"The idea that players have to walk for 10+ minutes on landscape doing nothing" is a facetious argument that you, axe, and quir are stuck on. Saying "putting a game mechanic in isolation makes that game mechanic boring" is simply stating the obvious and not furthering any kind of meaningful conversation.
It is not an idea. It is a actual undesirable mechanics that are in games in the early days (like in EQ) and remedied later, like in WoW.
Do you deny there are instances of games that you have to do nothing but travel for 10-20 min to get somewhere?
Except that statement is untrue as evidenced by games already referenced back on page 6.
Repeating the same invalid argument does not make reality go away.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Grand Turismo and Foraza have sold over 80 million combined. Grand Theft Auto has sold over 100 million. Minecraft has sold over 70 million. Those games have you traveling with no fast travel.
Grand Turismo and Foraza has no travel at all. Those are racing games. The objective to move is to be faster than the car next to you. So it is not travelling from point A to B, repeatedly. Racing is not travel. And I thought people who love to argue about the literal definition of MMOs should know better.
Your first comment is pointless there.
Your second comment is incorrect. Winning a race is not as simple as having the fastest car. Racing is fundamentally travel, and there's no way around that fact as the core premise across any type of racing mode is ultimately the matter of completing the task of covering a given amount of distance within a time constraint, competitive restraint, obstacle constraint, or otherwise. This applies to continuous racing games such as runners as well as the more finite circuit track games.
Travel is not simply "moving from point A to point B". If you take the literal definition of travel; "The action of traveling, typically abroad. Journeys, especially long or exotic ones."
Or more succinctly; "Go or be moved from place to place."
"Place to place" is not a definitive of "A to B", it is in fact simply pointing out the act of moving around and the place of intent can be any variety of destinations or goals.
And the definition of "go or be moved from place to place" fits exactly with the premise of "move from the start line to the finish line". It depends on the type of the race in question and the rules as to anything beyond that core mechanic, but the fundamental act of travel is always there for that genre.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Grand Turismo and Foraza have sold over 80 million combined. Grand Theft Auto has sold over 100 million. Minecraft has sold over 70 million. Those games have you traveling with no fast travel.
Grand Turismo and Foraza has no travel at all. Those are racing games. The objective to move is to be faster than the car next to you. So it is not travelling from point A to B, repeatedly. Racing is not travel. And I thought people who love to argue about the literal definition of MMOs should know better.
Your first comment is pointless there.
Your second comment is incorrect. Winning a race is not as simple as having the fastest car. Racing is fundamentally travel, and there's no way around that fact as the core premise across any type of racing mode is ultimately the matter of completing the task of covering a given amount of distance within a time constraint, competitive restraint, obstacle constraint, or otherwise. This applies to continuous racing games such as runners as well as the more finite circuit track games.
My first comment is pointless because it points out your factual mistake, and you have no rebuttal? Got it!
You said "ultimately the matter of completing the task of covering a given amount of distance within a time constraint, competitive restraint, obstacle constraint, or otherwise".
So it is not just covering the distance, which travel is. You just prove yourself to be incorrect. Thank you!
The appropriate example is American Truck's free run mode, which has nothing BUT moving from point A to B. And we all know how successful that game is, compared to games with fast travel.
Of course, I would not say there is no one like slow travel, since you are arguing that walking around is fun. But hey, don't tell me you think that is the mainstream preference. Otherwise, fast travel would not be so popular.
Do you deny there are instances of games that you have to do nothing but travel for 10-20 min to get somewhere?
Except that statement is untrue as evidenced by games already referenced back on page 6.
Repeating the same invalid argument does not make reality go away.
How is that untrue?
Are you disputing that there is a 20 min boat ride in the original EQ?
Again an invalid argument is not a meaningful argument as I corrected the comment you are making now a long time back on top of you ignoring that there are more and new titles which are being used as example.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Grand Turismo and Foraza have sold over 80 million combined. Grand Theft Auto has sold over 100 million. Minecraft has sold over 70 million. Those games have you traveling with no fast travel.
Grand Turismo and Foraza has no travel at all. Those are racing games. The objective to move is to be faster than the car next to you. So it is not travelling from point A to B, repeatedly. Racing is not travel. And I thought people who love to argue about the literal definition of MMOs should know better.
Your first comment is pointless there.
Your second comment is incorrect. Winning a race is not as simple as having the fastest car. Racing is fundamentally travel, and there's no way around that fact as the core premise across any type of racing mode is ultimately the matter of completing the task of covering a given amount of distance within a time constraint, competitive restraint, obstacle constraint, or otherwise. This applies to continuous racing games such as runners as well as the more finite circuit track games.
My first comment is pointless because it points out your factual mistake, and you have no rebuttal? Got it!
You said "ultimately the matter of completing the task of covering a given amount of distance within a time constraint, competitive restraint, obstacle constraint, or otherwise".
So it is not just covering the distance, which travel is. You just prove yourself to be incorrect. Thank you!
The appropriate example is American Truck's free run mode, which has nothing BUT moving from point A to B. And we all know how successful that game is, compared to games with fast travel.
Of course, I would not say there is no one like slow travel, since you are arguing that walking around is fun. But hey, don't tell me you think that is the mainstream preference. Otherwise, fast travel would not be so popular.
Your first comment is pointless because it is one game where many have been offered. Invalidating one does not invalidate the rest (ignoring the other points made correcting your argument).
The second point was examples of different rules, not the fundamental mechanic which is travel, so your tangent there isn't even logical.
The appropriate xample is any number of free run games that have been shown to be successful on mobile, platformer and free-run games (Mirror's Edge for example), Traditional racing games, sandboxy racing games like Trackmania, and many others which have indeed proven successful.
I'm arguing that travel when treated as a game mechanic and integrated with the rest of the game and not implemented in isolation is fun.
So please don't lie. It does not further the conversation.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
My statement was "My position from the beginning has been the point that travel is a mechanic that has value in gaming for the depth it delivers when properly integrated, and that we have seen sch value across plenty of games already."
For you to even assume your argument you have to not simply be misunderstanding me, but ignoring entire segments of what I'm saying.
