At the risk of getting flamed - I am going to agree with the OP. Although not with the reasoning behind the point.
Pantheon is likely to have an enormous amount of grinding. This is a traditional time sink going back well before EQ.
We do not need to also build in a lot of time spent with *nothing* to do. Anyone that wants to go afk to work on spouse-faction will have many chances to do this without being compelled.
I hear the point about socializing but I can find ways to socialize without arriving at a transportation point and having an hour to kill. It won't get me to socialize it will get me to swap to another character while waiting for the boat and then afk while on the boat.
Let me get this straight... the general attitude is that if someone doesn't think the game should force them to wait AFK for almost an hour to get on a boat, they need to go back to WoW? Come on people. You can't justify every stupidly boring/punshing mechanic as "reason to socialize". Now, I'm all for making travel meaningful. Limited ports . If the game has mounts (which it probably will), I would love to see mechanics that greatly limit their use (long cooldowns or a very slowly recharging endurance, expensive feeding/upkeep/stabling fees, etc). But having someone sit in one place for almost an hour is ridiculously unnecessary IMO.
its not an hour thats the thing, its 20 minutes at most with a 15 minute ride, its part of the game, and its a great part, it adds mass to the world, i dont think you should be able to go from one side of the world to the other in 2 minutes, 4 minutes, or an hour, unless you have friends to port you somewhere close and even then it should be a hike, wow like traveling, eso like traveling its all lame and only takes away from the enjoyment and feeling of being part of an actual world, if this route is taken why even have a world, why not just give everyone their own little room with a menu to open that puts them where they want to be, that is a mindless thing, its like turning chess into checkers, checkers is fun for 5 minuntes, chess however isnt as much fun as it is mentally challenging, why not let ogres start in the elf town? its just bleh, and i dont understand the thought behind that other than youre lazy and want things handed to you, and this isnt a personal attack, its a broad one i guess if you want to call it that, and if you dont have that much time why dont you do something on that particular continent, or log in and move to a spot you want to start playing in during your next session, or log out in a spot u want to play in your next session, why should the time frame revolve around you? you need to get in the mindset of using the time you have for you and revolving around it.
Time sinks are all subjective at this point until we get into the game and experience them for ourselves. As for the live stream combat down time, I think its on par with what I was expecting and what it used to be. As for ships and waiting for long distance travel. Before you know it you will have forgotten all about that dock and ship.
Once Wizards and Druids get gating and teleporting we'll all be able to pay to travel in style.
I'm in the camp that sees reasonable time sinks as an important part of the game. Having certain "inconveniences" placed on the player such as having to wait for a boat adds to the wonder of the world in my opinion. While waiting for that boat, I can either talk with friends or maybe run around doing some farming or buy some provisions or explore the nooks and crannies of the village. Having to make "real life" sorts of decisions like that is part of what makes an mmo enjoyable for me. Certainly, time sinks can be taken too far, but I don't see that becoming a problem with Pantheon.
I have no problem with moderate wait times for boats / ships. IMO 45 minutes is too long but I remember in other game with airship and boat wait times in the 20m region as not a problem, even memorable.
Long journey times on boats can provide opportunities for relaxing, unique fishing opportunities, random pirate attacks and rare spawning open world named monster encounters.
I will agree, the time sinks for some travel did add immersion and character to EQ.
Typically you only had to endur them a few times in your early days of leveling.
As you progressed you gained access to other travel options. Friends, guilds and your own characters abilities as you leveled.
There was something to be said for those aspects that you see completely have disappeared from most MMOs today.
There should be some destinations that don't have quick travel options and force you to walk/run or especially travel by ship. Most of the above posts have ignored the content along the way - a common theme among many players.
Let's take a look at the ocean zones in early EQ.
Ocean of Tears had two islands with docks and merchants. It also had several islands that were very good hunting at various levels and of course the ancient cyclops island with the jboot camp and a required merchant for mages to visit to acquire spells. There was no way to quick port to these destinations and there were substantive rewards for adventuring in the zone. The islands were mostly quite far apart so you had a real sense of this being a large sea.
Timorous Deep also had a few unique features with important quest NPCs for various epic encounters. There were a few spots you could grind experience, but overall I think in terms of content, it felt less rich than OoT. Negotiating the dark elf outpost in OverThere did add some interest/challenge, especially for KOS Iksar who wanted to travel. Unfortunately, there weren't many reasons to take the boat trip. Getting a port was infinitely simpler. The firepot room did add an interesting element to TD, making you take a boat and a long swim/levrun to get to an array of portals.
Erud's Crossing had only a single isle which was visited by the ship. There were lots of Kerrans, wisps and one rare spawn erudite that was marginally worth camping. Mostly Erud's Crossing was a waste of ocean real estate and just a time sink barrier between Qeynos and Erudin. There weren't a lot of reasons to visit the zone. Fortunately, the ship crossed this zone with higher frequency than either the OoT or TD boats.
