Where'd all the Lunar Rifts go? - Faster Travel is low-hanging fruit!

At the beginning of this Pre-Alpha journey, Lunar Rifts felt like they'd be a much bigger deal than they seem to be now. I feel like we had a lot more interaction with them in the earlier releases, and little by little, we've been weaned off of them...

...Why? These are one of the things that make Shroud of the Avatar really cool and unique in the Fantasy genre. Shouldn't these be all over the place, or at least be a bit more abundant than they are now?

Instead of a few placed within current scenes like towns or wherever, what if Lunar Rifts were their own personal scenes that could be placed strategically around the Over-world?

This would give players multiple travel options that still utilize the Over-world map, providing the opportunity to still experience a random or roaming encounter along the way. It also gives players another way to skip Control Points (which perhaps opens them up to becoming something better than they are, like maybe a tiered spawn encounter with a reward at the end similar to in RIFT).

I understand there might be a concern about the regional economy concept, but what if you couldn't travel through Lunar Rifts while over your weight limit? This will help slow the circulation of goods, and it should encourage players to work together to move items. Sounds like a win win win to me!

What do ya think?

 

I kind of agree - the moongates were a really great selling point in Old Britannia, and real teleportion isn't in the game yet. Please don't make zoning the only alternative in the meantime

 

If any travel of any kind, carrying anything at all, is permitted between regions, regional economies are meaningless/pointless. (including but not limited to: pedestrian, equestrian, aeronautical, nautical, or magical)
Any un-fun mechanics to that end are just punitive for no reason, and will reduce the attraction of the game to a larger demographic.

 

Just give me a map when I login and let me pick where I want to go. Can even have a resource selector so I can automatically gather from the map without having to load the game. I don't have time to play the game and I shouldn't be penalized!

 

Are you saying you shouldn't be able to carry inventory out of a scene?

 

No.

My point is that there is a whole bunch of mechanics going into the game with the philosophical/design goal of creating and sustaining regional economies.
The reality is, if anyone can carry anything anywhere, via any means, regional economies are not going to happen.
Either you isolate the regions, and enforce it 100%, or you don't. If you don't, then why all the punitive mechanics that won't stop it?
If the game is supposed to be about fun, what's fun about naive players suffering and veterans ignoring the mechanics? Seems silly, to me.

 

I think agra is pointing out examples like suet costing 20k for 20 in owl head, but 20k for 40 in Ardoris. Currently since I can use pedestrian and nautical forms of travel to go to Ardoris buy the suet for half price use the same travel methods back to owl head and sell them there or just keep them for my own use I have effectively broken the regional economy. His point is since that is currently allowed, he thinks it's silly to care about mechanics trying to sustain regional economies when it's not 100%. Hence in reference to the topic here why not add more Lunar Rifts or any other possibly fun mechanic, when not doing so really is only hurting the player that doesn't know where to go or what travel methods to use to break the regional economies. Although I mostly agree with his point, what interests me is does the fact it takes a bit of time to use the travel methods (pedestrian being the slowest) dissuade people from breaking the regional economies more often, for someone like me it wouldn't. Hence I would value adding fun mechanics like more lunar rifts over trying to maintain slow forms of travel to dissuade players (Edit for clarity: I would love risk mechanics like being "attacked" by bandits lose x cargo or force flagged PvP while moving x amount of weight, I just don't think slow travel is enough to dissuade moving goods from region to region). Obviously, this is just my subjective opinion, because I don't have the numbers on how much travel time affects regional economies.

 

Actually devourerofmemes, you have not broken the regional economy. But have taken the risk of transporting the goods from one area to another. Well done!

 

To actually address the OP...

If we work on the assumption that Richard & team are sticking as closely to Ultima as they can.. and lunar rifts = moongates.. then there will only ever be a total of 8 lunar rifts in fixed locations to be placed throughout 5 episodes.. with each EP adding more and more land.. if we added more and more rifts now.. there wouldn't be any left. We had them early on as a stop gap measure to move players about in an incomplete word.. for awhile they were the only way to get from Solace Bridge to Owl's Head.. The Owl's Head rift being only temporary for that purpose.

We can expect a new rift leading to new lands with each EP until we have all 8.

 

And what a risk it was! Pretty sure that's what agra meant by not being able to sustaining regional economies, but I don't want to speak for him and I won't argue over semantics since there is no inherent good in doing so.

 

Risk? Not seeing that, personally.

And aside from all of this, legit teleportation back to your bind point and/or friend is going to be permitted, by design. As such, you travel one way to another region, get your stuff, teleport back. Rinse, repeat. Multiply by 100 or 1000 times a day for a large guild.

 

I'm sure they'll put enough limits on teleporting to not make it that easy.

 

I like the concept of a player's encumbrance limiting magic-based fast travel options. (scroll of recall, teleport, moongates, blink, etc) If you're overloaded then perhaps you need to travel to a town with a stage coach, rent an air balloon, take a ship, some alternate means of travel etc. and this might incur fees. This would create new traffic in npc and player towns depending on the town's fast travel options.

In one of my other posts...had an idea about towns having post offices/stage coach and you package up part of your inventory and have it delivered to another destination. It might show up at the final destination an hour later because the stage coach will deliver a group of packages all at once. Part of the fee incurred to send packages would be paid to the "courier" and the other part would be paid to the stage coach/POT. I figured the job of courier could also be player driven.

