Does instant transportation effect game immersion?

[Rhomagus]

what made those zones awesome was the seclusion and distance from the cities. Like going to Xarcabard felt like you were way out in the north of the world. If you could have just instantly ported to them all it wouldn't have made them as special.

You can port to Xarcabard.

http://www.ffxi-atlas.com/maps/xarcabard/general/

[Azurymber]

You can port to Xarcabard.

http://www.ffxi-atlas.com/maps/xarcabard/general/

yes but you have to adventure there firsts to touch the crystal and its not an easy journey. That adventure alone (going through raungemont pass, through beaucedine, and then through xarcabard, especially with no map) added a LOT to ffxi because it created memories.
Further you need a whm to port there so you can just insta port whenever you want and then port back. You have to plan your journey there.

Im not -against- porting. Im just against the FFXIV way of it. I thought FFXI balanced it near perfectly.

[AmyRae]

yes but you have to adventure there firsts to touch the crystal and its not an easy journey. That adventure alone (going through raungemont pass, through beaucedine, and then through xarcabard, especially with no map) added a LOT to ffxi because it created memories.
Further you need a whm to port there so you can just insta port whenever you want and then port back. You have to plan your journey there.

Im not -against- porting. Im just against the FFXIV way of it. I thought FFXI balanced it near perfectly.

No one is forcing you to teleport. You can walk everywhere you care to go if you feel that's important to your immersive experience.

But instead, you see everyone else's enjoyment of teleporting as the problem, and that's really sad. It's important to you to make things difficult for everyone else, as though it's a challenge you know you can overcome and lord over everyone else with, even if it means the demise of the game in the long run as players give up on the time requirements just to start an adventure.

This is a game, not a replacement for your life. In real life, people suffer through hellish commutes coming home from work or school. Why would they want to come home and play a game that puts them through yet another commute every time they want to play a little while?

You're welcome to make your journeys as long as you want. Nothing is stopping you whatsoever. But don't try to impose these silly notions of "olden day travel" on everyone else in your elaborate troll thread over here. Even FFXI's Xarcarbard, which you site as a "remote place," has at least three insta-warps available (teleport crystal, outpost, and abyssea). You're just remembering it wrong.

[Jynx]

Even FFXI's Xarcarbard, which you site as a "remote place," has at least three insta-warps available (teleport crystal, outpost, and abyssea). You're just remembering it wrong.

I can't comment on Abyssea, but Outposts and crystals were far from easy to obtain they required you to walk to the area prior to teleportation. Outposts were even worse you needed to wait for the game to deem your nation great enough to control the zone and if Beastmen took over? Forget about using it.

Thats the point teleportation was limited and restricted, you had to use resources to teleport. Anima is fine and dandy it functions alot like how much you were willing to spend on a teleport Vhalz or whatever.

You used it up and your done, you have to walk, your easy ride was over for that day until you regenerate more anima. If your sucking up your anima faster than you generate it you might want to look at how you can tailor your playstyle to suit your resources instead of expecting SE to hand you a free ride.

So, let's cut the crap and accept that there will be choice to accommodate all players whose opinions all greatly vary. Maybe some people are not immersed as much as you are. It's not the same reflection from player to player to player.

A wise man once said "if you chase two rabbits both will escape."

It's not all about immersion either, it's about creating a game that feels good when you accomplish something. I hardly felt a twinge of "Awesome!" when my Marauder dinged 50, it was more of a "Ok...now what class next"

I didn't stop and jump for joy that I was finally at the max level for my character I litterally thought "Well what now? I can't do anything usefull with my marauder now, I can't even level..." You can only play the Darkhold so many times before you get bored of that.

Things like needing to walk place to place, earn your airship passes, having beatifull vistas to explore and look in every nook and cranny to find things, just looking around for the hell of it. These are the things SE needs to focus on in my opinion.

I don't want instanced dungeons that drop gear for a job that I don't need to play anymore. I want areas that only my rank 50 job can explore because thats how strong things are! I want a dangerous vista where if I'm caught wandering around it any other level I'm as good as dead. I want an area that if I want to try and explore it as a lvl 1 bare ass nakid goldsmith I can and die a painfull death when I think "Ok that monster wont move again for a few seconds time to run!"

