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EverQuest Next: Latest Roundtable Discusses Fast Travel

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  • bingbongbrosbingbongbros Member UncommonPosts: 689
    Originally posted by ishist

    Ask most veteran EQ players when EQ started to go wrong and most will likely say either Shadows of Luclin or Planes of Power. That's when EQ1 began its gradual pussification. All of a sudden, all the dangerous zones to travel through were made inconsequential. Why worry about having to cross Kithicor during the night when you could just pop into PoK and instantly port wherever in the world you wanted?

    Once you give people the ability to bypass your content it's only a short hop to hubs and rails.

    Yes, I realize they claim you have to explore to find the fast travel hubs, but we all know that'll only last a year tops before the whiny little bitches get that requirement removed as well.

     

    Agreed.  SOE really started gutting the game for what it originally was, in turn for a non stop raid treadmill/instance grind.  I lost a piece of my soul when they gutted the commonlands trade tunnel for a npc bazaar of afkers and bots.

     

    EQn is going to be a generic GW2 rip off melded with minecraft.  SOE claimed to be "all about the players and community" "help us build the game!".  Psssh, yeah right.

    Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
    Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
    Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.

  • Storm_CloudStorm_Cloud Member UncommonPosts: 401
    Originally posted by ishist

    Ask most veteran EQ players when EQ started to go wrong and most will likely say either Shadows of Luclin or Planes of Power. That's when EQ1 began its gradual pussification. All of a sudden, all the dangerous zones to travel through were made inconsequential. Why worry about having to cross Kithicor during the night when you could just pop into PoK and instantly port wherever in the world you wanted?

    Once you give people the ability to bypass your content it's only a short hop to hubs and rails.

    Yes, I realize they claim you have to explore to find the fast travel hubs, but we all know that'll only last a year tops before the whiny little bitches get that requirement removed as well.

    This is the truth!

    That's all folks... Moving on!

     

  • Pratt2112Pratt2112 Member UncommonPosts: 1,636
    Originally posted by Ridrith

    I love how people are whining about how the supposed 'now' crowd are the people asking for no class restrictions and waypoints.  Really?  I think those are good mechanics and I've played almost every MMO under the sun.  I played EQ for two years, WoW for 7, EQ 2 for 4...  Let's not even get started on a majority of the other games.  Fast travel and having no class restrictions are good systems to have in place.  Not everybody wants to ride across the vast world every time they want to meet up with a friend.  You're not required to use the waypoints.  If you feel that it's going to take away from your experience don't use them.  Simple as that.  Same with the class/races.  If you don't think that a gnome for example should be a warrior, don't ever make one.

    Neckbeardia calls to its people.  They're coming out in droves.

    Not simple as that.

    That argument, "if you don't like it, don't use it!", comes up every time this particular topic is discussed/debated. 

    It sounds wonderful in theory... "Play however you like!"

    The problem is, that "wonderful theory" is quickly crushed by the reality of, "People are going to want you to use fast travel, leaving you the option of: "use fast travel, or be ditched and left behind".

    Humans, by nature, will very often take the path of least resistance (depending on their goals, anyway). And it very much is about the "now" crowd. They're the ones demanding everyone fast travel, everyone skip quest dialog, cut-scenes, skip trash mobs and speed-run through dungeons. They're the ones demanding leveling be faster, rare items be easier to obtain, etc. That's the "Now" crowd by definition. And that's the crowd of people who are largely playing these games nowadays.

    So, you can scoff and dismiss it all you like, the fact is.. the "Now Crowd" is quite real, quite present, very impatient, and extremely vocal about it. 

    Just go check out the forums for FFXIV:ARR, particularly the official forums. There seems to be at least one new thread started, almost daily, with people doing one of two things:

    1. Asking others to stop trying to rush them through cut-scenes and telling them to "watch them later", so they can have their speed run.

    2. Complaining about others "being inconsiderate" by watching cut-scenes instead of "watching them later", because they "just want to get the content over with and move on to the next". 

    That "now now now" attitude is pervasive throughout MMOs these days, bleeding over into every aspect - including travel. People are freaking impatient and require constant gratification to keep them interested. If they have to wait more than 5 minutes for someone to travel to them, they're gonna be freaking out; and yes I've seen this happen many times.

