Travel Speed on Overworld Map Is It Too slow? (Poll)

aha! i finally get it, as i am trying to walk from solaris to breamar: when you want to get somewhere, the overmap is FAR TOO TIME CONSUMING!

we need to get a banksitter in one key town: breamar. or tell me how to /zone or mark a rune please.

I was totally fine walking in the overland maps for short distances, but for the long haul it suck balls of energy and immersion, somehow. s'weird.

The Hendoman

 

This is how I feel about the current slow traveling on the maps, I had posted in a different thread, but I feel it fits here as well. Currently it's like we're being made to feel like the world is bigger than it actually is.


If the game world was as big as UO, I'd say no problem, please don't give us any fast travel, because I like to wander about and explore in an mmo, but it just isn't. There's not much in the way of exploration, and I understand it's just Pre-Alpha, I'm hoping....HOPING that the cities, scenes and dungeons are just placeholders and just so tiny for alpha testing, and will be increased in size, and given more depth as it develops.

We're slowed down by walking and blocked off from places with rocks, trees, mountains and corralled like cattle along the places in Novia to artificially make it feel like the world is bigger, and the scenes/dungeons we fight in are instanced and extremely small, making even more notice to how tiny the world really is. I would rather the world be actually bigger and not artificially made to feel that way. In UO, exploration was vast, and the dungeons were huge and got more difficult and dangerous the further you made it downward into the depths of them, I loved that. In SoTA, it doesn't look like we'll ever travel into a vast dungeon, deep down into a treachorous place and see other people adventuring, unless their in your party, which is to me.

It's depressing to go to the cities like Owl's Head or Kingsport and look out into the distance and see such beautiful scenery, knowing you'll never take a walk or adventure out those electric gates to explore it for yourself, taking in the scenery and trek all the way to that distant mountain, fighting foes along the way, and meeting people also out exploring/adventuring that way. You'll instead walk out from one instance into another, crawl along on the overhead map to go to yet another instance to get from place to place. I understand the instancing is here to stay and we just have to deal with it, I've come to terms with that, I've accepted it, but that's no reason not to have vast areas to explore and get lost in. Areas with depth, scenery, exploration, not trees blocking a wall around you at every turn.

As the game is currently it's not very mmo-like and if it's to stay the way it is, there's really no reason not to be able to port or gate from place to place as there's not much exploration to really do in the game. I can honestly say, I've never invested so much in an mmo before, for the hope that it becomes a good game and I've gotten in on it from the date the game goes live, until SoTA. I'm all in, I'm here to test and be here for the big finale (release day or for me lot selection day ). I appreciate all the hard work that's being done on the project and I hope all their hard work pays off and this game is a huge success, but I think we should point out problems we see as it's being developed to hopefully make it a better game for everyone and help make it a huge success for years to come. Constructive criticism is a good thing that I see on these forums and I applaud those that do so with tact. I think most times their criticism is more important than the praises given, though praise is deserved in many, many cases, and should continue. Sorry to have rambled on but this is a place(Exploration, and tiny scenes/cities/dungeons) where the game needs to be improved on big time in my opinion.

 

There are plenty of other games that will give you instant gratitude and super easy travel. The overland map and the ambush scenes are part of The Ultima series. Except for UO where everyone recalled back and forth at furious paces allowing scripters to run rampant and wilderness venders to be totally ignored and bypassed for the "LUNA" metropolis of vendors. I do not want to see this, I want people to not have god like powers of time/space travel. Redfish traveled 13 hexes, which is about 40 miles per hex roughly, (13x40=520), which is 520 miles in 49 seconds, and thats with ambush scenes included. How is this bad? Really, less than a minute! I have had load scenes that take longer. *SMH*

 

Ice Queen did you say if the world was as large as UO you would be fine with no fast travel?

 

Aye I did, walking or riding a mount would suffice for faster travel for me IF the world was actually vast.
In SoTA it's not, you can even see this by the portion of Novia we got this patch and by looking at the land mass map on the forums. Its not vast, it's actually quite paltry, and we're blocked off here and there by rocks, slow walking, etc. to make it FEEL like it's bigger than it really is. Just because it takes longer to get from one place to another, isn't making me think it's a bigger world. I can see by them doing this they know it's miniscule too.

I'm not saying years down the road when people have covered every inch of the map in a game and explored everything, that there shouldn't be some way to get to the new lands contents faster. That really doesn't seem to be an issue with SoTA though, unless of course they improve the size of cities, explorable areas, scenes, dungeons, (well the whole world) and make everything larger and explorable, instead of trying to make me think it's bigger than it really is, which by the way doesn't work. If the world had meaning and was vastly explorable there would be no need for instant travel until later expansions.

