Travel has been a love hate relationship with me in MMOs. The first time I traveled from Qeynos to freeport in EQ it was both terrifying and exciting. It seemed to take forever and yet at the same time I did not even notice I was so fixated on getting to my destination safely. In Vanguard shortly after I started playing, I meet someone that invited me to his guild. He had a great idea to meet up with the rest of the guild and play. We started out and after over an hour of travel and a boat ride we meet up with the rest of the guild. We grouped for around 30 minutes and never saw any of them log back in again.
Thinking back on the travel that I have done in games like EQ it was also rarely scary or fun the 2nd, 3rd, or 100th time I had to make the same trip. In short, the more I am forced to live though the idea that travel should matters the more I question the good it brings to the game.
How many of us have played an MMO that made us travel for 30+ minutes to kill a few monsters or talk to some NPC only to have to turn right around and travel back? How many of those times was the travel nothing but a time sync? No risk or fear of death. If you are going to make travel an important part of the game, please find a way to make it not only interesting the first time but also interesting the 10th time you have to make the same trip.
If you are unable to make travel continue to be a notable experience and not just a time sync then I ask the developers and other players do we really want it to matter?
Susurrus said:Thinking back on the travel that I have done in games like EQ it was also rarely scary or fun the 2nd, 3rd, or 100th time I had to make the same trip. In short, the more I am forced to live though the idea that travel should matters the more I question the good it brings to the game.
How many of us have played an MMO that made us travel for 30+ minutes to kill a few monsters or talk to some NPC only to have to turn right around and travel back? How many of those times was the travel nothing but a time sync? No risk or fear of death. If you are going to make travel an important part of the game, please find a way to make it not only interesting the first time but also interesting the 10th time you have to make the same trip.
If you are unable to make travel continue to be a notable experience and not just a time sync then I ask the developers and other players do we really want it to matter?
It's more than just a time sink or some drull thing. Distances and travel times keep the world feeling large, even when it isn't. EQ wasn't really all that large of a world and yet it still felt larger to me than WoW or really most any MMO since. Often making those long runs at mid-higher levels (in EQ) I'd check on various rare spawns off the path that were along the way and sometimes I'd actually find something. It was also good time to sort out any bags or get some measure of decent social time in. It helps it feel more like a world and less like a game, somewhere large that you can get genuinely lost in. If I was in GFay I felt very far away from Qeynos.
As for traveling 30 minutes to kill a few monsters and then back, that is just bad game design. The atrocious quest hub style MMO that has become staple, one that we shouldn't have to deal with here.
Travel should be a consideration much of the time. I am not saying it should all be Qeynos to Freeport runs all the time, but it should be something people think about and plan around. You should be able to get lost out there and feelfar away. One learns the zones, they see more and pick up on shortcuts or points of interest, they have more interactions with or otherwise pass by other players more often. With varied non-liner zone design one might get attacked by dangerous mobs or help players being attacked by something becoming someone or a groups momentary hero. Each travel can have a chance to be unique.
I feel there is a lot missing to modern MMOs that has been done away with via QoL stuff that should be re-examined to some degree. Death penalties, consquences for mistakes, players "roughing it" and things like weight limits or travel times/distance, upredictability. I think these sorts of things tend to cause more rich memories and bring players together more. More avenues for seeking help from others and comisseration.
It's another one of those things that can't always be a thrill every second. A bit like death penalty corpse runs, they aren't always, in-and-of-themselves, 'fun' as such, but they give immense meaning and worth to all the activities and social aspects around them. Meaning and worth isn't always an immediate or direct payoff. In fact I would say more often than not, it is indirect and, unfortunately, it is the dumbing down or complete removal of these types of aspects of MMORPGs that has 'ruined' the genre, or at least changed it in ways that most players maybe don't realise is to its great detriment as a deep immersive experience, not just a game.
Sometimes, relatively 'boring' (I prefer to say 'peaceful' or 'relaxing') travel is a nice break, but the fact that it may be long and a 'time sync' means that you must make important (meaningful) decisions over whether or not you go at all, when you go, why you go, what preparations are needed, who you might coordinate with, what you will do when you get there, what you might do along the way, to make it all worthwhile.
There are going to be quite a few aspects of Pantheon like this.
Good thread topic.
