Forgotten features of a golden era: long travels

Metentso

Back then, human cities had humans. Elf cities had elfs. Dwarf cities had dwarfs, and so on.

Because traveling was hard.

It took time and it was risky, and it had consequences, like not being able to train (depending on faction alignment).

So if you were an Elf, an travelled to the human cities, you draw the attention of everybody, since it was strange for an Elf to travel from such a long distance. You were special and you had a tale to tell and people interested in it.

Add this to the long list of things we have lost, thanks to modern developers.

 

I know some of you hated long travels.

 

warmaster670

Lol, long travel times, a feature?

 

Really? no wonder these people hate anything new, there probably still using rotary telephones and typewriters , thyey had some really nice "features"

Loktofeit

Originally posted by Metentso

Back then, human cities had humans. Elf cities had elfs. Dwarf cities had dwarfs, and so on.

Because traveling was hard.

It took time and it was risky, and it had consequences, like not being able to train (depending on faction alignment).

So if you were an Elf, an travelled to the human cities, you draw the attention of everybody, since it was strange for an Elf to travel from such a long distance. You were special and you had a tale to tell and people interested in it.

Add this to the long list of things we have lost, thanks to modern developers.

 

I know some of you hated long travels.

 

Do you really believe this is a 'modern developers' thing and not a convenience added because of a desire by the players to be able to group up with their friends?  Travel definitely has its place, specifically in some warfare-based MMOs, but in a game where the focus is getting together and PVEing with others, there's no reason to place undesirable obstacles in the way.

I think the EQ/WOW crowd forgets there are other styles of games out there, as UO, Asheron's Call, Tibia, Lineage 2, SWG, Puzzle Pirates, and Horizons offered fast travel to jump between key locations. All of those titles are from the nostalgic days of yore.

 

Lexin

People are lazy and they want everything within a month. Do I really need to say anything else?

Naqaj

Originally posted by Metentso

Back then, human cities had humans. Elf cities had elfs. Dwarf cities had dwarfs, and so on.

Because traveling was hard.

It took time and it was risky, and it had consequences, like not being able to train (depending on faction alignment).

So if you were an Elf, an travelled to the human cities, you draw the attention of everybody, since it was strange for an Elf to travel from such a long distance. You were special and you had a tale to tell and people interested in it.

Add this to the long list of things we have lost, thanks to modern developers.

 

I know some of you hated long travels.

 

If you want to roleplay that your elf was drawing attention in a human city, that's fine by me. Don't try to tell us it actually happened that way. The other 999 Elves who made the same journey are going to laught at you.

I'll add it to the list of things we lost, and I'll make sure to thank the devs for it.

 

Some of us may really hate long travels. Personally I only hate boring, pointless travels. In most MMOs, that's the same thing though.

Requiamer

Up until dev teams are able to make rich worlds with a lot of encounter types that have some sense and not just dummies scatered every so much square meter, traveling will be a negative feature. But if they manage to make traveling as fun as it is in Skyrim for exemple, it will most certainly because a positive aspect.

Venger

LOL running time sink as a feature.  You EQ people kill me.

EQ started the simplifying genre WoW brought ADHD design to the genre.

Volkon

Long travels were implemented primarily as a time sink to help people justify paying subscription fees. It forces you to play longer periods of time, feeding the myth that you're "paying for the servers".

Dibdabs

Originally posted by Metentso

So if you were an Elf, an travelled to the human cities, you draw the attention of everybody, since it was strange for an Elf to travel from such a long distance. You were special and you had a tale to tell and people interested in it.

Nothing "special" about it when hundreds of other Elf, Dwarf and Halfling characters had also made the trip that week.  In EQ, an Elf, Dwarf or Halfling in somewhere like Freeport didn't merit a second glance.  Ditto with the "Evil" races travelling to each others home cities.  I think you're getting a bit carried away with the nostalgia!  I considered lengthy travel a personal achievement, especially if I was low level and it was a tough trip, but in reality nobody else thought it that much of a big deal.  Why would they?  I certainly didn't consider I had a tale to tell. 

Gudrunix

The complaint that travel times are a "time sink" misses the fact that the whole concept of the MMORPG is as a time sink.  The  parts of the game that actually test player ability are few and far between.  The primary sin of travel times was not that they were a time sink (that's pretty much the whole game), but that they were a boring time sink.  Like fishing, but without catching any fish.

