I've watched yesterday Voices of Terminus Show #167 Closer Look: Teleportation Druid & Wizard and I'm left with couple of thoughts on the matter.
1) Druidic "Wandering Stones" - i don't know what devs had envisioned for them, but how cool it would be for them to be Big-ass Golems wandering around specific area (so the port location would not be always at the same location - or zone even) and in order for druids to ba able to teleport to them they would need to: 1) Find Golem 2) Defeat the Boss golem (incapacitate it) 3) mine from it small, medium, large stone fragment 4) bring stone fragment to crafter (Gemcutter) 5) bring stone from gemcutter to blacksmith in order to make amulet or something and stone would last for certain ammount of uses: eg small - 10, medium - 30, large - 75. Once in a while - due to specific time of year - solstice perhaps - golem would gain immense power and turn into world boss which would among other things drop pristine stone with unlimited uses.
2) Wizard portals - personally love Leksurs idea of becoming more adept with the skill depending on how many time you use it - so in case of portal at first it would be mere tear in a space and you'd be unable to see your destination and could land wherever. After couple of uses the teleport would look more like proper portal - oval and all and you'd be able to see changing scenery though really blurred - and in order to land where you want you'd need to have a good chunk of luck and perception. Later portal would become enveloped by stones and gain more stability - we'd be able to clearly see whats on the other side, but the scenery would sometimes switch to another without warning, finally after mastering the art of teleportation it would become a majestic stable portal taking us to wanted location without fail. On top of that due to more unpredictable nature of arcane magic - compared to druidic magic for example -teleportation would have a chance to leave travellers with positive or negative buffs/effects.
3) World trees - druidic world teleports (one at each continent) - after some help from a druids (tending to these trees and applying fertilizer), the trees would be able to bloom which would activate the tree and allow for teleportation. Perhaps the blooming would be available once a week but only for an hour or two.
4) Lunar lakes - world teleports governed by wizards (one at each continent) - once a month at full moon concentrated (with the help of wizardry) lunar light would shine on the lakes surface which would start to emanate light - becoming a portal. In order to teleport we'd have to swim at the middle of the lake. The portal would stay active 24h in opposition to druidic more frequent but short ports.
5) Although area immidietely around world portals would be a safe zone, to reach the rest of the continent we'd have to pass a dengerous areas - so eg one porting location could be on the top of the mountain, but on the way down orcs have made their camp.
6) I'm against any portals in towns, but I'd love the possibility to port into a guild hall - perhaps after guild hall upgrade/construction project has been made.
What are your takes on the teleports?
1. A quest to unlock the ability to use portals is good. Once unlocked it should not take a quest each time you want to use the ability. I am not sure at all about the idea of needing to do a quest every 10, 30 or 75 uses. It would have the advantage of providing a constant pool of druids needing to do the quest and therefore willing to group with new druids. If this approach is taken - make the stone a unique item so that you couldn't stockpile endless uses of the ability.
2. I see the appeal but with respect I disagree. Reminds me too much of some of the single player games where a min-maxer might spend many hours hurting herself so she could cast heals and raise that skill. Damaging trivial enenmies to raise combat skills etc. I see no gameplay benefit to my wizard casting portal 100 times in a row or casting it each time she logs in up to a daily limit.
3. Disagree if you mean the ability would only be available for an hour each week. Agree with the idea of having a limited number of uses a druid could make of the ability but not limited to one block of time. Thus - if a druid could only teleport 7 times a week that would be a nice limitation but not the same reaction if the druid had to trigger the ability each week and then could only use it within a few hours of the trigger.
4. Disagree. See above. Strict limits on use are fine to keep the world feeling larger. Only being able to transport friends or guildmates or groupmates during a very limited period each month would cripple the social use of the ability.
5. Agree that portal locations should not be too convenient so that the world would be a large place to anyone but wizards and druids and their friends/clients to whom it would be a ridiculously small place. See no need for a portal location to be safe at all.
