I watched the last dev stream and saw how large the areas are going to be. My question is how are we going to get from one pleace to another without taking 30 miuntes or longer of travel time?
I always hated going into EQ and taking 30 or more minutes of travel time, without having to fight anything, to get to a camp. Most people have limited time to play per day.
I remember running in some zones with SOW and it still took a long time and if we had to fight something cause of argo it took longer.
Do not get me wrong I love the large zones witch will allow more people per area. I remember a lot of times yelling camp check in a zone and finding all camps taken and this was after a long travel time to get their.
Keep up the good work VR.
Scale. It's a wonderful subject to read about, we humans have no immediate cognitive grast of the subject and therefore it is almost a assured that we learn something.
Personally I like that travel over great distance is a challenge. I like the voyages, I like the unknown nature of having things I may have missed on a past trip surprise me. I also enjoy the people I may meet along the way. But to really sell it, I'll let you know in confidence, I enjoy putting distance between myself and anyone or any group that I feel is detrimental to my enjoyment of my gaming session. Because I expect at some point I'll be logging into Wilds End only to find a bunch of Skar teenagers running around bashing rats and farting up the place. It's at this time I'll be happy to take a trip and relax in every step putting time and distance between me and the dung eaters.
Note: I already solved this problem if the developers would only listen to good reason. https://seforums.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/11397/travel-option-and-naming-contest
rkwiles said:I always hated going into EQ and taking 30 or more minutes of travel time, without having to fight anything, to get to a camp. Most people have limited time to play per day.
I have a question to you: Do you plan ahead for your game activities in that you choose where you want to go, what you want to accomplish, etc a day (or more) in advance and get yourself there before you need to? Do you replan groups with friends or only rely upon some LFG tool?
I dont ask in a negative or demeaning manner, only out of curiosity. I'm one of those people who does plan out my anticipated activities day(s) in advance to minimize as much travel time as possible. VR has talked at length over the years about this '2 hour window' where they feel should expect/desire to accomplish something other than just travel. I see pre-planning in both building your groups and deciding on activities that will pay dividends in Pantheon.
This is whjy people would camp outside the dungeon, or at a safe spot in the dungeon where they were currently adventuring.
Rather than ending every session by returning to a city and having to start every day by setting out again.
Choices and meaningful travel, not instant gratification and meaningless worlds that are skipped by a waypoint and a loading screen.
It will also eventually add more meaning to having a Druid or Wizard in your group or simply emergent gameplay to pay for the services of one to transport a group somewhere more easily.
Hopefully, the 30 minutes of travel will have gatherables to distract, perception pings to, um, ping, mobs in your way to clear (for deeds! - heh) other adventurers to bump into, wizard/druid port sites to note, randoms quests to scribe down, climbing skill to improve, climates/fractures (or whatever they are now) to avoid and the like. Maybe there are Devilsaurs and Fel Reavers to keep an eye out for.
Also, If someone in your party has more time to play and you have already been to a summoning stone (these are a thing, right?), you might be able to be summoned.
Although unseen over the horizon (Terminus is not flat, right?), Alpha will be streamed and perhaps can allay some concerns.
I look at your issue with almost the opposite thought. I’m glad it takes time to get from one place to another. One of the Main draws for me (and I assume allot of others) is the idea we will be playing in a fantasy world. People have forgotten (or maybe never experienced) what it is like to really feel like the area they wish to Explore is truly deep in a jungle or way high up on a mountain. The current trend is you just get to your location in a few minutes and you then pretend like you’re on top of the mountain or in the deep jungle.
I have absolutely no problem spending my play time traveling to my locations, that’s part of the game, I would not want it any other way.
I also agree with the above comments enjoying the travel. I'm TOTALLY ok with spending my proverbial "2 hour" game session today getting to my destination where I and my friends (from differing areas of the world) will all be prepaired to journey into the dungon at 5pm PST on Saturday night for a 4-5 hour play session.
