"Fast Travel" / Ashes and Valheim

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.

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Comments

Mowaby

I think the current systems are fine. There is only one change I would make to the family summon and that is to add a cool down to the summoned player instead of the summon skill.

Noaani

I think the current system with the family summons is already too much.

If you travel to a location, you should take in to account the need to travel back.

Warth

Fully Agreed with Noaani any form of fast travel is too much.

ariatras

If you want corruption to be a gameplay loop (As you should, let players form little raiding parties) You already drop a percentage of resources upon death (If I remember correctly?) If gathering professions can just teleport back to safety it only lets players ambush/attack whilst they are actually farming.

There should be as little fast travel as possible, fast travel makes the world look smaller too.

VmanGman

Why? This is just so much to keep track of and unnecessarily complicated. Just let the game have its limited fast travel.

maouw

The real downside of nearest-town tping is that most players will do half the journey, then as soon as they cross the border to the next region they tp. (I know I do this)

Wandering Mist

Maybe I missed something (reading this first thing in the morning) but why do we need more fast travel options? You say you want more fast travel but you don't say why. And no, making the mage class more distinctive by giving them portals like in WoW is NOT a good enough reason for more fast travel.

FuryBladeborne

OP,
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.

Vhaeyne

We need to be fighting for less fast travel. The family teleport is way too much.

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.

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I wish there was a distance limit on the family summon.

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).

FuryBladeborne

I like the idea of some type of range limit as well, although I don't see the point of having the summon to join friends if it can only save a few minutes. A range limit of the current region or the region of the node that the summoner belongs to would be sufficient to me.

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.

Noaani

FuryBladeborne wrote: »

I like the idea of some type of range limit as well, although I don't see the point of having the summon to join friends if it can only save a few minutes.

The point would be so that the group doesn't need to fight all the way back to the start of the dungeon to pick up the player.

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.

BlackBrony

I don't like fast travel, and I don't like family summon.

Ostaff

The less the fast travel options, the better the game.

Neox365

Ostaff wrote: »

The less the fast travel options, the better the game.

agree 100%

novercalis

ariatras wrote: »

If you want corruption to be a gameplay loop (As you should, let players form little raiding parties) You already drop a percentage of resources upon death (If I remember correctly?) If gathering professions can just teleport back to safety it only lets players ambush/attack whilst they are actually farming.

There should be as little fast travel as possible, fast travel makes the world look smaller too.

Hence the restriction part of the post I mentioned. Farmers/Gatherers won't be able to port out.

novercalis

VmanGman wrote: »

Why? This is just so much to keep track of and unnecessarily complicated. Just let the game have its limited fast travel.

what exactly is complicated?

novercalis

maouw wrote: »

The real downside of nearest-town tping is that most players will do half the journey, then as soon as they cross the border to the next region they tp. (I know I do this)

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.

Noaani

novercalis wrote: »

maouw wrote: »

The real downside of nearest-town tping is that most players will do half the journey, then as soon as they cross the border to the next region they tp. (I know I do this)

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.

FuryBladeborne

Noaani wrote: »

FuryBladeborne wrote: »

I like the idea of some type of range limit as well, although I don't see the point of having the summon to join friends if it can only save a few minutes.

The point would be so that the group doesn't need to fight all the way back to the start of the dungeon to pick up the player.

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.

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

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