Honestly, I don't know. I personally don't mind travelling, but I do recall when I was seriously playing P99, I ended up doing anything to shorten that travel time. I feel I would still like the time sync to be there, but perhaps with *some* short cuts offered at high levels, or when that particular content is redundant for the given level or progress of the player. For example, a port would be great, but may have me relying on another player. If I can't find a port, maybe a speed buff. Failing that, the good old way of having to run to my intended destination.
Thus, having that co-dependency on others may go some way to addressing this, whilst keeping everything relavent and in-line with the pillars.
This is why instant teleports exist. Travel gets boring eventually... By that time you can usually afford ports.
Edit: Also travel is one of those things that can clearly be exciting. I have yet to see a PVE game where travel itself is dangerous, but it is certainly possible. The devs would have to make traveling dangerous which is against the MMO norms and given how levels in RPGs often turn players into gods travel quickly becomes boring again, except through the end game areas where players can be forced to be the apporpriate level for the content. Too many players don't want the world to be dangerous because they want to solo in safety, this means travel needs to be boring for their enjoyment of the game.
In Eve travel was deadly nomatter where you were in the universe, but especially deadly in the high traffic areas while traveling solo. On the PVE side Eve would have various enemy factions defending travel choke points that would attack on sight but you could outrun them relatively easily. On the PVP side you had only a few second window to chance outrunning anyone paying attention, if your ship was too slow you would need an option other than attempt to run away. Transporting goods through unexpected blockades are some of my favorite moments in the game. Safe travel was still largely boring, but clearly still very exciting when the unexpected happened.
If I were to add spice to the time sink of travel it would have to be random events and a good mix of in-zone level ranges, gatherable components, level/skill locked perception pings, summonable minis, and events.
As for the random bit, there should be wayward caravans and cave openings that come and go, et al.
Make Travel Great Again.
It's interesting that one of the argument is that travel isn't dangerous enough. If travel were more dangerous it would take even longer. A 30 minute run could end up being a 10 minute run, then a corpse run, then a 15 minute run, then a corpse run, than a 30 minute run...extending that travel from 30 minutes to 80 minutes along with 2 deaths.
I'm certainly not saying that travel should not be dangerous, but to say that travel is a time sync because it's not dangerous doesn't seem right. It would be more of a time sync if it were more dangerous.
In the example you provide (and yes I've experienced that :( ) It's more about finding people that play in similar ways to you than it is about travel times or danger. Those friends that you went to meet up with never showed up again, that's not really the game's fault...althought I get how sucky of a situation that is.
If the assumption is you are not coming back for some time, then the time-sink of travel (like a heat-sink on a computer processor takes heat, so a time-sink takes time) is an adventure of itself while you are walking in-sync with your party. Walking at the same pace like soldiers marching.
If I head out it will be with intent to hopefully make it to a place and stay there for a bit. I would like to see a overland design with areas that are understood to be points of no return because of NPC levels being too high or just too far away so the player has to make a consious decision to make it through to a safer area ahead, perhaps 2 or 3 zones away, and managing with small merchant camps with meager supplies or tiny hamlets which may also have some side-quests. The idea being once at that safer area, that becomes the new home base and the player can double back to the harder areas they snuck through or explore the outward radius from the new home base.
*Edit* to answer the OP's question: Yes, I think what would make traveling or a "walking simulator" engaging would be a changing environment. If there is something that can only be experienced or seen while travelling or hiking then yes. However, this would depend on a changing world or enough of a changing environment so the encounters are subtley unique each time. I'm not sure how this can be done as there may be a finite number of "events" on a cycle that can be created.
I would say have the cycles, if any, on a quick turn around near newbie cities and slower and grander in higher level areas. This allows travelling out and staying out to have some impact and also makes the return meaningful as the chance is greater to run into a different change of scenery in the higher areas because of the longer time needed to spend as a player in the higher end areas. This also makes the return home psychologically pleasing (nostalgia) because you remember the cadence of local events so when you head back the familiarity (ah- it must be blooping season as the fog is in) gives a sense of accomplishment and mastery of environment.
If Time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once, then Space is God's way of keeping the Universe from looking like the World Wide Web.
Really, the thing that really struck me about EverQuest, the thing that impresses me to this day, is the sense of place. Of being somewhere.