I don't see a thing wrong with it, and I had time for it when I was 25 years old working 6-12 hour days a week raising 3 kids, and I have time for it now still working 5-8 hour days and my kids all grown and moved on. I have a hard time understandig where people lost all these hours, my day still has 24 of them to work with just like it did when EQ launched.
yes and no
I hope there is alot to do in my local area (for those that know everquest, think the design around Everfrost). But if I DO decide to travel, I know that is going to be a big deal.
So if I decide to travel, hopefully it will be with people that also want to travel and with the knowledge we will be gone for some time without the customary conveinences of town. If I happen upon a quest to deliver mail at level 5, I may be holding that bag of mail when I am level 30 having gotten side tracked in my travels because the only instruction was, "it is west of here, just a ways north of the magicians tower on the banks of the great river, there. "
On the flip side, if I end up alone which could happen, I would like to know there are places where there are people (PC's) or at least run into them. If the country is so vast, there might be some desertion anxiety. Poor me, all alone-Urk! I died! *pupils shrink* my corpse...
I would like there to be enough to do close by and to your point to be able to see other places, but also be confident that I will see or meet or have a way to get to others to group/socialize/adventure/RP with. Because tbh thats part of the fun, meeting others with different agendas and getting sidetracked into other things for a month or 5.
I don't know how to answer without feeling I'm against the OP.
The issue to me is non existent, meaningfull travels (or useless timesinks to others) promote engagement in groups and areas. You don't leave Unrest every play sessions because it's annoying to reach (thank you aquagoblin shaman red /con), you stay here and you try to maximize the efficiency of your time there by forming groups and bonds with others.
You won't gquit at the first dispute because you will be alone again and doig very few experience by yourself while risking death.
All of this is part of why a large and dangerous world is meaningfull, and why most MMO's in the last 10 years have been utter failures at making the world fell more than a bland painting you don't even look at.
Most arguments in favor of slow and difficult travel focus on making Terminus seem like a large world not just a place you ignore as you teleport back and forth between a city and a dungeon. And those are *good* arguments.
The point about discouraging people from leaving a dungeon or a group any time something goes wrong or they get even slightly bored - isn't as commonly made. But I applaud it as possibly even a better argument.
Good points being made. The modern MMO mechanics that have turned them in to a dungeon simulator instead of a virtual World. Insta port to fight, port back to town to sell and repeat.
I suppose we don't have quite enough detail on the fast travel mechanics yet to know if OP concern of 30 minutes of travel time will be where we're at.
Last we heard buffs outside of groups will be reduced duration so getting that SoW from someone is not going to be an hour or 30min buff worth of run time. Does that mean longer run time because of less buffs? More SoW potions?
Will the tameable mounts be readily available always once you gain some skill and a harness? Will it take 30mins to hunt one down or 10 of them to tame within a quick walk?
Safe spot summons, ports.
Quite a bit of fast travel available so we'll see if they lean more towards convenience or journey (time sinks, wasting my time, no fun jogging simulator as the modern MMO player would say).
I disliked travel in games like EQ only when I would spend the time to travel and find the dungeon zone I was travelling to was full (or completely empty), so I had to travel again - and maybe again - before finding somewhere I could even start to 'adventure', but the problem there was the LFG tool wasn't used and the whole concept of having to be in-zone to effectively look for a group *for* that zone was horribly ineffecient.
Even if that were the case in Pantheon, though (and it won't be - I'm confident there will be a good LFG tool and players will adopt it - the opposite to Everquest) I would still not want the world to feel small just to avoid inconvenience.
It's one of those things that is 'old school' that gave the game world meaning and worth beyond obvious direct measure.
The 2-3 hour meaningful session 'guarantee' concept is already a compromise as far as some old school players are concerned. I'm sure there will be adequate systems in place to avoid excessive travel, but, to be honest, I want as few as possible - I hope they err on the side of caution.
If some sessions have a lot of planning and travel to set me up for a following special heavy adventuring session, that's fine.
It's too early to know which, if any, fast travel options will feel right for Pantheon. I hope to see and test many options in Alpha, but we need at least one full continent to test properly.
Personally, I want travel to matter but I also don't want it so limiting that it restricts my ability to find groups to too small of an area. And I find traveling to an adventure far more enjoyable than traveling back, so I'd be more interested in fast travel for returning to town.
