So, over on mmorpg.com the thread showing off the new map spun off into the age old Fast Travel VS hoofing it debate and I just wanted to cross-pollenate and repost my response here to see what other people (who are actually here to support the game) thought.
Me:
While I totally agree I think FFXI had a pretty brilliant middle-ground here. You had white mage teleport spells to certain "crag" locations, you had outposts that you could fast-travel to once you did a supply run to them, you had black mage teleport or "return" spells, you had chocobos, you had airships (faster than running, faster that outposts/teleports depending on the location) and then ships (slow, with a neat little chance for pirate attacks.
I guess what I'm getting at is it's not all or nothing. You can have conveniences that don't totally kill the adventure, it's all in the execution. Variety is the key here, as in the ffxi example I used. There were myriad ways to get about, and none of them made that world feel small.
How you got to place A was totally different from place B. Crawlers nest you would either be in Jueno or take an airship there, or home point there, then you got on a chocobo and traveled about 5 minutes to the dungeon itself.
For sky, the first raid zone you would typically outpost warp to the adjacent zone then run and/or chocobo to the teleporter.
Alternatively to all of those, you could always get a teleport to the nearest crag and then chocobo from there. Point being....not excessively difficult to access, not diminishing of the world size.
I think the grouping dynamics aspect of it is another topic entirely....as there are ways to combat the whole "wait around for an hour for a healer to show up on lfg" thing outside of travel mechanics.
For the grouping dynamic debate....I think modern mmos have actually made a lot of progress that could be helpful in this regard. Look at ffxiv, where healers can solo quest just like any other class but have skills/abilities (stances) that do things like reduce dps and increase heals, or turn hurts to heals. You also have the wildstar approach, where each class can swap on the fly to another "mode" with totally different skills. This means you get totally different skills and not just a stance or mod on existing skills which I think is amazing and should be an industry standard personally. Then there's hybrid classes which most modern mmos have kind of gone away from.
I'm still a fan of hoofing it plus specific classes having teleportation abilities. Maybe community travel that moves a bit faster than running yourself that you can talk to other people on or afk on until you get to (but don't pass!) your stop.
I am looking for basically an EQ Reboot haha. I might be in the minority, but EQ had so much right that I hope Pantheon feels very similar to it.
maslo said:I'm still a fan of hoofing it plus specific classes having teleportation abilities. Maybe community travel that moves a bit faster than running yourself that you can talk to other people on or afk on until you get to (but don't pass!) your stop.
I am looking for basically an EQ Reboot haha. I might be in the minority, but EQ had so much right that I hope Pantheon feels very similar to it.
I would support hoofing it and class based travel spells that assist with speeding up the travel via run speed increases and portals. I would however be against any instant based travel where another player isn't involved aside from boats :) .
maslo said:I am looking for basically an EQ Reboot haha. I might be in the minority, but EQ had so much right that I hope Pantheon feels very similar to it.
Heh, I'd love that, but we know that's not what's happening here.
Kajidourden said:So, over on mmorpg.com the thread showing off the new map spun off into the age old Fast Travel VS hoofing it debate and I just wanted to cross-pollenate and repost my response here to see what other people (who are actually here to support the game) thought.
Dullahan said:Trying to stay on topic, what you have to understand about Pantheon, is that they won't be doing the lobby game design. They want a virtual world where there is realism involved. Going across the map takes time and planning or the assistance of other players if you aren't capable of teleporting.Me:
While I totally agree I think FFXI had a pretty brilliant middle-ground here. You had white mage teleport spells to certain "crag" locations, you had outposts that you could fast-travel to once you did a supply run to them, you had black mage teleport or "return" spells, you had chocobos, you had airships (faster than running, faster that outposts/teleports depending on the location) and then ships (slow, with a neat little chance for pirate attacks.
