Why laxer travel time helps gameplay

Okay, so I'm not writing this post to argue the general concept of having overland travel in the game. I personally think it's a good thing, because I think travel as part of the experience of adventuring adds a lot to gameplay and to the game world. So I would definitely argue for that in another context.

But the dev team already decided that issue a long time ago. Back at Kickstarter, they announced that there would be travel in the world, things like roving encounters, traveling NPCs, and a regional economy. The issue now is how fast should the travel be.

I don't think that its only about immersion -- although I think that's a relevant thing to think about. I think there are going to be a lot of consequences to gameplay that also need to be taken into consideration. Many aspects of the game aren't even in yet for us to test, but I think when they start coming in, people will start seeing that travel speed does matter.

1. MARGIN OF TIME IN A CHASE

In the future, there'll be roving encounters on the map -- both enemy encounters that you'll either want to catch or avoid -- and travelling NPCs like the gypsy wagon that was shown off in the Kickstarter video. There'll also be PvP scenarios, such as the "contraband quest" example that RG talked about, where you would have to escape other players as you carry contraband across the continent, and you'll have to decide what roads to take, and whether to take more hidden, but slower paths, such as through a forest, or to go through faster but more visible paths, such as in open grassland. With these scenarios in mind, keep in mind that the faster your movement on the overland map is, the more difficult it'll be. It's easier to maneuver in a chase at laxer speeds.

2. EMERGENT GAMEPLAY

Requiring travel time to go from place creates a lot of emergent gameplay on the multiplayer level. For example, on the forums, we've already talked about "courier runs", where you'd pay another player to deliver a message for you, or deliver goods, or to do tasks for you. If its really fast and costless to get from place to place, however, these become useless.

3. PvP OPPORTUNITIES

Right now, we're not able to get drawn into encounters with other players, so we just pass by them on the overland map, or chat with them, go with them into a map scene. But the degree to which PvP exists in the world can expand with the overland map. Guild vs. guild warfare can take place between bands of players on the map. Open-PvP tagged players can set up ambushes on the road, and be matched, through Selective Multiplayer, with other Open-PvP tagged players. So the overland map can be great means of PvP encounters.

4. RANDOM ENCOUNTERS FEEL LESS ABRUPT

This may sound a little counter-intuitive, but I think random encounters work better at laxer speeds. Imagine there are two random encounters on your trip somewhere. Would you rather have two right after another, or two at a slower pace apart? If the pace is slower, I think its less annoying.

5. LARGER WORLD

By that, I don't just mean the feeling that the world is large, although I consider that a good thing in itself. But, the more they actually change the scale of the avatar to the world to make the world more expansive, I think it creates a much better game -- there's more leg room to subdivide areas on the map to make more nooks and crannies to explore. So for example, if Greymark Forest appears large, they can safely subdivide the forest into different scenes, but if it appears small, there's less flexibility about subdividing it. They could also add more POTs on the map if the world appears large without creating a rat's nest of sprawl. Now its possible they could make the world huge and keep fast travel speed, but there's a point that it breaks and feels ridiculous.

6. FEATURES LIKE SETTING UP CAMP

I'm going to start another thread about this soon because I think it can be a fun and important part of the game, especially the part of the game that takes place on the map. Setting up camp would let you do field crafting like tanning, cooking, resting your wounds. It would also let you set up a space to gather other players for a party. For example, you'd set up a campfire, and it would appear to others, based on Selective Multiplayer, on the map. Anyone who's interested in forming a party would visit your campfire, and so it would serve as a recruiting ground. It would also serve as a means to come together with a pre-assembled party before staging a raid. You'd tell everyone to meet you at the camp -- which would appear on the map -- where you'd then eat food for nutrition buffs, heal your wounds, and so on. You could also listen to music, and do role-playing. It would also let you spend your time in a way that's more fun while waiting through the darkness for morning to come, for all the reasons listed above, plus things like monster and PvP ambushes. So, all in all, I think this would be a great feature. Because of all of the other reasons enumerated above, laxer travel speed would make this work much better. Expect to see a thread from me soon devoted to this.