And again, it depends on the type of game. Not all games need travel because not all games are designed with mechanics that integrate with it. As I have said repeated times now and you had to straight up pretend I didn't say; "When I have also made multiple statements about the types and variety of games in even the MMORPG genre alone, and even stated myself on a couple occasions in this thread that fast travel is to the benefit of themepark and games with a heavily scripted user experience, there is no wiggle room for the jab you just took to bear any validity."
Removing fast travel from games that are not built for collaborative gameplay, user economy, virtual world, etc, doesn't have as much impact on depth because travel in those situations is not generally a well integrated mechanic.
HOW IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY CAN YOU NOT GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD?!
"When integrated" is a phrase that has meaning, ignoring half of the crap that is written to make a sideways argument that doesn't even work and is already addressed by shit I said a post prior to what you choose to respond to is inane to the Nth degree.
Would you like to respond again after actually reading the posts you are responding to next time?
Hey, I think I'm getting there. When a game's main focus is competition in a virtual world then fast travel can be a hindrance?
MMO is such a broad term, it can encapsulate a lot of different genres. I was fixed on RPGs rather than virtual worlds, simulations.
If this had anything to do with the argument I still believe fast travel doesn't take away any of the depth in a virtual world themepark/sandbox game if competition isn't at the fore front.
My statement was "My position from the beginning has been the point that travel is a mechanic that has value in gaming for the depth it delivers when properly integrated, and that we have seen sch value across plenty of games already."
For you to even assume your argument you have to not simply be misunderstanding me, but ignoring entire segments of what I'm saying.
And again, it depends on the type of game. Not all games need travel because not all games are designed with mechanics that integrate with it. As I have said repeated times now and you had to straight up pretend I didn't say; "When I have also made multiple statements about the types and variety of games in even the MMORPG genre alone, and even stated myself on a couple occasions in this thread that fast travel is to the benefit of themepark and games with a heavily scripted user experience, there is no wiggle room for the jab you just took to bear any validity."
Removing fast travel from games that are not built for collaborative gameplay, user economy, virtual world, etc, doesn't have as much impact on depth because travel in those situations is not generally a well integrated mechanic.
HOW IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY CAN YOU NOT GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD?!
"When integrated" is a phrase that has meaning, ignoring half of the crap that is written to make a sideways argument that doesn't even work and is already addressed by shit I said a post prior to what you choose to respond to is inane to the Nth degree.
Would you like to respond again after actually reading the posts you are responding to next time?
Hey, I think I'm getting there. When a game's main focus is competition in a virtual world then fast travel can be a hindrance?
MMO is such a broad term, it can encapsulate a lot of different genres. I was fixed on RPGs rather than virtual worlds, simulations.
If this had anything to do with the argument I still believe fast travel doesn't take away any of the depth in a virtual world themepark/sandbox game if competition isn't at the fore front.
Not sure where you got competition from.
I said themepark and heavily scripted user experiences tend to not benefit from travel, and as such fast travel is good for them because it delivers players into the defined user experience faster.
The other aspect mentioned was collaborative content, not competitive. Meaning world building, interactive player economies, storytelling, etc which is reliant on the interaction between users to create emergent gameplay value as well as capitalizes on networked tools. Travel benefits this scenario and virtual worlds because it can emulate elements such as item scarcity, migration and hunting, trade of goods becomes an effect of risk/reward as well as a task that depends on user input for success, etc.
You try emulating those elements without travel and you generally have a lot of RNG and timers. RNG is circumvented by time and player volume simply resulting in the inevitable of statistics, and scarcity of technically rare items will go down as inflation overtakes everything. Timers are simply a replacement where you have to wait on a bar instead and there isn't much opportunity for any interactivity there (and the results often rely on RNG there too).
Like the survival game genre for example. If you fast-traveled around the environment then hunting food, foraging for resources, even PvP would suffer because the ability to instantly travel would bypass the challenge the environment is built to pose.
It's about where the content is and how it's being delivered.
When a game is designed so the content is delivered by discrete game elements such as when you are following a chain of quests along a narrative being dictated to you, then fast travel is a help because there's nothing outside of those discrete game elements.
When it's about building a complex set of tools for users to collaborate with, or a virtual world where playing "with/against the environment" is a part of it, or otherwise, you have a scenario where the use of these mechanics and tools allows for emergent gameplay value.
Which is also where a quote stated from Cadwell I've shared a bunch of times comes in; "Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Grand Turismo and Foraza have sold over 80 million combined. Grand Theft Auto has sold over 100 million. Minecraft has sold over 70 million. Those games have you traveling with no fast travel.
Grand Turismo and Foraza has no travel at all. Those are racing games. The objective to move is to be faster than the car next to you. So it is not travelling from point A to B, repeatedly. Racing is not travel. And I thought people who love to argue about the literal definition of MMOs should know better.
Said nothing of MSG. Thsts a pure strawman. Showing one game with fast travel does not negate others who don't that sell tremendously well.
Racing is competitive traveling. Races are literally point A to point B or traveling along laps traveling the same environment over and over. Miles are logged and cars move. It's travel.
Second verse same as the first, this repetition of lies is over-rehearsed.
IE, we click one page back to see this same argument and the counterpoint made with games by-name that were done as AAA production titles and sold well.
Maybe people are ignoring you because you don't make any sense.
I find reading skills helps with that.
If there was something about either of those sentences you could not understand, feel free to ask instead of insult.
You are arguing something else entirely than Axehilt and me. What do you think our position even is, I wonder?
My position from the beginning has been the point that travel is a mechanic that has value in gaming for the depth it delivers when properly integrated, and that we have seen sch value across plenty of games already.
The rest of my dialogue has been correcting inaccurate statements.
Your two's dialogue remains on the idea that a mechanic can't be good because you don't like it, and you've gone to the ends of the earth to try and justify it.
Alright, clearly you don't understand my side of the argument so I'll explain it as succinctly as possible.