I watch my friend play Final Fantasy XIV, and while it's pretty, it feels hollow, and gives me no sense of geography.
Conclusion:
I am kind of hoping I can get lost.
Heya. ^^
Traveling is great, IMHO. Because the world feels way bigger and there is always something to do and to discover. I do not like it in FF14, that you can teleport literary everywhere.
But please, do not turn the game into a walking simulator. That's one of the big reasons why New World failed so badly. If 80% of the gameplay is walking then the players will not play it. Because it is wasted time and money. The most important POIs should be reachable in a 10 minutes range from everywhere in the world. It should feel like a journey but t should not be boring and tedious. I guess, a combination of fast traveling/teleport and manually traveling to the POI is the best combination. :-)
Cheers
I want to see multiple travel methods available, each with their own limitations. In order of speed, slowest to fastest, I suggest something like the following:
We also need to consider that porting back to town at the end of a session is less disruptive to how travel feels than to port right to the start of where you will be xp'ing. So maybe no initial port mechanism but some return mechanism is fine. This is especially helpful if the team disbands before heading back or you have to leave early and they won't rescort you back.
As usual I have that feeling that every activity that doesn't instantly give benefits or a sense of victory is a time sink to the eye of some.
But no game and truly nothing at all can be a perpetual reward or a constant thrill, that wouldn't even work as we human would temper to the thrill and require even more to continue feeling that excited.
Travel serve many purposes, some of them beeing related to the core of the genre which is "mmoRPG", in which it's crucial to maintain integrity in the game's logic including distances, time and harshness. Ease displacement with ultrafast speed or instant teleport and the more your playerbase moves away from the middle level rang, the more zones will feel empty and useless as no one will be crossing them anymore. The less time people will spend in capital cities or "high end areas", the less players will simply feel the world is beeing populated.
The less involvment a task or project is the more people will hop in and out carelessly. Why would you fill your bags as much as possible and plan for a long sessions of crafting / trading / selling if you are not capped by a travel cutting you some time ? If instant teleportation becomes the norm, then you will just get back to cities when you don't have a party and anything valuable to sell, hop to a camp spot while waiting for a group and hop back to a high end area once you get a group, getting there in a few minutes.
If you're limited by travel and constrained by the time it will take you, you will spend more time in the high end area, run back to the capital when your bags are full and only plan some solo camp / activity when you know you won't have the time to spend in grouping for the next few hours or even for the week if your job makes it so.
Travelling is an essential element to retain the size of the world and the investment in activities, because no matter what you plan to do, if you have 15 to 30min of travelling before doing it, you will force yourself to engage it long enough to make the travel time worth it. Hopping somewhere instantly doesn't make enforce engagement, it only serve as a purpose to fill the insatiable impatience, which in turn will make the game life shorter even for the so player, as running out of long term objectives will cut down the desire to play.
Travel time is the reason many of us spent so much time in certain zones that hold memories to this day. It took time to get somewhere so you often stayed more than 1 session, and where you hunted/adventured was thought out and planned on that travel time vs play time.
How many of us logged in early or during downtime to "travel" move a character from location to location so we wouldbe ready for the nights activities?
I beleive the main reason I remember so many EQ zone names and details is because of the time it took to get there and that desire to get the most out of that travel.
I met many new people just because I was in a certain area and had no desire to spend any significant amount of time traveling that session, so I found a group and played, and made new friends.
As disposalist said, the benefits of travel may not have immediate or direct payoff.
Mauvais_Oeil said:Travelling is an essential element to retain the size of the world and the investment in activities, because no matter what you plan to do, if you have 15 to 30min of travelling before doing it, you will force yourself to engage it long enough to make the travel time worth it. Hopping somewhere instantly doesn't make enforce engagement, it only serve as a purpose to fill the insatiable impatience, which in turn will make the game life shorter even for the so player, as running out of long term objectives will cut down the desire to play.
You are literally describing a time sink here and why they exist in games. Time sinks are not some dirty word or a horrible mechanic that needs to be removed at every point but a scale of sorts that need to be dialed in. Repeated traveling will not be "engaging experience long term" as the OP asked, but the effects of the time sink are not entirely negative either.
