2.0 Teleportation and you!

[Jynx]

From the sublimans mouth.
(Well his translation of the dev post at least)

In 2.0 you wont be able to use return or teleport from beginning for return you have to go through tutorial quest, and for teleport you have to complete a quest to be able to use it, for both we aren't planning any hard quest.

So it's been more or less confirmed that Return and Teleportation will remain in the game well into 2.0 but what we should be discussing is how we want it to function. Let's use this thread to toss out ideas on how we feel teleportation should be used/limited/gained.

As the dev response above we know that Return and Teleportation will be aquired after a tutorial and a quest respectively. That drums in my head a good idea on how to attain teleportation nodes.


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Once teleport and return have been obtained, getting the tele point or aetheral node for a area should be less simple than just "Yo man you got some spare anima to port me to all the nodes?"

Why not throw some proper lore in here while we are at it. The best way to give teleport access some meaning and making it so they player themselves have to do the footwork. We should have quests at each teleport node to gain the Telepoint. They don't have to be anything crazy but they should help verse us in the lore and situation that the characters in said area are having issues with.

Want to get a Aether pass issued for the area?

Let's use the black shroud as an example.

Bentbranch: SOS Girl in distress!

A girl stole into the shroud "To have a grand adventure" her friends at the greatloam growery commented. Worried the Wood Wailers have sent out a SoS for all able bodied adventurers to track down and return this girl back Gridania. The wood is usually kind to her kin but earlier this very day a Garlean attack has awoken the greenwrath and venturing outside the city is far from safe.

Make hast to the woods and rescue this child before it's too late!
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Now this quest introduces us once again to the concept of the greenwrath and that the wood isn't always a very kind place even for it's inhabitants. I say that only one quest should be required per zone to gain a "Aetherpass" to the zones Aetherite network but all nodes must be aquired afterwards by hand (How we currently attain nodes and camp telepoint)

Giving us a good rundown on the area, some of it's dangers, and gaining recognition from the local people and guards that we are here to help them and in doing so gain access to the Aetheral network of the area.

How do you guys think the Teleport system should work in 2.0?

My main issue is that it's far too freeform and loose as it stands, there is no real sense of accomplishment when you attain all the camps. All but a handfull are extremly easy to aquire and the main ones can be handed out like free candy.

[Airget]

What amuses me about all this Teleportation talk/change is people are seriously asking for a time sink when getting to events. They don't want traveling to be as easy but by doing that you are pretty much adding 10-15 time sinks based on where you go in a wide variety so you are pretty much saying "Please SE give us a time sink which will add up to hundreds of hours of "gameplay" over the years"

Teleporting is a tool to make traveling easier to Casuals and those without a lot of time on their hands. I always feel that it's the hardcore complaining about this issue or perhaps the ones who have problems getting parties but have a lot of time on their hands. There is no need to change teleportation it's working as intended and allows people to play the actual content rather then spend time within time sinks just to get into events.

[Hycinthus]

I personally don't think it should be teleportation. It should be similar to a flight path in WoW. Meaning that once you have discovered it, to go there you have to endure flying there. It's not about just teleport teleport instantly, but there is still the journey. In FF 14 v.2, this should be the train tracks, so instead of flight paths, it would be using carriage/cart/train that connects each camps.

They will be faster than chocobo, but not instant teleportations. For those that enjoy the environment, they can enjoy the journey. For those that get bored, they can afk, and come back when they've arrived.

[Eekiki]

This ain't about "casual" and "hardcore". PLEASE don't start that nonsense again.

As I said in another thread, I like teleportation almost exactly as it is, except a person should not be allowed to accept a teleport to a camp unless they have first traveled there on foot. With chocobos and airships, this isn't too much to ask, even of someone with very limited time to play. Part of this game's content is exploring the world and learning the geography.

[Elexia]

What amuses me about all this Teleportation talk/change is people are seriously asking for a time sink when getting to events. They don't want traveling to be as easy but by doing that you are pretty much adding 10-15 time sinks based on where you go in a wide variety so you are pretty much saying "Please SE give us a time sink which will add up to hundreds of hours of "gameplay" over the years"

Teleporting is a tool to make traveling easier to Casuals and those without a lot of time on their hands. I always feel that it's the hardcore complaining about this issue or perhaps the ones who have problems getting parties but have a lot of time on their hands. There is no need to change teleportation it's working as intended and allows people to play the actual content rather then spend time within time sinks just to get into events.

