Why The Game Needs Fast Travel

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.

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Orrion

Volgaris wrote: »

@Orrion

Travel info can be found here. You should check out the wiki a bit for anything else that concerns you.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Fast_travel

Anyway you slice it easy, fast, teleport like travel shrinks the world. I think Airships, flight paths, ect will be enough to appease you (maybe?). It's hard to judge the when 90% isn't in and the 10% we're "testing" is just a placeholder.

How fast should you be able to travel from edge to edge? I don't care if it's 8 hours or more. It might be if you're running a basic caravan from corner to corner lol. You'll just never make it there lol. That'd be a hell of a guild event though.

The problem with the wiki in that aspect is that - at least at present - the game really doesn’t give us the freedom necessary to do multiple things at once.

Our inventories are small and we lose 25% of whatever we’re carrying when we die. So there is no real draw to “oh look at event I should go it” while I’m carrying around a bunch of rare materials - ‘cause I’ll probably lose them.

At the very least, they should give us one of those proposed systems in the wiki ASAP, since - correct me if I’m wrong - we currently have none of them. Besides, I really can’t test any content for them if the majority of my time is spent on my horse, can I?

The hub style of the proposed game is good in theory and on paper. In practice, however, doing things like restricting our access to storage, giving us small inventories, having a significant death penalty, and not having ways to get where we want to go simply shrink the game to a smaller area for most players.

Ludullu wrote: »

Orrion wrote: »

Exactly how does fast travel make features irrelevant? If anything, it makes players more willing and able to go exploring new areas and discovering new things - because it doesn’t take them forever to get over there and start doing it.

You're thinking from the standpoint of only experiencing POIs, as if there's no content outside of that. This game is not built only around POIs, so travel lets you see all the other stuff in the game, instead of just TPing to your little cave and only farming it for a few hours.

There is content outside of that. However, currently we have very little means to do more than 1 thing at a time. There is little incentive to go “oh, I’m just going to go farm my way down to this enemy area and do events along the way.” Actually, that’s wrong - there’s plenty of incentive to do it, we just don’t have the tools necessary. Our crafting inventory fills up way too fast, for examples

Orrion wrote: »

I want to be doing things in the game. Not waiting to do things in the game.

And when the world is fully built out and populated - that's exactly what you'd be doing. And the same will be true for the group that's waiting on someone.

You use the argument of "well, irl shit happens, so people have limited gameplay time". But that irl shit could also mean that the person is late to the preestablished gathering time. Would your group immediately say "nah, fuck that guy, we ain't waiting for him"? Or would you immediately quit the game if you have to wait for someone to join you?

What I’m saying here is the game design seems to have big things planned for organized events and open world, but it hasn’t yet given us the tools I think are needed for it.

That may change as we get closer to launch. Hopefully it does. I don’t understand the reluctance to start testing at least one of those systems though. Alpha no doubt has a very limited player base. The more we can test, the better. The more time we spend riding our horses around, the less we can test.

Travel times is not the issue here. Variable content availability is. And the wow-like "only dungeons matter" type of design is exactly what leads to the thoughtprocess of "oh damn, I gotta go all the way to that spot?". When there's only one way to play the game and that way requires only a precise number of people (let alone composition of classes) and THEN they also have to travel - yes, that's a design issue that should be resolved with faster travel.

But when the game is built around open world locations, big living world and pvp interactions - travel is one of the most meaningful parts of the game, because that IS the game.

Have you seen another leveling system? I haven’t. You’re not going to level by crafting or gathering - the experience gains are pathetic. This is gonna be a dungeon game for leveling your character.

I’m already worried about that, to be honest. Ashes seems very much like a group-leveling experience to me. Solo play is quite difficult for certain classes. And I love open world group leveling - but at the same time you have to facilitate it, and I don’t feel they’ve done that yet.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think EQ also revolved around dungeons as main POIs of the game where everything else didn't matter as much. Was there no difficulty variance in mob/boss composition at/around those POIs? What would a party occupy themselves with if one of their members were late to the gathering?

There was very little to occupy yourselves with if you didn’t have a full party. You could solo, but something at your level would beat most classes’ faces in unless you were a class that could kite.

To that end, I feel like Ashes has the potential to do a better job because the group size is 8 instead of 6, or 5 as most MMOs do now. But there’s only 1 healer and 1 tank class at the moment.

Tjaeden wrote: »

How do we explain why Fast Travel does not belong in this game?

