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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Why The Game Needs Fast Travel
Orrion
Member, Alpha Two
I know it's been said that the game will not have point-to=point fast travel.
However, I feel like this is a mistake. The points of not having fast travel are o encourage world exploration and open world PvP. Given that there are PvP areas, large scale wars, and a node spawn system that is dynamic, these reasons are already covered. We will have plenty of reason to go exploring the world.
There's simply no point in making us take 20 minutes or more just to cross the map. This is further exacerbated by all the different leveling areas being very spread out and not having any kind of combined storage. If you add in the fact that the map is nowhere near completed, and you'll have players spending the bulk of their time just to get from point A to point B.
Case in point was making a group for Oakenhold tonight. We invited a cleric who was in the upper left of the map - it literally took him 25 minutes just to get over to us. That's a lot of wasting 7 other peoples' time.
At the very least, we need what EverQuest had - classes with the ability to create portals and gates to other locations. Druids and Wizards both had the ability to travel around, and at later levels they could do so for groups.
Many of your players are going to be people with limited time. We're going to want to spend the time we have doing what we want to do, not auto running and staring at your mount's backside.
So, please, consider throwing us a bone or two here.
However, I feel like this is a mistake. The points of not having fast travel are o encourage world exploration and open world PvP. Given that there are PvP areas, large scale wars, and a node spawn system that is dynamic, these reasons are already covered. We will have plenty of reason to go exploring the world.
There's simply no point in making us take 20 minutes or more just to cross the map. This is further exacerbated by all the different leveling areas being very spread out and not having any kind of combined storage. If you add in the fact that the map is nowhere near completed, and you'll have players spending the bulk of their time just to get from point A to point B.
Case in point was making a group for Oakenhold tonight. We invited a cleric who was in the upper left of the map - it literally took him 25 minutes just to get over to us. That's a lot of wasting 7 other peoples' time.
At the very least, we need what EverQuest had - classes with the ability to create portals and gates to other locations. Druids and Wizards both had the ability to travel around, and at later levels they could do so for groups.
Many of your players are going to be people with limited time. We're going to want to spend the time we have doing what we want to do, not auto running and staring at your mount's backside.
So, please, consider throwing us a bone or two here.
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Comments
Not to mention the easier you make it to move around the map the worse off your economy is, games like NW and FFXIV have this problem where all your mats are either dirt cheap or super expensive cause everyone's just able to jump on the ones everyone wants or farm the hell out of basic stuff.
We should also have better mob spawns around POIs and better mob strength spread within them, so that even incomplete groups can still occupy themselves with something while waiting for those 1-2 extra members that are late.
And once all of that is put in the context of fully-implemented artisan system and questing - you have yourself a game where you can be beneficially occupied at nearly all times w/o spending your time purely on traveling.
Teleportation would also not work well with resource transportation, because you need to put insanely strict limits on how, when and with what you CAN teleport, or else the entire caravan system is utterly pointless because everyone can just teleport wherever they want (and this includes being summoned/portaled by other players).
There's already the https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Family_summon system, that's gonna be either VERY controversial or very restricted. And the system itself is kinda meant to address your exact point, but I personally don't believe it'll survive testing.
One such reason is Ashes has a heavy emphasis on open-world PvP, which naturally means there will be "zerg" guilds.
However, no fast travel fucks over zerg guilds. Lets say your guild plans a caravan run or an attack in a certain part of the map, and the zerg guild is spread around the map doing their own thing. With fast travel, they just fast travel to the nearest point to you in 2 minutes and fuck you over with no counterplay. Without fast travel, now they have to travel literal hours to all converge from around the map, by which point you've likely done whatever it is you planned to do. Ashes map is currently around 8% of the intended final size, and it already takes a fair few minutes to travel across the singular biome. Add in the Ocean and the other dozen+ zones, and you have huge map with no fast travel that fucks over those zergs.
However, Ashes large world size means that no fast travel will screw over players wanting to run content. Its almost as if major decisions about this game are being made by someone that has never created a game before or something.