I guess what I'm getting at is it's not all or nothing. You can have conveniences that don't totally kill the adventure, it's all in the execution. Variety is the key here, as in the ffxi example I used. There were myriad ways to get about, and none of them made that world feel small.
How you got to place A was totally different from place B. Crawlers nest you would either be in Jueno or take an airship there, or home point there, then you got on a chocobo and traveled about 5 minutes to the dungeon itself.
For sky, the first raid zone you would typically outpost warp to the adjacent zone then run and/or chocobo to the teleporter.
Alternatively to all of those, you could always get a teleport to the nearest crag and then chocobo from there. Point being....not excessively difficult to access, not diminishing of the world size.
I think the grouping dynamics aspect of it is another topic entirely....as there are ways to combat the whole "wait around for an hour for a healer to show up on lfg" thing outside of travel mechanics.
For the grouping dynamic debate....I think modern mmos have actually made a lot of progress that could be helpful in this regard. Look at ffxiv, where healers can solo quest just like any other class but have skills/abilities (stances) that do things like reduce dps and increase heals, or turn hurts to heals. You also have the wildstar approach, where each class can swap on the fly to another "mode" with totally different skills. This means you get totally different skills and not just a stance or mod on existing skills which I think is amazing and should be an industry standard personally. Then there's hybrid classes which most modern mmos have kind of gone away from.
I may as well be posting with Dullahan's username, cause I agree 100% with what he's saying. With all due respect Kajidourden, I disagree with your suggestions. I did not play FF11, but from what you described I would not want any fast travel at all. (I'm already disappointed with talk I heard of possible portals being in starting cities, but I don't know if that's actually happening or not.) If it is, I think it would certainly kill the need for boats to travel to other continents. I don't feel we need any more convienences than what we'll probably have: horses to travel faster, movement speed increasing spells for those without mounts, certain classes with teleportation abilities.
As for modern mmos and the progress thay have made regarding group dynamcis.... I've played and enjoyed FF14, but I don't want to see anything in that game in Pantheon. I don't want to see any of these modern day mmo new ideas in Pantheon - no multi guilding from GW2, no skill swapping from Wildstar, no single-player feeling mmos with tons of cutscenes like FF14(I love them, but that is that game, not here please)..etc etc etc. I want to play Pantheon because I want to get AWAY from all these modern day mmo ideas. Really, if Pantheon is going to have them, I wouldn't want to waste my time playing, I'd just stick to playing the already established ones that I've made friends in and have some roots in, another clone would not interest me.
AgentGenX, their explaination of final fantasy xi's travel system makes it sound like far more than it was. Hoofing it as people are referring to it here was still by and large the primary method of getting around in XI and fast travel options were extremely limited and about 1/100th of the effectiveness of the fast travel in ffxiv. I mean, despite having those systems people still used mage teleports (which usually put you 3+ zones away from where you were really trying to get to anyway), airships and boats (not instant, you would actually ride in the boat for about 10 mins or so), warps (like everquest bindpoint thing except it was only available to a single option of a small set of possible locations), and chocobo travel (xi's mounts which you could only get from specific locations and once you got off it left unless you did a pretty serious quest to obtain an item with a very long cooldown that would spawn one at you in most zones but not all). Basically it was nothing like most fast travel options you see currently (which I am right there with you against it) and was pretty similar to what was found in everquest overall.
Having said that, I don't feel that it is necessary to have the outpost warp type of travel. Things I think should be in are basically some bus like travel options (boat, airship) that make certain travels (say, between a port near a small town to a port on the other side of the continent) more effeicient without diminishing a sense of scale in the world by a considerable margin and maybe a couple of finite point teleports and then some conservative mount options.
Note: Cutscenes aren't really a modern idea, they were in pleanty of games far earlier on and in mmos ffxi did them in 2003. I personally want them here because I feel like they are an important tool in developing story and attatchment to the world (though not the only tool). However, I understand that they are expensive to add and not something that is of a high priority in the scheme of what pantheon is attempting to accomplish.