If you live in Joeva - all your crafting and gathering is there. You like the weather. You know what spots to grind for glint.

WHY would you want to go to Sunhaven?

It's like driving to Florida to visit grandparents, you do it rarely, once a year.

If you live in New Aela, but want to grind in Carph, guess what? You are visiting/staying in Mireleth for a week.

The TRAVEL is part of the game.

When the Riverlands Oak becomes the biggest export to the Tropics, or Sandstone comes out of the Desert, the gathering and trading of materials - the MOVEMENT of goods, IS a core loop of the game.

The end result isn’t going to be the movement of goods, but merely players gathering around what’s considered “the best” hub.

Kinda like how in New World Windsward in the center of the map was the most highly desired territory to own, but nobody really cared who owned Ebonscale. Windsward was more easily accessible, so it won in terms of the market, materials, upgrades, etc, up to the point where the devs finally got enough brains to make all the towns more easily accessible.

The same thing will happen here. Very few people will “go to Mireleth for a week,” as you put it, if Mireleth isn’t the central hub.

Orrion

Urlic wrote: »

I don't know. "Fast Travel" always seems like it guts the tone of the story for me. People popping in and out of areas and crowding around the NPCs needed for questing, having 50 people pop in and kill a mob for a guildmate that you also need or just to strip the crafting resources is really more than a tiny bit annoying. I feel like it's one of those 1,000 tiny cuts that games die by.

People crowding the area for questing is just a natural result of a launch and/or having a limited leveling path.

The second thing is easily solved by giving credit to everyone who participates in the kill, not merely who tagged it first or dealt more damage to it. Most games do this nowadays.

And since crafting resources are supposed to be dynamic, that part shouldn’t be happening. So far I haven’t even run into anyone gathering what I’m gathering.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

No, you won't.
You'll see more copper, more oak. Even if Intrepid do somehow manage to make it so that there really are region specific raw materials like you are thinking, unless that is what you came for, you won't bother getting them. Why would you - you're about to get involved in some form of content that is likely to see you killed at least a few times.

You'll see more quests that are as mundane as the ones where you came from. The game worlds design limits the kinds of quests the game can have - you won't find some amazing new thing, you'll find more "kill 10 rats" quests - that you won't bother taking because you are heading towards a specific piece of content. Why would you stop for this kind of thing?

You may see mobs with a different skin, but they will still drop glint. It may be a different glint, but it still functions the same. Since you are again heading somewhere you are expecting to die at least a few times, there is no point holding things up to get any of this glint from these mobs in skins that are new to you.

Obviously you don't believe that Intrepid will do what they've promised to do. And that's fine. I doubt that myself as well, but until we actually see that they've failed, I choose to simply discuss the game from the standpoint of what it's meant to be, rather than what I think it might be.

And it's also obvious that we play games differently, so I guess I am wearing rose-tinted glasses, because what I described is exactly how I play. I might go to a node for a specific task, but I'll still do some additional activities along the way there and back. And on a full map, that kind of gameplay would be even more pronounced, cause there's gonna be more content at each new big location (I'm talking metro vassal zones here).

Orrion wrote: »

However, currently we have very little means to do more than 1 thing at a time.

What I’m saying here is the game design seems to have big things planned for organized events and open world, but it hasn’t yet given us the tools I think are needed for it.

I’m already worried about that, to be honest. Ashes seems very much like a group-leveling experience to me. Solo play is quite difficult for certain classes. And I love open world group leveling - but at the same time you have to facilitate it, and I don’t feel they’ve done that yet.

It's as if we're still in the Alpha stage of the game and not all of the promised things are in the game yet

Orrion wrote: »

There was very little to occupy yourselves with if you didn’t have a full party. You could solo, but something at your level would beat most classes’ faces in unless you were a class that could kite.

So sounds like it was a completely different design that then had to come up with a solution for itself.

The supposed design for Ashes is "node lvls determine the power of mobs in its region, on top of the lower lvl mobs from previous node lvls", and each POI has layers of mob power within it.

And that latter part is the case already. Back in P1 I soloed as a tank and could take on single mobs on the outskirts of POIs like HH or Oakenbane. And if I wanted to go deeper - I'd need a party. But you could still farm some mobs with an incomplete party as well.

That kind of design directly addresses the "one of our members is late" situation. Your group can still do something useful while you wait, instead of just sitting on your ass because the game is design only around a precise party comp and only when that comp is full.