No matter how much you integrate slow travel with other systems, it will remain un-fun if you don't make slow travel in itself fun. I thought we established this a long time ago. Also, what we've been trying to tell you, is that making slow travel fun is very expensive. So expensive, in fact, that it would be reckless to try it since you have no guarantees you will succeed.
It is more cost effective, and safe, to spend your efforts on exploration (first time travel), the main content (the "destinations") and don't worry about travel (implement fast travel).
My own preferences do not enter the discussion. This is simply an objective observation. If you can make slow travel fun, I would play that game myself. However the crux of the matter is: No one has managed to make slow travel fun yet and if there is a way to make it fun, likely it is not going to be cheap.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
My position from the beginning has been the point that travel is a mechanic that has value in gaming for the depth it delivers when properly integrated, and that we have seen sch value across plenty of games already.
The rest of my dialogue has been correcting inaccurate statements.
Your two's dialogue remains on the idea that a mechanic can't be good because you don't like it, and you've gone to the ends of the earth to try and justify it.
Alright, clearly you don't understand my side of the argument so I'll explain it as succinctly as possible.
No matter how much you integrate slow travel with other systems, it will remain un-fun if you don't make slow travel in itself fun. I thought we established this a long time ago. Also, what we've been trying to tell you, is that making slow travel fun is very expensive. So expensive, in fact, that it would be reckless to try it since you have no guarantees you will succeed.
It is more cost effective, and safe, to spend your efforts on exploration (first time travel), the main content (the "destinations") and don't worry about travel (implement fast travel).
My own preferences do not enter the discussion. This is simply an objective observation. If you can make slow travel fun, I would play that game myself. However the crux of the matter is: No one has managed to make slow travel fun yet and if there is a way to make it fun, likely it is not going to be cheap.
Well you start off by making a mistake, which makes it really hard to agree with your opinion.
"No matter how much you integrate slow travel with other systems, it will remain un-fun if you don't make slow travel in itself fun." Integrating mechanics with each other is how you make games fun.
Combat is an example of this because it is often a mix of multiple gameplay mechanics together. Time, a bit of movement for position/direction based attacks, the manner of input for the controls, etc. You start isolating these mechanics and combat starts getting less interesting. You can establish a flawed argument as long ago as you want. It was corrected a long time ago too.
As for your continued dialogue, that claim is invalidated again as far back as page 6 with pointing out that your claim is at best only the application of western gaming market, fails to reflect that the integration of travel mechanics is a very real element of eastern gaming titles, and that there are existing examples of it's use.
I will agree it is more cost effective and safe to make the same thing over and over again. But that's also how you make games that are going to be progressively less interesting as evidenced by the rush of very similar titles that has lead to failed sales and many MMOs closing even though they followed the same formula implied by you as successful.
Also hence the previous statement;
"MMOs as a global genre are slower to develop and their technical requirements burdens them in a way that they will never be able to match the present technical capacity of a single or smaller scale multiplayer.
This puts a dampener on doing "new" things in the genre not because of what is being done is "bad", but because it is under-developed and the time and cost to invest into it to see it evolve is great. More than many developer have or are willing to invest.
So we have compromises."
"RPG games didn't face 22 years of refinement and evolution to stagnate. Same applies to other game genres. Just because mechanics are newer and more experimental does not mean they should be abandoned for the same old experience. Someone with the skill to do so needs to spend the time and effort to create "22 years of genre experience" for newer game mechanics. To continue growing, trying new things, making bigger better games, worlds, systems, etc. We need not wallow in mediocrity."
What you offered is not objective observation because it has failed to observe many things going on with the games in the market in favor of taking finite snippets to declare it the truth of all. There have been plenty of examples offered by name of active titles directly disproving your last argument, meaning what you said is very much driven by opinion and not objective observation, otherwise they would have been accounted for.
Post edited by Deivos on
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I said themepark and heavily scripted user experiences tend to not benefit from travel, and as such fast travel is good for them because it delivers players into the defined user experience faster.
The other aspect mentioned was collaborative content, not competitive. Meaning world building, interactive player economies, storytelling, etc which is reliant on the interaction between users to create emergent gameplay value as well as capitalizes on networked tools. Travel benefits this scenario and virtual worlds because it can emulate elements such as item scarcity, migration and hunting, trade of goods becomes an effect of risk/reward as well as a task that depends on user input for success, etc.
You try emulating those elements without travel and you generally have a lot of RNG and timers. RNG is circumvented by time and player volume simply resulting in the inevitable of statistics, and scarcity of technically rare items will go down as inflation overtakes everything. Timers are simply a replacement where you have to wait on a bar instead and there isn't much opportunity for any interactivity there (and the results often rely on RNG there too).
Like the survival game genre for example. If you fast-traveled around the environment then hunting food, foraging for resources, even PvP would suffer because the ability to instantly travel would bypass the challenge the environment is built to pose.
It's about where the content is and how it's being delivered.
When a game is designed so the content is delivered by discrete game elements such as when you are following a chain of quests along a narrative being dictated to you, then fast travel is a help because there's nothing outside of those discrete game elements.
When it's about building a complex set of tools for users to collaborate with, or a virtual world where playing "with/against the environment" is a part of it, or otherwise, you have a scenario where the use of these mechanics and tools allows for emergent gameplay value.
Which is also where a quote stated from Cadwell I've shared a bunch of times comes in; "Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
I agree mostly. I mentioned competition because of economy. To me that's another form of PvP/competition.
I never did mean I could fast travel anywhere I wanted, I don't think any MMO does that, you still have to travel to most locations.
Even though I do think it would be beneficial in games like creative mode Minecraft where you are just world building, even in an MMO game.
Personally I thought the point of survival games was to progress to make things easier. If not by using some sort of fast traveling, by growing your own crops at home so you don't have to keep traveling.
Now I'm thinking what actually is traveling, I hope we're not using it as any form of movement no matter how small the journey. What a pointless discussion this was.
Travel to me is not the same as exploring. Take survival games, most of the time I'm exploring, not traveling, two different things to me. When you travel you're purposefully going to a certain location, exploring you're not.
