HI
This ide is from my tabletop gaming
What about a Travel Plane that shortens Travel but contain dangers and difficulties for user's.
And could be use in story or "Emergency" events suggested in another tread?
Difficulty example : If we died the corpse was trown out to real world to get back or maybe there is a chanse for this to happen
For longer travel we "need" a groupe or raid so we could invent places where we stod and formed this to get to far away places faster and make new friends
This could add a new dimension to explore and might tie in with the Lore of Terminus as the population is "Mysteriosly" transported here.
Turn on your thinkin cap and evolve on this suggestion, could it be something Terminus could use maybe in a Future Expansion
The idea has been used in several different fantasy settings, Karl Edward Wagners’s Tower of Ysyl and Robert Jordan’s ‘the ways’.
Could be a shortcut that was available to span the distance between KOS areas like the old good and evil zones of Freeport and Qeynos which required a long travel distance and passing guards. Your travel plane could involve a significant time savings and the ability to bypass this, but has a chance to spawn a super nasty encounter thus making it a risk vs reward situation. This could encourage players to form travel groups as it would be too difficult to face the encounter without a full group makeup with tank and healer etc.
Cadenbrie said:The idea has been used in several different fantasy settings, Karl Edward Wagners’s Tower of Ysyl and Robert Jordan’s ‘the ways’.
Was thinking the same about Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, with the NeverNever, the Faerie planes. Harry Dresden used them as a shortcut regularly. Got his ass kicked there for doing it repeatedly :)
I actually kinda like this idea for use in an MMO. If you're willing to risk big to cut your travel time, that's a fair trade in my mind.
Feyshtey said:Cadenbrie said:The idea has been used in several different fantasy settings, Karl Edward Wagners’s Tower of Ysyl and Robert Jordan’s ‘the ways’.
Was thinking the same about Jim Butcher's NeverNever, the Faerie planes. Harry Dresden used them as a shortcut regularly. Got his ass kicked there for doing it repeatedly :)
I actually kinda like this idea for use in an MMO. If you're willing to risk big to cut your travel time, that's a fair trade in my mind.
One of my favorite series. Could one up you with The Room of Thirteen Doors, from the Sandman Slim series.
Or Raymond E. Feists 'Hall of Worlds'
http://midkemia.wikia.com/wiki/Hall_of_Worlds
(not the one I was looking for, but it does show it in this nice artist concept)
No matter how difficult you make it, I am still not a fan of this concept. The Nexus, which this basically is, was the beginning of the end for EQ for most of us "old school" players. The Nexus, and this, is basically a "public transit" system for the game. This "public transit" system pretty much killed the "socialness" of EQ and the population of zones that were not raid zones or Nexus port zones.
The only "public transit" systems should be boats and caravans, whatever both of those turn out to be.
In addition to the killing off of the population in zones, these sorts of "insta-travel public transit systems" negate the intended feel of the size of the world.
Grizzly, I like your idea in terms of making it a content-based thing (the farther you go, the tougher the challenge you have to face), but I think the implementation would be really hard. At some point you'd hit diminishing returns because it would take longer to get people together to beat whatever encounter was needed than it would just to walk there.
On the broader topic of fast travel in general, here's how I feel about stuff:
POP-style "portal" stones: Big no. They became way too much of a convenience for players, and made it so distance no longer mattered.
Luclin-style "public" teleports. No. While they weren't as bad as POP (because of the wait time), they still completely devalued existing methods of travel when they were introduced.
WoW-style "flight paths". Maybe. I'm more ok with these because they keep you in-world (they're not just teleports), and because you have to go to the place on foot at least once to unlock them. That said, presentation is really important on these and they need to have a significant cost - bluntly, they should cost enough that we *only* use them when it's really important.
EQ/Vanguard style "Boats". I'm ok with this, and would support it as long as it makes sense from an immersion standpoint.
Individual or group "ports". No. Players turn them into taxi services which is maybe great for socialization, but if you roll time forward a few years it's become institutionalized and regular travel has been devalued. An exception, however, is "evac" type spells in dungeons, that move the party back to the entrance, personal "gate" or "town-portal" type spells that offer a one way trip back to the home point, and specific group ports that are the means used to access an area, like the Hate/Fear/Sky ports in old EQ. But in general, I would like to not see druid/wizard ports be a thing. I know that will rub some folks the wrong way.