7. OTHER MEANS OF TRAVEL

Keep in mind that when mounts are in the game, they'll have to go at least twice, if not several times faster than walking speed, and that breaks a lot of the things I mentioned above even further. If chases are breakneck at walking speed, they'll be even worse on a horse. If emergent gameplay is broken at walking speed, it'll even be worse with horses.

8. VALUE TO HOUSING LOCATIONS

This would be part of the regional economy that the dev team is talking about; that there's a good reason to have a house in a certain location, and it brings value to it. Of course, there'll be other reasons to have a house in a certain town or city, but the regional economy will be a big factor to that.

 

I disagree with this. We can move at R17 speeds and still have this margin of time in a chase. The speed of Roving Encounters can change depending on the encounter and the other factors. So if it's difficult to avoid a random encounter, you make it faster than the player. If it's easy, make it slow. The margin of time isn't decided by how fast we are but how fast the roving encounters are in comparison to us.

I disagree with this as well. Couriers aren't useful because of the speed of travel but because it allows me to accomplish delivering a message or goods while I do something else. It enables multi-tasking. Also, this will be a single-player game so you can't just factor in multiplayer components to the game.

Speed on the overland map won't affect PvP.

Not affected by speed. I've had two in a row rather than spread out at the laxer speed and that was actually more annoying. If I move faster, sure it'll be annoying to have one right after another, but at least I know I'll get to my destination in a jiffy. But if I move slow, then random encounters slow me down way more.

Well as you said, it's possible for them to make travel faster but frankly the size of the world won't matter if travel speed is so slow that nobody wants to actually explore it.

So people have to wait after launch, probably into Episode 2, before they find exploring the overworld to be tolerable? That's asking them to take a lot of pain.

 

A random encounter that's going at the same speed as you, because its a human like a bandit or another player chasing you for PvP, Heradite. It will also be more difficult to place them with smaller map space. Also something that will be naturally going faster than the player but you have to catch up to, like a gypsy wagon. The same factors that will affect roving encounters and random encounters will affect all sorts of PvP that happens on the map.

 

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

It may take 35 seconds to go to Kingsport from Owl's Head. You make that twice as fast and shorten that to 17 to 18 seconds. 23 seconds to go to where the road turns into Kings Road. You make that twice as fast and shorten that to about 11 to 12 seconds. 33 seconds to go from Braemar to North Marsh. You make that twice as fast and shorten that to 16 to 17 seconds.

That's not going to make a major difference as far as encounters and on-map gameplay goes? I think it would make a difference. How much could you speed it up without creating a major difference?

 

It might be more difficult to place them but I don't see a big difference in terms of speed.

Yes it might make a big difference between whether people play or don't play. The feedback we're getting from players who think it's to slow is that it's actively discouraging them from playing the game and/or exploring. You have to take that more into consideration than the factors you think are dependant on slow speed.

But you are also making the assumption that a player will always try to escape a roving encounter. And with it moving as fast as they, they have mathematically the exact same chance to catch the player. Make it slower and you are just asking the player to evade them on a slower pace that turns them off.

 

I think people are confusing the game right now with what they want the game to be.


This is pre-Alpha and nothing is implemented. The travel speed is far too slow for what we have in game right now and it needs to be bumped up. We are discouraging people from playing before the game is even going yet.

If and when everything is implemented, maybe this travel speed will work....but it's terrible right now. That's why people are complaining about travel speed. No one cares (in terms of travel right now) about what the future holds. Travel speed will need continual evaluation as we move forward and more things are implemented.

 

I believe the reason why it feels painfully slow right now is that the overland map is currently half empty, boring, uninteresting. I would rather skip through a huge empty space, wouldn't you?
Now, if there were things to be seen, hidden places to be found, roving encounters, scenes that change depending on astronomy/season/events, gypsy vagons, players chasing other players and so on, then I would not mind a slower pace. That's because it wouldn't take me hours of walking just to find something interesting.

