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"Fast Travel" / Ashes and Valheim
novercalis
Member, Founder, Kickstarter
I think most of us agree Fast travel is a bad idea. I believe there was a decent compromise was made, with having a fast travel tied to a node type and works only for those, city to city? (CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG) and that is fine.
my concern is other potential fast travel, such as gates/teleports/recall.
I think there should be SOME degree of gating / recalling / teleporting. One makes the mage and/or wizard class a distinctive character but have restrictions.
Definition:
Recall - able to fast travel to home only.
Teleport 1 - Able to fast travel to City. Self only OR
Teleport 2 - Able to fast travel to a marked spot. Self Only
City Gate - Able to teleport from specific city node to other specific city node. (In current system iirc)
Magical portal - Created by specific class(es) to allow fast travel for multiple people.
Now let's talk about restrictions.
I believe we can have all of these but with strict restrictions.
First, ALL FAST TRAVEL WILL NOT WORK after leaving a dungeon. You will have a Dungeon Debuff of 1 IN-GAME hour. Unable to recall/teleport/gate. Certain Items/Mats can also prevent you from recalling/teleporting/gating.
Like in Valheim - you're unable to use a gate when you have ores on you. Quest items from dungeon bosses / or highly sought mats can prevent you from using fast travel.
Additional restrctions.
Recall - Can only be done from City to home and from the same node the home resides in. 3 hour IN-GAME cooldown
Teleport 1 - For specific class(es) - they can pick up to 5 cities, 1 from each node type only and is permanent. May be able to travel there freely city to city or a IN-GAME cooldown of 5 hours from anywhere in the world to the city. The cities they have chosen is permanent. Only way to remove it is if that city is destroyed. or falls down to tier 2?3? Then the caster may chose another city of that same type (military, market, science, religion...).
Teleport 2 - Self only for specific magical class(es). Has an in-game cooldown, can be tied to node it resides in only or adjacent node if needed.
City gate - intrepid already has a rule attached to it iirc.
magical portal- can only be opened if no-one is under the dungeon debuff or is carring banned items. Magical gate teleports everyone, including the caster, so this prevents mage services and goes on a LONGER in-game cooldown. Anyone in that group portal that has a dungeon debuff or carrying items that are banned from portals will be left behind, alone!
I do think there should be some access of fast travelling after a fail dungeon raid or excursion. But we can limit the how. So farmers gathering ores, plants for big ticket items may not be able to fast travel and have to risk not getting pvped for those highly sought rare mats. Dungeon loots - you aren't safe yet - now you need to make it back home safely with your entourage. Maybe the boss loot is so epic, it spawned a caravan - and the loot isn't officially yours until you can make it back into town.
overall - I never thought of this until recently playing Valheim and I found it intriguing they restricted the portal because of ores and we can use that type of mechanic here for some compromises. It is unfortunate Valheim is easy to loophole the ores - log out from your main server at your base, start a new world, mine there then log back into your main server - tada. But obviously you cant do that in AoC.
my concern is other potential fast travel, such as gates/teleports/recall.
I think there should be SOME degree of gating / recalling / teleporting. One makes the mage and/or wizard class a distinctive character but have restrictions.
Definition:
Recall - able to fast travel to home only.
Teleport 1 - Able to fast travel to City. Self only OR
Teleport 2 - Able to fast travel to a marked spot. Self Only
City Gate - Able to teleport from specific city node to other specific city node. (In current system iirc)
Magical portal - Created by specific class(es) to allow fast travel for multiple people.
Now let's talk about restrictions.
I believe we can have all of these but with strict restrictions.
First, ALL FAST TRAVEL WILL NOT WORK after leaving a dungeon. You will have a Dungeon Debuff of 1 IN-GAME hour. Unable to recall/teleport/gate. Certain Items/Mats can also prevent you from recalling/teleporting/gating.
Like in Valheim - you're unable to use a gate when you have ores on you. Quest items from dungeon bosses / or highly sought mats can prevent you from using fast travel.
Additional restrctions.