Mounts and player-controlled ships. Yes. However, having a mount shouldn't allow you to ignore aggro mechanics. If something aggroes you while mounted, it should either hurt your mount, OR it should have a way to pull you off the mount and force you into combat. That means you can't just ride through the pack of trolls and outrun them on the other side. Also, if flying mounts exist they should be *very* rare and hard to obtain, and their usage should be limited in "overland dungeon" areas. For example, you can't fly your griffon over the bandit camp, because the bandits will start using you for target practice.
Speed-enhancing spells and effect (SoW, Selo's, etc). Yes, however, this is a significant utility, and utility should be balanced between classes. So classes that don't get these spells/effects should be getting something else that's equally useful/valuable to a group, in general. As an poor example of what I mean, if rangers can cast SoW, and rogues can't, perhaps the tradeoff is that the rogue can disarm the nasty traps that tend to be everywhere in dungeons that would nail the ranger (and everyone else) right in the face.
"Summons" like EQ's Call of the Hero. I'm ok with this, with limitations. I think it's important to allow groups to form up, however, it shouldn't be global. I'd say limit it to in-zone only.
Caravans that allow (offline) fast travel to zones/outposts. In theory, this might work ok - the idea is that your character is traveling while you're offline. However, implementation would be key. For example, if you only had to be offline for 10 minutes to allow the caravan to move your character, people would sign up for a caravan, log off, and then log back in 15 minutes later in order to basically get free travel. So while I'm down with the intent of caravans, I think the details of how they work will need to be carefully thought through.
I think that the moment you start centralizing travel through some means - even if you initially add some sort of danger to it - is the moment you open the door to trivializing travel. I think such mechanics also shrink the world. Going from point A on one side of the world to point B on the other side of the world feels like exactly the same distance as travelling from point C in the world to point D which is relatively close to point C.
For me, not an idea I'm in favor of.
Nephele said:Grizzly, I like your idea in terms of making it a content-based thing (the farther you go, the tougher the challenge you have to face), but I think the implementation would be really hard. At some point you'd hit diminishing returns because it would take longer to get people together to beat whatever encounter was needed than it would just to walk there.
On the broader topic of fast travel in general, here's how I feel about stuff:
POP-style "portal" stones: Big no. They became way too much of a convenience for players, and made it so distance no longer mattered.
Luclin-style "public" teleports. No. While they weren't as bad as POP (because of the wait time), they still completely devalued existing methods of travel when they were introduced.
WoW-style "flight paths". Maybe. I'm more ok with these because they keep you in-world (they're not just teleports), and because you have to go to the place on foot at least once to unlock them. That said, presentation is really important on these and they need to have a significant cost - bluntly, they should cost enough that we *only* use them when it's really important.
EQ/Vanguard style "Boats". I'm ok with this, and would support it as long as it makes sense from an immersion standpoint.
Individual or group "ports". No. Players turn them into taxi services which is maybe great for socialization, but if you roll time forward a few years it's become institutionalized and regular travel has been devalued. An exception, however, is "evac" type spells in dungeons, that move the party back to the entrance, personal "gate" or "town-portal" type spells that offer a one way trip back to the home point, and specific group ports that are the means used to access an area, like the Hate/Fear/Sky ports in old EQ. But in general, I would like to not see druid/wizard ports be a thing. I know that will rub some folks the wrong way.
Mounts and player-controlled ships. Yes. However, having a mount shouldn't allow you to ignore aggro mechanics. If something aggroes you while mounted, it should either hurt your mount, OR it should have a way to pull you off the mount and force you into combat. That means you can't just ride through the pack of trolls and outrun them on the other side. Also, if flying mounts exist they should be *very* rare and hard to obtain, and their usage should be limited in "overland dungeon" areas. For example, you can't fly your griffon over the bandit camp, because the bandits will start using you for target practice.
Speed-enhancing spells and effect (SoW, Selo's, etc). Yes, however, this is a significant utility, and utility should be balanced between classes. So classes that don't get these spells/effects should be getting something else that's equally useful/valuable to a group, in general. As an poor example of what I mean, if rangers can cast SoW, and rogues can't, perhaps the tradeoff is that the rogue can disarm the nasty traps that tend to be everywhere in dungeons that would nail the ranger (and everyone else) right in the face.