So give us a reason to want to take the boat and visit the points along the way. Add more quests to these areas. Include NPC vendors who perhaps have unique items or offer advantageous pricing to the travellers who brave the path to their doorstep. Put more mobs and potential experience camps along the way.
If you contrast EQ ocean zones to the Atlantic ocean during the 1700's, the islands between London and the Honduras were bubbling centres of activity with nations warring over their ownership. Use this as a model. Fill up the "travel zones" with interesting content and players will be falling over each other to visit them, rather than viewing them as content to be constantly skipped.
So far as the boats being necessary to maintain spousal faction or getting chores done, that's shouldn't be a consideration. The Pantheon client will have a /logout command.
I made several long-term friends while waiting on the dock in Butcherblock. I do see the value in having travel delays to add opportunities for socialization. They do need to be handled in moderation though.
Extended downtime is not a timesink. Those are two different things in my opinion and should not be lumped together in the same discussion like I am seeing here.
I am usually the first one to say that I embrace grinds and timesinks...but there is a caveat to that. There has to be a goal, some reward at the end of the tunnel. A carrot I am chasing.
Killing a million rats might take multiple years and I'm good with that as long as my stats are +1 better than they would have been otherwise at the end of it. That kind of incentive keeps you playing. It gives you a reason to log in when you might be running out of ways to improve your character.
The kind of timesink I am not good with is waiting an hour for a boat or waiting multiple hours for a group just so that you can start working on killing the million rats. That's extended downtime.
Edit: maybe I need to clarify? Traveling obviously wouldn't be considered extended downtime. You are being active, moving, your destination is the goal. It is the waiting to travel (Ie: for a boat) or waiting for a group, when you are basically doing nothing for long periods of time that I don't agree with.
I agree that everyone have its own definition of pointless time sinks. I don't like time sinks in general, but if the design of the time sink is meaningful, I'm ok.
For example I'm ok with boats, I think this way to travel is meaningful (more than TP) and spending 30 mins or so to travel from Antonica to Faydwer was fine, especially with a zone to explore between Freeport and Butcherblock. If some players find such travel too long, it's also possible to add more ships on the way, to lower the time waiting for the boat (opposed to the time passed on the boat). In general, I'm not bothered by time sinks linked to travel conditions, cause we want a huge world with plenty of content, ok, so we should accept traveling is taking time (that's why I'm against TP and fast travel in general).
What I don't like is artificial time sink, when the goal is to make players loose time by repeating always and always the same tasks or fights or camps to give the illusion of content or the illusion of difficulty. I often says that long is just long, it is not difficult, long tasks leads to boredom, difficult tasks leads to excitement. That's why I'm not fan of too long xp grind, and hell levels for example, I don't find any challenge in killing a gazillion times the same mobs, that's a bit like always repeating the same sudoku, no challenge. I totally trust VR to create an interesting and huge world, I think we should encourage exploration and not grind.
I have no problem with long-distance travel for free taking some time. Didn't mind boats in EQ, but I'm not gonna lie - that was almost never a time for socializing past the hayday of that particular era. Why? Hardly ever anyone was on the boat with me. That's not time for socializing - that's time for going AFK when there's no one to make small talk with.
Not every time sink is a good one and a way to effectively promote socializing, just like not every convenience feature should be dismissed immediately and without thought. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
My original comment was a joke. Didn't expect his thread to take off like this. But in all seriousness, I'm against extended pointless time sinks.
The boat isn't pointless nor is it as long as a time sink as it's made out to be. Figure out the sechedlue and you only have to wait 1 or 2 mins. Thats nothing. It's not the designs fault you decided to get there and wait 20 mins.
I am hoping that both the wizard and druid fast travel tools will be point to point transfers that require you to be at one Wandering Stone Ring or Gate to travel to another. I also hope that these points are all a fair walk/run away from any of the major cities. For interest and lore sake I am hoping that the Wandering Stones only teleport you to something like the Faewyld that you need to move in force as a group for safety to get to the outbound location so that it is actually a single spell that activates all the rings.
If this ends up being the case then public transportation would be the primary way, other than walking, to get from one major city to another. I think it would be cool if there were both boats on the water and boats, aka wagons, on the land. All open format object you can jump off of with schedules and travel times listed and kept. For convenience I would try and have departures at most 10 minutes apart but the actual transport times could be up to an hour based on the size and number of the zones crossed.
This would make striking raid targets harder and give you a reason to stay in a local area to level as the travel could actually take your entire play time to get to a similar level zone on the other continent.
It maybe pointless to some, as WOW clones have ruined your adventure.... Keep it hardcore, and lots of time syncs for us.