I personally still opt to add spice to the traveling. Booking it on foot solo should be deadly at times, especially for people not paying attention. Traveling together or waiting for an NPC caravan are both options that beat the safe auto run. Choke points filled with problems that require players to find a detour or call in backup. Various problems or encounters not every class excels at. If every problem is climbing then rogues are effectively just auto running. Traveling can be a part of the story and not purely a time sink after the initial trail is blazed, but as soon as the risk factor is removed all of these ideas are themselves just time sinks.
Too much of anything is problematic, but from time to time if there is a few hours where hill giants have blocked access to a main choke point as they pillage a large shipment of food destined for... and enough PCs have to band together to eliminate them, let the giants finish pillaging, or simply take a detour the game will be far more engaging.
Could game features be added that would make repeat overland trips more exciting? What about:
1) Rewards for assisting NPCs that come under attack along the road (should be somewhat random and seasonal rather than predictable). For example, perhaps your reputation improves in the local area, allowing you (and maybe even your guild) to get more cooperation from NPCs and better prices from local merchants. One aspect of cooperation could be that the town guards are willing to travel longer distances to assist you with killing a mob (without stealing your experience).
2) Rare gathering items or other opportunities that pop up randomly.
3) Mobs that get closer to the road and increase the danger of road travel if players don't push back their camps periodically.
It seems to me that attempts to make repeat travel interesting have mostly failed in previous games. EVE Online is an exception. Always exciting flying your goods into Jita's market without being attacked by pirates.
Vandraad said:Travel, for me, is only ever interesting the first time or two. After I've learned the area it is forever relegated to a tedious bore.
I agree with this. Travel and exploration quickly become standardized because the world is a constant never-changing thing. Players are able to easily map out the best routes to any given location because the world is almost never a dynamic experience.
There are ways to keep travel engaging. Such as implementing dynamic patrols, resource implementation, mounts, and even implementing quests in ways where they respect players' time. However, the sense of exploration is typically still lost over time. The only way to fix this would be if the world was dynamic and ever-changing, and that is a lot to ask from a development team.
FatedEmperor said:There are ways to keep travel engaging. Such as implementing dynamic patrols, resource implementation, mounts, and even implementing quests in ways where they respect players' time. However, the sense of exploration is typically still lost over time. The only way to fix this would be if the world was dynamic and ever-changing, and that is a lot to ask from a development team.
As for the 'dynamic patrols', possibly..until I've so far outleveled everything in a zone then what? I'm level 50 running through Avender's Pass and you want the game to spawn a random level 50 patrol to chase me? Even that wouldn't keep travel engaging. If we look at the definition of engaging meaning 'to attract and involve, to participate in, establish a meaningful connection' then it really is impossible to keep travel engaging throughout all the levels. Any travel through zones where the content is trivial, it is a tedious bore. Nothing there is of any interest because I'm only passing through to get to the location that is interesting, that has something I need/want, be that XP or loot or part of a quest. All the garbage between where I am and where I want to be is not interesting. Sure I might have to be mindful of avoiding things I don't want to deal with, but that is not interesting and isn't me engaging in the content.
I personally would rephrase it as "travel should be dangerous and engaging the first time you make the trip." I wouldn't expect the same trip to stay engaging over and over and over or feel dangerous after you've mastered the route.
Westley : "No, no. We have already succeeded. I mean, what are the three terrors of the Fire Swamp? One, the flame spurt - no problem. There's a popping sound preceding each; we can avoid that. Two, the lightning sand, which you were clever enough to discover what that looks like, so in the future we can avoid that too."
Making travel dangerous is one way to keep it engaging. But that would get old as well if you could never out level it. One of the key ways we feel the growth of our characters is by seeing past threats no longer being a threat.
I found myself asking this question while playing another game recently. In this game I was expected to travel all the time. Never for real long time 5 minutes was common. But I was also expected to only spend 2-3 minutes at the new destination before heading on and many times right back to were I started.
If every time I decided to make a trip or was prodded to, I had good reason to stay at the new location for a day or more of playing then the travel would be worth it. Even if the travel was boring and was just a time sync. In EQ when I traveled a long way I could stay at the new zone for days or even some times weeks before finding a reason to move on.
This is just me musing over what I see as an issue and have loved reading peoples posts.