Lineage 2 relied on proper party composition even more than Ashes will, due to buffers being pretty much required for good farming, but we could still farm some mobs that had loot similar to that of the mobs we'd be farming in a full party later, exactly because the location design allowed for that. Ashes is already like that and I expect it to become even better at that once we get better mob loot tables.

Noaani

Ludullu wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

No, you won't.
You'll see more copper, more oak. Even if Intrepid do somehow manage to make it so that there really are region specific raw materials like you are thinking, unless that is what you came for, you won't bother getting them. Why would you - you're about to get involved in some form of content that is likely to see you killed at least a few times.

You'll see more quests that are as mundane as the ones where you came from. The game worlds design limits the kinds of quests the game can have - you won't find some amazing new thing, you'll find more "kill 10 rats" quests - that you won't bother taking because you are heading towards a specific piece of content. Why would you stop for this kind of thing?

You may see mobs with a different skin, but they will still drop glint. It may be a different glint, but it still functions the same. Since you are again heading somewhere you are expecting to die at least a few times, there is no point holding things up to get any of this glint from these mobs in skins that are new to you.

Obviously you don't believe that Intrepid will do what they've promised to do. And that's fine. I doubt that myself as well, but until we actually see that they've failed, I choose to simply discuss the game from the standpoint of what it's meant to be, rather than what I think it might be.

I fully agree that Steven wants to do what he has said.

I also know full well they can't.

The game would be 10 years from release if they attempted to do what Steven has said he wants for the content, with the current staff they have.

It's all well and good to say "they could just hire the staff to get it done". The thing there is - Intrepid have been trying to hire - their economy designer position has been advertised long enough for someone interested to see the position advertised, gain the degree and experience required and then apply.

So, the assumption should be that the Ashes team will be more or less what it is now, meaning the game will be what the current team are capable of.

RonDog98

Just had a crazy idea. Limited fast travel for players that aren’t in guilds. That would give casual players everything they need to be happy.

Volgaris

@Orrion

The problem with the wiki in that aspect is that - at least at present - the game really doesn’t give us the freedom necessary to do multiple things at once.

I don't think it's intended for you to do multiple things at once, but maybe you'd have to give me an example. I wiki is vague, but they can't get too specific until things develop more. Things change.

Our inventories are small and we lose 25% of whatever we’re carrying when we die. So there is no real draw to “oh look at event I should go it” while I’m carrying around a bunch of rare materials - ‘cause I’ll probably lose them.

Death should have a cost, and will be a determining fact in if you participate in something. Store/sell your glint often.

At the very least, they should give us one of those proposed systems in the wiki ASAP, since - correct me if I’m wrong - we currently have none of them. Besides, I really can’t test any content for them if the majority of my time is spent on my horse, can I?

I don't think with the current size of the map any of those fast travel systems are 'needed'. I do agree that testing content is locked behind a grind, but I don't think it's a travel problem. It's WAY too much of a time investment to test the late alpha features.

The hub style of the proposed game is good in theory and on paper. In practice, however, doing things like restricting our access to storage, giving us small inventories, having a significant death penalty, and not having ways to get where we want to go simply shrink the game to a smaller area for most players.

Travel is supposed to rigorous you're not supposed to be able to go from edge to edge easily. I don't have a problem travelling the map as it is. It's pretty small really. I reserve judgement on the usefulness of these purposed system until I see them in action on a full sized map.

There's supposed to be risks while traveling.

Bag space increases with later bags.

There is a mule that's supposed to come out, like the AA mule I think. Surprised it wasn't out before caravans...

I'm okay with the loot loss on death, I really don't like that 25% is deleted, just make 50% lootable, that'd encourage more PvP. I would like to see that pvp deaths didn't give me exp debt and pve deaths didn't give repair costs. The time cost involved in PvP is too steep for me, so I avoid it until max level, where it can be capped. So overall yeah the "death tax" is too high. But that's because the grind is too high. Most people work 40 hours a week and probably won't tolerate this for long, but maybe this a game for people who don't work a full time job or have nothing else to do but work, game, and sleep. Either way I hope it's successful. We need more MMO success stories.

Volgaris

RonDog98 wrote: »

Just had a crazy idea. Limited fast travel for players that aren’t in guilds. That would give casual players everything they need to be happy.

Crazy for sure. This would encourage people to organize even more out of game and not use guilds, the benefits to fast travel far out weight the benefits of any in game guild perks or structure. Most people use discord to organize mainly anyways. Basically this would be massively abused.