Recall - Can only be done from City to home and from the same node the home resides in. 3 hour IN-GAME cooldown
Teleport 1 - For specific class(es) - they can pick up to 5 cities, 1 from each node type only and is permanent. May be able to travel there freely city to city or a IN-GAME cooldown of 5 hours from anywhere in the world to the city. The cities they have chosen is permanent. Only way to remove it is if that city is destroyed. or falls down to tier 2?3? Then the caster may chose another city of that same type (military, market, science, religion...).
Teleport 2 - Self only for specific magical class(es). Has an in-game cooldown, can be tied to node it resides in only or adjacent node if needed.
City gate - intrepid already has a rule attached to it iirc.
magical portal- can only be opened if no-one is under the dungeon debuff or is carring banned items. Magical gate teleports everyone, including the caster, so this prevents mage services and goes on a LONGER in-game cooldown. Anyone in that group portal that has a dungeon debuff or carrying items that are banned from portals will be left behind, alone!
I do think there should be some access of fast travelling after a fail dungeon raid or excursion. But we can limit the how. So farmers gathering ores, plants for big ticket items may not be able to fast travel and have to risk not getting pvped for those highly sought rare mats. Dungeon loots - you aren't safe yet - now you need to make it back home safely with your entourage. Maybe the boss loot is so epic, it spawned a caravan - and the loot isn't officially yours until you can make it back into town.
overall - I never thought of this until recently playing Valheim and I found it intriguing they restricted the portal because of ores and we can use that type of mechanic here for some compromises. It is unfortunate Valheim is easy to loophole the ores - log out from your main server at your base, start a new world, mine there then log back into your main server - tada. But obviously you cant do that in AoC.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
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Comments
If you travel to a location, you should take in to account the need to travel back.
There should be as little fast travel as possible, fast travel makes the world look smaller too.
Current fast travel is limited to requiring scientific metropolis's and family summon. Scientific metropolis citizens can teleport between nodes under the metropolis influence which has a limit of 1/5 of the world map. Only the metropolis citizens can move to any node within influence. Citizens of the nodes under the metropolis may teleport from their home node to the metropolis and back; and, nowhere else.
Family summon has a maximum of 9 players linked together that can be summoned to one another. Currently, summons can be once every 1/2 hour but I would be surprised if that does not change during testing in Alpha 2. Players cannot be summoned with any mats, gatherables, or certs in their inventory; or, into combat or to save corrupted players, etc. While players can be summoned to and from dungeons, they cannot carry any of the common loot from dungeons while doing so. Creating and maintaining a family has an unspecified upkeep cost which means having access to family summon will have a cost.
The intent of family summon is to provide players with a way to join their regular friends quickly when logging in. Restrictions are intended to prevent abuse.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Fast_travel
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Fast_travel#Family_summon
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Families
While a constant supply of ideas is good, I wouldn't expect any significant changes to family summon before the scheduled testing period of Alpha 2.
I wish there was a distance limit on the family summon. The family summon should be a tool for new players to easily find each other in the same area, not teleporting across the entire planet. Maybe if the distance was capped at 1/8th the world map on a 8 hour cool down with no inventory we might have something.
I mean the better move would be to take all fast travel out, and have "Zero Fast Travel" as a key feature, right under "Risk Vs Reward." on the main page of the website.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
This is actually about the only limitation that Intrepid could place on the family teleport that would eliminate the exploits I can see with it.
The range should be roughly the distance from the start to the end of the largest dungeon - and no longer.
There would still be a few minor exploits with it, but they would be minor. If Intrepid made this change to it, I would personally support the family summons as a whole (not that I think my support means anything to anyone).
Presumably, groups of regular players will belong to the same area and if players want to play with others farther out, they can just walk in the game that is supposed to have very limited fast travel anyway.
I think that such region locking would actually encourage players to stay closer to their friends.
If the dungeons are designed well, it won't be possible to just run from one end to the other, getting there will require fighting.
My experiences with open dungeons in other games (where the design intent is to have roughly the same number of players in it as Ashes has said they want) is that it could take an hour or more to fight from one end to the other.
EQ2's Sol Ro was a great example of that back in vanilla EQ2, heading to the bottom of it to talk to Nagafen for the dragon language quest could take several hours.
While I am not saying that this is you, many people here seem to forget that dungeons in Ashes will see mobs respawning. So rather than being able to have a clear path back to the dungeon entrance, you will find that you have all the mobs you just killed standing in your path - this means an hour spent fighting in means an hour fighting back out - this is all without taking the variable of PvP in to account.
