Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Portals are instant travel.
Fast travel is like airships and/or flight paths.
There certainly won't be portals that allow the transport of bulk resources.
And it's highly unlikely that we will have any form of instant travel between cities in a fashion that would make porting back and forth as efficient for transporting resources as using mules and caravans.
Any instant travel between cities would have to quite a long cooldown.
We still have to see what the fast travel network for the Scientific Metropolises will be like... and then how they might connect if there are more than one Scientific Metropolis.
(I doubt they would connect)
Especially when devs and streamers, etc hold impromptu parties.
As compelling and profitable as a mage taxi service sounds in a game with limited travel options, I'd probably be against it, unless it had some serious limitations or came at a crazily high materials cost.
Maybe a "get out of jail" spell that teleports you and your group out of danger, but has a super long cooldown and costs a fortune?
No ruby slippers?
Well maby summoners can get a spell to make a portal for short range teleport in siege wars?
If there is magic, there should be a portal. Or at least Clerics and Mage could do it. I mean in what kind of world that people can shoot fireballs out of their fingertips, but cannot open a space-time gate.
@ Mosaic said: Any body remember Corpse retrieval in EQ dungeons? Yeah, lets avoid that to an extent).
Heck ya! That wasn't fun. lol All the more reason for caution and trying to take a buddy with you on your travels. lol I say this yet I am usually solo playing mornings. lol
Before instant travel became a thing, it was challenging and dangerous often times to get to a dungeon or raid. These things can be time consuming for those who have limited time to play. I hope they find a way to counter that other then making things too easy.
This is a topic where the Ashes community and dev team has caused sway in my way of thinking. I've never been a fan of dungeon finder stuff, so I was happy to hear that isn't a thing here. But.....I was disappointed with the thought that I wouldn't be able to teleport to various cities or points on the map at will. With the aid of a mage or not.
After listening to all of the live streams, watching all the youtube videos, and talking it out with players in the community, it's obvious that the world itself is being created with the lack of fast travel in mind. It will also be uniform across the board. The only exception so far being science nodes that will allow fast travel to nodes within the zone of influence. That means that Intrepid will make sure that typical destinations won't be outlandishly far apart, but there will be distance enough for you to really feel like you're traveling somewhere.
It's like a vacation trip across the country/world by plane. You walk into the airport, walk onto a plane, take a nap, suddenly you're 1,000 miles away! But...does it really feel like you went very far? The weather might be different, but you may as well have just gone to the next town over.
What I have always been a fan of, and always will, is having at least one point that you can teleport back to. A way to return home at the end of a day, when you realize that you are up way too late and you really need to get to bed, or when something comes up that needs your attention immediately and you need to log off. Taking another 45 minutes to run home just isn't feasible in either situation. I can live with the fact that I'll just have to camp in the woods, but I'd be much more comfortable if this was an option.
There should be zero fast travel in the game, I think not even for the scientific nodes they mentioned it may exist in.
Agree 100% to initial Comment. Because then that'll lead to an easy to game to finish in less than a month - and that'll affect Payment Model too
This, in turn, creates regional cultures, which would be pretty awesome! I think I've only seen this before in EVE, where different areas and security levels of worlds lead to oftentimes radically different player cultures. Some people will never even visit some areas because of the distances and dangers involved in travel.
This could really be an interesting thing to see how it turns out in Ashes.
And it's an interesting discussion too, because I see valid points for either side of the play spectrum - both pros and cons.
But here and now, finally, these discussions may actually go somewhere... because we'll get to put the theories into practice with an actual game.
(I'm living my life under the assumption that AoC won't go the way of EQN.)
Of course, I'm easy to please. As long as I'm happy with my dwarven character, I'll play no matter how they handle travel.
I could be galloping around on one of these bad boys and still be happy if I got my hammer and shield by my side for grand adventure!
How awesome would it be if a summoner can actually sneak behind the enemy walls and start teleporting party members in for a sneak attack. It feels totally within the lore/physics of a magical world. Provided the spell has a significant cast time and/or long cool down.
They could implement something similar, maybe guildies or friends on friends list etc. Obviously can't be used in combat, has say a 30min cool down etc.
So, bottom line is that I hope that teleporting will not be a thing, so that the breeding/taming profession will be meaningful like every other feature they are aiming to implement.