Kallysha

Orrion seems to be the only one with a brain in here...Fast travels will absolutely be needed, we dont need a lot of them but we definitely need some around. Now you only got a fraction of the map, this is the size of what is supposed to be tho

Arya_Yeshe

RonDog98 wrote: »

Just had a crazy idea. Limited fast travel for players that aren’t in guilds. That would give casual players everything they need to be happy.

I think this is the worst idea i have ever seen in a long time, then guilds will just have a neutral mailman to haul stuff for the guild and deliver stuff in the other node and circumvent any possibility of danger

Azherae

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

RonDog98 wrote: »

Just had a crazy idea. Limited fast travel for players that aren’t in guilds. That would give casual players everything they need to be happy.

I think this is the worst idea i have ever seen in a long time, then guilds will just have a neutral mailman to haul stuff for the guild and deliver stuff in the other node and circumvent any possibility of danger

If it's just to appease the sort of casual player that is fine with not having anything on them, there are ways to set it up.

There are ways to set up many forms of 'fair enough' limited fast travel, the main problem is that it probably wouldn't be worth it for whatever 'good sentiment' it would bring. Just more reasons to argue about details, really.

But, you could give it similar restrictions to the Family Summon, for example.

Europa74

Orrion wrote: »

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.

That's how it started in WOW. People complaining it was too hard, they didn't have enough time. They wanted the rewards the easy way. Look where the game is at now.

Dygz

I love where WoW is now.
(As of Dragonflight)

nanfoodle

Types of fast or faster travel that's planed.

Family telaport I think it's up to 9 people in a family is there is a marriage Flight paths between nodes. Science nodes will have fast travel. But this all needs to be tuned to slow down zergs, for both PvP and PvE. Having non- instant dungeons PvE needs this most of all.

Imanek

Kallysha wrote: »

.....

Once again, it will be up to the players, and them alone, to shape the world. If you want teleportation, you’ll need to establish two or even three scientific cities in strategic locations. This way, everyone will have access to teleportation points in different regions.

Evilryce

Orrion wrote: »

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.

Just because that cleric took 25 minutes going from point A to point B doesn't mean it actually takes that long to cross the map, he could've went afk to take a 10 minute and you wouldn't even know it.

If you haven't personally traveled from one end of the map to the other, don't be so sure it takes that long without testing it yourself.

It literally takes like barely 10 minutes.

Noaani

Evilryce wrote: »

Orrion wrote: »

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.

Just because that cleric took 25 minutes going from point A to point B doesn't mean it actually takes that long to cross the map, he could've went afk to take a 10 minute and you wouldn't even know it.

If you haven't personally traveled from one end of the map to the other, don't be so sure it takes that long without testing it yourself.

It literally takes like barely 10 minutes.

This is making too many assumptions to be said with such certaintity.

There are many reasons why it may take someone 25 minutes or more to cross the current game world - and when translated to the full game world, that could easily be a few hours.

Just because it "can" take less time under some circumstances, that doesn't mean it will take less time under all circumstances. Rather than asking if it can be done faster, you should be asking if it is understandable that it could take as long as stated - which it absolutely is.

ghojinn

they will have flying mounts and gliding mounts.

Volgaris

I'd be okay with flying mounts if they aren't ever-hovering mounts. But fly like a bird or whatever and have limited stamina for flight times. Different mounts different stamina, speeds, altitudes, vertical climbs, ect. Doubt this would happen, but it could be fun and could maybe fit.

Aszkalon

What i personally can not really or fully accept - is how slow the riding Speed feels most of the time.

The "Sprint-Speed" should be the normal Speed - and the actual Sprint should be a bit faster than even that.
I mean the Riverlands alone are not even that much on the Worldmap of Ashes. But Gods have Mercy when you ride from one end of the Riverlands to the other end.

DON'T forget to relocate your Teleport-Stone thingy. Because if you die for whatever the Reason and your Home-teleport-Stone-thingy is still set on the other end of the Map, you will have a very bad time.

MDS

Is it a bummer I cant TP home before I log off at the end of the night? yes
is it a bummer it takes a while to run to a dungeon? yes
Are there more negatives of not having fast travel? yes

Do I want fast travel? NO

All modern MMOs have fast travel and it guts the whole experience of adventuring in a world. We all need to stop asking for instant gratification. Teleport me here so can do a thing so I can quickly get home to do another thing quickly..... Traveling is content and while not always exciting, has the potential to be so fun. Lets try something different. Keep fast travel to an extreme min in Ashes, please.

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