AgentGenX said:maslo said:I am looking for basically an EQ Reboot haha. I might be in the minority, but EQ had so much right that I hope Pantheon feels very similar to it.
Heh, I'd love that, but we know that's not what's happening here.
Kajidourden said:So, over on mmorpg.com the thread showing off the new map spun off into the age old Fast Travel VS hoofing it debate and I just wanted to cross-pollenate and repost my response here to see what other people (who are actually here to support the game) thought.
Dullahan said:Trying to stay on topic, what you have to understand about Pantheon, is that they won't be doing the lobby game design. They want a virtual world where there is realism involved. Going across the map takes time and planning or the assistance of other players if you aren't capable of teleporting.Me:
While I totally agree I think FFXI had a pretty brilliant middle-ground here. You had white mage teleport spells to certain "crag" locations, you had outposts that you could fast-travel to once you did a supply run to them, you had black mage teleport or "return" spells, you had chocobos, you had airships (faster than running, faster that outposts/teleports depending on the location) and then ships (slow, with a neat little chance for pirate attacks.
I guess what I'm getting at is it's not all or nothing. You can have conveniences that don't totally kill the adventure, it's all in the execution. Variety is the key here, as in the ffxi example I used. There were myriad ways to get about, and none of them made that world feel small.
How you got to place A was totally different from place B. Crawlers nest you would either be in Jueno or take an airship there, or home point there, then you got on a chocobo and traveled about 5 minutes to the dungeon itself.
For sky, the first raid zone you would typically outpost warp to the adjacent zone then run and/or chocobo to the teleporter.
Alternatively to all of those, you could always get a teleport to the nearest crag and then chocobo from there. Point being....not excessively difficult to access, not diminishing of the world size.
I think the grouping dynamics aspect of it is another topic entirely....as there are ways to combat the whole "wait around for an hour for a healer to show up on lfg" thing outside of travel mechanics.
For the grouping dynamic debate....I think modern mmos have actually made a lot of progress that could be helpful in this regard. Look at ffxiv, where healers can solo quest just like any other class but have skills/abilities (stances) that do things like reduce dps and increase heals, or turn hurts to heals. You also have the wildstar approach, where each class can swap on the fly to another "mode" with totally different skills. This means you get totally different skills and not just a stance or mod on existing skills which I think is amazing and should be an industry standard personally. Then there's hybrid classes which most modern mmos have kind of gone away from.
I may as well be posting with Dullahan's username, cause I agree 100% with what he's saying. With all due respect Kajidourden, I disagree with your suggestions. I did not play FF11, but from what you described I would not want any fast travel at all. (I'm already disappointed with talk I heard of possible portals being in starting cities, but I don't know if that's actually happening or not.) If it is, I think it would certainly kill the need for boats to travel to other continents. I don't feel we need any more convienences than what we'll probably have: horses to travel faster, movement speed increasing spells for those without mounts, certain classes with teleportation abilities.
As for modern mmos and the progress thay have made regarding group dynamcis.... I've played and enjoyed FF14, but I don't want to see anything in that game in Pantheon. I don't want to see any of these modern day mmo new ideas in Pantheon - no multi guilding from GW2, no skill swapping from Wildstar, no single-player feeling mmos with tons of cutscenes like FF14(I love them, but that is that game, not here please)..etc etc etc. I want to play Pantheon because I want to get AWAY from all these modern day mmo ideas. Really, if Pantheon is going to have them, I wouldn't want to waste my time playing, I'd just stick to playing the already established ones that I've made friends in and have some roots in, another clone would not interest me.
You, Sinist and Dullahan are welcome in my guild lol. :) All three of you have very similiar mindsets on most topics that my wife and I have.
Put me down solidly in the "please reboot EQ1, BEFORE LUCLIN dropped the Nexus into the mix" camp.