    I've seen someone DC while in a group - something out of their control - and the leader barely waited 30 seconds before saying "Okay, I've given them long enough, I'm replacing them with someone in my guild". Folks, including myself, protested and said to give them time. They refused. "I want to get this over with", they said. Moments later, the replacement was in-group. The person who DC'd came back in about half a minute after that, to find they'd been replaced. When they were (understandably) frustrated about this, the party leader said "Find less sucky internet. I don't have all night to wait for you".  The person had been offline for barely 1.5 minutes. Sad thing is, that's not the only time I've seen that happen. Scenarios like that are not rare.

    So, saying "well, if you don't like fast travel, don't use it" is as good as saying "You may as well count on playing solo, because very few people are going to want to wait up for you". 

    Now, the usual follow-up to that is, "well, then play with people you know don't like fast travel either". Again, sounds great on paper, but there are problems with that as well:

    1. Easier said than done. Everyone you know with the same playstyle is not going to be online at the same, leaving you to either play solo or "fast travel" so the group you do get doesn't ditch you.

    2. Sticking to a small, core group of people completely undermines one of the greatest aspects of playing a MMO: The ability to play with any of thousands of people, located all around the world. If you're going to limit yourself to a relative handful of people, you may as well just play a damn co-op game. 

    Developers are consistently trying to reduce MMOs from being the vast, epic adventures they once were, down to Facebook style "bite-sized" nibblets of content. This obsession over "fast travel", "fast everything" is certainly helping to get it there.

    You can't develop strong community in a MMO when people are too busy zipping around everywhere to actually build one.

    Reminds me of this song. The chorus would be great advice for many gamers these days.

  • Ender4Ender4 Member UncommonPosts: 2,247


    Originally posted by Ridrith
    Having more WPs are good because that allows you to find your friends that much faster and easier.  That's what MMOs are about.  Playing with others and enjoying the game with your clan mates and friends.


    I thought they were about playing an alternate personality in a fantasy world and being involved in a community that lives within that world. It is important to keep the feeling of a world and community and things like fast travel destroys that feeling. If my only goal is to just hop in and play with friends I'd probably enjoy the lobby games we keep getting, that isn't what I want. It isn't what MMORPG used to be about either.

    I'm not looking to play a game, I am looking to experience a world. Eventually a developer will make that happen again.

  • evilizedevilized Member UncommonPosts: 576
    hopefully this will be something like the moongate system in UO or the wizard spires / druid rings in the original EQ. they get you to the zone/area but then you got a whoooole lot of running to do afterwards. 
  • Temijin1Temijin1 Member UncommonPosts: 14

    DAOC AND LOTR type of fast travel is a good compromise IMHO. Instant travel shrinks the world. 

     

    I find it disturbing the the polls seem to be so often ignored.  Typically it's one or two people on the development team who's though proces is "ya polls are great....as long as they don't conflict with what MY vision is of the game".  Many times the poll was put up by members of the development team specifically to get input from the future CUSTOMERS to show the "visionary" they are wrong. The visionary's ego can't accept it and the poll gets ignored.

     

    SOE needs to decide who their market is and build a game for them. It's called market segmentation. When you build a product to please too many people you run the risk of pleasing none of them. This is why players can point to "upgrades" to games that actually killed them.

    An example of an updrade that started the death of a game for me was the Bazzar in EQ. The only way to sell was one on on with a live person at the beginning of the game. The tunnel in one of the Commonlads Zones spontaneously grew on my server as the place to go to sell or buy.. Friday and Saturday nights the place was packed and zone chat was full of offers to sell and requests to buy. It was like a farmers market and stock market rolled into one social experience. Crafters had regular customers and suppliers. Social networks were built and friends made outside of the guild. The Bazzar killed this player driven social experience and changed the nature of the game. With the Bazzar came the gold farmer industry and all it's problems.

     

    The NOW crowd are the ones that will be leaving your game in droves and depopulating your servers in a year leaving them unsocial as there few left to group with. There are whole guilds of NOW folk who race to max level, crack the code of all end game content then start the bitching on the boards that there is nothing to do in the game.  Boom, the whole guild is off to the new game.

     
  • Nurf3dukNurf3duk Member Posts: 35
    Everquest pre SoL had a good travel system, if you wanted to travel by foot and take boats the option was there or you could find a friendly Wizard/Druid to port you for a tip and run 2-3 zones to get where you wished to be.
  • Ender4Ender4 Member UncommonPosts: 2,247


    Originally posted by Temijin1

    I find it disturbing the the polls seem to be so often ignored.  Typically it's one or two people on the development team who's though proces is "ya polls are great....as long as they don't conflict with what MY vision is of the game".  Many times the poll was put up by members of the development team specifically to get input from the future CUSTOMERS to show the "visionary" they are wrong. The visionary's ego can't accept it and the poll gets ignored.