It's not really a timesink, I mean even people who like things handed to them would agree not even walking to a camp you can be teleported to was pretty ridiculous. What's the purpose of making this an explorable world if you can teleport everywhere without setting one foot outside of the city?

It may as well be a lobby MOG like GW was.

[REDace0]

OP, your idea is excellent.

The Aetheryte Network, wonderful time-saver that it is, feels too unearned. This leaves it with a fake or illegitimate impression, at least to me. Incorporating it more deeply into the lore and requiring one-time, easy to moderate difficulty content to unlock each node would still afford players the needed convenience, but without making it so meaningless.

[Hulan]

What amuses me about all this Teleportation talk/change is people are seriously asking for a time sink when getting to events. They don't want traveling to be as easy but by doing that you are pretty much adding 10-15 time sinks based on where you go in a wide variety so you are pretty much saying "Please SE give us a time sink which will add up to hundreds of hours of "gameplay" over the years"

I think you are looking at this from the wrong direction. Look at it from a game design perspective. If you need X event to take Y amount of time to complete, you can do that in a few ways but to vastly oversimplify it let's boil it down to two: it can take no time to get there and then take Y amount of time to complete, or it can take time to get there and take A + B = Y amount of time.

I can guarantee you that many developers would not see travel time as "extra play time added on" but "part of the time it takes to do the event". Balancing an MMO takes a very holistic approach. There are pros and cons to each approach to travel time.

Instant Travel:
Fast - obviously, players can get in and start content immediately with very little pickup time.
Isolated - I would call this the major drawback of instant travel, events become isolated in on themselves, with no context to set them in. As a side effect, the world seems to shrink in the eyes of the player the faster they can get around it.

"Slow" Travel:
Expansive - In contract to instant travel, "slow" travel sets the tone of each event by placing it in a context.
Intra-event Variety - Okay, variety isn't quite right, but when traveling is required to take part in an event, it becomes, in and of itself, part of the event. The event then takes on two very distinct and varied parts, the journey, and the destination.
Slow - I have added a few more blues than reds on "slow" travel, but this is a pretty serious red. Slow travel restricts events two catagories, those who have enough free time to enjoy them, and events that are brief enough to cater to those who have time to travel to them and take part in them.

For myself, I have debated this long and hard, and the conclusion I have come to is that the life-blood of an MMO is the world itself. We see this in games like WoW and FFXI, Eve and Everquest. Games that may not all have had massive populations (WoW aside) but they all have lived long, stable lives. Those long lives are built on top of the strong foundation of a World. WoW and FFXI had decades of lore to pull from, Eve and Everquest both had rich, interesting worlds.

Taking away the player's reason to live in the world that they are playing in is tantamount to suicide. Yes, you will alienate your casual players, catering to both for any long period of time is going to be neigh on impossible; but in order to really pull people into the world, instead of inviting them to play on top of it, they are going to need to stop apologizing for their own massive world and start taking pride in it.

[Jynx]

I'm not advocating a "Timesink" I am advocating that players earn the right to travel to areas I think it should still have a limit of sorts (Anima works) I just feel the teleportation for the most part feels cheap and it could be used in a much more immersive and practical way.

Not only giving us some lore but a sense of belonging instead of it being there just to be there.

[Krausus]

I do like the OP's suggestions as long as I'm free to use anima as I see fit after completing said simulation to obtain the aytherpass.

I don't mind rediscovering all the camps even if quests are involved (I think that would be pretty fun actually) but that is all I want to change. I feel my time is best used playing the actual game content and not traveling to it. If people want to spend their time traveling to an event then they have that option. Stop trying to force people into playing the game your way I could give two s**** and a f*** about YOUR immersion.

[Skies]

I say, after using a goddamn Aetherial Node to escape the Black Wolf wiping my ass with a god-forsaken magitek tank (it's part of the main quest, does anyone even remembers those nowadays?) I think I feel like Teleport has it's place in the world.