I often hear people talking about players should not be allowed to "skip content".
In some situations this could probably be true, but I think many are going WAY overboard with the theory. If Pantheon was intended to be a linear game on rails, then yes skipping content would be much more relevant. But its not, intstead it's a sandbox with multiple starting zones, just by design everybody is going to be skipping content.
I think the arguments that, Portals, SoW, Invisibility, Feign Death, and other spells of this sort that are being said to skip content are blowing things completely out of proportion.
I think the biggest issue when it comes to skipping content is the subject of flight mounts and being able to straight-up avoid the majority of combat in the world.
When it comes to skipping things like quests, dungeons, or a zone, in general, I believe that that should be left up to the player to decide. I think there should be entices that make players carefully consider skipping over the content. For example, completing a low-level escort quest could open up a chain quest later on in the game leading to something that is highly useful. However, I think in the end it should be left up to the player to decide the risks vs benefits of skipping certain content.
The problem with most modern games is they are too theme park oriented. They try to hold a tight control the player's experience and in doing so they limit player freedom. Some games even go a harsh extreme and force you to complete certain areas before you are allowed to move on. This limits the whole sense of player freedom, exploration, and active choice when it comes to leveling.
I don't think that SOW, Invisibility, and Feign Death are that game-breaking when it comes to skipping over content offered. I view these things more in terms of strategic gameplay V.S. content skippers, and this is mainly because there are mobs who can see through invisibility, and Feign Death doesn't always work and even when it does if your trying to maneuver through higher-level content chances are once you come out of FD your getting killed. As for SOW, I suppose that depends on your stance when it comes to ground mounts. I fully support the concept of ground mounts being added into the game and since I'm ok with this concept, im ok with players having access to SOW. The thing with SOW though is you still have to run through whatever area you are trying to get to, and in that process, you are still subject to stuns, roots, and daze. There is still a chance that you can be killed if you are not extremely careful.
Portals, on the other hand, are where things start to enter a gray area. I love the idea of all the capital having access to a teleport spell, and the ability to learn them is tied to your faction alignment. When you start talking about the open-world though it depends on how frequent they are, their overall distribution across the map, the zones they are located in and the zones that are located near them. For example, if every raid zone has a TP located a zone or two away; is that a healthy concept? When it comes to open-world tp locations I firmly believe that the more sparingly they are used the better the overall health of the game.
Regarding skipping content and flying mounts. I've recently picked up FF14 again, and I think they're using a pretty good approach with their flying mounts:
You need to unlock a number of aether currents to enable flying in a zone. A few of these you can unlock by visiting certain spots scattered over the zone, and interacting with the currents there. For others you have to complete side quests in the zone, and for the final one you have to finish a main story quest related to the zone.
It usually works out so that you cannot skip over the relevant content while still playing through the story content of the zone, but once you're done with that, you're free to fly and explore the rest of the zone from the air (and there's usually areas in each zone that you cannot even reach other than by flying).
I like that approach because you cannot skip content when its relevant to the story, but after that you are not forced to run through the same mobs and areas again. Also, in many of the zones the design is so that it takes a good amount of time to get around. When you finally gain the freedom to fly, it really feels like a huge reward!
It's not so much a matter of 'skipping content' as of bypassing intentional challenge to travel and progress.
Pretty much everything can be balanced and tweaked to keep travel and content meaningful. It's hard to do with flying, but possibly still doable.
Mostly you just 'gate' the abilities behind stuff that takes such a level of power that the content/travel you are skipping definitely would have been trivial anyway, so you are simple avoiding repetition and tedium, not anything that should have been a challege.
Baldur said:I think the biggest issue when it comes to skipping content is the subject of flight mounts and being able to straight-up avoid the majority of combat in the world.
When it comes to skipping things like quests, dungeons, or a zone, in general, I believe that that should be left up to the player to decide. I think there should be entices that make players carefully consider skipping over the content. For example, completing a low-level escort quest could open up a chain quest later on in the game leading to something that is highly useful. However, I think in the end it should be left up to the player to decide the risks vs benefits of skipping certain content.
The problem with most modern games is they are too theme park oriented. They try to hold a tight control the player's experience and in doing so they limit player freedom. Some games even go a harsh extreme and force you to complete certain areas before you are allowed to move on. This limits the whole sense of player freedom, exploration, and active choice when it comes to leveling.
I don't think that SOW, Invisibility, and Feign Death are that game-breaking when it comes to skipping over content offered. I view these things more in terms of strategic gameplay V.S. content skippers, and this is mainly because there are mobs who can see through invisibility, and Feign Death doesn't always work and even when it does if your trying to maneuver through higher-level content chances are once you come out of FD your getting killed. As for SOW, I suppose that depends on your stance when it comes to ground mounts. I fully support the concept of ground mounts being added into the game and since I'm ok with this concept, im ok with players having access to SOW. The thing with SOW though is you still have to run through whatever area you are trying to get to, and in that process, you are still subject to stuns, roots, and daze. There is still a chance that you can be killed if you are not extremely careful.
Portals, on the other hand, are where things start to enter a gray area. I love the idea of all the capital having access to a teleport spell, and the ability to learn them is tied to your faction alignment. When you start talking about the open-world though it depends on how frequent they are, their overall distribution across the map, the zones they are located in and the zones that are located near them. For example, if every raid zone has a TP located a zone or two away; is that a healthy concept? When it comes to open-world tp locations I firmly believe that the more sparingly they are used the better the overall health of the game.
I agree with all of the above. Well said. I also enjoyed reading and appreciate the sentiment behind your other recent (but related) post:
Barin999 said:Following this thread you can see that many have suggestions and other points of view. What is given that there will be portals and that Druid and Wizard will have abilities relating to that. (not to underestimate the consequences of the summoners': Escape Portal-ability)
I would agree that another class can only zone towards a portal that they already have discovered. This discovery event can already be a memorable experience for that player. So it might be a shame to design a mechanic that allows players to bypasses this experience.