6. Tentatively agree with having no teleports ever near a town BUT see advantages to having a teleport in town that is only linked to one possible destination where that destination is no closer to an adventuring area than the town is. Thus - if elves have a realm containing one merchant hub and one training hub connected by good roads - allowing a wizard to go from one to the other may reduce tedium without significantly reducing risk or opportunity for adventure.
Yes would love it if fast travel weren't so trivial as it can be in most MMORPGs. I've posted about ideas like needing to gather resources to use portals and to do quests to unlock them, but you've expanded the idea and had some great thoughts.
Stopping porting from becoming as mundane as a druid/wizard taxi service money-spinner would be a good thing.
Making it something that is engaging and interesting in and of itself is even better still.
I don't think it should be the arbitrary domain of particular player classes (Druid/Wizard), though. Making it quested and resourced and limited in power (accuracy, distance, schedule, etcs) would mean it could be available to all. Ability to travel is a fundamental thing.
The OP's ideas would work well with NPC porters that have to be appeased/subdued/paid/all-of-these.
I hope that group teleportation is something special, I want it to be rare that a druid or wizard can say to the group " Dont worry I'll port us there ". I feel it should take something like a epic quest maybe not as hard but close too, it should be a huge deal that your druid / wizard can teleport group members, and even teleporting yourself should feel like an achievement of some kind.
On top of that I feel special locations should have special quests to gain access to using that portal, there may be a portal near a raid zone, but it cant be used unless you've soothed the wild life around there from some creeping shadow. Once you've done that quest chain that may even involve adventuring into dungeons it should then be usable for you.
I just want teleporting to be rare and respected I don't think it should be a given that every wizard or druid can teleport you or themselves. Its a massive boon and should be treated as such its something very special.
dorotea said:1. A quest to unlock the ability to use portals is good. Once unlocked it should not take a quest each time you want to use the ability. I am not sure at all about the idea of needing to do a quest every 10, 30 or 75 uses. It would have the advantage of providing a constant pool of druids needing to do the quest and therefore willing to group with new druids. If this approach is taken - make the stone a unique item so that you couldn't stockpile endless uses of the ability.
2. I see the appeal but with respect I disagree. Reminds me too much of some of the single player games where a min-maxer might spend many hours hurting herself so she could cast heals and raise that skill. Damaging trivial enenmies to raise combat skills etc. I see no gameplay benefit to my wizard casting portal 100 times in a row or casting it each time she logs in up to a daily limit.
3. Disagree if you mean the ability would only be available for an hour each week. Agree with the idea of having a limited number of uses a druid could make of the ability but not limited to one block of time. Thus - if a druid could only teleport 7 times a week that would be a nice limitation but not the same reaction if the druid had to trigger the ability each week and then could only use it within a few hours of the trigger.
4. Disagree. See above. Strict limits on use are fine to keep the world feeling larger. Only being able to transport friends or guildmates or groupmates during a very limited period each month would cripple the social use of the ability.
5. Agree that portal locations should not be too convenient so that the world would be a large place to anyone but wizards and druids and their friends/clients to whom it would be a ridiculously small place. See no need for a portal location to be safe at all.
6. Tentatively agree with having no teleports ever near a town BUT see advantages to having a teleport in town that is only linked to one possible destination where that destination is no closer to an adventuring area than the town is. Thus - if elves have a realm containing one merchant hub and one training hub connected by good roads - allowing a wizard to go from one to the other may reduce tedium without significantly reducing risk or opportunity for adventure.
1) It's 10-30-75 uses per location so if you want to port to the northern part of middle continent it would only take a use from that given stone variant - so it wouldn't be that often. And the fight with the golem could only be triggered by a druid and only druid could "mine" the stone, but that doesn't mean he needs to group with other druids - could just do it with regular party "on the way" while leveling (as each zone will have different level monsters)
2) Could have restrictions - maybe something like in shroud of avatar, where a pool of your exp will go into your skill pool and then after each skill use it will substract portion of it , so if you run out of skill exp you'll just stop leveling your skills until you gain more exp.