There was fast travel in EQ1 pre-Luclin: wizards and druids. Find one, offer to pay, hope they say yes. Beyond that, wait for a boat or get to walking/swimming. To be honest, I wished back then that wizard ports had been like druids, and the person being ported needed to have already set foot on the porting location in order to get there, like the dragon teeth for the druid rings in Velious, two of which (Wakening Land and Cobalt Scar) were no small feat to pull off the first time you did either.
Fast travel wrecks immersion. It is one of the McQuaid commandments I have always agreed with. He was right in EQ1, he was right in Vanguard, and he's still right. When the world feels big, it is big. As Kajidourden points out, I remember starting my first EQ1 toon (high elf mage) at Felwithe, and the next xone over seemed like a whole new world. Reading on forums about Qeynos, Toxxulia, and Cabilis was like reading about another game entirely. And yeah, there were plenty of days that my entire play session was a "moving day" where the base of operations moved from one continent to another. Between boats, running and finding a proper safe spot to set up in, that could take a couple hours. Guilds told their members where this weekend's raid was, and you had the weekdays to make sure you were moved there.
That's proper travel. If a fast travel system exists, it should be the result of an epic, involved quest. at the very least, make it resource intensive, as in ungodly expensive or requiring a rare gem or something. Anything else that is too easy will shrink the world. The heck with that. There are already a bazillion games with easy peezy, hold your hand and guide your comfy journey to max level mechanics.
I just hope P:RotF takes off the gloves and provides a proper MMO PVE experience. If that means I stand ona dock staring at the screen for 15-30 minutes waiting for a boat...OK. I am actually cool with that, because now I must factor wait times, travel distance and time, and all that into my game play. The world is bigger and I feel immersed. If the wait for that boat pulls all that off, then make me wait. Please.
Count my vote for another EQ1esque reboot for travel. I know one of the cons aganist travel in today's gaming world is it's a time-sink. And, with the "2 hour budget" gametime being developed into Pantheon - one could make the argument that travel could cut into that time.
But, much like the death penality/corpse recovery argument, one just has to change their expectations of what to expect from the game experience and the speed in which someone could be "max level" or "the best."
If the goal is to rush to end-level 1-50 experiencing nothing of the world, not being immersed in the world, and not being in sheer terror of exploring a massive, mysterious, and magical world - then there are plenty of games that fit that mold. Part of what made the EQ experience great is it did not seem cumbersome or a time sink at the time to make the journey across Norrath from Halas to Greater Faydark. I was a level 8 warrior trying to meet my friend who had started a High Elf Cleric - I hadn't been tainted by stories of fast travel - it was the expectation that travel was part of the game, and once people started experiencing the "journey" you were hooked. Remove or water down all the ideas that made the "Vision" and you won't recapture that magic.
/agree Raidan.
I was on the 2 hour budget back then, and what made EQ1 great is that there was tons of 4-6+ hours content. They weren't trying to make the game easy for me on my schedule. The game was the game, and that's how it was. Even soloing with my necro, with 18 minute spawn timers, it was typically 2-3 cycles, or close to an hour, before I got a proper soloing grind going, and once you did that, you didn't just roll for an hour, you rolled until you dropped, because the good flowing exp spots were tough to find and hold. So leveling took a long time based on time budgets, the game content and mechanics, etc.
But if you look at the 40-50 hours per week folks, they didn't just steamroll the next boss mob on a weekly basis. Between spawn timers, travel, organization, etc...even the uberest of uber guilds took a good bit of time conquering the next hurdle in EQ1. People on 2 hour budgets couldn't do uber guilding...and OK. Content that the average gamer never saw, like tons of it? That's awesome. There's plenty of content in even the newer, games-on-rails MMOs that most players never see. Look at the achievement listing for any game on Steam....and a ton of things in most games is seen by maybe 5-10% of the playerbase. Anyone firing up a PC version of Minecraft is playing in a world they will never see about 90% of if they play 2 hours every day for the next decade. It's a big world, and no, you won't get to see it all.
