Intro

Vanguard's pre-click and travel world had a crucial element to it that is lacking in MMORPGs:  exploration.  Exploration is the most underestimate MMORPG feature, and the best and most accessible to log-in for an hour and just travel.  Travel and exploration cannot be divorced from each other.

The problem with Vanguard's exploration feature is two-fold:  (1)  travel and (2) incomplete content.   I will discuss the latter before the former.

Incomplete Content

For exploration to "work" it must be rewarding.  You cannot travel for two hours from point A to point B without coming across something visually interesting or a cavern or dungeon or new content.  World immersion is important here such as a "living and breathing and evolving world."  Yes.  The world could change over time by adding new content, features, etc. to an already existing world.

Travel

It is a huge world with instanteous travel options and boats that do not work - still.  I do not mean to poke the eyes of a blind man, but SIGIL really had no practical concept of travel.  I say that respectfually because I believe the concept was a giant world with player travel options (different boats, different mounts, a fellowship system (caravans?), etc.).  The concept was excellent, the implementation was ... you can draw your own conclusion.

Conclusion

Once Vanguard has mostly complete content, will travel necessarily be reformed?  I wonder how used to instanteous travel the players have gotten to riftways.  Do these undermine the game?  Enhance it?  I think they make a large game feel smaller, which is not a good thing. 

Nevertheless, Vanguard has a great thing going for it:  huge world.  When content is completed and travel receives some additional attention to make it more practical, accessible, and interesting without making the world feel smaller, I anticipate yet another victory. 

Travel:

• Players should get lost
• Players should get stranded on an island
• Players should get ship-wrecked out of nowhere
• Players should get ambushed by highway men
• Players should have a werewolf attack them when they are forced to pitch a tent because they are tired from so much travelling
• Travel should be a part of immersion

Exploration

• Players should be rewarded
• Players should find that a world can evolve
• Exploration is a significant part of world immersion

Just a few thoughts!

having certain mobs that spawn during certain times of the day would be another nice feature ( werewolfs out at night only, more undeads at night just to name a few)

Wow...

I thought I'd check back on these forums, since I've been away from them for a while and this is what I get to read.

Exploration feature?? Is that a feature or content?

The comment on the boats not working...WRONG. They work fine and everyone I know that has one, works fine. The Griffons that allow you to fly to the highest peaks, work great....love 'em. Different levels of horses, that have various travel speeds depending on their level and how you equip them... love it. Riftways that will take me to various areas of a continent (mostly city areas) or a different continent all together that are level restricted and cost money... love it. Oh ya, how about those racial mounts... nice diversification, thank you Devs. That's my conclusion!!

What would you have done?? Make everyone walk?? There are plenty of other games that make you do that and they're free to play. If you don't like the travel options and it makes the world seem smaller, then DONT use them!

You mention "when Vanguard has mostly complete content" as if there is a date they will stop making changes to the game. Heck, their still making expansions for EQ1 for gods sake (which I love). So why would anyone think there is going to be completed content??

Travel:

If I had to waste my time because I was getting lost all the time, would I continue to play the game?? NO

If I had to waste my time because I was shipwrecked in the middle of nowhere, would I play this game?? NO

If I was stranded on an island, would I play this game?? Kind of already happens every time I recall to my Guild Hall. Only option off is to take a griffon, recall to bind spot, use my boat or swim. Thank god for those travel options.

The random ambush by highway men?? Well, I'd just invis, run around them or ignore them all together.

As far as resting, having some sort of "travel stamina that would diminish over time" might be acceptable, but would would become a mute point and a nuisance over time. I look at this point the same as having to eat food and sleep to stay alive.

Exploration:

Why does everything you do, have to be rewarded. Cant it just be enough for your own personal interest to explore the unknown or does every nook and cranny have to have a point??

The world evolution thing would be nice, but how much has your little neighborhood evolved (from mud huts to brick buildings, from steel structures to biospheres?) since you've lived there?? This game just doesn't need it, in my opinion, but maybe certain dungeons could change as you progress through a quest due to some time shift.......

This world is awesomely huge. Just play it and enjoy it for what it is at the moment or find something else to do. Get a gold fish in a simple round fish bowl, then sit there and stare at it and dream of all the awesome worlds you could build for your goldfish. The potential would be awesome, the cost significant and the value of watching your goldfish in its hugely diversified, everychanging, expansive world would be priceless.

My ultimate point to all this is that not all of us have all day to just travel. I WANT TO PLAY!!

Some people have A.D.D. and get bored in a matter of minutes. I wish I was joking about this, but some of my guild mates have clearly proven this and state this themselves.

Sometimes you just have to enjoy it for what it is. Its like a box of chocolates. You never know what your going to get.