3-4) The ammount of time was given as example - can be shortened or prolonged. And in 3 and 4 point i was talking about WORLD portals and by it I mean portals freely accessible by all - not just druids/wizards - only activated by them (so bunch of wizards gather once a month by the lake, channel their energy and from this point for a day any class without any help from a wizard can swim to the center of this lake and instantly port to another continent) . Regular druid/wizard portals would be available multiple times per day - wether its with a 30/60 min cooldown or with dependance on wizards/druids level or skill level x times per day.
Hegenox said: ... What are your takes on the teleports?So far? That most serious/hardcore players will 2-box a wizard and/or druid to have a pocket teleporter that will allow them to go from wherever they are, in any location, dungeon or otherwise to any egress point in the respective type of teleport network/destination, at any time.
vjek said:most serious/hardcore players will 2-box a wizard and/or druid to have a pocket teleporter that will allow them to go from wherever they are, in any location, dungeon or otherwise to any egress point in the respective type of teleport network/destination, at any time.
Well - but it's a fault of multiboxing and not teleportation. Personally I'm strongly opposed to multiboxing esp in a game like Pantheon which aspire to be a social expirience. What amazes me the most is that majority of the forum users oppose to any kind of simplification in the game - whether its UI, travel or anything else, but at the same time most of them declare that they'll multibox - which not only stays against anything social, but is making a game easier in a way as well.
Hegenox said: ... Personally I'm strongly opposed to multiboxing esp in a game like Pantheon which aspire to be a social expirience. ...I am in full agreement, yet, history has taught me and mine to take advantage of these mechanics, especially when they are part of the companies stated public design goals.
vjek said:So far? That most serious/hardcore players will 2-box a wizard and/or druid to have a pocket teleporter that will allow them to go from wherever they are, in any location, dungeon or otherwise to any egress point in the respective type of teleport network/destination, at any time.
I mean, personally? If I were to do it, I wouldn't do it that way, but that's their current public design goals on the topic, so far, as I understand it.
It's also why any attempt at economic regionalization or arbitrage will fail, but that's a different topic. :)
Again thoses "I want easyness so I pay more" arguments ? Your definition of hardcore is by far not common agreed to.
So, when responding to "What's your take on?" I must always preface every post that it's my opinion? That it's my opinion isn't presumed? Good times, MauvaisOeil, good times. :)
The important thing is to attack the messenger and/or delivery. That's the best way to have community building discussion. /s
LOVE the idea of actual wandering golems as Wandering Stones. That takes the concept to the next, crucial level. I wouldnt connect a fight mechanic to it, but the idea of pathing teleport points is brilliant. Druid: "Now where is that old Wandering Stone..."
Also a phenomenal way to differentiate druid and wizard teleportation. I hope a dev sees that idea.
Also love the idea of power foci changing in time, eg lunar lakes. Awesome thoughts!
I have seen nothing on these forums that indicates that anywhere near a majority would consider multi-boxing. I think that is very much a worst case scenario.
The logic of letting two classes have teleports in a game like Pantheon is not entirely obvious. It seems almost self-evident to me that the *real* reason for this is the same as the real reason for having corpse runs and the real reason for having training. A strong support in the community and an even stronger support by VR personnel for having features visibly reminiscent of EQ. For nostalgia. They may not throw these in where they think it will hurt Pantheon but if other things are even close to equal this is an enormous factor.
Don't get me wrong - corpse runs, class teleports and training all have some benefits and all contribute to meeting the core objectives. But they probably would have found *better* ways to meet these objectives if not for the strong preference for some "nostalgia" features. Those that object to any of these features are wise to argue for ways that they can be made more beneficial and less harmful. We *are* going to have them.