Heck we walked everywhere in Dark Age of Camelot for years, with only having a portal to the areas to defend our keeps. We had places we could bind our characters and when you died that's where you went if you couldn't get a rez, so dying meant something. It meant you'd have to walk back to your hunting grounds or dungeon to get back to fighting again, so you were careful and it was exciting. We did have some classes though that could provide speedier running for us though because the world was so big. We walked everywhere and it was fun to get out and just explore the lands. Especially out in the Frontiers area which was strictly pvp areas (My favorite part of the game Pre ToA Expansion--the game went to crap after ToA, lol), if you went out in the Frontiers the fear of danger was everywhere and it was exciting. We had an objective in pvp, if someone was at our keep to take our relics, I'm not kidding, people would run to the nearest mobs in droves to die on them to get to the portal pads so we could mass up and go into the Frontiers and fight off those Hibernians and Albions It was not uncommon in those days, (there was no voice chat) for people to call you up from your guild at 2 a.m in the morning on a weekend and say "Hibs are on our relic get in game now if you can!" lol

 

I would imagine you also mean if the world is vast and populated with people you could directly interact with. Seeing someone in SotA right now feels inconsequential; that person has their own agenda, their own grind or whatever they're focused on. I don't mean much when they see me, and likewise they are completely meaningless to my gameplay. They can't affect me in any way, and likewise I can't become involved into their game with their express permission.

It feels very disconnected. Seeing some random people run around on the map (slowly) doesn't make me want to stay on the map any longer than I have to.

 

Aye, the population part can be fixed upon having a successful game. I think they were trying to make it feel populated a bit so you don't feel so alone on the overhead map, but I've hardly ever bumped into anyone that wants to chat on the overhead map, except for the one person so far that needed to know how to get to Owl's Head.

 

I've had several conversations on the overland map. In fact I've met more new people this release on the overland map that I actually had conversations with and traveled with than I have in any other release.

So maybe you guys are the ones in a rush and not interested in saying hi to someone. I'm just offering that as a possibility.

 

This is very odd because I found I could interact with another player on the overland map just as much as I could in a town or city. It was the same exact experience in fact. I was even able to click the player and add him to my party. The only difference between meeting a person on the overland map and in a city is that they are smaller on our screen. Otherwise there is no difference at all.


Furthermore I was able to enter my party members' random encounter instances by double clicking their flag thingy. We can very much interact with players and they can effect our game play. I imagine if two players are flagged PvP they might have reason to interact if one or both are particularly aggressive.

 

You missed the point. It's organic interaction many of us are looking for. Standing around, waving people down just to say "hi" isn't organic interaction. That's desperation, and sounds kind of sad.

Maybe I'm spoiled, since I've been playing Felucca-only servers for the last 7 years with ArcheAge for four months last year. When you walk into a dungeon, or see someone on the road, and neither of you are quickly passing the other by, you both greet one another. Everything else on the planet ceases to matter; you acknowledge the other person and something happens. Maybe it's a friendly "How goes it?" or even a "Need any help?" Do you know why?

Because the next thing that happens could be that random noob you bumped into pulls out a sword, stabs you to death and plays around in your blood. There's no reason to talk to any one on this game 'cause everyone's just doing their own thing, mostly running around to get their stupid hat. I think there's a significant divide in the playerbase, between those wanting meaningful interactions and those who just want a friend to go beat up monsters with when they get lonely. One fosters immersion, role-play and natural interaction while the other is just LFG.

I've put in about 50 hours or so into this game so far, most of which were in areas that had other players (Owl's Head, Righ Innis Highlands, post-player populated overland map). I can count on one hand how many times people said "hi" to me, most of which were at an event (and mostly because they recognized who I was from UOF). Again, there is no meaningful interaction on the map; as far as I'm concerned, it could not exist and the game would break even, if not feel more streamlined.

 

I agree with the conversation issue with all the party chats and guild chats most people probably don't respond to us because they are responding to us in a chat you cannot see. I brought that up a month ago in another thread mentioning how people don't stop to give others the time of day.

However, I'm sorry but you are making very confusing arguments regarding the map, and I don't understand how this relates to the speed of travel on the map. In fact from your post I'm not sure you want people to move faster or slower or if you are just going off topic entirely and just complaining about people just not interested in talking. If you say it is not social as it is, wouldn't speeding up the travel speed make it even less social since people would be flying around the overland map? Also flagging for PvP should give you that risk as well so how exactly does the map interfere with interactions? It sounds like you are speaking jibber jabber because you say it is desperate and sad to flag people down and then you describe exactly that (flagging people down as you pass) in your next paragraph talking about your other experiences.

So maybe we are having a communication breakdown, and define certain words differently. Certainly there must be a communication breakdown some place because you say I keep missing the point. So if I'm missing the big picture that really bothers me. Either I am not understanding you or you are not speaking about the same thing I am.

 

Regardless I think the addition of seeing others on the overland map is a huge step in the right direction to allow people more chances to interact with others in the game.