Ashes needs fast travel of some form to be playable as an MMORPG, as opposed to a PvP murderbox or economy simulator. Not the family summons - but something.
There will be "science node teleports", "flight paths", "airships", and "fam summoning". I think this will be enough. It's a 15/20 minute to travel from west to east on the current map. Once the map is complete it could be a hour or more if done on a basic mount only. But with all the options it will probably be more than enough, too much I think. Traveling across the world should be something that can be done on a whim. It should be something you plan and logistically think about. Once travel becomes trivialized the world shrinks to loading screens and POIs. The game isn't met to be solo'd, it's met for guilds, guilds should be planning events and organizing people to meet their goals.
Probably the biggest reason you won't see any type of teleport fast travel outside the family summoning and science nodes is Intrepid put a lot of work into mounts. Teleport fast travel will devalue these mounts more than deepseek tanked nvidea stock.
Collecting POIs serves zero purpose if you have no way to return to them except hopping on your horse. It’s not like the area doesn’t show up on your map. There’s no fog of war or anything similar. I can see Oakenbane Keep on my level 6 mage despite never going down into that area. Going there for the Emberspring serves little purpose as well, since you automatically have the nearest Emberspring as a respawn point if you die.
Further, again, dynamic spawns prevent the economy from worsening. There aren’t going to be set spawn points. I would argue that without fast travel people are more likely to farm the hell out of basic stuff. What am I gonna do with my time - ride 30 minutes and farm a small inventory’s worth of mats and ride back or ride around Winstead and farm ash and oak, basalt and granite? Most people are gonna farm ash and oak, basalt and granite.
Sidebar while I’m at it - we have nowhere near the amount of inventory and storage space we need when every type of material has 5 different rarities.
So.. you’re telling me it’s better for people to be unable to participate in content? That’s not a winning formula for any game I’ve ever heard of.
There are much easier ways to prevent zergs, such as limiting the number of participants for given events. This is 2025, not 1999. Plus, even if you take EQ’s mentioned method of a few classes having teleport capabilities, it’d still take a fair amount of time to coordinate getting everyone to the point of conflict.
That only 8% of the map is currently complete and we’re already taking this long to travel does not bode well. Players want to be able to spend their time doing what’s fun to them. Running around on your horse for hours on end is not going to fly. That’s simple fact.
This is, again, especially true when leveling areas are very spread out. We don’t have all the 5-10 leveling areas in the same spots on the map.
Plus, Ashes is going to run on group content. Playing solo for most classes is difficult, and you’re not going to be able to kill starred enemies anywhere your level. It is therefore in the best interest of the game to facilitate ways for people to group up, get to the same location, and get to killing.
I love the non-instanced aspect of this game, and the 8 person groups, and the support classes. It reminds me very much of EQ’s early days. But Ashes is going to need to modernize at least some aspects of the game if they expect to retain players, and when you have MMOs coming up on 30 years old doing something essential better than you do, you’ve got to address that.
Finally you and I agree on something
I think New World here did a great job. There's wayshrines, but they're quite far apart from one another.
Getting an ember spring also allows you to set it as home. A POI like HH isn't going to give you anything. Either way I don't see how POI collecting gives any value to either side of the argument. The only thing you "collect" are ember springs for respawning.
As far as zergs go there isn't much controlled pvp content. Caravans or node wars... larger numbers will normally win. Anything that helps large groups of players quickly move from point A to B will be a massive advantage to those large groups.
I'd argue more like 15 to 20% of the map is complete at least size wise, filler content is lower.
I do agree they need to innovate or "modernize" but I don't see fast travel as something innovative, that's just the copy/paste from past mmos after they were over the hill. People will scream for QoL systems until the QoL systems are basically playing the game for them. dungeon finders, teleporting to dungeons and back to where you were when done. ect ect.
Too much still isn't in the game to really say it needs some travel QoL. Travel is part of the game and too much is built off of it, if you remove travel with teleports then everything will need to be worked. What everything is, well is still incomplete, a placeholder, or just not in yet.
Blown past falling sands…
It is far more difficult to plan events and organize people if you can’t count on being able to get everyone to the same locale in a timely manner.