Thus - strict limits on how often class teleports can be used. Strict limits on where one can teleport to. Strict limits on how many other locations any one terminus connects to. Limits on getting overpowered abilities like this until one is rather high level. Limits on using it to teleport others until one is even *higher* level. Limits on what levels are allowed to be teleported. Limitations on how often any character can be teleported. This type of limitation.
Perhaps to make it more fair, some more limited ability for other classes to teleport. Perhaps a NPC that for a high cost allows any character of any class that meets level requirements to teleport once a day to a limited set of locations.
dorotea said:I have seen nothing on these forums that indicates that anywhere near a majority would consider multi-boxing. I think that is very much a worst case scenario.
There's no real data about how big or small the "boxing" population might be, for this or any other aspect of that discussion. Anecdotally, across multiple games I see the following:
- At launch, the population is usually relatively small, maybe 10% or so that run multiple accounts. This varies by the game, of course.
- Over time, as people figure out how to do it effectively, or see others boxing for their own benefit, that population increases. In older games that I am currently playing, both live and via emulators, something like 30% or more of the player population is known to run more than one character simultaneously.
We have to understand that a core component of almost every gamer's psychology is to actively look for ways that they can make playing the game easier for themselves. That's why so many people min/max and chase after so-called "best-in-slot" items. It's why in many games you can't join a group for a boss fight without being asked if you've watched the video. It's why things like UI addons have happened in games that allow those, and why RMT continues to be an issue for pretty much every major MMORPG.
I submit to you that whether it's the majority or minority, a non-trivial portion of the people that will play Pantheon are inclined to multibox if they can get away with it. Maybe not right away, but once they understand how the gameplay works, if there's a benefit, they'll eventually pursue that benefit. The more people that do it, the more the people who haven't tried it yet will be tempted to. And once they do, it becomes a crutch for them - just like duty finders and item levels and dps meters and other "conveniences" have become crutches in many games.
Any system that can potentially be abused by a multiboxer to bypass the requirement to actively engage with other players, while providing gameplay benefits to themselves, is something that I would consider a critical risk to the integrity and long-term viability of Pantheon. If we want the game to continue to attract and retain new players long after its launch, then the game must be designed in such a way that players can't become less reliant on others over time.
I like the ideas, but looking at the issue of porting from a broader sense and the issue of a small world. I think the small world issue comes from the fear of porting to, instead of porting back.
What I mean is, the "no ports because it makes travel trivial" I believe centers on the premise of porting to somewhere. What if ports were limited to only porting back? Similar to the angst created by one way zone in's in dungeons, where if you wiped, you had to start all over again.
This would make getting to the place important, rather, having the playerability to navigate through the areas quickly or efficiently to get to the place from which you can proceed. A hard earned mini progression if you will. Some gamers may like this as it hearkens to ribbon style gaming a la Mario. The argument may be this is an "on-rails" approach but in an open world you can take many paths to get to the same destination without ports.
What if ports only worked from where you got to, to back to a town and a port could only be activated after a ranger or mage (notice I didnt say wizard or druid- it could be something else in Pantheon) passed or "flagged" through a minimum of at least 2 zones? You could collect ports to all cities but had to anchor a port to a city to be able to use it and once used had to re-anchor the port to use it again. This would prevent anchoring ports in all the cities and having the ranger run through two zones to be able to port to another city. The rule being you can run at the minimum two zones out, but only port back to the city you ran out from.
This would still make travel meaningful and save time at the end of your adventure if you didnt want to camp in the wild and you had someone that could port, you could port back to their anchored town.
If you wanted to get anywhere, you woudl still have to physically get there, and like anything hope the information was good or meet strangers on the way heading the same direction- safety in numbers after all. You heard there were crowd in avendyrs pass, great place to exp, so you make your way there, anyone going there? that was a week ago. Could be when you get there, who knows but thats the chance you take but who are you with and what do you do now? thats when the adventure begins.