Based on the design intent of the family summons, I don't see the need for it to summon long distance. If you have a friend log on a bit later than normal, you wouldn't have walked half way across Verra without them. In a game like Ashes, that trip is half the fun of the adventure and you would want to do that with your friend. You may, however, start fighting your way down the local dungeon. If this is the case, your friend getting to the entrance of that dungeon shouldn't be an issue, and a summons allowing that friend to be ported to you has no need for a long range.
One thing to keep in mind, if there is a range limit on the summons, a single group 8 players will be able to all but lock out caravan travel within an area that size.
If that range is that of a node, then a group of 8 players will be able to lock out caravan access to that node.
agree 100%
Hence the restriction part of the post I mentioned. Farmers/Gatherers won't be able to port out.
what exactly is complicated?
you're tied to the city you're bound to. So you picked City X and in Y node. U cant port to city X nor city Y.
Sure, the second u walked from city Y into Node X, u can port to city X but thats because it's your hard bound recall spot. You can not port to any other cities in their nodes.
Why do we need a port to a city in the first place?
Hopefully you have a better answer than "convenience", because that really isn't a need.
Personally, I don't like the idea of changing the intent of family summon from enabling friends to quickly start playing together into a primary purpose being a way of avoiding working through a dungeon after death. I am hoping that certain areas such as the inside of dungeons and raids will be off limits for summoning. However, if the range is reduced that much, I would be glad to see it removed altogether.
As far as a group using it to blockade an area against caravans, it could be. Speeds are going to matter. Currently, the intent is for summons to be: "Long duration cast (30 seconds to a minute) with an approximate 30 minute cooldown that slowly summons each of your family members to your location (up to eight members)." That looks like 1 person per 30-60 seconds but could be 30-60 seconds total. If the total summon time is several minutes, then catching the caravan may not be possible. It will depend on the speed of mounts vs. caravans. But I can see your point. I expect that will be brought up a lot during testing.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Family_summon
First of all, the game should have a mechanic in place so that if the groups cleric dies, someone else in the group has a means of resurrecting them (cast a buff on or summon an item for a group member so they are able to resurrect that specific player once in the next hour, or some such).
With that in place, there is no real way in which someone can die, there not being a resurrection available, yet there being someone in place to port back to - which is the scenario you need to be in for a summon to be used to avoid working through a dungeon after a death.
Its just that the game has been no fast travel since the beginning, and having it betrays the trust that we have in steven.
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
Here's the 3 reasons why I don't like fast travel in mmorpgs:
1. It makes the world smaller. When you're able to cross the map in seconds the entire world feels like a tiny village
2. It reduces random interaction. You wanna know how many actual players I run into in the open world in ESO? Hardly any at all. Even if I don't use fast travel, everyone else does so they teleport from the towns to the dungeons and back without ever going out into the world.
3. It turns what should be a grand adventure into a non-important side trip. In the Lord of the Rings when the hobbits reach Rivendale there is a huge sense of relief after the trials of travelling through the wilderness being hunted by the Nazgul. Now imagine if they just teleported instantly from the Shire to Rivendale....
A game like Ashes relies so much on the world being big and meaningful interactions in the open world that any kind of fast travel has the potential to ruin the entire gameplay experience.
@Meytal Wandering Mist answered your question perfectly.
If you personally like fast travel and it’s a deal breaker for you, then you might not like AoC because thankfully it will have very limited fast travel.
Edit: word
It's already starting...
You "don't have time" but you want to play MMORPG which are time consuming games, especially AoC which claimed to be a "oldschool" and way more slow pathed than the other MMORPG on the market ?
And stop with the : "You don't like it, don't use it". It's not an argument. This is the typical sentence used by lazy people to ask for P2W/P2Fast features.
Ex : "Please add a 60$ level max boost. Don't like it ? Don't use it" This work with every sh*tty features like this.
Agreed.
Steven's stance on fast travel is well-known.
This is one of the few game mechanics that I (appreciatively) don't see changing much before launch.
The few options that we'll have access to shouldn't be gamebreaking, as in whole guilds zerging a zone, but instead, be a minor convenience. And i think that's what the current FT vision is.