"Summons" like EQ's Call of the Hero. I'm ok with this, with limitations. I think it's important to allow groups to form up, however, it shouldn't be global. I'd say limit it to in-zone only.
Caravans that allow (offline) fast travel to zones/outposts. In theory, this might work ok - the idea is that your character is traveling while you're offline. However, implementation would be key. For example, if you only had to be offline for 10 minutes to allow the caravan to move your character, people would sign up for a caravan, log off, and then log back in 15 minutes later in order to basically get free travel. So while I'm down with the intent of caravans, I think the details of how they work will need to be carefully thought through.
I agree with almost everything that you said. The things that I differ on, I will bring down and offer an explanation on.
WoW-style "flight paths". Maybe. I'm more ok with these because they keep you in-world (they're not just teleports), and because you have to go to the place on foot at least once to unlock them. That said, presentation is really important on these and they need to have a significant cost - bluntly, they should cost enough that we *only* use them when it's really important.
I disagree with this. This is very similar to the old EQ where if you visited a Nexzus location and got a stone, you could use it to teleport to the Nexus and travel other places, there-by being able to bypass large sections of the content just by running to one place in it.
Mounts and player-controlled ships. Yes. However, having a mount shouldn't allow you to ignore aggro mechanics. If something aggroes you while mounted, it should either hurt your mount, OR it should have a way to pull you off the mount and force you into combat. That means you can't just ride through the pack of trolls and outrun them on the other side. Also, if flying mounts exist they should be *very* rare and hard to obtain, and their usage should be limited in "overland dungeon" areas. For example, you can't fly your griffon over the bandit camp, because the bandits will start using you for target practice.
I think this should depend somewhat. For instance, the flying mounts, you should be able to be attacked by SOME ranged weapons, for instance, no to thrown weapons and yes to stringed weapons and some spears, which would pull you into a combat situation under certain circumstances. Magical attacks would be treated similarly. I'd base this on level. For instance, if the mobs shooting arrows at you are grey to you, I don't have an issue being able to continue on, because they are just to weak to "hurt" you. Make this somewhat realistic.
For ground mounted attacks, something similar, but it also mades a difference how they implement mounted combat. If mounted combat is a thing, then they don't necessarily need to be able to pull you from your mount. However, I agree that either way, your mount should take damage. If it gets enough damage it dies, necessating the purchase of a new one, or just despawns leaving you in unmounted combat.
Definately not a fan of nexus or PoP stone, style travel. Don't think I need to rehash why. As someone mentioned, it will forever mark the beginning of the end for me.
I really hope that there are boats that actually travel in the game. Instead of just being a port with a timer, actually travel through the ocean. Much like catching a boat from Freeport to Butcherblock in EQ. You didn't magically pop up ono the other side of the world. You travelled through the ocean of tears, a proper area itself. With a couple of toons I even banged out 5 or 6 levels on cyclops there.
With the ability to train being a part of this game I hope they take that into consideration when implementting the mounted travel. Don't want to see people travelling cross country through camps and pulling frequent large trains across the area
Grizzly said:HI
This ide is from my tabletop gaming
What about a Travel Plane that shortens Travel but contain dangers and difficulties for user's.
And could be use in story or "Emergency" events suggested in another tread?
Difficulty example : If we died the corpse was trown out to real world to get back or maybe there is a chanse for this to happen
For longer travel we "need" a groupe or raid so we could invent places where we stod and formed this to get to far away places faster and make new friends
This could add a new dimension to explore and might tie in with the Lore of Terminus as the population is "Mysteriosly" transported here.
Turn on your thinkin cap and evolve on this suggestion, could it be something Terminus could use maybe in a Future Expansion
While you might make the distance short but try to make it difficult, how is that any different than longer distance over-world yet only dealing with the creatures that already exist? Both could take the exact same length of time and the latter wouldn't need any additional programming. That said, such a mechanic as 'The Ways' from 'The Wheel of Time' series could work for reaching extra-dimension locations like the diety planes, etc (if such things were to be created).
There isn't a need for such a gimmick.
EDIT: And another thing. This couldn't be common means of travel across all level spreads as it would be impossible for low levels and trivial for high levels. Thus your idea, which works great in the books because there is only one hero group traveling via The Ways, is terrible for an MMO. You would need dozens of different versions of The Ways to deal with all the level spreads needed.