By the way, have you posted these ideas on the VG forums, where someone who could actually implement these ideas, might read them??

Keep thinking though. Its good to see an active brain at work. And keep notes of all of these good ideas, you may be able to implement them into your own MMO some day, which I would gladly immerse myself into.

Maybe, instead of hashing up travel, you could spend your time going over all the spells and coming up with unique animation ideas and posting them for the VG Devs to consider. And maybe if your a qualified programmer, you could make some examples for them to see, get hired and get involved making this game even better. This is an area that I think that is lacking and a little lack luster in a game of this caliber and capability (why does Fireball1 have to look the same as Fireball5?).  Just my thought.

Peace!!

Its not really practical to have a static content game and still have meaningful travel.

That is why Eve is strucutred the way it is.  You simply cannot expect people to travel 2 hours to get so some particular thing.

The knee-jerk response is, make it extremely rewarding.   But that really won't work. 

The other response is make it not take 2 hours.  Well then you have completely altered what it was meant to be.

For example let's take LOTRO Loremaster lvl 45 class quest.  It requires certain drops that can only be found in a particular area of one zone.  Many other class specific quests or deeds do this in LOTRO.

If you have a world with many quests like this then you are essentially forcing people to waste time.  That is not an acceptable practice.

If it takes 2 hours to get to this place so that I can get my eagle pet trait or even worse just to finish some quest, people will get pissed.

If it takes 2 hours to explore around and dig into hidden places then that is perfectly fine.  Not everyone will do it but they will think its a decent thing.

Unforatunately these things always wind up in conflict.  If you want to have quest like I mentioned above then you better give me quick travel or I am going to tell you, the dev, to go eff yourself.  If you want to have TRUE wildlands that you can get lost in and are a serious consideration as to wehther you go there or not then you need real travel time.

The thing is neither of these two things is really all bad or all good.  But they should never be mixed.

What many of the immersion folks from EQ1 really want is game that is not really structured like EQ1.  EQ1 had as many barriers to the kind of immersion you want as it did things that you like.

If you mix exclusive things and close to required things in particular locations with long travel times you have made a bad game.  End of story.

Now that isn't to say there cannot be unique things in unique locations.   I think someone made a dragon or spelled something using just cargo containers in a system in Eve.  And if you never go there you will never see that.

But if you expect people to travel all the way across the entire game world/universe just to get to Lord Otho the Cruel or the super mega dragon of death to get its one of a kind 1/100 chance drop then that is flat out bad.

So if you put that kind of stuff in the game you will eventually put fast travel in.  You can't avoid.  The reason travel works ok in Eve is there is almost no reason you have to go to System X, ever.   Unless and specifically to kill Corpoartion Y who lives in System X.   Otherwise you can get what you need done via trade in some way.  And flying for an hour may even get you a better deal and is therefore rewarded.

You simply cannot put game content at odds with travel time.  See in Eve that better deal from far away may or may not exist.  But in a static content EQ1 type game getting to the uber dragon is ALWAYS a pain in the ass.  Even if you have run the route 20 times.

So what i am saying is travel cannot be what you want it to be in Vanguard.  And this is because of the content model. 

In Eve they have survey things you can do.  You go around and survey various things in various systems hoping to find stuff (artefacts salvage whatever).  But at the same time other people stay within their same "neighborhood" of roughly maybe 5 or so systems in Eve doing whatever it is they like to do. 

Ask yourself does this make any sense in Vanguard or EQ1?  How would level if you always stayed near the capital?  You can't you are constantly nudge to go places.  Not roam, not explore.  The content itself dictates where you will be even though  there may be a choice of a, b or c.  Not the other way around.  Not the content affects what you doing.

Its not I walked down the road and a highwayman walked out and tried to rob me!

Its go kill ten highwaymen, highwaymen tend to spawn in area X which is level 10-15 and in level Y which is level 15-20.  Therefore we know you will be in area X.  Period end of story.

Or let's put this another way and go back to the artifact finding type thing in Eve.  Assume these spawn randomly in random locations.  Now lets like at a site like MMODB.  If I want to find a particular named creature I can go there for a particular game, look at the map, find its spawn point and spawn frequency.  But the Eve artifact finding thing cannot be mapped that way.  Further it would be perpetual exploration type content.

Those of you who really want travel need to seriously consider that your only hope is content, of various sorts, that is dynamic.  You may need to seriously consider that the game you really want maybe lacking things like static named spawns.  In a game that truly implemented this well there would be no dragon named Nagafen that you could plan to attack at a certain in a certain place. 