Why this is no longer kosher in MMOs makes no sense. The 2 hour time thing kills me. So what if that's the average player's window. Make the game have 1,2,4,8 and even 24 hour windows for some tasks. Let the player figure out how to see whatever amount of the game they want.
I can definitely see everyone's point on the issue. I guess really what I'm getting as is that I've played a game with a system that was very well-balanced in this regard and it never trivialized anything in that game.
I HIGHLY doubt that Pantheon will release with absolutely no concession on this matter. If it does, I'm not going to be upset as it will be a new experience for me, I just very much doubt that any and all forms of fast travel will be non-existant.
Venjenz said:....
I just hope P:RotF takes off the gloves and provides a proper MMO PVE experience. If that means I stand ona dock staring at the screen for 15-30 minutes waiting for a boat...OK. I am actually cool with that, because now I must factor wait times, travel distance and time, and all that into my game play. The world is bigger and I feel immersed. If the wait for that boat pulls all that off, then make me wait. Please.
.....
But Venjenz, you don't have to stare at the screen for 12-15 minutes waiting for a boat, you can do some fishing!
Manouk said:But Venjenz, you don't have to stare at the screen for 12-15 minutes waiting for a boat, you can do some fishing!
Absolutely, and in the pre-Nexus days of EQ1, almost everyone got all their fishing skills waiting for boats. I know I got mine to max that way, same with swimming. When fishing got boring, jump down and swim in circles around the dock. Every wait for a boat spent swimming got you like 2-5 points in swimming.
There was also a cool thing in the community of "/shout boat at BB/Freeport docks!!" People let others know if they saw the boat and it added to the community.
A little thing like waiting on that boat, and emergent gameplay pops up that adds to your character, adds to community, and makes thew world feel bigger. So simple.
Niien said:You, Sinist and Dullahan are welcome in my guild lol. :) All three of you have very similiar mindsets on most topics that my wife and I have.
Hey Niien, I appreciate that man! I'll definitely be looking for a guild as game time nears, so I am going to add you as a friend on here. I must point out though, in sticking with the old school mmo themes, I will be looking for a guild that does NOT use voice chat (with the exception of maybe a raid with many players trying to organize). I've seen several others around here that share the same sentiment, but I don't know how you and your wife feel about it. Regardless, we have a while to go :)
I agree with the EQ Reboot mindset. With the addition that all wiz/druid ports should work like Velious ones did - you need to get there on foot once, pick up an item or flag or something, and from then on you can port or be ported.
It's tempting to add portals... it shortens the travel. But very soon, the game just becomes one big lobby where people talk and wait for group, and then teleport into a dungeon, finish it, back to the lobby. We have seen where that leads.
Mephiles said:AgentGenX, their explaination of final fantasy xi's travel system makes it sound like far more than it was. Hoofing it as people are referring to it here was still by and large the primary method of getting around in XI and fast travel options were extremely limited and about 1/100th of the effectiveness of the fast travel in ffxiv. I mean, despite having those systems people still used mage teleports (which usually put you 3+ zones away from where you were really trying to get to anyway), airships and boats (not instant, you would actually ride in the boat for about 10 mins or so), warps (like everquest bindpoint thing except it was only available to a single option of a small set of possible locations), and chocobo travel (xi's mounts which you could only get from specific locations and once you got off it left unless you did a pretty serious quest to obtain an item with a very long cooldown that would spawn one at you in most zones but not all). Basically it was nothing like most fast travel options you see currently (which I am right there with you against it) and was pretty similar to what was found in everquest overall.
Having said that, I don't feel that it is necessary to have the outpost warp type of travel. Things I think should be in are basically some bus like travel options (boat, airship) that make certain travels (say, between a port near a small town to a port on the other side of the continent) more effeicient without diminishing a sense of scale in the world by a considerable margin and maybe a couple of finite point teleports and then some conservative mount options.