     


    The polls are not the important part of the process, the discussions are. I already pointed it but you are wrong here. When they started the polling process for the race question they were leaning towards having racial restrictions, they said this quite clearly multiple times. It was through the discussion that they realized that racial restrictions weren't going to work and the developers changed their minds on the topic. If you really want your voice to be heard go to their discussion board and give your ideas. The poll is just something that is there to start the discussion, it is the least meaningful part of the process.


    The poll should not and never will change their opinion on anything. The discussion should be able to and already HAS in one case changed their direction on something.

  • ishistishist Member UncommonPosts: 213
    Originally posted by Nurf3duk
    Everquest pre SoL had a good travel system, if you wanted to travel by foot and take boats the option was there or you could find a friendly Wizard/Druid to port you for a tip and run 2-3 zones to get where you wished to be.

    Imagine how many entertaining and fondly remembered experiences we would all be missing if nobody ever had to take the boats? The number of people who never got stuck in the middle of the ocean, praying to their gods that if they ran into a Seafury Cyclops they could find their corpse again, is certainly very low. 

    Now keep remembering and imagining, because that's all we're gonna get. Memories. This new generation can't be bothered with things like "experiences".

    Experiences get in the way of their lewts and mess up their carefully maintained parses.

    Also, F**K this new generation.

    In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. - Douglas Adams

  • AnthurAnthur Member UncommonPosts: 961
    "People wanna crawl around" ? Really ? It's never ever good to make fun about your customers. Bad business style.
  • ZajjarZajjar Member UncommonPosts: 116
    Originally posted by Temijin1

    DAOC AND LOTR type of fast travel is a good compromise IMHO. Instant travel shrinks the world. 

     

    I find it disturbing the the polls seem to be so often ignored.  Typically it's one or two people on the development team who's though proces is "ya polls are great....as long as they don't conflict with what MY vision is of the game".  Many times the poll was put up by members of the development team specifically to get input from the future CUSTOMERS to show the "visionary" they are wrong. The visionary's ego can't accept it and the poll gets ignored.

     

    SOE needs to decide who their market is and build a game for them. It's called market segmentation. When you build a product to please too many people you run the risk of pleasing none of them. This is why players can point to "upgrades" to games that actually killed them.

    An example of an updrade that started the death of a game for me was the Bazzar in EQ. The only way to sell was one on on with a live person at the beginning of the game. The tunnel in one of the Commonlads Zones spontaneously grew on my server as the place to go to sell or buy.. Friday and Saturday nights the place was packed and zone chat was full of offers to sell and requests to buy. It was like a farmers market and stock market rolled into one social experience. Crafters had regular customers and suppliers. Social networks were built and friends made outside of the guild. The Bazzar killed this player driven social experience and changed the nature of the game. With the Bazzar came the gold farmer industry and all it's problems.

     

    The NOW crowd are the ones that will be leaving your game in droves and depopulating your servers in a year leaving them unsocial as there few left to group with. There are whole guilds of NOW folk who race to max level, crack the code of all end game content then start the bitching on the boards that there is nothing to do in the game.  Boom, the whole guild is off to the new game.

     

    Sounds about right

  • ZajjarZajjar Member UncommonPosts: 116
    ppl talk about new generation, BUT GUESS WHAT, we old mmo gamers ARE THE NEW next GEN, we are the ones leading the steps for the next players, so what we think and want, is what the next new gen what. BUT the game developers havent really payed attention, thats why every damn mmo out there has flobbed since bliz
  • DistopiaDistopia Member EpicPosts: 21,183
    Originally posted by apocoluster
    Originally posted by Zajjar
    HE speaks like, urll never grp with ur mates if u dont got fast travel, seriously.... these people... once u start the journey toward ur mate in " halas or where ever... urll eventually get there, WE DONT NEED fast travel at low lvl. ITS borring and feels like a themepark

    You do have to walk it the first time....and when it's implemented nobody forces you to use.  Fee Free to walk to your hearts content. 

    As long as the world offers the ability to walk from place to place, I  don't see what the problem is. As those who will be using fast travel are those who want it. IF you don't want to use it, don't... It's that simple.