So if I find something interesting when I'm exploring I should be able to craft something so I can travel to that location faster, be it a bike, car, plane, teleportation if I want to bypass the traveling. All dependent on the stage of the game I'm at. Isn't that a form of depth in regard to travel?
Travel is in general a broad element and for the most part is simply the mechanic of things moving, yes. As it generally applies to the discussion we're usually assuming certain lengths of travel, and others seem to be pretty fond of ascribing plenty of distinct rules that apply to specific forms travel as taken without regard to others.
For example how you just described your gameplay scenario. Finding a specific location and wanting to "bypass" the travel implies quite a lot about the design of the rest of the game that bypassing content (or non-content) is the immediate goal. It makes sense if the world is populated by static elements, but what about, say, Saga of Ryzom where resource nodes change places around the environment and creatures have migratory cycles that makes resource gathering into a hunt rather than a strict circuit? It changes things dramatically, and while faster modes of travel (vehicles, mounts, etc) might be desired to achieve shortening the cycle, fast travel (teleportation, zone warp, etc) across environments introduces the issue of accidentally missing the very content you're looking for.
It depends on the design of the game for that, and when you have played some games and use that as a reference to define your scope and familiarity with a tool then it greatly skews the assumptions you make about it's actual range of uses and how it's been integrated with other games.
So different modes of travel generally all have their own place, and saying one mode should be present and used in all designs generally overlooks how it can make or break other game mechanics.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
For example how you just described your gameplay scenario. Finding a specific location and wanting to "bypass" the travel implies quite a lot about the design of the rest of the game that bypassing content (or non-content) is the immediate goal. It makes sense if the world is populated by static elements, but what about, say, Saga of Ryzom where resource nodes change places around the environment and creatures have migratory cycles that makes resource gathering into a hunt rather than a strict circuit? It changes things dramatically, and while faster modes of travel (vehicles, mounts, etc) might be desired to achieve shortening the cycle, fast travel (teleportation, zone warp, etc) across environments introduces the issue of accidentally missing the very content you're looking for.
Yes, but you'd obviously go explore for the new spawn locations and set up a camp/teleporter there.
SWG had a similar thing with resources, they'd respawn at different locations and you'd have to explore and search for them. And that is a game that would easily of benefited from being able to craft a teleporter as most of the planets were very stale/dull and you wouldn't miss anything deep/dynamic when traveling from home to your harvesters. If you did it was a rarity.
That's again an assumption of gameplay in that you are returning to a node and it still being there, not you depleting it or it migrating on you. Setting a teleport location to a place that doesn't have any resources after you've been there doesn't do you a whole lot of good.
And if it's a static enough element that returning to it multiple times is a valid option, then it would indeed have an impact on economy, as it'd imply you could double, triple, or further multiply the output of resources from a particular location and in turn propagate inflation of the market. Besides which, if you have a means to obtain a rare resource or something that is hard to get by bypassing the challenge or time it takes to get it, then you have bypassed the very reason that good is "rare" and you may rapidly devalue it or imbalance other aspects of the game.
Your immediate example was again to draw from a game and user experience that curtailed outside examples. SWG isn't Ryzom, there are differences there in the way the economy, gameplay, and resource migration works. I know it might be a close reference so it's easier for you to understand, but stop making the mistake of "X game is like this therefore Y game must be too".
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
That's again an assumption of gameplay in that you are returning to a node and it still being there, not you depleting it or it migrating on you. Setting a teleport location to a place that doesn't have any resources after you've been there doesn't do you a whole lot of good.
And if it's a static enough element that returning to it multiple times is a valid option, then it would indeed have an impact on economy, as it'd imply you could double, triple, or further multiply the output of resources from a particular location and in turn propagate inflation of the market. Besides which, if you have a means to obtain a rare resource or something that is hard to get by bypassing the challenge or time it takes to get it, then you have bypassed the very reason that good is "rare" and you may rapidly devalue it or imbalance other aspects of the game.
We're both making assumptions. And if it's not static enough?
You could also multiply your output with out fast traveling. Gatherers would place as many harvesters as they could afford. Fast travel wouldn't speed up the output, if anything it would become a bottleneck. You'd be hanging around waiting. It would allow you to go do other things though.
And resources had a finite amount so no matter how many harvesters you used you'd always get the same amount.
And no developer would implement a fast travel system so extreme that rare resources would devalue like you're suggesting.
The mechanic that kills in game economies more than fast travel is a global auction house.
Your immediate example was again to draw from a game and user experience that curtailed outside examples. SWG isn't Ryzom, there are differences there in the way the economy, gameplay, and resource migration works. I know it might be a close reference so it's easier for you to understand, but stop making the mistake of "X game is like this therefore Y game must be too".
SWG may not be Ryzom but it's an open virtual world, sandbox(esque), community driven MMO. Maybe Ryzom does the whole collecting resources a lot more interesting/challenging than SWG where you had to tediously scan areas of the map with a scanner and follow the percentages untill you found the sweet spot. I never got passed the starter area to find out.
That's again an assumption of gameplay in that you are returning to a node and it still being there, not you depleting it or it migrating on you. Setting a teleport location to a place that doesn't have any resources after you've been there doesn't do you a whole lot of good.
And if it's a static enough element that returning to it multiple times is a valid option, then it would indeed have an impact on economy, as it'd imply you could double, triple, or further multiply the output of resources from a particular location and in turn propagate inflation of the market. Besides which, if you have a means to obtain a rare resource or something that is hard to get by bypassing the challenge or time it takes to get it, then you have bypassed the very reason that good is "rare" and you may rapidly devalue it or imbalance other aspects of the game.
We're both making assumptions. And if it's not static enough?
You could also multiply your output with out fast traveling. Gatherers would place as many harvesters as they could afford. Fast travel wouldn't speed up the output, if anything it would become a bottleneck. You'd be hanging around waiting. It would allow you to go do other things though.
And resources had a finite amount so no matter how many harvesters you used you'd always get the same amount.
And no developer would implement a fast travel system so extreme that rare resources would devalue like you're suggesting.
The mechanic that kills in game economies more than fast travel is a global auction house.