Note: Cutscenes aren't really a modern idea, they were in pleanty of games far earlier on and in mmos ffxi did them in 2003. I personally want them here because I feel like they are an important tool in developing story and attatchment to the world (though not the only tool). However, I understand that they are expensive to add and not something that is of a high priority in the scheme of what pantheon is attempting to accomplish.
FFXI had great fast travel systems in place, similar to EQ. The player controlled options worked great. The chocobo and airship required minimum levels and mission ranks to access. The chocobo wasn't on autopilot and cost money dependant on how many people had recently used a chocobo in that area. The airship went between 5 towns total across several continents, required you to wait both for it to arrive and the whole time for it to make the trip. There was also a boat in the game but it only went between 2 small cities at first and later 3, but it had similar wait times to access. I met a ton of players and made long term friends in game waiting for the airship and boats to go places. There was actually a travel mini game when it comes down to it, trying to decide the best way to get around from your current spot to where you wanted to go.
The other options in FFXI were also pretty good and limited in a good way I believe to not "shrink" the game world. The outpost teleports required your city of origin to control the region, then you did a supply quest to that region to get access to the outpost warp. If beastmen later controlled the region, you could warp to the outpost, but not back from it. These warps worked between your home city and the specific outposts. It wasn't free. I think that pantheon could use a similar system of outpost warping but improve upon the design of FFXI.
The last added quick option for FFXI was the chocobo whistle. It required a massive amount of time sink to complete. You first had to get a chocobo egg and hatch it, then raise it for something like 2 months. The food you fed it and the way you exercised its mind and body caused it to improve in different ways. It took generations of chocobo raising to get a chocobo that was worth a damn compared to rentals. The whistle also had a long cooldown, limited charges that cost money to refill, and even when maxed wouldn't be as fast as a rental. There was 2 mini games in FFXI based around chocobos though, so some people raised theres for those activities. One was a racing game where you raced other players chocobos. The other was a harvesting mini game that could be done anywhere in the world, and when skilled up enough you could randomly find some pretty valuable items. A system like this could also work in Pantheon IF IMPLEMENTED CORRECTLY. I personally would love to see a mount raising system that gave you access to a personal mount. However, it should be sensible. If you store your mount at a certain location, thats where it needs to stay until you pick it up. It should require some kind of food upkeep as well. A long and in depth raising and breeding system along with access to mini games that assist in gathering crafting materials or allow you to interact with other players in new ways would also be fitting with the goals of Pantheon as well I think.
Long story short, There is a line somewhere between super fast travel and no travel options that makes sense for the game and I think they will either find that line or be able to adjust that line once players get to check out an alpha/beta. I think a game world with no travel options besides walking would be beyond silly and not add to overall immersion in the game world.
P.S. About cutscenes... I am torn. Chains of Promathia story told through cutscenes were probably the best story missions in any MMO I have ever played and added some great characters to the lore of the game. At the same time, in a lot of content, impatient players would want people to mash through it because they didn't want to wait on the newer player to watch it. This basically made them worthless. So while cutscenes were awesome I don't know how useful they are in a setting where they will end up just being skipped through.
EDIT: I just want to add one more note on the fast travel. Recent FFXI has been completely crapped up so don't bother trying to check it out and see what its like now. But the old school game required you to consider if it was worth it or not to fast travel. Sometimes you would purposefully travel a slower route to be able to check if an NM was up or to kill mobs that dropped a valuable crafting material, or simply to save money or points to use it when you were in more of a hurry. New MMOs seek to combine every aspect of the game into a single path that you never divert from, Pantheon I think just needs to manage to divide things back up so you have choices again, and now and then you can have that exciting moment where you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
Aethor said:I agree with the EQ Reboot mindset. With the addition that all wiz/druid ports should work like Velious ones did - you need to get there on foot once, pick up an item or flag or something, and from then on you can port or be ported.