So, to paraphrase a somewhat well-known physicist of the past: 30 seconds spent running through an empty map feel a lot longer than 30 minutes spent crawling on a map filled with wonders.

 

It feels painfully slow right now because overworld travel speed was decreased between R17 and R18. But you're just reinforcing my point by your statements. There is nothing in game now to support a decreased travel speed. So keep the speed bumped up until there is...

 

Btw, I just want to add to this discussion that, at the current rate, I don't find travel speed to be painful at all. So nowhere am I defending that "travel speed should be painful".

Of course, if you're in an extreme rush and need to get somewhere right now, right away, any travel time could be painful if you're not patient, even if its two times as fast as it is now, or three times as fast. I don't think travel times in the game should be based around that.

There are still one or two roads in the game are artificially slow, like from PaxLair to where Brittany would be, and I think the slowdown off-road in places like in forests still feels a bit artificial. I think the more natural they make movement feel the less problems people will have, even if the travel time remains the same.

 

A Neuroenergetics Theory of Attention (NeT)

 

Yes, I was supporting your statement: as long as we have a vastly empty map, travel speed should be faster.

And I was also supporting redfish's statement: on a populated map with lots of things going on, travel speed should be slower.

 

I am asking myself right now: Why should travel speed be faster on the overland map than in scenes? Why is it possible for the hero to suddenly run at the speeds of a fast car just because he enters the wilderness? Does he have superpowers while on the overland "map"? Why can't I rund at those speeds in scenes, too?

Problem is the term overland "map" when it actually is no map. Bascially is it a zoomed out version of the world and you can zoom down to certain scenes. If you have a map you don't think that anything will happen on it. It is a map after all. So it is a means to fast-travel from scene A to scene B. But when you think of the overland view as a zoomed out version of the world it is no longer a map, it is another gameplay layer. Things are happening in this view as well. NPC and monster encounters, you can get quests, discover secrets, experience events...

If we want to skip all of this by traveling like a plane across the overland view then what is the next step to speed the game up? Combat is a bit boring right now so why not introduce an auto-resolve button that just gives you the results of the combat? Maybe running around in the cities is boring so why not introduce a city view on which you can just click on the merchant you want to trade with or the NPC you want to talk to without having to walk there?

You see what I mean? Introducing fast travel on the overland view would mean taking out or reducing a crucial gameplay element - exploring the world and experiencing things there.

 

For Item #1 regarding chases... I am here for fun and excitement... which of these is fun to you?





Somehow - a slow-motion chase just isn't fun for me.

 

Well it currently isn't turtle-slow, so I don't think its a good analogy.

It should all be taken in context. You should have at least feel you have ample time to find escape routes, and then have your adversary cut you off at the pass if you make the wrong move -- if you don't there won't be much to the chase at all, except for one person always outrunning the other, or one person always catching the other.

The pace is something that's going to have to be tested out when roving encounters come online; I'm just making a general point. It might also be that travel speed should be a little faster, but travel time should remain the same or longer. Travel speed might make the chase more exciting, but travel time would allow us more opportunities to find escape or head off an adversary from point A to point B. I made a thread on travel speed vs. travel time.

I think we should eventually be allowed to sprint and use up our Focus when traveling, so someone could sprint after us to speed up the chase if they want to use up their Focus. Or use skills like Dash and Sprint. Then, they should allow things like Shadow Form and Night Vision on the map. Then mounts, if we can ever get them in the game (!), should really speed up the chase.

 

I think it might be a little slower now on the map then in scenes, though I'm not sure,

See this thread,

 

in the eye of the beholder is it ?

 

It is turtle-slow to me... so slow that I am logging in to refresh my house - and logging right back out for something with more action rather than being in SOTA and testing like I'd actually rather be doing. Sorry - but it is to the point of not-fun.

And please don't say it's my system lagging... or my internet connection lagging... both are top-notch.

 

I also sadly didn't feel like playing on this release...

 

If we could move faster on the overland map then the time should move faster on the overland map, too. otherwise it would really come down to: Avatar is suddenly runnding at super-speed which is ridiculous.