    For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson


  • HolophonistHolophonist Member UncommonPosts: 2,091

    Fast travel is such a tricky subject. For me it seems to be based on how the game is made. For instance, I loved UO's system which was basically you could mark a rune almost anywhere in the world (not in dungeons) and then either teleport there yourself or open a gate so other people could follow as well using magery. That's fast travel to the most extreme degree. It just fit with how the game was played. It being a full loot ow pvp game it made sense to have that kind of mobility. You could call in help if you needed it, or get out of dodge quick if you had to.

     

    On the other hand I like how in Darkfall you have to run to most places. There are a few portals around the world that you can jump between, but that's for really long distances and there is almost always a decent amount of hoofing it on either end of the trip.

     

    One thing I would like to see is more automated traveling, like in EVE. I think in The Repopulation they were toying around with the idea of having a subway system.

  • Nurf3dukNurf3duk Member Posts: 35
    Why is it such an effort to have to travel to get somewhere? I see alot of "Don't use fast travel then!" , what are you in such a rush for?
  • ropeniceropenice Member UncommonPosts: 588
    Originally posted by Ender4

     


    Originally posted by ishist
    tl;dw

     

    "We want the players to experience epic journeys and to feel the epic scale of the world. But people bitched so we're giving everyone fast travel everywhere."

     

    Why do they bother putting up these roundtable polls? They've ignored the results of the majority of them.

    Q:  Should all races have access to play all classes?

    Leading poll result: I'd like to see certain races restricted to certain classes based on lore

    Their response: We don't feel that restricting class from races is good so we're just gonna go ahead and let you roll up that Ogre Wizard and a Halfling Shadowknight.


     

    Actually they were going to have restricted races, the polls agreed with them but the discussions pointed out exactly why restricted races were not going to fit their game design philosophy. You pointed out exactly what these are for, they changed racial restrictions already because of it.

    So experienced devs working on a game for years needed to be enlightened by players that the race restrictions wouldn't fit their philosophy. How could they over the years not have come to their own conclusion? Smells fishy. Seems more likely they wanted to have no restrictions and thought the poll would support this, but had to backtrack when it didn't. These guys should be knowledgeable about mmos in general and their own game philosophy to have made that decision well before a poll or being told by a forum discussion.

  • HrimnirHrimnir Member RarePosts: 2,415
    Originally posted by Ridrith

    Despite all of the way points GW2s world never really felt all that small to me, WPs all over the place don't really bother me that much either.  I just don't see how/why they'd bother anybody to begin with.  If you don't want to use the system don't use it...  It's just that easy.  When it comes to the world seeming small, if it's not who cares?  Having more WPs are good because that allows you to find your friends that much faster and easier.  That's what MMOs are about.  Playing with others and enjoying the game with your clan mates and friends.

    Thats not what MMO's are about.  Thats what multiplayer games are about.  MMOs are multiplayer games, but that doesnt make them equal.

    MMO's were started based on the idea of a persistent world that when you logged out of it, things still happened and went on.  Part of that persistent world was the feeling of immersion.  Just like in real life when you can't just instaport somewhere, you couldnt in the MMO's with a couple of exceptions.  In EQ you had druids and wizards who could cast port spells.  So it allowed you to get to a major part of the world quickly, but just like in RL (lets say you fly somewhere) you still gotta spend at least a little bit of time travelling to your ultimate destination.

    Do you think people would care about vacations in italy or france, or something like that if they could just insta port there any time they wanted.  Nothing would be special anymore, nobody would care about going somewhere special.  The world would no longer feel large.

    Guess what, same thing happens in MMO's.

    I'm not against fast travel, im just against it at the level of dispersion it is at in most modern MMO's.

    IMO an early EQ1 system + mounts is the perfect way to do it. Have 1 or 2 points per continent that can be ported to, and then mounts once you reach say 60-75% of max level.  Also, let raids be able to port in other raiders by at least one person showing up ahead of time and entering the instance.  I say this only because raiders need all the time they can get and it gets to be a logistical nightmare getting 20-40 people to show up at a physical location at the same time, etc.

    "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

    - Friedrich Nietzsche

  • Ender4Ender4 Member UncommonPosts: 2,247


    Originally posted by ropenice
    So experienced devs working on a game for years needed to be enlightened by players that the race restrictions wouldn't fit their philosophy. How could they over the years not have come to their own conclusion? Smells fishy. Seems more likely they wanted to have no restrictions and thought the poll would support this, but had to backtrack when it didn't. These guys should be knowledgeable about mmos in general and their own game philosophy to have made that decision well before a poll or being told by a forum discussion.