I am not a person that normally plans 3 or more days ahead of time, mainly becuase the Guilds I have joined are not raiding guilds and more like relaxed player guilds. with a single day to raid per week.
So my normal sequence would be to log in and see what people in the guild are doing and if I can help them. This may mean I have to traval some distance to get to the people I am going to help.
If the guild did not need me I would LFG and that may mean a lot longer travel time based on the group I would get. This may end up eating away form my time to play per session.
This was before EQ created the fellowship tokens and Guild Flag portals, this to me helped alot in travel time. It would be nice if Phanteon would also come up this things that make travel easier without making it trivial. The fellowship tokens were nice but i could only join one fellowship :( The guild flags are ok but they have a few restrictions.
I am not sure how the caravan system will work but if I have to join the caravan before I logged out the previous day I am not sure how much that would help in my case.
I do not know of an easy solution to this issue, which seems to me to be my issue only based on most of the comments above. I would not mind a timer lockout on one type of travel that would get you to a place quicker, like lets say a grooup wants me but they are a long time away. Would it be ok if the group could summon me from anywere, or only from a few spots in the world, if my lockout timer is not active. The lockout timer could be 12 to 24 real hours long.
Hopefully it will not be as bad as I am thinking it will be.
rkwiles said:I am not a person that normally plans 3 or more days ahead of time, mainly becuase the Guilds I have joined are not raiding guilds and more like relaxed player guilds. with a single day to raid per week.
So my normal sequence would be to log in and see what people in the guild are doing and if I can help them. This may mean I have to traval some distance to get to the people I am going to help.
If the guild did not need me I would LFG and that may mean a lot longer travel time based on the group I would get. This may end up eating away form my time to play per session.
This was before EQ created the fellowship tokens and Guild Flag portals, this to me helped alot in travel time. It would be nice if Phanteon would also come up this things that make travel easier without making it trivial. The fellowship tokens were nice but i could only join one fellowship :( The guild flags are ok but they have a few restrictions.
I am not sure how the caravan system will work but if I have to join the caravan before I logged out the previous day I am not sure how much that would help in my case.
I do not know of an easy solution to this issue, which seems to me to be my issue only based on most of the comments above. I would not mind a timer lockout on one type of travel that would get you to a place quicker, like lets say a grooup wants me but they are a long time away. Would it be ok if the group could summon me from anywere, or only from a few spots in the world, if my lockout timer is not active. The lockout timer could be 12 to 24 real hours long.
Hopefully it will not be as bad as I am thinking it will be.
If life becomes more demanding, as it does for most people as time passes (until retirement I suppose), we have to make sacrifices. It becomes more difficult to pursue hobbies and passtimes. I like to go on motorcycle tours, but if my job or family is needing my time I have to be much more organised to fit those in, which can be frustrating, but I wouldn't want to only take short trips or only use the car, even if it meant I could more easily fit trips into my life.
I understand your pain and I'm not saying this to be contrary or argumentative, but I would prefer people who used to do what you used to do (and so did I) in MMORPGS would start using Discord or whatever social media, which barely exsisted back in the day, but is so easy and common now, to organise gaming sessions if necessary rather than add much fast travel to Pantheon.
We know that lots of features Pantheon is returning, like high level of challenge, group focus, corpse (remnance) runs, etc are going to put off *some* players. That isn't a reason to design them out, especially as we know that that results in the modern MMORPGs we play for a few unsatisfying weeks these days.
There is a balance and VR seem to be doing a great job walking that tightrope, but staying faithful to the vision. The 2-3 hour session aim is a compromise I'm fine with, though it will have an effect on the 'old school' nature of the game, it doesn't make it too 'casual'. The promises re. grouping tools I am fine with as they won't be making a WoW-style Dungeon Finder speedrun teleporter. There is a compromise between 'old school' and 'modern casual' and I think VR are already there. I think it will be fine for most players including you and me, @rkwiles.
But, personally (and it think this goes for many) I would rather have an 'old school' MMORPG and have to make some personal effort to fit it in my life than have another modern casual MMORPG however easily it fits into my life.