Your immediate example was again to draw from a game and user experience that curtailed outside examples. SWG isn't Ryzom, there are differences there in the way the economy, gameplay, and resource migration works. I know it might be a close reference so it's easier for you to understand, but stop making the mistake of "X game is like this therefore Y game must be too".
SWG may not be Ryzom but it's an open virtual world, sandbox(esque), community driven MMO. Maybe Ryzom does the whole collecting resources a lot more interesting/challenging than SWG where you had to tediously scan areas of the map with a scanner and follow the percentages untill you found the sweet spot. I never got passed the starter area to find out.
Again, you assume mechanics around "harvesters" even though no such thing was mentioned.
My "assumptions" only went as far as providing an example from a game I know, not trying to draw ideas up about a separate game I'm unfamiliar with and interjecting mechanics from one onto the other in speculation.
In regards to "not static enough", it would be a case of a mechanic set without supporting tools for players to keep up.
And being able to make a fast travel means to reach a destination that's supposed to be hard to reach would directly counter the logic of it being hard to reach, and would directly devalue the resources that were supposed to be rare.
If you are talking about mounts and things as fast travel then you're not in the same camp Nariu and otherwise are in, as you are talking about not-as-slow travel. If you are referring to portal locations, then it becomes a very large question of the mechanics surrounding it, how widely available they are, and the cost of use to balance the effect it has on the rest of the game.
And as stated before; "I know it might be a close reference so it's easier for you to understand, but stop making the mistake of "X game is like this therefore Y game must be too"."
Everything has a use case and everything has an impact on other elements of a game. Fast travel's (teleporting around locations) presence impacts the functional scale of the game world and accessibility to the contents of the game world greatly for good and bad, and it ultimately depends on the type of content and manner in which it is being delivered as to whether or not it's going to be ideal or cause issues.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
This conversation has made me see that all other mmo mechanics are severely hindered by fast travel for perhaps the exception of combat, which itself is an integration of mechanics as Deivos said. How the developers of the most successful mmos out there don't see this is beyond me. Maybe this conversation gives hints to that also. To not understand something that is plainly clear is beyond me.
Talking about games where thousands of players exist simultaneously in a single instance and mechanics related to such games.
The whole opinion that players don't like long travel and even travel over the same landscape doesn't hold water because games mentioned have them and are way more popular than MMORPG. It's really as simple as that. Most MMORPG now won't have it because it's simply not suited to game. Travel doesn't exist in a vacuum more than any other system unless the game is solely about it.
Grand Turismo and Foraza have sold over 80 million combined. Grand Theft Auto has sold over 100 million. Minecraft has sold over 70 million. Those games have you traveling with no fast travel.
To say MMO that can and arguably should represent virtual worlds can't have meaningful travel to a viable audience means you simply have no imagination.
Who holds that straw man opinion?
The fact stated in this thread is that players don't like shallow travel. You don't dispute that fact by naming games which have implemented deep travel (racing games, and GTA.)
Nobody is arguing that players don't like deep travel. I'm simply pointing out the reality that MMORPGs don't have deep travel, and wouldn't have it because their focus is on core RPG features rather than travel.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Grand Turismo and Foraza have sold over 80 million combined. Grand Theft Auto has sold over 100 million. Minecraft has sold over 70 million. Those games have you traveling with no fast travel.
Yet the travel in those games aren't deep. Maybe the travel is fun.
It's not really the point when they're single player open world games with fast travel that sell a lot and are as deep as the games you mentioned.
It's worth noting travel in racing games is fairly deep. There's a big difference between skilled and unskilled players. Several hard-to-master skills are involved, like learning the subtle nuances of how to steer perfectly (because steering 4 degrees a second actually produces a different race time than when you took that corner at 5 degrees a second last time,) and learning the right lines for each course is important too.
What's the last racing game where you felt you had completely mastered the game? Even back with Super Mario Kart (probably the racing game I've put the most time into) my times varied considerably race to race, and I was still improving after several years of practice.
So it's a big difference from typical MMORPG travel, where nobody is considered skilled at travel because it's shallow and no challenging skills are involved.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
This conversation has made me see that all other mmo mechanics are severely hindered by fast travel for perhaps the exception of combat, which itself is an integration of mechanics as Deivos said. How the developers of the most successful mmos out there don't see this is beyond me. Maybe this conversation gives hints to that also. To not understand something that is plainly clear is beyond me.
Where does this comment even come from?
The vast majority of MMORPG mechanics work just fine without excessive slow travel.
Are you living in a fantasy world where WOW didn't exist? Because if "all" mechanics were "severely hindered" by fast travel, then WOW would've flopped. Here in real life that didn't happen.
You're more willing to believe a lie than the truth? What benefit do you gain from ignoring all the evidence?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
And please refer to the title of the thread before calling up my literacy skills after rambling about losing in games.
I literally just stepped you through the issue's relevance to the thread title. It was VestigeGamer's vain attempt to use "losing isn't fun; but games have losing" to attempt to rationalize slow travel. I disputed that, and you responded. And you keep responding to it, in spite of the fact that the battle was lost to truth, evidence, and reason long ago.
The correct way for you to have handled it would've been:
Vestige attempted a flawed point about losing to support the slow travel side of the argument.
I posted to point out that his point completely lacks evidence and is just outright wrong.
Because you're literate, you would've read both posts, realized this, and let the issue drop. No further mention of "losing" would've been made.
The wrong way for you to handle it is how you have been:
Vestige said something wrong.
I pointed it out.
You pressed the issue without reading or thinking about the fact that I was right.
I laid out a huge list of games, which served as objective evidence proving my point.
A completely different poster made an unrelated point.
You responded to them saying they had brought up Tetris.
I corrected you yet again.
Reading this, and how you've behaved, wouldn't you agree that "reading and understanding what's being said before responding"hasn't been a behavior you've been following? Knowing that, doesn't my call for literate responses seem reasonable?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
My position from the beginning has been the point that travel is a mechanic that has value in gaming for the depth it delivers when properly integrated, and that we have seen sch value across plenty of games already.
The rest of my dialogue has been correcting inaccurate statements.