People have work, lives, families, emergencies, events, etc. If I have to log out at a certain time at night and we have something scheduled the next day a half hour from where I was, and I can’t log in a half hour beforehand, what are they supposed to do? Wait on me? Do they then wait on the next guy who is 10 minutes out after me? And the guy 5 minutes after that? What about everyone else who is already there because they had more freedom of time that day?
The fact is that limiting us in this fashion makes it much harder to organize events, especially anything large scale. There’s a reason WoW has scaled their raid sizes down from 40 initially to 25, then to 20 and 10 and started emphasizing 5 man dungeon content over the years.
The bigger Ashes wants events to be, the easier they have to make organizing those events. Otherwise people simply can’t or won’t participate.
As for the mounts, bah to that. WoW has travel capabilities and still a metric f***ton of mounts. Being able to travel places faster didn’t prevent me from hopping on my favorite protodrake all the time.
Again, we’re going to have to use mounts to get around and farm and gather. The node system they have encourages going out into the world to do that. Our mounts will see PLENTY of use, and people still always want the best and fastest mounts. I can teleport around in FF14. Did that make me want the special flying horse mounts from the Primals any less? Nope.
I’d even be happy with the equivalent of WoW’s flight paths - if that’s something that’s planned, point it out to me and I’ll be somewhat mollified.
And what does setting an Emberspring as a home point actually do? Nothing. You can’t use it unless you die.
Again, the way you stop large group advantage is limiting participants. That’s exactly what you’re all arguing that a large map already does, so you might as well just put the limit on it in the first place and not punish player activity and convenience with a nebulous one.
I don’t see fast travel as playing the game for me. Starting at my horse’s ass crossing the map isn’t playing the game. It’s just preventing me from doing so.
This is precisely what makes Ashes of Creation so strong: its deliberately slower pace and structured approach, which add to its charm.
Imagine how easy it would be to call a guild when spotting a passing caravan – within just two minutes, 40 hungry players would show up for a raid. No place in Verra would ever feel like a pseudo-safe zone anymore; a single call could instantly mobilize a massive group of players.
In the end, the map will feel larger, allowing some players to distance themselves from toxic guilds or zergs that dominate many other games. Some regions will be calmer, while others will be more intense, reinforcing the essence of a true RPG world.
Take the time to enjoy the scenery and immerse yourself in the game. We are still in the early testing phases, and a mail system will soon be implemented to address some of the current minor inconveniences. But as it stands, the movement system is already well-designed.
I feel like none of you are following the thread.
Is the zerg strategy a legitimate concern? Yes, it is.
Is making the map so large that players can’t effectively zerg the only way to combat it? No, it isn’t.
I’m all for enjoying the scenery, but remember - some people don’t have all day to play Ashes. Players are not going to happy when they have maybe 2-3 hours a night to play a subscription based game and the majority of their time is spent traveling across the overworld to their destination for the evening. They’re going to go play something else.
I want Ashes to be large and successful - and for that you need players, casual and hardcore and everything in between. I currently see a big issue with the travel time. You may not, but it’s there.
I’ve already seen this exact issue be a problem in a few recently launched MMOs, such as New World. Granted this isn’t the only reason they bled players so fast, but it was certainly a factor. And that wasn’t even a sub based game.
Said vassal system will be roughly the size of the current A2 map, which will be crossable even faster than it currently is, because we'll get better mounts than what we currently have (due to husbandry and mount variances).
I already kinda answered this in my first comment in this thread, but yes, they ARE supposed to wait for you. That's the point of having a constant group of people that you play with. You all have roughly the same playtime schedules and you all have a close enough relationship to each other to forgive any member being slightly late.
This is also exactly why I said that POIs should support any size of parties within its region, so that the ones waiting could still do something useful while they wait. And sometimes having someone who's late is a good thing, because they might be able to bring a few consumables that someone else might've forgotten and/or see an updated situation on any potential enemies in the area, so that the party could be prepared beforehand.