Ranarius said:I personally would rephrase it as "travel should be dangerous and engaging the first time you make the trip." I wouldn't expect the same trip to stay engaging over and over and over or feel dangerous after you've mastered the route.
I would assume level appropriate dangers for the zone. If said danger requires a group to resolve to clear the road then gaining merely a few levels won't make you able to take it on with ease. Also assuming static encounters is against a core idea of Pantheon. You can define 99% of MMOs with, "combat should be dangerous and engaging the first time you have the fight." Pantheon aims to mix things up more.
Danger should be sporadic. Bad luck can be a wonderful while infuriating factor in games. VR has largely taken this to heart with dispositions. You can apply it to skill checks too. You made the climb when it was dry, can you make it while it is raining or in high wind? I hope VR applies this mindset to most mechanics. Higher foot traffic could get larger scale problems. You may go to the most popular lvl 50 dungeon grind every day with half the server for weeks, never having or hearing of a problem that isn't immediately addressed there due to all the people. Then be surprised the guard outpost at a choke point leading there was overrun with a raid level encounter of multiple strong mobs.
Going back to EQ memberberries, the danger didn't go away just because you learned to listen out for sand giants. It was simply a possible encounter you would have to deal with.
Edit: @Sus, yeah constant forced encounters is a bad design, especially when the enemy is downed instantly because they have no awareness. Most dangers in an open world should be avoidable if you are paying attention. I would hope VR would have more of a world event like system in place. If you were trying to take the same road back to safety you may not be able to for a few hours until people dispatch the problem. Perhaps you have to now sneak through the less safe forest to avoid the temporary problem.
Jobeson said:I would assume level appropriate dangers for the zone. If said danger requires a group to resolve to clear the road then gaining merely a few levels won't make you able to take it on with ease. Also assuming static encounters is against a core idea of Pantheon. You can define 99% of MMOs with, "combat should be dangerous and engaging the first time you have the fight." Pantheon aims to mix things up more.
Danger should be sporadic. Bad luck can be a wonderful while infuriating factor in games. VR has largely taken this to heart with dispositions. You can apply it to skill checks too. You made the climb when it was dry, can you make it while it is raining or in high wind? I hope VR applies this mindset to most mechanics. Higher foot traffic could get larger scale problems. You may go to the most popular lvl 50 dungeon grind every day with half the server for weeks, never having or hearing of a problem that isn't immediately addressed there due to all the people. Then be surprised the guard outpost at a choke point leading there was overrun with a raid level encounter of multiple strong mobs.
Going back to EQ memberberries, the danger didn't go away just because you learned to listen out for sand giants. It was simply a possible encounter you would have to deal with.
All of that is irrelevant once you have outleveled the content. With my example, a level 50 running through Avender's Pass on their way to another zone will not come across anything that will cause them any concerns at all. The player(s) will just run right past it, ignoring it completely.
Going back to those 'EQ memberberries', the danger absolutely went away once Sand Giants were trivial to any class, even the ones with the worst solo capabilities. I do not believe anything will be different with Pantheon. Once you've outleveled it, you can basically ignore it and thus traveling through it will be boring, monotonous and tedious.
Vandraad said:All of that is irrelevant once you have outleveled the content. With my example, a level 50 running through Avender's Pass on their way to another zone will not come across anything that will cause them any concerns at all. The player(s) will just run right past it, ignoring it completely.
Going back to those 'EQ memberberries', the danger absolutely went away once Sand Giants were trivial to any class, even the ones with the worst solo capabilities. I do not believe anything will be different with Pantheon. Once you've outleveled it, you can basically ignore it and thus traveling through it will be boring, monotonous and tedious.
Once you have outleveled anything in the game you can ignore it. That is why people complain about outleveling content. Your argument might as well say why have low level fights since high levels will just ignore it. If you spend 12 months at lvl 50 with interesting travel mechanics around your lvl 50 dungeons what do you care that 5 years from that time high levels who would never even enter that zone could run past it?
Doing ANYTHING in low level zones will be trivial, no one has disagreed on that point. If traveling through a zone your level is trivial as it is in most MMOs then VR has failed to make traveling interesting. If VR makes lvl 50 need to travel through lvl 10 zones every day it is poor design, but even if VR did that as you said, most high levels would ignore the problem as they afk auto run past the giants in that zone having absolutely no danger, how were they even impacted negatively?