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EQN Transportation
Etris
Member Posts: 13
Part of the nostalgia of Everquest 1 which brought on a forced social experience were the Boat rides along with making Druid / Wizard friends.
I personally would vote for options 1 and 3. Flight Paths or flying mounts kill MMO's. I want to beg for SoW or love Bard Speed again.
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EQ2 fan sites
I think having a 'return to home/city/bind' option, that could maybe be used once a <timeframe>. Would be a good idea for helping people get out of mistakes and get back to civilization if you need something. But it should be a one way trip, and then you have to run back to wherever you were before again.
...least it would help me, being on call all the time I might have to leave at the drop of a hat. So knowing my guy is safe somewhere definitely helps.
Flying mounts can work if they fit in with the lore but if it a transport that is meant to get you past areas then not so much. I'd much prefer having to use flying mounts to reach areas up in the air like a sky citadel or some other out of the way place.
As for actual player travel I'd prefer if people didn't zip all over the place but actually be in the game, If you must zip to one point make it player interaction (druid/wizard). The reason is if you are running around in the world you might see another person and help them out if they look like they are in trouble or they might help you.
As for my views on long boat trips, my very first post in this forum shows that.
The more you have people zipping around on their own the less of a world it feels like, now i'm even okay with going to a stone to transport because thats at least a central location where you can meet people, however i don't want any of that pick a location and telejport ala Fallout 3/GW2 style. Although in Fallout 3s case it was a single player game which is the only type of case I feel insta porting is fine, never in a MMO unless it involves other players or a central location to another central location.
I'm very much a social type people, I will try and strike up conversations, anything that restricts that I'm against, get people needing each other and it fosters a good community, let them do everything by themselves (even if others are around ala Rift) and zip all over the place and it won't. Personal view of course.
I voted for options 1 & 3.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
This is sort of off topic. But I'm also against Auction House.
I loved a player driven market in EC Tunnel. It allowed players to build names for themselves. Servers knew the scammer from the loyal traders.
One of my favorite stories (I was young) was when I paid 300 gold to a level 50 wizard as my 17 or so ranger for a Trueshot bow. He said he needed to get it from the bank...so I waited....for 2 hours....he never returned.
I laughed and cried....
But that's Everquest! The only game on the market that invokes EMOTION. I didn't really cry...
Spires/rings with a recall ability as well.
You have to collect the shard at the spire first (utilizing legs, mount, boat etc). seems the masses so far do not want fast travel for the most part....
I liked it just after Velious then freeze it. Circles, Druids and Wizards, boats and bind points.
The only change I'd make is give everyone a basic bind skill, not just casters. That won't take travel out or reduce Wizard/Druid utility. I was a cleric so I had bind, but I never thought it was fair to Rogues/Warriors and the rest to not get a bind.
Asdar
Are 20 minute boats really popular?
I suppose it gives people a chance to chat and fish or whatever, but I suspect even more people would prefer to get to their destination sooner.
@Nadia, how did programmed travel routes, like the horses in DAoC destroy immersion? Or the steampunk airships in WoW? I don't think either destroyed the immersion (despite my perfectly-sane, innate hatred of all things gnome).
I mostly agree with @whilan';s point about individual transportation options (mounts, etc) hurting the social aspect of the game. I'd even extend this to say that any fast travel option that doesn't involve a player has the same effect. A portal stone without some kind of delay (like the EQ1 Spires-Nexus portal) does not give anyone a reason to slow down and see what the silly enchanter is doing.
I don't have a problem with flying personal mounts, (as long as the in-game upkeep cost is brutally steep) so I voted all of the above, but I also wanted a None of the Above answer.
Now, how do we avoid the Pegasii pollution problem?
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
At least for me it has to do more with the feel of the world. I'll take EQ for example, mind as well right?
You had 3 continents, when you switched between these you had to take a boat, which took you through a zone. It made it feel like that other island was some distant place away because the boat was the only way to get there and it took a while to get there. anyone who came along with you became your traveling companion as talking to them was really the only thing you could do beyond jump in the water and swim there. So it gave you an chance to talk with someone else.
You didn't do it often but when you did it was out of the norm of what you did. I still remember it to this day even though it was long ago. It gave you time to sit down, stop for a moment and talk to the people around you instead of going from one quest to the next.
Granted I wouldn't want to do it all the time but it was nice when it worked out that way. I managed to find a guild once by talking to someone on the dock in Qeynos which would not have happened if I could have teleported to my destination.
It's more about what that symbolizes rather then standing on a boat for 20 mins. It lets you stop, take in the world, kind of like stopping to smell the roses every so often which most people dont' do now a days.
Yes people prefer to get to their destination faster, but i'm not so sure what they prefer is actually what they'd want in the long run. It's a community building aspect, at least it is for me.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
When considering immersion, I'd very much prefer a low-flying transport on a pre-defined path meant to show you specific areas of the landscape. Rather than a insta-port from A->B. I think this was the point of option 2. This is not to say EQ1 transport was lacking - I loved it. Rather, I can see value in showing players landscape that they may not have considered. IE: Instead of begging a druid to port me from faydark to butcherblock, I could either run, or hop on a local 'faster' travel option. After 10x trips to the city, I feel that using 10 minutes to run back and fourth is a bit wasteful to the user.
To your point I agree, user-controlled flying takes away from immersion.
I am okay with wizard portal spires and spells, like in EQ1 (but not in EQ2) and Druid rings (same). I am also ok with Gate/Bind as a caster ability only. NO NPC that does it for you, make you ask another player. Boats, like EQ1 and I guess if an area needed an airship (like Legacy of Ykesha)...as long as they were all slow travel.
-NO POK book thingies, no Guild portals (like in EQ2). Basically, nothing that forces you away from other players.
The reason is this. There are at least 100 MMOs where you can get the usual fast travel, instant travel, no social contact what so ever. Why not have at least ONE game where you do things a bit like you did in the old days.
I am also okay if they have specific servers that are oldstyle EQ rules. EQ1 is notorious for having different ruleset servers, whether it is Fironia Vie where every item can be traded for, the PVP servers, progression servers...etc. If they went and added "easy mode" servers, that is fine by me as long as they have "traditional EQ" servers. This is what I think will happen, they will make different rulesets servers. SOE did it in both of their EQ games.
I'd argue that this removes control from the player in the game. Lets say you need to get to point B which is on a different continent to complete a quest, or meet a friend to make a trade. You have to go to work in a half hour. Lets say the world is large and would take you 40 minutes to run.
I find it rather unappealing to say there is no way to get to your friend without one of a select group of classes that can transport you - if they aren't available, you can't do what you need to in the game. Why not provide limited user control over their transportation? Why not provide them with a way to get around in the world once they have explored it?
In EQ1, I had a wizard and druid box specifically for this purpose. Not only did it save me hours and hours of running time, but I was able to make a lot of cash in the meantime from random people pushing platinum on me saying I was amazing for porting them. I don't want to be that person again, who has an extra $15 a month to enable my transportation.
Druid and wizzy port but have most location ports very hard to get and when a druid/wizzy have that port they become know for there capabilities.
Also have more than one way to get to a place and maybe a secret way like the teleportaion room in old EQ which very few knew about.