Also, if you can only play for 1h a day and you're afraid that half of that hour is taken up by running to a spot - sadly, this game might not be for you. Or, at least, it won't be for you if, even though you have that kind of tight lifetime schedule, you still expect to achieve something great in this game in any amount of time that's anywhere near the hardcore players.
People can still more than enjoy Ashes evne with 1h of gameplay a day, but they have to be realistic about their goals in the game. You'll be able to do quests, gather stuff, kill some mobs solo or with a pug or with other casual players, etc etc. But all of that will be on a much slower timeframe than any hardcore player who can do all of those things at a much bigger scale every day.
Also also, afaik there's remote desktop programs that allow you to control your PC from your phone or another PC. And god fucking knows I've seen waaay too many "busy people" that constantly watch streams or do random shit at work instead of working. So, if you're scared that you gotta run for 30 minutes in game - do that shit from work on your phone. We literally have autorun for that.
Travelling 30 minutes is nothing, specially if a lot of opportunities for content can be met along the way.
It is also not supposed to be a game where you can only run a small percentage of the content due to travel time.
There is a very large amount of space between what Ashes is now, and a game where players would feel they can see all content.
Ashes needs to aim to be in the middle of that space, as opposed to being on the edge of it. The game still needs to ensure people spend time in the open world rather than just fast traveling around different content pieces, and the game needs to maintain the integrity of the economy, but it also needs to ensure people can get around in a reasonable time.
Right now they are only doing two out of three.
If there's, say, 3 month a year of irl time where you CAN experience the same content - I think that should be enough time for people to go and attempt it. Obviously the chances of casuals actually doing all the available content is somewhat low (cause pvp for valuable spots/bosses and all that), but the ability would probably still be there.
Except - Player made and run passenger caravans. Which cost 10x more than normal, carry 4 players max.
I don't personally think these two things will have any impact on it at all.
Reason being, I don't think seasons will have enough of an effect on content for it to feel like "new" content. Rather, it will just be a slight change to what is usually there. As to story arcs, with the node system Ashes has, I am skeptical that these will even exist in a manner comparable to other MMORPG's, let alone in a way that will drive players towards content.
Keep in mind as well, in regards to things like seasons changing content, as it stands now the content team for Ashes is fairly small, and the amount of content they need to produce just to fill out the world once is large.
Creating content in a way where the same area has what players would consider different content just adds even more work to an already too small team. This is the primary reason as to why I am skeptical as to exactly how different content will be based on any of these things "dynamic" situations.
In order tomproduce the amount of content needed to make content actually different based on node state and season, the content team would need to be larger than the current Intrepid team.
Those added some meaningful decisions to gameplay, social interactions, and so on, and those games had smaller (technically, roughly the same size actually) zones/sub areas and travel times.
It's fine to add a little of it, and they know that already. Even the Family Summon type thing has an incredibly simple solution for any real 'family group'. Will it still result in 'zerging' and the resultant complaints? Sure, but not 'an amount of zerg that Intrepid actually has a problem with' (or they would have canceled the Family Summon entirely by now).
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
of content that would fit your standards.
But you're kinda saying here that you don't expect content to change all that much, right? Wouldn't that literally mean that any player can easily attempt to experience any/all content in the game? If content doesn't go away/change - time doesn't matter, when it comes to you experiencing said content.
And all the truly important content, that Intrepid want people to see, will be instanced, which means that everyone gets to experience it.
So, ultimately, the only real reason behind not everyone experiencing all the content will be (and always has been) owpvp.
That's pretty standard here across the board, though. I logged in the other day to help some guildies with some Lumbermilling. And it took over an hour, cos of how the Processing Queues work. And I couldn't go anywhere more than a few minutes away from the processing station cos I had to come back and re-queue every few minutes.
Despite how quickly everybody's trying to powerlevel on the not-yet-balanced mobs, as was said above, Ashes is a slower-paced game. Whether or not it ends up that way, we don't yet know!
Imagine this:
"Hey, can someone help me with a boss in X area?"
"Nah, that’s a 20-minute ride up north… I’m good."
