Why Don't MMOs Allow Easier Transportation? 337
Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running an opinion piece which asks why the majority of MMOs force users to spend a fair portion of their time traveling around a virtual world. At what point does moving from one location to another become a chore? From the article:
"I love big, explorable worlds. They're by far one of my most favourite things about games. Running off in a direction without any idea what I might encounter is a rare pleasure, and one far more likely to result in an exciting discovery in a game's world than the real one. ... Not knowing what's coming up is huge and exciting, and I'd not want to take it away from gaming, not ever. But you know what? Once I've been there, that moment's gone. I've discovered it already. I did the exploring. I don't need to spend half an hour of my time that I've allocated for playing games trudging at whatever stupidly slow speed a game's decided to impose upon me. There is no good reason, whatsoever, to not just let me be there."
Just.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Free Realms (Score:3, Interesting)
Or, the alternative... (Score:3, Interesting)
Codswallop (Score:2, Interesting)
Everquest one was mostly ruined when they included instant portal stones in the Plane of Knowledge.
WoW lost most of its charm when flying mounts were introduced. Imagine how epic Northrend could have been if there was actually some danger involved traversing the Lich King's lair, rather than flying over it all unmolested.
Yeah (Score:3, Interesting)
After playing a little bit of WoW again after Lich King came out, yeah, it was amazingly tedious after having played AoC and WAR. EVE is the only game with more tedious travel, but the concept of trading off cargo space over time is one of the primary mechanics that drives the economy. Different regions produce different things (like Electrical Engineering datacores) which someone needs to ship to the final destination, unless buyers want to fly over to the place themselves. But they're usually willing to pay a markup on them to avoid having to spend half an hour of real life time flying out and back.
WoW didn't have linked flight paths when it came out, which meant that if you were flying a long distance, not only was it incredibly tedious, but you also couldn't get up to go grab a sandwich or something. It was actually the main reason I played a mage in the game - they could teleport to different cities, which did a lot to eliminate the hated tedium of travel in the game.
Re:As the great Bartle said (Score:2, Interesting)
Parent post is the obvious and correct answer. Next question please. I know that insulting people isn't a good way to conduct an argument but if you ask this question and can't even come up with this answer yourself (yes I rtfa) you're an idiot.
And for the "it's a game, not work", this is such a ridiculous argument which translates to:
"It should be exactly like I want it to be even though it's a MM(ultiplayer)O game. It doesn't matter at all what other people like, in fact I won't even consider thinking about it because they're all there to screw me over anyway. I want instant gratification because that's the only way I can be entertained.
Anyway, I used to play Everquest (a lot) and one of the biggest disappointments was when they introduced the city portals.
When I first started playing (as an ogre) traveling from the Oggok (ogre city) to Neriak (dark elves) was quite a trip, which I had to prepare for and I had to be constantly alert so I wouldn't die (those damn madmen and sand giants).
Not to mention traveling to for example Ak'Anon or Erudin, for which trip you actually needed to sneak through human controlled cities to take a ship.
That was awesome to me. I can understand that it's not fun for everyone but when discussing these features at least consider this!
Guilds Wars method (Score:2, Interesting)
I think Guild Wars method was one the best method. Once you discovered a given post (Like "towns", "villages", ...), you could just open the map, click on the post and warp to it instantly. You still had some walking to do if you wanted to go to some dangerous place far away, but this was a good idea, IMHO. Death penalty was high enough to make traveling to those dangerous places a real adventure, even with simple bots with you.
I quite frankly hated the transportation method of World of Warcraft. Unless you were a Mage, traveling was so boring, time-consuming and awful that the "business strategy" behind those limitations was crystal clar.
I never found a clever transporation as Guild Wars did it. This game had also an automatic path finder if you were on a field and you clicked on some reachable place, that worked more or less. Sometimes you'll be just stuck on a wall but, generally, the AI would find the path alone very easily, even if the path were quite long.