Interaction with a portal opened by a player might require a consumable. This product could have a refresh timer. This allows travel by portal but it has consequences, namely: the player can not interact with another portal for X-time. This item can be player made or a singular purchase might be possible at the npc standing near the portal. Meaning, npc-bought items do not stack and will dissappear when used. The player can still not interact with another portal after X-time.
As many mentioned already, the location of the portal might be in such a manner that you might be able to go from one continent to another. But after teleportation occcurred you still have to travel for a reasonable distance before you can engage in the majority content around that portal. One can not walk from one portal to another without investing a large amount of time (requiring multiple gaming sessions).
I like the idea of the 'npc-portals' functioning similar to travel by boat. The portal opens and closes in a certain time sequence. This for me holds the most potential when looking at long term community interaction, or at least creating opportunities to see, meet and converse with other players throughout the years. (Imagine players stating in chat, portal X is open if you want to use it,...a stream of players coming over and stepping through. Or players waiting at the portal to open.) Directly linked to this, player created portals might be a faster way to team up with distant groupmembers or friends, as said before it might have consequences. The portal created by the player might not stay open as long as the NPC-portals.
Using the portal ability itself might have it's requirements for the druid or wizard. Meaning, they might not be able to use that ability every 5 minutes, but rather X time/day (real time, not game time). So although it is very handy, they might want to use it for their friends or such. (I am not saying this will be the case, but it just another path how portals can be designed). I can imagine that if I have a limited amount of times I can use that ability per gaming session, I will not be porting every passer-by that asks for it. It now became an ability to be used in a strategic way and not just a spam taxi service.
Not every portal might give you all options of portals. The overall expectation, that I'm reading here, is that 1 portal will grant access to every other (explored/known) portal in the world. This however might not be the case at all. I'll use real life to examplify, because not everyone might be familiar with the geography of Terminus' current locations. If I can open a portal in Europe to Canada, but that same portal from Europe, does not allow me to access the portal in California. So it will still require of me to travel from Canada to California. The portal from California might allow me to Europe and Canada. (or any other combination). Again, portals and especially the use of portals now becomes a strategic matter. You need to think which portal will get me where and which portal will take me back if I wanted to. This will be even more so if you have a downtime for using portals.
Lastly, player created portals might allow you access to certain portals but not all and vice versa. NPC-portals might allow you access to certain portals but not all. A good design would still allow you to experience distance and time investment without taking away the opportunity to team up and travel together. You just need to think, before you zone as a player or as a group.
These things seem reasonable to me. They seem great, even. In my eyes, this is the definition of "meaningful travel." Travel that requires planning? Strategy? Coordination? Thinking? Sounds awesome to me. I would be very happy if things work exactly as you described here. Thank you for your detailed explanations and for having the foresight to think about the game several years after release rather than just the thrill of a fresh launch. Cheers!
disposalist said:
It's not so much a matter of 'skipping content' as of bypassing intentional challenge to travel and progress.
That's a good way to put it disposalist.
For example SoW is ok if there are many types of monsters with many based land speeds. An ogre may move at say 5 mph at a full trundle but a wolf can sprint you down at 40mph. If walking speed is 4mph and SoW speed is a whapping 6mph, sprint speed is 8 mph but can only be maintained for 20 seconds and sprint with SoW is 12 mph then you have an actual gradient of speeds. You are never going to be able to outrun the wolf but you can break away from the ogre with SoW, so long as you don't run right into another. SoW just becomes a cog in the over all movement speed system. I would add in speed boosts on well paved roads and penalties on unfavorable terrain.
Likewise even mounts can be a positive tool to decrease the tedium of traveling between points that are not intended to be a challenge but should not be useable to say run through a camp of challenging mobs and get away. Portals and teleportation can also be a system that cuts down on tedium as long as it does not destroy the concept of localization (if localization is still a goal). In my opinion teleports are actually more damaging to world size in their “from” function rather than their “too” function. Being able to run all the way to a challenging target then immediately teleport back to a major city bypasses challenging content intended to be faced on at least part of the return journey. After all with death penalties its not just getting exp that is important it is getting back with it as well. There could just be many areas that are "too dangerous to connect to the etheral plane" from which could be a function of your level vs the zone and so becomes a function of the intended challenge though that gives a huge advantage to high level players farming low level content.
Movement speed enhancements are honestly more a function of world size, agro range, sight range, attack range and content density. The higher base movement speed is the higher the other numbers need to be except for content density which needs to be lower. Hand crafting a zone takes a lot of time so I would like to see the highest play time yield each zone can deliver and to that end we want to decrease those numbers while increasing the density.
My whole assumptions could be wrong though if it is actually fairly easy to spin out 40 zones of relatively low content density and there by decreasing the server load on individual clusters because that zone will be controlling fewer mobs and containing few players.
In a PvP oriented game (or server) fast travel should be minimalized as those open areas are places where one could find content (pvp) and access it.
Fast travel ruins this opportunity because if people dont run through areas, you have less of a chance at content (pvp).
In a PvE oriented game, I honestly do not think fast travel matters that much. Again it comes down to choices. Giving players the choice is preferable in my opinion because players tastes vary.
Some enjoy the exploration and running from place to place and having to dodge mobs all the way. Others dislike the monotony and tedium. Some players have all day to play and do not mind spending time getting from place to place. Other people have limited time and as such do not want to spend a significant portion of their gaming time travelling.
Quick rule of thumb IMO is give choices. As long as an option does not negatively impact another player then why not leave it up to the players.