I am not ok with POK stone portals type of traveling because they destroy the important immersion of traveling and shorten the game, encourage to skip entire areas on your own, reduce socializing with players if they have those spells available and make the size of the world seem so little that soon people just won't go to those zones any more because they skip right through it which is very sad.
They hurt games like Everquest and World of Warcraft in the long run. "I'm not coming for you any more, I'm not helping you any more to get there...as much as I did because you can just take the stone". "Check your map and run through it yourself" ...
In the end, It is certainly not fun in your final moments with this system where players aren't caring as much or taking the time for their teammates to show them around and help them get there. So personal gate spell back home, sure, but gateway/hub with every portal gets a big fat no from me! It cheapens the game way too much ! :(
I think the idea of a Travel Plane/ Plane of Shadow / Ethereal Plane is pretty cool. Effectively one huge semi Maze with fog of war zone with portals to different locations in Terminous. The zone would be both difficult to gain entry too and carry a significant amount of danger if you get lost in the zone. You need to have attuned yourself to the gate on material plane to make it open for you from the Travel Plane side. You could even have a timer based on some tiered progression, if you don't make it to a portal in time you get shunted to a semi random location so which portals you can reach is limited. You would still need to do a fair amount of travel and possibly need a full group to safely cross it. Bonus points if the zone is slightly dynamic like the stairs in Hogwarts so that the same path is not always open.
P.S. entry gates are not in too convenient locations unless the story of that hamlet is based around supporting the gate.
Very cool idea, though I agree with other posters: It'll either turn into a zippy shortcut or need to be weighed out and turn into a dungeon run/raid all in itself.
Maybe have this or something similar, but maybe a quest needs to be completed before the NPC activates a gate or something for you, like, each time you want to use it? Have it limited as in, "You need to return before the next nightfall or you will not be permitted to enter." Just thinking of how to limit it, but after writing it out, I see dozens of problems already. =P
As for the other travel ideas, I think the game has features that could be utilized for other modes of travel. For example; you can ride a mount only so far before needing to feed/water it and if none can be found it runs off or keels over. Also, if you need to be acclimated to a zone the mount isn't, so it becomes frozen or your cooked supper for that night. I'd also make it that wherever you leave your mount, there it is. Peraps AI of it's own like mobs where it'll run if something happens and you'll need to find it. But none of this "I pull a warhorse out of my pocket!" and when done "Back into the pouch you go!", type thing. Make any Summon Mount spells viable.
It seems that a hostile travel dimension would overly benefit raid groups that could start in a main city then just zerg to whatever dungeon they wanted to run, then back to a city to unload/stock up, rinse/repeat
Also, we'd likely see parties providing transport for races from their home to the starting cities of other races
I think I mostly agree with those that prefer real-time travel, as I want to feel immersed in a large game world on an epic adventure level
However, I also enjoy being able to help a lower level guild member when they need it, which would be tough but not impossible I suppose
Eventually I believe I'd have a number of alts, so I could potentially have someone close enough to help out anyone, and membership in a very large guild would have a much larger benefit in this regard
If I had been playing for quite some time and convinced a friend to start a character in Pantheon, I feel like (without some form of fast travel) I'd have to make a choice between meeting up with them in game, halting my own progression and schedule substantially just to hang out with them for a bit, and leaving them to their own devices feeling kind of alone in a world I invited them into
Ultimately, though there are some pronounced down sides, I think after playing sooo many games where distance is so trivial, I would prefer to be more invested and immersed in Terminus, so I'd figure out some way to deal with my care-bear impulses, or work around the lack of teleportation or other instant/fast travel options
Agreed also that there should be something to do during boat (and caravan) travel that wouldn't make it just an offline activity
Edit to add that I also like the idea of mounts taking damage/dying and not being pulled out of one's pocket when needed
Preechr said:It seems that a hostile travel dimension would overly benefit raid groups that could start in a main city then just zerg to whatever dungeon they wanted to run, then back to a city to unload/stock up, rinse/repeat
I wouldn't worry too much about something giving a raid group too much benefit. Regardless of what travel system exists a raid group will have the diverse manpower to use it at will and with speed far exceeding what any single group could manage.