I rarely found so clever transporation methods, even in Free MMORPG. I know, Free MMORPG aren't free. They place transportation limitations so you would give them money to get past those limitations.
But, quite frankly, I don't see that as a clever business method. If you piss the player too much, he will just get away. Blizzard thought about this in giving mount access to level 30 (level 20 in future, I heard) but that wasn't good enough. Gryphon transportation is totally retarded (Let's just make the path 3 times longer that it needs to be !) and flying mounts needs to be controlled, as there are no automatic path finder for human players IIRC, so that's also boring and time-consuming.
I find this very stupid that in a lot of games, mages aren't able to use transportation magic at a high level to teleport at any location.
Guild Wars - WoW Lite (Score:4, Interesting)
With Guild Wars, you have to run/walk/fight to new cities/towns first (or get someone to "run" you there - e.g. do all the hardwork while you just tag along). After that, you can teleport to that town or any other town you have been before.
It's a _chore_ having to keep running to places you've been before.
Like "same old" cutscenes you can't skip, but must keep pressing "Next" (to kill anything that gets in your way) till you finally reach the real destination (the actual battle).
Being able to teleport straight to places you've been before is a good thing. I don't care if the world feels small in that way - as long as it's diverse enough.
It's like being in a small shop with a huge variety of products, and a different product on every inch of the shelves that you can choose if you like. Compared to being in a huge hypermarket with shelves and shelves of the _same_ items, so you need to walk about a lot more to get to the stuff you want.
Guild Wars is a bit like WoW Lite in some ways. So a lot of ppl won't like it.
Problem is lack of dynamic content (Score:4, Interesting)
This is where static content fails. There is hardly ever anything new going on in an area you've already visited. Maybe game developers should focus less on expanding worlds when they do expansion packs and such, and more on coming up with systems for dynamic content delivery that mimics a living world better.
I wouldn't mind a 10 min trek through a known area, if the monsters changed, little random quests popped up, or whatever else happened on the way.
The issue is plainly the static nature of the world, not a lack of teleportation (or whatever other system is suggested)
Re:Pretty simple (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe. I have some pretty strong doubts about MMOs consuming all that much motivation and intelligence, they likely take away from similarly frivolous time consumers.
No, the technical term is "Dead Time" (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would you pay to wait???
As the Lead Designer of the PC game Majesty explained to me the technical term is called "Dead Time." If the player is _bored_, you hav _failed_ as a game designer.
Anyone who thinks waiting 20 mins in a MMO getting one from one destination, has never played D&D. D&D has almost _zero_ dead time. Want to travel north? Ok, GM rolls a die, and usually 1 or 2 things happen.
1. Ok, you're there. Now what?
2. Half way there you get attacked. Now what?
In CRPGs, there needs to be a balance. Ultima Online showed that if any one can recall, then yes, the world does seem small. WoW has shown us that suckers, er gamers, will put up with paying to wait. In Diablo 2, there are check-points (waypoints) that once you reach them, you can instantly travel back to any of the ones you have reached. Guid Wars does this exact same thing. Want to travel back to any city you have previously reached. Bam, there. I would limit the distance warped, or allow mages to _sell_ tiered portal scrolls that allow for greater distances.
Re:As the great Bartle said (Score:3, Interesting)
WOW could keep that big feeling and make players happy if they did one simple thing. Make the griffin flights instantaneous. They are from major point to major point, but then you still have to walk (or ride a mount if you are high enough level) to the area of the quest and some of them are still quiet far from a griffin flight path.
Sure flying on the griffin was fun for probably the first 10 times. After that it became a major pain in the @ss especially if you were flying a long distance, say Menethil Harbor to Southshore, because rather than flying straight there the path meanders all over the bloody place. At the very least, if Blizz didn't want instantaneous flight they should revisit the flight paths and make them straight lines between two points.