 

Not to take this thread too far off topic, but even CrazyPhil was brainstorming ways to keep instant travel not ideal in every situation. Ancev the idea of a stage coach taking time to travel seems rather interesting and although people might hate this idea, I'd love for it to have a chance to be "attacked" and lose some of the cargo. The longer the distance the more time it takes and the more likely and severe the loss might be, however if they went this route maybe you put more limits on what you can actually walk places making this new mechanic the most common way to move large amounts of supplies from town to town. This would address the OP's concerns about Lunar Rifts impacting the regional economy concept.

 

Exactly! I was thinking the price of the convenience (other than the fee) for shipping packages, might be the periodic anomaly of something happening to the shipment. Perhaps the red sash bandits waylay a stage coach - a few items were lost. Or the driver of the stage coach lost control of the wagon during a storm, etc

The occasional mishaps in the NPC delivery system would encourage players to get involved. By participating as couriers, players could reduce the probability of something bad happening to the package. My first thought was packages would be handled automatically through some of these fast travel methods...from post office to post office. But maybe that's just the first phase of delivery, the 2nd part would be where players could make deliveries to player's houses? The courier payment could be broken into chunks - the closer you get the package to it's final destination, the more you get paid, if you get the package to the player's lot you've collected the full payment for delivering that package. However, if you just bring it from a distant post office to the post office nearest the package destination, you'd get 3/4 of the payment. You helped eliminate a lot of the 'mishap' checkpoints that the package had to go through, now it just needs to be delivered to the player's house from a much closer post office (less chance of something bad happening.) Perhaps another player takes up the task of making the individual deliveries.

I'm sure there are ways to abuse this type of system...I figured players would have a certain amount of time to deliver the packages, if they weren't delivered in the appropriate time, the packages would go back into the NPC queue and be delivered at the regular time from when they were shipped. Maybe if a player sits on packages and doesn't deliver them, he'll lose his courier license after failing to deliver them on time a few times.. etc. I guess this type of system might defeat the purpose of regional economies...not sure.

If there were more lunar rifts, post offices, etc in the game you'd still be able to transport a decent amount of stuff because suet, beetle carapace, gems, etc don't seem to weigh very much at all. Maybe increase the weight for resources? I was hoping gold would have a weight also.

 

Real teleportation is being added into the game this week.

 

And you need a way to defend the cargo to minimize losses. All in good fun and risk.

 

Yeah, you missed and/or twisted the whole point.

Regional economies are inevitable and a mechanic specifically put in by RG to maintain foot traffic and residency in remote regions. Agra isn't saying trying to maintaining them is pointless, although that's a convienent translation for folks who are pro-lunar rift.

Lunar rifts were slowly removed because portalarium doesn't want excessive fast travel because it helps people bypass the control points with bulk resources and allows centers for commerce like luna in uo.

Lunar rifts can exist in abundance and are currently in game as of r26, but need to be restricted to use only by players who are not overweight and so they arent providing advantages ovet the long range ferries in npc towns. They dont want players attempting to bypass control points with bulk materials.

 

Teleportation, legitimate teleportation, is being put into the game, by design. If I can walk out of my region, and teleport back into my region, regional economies will never happen.
It doesn't matter if players can't teleport when encumbered or not. If they can't teleport when encumbered, they'll just teleport when they hit the weight limit, and then return and do it again.
Every guild over 20 people will likely have a teleport friend somewhere in each region.

There's also this to consider; Exactly zero data has been collected, for the past 2+ years, on regional economies without fast-travel, in-game. Zero.
There's just over 100 working days between this moment and final wipe. Within that time, they have to not only implement, but collect, and then iterate and balance, regional economies, and eliminate fast travel? But, they're putting teleportation in the game. These two goals conflict, directly.
Consequently, there will never be metrics collected in game where teleportation or fast travel doesn't have an impact on regional economies. As such, there's no way to made informed decisions regarding regional economies without fast travel. It will not be possible before July 28th, and it won't be possible as long as teleportation is in the game. If you remove the ability for players to teleport to their friends, or recall to their home, you reduce or lose a portion of your target demographic. Unwise, from a business perspective.

And before some of you jump in and say "but but but", I urge you to consider history. There is a game that has exactly what you're describing. Regional resources, no fast travel, and no teleportation. That game lasted 9 months in early access, and then laid off all it's developers except two. Now it's on life support, desperately looking for an investor to save it. That happened in 2015, to PFO. The exact moment you get what you want is the exact moment players looking for fun, instead of a second job, will walk away from this game forever.

And here's the kicker, re-iterated, in Dr. Cox style: (go Scrubs!) Even without fast-travel, if players can walk, carrying anything, between regions, regional economies will never happen. Ne-he-ver. Every attempt the developers make to create regional economies, artificially, will reduce the fun and reduce the target demographic. Historically demonstrated to be true. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.

 

I love all of this discussion! Even if nothing here ever gets looked at by the team, I still really enjoy the back-and-forth of ideas in these forums with you all.

At this moment, you still have to wait for the Lunar Rift to switch to the destination you prefer... so it's not exactly "fast"... but some would probably choose to stand and wait, while others might choose to make the journey...



the thought sure reminds me of a few moments from my past... like everyone collecting at the Wizard Spires in EverQuest...



or perhaps at the nearby Moongate just outside of town in Ultima Online?...



These were bustling places of Player interaction sometimes. Could be pretty awesome in SotA.

I remember hearing in a hangout/telethon the idea of making Boats their own scenes as well, so you'd have to travel on boat across the scene instead of just double-clicking it to teleport. Reminds me of another moment I miss from the worlds of old. EverQuest's Ocean of Tears...



Hopefully the Fast Travel ideas entering the game soon are fun and unique in their own way... but if not... there's lots of options out there.