Travel times would make for an effective addition, but only if there was real risk and real reward added to the process - if some parts of the world were genuinely difficult to travel to, but had significant content that was otherwise impossible to access.  But adding real risk to traveling would mean adding real risk (besides the inconvenience of running from the graveyard) to dying - and I'm not sure when that's going to happen.  But if an MMO were to revisit the whole risk-vs-reward concept from the ground up, adding in travel times may at some point make sense.

dlld

In a themepark? No, just no it's nothing more then a waste of time, in a sandbox with regional resources where you can actually be a trader and make a profit from simply moving stuff(or be robbed on the way)? Sure.

jeremyjodes

You speak of times when SWG had no speeders, when level 30 hunters would run you through the wetlands. I actually liked those days. I agree OP. Whats missing is from another time. todays games are designed with marketing first. since most of todays MMO gamers just want shinys. the journey is dead. all that matters is the end.

But sometimes a niche game gets made and thats enuff for me to keep looking to see if they make the journey worth it again.

Venger

Originally posted by Gudrunix

The complaint that travel times are a "time sink" misses the fact that the whole concept of the MMORPG is as a time sink.  The  parts of the game that actually test player ability are few and far between.  The primary sin of travel times was not that they were a time sink (that's pretty much the whole game), but that they were a boring time sink.  Like fishing, but without catching any fish.

Travel times would make for an effective addition, but only if there was real risk and real reward added to the process - if some parts of the world were genuinely difficult to travel to, but had significant content that was otherwise impossible to access.  But adding real risk to traveling would mean adding real risk (besides the inconvenience of running from the graveyard) to dying - and I'm not sure when that's going to happen.  But if an MMO were to revisit the whole risk-vs-reward concept from the ground up, adding in travel times may at some point make sense.

Maybe they should waste our time with actual features.  UO didn't require such huge time sinks.  But UO actually had some complexity to its character developement.

Running risk:  Your character gets blisters and can walk for 3 rl days.

Vryheid

Leave it to a so-called MMO vet to call long travel times a "feature". You know what I remember from the "golden era" of gaming? First getting Fly in Pokemon, and then using it absolutely everywhere because walking around the same caves and grass covered paths over and over was an absolute pain. We've had world map shortcuts since the days of airships in Final Fantasy, and I can assure you that these games have had a more positive impact on the gaming industry than whatever archaic MMOs you're thinking of.

But hey, if you want ridiculously long travel times, don't fret- you have Final Fantasy XIV, where not only are common roads randomly loaded with monsters who kill you in one hit, but simply walking to a mission objective means a mandatory 20-30 minutes of travel time if you don't want to waste anima. It takes more time just to get to a mission than it does to complete it. But that's what you want, right?

Quizzical

Long travel times are all right if there's a good gameplay reason for it.  You don't manage to cite one in the original post.  The only one I've seen is maintaining local markets, with the same goods worth more in some places than others.  And even that is only plausibly a good reason if the game has a heavy emphasis on the economy, which the overwhelming majority of MMORPGs don't.

Bladestrom

Long Travel and rich virtual worlds go hand in hand IMO.

There was a thread that discussed long travel, long and hard, worth a read

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/333742/Old-school-freedom-or-new-style-story-poll-.html

Axehilt

Originally posted by Lexin

People are lazy and they want everything within a month. Do I really need to say anything else?

Yeah, a True MMORPG For Hard-Working Players would make every activity involve at least 24 hours of un-AFKable travel.

The True Hard Workers would intentionally take longer routes which take weeks to complete.  These players would laugh at the lazy incompetant players taking their shortcuts and direct routes (you completed that trip in only 24 hours?!? What a lazy noob..)

(Meanwhile in reality-land, players play games for fun and most travel systems are big empty timesinks with no gameplay.  And until that changes, it doesn't make sense to have travel take any longer than the absolute minimum required by gameplay.)

Bladestrom

lol axe, remember it does make sense and is  to 5% of us eh :P

Loke666

Originally posted by Metentso

Back then, human cities had humans. Elf cities had elfs. Dwarf cities had dwarfs, and so on.