Re:As the great Bartle said (Score:5, Interesting)
No, its not. Absolutely not fun at all. When you're doing a dungeon again, and again, and again because of the farming spirit of this game and you have to wait 30 minutes to get someone, it's awful.
You don't need more than 10 minutes ? If you got guys in a capital which isn't dalaran without their heartstone ready (reloading time 1 hour, so greaaat...), and you want to do a Lich King's dungeon, people will take so much time to come that you'll wonder why you're still playing this. Yes of course, you could ditch everyone and get another team and, if you're on a low pop server, wait forever.
Timesinks are stupid. Period. I don't play a game for awfully boring timesinks. And frankly people talking about "big worlds"... Who cares ! I've already explored this "big world", it doesn't seem "that" big, even if retarded automatic transportation methods takes a lot of time to go from one point to another. It's not because your character is slow as hell and takes 30-45 to run from one side of the continent to the other that a world is "big" and "nice".
People who wants ease of transportation in those games are people who don't care anymore about the landscape. They saw it so much times, they're sick of it. Flying mounts are slow, unless you want to farm as hell to get a "faster" transportation method, which you'll be unable to use if you're on Azeroth anyway, so it doesn't solve the problem indicated above.
Frankly, the number of timesinks of this game make me quit. Getting money by killing the fun with timesinks is completely stupid.
And, to finish this rant, "big" worlds comes with big citys. Almost all the "villages" look as big as highway gas-stations. The capitals aren't bigger than a small town. "Big" world ? Meh...
Re:Or, the alternative... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:As the great Bartle said (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously I'm not the AC, but I actually really enjoyed the old badge system. I'd prefer a proper progression system for 5-mans but if Blizzard is unable to grasp the concept of "raids and small group content should be parallel, not sequential, progression paths", at least let us buy high end gear with large amounts of tokens dropped off heroic dungeon bosses. I liked the fact that, even though I can't raid and can only run a heroic or two a night after the missus was finally asleep, I could still work on my gear and progress my character. Again, it'd be awfully nice if they'd actually add tiered 5-mans to match the tiered raids, but failing that at least give me SOMETHING to do that doesn't involve a one-week lockout timer and 9+ other people. As it is, I have two characters that literally don't have any upgrades available without me either committing to raiding or getting a substantially better PvP ranking, and they're pretty much abandoned because they have no further character progression available. They've 'won' and that means game over.
Re:As the great Bartle said (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd prefer a proper progression system for 5-mans but if Blizzard is unable to grasp the concept of "raids and small group content should be parallel, not sequential, progression paths", at least let us buy high end gear with large amounts of tokens dropped off heroic dungeon bosses. I liked the fact that, even though I can't raid and can only run a heroic or two a night after the missus was finally asleep, I could still work on my gear and progress my character.
Progress this character for what exactly? If you don't have the time to get past the heroic dungeons you are practically at the end of the game. All you can do at this point is collect and the gear dropped and that can be purchased with emblems or gold is enough for you. Why would you need tier 8 items to continue to run heroics? The heroic gear is the entry into raids (that raid gear into higher level raids, etc).
This really isn't anything new to this or similar games. You go on to say that you've won and it's game over - but you don't even have the time to look at the true end-game content so why continue to play? Suspend your account until there is another expansion (or be more social and non-linear and get your rewards that way). You could also just play PVP content. The fact that arenas are going in seasonal rotations with new and better gear showing up each time you could theoretically never 'end'.
But, oh yeah, they are doing what you've suggested. They are going to start giving out emblems that let you get the gear the dedicated players are wearing right now. And you've never had to bare the expense (in game) or the time (both in and out) that they have, so please don't whine. This change is going to punish us who have just a bit more time than you and have felt like we have accomplished something. Now you can walk into our group and fool us by having equivalent pieces. And help the group fail, and then you go to bed.
I'm just saying, it's not for you. You want there to be an expansion every time you've reached the level cap because you can't dedicate the time it takes after you've hit it to continue on. Well, that costs real money, and would be impossible to balance considering someone hit the level cap 48 hours after the last expansion.
