobs is fun. Doing quests is sometimes fun. Exploring areas is sometimes fun.

Traveling from area to area in the overworld is never, ever fun. Lengthening the not-fun time via random encounters (or going off the road to dodge them) and control points is also not fun and adds to the already not-fun chore of traveling in the overworld. Note that I actually tolerate the concept/design of overworld travel, but I'm still saying it's not fun. I have a problem when more not-fun things (road encounters, control points) are piled on an already not-fun experience.

If some people want immersion, let them immerse themselves (you're walking in overworld, right? Because it wouldn't be immersive to 100% run from city to city) while having an option to let other people avoid the loading screens.

 

Just so it will pay for the development and art creation and extensively upkeep for someone to maintain the database:

Runes should cost 1 crown
To rewrite a rune will take a pattern remover
Books to hold 10 runes should be 5 crowns

Runes can only be marked in special areas like NPC friendly territory or a Town/Property


Disclaimer: I am fine with the way things are. There should be a possible real world cost for this system even though you could spend time gathering or finding the resources to buy the runes and books in game over time...

Long term, as more land gets made, something like this may be beneficial, so maybe this could be an episode 2 goal.

Or we could walk/ride/ship everywhere too

 

I thought they were already doing this with Teleport scrolls on their friends list?

 

Friends, I am torn with the content of this thread. I don't know whether to enjoy the cross trolling, to be frustrated by it, or to try my best to filter through to read the suggestions.

Word to the wise though, if you're going to proclaim that others don't know what they're talking about, make sure you do *chuckles*

 

I really hate this aspect of SotA. Not the teleporting part but the part where perfect strangers send a friend request just to use me as a teleport station. I also hate the "X is now online" and "X is now offline" messages that clog my chat window.

 

THIS! One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Times THIS!

 

If we had runebooks then everyone on people's friends list would be, well.... friends .