FIRST: put the riftway system back to the way it was, before SOE changed em or make only one per continent  free access, all others you have to go to first before you can use them

SECOND: take out the sea portals (like they should have been after open beta SOE) I don't know about everyone, but I think it would be awesome to take on a big ass sea monster with a group of people on a boat, or hell try and swim to another continent just to see if you can do it(+ the big ass sea monsters)

making the travel system a little more challenging would be a hell of lot more fun

Exploration as the new, but final, innovative MMORPG feature is important in this respect:  changing and evolving world.

The world must evolve, change for exploration to be meaningful.  Rare will an MMORPG be large enough for exploration to be a lasting feature.

Travel is one, but just one, dimension of exploration; rewards are as well.  Exploration should be different in different areas from rewards, means, and ends. 

I posted exploration in the Vanguard section because Vanguard is the one game on the market now, and perhaps in development, in which exploration as a feature is viable.  In fact, there are hints, notes, and some sense of exploration to the game today.

Exploration is the new frontier in MMORPGs, the company to utilize this first will reap enormous rewards.

EQ

I think the boats and the flying rental mounts should be enough in Vanguard. They should probably increase the time you can fly on them though. Next they should implement rental boats to travel across seas. I think after this happens they should remove the riftways.  That would be meaningful travel yet it wouldn't be trivial.

Thats cool but, they still need to take out the sea portals. Then they add in sea monsters, and it leaves a big open area for future expansions.

Great post from the OP.

Indeed free teleportation (riftways) & rentable flying mounts made exploration obsolete in VG.

A real shame because Vanguard has a great collection of different mounts & boats.

Questing for a mount ? building a boat ? Not really needed these days as you got free rides to nearly everywhere.

By adding instant teleportation & free timed flying mounts, the devs made half of Vanguard content nearly useless.

Now i'm crossing my fingers that they don't make the awesome crafting system obsolete as well, but thats another story..

I believe Vanguard WAS a great game (in theory). I remember reading back in the beginning (when I pre-ordered in feb of 06) about a huge massive world.  It felt more like you were living a story and making your own than playing a game.  That's what sounds awesome to me.  The ability to LIVE in a world.  A presistent world with meaningful travel, and a REASON to go ANYWHERE.  As it stands now, the game is very linear, go this, do that, do quest a, then quest b.  The same for every character/class/race..

With the quick travel, it made horses pointless.   The only class that I use them with are the slow classes (those that don't get speed buffs) like the paladin..  The point I'm getting at is that the game wasn't supposed to be about "press button, Get pellet" but was supposed to be about "Living the adventure".  Now, the game feels like a gear grind (APW anyone?)..

I have read some great opinions on the travel aspect of VG. But I have to be honest, I use the travel options, because "I WANT TO", not because its "the only option" to get from point A to B. I read people criticize the devs for putting some of these options in game and think it may be a bit unfair.

If you're like me, who may have just worked a 12 hour shift, log on for a couple hours and find your guild mates grouping up, I do not want my only option to get from point A to B to be riding my horse or taking a boat. I do not recall any dev making it mandatory to use the travel options made available and hardly see how it diminishes the exploration aspect unless people are making the "choice" to use alternative options. If you want to explore, EXPLORE as you see fit! If you don't want to explore, do as you please. Its about choices, not limitations and/or immersion.

Many people have gone the route of RPing in VG. I applaude them for playing the game and immersing themselves in classic gaming style. Try it for a while.

Peace!

I really don't see that rifts and rentable flying mounts have diminish the exploration of the game.  In fact I'd argue that they enhance it.  Being able to rift around the world makes areas of the world accessable at lower levels then they would be otherwise.  How would a level 13 player get from 3 rivers to a level appropriate area in kojan?  He wouldn't.  Which is arguably good for replayability but limits the world.  Do we still need horses?  Uh yeah... there are still plenty of areas that have no rifts or flying mounts so I'm riding my horse all the time.  Am I still exploring the country, yeah!  There is a mountain or valley or just something interesting and I'm off to see whats there.  I go all over on my horse.  The rifts just get me in the general area scouting it and exploring are still required.  Flying mounts are mostly good when you know where you are going and want to get there fast.  Like you just joined a group in CIS and you are in TK.  Awesome I can be there in a very short time.  This isn't time I'd rather be riding my horse.  Believe me I remember playing when there were no fast transports at all and you had to take boats between continents when they worked till they added the teleporting boat masters.  Getting to a group could easily take an hour of travel and when you have done it a dozen times it really isn't interesting.

Anyway, I like having the choice how to spend my time.  Exploring I'm on my horse and out roaming or going from quest location to quest location.  When I need a new fresh area I can hit the rift or when I need to be somewhere soon I can get there fast.  When I got more time I can just ride my horse.

Choice isn't a bad thing.