That’s exactly what’s going to happen. People will stick to the more convenient places, and anything too out of the way will become a ghost town. No matter how cool or well-designed a zone is, if it’s a pain to get to, players will just avoid it.
If people know they can actually get around without it being a full-time job, they’ll be way more likely to:
It's like some of you have never played an MMO and it shows.
I already said I’d be happy with something like EverQuest had - which is that the Druid and the Wizard had the ability to teleport themselves and groups to different zones. Not all of them, but enough of them. Also, EQ had a Bind spell that you could use to pick a town once you’ve been there and return at any time.
WoW originally had a half hour cooldown on the Hearthstone, which is basically the same thing as EQ’s bind spell plus the flight point system. That would also be completely fine.
We need SOMETHING.
The original complaint was that if you have fast travel, everyone just ports to where the fight is and wins by mass numbers. That’s what a zerg is, isn’t it?
So you limit participants so mass numbers aren’t the problem. Which is what the current system of distance-from-event does, except it has a chance of not working and you don’t screw the rest of your playerbase who aren’t doing said events.
They could also very easily - because wars are node based and area based, right? - simply turn off the ability to use the surrounding waypoints around the war times. Inconvenient, perhaps, but less convenience in times of war is actually quite realistic.
There’s a difference between something being slower paced because things take time to to and just making it take longer to get anywhere.
People like to feel that they’re making good use of their time and accomplishing something. You accomplished something meaningful in your example - you were helping guildies and presumably enjoying doing it.
Now, if you’d spent that same hour just riding your horse to another town, would you have felt like you accomplished anything? I know I wouldn’t.
Players were very outspoken about the travel costs in New World. And they made the changes for everyone - the Fresh Start servers were to reset the economy for people who wanted that. Originally there were problems with duping items, and they never dealt with bots effectively.
Ashes even now doesn’t sound like you describe, but maybe that’s because we don’t have the whole map yet. But still - how are you supposed to know which region you’d like to settle in if you can’t get to them? Is each region supposed to have their own leveling areas? Even right now that isn’t true - and the leveling areas themselves are spread out, so there’s no easy congregation of players around your level like in most other games.
On your “if we could teleport” section -
You won’t be able to instantly gather resources. There’s no guaranteed nodes. Further, the opposite is also true - a lot of people simply aren’t going to gather those resources if they can’t get to them in a reasonable time.
For caravans, simply put a cooldown or daily limit on your participation.
Dungeons - Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Should 7 people really have to wait for their tank to take a 20 minute horse ride? After probably already taking a while to form the group itself? Why? What’s the benefit of that?
Treasure maps - Disable fast travel when you’re on a map quest. Simple.
I agree that Ashes should be based on meaningful choices. I simply fail to see how travel time is a meaningful choice. If significant travel time is required for basically everything you do, then it’s not a choice, is it?
I strongly encourage you to research Ashes of Creation more thoroughly. A major feature of the game is exploration, with fog-of-war mechanics and map inconsistencies until verified. Since we are dealing with a dynamic world, a region you visit may change over time based on player interactions.
The goal is to maintain interest in exploration and discovery. Nodes will also be well-balanced in terms of content; otherwise, the entire player base would just cluster in the same spots.
Regarding the desert biome, simply playing the Alpha makes it clear that the desert is being enriched every week with unique settlements, exclusive resources, and distinctive crafting options. This diversity is what makes the game compelling, allowing players to settle in the biome that suits them best.
As for fast travel, here’s what we know:
- Scientific Metropolises will be connected to each other to facilitate travel.
- Starting zones will allow friends to begin playing together through a portal system.
- The Breeder profession will be crucial, as players will be able to develop faster mounts, including terrestrial and maritime ones, using genetics.
So, once again, Ashes of Creation is built around an exploration-based system, and I encourage you to read the wiki if needed. As many have pointed out, we do not want fast travel. And without making too many assumptions, I believe the developers are well aware of this. Otherwise, why put so much effort into creating unique, detailed regions if they were just going to add a teleportation system that would make half of these features irrelevant?
Much respect for the work and the originality of this project. As Lord Bodd mentioned, they will not change such a fundamental aspect that makes AoC unique.