Your two's dialogue remains on the idea that a mechanic can't be good because you don't like it, and you've gone to the ends of the earth to try and justify it.
Alright, clearly you don't understand my side of the argument so I'll explain it as succinctly as possible.
No matter how much you integrate slow travel with other systems, it will remain un-fun if you don't make slow travel in itself fun. I thought we established this a long time ago. Also, what we've been trying to tell you, is that making slow travel fun is very expensive. So expensive, in fact, that it would be reckless to try it since you have no guarantees you will succeed.
It is more cost effective, and safe, to spend your efforts on exploration (first time travel), the main content (the "destinations") and don't worry about travel (implement fast travel).
My own preferences do not enter the discussion. This is simply an objective observation. If you can make slow travel fun, I would play that game myself. However the crux of the matter is: No one has managed to make slow travel fun yet and if there is a way to make it fun, likely it is not going to be cheap.
Well you start off by making a mistake, which makes it really hard to agree with your opinion.
"No matter how much you integrate slow travel with other systems, it will remain un-fun if you don't make slow travel in itself fun." Integrating mechanics with each other is how you make games fun.
Combat is an example of this because it is often a mix of multiple gameplay mechanics together. Time, a bit of movement for position/direction based attacks, the manner of input for the controls, etc. You start isolating these mechanics and combat starts getting less interesting. You can establish a flawed argument as long ago as you want. It was corrected a long time ago too.
As for your continued dialogue, that claim is invalidated again as far back as page 6 with pointing out that your claim is at best only the application of western gaming market, fails to reflect that the integration of travel mechanics is a very real element of eastern gaming titles, and that there are existing examples of it's use.
I will agree it is more cost effective and safe to make the same thing over and over again. But that's also how you make games that are going to be progressively less interesting as evidenced by the rush of very similar titles that has lead to failed sales and many MMOs closing even though they followed the same formula implied by you as successful.
Also hence the previous statement;
"MMOs as a global genre are slower to develop and their technical requirements burdens them in a way that they will never be able to match the present technical capacity of a single or smaller scale multiplayer.
This puts a dampener on doing "new" things in the genre not because of what is being done is "bad", but because it is under-developed and the time and cost to invest into it to see it evolve is great. More than many developer have or are willing to invest.
So we have compromises."
"RPG games didn't face 22 years of refinement and evolution to stagnate. Same applies to other game genres. Just because mechanics are newer and more experimental does not mean they should be abandoned for the same old experience. Someone with the skill to do so needs to spend the time and effort to create "22 years of genre experience" for newer game mechanics. To continue growing, trying new things, making bigger better games, worlds, systems, etc. We need not wallow in mediocrity."
What you offered is not objective observation because it has failed to observe many things going on with the games in the market in favor of taking finite snippets to declare it the truth of all. There have been plenty of examples offered by name of active titles directly disproving your last argument, meaning what you said is very much driven by opinion and not objective observation, otherwise they would have been accounted for.
Travel has nowhere near the amount of depth combat has. To make travel interesting you'd have to make travel itself interesting. It is not going to magically turn into a fun activity by attaching it to other mechanics in the game. Travel can be an important element to those other mechanics, but that does not make travel fun. Just like grind is not made fun by the eventual reward at the end.
Do you see the challenges involved? First time travel is easy to make interesting. Many games do it, and then implement fast travel. But to make travel interesting most of the time after that, and in an MMORPG environment no less, is incredibly hard and likely very expensive. So far, no MMORPG has done it (although some people are more easily amused than others).
You talk like its just a simple matter of "doing it". This sort of ignorance of what is doable and what is not is what causes people to concoct these crazy, ill-adviced notions about how the developers only think about money, they are inept and stupid, out of touch with the audience or all of the above. Now I don't know whether you nurse these kinds of theories yourself, but I read them every day on these forums, and this is one of the reasons why.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Comments
Except that statement is untrue as evidenced by games already referenced back on page 6.
Repeating the same invalid argument does not make reality go away.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Your second comment is incorrect. Winning a race is not as simple as having the fastest car. Racing is fundamentally travel, and there's no way around that fact as the core premise across any type of racing mode is ultimately the matter of completing the task of covering a given amount of distance within a time constraint, competitive restraint, obstacle constraint, or otherwise. This applies to continuous racing games such as runners as well as the more finite circuit track games.
Travel is not simply "moving from point A to point B". If you take the literal definition of travel;
"The action of traveling, typically abroad.
Journeys, especially long or exotic ones."
Or more succinctly;
"Go or be moved from place to place."
"Place to place" is not a definitive of "A to B", it is in fact simply pointing out the act of moving around and the place of intent can be any variety of destinations or goals.
And the definition of "go or be moved from place to place" fits exactly with the premise of "move from the start line to the finish line". It depends on the type of the race in question and the rules as to anything beyond that core mechanic, but the fundamental act of travel is always there for that genre.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Are you disputing that there is a 20 min boat ride in the original EQ?
My first comment is pointless because it points out your factual mistake, and you have no rebuttal? Got it!
You said "ultimately the matter of completing the task of covering a given amount of distance within a time constraint, competitive restraint, obstacle constraint, or otherwise".
So it is not just covering the distance, which travel is. You just prove yourself to be incorrect. Thank you!
The appropriate example is American Truck's free run mode, which has nothing BUT moving from point A to B. And we all know how successful that game is, compared to games with fast travel.
Of course, I would not say there is no one like slow travel, since you are arguing that walking around is fun. But hey, don't tell me you think that is the mainstream preference. Otherwise, fast travel would not be so popular.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Your first comment is pointless because it is one game where many have been offered. Invalidating one does not invalidate the rest (ignoring the other points made correcting your argument).
The second point was examples of different rules, not the fundamental mechanic which is travel, so your tangent there isn't even logical.
The appropriate xample is any number of free run games that have been shown to be successful on mobile, platformer and free-run games (Mirror's Edge for example), Traditional racing games, sandboxy racing games like Trackmania, and many others which have indeed proven successful.
I'm arguing that travel when treated as a game mechanic and integrated with the rest of the game and not implemented in isolation is fun.