 

The overland map speed, random encounters, toggling PvP and a plethora of other suggestions and annoyances (which I've linked to in a previous post) are symptoms of a greater issue here. While my comments aren't strictly related to travel speed on the overland map, the speed at which you walk in the overworld wouldn't even be a topic of conversation if the overland map were more immersive and meaningful. Right now it serves as a mechanic to get from quest A to quest B, Generic Townville to Boring Hamletheim, with atrociously outdated random encounters thrown in for the added yawn factor.

I get that you might not feel this way, as many, many others don't either, but a sizable portion of the community is echoing these discomforts - those that bother to voice them at all instead of logging out and playing another game until the next release so they can get a hat to ultimately pawn off for start-up gold in the MMO. If you just went from instance to instance instead of running on the overland map or simply moved to a point a la Indiana Jones segue, that wouldn't change my experience at all. It also wouldn't change the experience of many other vocal members of the community (see threads I linked) either; if anything, it might make it more enjoyable for us.

As I said, this whole topic is a symptom of something larger that is causing annoyance, boredom and/or agitation for players. This has little to do with lack of content per pre-alpha expectations, but rather core mechanics that are being further built upon and will be in place come release. If a significant (not majority, mind you) portion of the backing customers get tired of it, there won't be Episodes 2 or 3 or maybe any others. I want there to be, but I don't have much faith the basics of this game are going to outcompete other games coming out enough to get the money it needs to make it happen.

And that is enough of a concern to me to make a stink about it now, in pre-alpha, when there's still a chance to get things fixed. (For the record, I actually voted "No" on the poll. I don't think the speed needs seriously adjusting, on its own merits, but everything else about the overland map makes me wish there wasn't one at all).

 

I don't know who this sizable portion of the community is that you are referring to that are mad about the overland map.

People disagree on many issues and this is just one issue. However all the polls ive seen show the majority seem to favor the overland map. Also this game was successfully kickstarted with a dual scale map as a selling point, and the kickstarter backers are still the majority of this community which leads me to the conclusion that the majority at least knew this was the deal from day one, and it is highly likely that they still support it now.

 

Being cool with an idea or theory from two years ago and harking its praises when it's implemented two years later are entirely different things.

Read through the forums. I only got here for R14 and R15, admittedly, so my time here is limited to the last month or so. But the trends where people mention things like this are numerous. I was actually looking for one in particular to join the list I already linked (as you seem to think there aren't that many people feeling this way), but just trying to look for that one specifically I found four others. lol

They're out there. If you want to find them, you can very easily. For now, I'll bow out of this thread. There are already two other threads that have come up with similar topics to this since then, and I've got some 1.1.0 PTU to play.

 

Watch for peoples waves in the chat box. If I can catch people, I at least I try to give them a wave. I think it's important to be connected since we are the lucky ones that are connected by a common goal.
It's so fuuny like in highschool you see kids you grew up with, like a popular guy who when he was five fell off my bunkbed and broke his arm and doesn't even talk to me years later. We played war and
house together and it was like we didn't know each other. It just feels a bit like that sometimes So I will talk to people whenever I get the chance so watch out lol We are in this together.

 

I think that somehow there needs to be a unique experience in traveling each area of the overland map. Maybe just special types of monsters in the random encounters and unique fighting environments that you don't get anywhere else in the game. Maybe some random magical drops to make people want to hang out there and do some fighting. Add a few artistic unique backgrounds and it would be pretty enjoyable.
Personally, I haven't figured out how to get to Novia yet, but as soon as I do, I'll try it out.

 

Very sure this will be more balanced as it noticed its not the terrain its just some place are "laggy"
Been running on dust roads while walking on roads where it was like i was to my knees in the mud so no worries .
A little slowdown would be nice when terrain would for realsies

 

I am fine with it currently. It will get smoother later plus horses and such will be introduced.

 

I've finally started exploring Novia and it takes a little time to get used to the visuals. I wish you could angle down a little lower to see what you're trying to walk towards. The walking speed seems ok to me. Novia is not laggy for me, with a medium-speed gaming system (Win64 with 16GB of ram though). What's laggy for me is the Novia towns. They are worse than the first towns. It's not so much laggy as the frame rate is down to about 2-3 frames a second and it almost makes me sick to walk around in town, especially in buildings. Obviously that will improve later, but it's hard to play. I think Novia needs more labels on the terrain like the first land (I forget the name), but maybe that's because the wilderness areas are not ready yet? I see lots of little towns, I'm assuming they are player controlled? I haven't gone in them yet. I really had trouble walking around Ardoris (sp). Finding the town square took me a while. I would really like to see big signs for the vendor shops so you can tell them from people's houses. But back to the original topic, I like walking around Novia, but there needs to be more purpose to it other than just trying to stay on a path.