Because traveling was hard.

It took time and it was risky, and it had consequences, like not being able to train (depending on faction alignment).

So if you were an Elf, an travelled to the human cities, you draw the attention of everybody, since it was strange for an Elf to travel from such a long distance. You were special and you had a tale to tell and people interested in it.

Add this to the long list of things we have lost, thanks to modern developers.

I know some of you hated long travels.

Can't say I hated it, but not that I liked it either.

As I remember it, travelling wasn't hard, just time consuming.

If you want long travel in MMOs, fine. But then you need to actually make the travel fun.

Exploring is however fun, but once you been everywhere it stop being fun and that is really the whole problem. 

Having an almost impossible long travel the first time you travekl to a new place is really no problem, but it really gets boring fast after that.

Robsolf

Originally posted by Metentso

Back then, human cities had humans. Elf cities had elfs. Dwarf cities had dwarfs, and so on.

Because traveling was hard.

It took time and it was risky, and it had consequences, like not being able to train (depending on faction alignment).

So if you were an Elf, an travelled to the human cities, you draw the attention of everybody, since it was strange for an Elf to travel from such a long distance. You were special and you had a tale to tell and people interested in it.

Add this to the long list of things we have lost, thanks to modern developers.

 

I know some of you hated long travels.

 

Funny thing is, people that look back in fondness also tend to be the ones touting freedom in old MMO's.

Yet, in your example, in the most practical sense, the freedom is an illusion. 

"all my friends are elves... guess it would be stupid of me to be a human, then."

"I wanna group up and run this dungeon... but I've gotta go train, and that's an hour trip there and back, and it'll be almost time for bed at that point."

Long travel for the sake of long travel always brought up visions in my head of developers sneering, "What pathetic losers.  They'll sit through over a half hour of just watching their toon running.  and running.  and running.  How many other tedious BS time sinks do you think we can add til this stupid lap dog turns on us?"

Bladestrom

read the link above guys,the discussion pretty much covers the same grouns, and the conclusion : some poeple like slow travel some don't, its a small cog in a big machine that is part of a virtual world.

MindTrigger

More people would enjoy long travel if the game was capable of making it an adventure in itself.  The trouble is today that these games are shallow, static and scripted.  The world looks great if you are just running by it on the way to your next quest, but don't stop and linger too long or you will notice the flaws in the paint job.

Xzen

In UO travel times from point A to point B took seconds with a rune book / recall. Just the first trip took time so you could mark the spot you wanted to be able to port to. Also only had one race. Human. Though a lot of people did RP Orcs and Elves and Drow. When a player put on orc helms and armor they looked pretty much look just like an Orc.

Volgore

I loved it and i would still love it today.

I'd love a massive world in which a journey to a city or certain part of the world can take up to several days, anything can happen on the way. Get your stuff together, we're leaving in 3 days. Everyone prepares, packs up supplies, farms some this and that the last minute. Somewhere it's safer on the road, somewhere you are better off the beaten path. Can't just log out everywhere, but got to find a safe place first. Adventure!

The problem is that the overall world design must support meaningful traveling...there you've got one of the many problems about it. Rather don't get me start about the players of today.

Bladestrom

Originally posted by MindTrigger

More people would enjoy long travel if the game was capable of making it an adventure in itself.  The trouble is today that these games are shallow, static and scripted.  The world looks great if you are just running by it on the way to your next quest, but don't stop and linger too long or you will notice the flaws in the paint job.

You are not really comparing apples with apples ( or is that computer games with hoops and sticks). Graphics have evolved over the last 10 years and worlds are ofc looking better and in high resolution.  Bug and flaw count now is no worse and almost certainly better than they were - this is down to more advanced development strategies.  Software develomment advances as does every other industry.

Axehilt

Originally posted by MindTrigger

More people would enjoy long travel if the game was capable of making it an adventure in itself.  The trouble is today that these games are shallow, static and scripted.  The world looks great if you are just running by it on the way to your next quest, but don't stop and linger too long or you will notice the flaws in the paint job.

Sort of like if you were always traveling somewhere different and always encountering a completely different set of enemies and/or storyline along the way!

Sounds an awful lot like modern themepark quest gameplay to me...