So please don't lie. It does not further the conversation.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
MMO is such a broad term, it can encapsulate a lot of different genres. I was fixed on RPGs rather than virtual worlds, simulations.
If this had anything to do with the argument I still believe fast travel doesn't take away any of the depth in a virtual world themepark/sandbox game if competition isn't at the fore front.
I said themepark and heavily scripted user experiences tend to not benefit from travel, and as such fast travel is good for them because it delivers players into the defined user experience faster.
The other aspect mentioned was collaborative content, not competitive. Meaning world building, interactive player economies, storytelling, etc which is reliant on the interaction between users to create emergent gameplay value as well as capitalizes on networked tools. Travel benefits this scenario and virtual worlds because it can emulate elements such as item scarcity, migration and hunting, trade of goods becomes an effect of risk/reward as well as a task that depends on user input for success, etc.
You try emulating those elements without travel and you generally have a lot of RNG and timers. RNG is circumvented by time and player volume simply resulting in the inevitable of statistics, and scarcity of technically rare items will go down as inflation overtakes everything. Timers are simply a replacement where you have to wait on a bar instead and there isn't much opportunity for any interactivity there (and the results often rely on RNG there too).
Like the survival game genre for example. If you fast-traveled around the environment then hunting food, foraging for resources, even PvP would suffer because the ability to instantly travel would bypass the challenge the environment is built to pose.
It's about where the content is and how it's being delivered.
When a game is designed so the content is delivered by discrete game elements such as when you are following a chain of quests along a narrative being dictated to you, then fast travel is a help because there's nothing outside of those discrete game elements.
When it's about building a complex set of tools for users to collaborate with, or a virtual world where playing "with/against the environment" is a part of it, or otherwise, you have a scenario where the use of these mechanics and tools allows for emergent gameplay value.
Which is also where a quote stated from Cadwell I've shared a bunch of times comes in;
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Racing is competitive traveling. Races are literally point A to point B or traveling along laps traveling the same environment over and over. Miles are logged and cars move. It's travel.
No matter how much you integrate slow travel with other systems, it will remain un-fun if you don't make slow travel in itself fun. I thought we established this a long time ago. Also, what we've been trying to tell you, is that making slow travel fun is very expensive. So expensive, in fact, that it would be reckless to try it since you have no guarantees you will succeed.
It is more cost effective, and safe, to spend your efforts on exploration (first time travel), the main content (the "destinations") and don't worry about travel (implement fast travel).
My own preferences do not enter the discussion. This is simply an objective observation. If you can make slow travel fun, I would play that game myself. However the crux of the matter is: No one has managed to make slow travel fun yet and if there is a way to make it fun, likely it is not going to be cheap.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
"No matter how much you integrate slow travel with other systems, it will remain un-fun if you don't make slow travel in itself fun." Integrating mechanics with each other is how you make games fun.
Combat is an example of this because it is often a mix of multiple gameplay mechanics together. Time, a bit of movement for position/direction based attacks, the manner of input for the controls, etc. You start isolating these mechanics and combat starts getting less interesting. You can establish a flawed argument as long ago as you want. It was corrected a long time ago too.
As for your continued dialogue, that claim is invalidated again as far back as page 6 with pointing out that your claim is at best only the application of western gaming market, fails to reflect that the integration of travel mechanics is a very real element of eastern gaming titles, and that there are existing examples of it's use.
I will agree it is more cost effective and safe to make the same thing over and over again. But that's also how you make games that are going to be progressively less interesting as evidenced by the rush of very similar titles that has lead to failed sales and many MMOs closing even though they followed the same formula implied by you as successful.
Also hence the previous statement;
"MMOs as a global genre are slower to develop and their technical requirements burdens them in a way that they will never be able to match the present technical capacity of a single or smaller scale multiplayer.
This puts a dampener on doing "new" things in the genre not because of what is being done is "bad", but because it is under-developed and the time and cost to invest into it to see it evolve is great. More than many developer have or are willing to invest.
So we have compromises."
"RPG games didn't face 22 years of refinement and evolution to stagnate. Same applies to other game genres. Just because mechanics are newer and more experimental does not mean they should be abandoned for the same old experience. Someone with the skill to do so needs to spend the time and effort to create "22 years of genre experience" for newer game mechanics. To continue growing, trying new things, making bigger better games, worlds, systems, etc. We need not wallow in mediocrity."
What you offered is not objective observation because it has failed to observe many things going on with the games in the market in favor of taking finite snippets to declare it the truth of all. There have been plenty of examples offered by name of active titles directly disproving your last argument, meaning what you said is very much driven by opinion and not objective observation, otherwise they would have been accounted for.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I never did mean I could fast travel anywhere I wanted, I don't think any MMO does that, you still have to travel to most locations.
Even though I do think it would be beneficial in games like creative mode Minecraft where you are just world building, even in an MMO game.
Personally I thought the point of survival games was to progress to make things easier. If not by using some sort of fast traveling, by growing your own crops at home so you don't have to keep traveling.
Now I'm thinking what actually is traveling, I hope we're not using it as any form of movement no matter how small the journey. What a pointless discussion this was.
Travel to me is not the same as exploring. Take survival games, most of the time I'm exploring, not traveling, two different things to me. When you travel you're purposefully going to a certain location, exploring you're not.
So if I find something interesting when I'm exploring I should be able to craft something so I can travel to that location faster, be it a bike, car, plane, teleportation if I want to bypass the traveling. All dependent on the stage of the game I'm at. Isn't that a form of depth in regard to travel?
For example how you just described your gameplay scenario. Finding a specific location and wanting to "bypass" the travel implies quite a lot about the design of the rest of the game that bypassing content (or non-content) is the immediate goal. It makes sense if the world is populated by static elements, but what about, say, Saga of Ryzom where resource nodes change places around the environment and creatures have migratory cycles that makes resource gathering into a hunt rather than a strict circuit? It changes things dramatically, and while faster modes of travel (vehicles, mounts, etc) might be desired to achieve shortening the cycle, fast travel (teleportation, zone warp, etc) across environments introduces the issue of accidentally missing the very content you're looking for.
