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.
I want a recall stone.
Menda Goodbody
Member, Braver of Worlds, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I know you want us to travel everywhere manually, and for the most part I agree. However, it would be nice to have a "once a day" recall to the nearest city/town/whatever. It would help friends gather up when they first login or let a player relax and log off for the night in town...
0
Comments
This would not be a fast travel, as it would take just as long or maybe even slower than traveling by mount (considering mount sprinting or whatever). However, this would let you be afk for a bit of time, to eat some food irl or something, but still leave you vulnerable to the open world PvP. Risk vs reward, and all that.
The risk here is that you kill a boss and have to then travel back while potentially dying and losing the loot you just earned. I like this and I understand it completely but there does need to be some form of "oh shit I need to log off RIGHT NOW". I don't want to be forced to log back in and then have to travel back to town. This just seems backwards from quality of life changes that have evolved over the years. Put it on a FAT cooldown but give us the chance to "hearth" back home to mommy.
Being able to farm rare or valuable materials and then immediately teleporting to a city will cause a ton of issues.
In ashes you are at risk of losing something if you dont work to defend yourself. That's a core principle of the game that would be damaged with a hearthstone like feature.
I disagree that a once a day travel would change the game that much.
No to the fullest. This is how it starts.
Then... " but if we have that..i want this " and the snowball rolls down to the swamp.
If they implement it anyway, it needs to be like the family travel system, where you can't do it with any kind of loot you can drop upon death, and just to the nearest node of lvl 1 or higher. Not porting to a specific one.
a simple example is the hearthstone in WoW
1h cd originally, finally to see it down to 30 min and even 15 if in guild with high level enough (when there was guild level)
When you begin to ease a thing, it is a door you open for "ever more".
Because "1 day CD is really long, 18h would be better, it allows to have it up when you come back home even if you used it just when you stopped to go in bed" and then another reason to ask less, and less. Some time, just saying "no", even if only a really little bit help could be nice for the game, is better for long term.
The game is around having a large world, and time to go from one point to the other. on another topic, it was for the same reason i said i was totally against an autotravel like in BDO. While i like it in BDO and think it fits well with the game, And could appreciate it in some kind of MMORPG, not in a sandbox in witch "fast travel" is limited to scientific node (with a lot of limitations). I am already quite not sure if family teleport is really a good thing so getting more . . .
about the need of "insta DC" i think there is some solution.
the really dangerous place is dungeon, make the relog of character who was inside a dungeon... just in the entry. (and due to short logout from little matter like desync, or box doing a reboot, lets wait the dc be like 10 min, or 30min long for it)
Then the game becomes "I'll do one big resource gather/quest adventure a day and use my free teleport to bypass any possible dangers".
Realistically people are going to do 1 big resource gather/distant quest adventure a day unless they are hardcore, so really this "24 hour compromise" is actually an entire gamechanger since it essentially just becomes a "time to do my daily resource gathering" instead of what you're intending
"Once a week" is closer to a "compromise" but still pretty bad.
Why are we even toying with the idea of invalidating the core concepts of the game?
Edit: The only way a recall stone wouldn't break the game is if similar to what you said it teleported you but left a lootbag of all your droppable items where you teleported from. Then another player could stumble upon where you were and take all of it.
That way you get to go home if you need to, and other people aren't missing out on banditry
Honestly couldn't have put that better myself.
It's just my personal opinion but I think there shouldn't be any fast travel at all in the game. Even for stuff like the scientific nodes as it would kill any sense of scale in the world just to TP around it.
But even just a home TP stone would just be a minor convenience at best and could bring with it a myriad of game-play issues and exploits that is really not worth it in the long run, and that's ignoring the fact that Intrepid is trying to make a genuinely interesting and unique open world with global PvP.
In a lesser game devs would normally implement things like fast travel to cover the fact that their world is just empty with copy/pasted trash mobs with nothing to naturally explore and discover.
It was my understanding that with Ashes they're aiming for a open-world where just by traveling back from a dungeon or resource gathering that you could discover something interesting that you never would have seen otherwise.
Just my two cents, take what you will from it.
Yep - it also reinforces the core risk v. reward aspect of travel.
They run out far from their base, look at their map and see how far they have to run to get back and... despair?
So you have to put in effort. I'm sorry, but just because you "don't want to have to walk back" doesn't mean you shouldn't have to. Maybe take that return trip into account when you set out in the first place.
It makes me angry that people complain when anything has even an ounce of effort tied to it, so they try to cheapen the experience for others.
You have to run through another zone to get to the zone you want to be at? Enjoy the trip and put in the effort. Don't whine about wanting flying mounts or teleports or fast travel because effort scares you.
Edit: I always hear the complaint that "But our time is too valuable to waste on such things". Well yes, but if you really felt that way you wouldn't/shouldn't be playing an MMO (or games in general) in the first place.
If you want fast travel and being able to go from point A to B quicker, maybe AoC isn't the game for you? And that's okay!
In Star Wars Galaxies, when we wanted to leave a planet, you had to use a ship at a special port.
This ship originally was once every 30 min.
Becoming a Jedi took between 6 month´s to a full year IRL time.
Time is the one thing needed to expand a game beyond a mobile mentality of " click and achievement ".
This includes planned things such as scientific nodes and family summons.
It is just bad for open world-based competition and goes against the core concept of risk vs reward.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
It really seems more and more that you should be playing some other game.
Open world competition and risk v reward is not as extreme as you apparently imagine.
member of Gray Sentinels
However, I'm a total casual with a family, and if I have to go afk or sign out, I don't really want to be stuck in the middle of murder mobs, especially with xp debt on death. In this regard I actually hope the devs keep some form of the ley line teleport available to get unstuck in alpha. They never return you to a town, but they're usually safe enough to go afk for a couple minutes, and if a ganker wants to pk me while I'm away... well that's on me.
Honestly, I think that’s an example of risk v. Reward they are taking into account by NOT providing any fast travel options.
My guess is that you would hear Intrepid recommend you logout before they would give you an insta-safe easy button.
Traveling matters, that's a key aspect of Ashes. And that's why players are supposed to "plan their trip" in Ashes - either time your farming / adventure and travel back to a node before you need to logout, or have a plan to find a quiet spot to logout in the wild, or find a nearby tavern to logout.
That might be a good idea though, it gives an incentive (the ability to semi-afk travel) and encourages more ppl to defend caravans.
I would argue that the line between "click and achieve" and "this takes way too long to balance life and gaming" is much bigger than you seem to suggest.
I'm torn between both sides of this argument. I want a way to not get stuck 45 minutes from being able to log out of the game but I also would HATE for players to simply hearth home after a raid and not have any risk on the return travel. With current direction, my option is to simply log out where I am and have to hoof it back alone later.
At what point do we/they realize that the game should still be fun to play. A good life is about give and take from all parties involved. Games are no different.
A simple log out system that allows you to safely log out where you are, problem solved.
That creates another problem though.
You see people coming to attack you for all your loot? Just log out and wait them out.
This new issue is then solved by a logout timer, where even if you force-close your character persists in the world for that timer, but then you run into complaints of people who logged out stress-free with no perceived danger, so they skipped the countdown, and then they maybe die to some mob that wandered too close after they closed the game or some player who just came over the nearby hill and sees them before the character disappears.
That being said, the latter is still preferable
I would say the former is preferable.
Put a 10 secoand countdown time for logging out, but make that countdown viable for everyone.
If you are attacked before the timer runs out, you aren't logging out.
That way, you cant just log out on someone if you perceive danger
Agreed. The old /camp rule is just fine.