It's tempting to add portals... it shortens the travel. But very soon, the game just becomes one big lobby where people talk and wait for group, and then teleport into a dungeon, finish it, back to the lobby. We have seen where that leads.
I think it would be a good idea to have a consumable item required for the better fast travel options. I think most MMOs since WoW have had a problem of long time players hording up massive amounts of cash and tilting the economy against new players. WoW responded by basically wrecking whatever they had left of a game. The better option is consumable items that are farmable or craftable by players, this allows new players and more casual players alike with plenty of free time to farm or craft these items and sell them to the long standing and more hardcore players.
Niien said:maslo said:I'm still a fan of hoofing it plus specific classes having teleportation abilities. Maybe community travel that moves a bit faster than running yourself that you can talk to other people on or afk on until you get to (but don't pass!) your stop.
I am looking for basically an EQ Reboot haha. I might be in the minority, but EQ had so much right that I hope Pantheon feels very similar to it.
I would support hoofing it and class based travel spells that assist with speeding up the travel via run speed increases and portals. I would however be against any instant based travel where another player isn't involved aside from boats :) .
I agree^
There should be no Public fast travel, only boats and natural means. The only instant travel should be via Player Character Roles (Wizard Druid).
Though, I do think Visionary Realms can take it a bit further, and allow a third type of crafted-public runic travel, similar to Ultima Online. Where the mastery of the scribe (Wizard/player) to etch the portal rune.. use is based on several factors, such as quality of rune, level of skill attempted, etc. So that each time it is used, it has a change of breaking and no longer usable.
Thus Guilds could travel quickly together, with a few Wizards having the right materials ands scouting out ahead, and scrbing these runes, then head back to help prep the guild for a raid later that night, etc.
Smaller guilds, who do not have rare inks, or pristine ruenstones, will not be able to portal as many as those guilds who have more wealth, or resources. Instant travl should have a huge cost. There should be portal sickness too.. and better spells, have less effects.
Knowing how to get around in the world, is a skill.
Venjenz said:Manouk said:But Venjenz, you don't have to stare at the screen for 12-15 minutes waiting for a boat, you can do some fishing!
Absolutely, and in the pre-Nexus days of EQ1, almost everyone got all their fishing skills waiting for boats. I know I got mine to max that way, same with swimming. When fishing got boring, jump down and swim in circles around the dock. Every wait for a boat spent swimming got you like 2-5 points in swimming.
There was also a cool thing in the community of "/shout boat at BB/Freeport docks!!" People let others know if they saw the boat and it added to the community.
A little thing like waiting on that boat, and emergent gameplay pops up that adds to your character, adds to community, and makes thew world feel bigger. So simple.
I knew people that while waiting for the boats, had foot races off the docks.. to shore and back to end of docks. Swimming races.. language sharing..
It was a social setting, because like any travel port in real life, mirrors such activity as waiting... at the airport, cruise ship, subway.. as OTHERS are going thru the same portal of activity. The bars can be used, with actual in-game poker, or wheels, etc. But in the day, most people just went around inspecting each other...
Ports are just that, a HUB of activity... I suspect nearly every port, will be metropolitan in Pantheon.
AgentGenX said:I may as well be posting with Dullahan's username, cause I agree 100% with what he's saying. With all due respect Kajidourden, I disagree with your suggestions. I did not play FF11, but from what you described I would not want any fast travel at all. (I'm already disappointed with talk I heard of possible portals being in starting cities, but I don't know if that's actually happening or not.) If it is, I think it would certainly kill the need for boats to travel to other continents. I don't feel we need any more convienences than what we'll probably have: horses to travel faster, movement speed increasing spells for those without mounts, certain classes with teleportation abilities.
@AgentGenX,
I had brought up the 3 cities with teleports a long time ago and how it was a terrible idea, but that thread has been archived. However, I was able to search for another thread, which I think was the latest discussion on the topic, or at least the latest I could find - and it was discussed that each race would have their own unique starting cities/villages with only perhaps the 3 major hub cities having limited teleportation (which I'd still be aganist). I'm not sure if the discussion is still relevant or not.