It depends on the design of the game for that, and when you have played some games and use that as a reference to define your scope and familiarity with a tool then it greatly skews the assumptions you make about it's actual range of uses and how it's been integrated with other games.
So different modes of travel generally all have their own place, and saying one mode should be present and used in all designs generally overlooks how it can make or break other game mechanics.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
SWG had a similar thing with resources, they'd respawn at different locations and you'd have to explore and search for them. And that is a game that would easily of benefited from being able to craft a teleporter as most of the planets were very stale/dull and you wouldn't miss anything deep/dynamic when traveling from home to your harvesters. If you did it was a rarity.
And in no way would it affect the economy.
And if it's a static enough element that returning to it multiple times is a valid option, then it would indeed have an impact on economy, as it'd imply you could double, triple, or further multiply the output of resources from a particular location and in turn propagate inflation of the market. Besides which, if you have a means to obtain a rare resource or something that is hard to get by bypassing the challenge or time it takes to get it, then you have bypassed the very reason that good is "rare" and you may rapidly devalue it or imbalance other aspects of the game.
Your immediate example was again to draw from a game and user experience that curtailed outside examples. SWG isn't Ryzom, there are differences there in the way the economy, gameplay, and resource migration works. I know it might be a close reference so it's easier for you to understand, but stop making the mistake of "X game is like this therefore Y game must be too".
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You could also multiply your output with out fast traveling. Gatherers would place as many harvesters as they could afford. Fast travel wouldn't speed up the output, if anything it would become a bottleneck. You'd be hanging around waiting. It would allow you to go do other things though.
And resources had a finite amount so no matter how many harvesters you used you'd always get the same amount.
And no developer would implement a fast travel system so extreme that rare resources would devalue like you're suggesting.
The mechanic that kills in game economies more than fast travel is a global auction house.
SWG may not be Ryzom but it's an open virtual world, sandbox(esque), community driven MMO. Maybe Ryzom does the whole collecting resources a lot more interesting/challenging than SWG where you had to tediously scan areas of the map with a scanner and follow the percentages untill you found the sweet spot. I never got passed the starter area to find out.
My "assumptions" only went as far as providing an example from a game I know, not trying to draw ideas up about a separate game I'm unfamiliar with and interjecting mechanics from one onto the other in speculation.
In regards to "not static enough", it would be a case of a mechanic set without supporting tools for players to keep up.
And being able to make a fast travel means to reach a destination that's supposed to be hard to reach would directly counter the logic of it being hard to reach, and would directly devalue the resources that were supposed to be rare.
If you are talking about mounts and things as fast travel then you're not in the same camp Nariu and otherwise are in, as you are talking about not-as-slow travel. If you are referring to portal locations, then it becomes a very large question of the mechanics surrounding it, how widely available they are, and the cost of use to balance the effect it has on the rest of the game.
And as stated before; "I know it might be a close reference so it's easier for you to understand, but stop making the mistake of "X game is like this therefore Y game must be too"."
Everything has a use case and everything has an impact on other elements of a game. Fast travel's (teleporting around locations) presence impacts the functional scale of the game world and accessibility to the contents of the game world greatly for good and bad, and it ultimately depends on the type of content and manner in which it is being delivered as to whether or not it's going to be ideal or cause issues.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
The fact stated in this thread is that players don't like shallow travel. You don't dispute that fact by naming games which have implemented deep travel (racing games, and GTA.)
Nobody is arguing that players don't like deep travel. I'm simply pointing out the reality that MMORPGs don't have deep travel, and wouldn't have it because their focus is on core RPG features rather than travel.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
[mod edit]
I was the one who brought up Tetris.
It proved indisputably that losing is a popular trait for games to have. That was the main point, not the travel point.
The travel point was just an incidental supporting point which provided strong evidence that games in no way require travel to be successful.
[mod edit]
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
What's the last racing game where you felt you had completely mastered the game? Even back with Super Mario Kart (probably the racing game I've put the most time into) my times varied considerably race to race, and I was still improving after several years of practice.
So it's a big difference from typical MMORPG travel, where nobody is considered skilled at travel because it's shallow and no challenging skills are involved.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Where does this comment even come from?
The vast majority of MMORPG mechanics work just fine without excessive slow travel.
Are you living in a fantasy world where WOW didn't exist? Because if "all" mechanics were "severely hindered" by fast travel, then WOW would've flopped. Here in real life that didn't happen.
You're more willing to believe a lie than the truth? What benefit do you gain from ignoring all the evidence?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
And please refer to the title of the thread before calling up my literacy skills after rambling about losing in games.
The correct way for you to have handled it would've been:
- Vestige attempted a flawed point about losing to support the slow travel side of the argument.
- I posted to point out that his point completely lacks evidence and is just outright wrong.
- Because you're literate, you would've read both posts, realized this, and let the issue drop. No further mention of "losing" would've been made.
The wrong way for you to handle it is how you have been:- Vestige said something wrong.
- I pointed it out.
- You pressed the issue without reading or thinking about the fact that I was right.
- I laid out a huge list of games, which served as objective evidence proving my point.
- A completely different poster made an unrelated point.
- You responded to them saying they had brought up Tetris.
- I corrected you yet again.
Reading this, and how you've behaved, wouldn't you agree that "reading and understanding what's being said before responding" hasn't been a behavior you've been following? Knowing that, doesn't my call for literate responses seem reasonable?"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Do you see the challenges involved? First time travel is easy to make interesting. Many games do it, and then implement fast travel. But to make travel interesting most of the time after that, and in an MMORPG environment no less, is incredibly hard and likely very expensive. So far, no MMORPG has done it (although some people are more easily amused than others).
You talk like its just a simple matter of "doing it". This sort of ignorance of what is doable and what is not is what causes people to concoct these crazy, ill-adviced notions about how the developers only think about money, they are inept and stupid, out of touch with the audience or all of the above. Now I don't know whether you nurse these kinds of theories yourself, but I read them every day on these forums, and this is one of the reasons why.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky