Thread: 2.0 Teleportation and you!

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

Originally Posted by Triairy

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.

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

Originally Posted by 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"

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.

Originally Posted by Airget

I always feel that it's the hardcore complaining about this issue

lolno

i have stuff to do. the faster travel is, the better

Originally Posted by 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.

This.

If you folks want this game to succeed, you have to make certain things easy. Travel, leveling, buying things, etc, should not take up the brunt of your playtime.

This is a game and access to your choice of content should be swift and painless. I want to go clear Aurum Vale, not run to Aurum Vale from Gridania.

This isn't making the game easy, it's making it less of a chore. The kind of attitude that supports otherwise is what will make anyone actually willing to try the game out in 2.0 cringe and go back to any other MMO where they can log on and do content without needing to take 15-20m running there and then doing a quest for 10-15m just so they can get there quickly again.

It goes without saying, tying your teleports to a slowly regening resource (regardless of Hamlet because Hamlet is awful) is also very poor design.

Originally Posted by Churchill

If you folks want this game to succeed, you have to make certain things easy. Travel, leveling, buying things, etc, should not take up the brunt of your playtime.

Okay, in response to this, let me try to rephrase what I have been trying to say previously in this thread. I will start with a gross generality that I think no-one will disagree with. That being: Nothing in a game should ever directly impede you from enjoying the game, be it the interface, content, or presentation.

Now that we're on the same page. Our differences here are exactly what constitutes an imposition to enjoyment. I fully agree that from the moment you decide "I want to do AV" to the moment you step out of the dungeon, you should be having fun. At the same time, I strongly believe that that the process of getting to AV can and should be part of that fun (I will grant that it most definitely would not be if they took teleports out right now, but that is not my point).

Having captivating, compelling, and interesting travel between events has a lot of positive secondary benefits - which I have mentioned before so I won't go into again - which is why I hasten to defend the idea of a certain level of travelling restrictions. Obviously, as with anything, such restrictions should be tasteful, but as long as any restrictions exist specifically to augment the player's enjoyment of the world itself, we shouldn't take them off the table entirely.

Originally Posted by Hycinthus

I personally don't think it should be teleportation. It should be similar to a flight path in WoW.....

i just stopped here & vommited. (sorry)

nice oppinion, now here's mine...

Hellz no, its should be White Mage only Teleportations like FFXI nothing else.
or just give a Time Mage that option...or.... take the damn Train.