Here's a link to the thread:
Venjenz said:Manouk said:But Venjenz, you don't have to stare at the screen for 12-15 minutes waiting for a boat, you can do some fishing!
Absolutely, and in the pre-Nexus days of EQ1, almost everyone got all their fishing skills waiting for boats. I know I got mine to max that way, same with swimming. When fishing got boring, jump down and swim in circles around the dock. Every wait for a boat spent swimming got you like 2-5 points in swimming.
There was also a cool thing in the community of "/shout boat at BB/Freeport docks!!" People let others know if they saw the boat and it added to the community.
A little thing like waiting on that boat, and emergent gameplay pops up that adds to your character, adds to community, and makes thew world feel bigger. So simple.
Oh, the times I missed the boat because I was swimming and swam too far out to make it back, up on the dock and onto the boat in time. :)
I think it would be pretty cool and a great way to build on the 'social' grouping aspect if they incorporated crafting into travel. Say a bunch of crafters got together and built a train system with train tracks connecting many different cities and locales. Or whatever other type of system like this that would fit into the lore, though I don't see why trains couldn't be accpeted into this type of world. But without any 'portals' to get people to each city quickly would help push players from their own cities to start building outwards with their train systems and ultimately connect with others from other areas. I don't know, I think something of this nature would be cool. It would take the idea in VG of 'it takes a village' to craft the boats to 'it takes a bunch of villages' to craft an entire train track system.
It would make the world feel more alive. Years down the road after launch instead of devs just adding rifts or portals to the game so players can get together more quickly, a fast travel system that wouldn't just port you around instantly would be implemented and it would be by the players hand. Players always have that talk, "remember before the rifts how we had to run 10 zones to group up". With this the vets could tell the new players that the train system wasn't always around and players had to run 10 zones to group with their friends.
But other than that, I'd like to see portals not exist. I'd like for any type of fast travel to be player dependent whether it be a spell like run speed, a teleport spell, mounts, etc. And game dependent travel such as traveling by boat to cities ports, or NPC ran horse carriages that take you from city to city to be used sparingly.
I think unlimited fast travel is damaging to the experience in the end, just keep in mind that all the changes that are now viewed as game-destroying in hindsight for games like WoW and EQ1, were usually praised at first. But then after implementation people found themselves logging in less and less because they usually made it feel more "video gamey" and less like a virtual world you were a part of. I really would hate to see Pantheon make that mistake, as I'm fairly certain this game is our only shot at having the experiences from the early MMOs that we all hold dear again. If there is a fast travel of any kind, make it class based, or resource intensive at the least as a few posters above me have said. Honestly I'm not too worried about it, since Brad has never had any bs mechanics like that in his games while he was still working on them.
Raidan said:@AgentGenX,
I had brought up the 3 cities with teleports a long time ago and how it was a terrible idea, but that thread has been archived. However, I was able to search for another thread, which I think was the latest discussion on the topic, or at least the latest I could find - and it was discussed that each race would have their own unique starting cities/villages with only perhaps the 3 major hub cities having limited teleportation (which I'd still be aganist). I'm not sure if the discussion is still relevant or not.
Here's a link to the thread:
Ah, I think the old thread might have been where I heard of it, but didn't know where it went - thank you for the link to the more recent thread, Raidan! I was pleased to find an explanation of what the 'sanctums' are on the map of Terminus (I admit I have not read all the lore yet). So the third santum not listed on the map must be on the continent(s) where the dwarves, gnomes, and archai are. I'm still with you in that I'd prefer to not have these ports, but I guess there are worse things that could be in the game, like multiple places you could port to in each continent, greatly reducing any travel time. Also, I hope these sanctums don't take away the use of each race's home cities.