Just not spending 4 hrs on corpse recovery is my only wish. XP rates have to be somewhat interesting, not to the point where you have to kill over 2000 mobs just to level up.
Those time syncs are pointless, and as well as Faction killing greys just to get somewhere in the game. Those time syncs are annoying.
Crazzie said:It maybe pointless to some, as WOW clones have ruined your adventure.... Keep it hardcore, and lots of time syncs for us.
Just not spending 4 hrs on corpse recovery is my only wish. XP rates have to be somewhat interesting, not to the point where you have to kill over 2000 mobs just to level up.
Those time syncs are pointless, and as well as Faction killing greys just to get somewhere in the game. Those time syncs are annoying.
As much as I partly agree, surely you see the irony of being fine with slow travel but not with CRs or faction grinding.
You know that some people will see it the other way, right?
The point is, one person's hardcore is another person's pointless time sync.
Personally, I think pretty much all of these issues/areas have a solution in between the extremes. CRs, faction grinding, fast travel, auction houses, instances, etc, etc. They can all be implemented in an acceptable way - they are just tools and none or them are essentially 'good' or 'bad'.
Long wait times for travel make classes that can port and/or summon valuable.
Ezrael said: WoW has watered down travel and caters to the 3 minute attention span millennial that needs to watch Netflix on another screen while playing a game.
Hogwash. In terms of travel, launch wow had nothing even remotely as watered down as plane of knowledge. Also, millenials? People in that generation are in their late 30s for god's sake.
Spluffen said:Long wait times for travel make classes that can port and/or summon valuable.
Ezrael said: WoW has watered down travel and caters to the 3 minute attention span millennial that needs to watch Netflix on another screen while playing a game.Hogwash. In terms of travel, launch wow had nothing even remotely as watered down as plane of knowledge. Also, millenials? People in that generation are in their late 30s for god's sake.
Aren't millenials born after 2000 ? Thus beeing under 20 y/o ?
MauvaisOeil said:Spluffen said:Long wait times for travel make classes that can port and/or summon valuable.
Ezrael said: WoW has watered down travel and caters to the 3 minute attention span millennial that needs to watch Netflix on another screen while playing a game.Hogwash. In terms of travel, launch wow had nothing even remotely as watered down as plane of knowledge. Also, millenials? People in that generation are in their late 30s for god's sake.
Aren't millenials born after 2000 ? Thus beeing under 20 y/o ?
Isn't that centennials? I didn't look it up. Millennials are the 20s and 30s somethings. Born in the 80s and 90s I believe.
MauvaisOeil said:Spluffen said:Long wait times for travel make classes that can port and/or summon valuable.
Ezrael said: WoW has watered down travel and caters to the 3 minute attention span millennial that needs to watch Netflix on another screen while playing a game.Hogwash. In terms of travel, launch wow had nothing even remotely as watered down as plane of knowledge. Also, millenials? People in that generation are in their late 30s for god's sake.
Aren't millenials born after 2000 ? Thus beeing under 20 y/o ?
Nope. I suppose the name refers to people who came of age around the millenial shift. They're born from the early 80s through the mid 90s.
Huh, apparently I'm a millenial, too.
I like both the oldschool and the new! I enjoy BDO, WoW, and vintage EQ alike. I really dislike the vibe that liking old and new mmos is somehow mutually exclusive, or that anything not belonging to the former category is somehow inherently bad as a whole. I totally get that you can like one thing and not the other. Just seems like a lot of folks are a bit too keen to dismiss things en masse because they don't belong to something conceived in the late 90's.
It's like when people ask me if I like to drive a Dodge or a Toyota, and when I tell them I drive a Dodge, they immediately launch into a slavering spiel about how Toyota is utter crap and yea man Dodge is so much better, and I'm just over here like... um, I like Toyota too. I own both.
Rokuzachi said:Huh, apparently I'm a millenial, too.
I like both the oldschool and the new! I enjoy BDO, WoW, and vintage EQ alike. I really dislike the vibe that liking old and new mmos is somehow mutually exclusive, or that anything not belonging to the former category is somehow inherently bad as a whole. I totally get that you can like one thing and not the other. Just seems like a lot of folks are a bit too keen to dismiss things en masse because they don't belong to something conceived in the late 90's.
It's like when people ask me if I like to drive a Ford or a Toyota, and when I tell them I drive a Dodge, they immediately launch into a slavering spiel about how Toyota is utter crap and yea man Dodge is so much better, and I'm just over here like... um, I like Toyota too. I own both.
Not hyping for old things (especially not trasak that seems crumbling).
I enjoyed wow for many years and many things, especially not beeing utter **** in solo back then ( going from a rogue in eq to a warrior in wow), but the whole genre went too far in twitch gameplay and unrewarding content.
Now i expect things to come back to strategy and socialization.