I don't want to stand infront of a zone going over the droll tactics I went over yesterday, I want to explore, I don't want to teleport from city to city, I want a reason to walk from city to city!

Far be it from me to speak "For the community" but the world in my opinion is far too droll and lacking in enviroment to even be called a proper world. The cities themselves have improoved by leaps and bounds with quests and events, the new outposts give a bit more life to the world but it's far from enough!

I guess I can't blame people for finding the world too boring to walk around...but shouldn't you be complaining about that and not for ways to avoid it? You guys want the easy way out and it disheartens me when I see that. I want SE to creat a world where even if teleports were instant and in free supply people would say.

"You know what...maybe I'll walk today, I just might leave a few minutes early so I can meet up with my party but still be able to catch my Chocobo instead of using my Anima."

Thats what I want, I don't want a way around a droll world, I want a lively world where such things are used as a last resort.

[AmyRae]

I can't comment on Abyssea, but Outposts and crystals were far from easy to obtain they required you to walk to the area prior to teleportation. Outposts were even worse you needed to wait for the game to deem your nation great enough to control the zone and if Beastmen took over? Forget about using it.

You're missing the point. It's not about the restrictions themselves to unlocking the warp points. It's that there are three distinct ways to instantly teleport to even the most "remote" area in FFXI. No one makes that journey any more than what is minimally necessary to get these shortcuts unlocked.

In FFXIV, you have to tag the Aetheryte crystals to be able to teleport to them (or get someone to teleport you to them in a party). But even you do that, you still have to walk to any of the smaller regional crystals if you haven't been to them before; there's no shortcut for those.

It's a bit less restrictive, but FFXIV is focusing on getting the adventure started for those with limited time. This is the most important thing. No one logs in to spend dozens of minutes a day traveling just to begin their adventuring on top of all the other prep work they have to do in order to be properly prepared.

But you still have to explore Eorzea to tag all the points there are to tag. And there is more to do than just leves at the big Aetheryte crystals, and there's going to be more added in the future where you need to visit the hamlets, outposts and dungeons outside the "safety" of the main bases.

The situation does not resemble the complaint at all. You still have to explore, but no more than you would in FFXI to unlock the instant-teleportation options it has in abundance all over its world. And there's no one forcing you to take those shortcuts if you don't like them. Why impose this misery on others? What did they ever do to you?

[Jynx]

Why impose this misery on others? What did they ever do to you?

If needing to walk from one place to another is a "Misery" then SE needs to get itself set straight and make it so doing something like that is not a "Misery".

I rarely seen people saying they were miserable because they had their first walk to Jueno, even after 10 or so deaths. The Journy was worth it! the rewards were plenty! and it felt all the better when you got their.

Exploration is not rewarded, hell the "Tags" as you call them Aetheral gates, the reachable ones at least are as safe as can be. They are at best a 2 minute walk from the nearest crystal and a newborn baby could navigate to them. How does this make anything fun for you? I'm simply at a loss at how someone could log in and say.

"It's a good thing I walked a grand total of 10 steps to do everything I needed to do today" Time to log out because I'm out of precious time.

Different strokes I guess, it's the new wave a MMO players and I'm being lost in the current of change. What was fun is now misery inducing. I just think SE has better things to do than make work arounds for a world that is in Dire need of some TLC.

[AmyRae]

Different strokes I guess, it's the new wave a MMO players and I'm being lost in the current of change. What was fun is now misery inducing. I just think SE has better things to do than make work arounds for a world that is in Dire need of some TLC.

Oh, for Pete's Sake. You can walk! You can walk! You don't have to teleport. Have allll the fun you want walking!

Laugh at the other players as you walk, letting them know how much more fun you're having than them as they teleport away. I mean, really. If it's that exciting, you won't have a hard convincing people by setting the example. You can start a following by doing the thing you find fun to do. You don't have to take teleporting away in order to do it.