Re:No, the technical term is "Dead Time" (Score:3, Interesting)
> Chess is not funner because you can teleport your piece all over the map and make any one of your pieces attack another.
Let me know when the world scale of chess leaves the microscopic 8x8 and reaches the macroscopic 1 million by 1 million.
> There's no sense in making a huge world with diverse regions and items, then giving the player the ability to hit any one of them at a whim.
1. Maybe you should go study the masters of this: Casino games _already_ do this, and they make _billions_. Let me know when WoW reaches that level.
2. I am not against environments such as snow, desert, tropical forest. They serve a purpose.
This bullshit of having to wait a week after clearing a raid instance is bad enough, but having to to constantly waste 20 minutes just to simply to get to an instance because I am the first one there when I have _already_ been there, is pure stupidity. And good luck when the 2nd person there to help summon everyone else, bails. And good luck when you try to summon who doesn't meet the "level requirements" for that instance.
> If a player could have started off in a room with a portal to any level in SMB,
I never suggested any such thing. If you actually read what I wrote was "Want to travel back to any city you have previously reached. Bam, there.". Having waypoints, or check points, to places you have _already_ been, is a good thing. WoW _already_ does this. I am complaining about the time it takes. I am paying to play with my friends, not sit on my ass because the game forces me to wait for them. This is the problem that WoW tries to solve in a half-baked manner.
Why do you think Star Wars Galaxies has this [sony.com] ??
> Players have to be bored to enjoy the game.
Let me know how many professional games you have worked on, let alone shipped.
> In a game like Majesty, what's the average length of a game? 1-2 hours?
You completely miss the point. There is something called "Game Density." Bigger Worlds are NOT better, because the average density of _interesting_ things for the player to do goes down, compared to games played on a single screen. This is what the WoW designers didn't have a fucking clue about when the game first came out, making you travel between the 2 continents and not giving you your mount until level 40! They have done a MUCH better job when they introduced the Blood Elves, but they still don't "get it" about "Dead Time." Paying 2x or 4x the gold cost, for 1/2, or 1/4 flight times is a much needed step in the right direction. Lowering the mount down to 20 is another band-aid solution.
--
Wow (TM) is the McDonalds (TM) of MMORPGs.
Re:No, the technical term is "Dead Time" (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, because obviously the most selling item is the highest quality item with the best return on investment. (See: Big Mac, Britney, Titanic)
People don't know what they want. They think they want to have action 24/7. They think they want to push the limits of effects and all the new things that have come out... then within a few weeks they are complaining that the game is boring or they are off to a new thing. I suppose as a game designer, that works great for you since you will always have a job replacing the last game you made that didn't keep the player's attention. So let me know when you make a game that keeps the attention of players for more than a year... or does that violate the business model? So you can shove your elitist attitude of, "I'm a game designer, so therefore I must know better" because it's not helping your argument in my eyes. Electronic Arts and their developer mills must be heaven in your eyes since they ship all kinds of games.
RE, Game Density: That's fine if you are making a game that requires you build up a town and defend it from enemies. (ie: Dwarf Fortress, try building a fort where there are no goblins. Boring!) but if you are playing in a World then instant teleports only make that world smaller, artificially. I'm sure the SWG instant transport was added because people completely missed the point of having a game world or really only want to play a FPS game with character development instead playing in a game world.
If you want to play with your friends, how about conversing with them. Communication really helps bring your game enjoyment up a level. If you are the type of player who decides to jump to the other side of the world leaving your friends behind, then you deserve to have to run back to them to play.
Quit trying to bring single player tactics to multiplayer games. If you solely want to play with your friends, then why even play an MMO? Why not attempt to invite people that aren't your friend to a group to take that enemy? You might find that there are some skilled players out there. Instead, you want the developer to dumb down the game and make it easier so you don't have to play with others? Makes sense. :rolleyes: