To give an over-thought but honest answer: In a meaningful, satisfying way that preserves the challenge and scale of a huge fantasy world.
To state the usual gripes: No flying unless there are as many interesting and exciting encounters and hazards in the sky as on the ground (in fact, more, including gravity). No teleporting so common guilds set up Uber services and Terminus effectively becomes a hub for dungeon speed runs, alternately abandoned or over-populated.
Run-buff. Class-based, item-based, food buff, faction-centric...
Good ol' fashioned walking. Although Ley lines, power vortexs , Fractures should have an affect on teleport travel, when a character has earned it.
What would be cool is a teleport portal located near a Fracture, where it was mostly dependable travel, mostly...lol. Depends on players skill or Keeper's knowledge to negotiate said portal.
I like the travel system in LOTRO. Mounts and stables. While exploring and travelling is grand the first few times, it gets old fast. Requiring another person to port leads to people choosing classes based only on travel, and in some cases fleecing of the customers. Lotro may have too many stables, and horses may be too fast, but those can be limited. Mounts and carriages are both era appropriate, and can be RP inclusive if done well.
I expect to be doing most of my travel by instant teleport, to wherever I last saved my progress like Dr. Strange, but oddly missing some inventory and xp. hmm..
But my favorite is probably by boat because it gives me some time to get in some fishing.
Flying, obviously...you cannot show us great scenic air views like you did in the streams and then expect us to be content with just walking around :)
That said, my favorite way of traveling around depends a bit on what I want to achieve. If I want to explore an area, I prefer to be on my own, so I can take my time and "sniff the flowers" or look at everything that peeks my interest. In that case, travel speed isn't that important (only to escape should I aggro anything I didn't intend to :). If I'm with a group, I prefer fast travel with teleports to the general area we want to go to, and then speed buffs like SoW of bard speed. I am not very fond of mounts, although I'll use them if they're the (better) version of runspeed buffs.
Even though I agree with the foot direction of Pantheon, I do like flying around. I do think it is an area of game play that is not taken advantage of much over getting from A to B. In the same way swimming will be a discovery in itself and opening areas of play, so could flying. No, I am not calling out for a change in direction and I agree that, in its current form, flying shrinks the worlds it is employed in. I am just saying that it should be looked at in the same way as swimming is in Pantheon. It should be dangerous, it should be employed to get you to places you cannot get to without it. It could open up further discovery and adventure, if employed correctly. The main difference between swimming and flying is that swimming is contained in specific areas (lakes and seas) and flying is not. If this could be addressed, then I could see it working in a game like Pantheon. There should be flying fatigue (the equivalent of holding your breath under water), high winds, adverse weather, dangerous flying mobs, etc., etc. These could be employed to limit how easy it is to get around in the air. It is not impossible to do and could open up the world even more so rather than being viewed as a short cut.
Anyway, I digress. Flying is my fave, but I am happy with where Pantheon is. I am just speaking my mind.
I agree with chenzeme about flying IF it's implemented with much more thought than is usual.
Fixed flying 'taxi' routes like in WoW would be fine, though. Those were actually well designed to give players an exciting, spectacular, enticing view of the zone, but not giveaway secrets or let you drop into areas that should be hard to get to.
They actually enhanced the desire to explore and fight your way to the places you spied from above, rather than ruined it like free flying mounts tend to when lazily implemented.
it depends on what is going on at the time.
Usually the answer is port myself and continue on a mount like EQ. IF I am needing to do RL things while I am traveling to my next group/zone, some sort of taxi service is always appreciated, especially if travel time is excessive. They aren't always the fastest/most direct option, but it gives you the freedom to multitask. If taxis aren't available, I'll just have to settle for auto-following the hubby.
Flying would seem tricky to implement. I would love it for ease of travel, but it could trivialize the climbing mechanic in the overworld if you can simply land on your point of interest.
I like the idea of "taxi" routes. You can make very few flight points in the world and make them far apart. Say you find one flight master in a 0-10 zone, but the connecting flight master is located in a lvl 30-40 zone. That way you've fought and adventured your way across the continent over many levels, now you get to travel to your main starting city/area (for spells, shops, gear repair, certain NPCs for quest turn ins) without it being a 1-2 hour slog all the way back. When the two connecting points are far enough apart, you'll still have to travel by foot a fair amount to get to wherever it is between them.
Kilsin said:Tavern Talk - What's your favourite way to travel around in an MMORPG like Pantheon?
IMO:
The first 50 or 100 times? On foot with buffs is fine.
After that? Fast travel to anywhere I've been 50 or 100 times, please and thank you.
All travel (fast, slow, whatever, of any kind) can be made meaningful. It's just typically not, because fast travel/teleportation is implemented instead of putting forth the effort to make all travel meaningful. I mean, the actual burden of development for fast travel is exactly one function applied to the player object: Teleport(Coordinates). It's not difficult, and requires near-zero development effort. Making travel meaningful? Requires significantly more than nero-zero development effort. :)
Personally, I have played MMOs with no fast travel or teleportation of any kind accessbile to players. All of them (of those I've played) either no longer exist or have double digit concurrency, best case, at prime time. Tedious running simulators are evidently not as popular as MMOs where you can get your group together quickly and achieve some tangible goals.
I have exactly one goal when I login to a grouping-required game. Join the group. Reach the group. Be in the group. Be at the group. Help the group, by playing my role in the group, by being near enough to the rest of the group to perform that role.
Making that (reaching the group) difficult, tedious, or inordinately time consuming would appear to be at odds with ensuring the success of a social grouping-required game.
Well I've played many MMOs over the years, and when the world feels huge and dangerous is when I've had the most fun. So traveling on foot is the way I like it, but movement speed buffs are acceptalbe and enjoyable. Mounts at some point will be fine, but out of the gate at release walking is the way to go.