    Yes because it really doesn't make any sense~. If your idea for your character requires one specific class you just pick a race that can be that class, your idea shouldn't be tied to 1 of 40 classes anyway. This shouldn't be a major hurdle for the player base but enough people spoke up saying it would be that they changed their minds.

    I personally hate the choice they made, I'd rather have the restrictions. So my Ogre has to pick Shaman as his healing part instead of Cleric, this isn't some big deal for any normal person. But the MMORPG fan base seems to think everything has to be made open to them and any obstacle is evil.

  • mysticalunamysticaluna Member UncommonPosts: 265

    I love flying mounts, so all I really want in exploration is huge expansive zones catered to special flying mount locations, that can only be reached after you are high level with a flying mount, then all of the old zones for newbies would have high levels in them doing higher level air quests. 

    You'd also still have fun legendary epic storyline quests requiring higher levels to return to older lower level zones, and you could really open up a lot if higher levels were in the sky doing their thing. Instead of having to always make brand new zones, why not just have awesome shared zones between different level players? 

    Of course, without levels you could just do the class/skill tree system thing and everyone mingles, but with the same idea that you'd have to do some long legendary quest for a flying mount and have special mount skill tree points spent. 

    Still, I worry about the graphics, it looks to much like WoW, and even though I play WoW, I wanted EQ to retain its realistic look in-between lord of the rings onilne and wow . 

  • mysticalunamysticaluna Member UncommonPosts: 265

    Zones should be huge because that is why Wizard/Druid portals had a point. By installing travel bells in Everquest 2 they took away the entire point of teleports, and in Everquest 1 you had Plane of Knowledge books. All of those portals opened up the world, which is huge and needed it, yet at the same time all of the Guild Halls have teleports as well. 

    So, why not at least restrict travel bells and teleports to Guilds and their Halls? 

    Now, it is insanely to easy to travel, and Druid/Wizards almost never need to teleport anyone but themselves anymore... 

    At least, in Everquest 1 you had to buy a re-agent to use the Guild Hall's teleporter, but the Plane of Knowledge Book is free. In Everquest 2, the teleport bell adds to the guild hall's status / coin upkeep maintenance but is otherwise free to all users. 

    Without more of a penalty cost of using them, they really took away the coolness factor of being a teleporter class ><. I saw when teleports used to be in demand and got paid for some on my Wizard back in old Everquest 1, alas, now no one needs them anymore ... 

    The most fun was porting people to Plane of Sky... Why do we have these huge zones, but take away the point of teleporting players? When you can just call to guild hall on Everquest 2, or port back to Origin point/Gate/use that Plane of Knowledge click necklace/click other items on Everquest 1? 

  • mysticalunamysticaluna Member UncommonPosts: 265

    I agree with classes being opened to all races, but they should have penaltys, that is what makes role-play. 

    An Ogre Wizard should naturally have high str and low int/wisdom. Now, that wouldn't keep you from getting equipment or doing quests to up your int/wisdom. Starting stats should have racial/class quests and allow you to learn to improve those stats in a storyline ip fitting manner. 

    No one should just easily get equipment and match a Gnome or a Elven Wizard for example. Dark Elves should have special quests to magically enhance their physical strength, draining some of their high naturally intellect, they shouldn't just be given easy mode beginning stats or op gear to fix that. 

    Starting on Everquest 1 now gives you insanely op gear, where almost all of your non-sv resist stats are maxed practically by level 30... Your primary stat is way overcapped and wasted, that you need AA to buy planar power and increase your primary stat cap ! 

  • muffins89muffins89 Member UncommonPosts: 1,585
    im sorry but the developers of this game seem to have no direction.  it's nice that they ask the community for their opinions.  but,   they are supposed to be game developers,  not yes men.  keeping my eye on this because it's "the next big thing".  but so far I've been less than impressed by anything they've told us.
  • Ender4Ender4 Member UncommonPosts: 2,247


    Originally posted by muffins89
    im sorry but the developers of this game seem to have no direction.  it's nice that they ask the community for their opinions.  but,   they are supposed to be game developers,  not yes men.  keeping my eye on this because it's "the next big thing".  but so far I've been less than impressed by anything they've told us.

    If every developer was this open you'd be more used to this. A game in pre-alpha doesn't tend to have these types of questions all answered yet. I beta tested WoW in friends and family beta and the game that was released way miles different than the game I started playing.

  • RaquisRaquis Member RarePosts: 1,029

    that's good if you want to explore you can.

    living world not running through worlds.

    they should have all level quests at all worlds so you go back for more.

    no levels just experience is also better.

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