I think that interesting, changing world should be reason enough for me to pick on-foot travel instead of teleports. They have great tool called "perception system" to implement something really cool - NPCs and events showing up on certain dates and time etc. Traversing couple of zones that I've travelled many times before isn't in any way meaningful - quite the opposite. I'm not a kid anymore and I can't spend whole day in front of the computer... there are days that when I come back from work I have 2 hours of play time available - and I don't want to waste half of it just by travelling - esp if I have a need to do some dungeoneering.
I agree that travel should be meaningful, but after you've played 40-50 levels, it becomes a chore if there aren't some sort of ways to speed up the trip.
It's not like Druids and Wizards would be created with the ability to port at level1. It would take time before the ability to port will be accessible to even the casual players. Just from a monetary standpoint, the first few porters will make good cash porting those that can pay what will likely be premium prices, until there is plenty of service providers to drive down the cost to the point the casual players can afford it.
I think people are thinking too much of early game and forcing travel, versus the reality that this won't happen overnight.
*Yaladan and Watemper. I believe your analogy to a healer's ability to resurrect is less than persuasive. If we are going to compare the special abilities of classes it makes more sense to compare combat abilities with combat abilities and ancillary abilities with ancillary abilities. All classes need to have abilities that will be important in combat and the immediate aftermath of combat. If not, some classes will be pariahs when groups are formed. It is less important for all classes to have equivilant non-combat abilities but it still is desirable not to give one class *much* better abilities than other classes for obvious reasons.
So if unlimited teleports will be so *strong* an attraction for people to create wizards and druids that there will be a boatload of them compared to other classes playing the same roles - we should limit the attractiveness of the teleport ability until things balance out.
But keeping combat abilities balanced between the various classes is a horse of an entirely different colour.
*Fulton - you are entirely correct that this is a middle to late game issue. VR has essentially confirmed that the ability to teleport will come fairly late, and the ability to teleport others will come even later. Nevertheless now is the time that basic decisions are being made about what limits on teleportation will be imposed to keep the world feeling large and to keep these two classes from having a much better ancillary ability than other classes, so now is the time to make suggestions such as those the OP made.
*Nephele I agree in all respects. My point was very limited. Not that people will not multi-box in Pantheon but that we have not seen any widespread sign of this on these forums. In another recent post I questioned whether multi-boxing was s serious threat. Not as a rhetorical device, though I have been known to use such. But because I have never felt it was one of the more serious issues facing Pantheon and others clearly *do* feel it is a serious issue. To the point of suggesting "no-boxing" rulesets. I have seen this mentioned enough recently by people I often agree with that I am certainly open to being persuaded that it is one of the important issues that should influence game design. But my experience in other MMOs doesn't lead me in that direction though over the last five years that experience has been limited to just a few of them so I may be living in a bubble.
Watemper said:Sounds like a daily quest in WoW...no thanks. Besides if you are going to make tping such a chore then you should make every advantage a class has a chore...like rezzing, clarity,...w/e ultimate tank skill is introduced...etc.
That's one good reason that porting shouldn't be allocated arbitrarily to any particular class.
Fulton said:I agree that travel should be meaningful, but after you've played 40-50 levels, it becomes a chore if there aren't some sort of ways to speed up the trip.
It's not like Druids and Wizards would be created with the ability to port at level1. It would take time before the ability to port will be accessible to even the casual players. Just from a monetary standpoint, the first few porters will make good cash porting those that can pay what will likely be premium prices, until there is plenty of service providers to drive down the cost to the point the casual players can afford it.
I think people are thinking too much of early game and forcing travel, versus the reality that this won't happen overnight.
In EQ porting was a goldmine.
If the classic EQ arbitrary assigning of group proting to Druids and Wizards is followed, I anticipate the Dial-A-Port guild being created on release day and within weeks having characters high enough level to do it. They will then quickly be the richest guild and, again if the EQ model is followed, anyone with the cash can have themselves or their level 1 alts and friends ported around and travel will be trivialised to a mundane Uber service.
Yay.
I can see gold sellers setting up dispatch characters taking calls and having a roster of Druid and Wizard 'drivers' who they 'employ'...