You want long travel times you should play TOR.

Sheesh.

It's murder before 14 when you get sprint, then at 25 when you get mounts the worlds you go to are fucking massive.

One town in the tiny corner of Tatooine is bigger then whole WoW zones.

Love the game, but honestly it's almost too big.

Still, got the wide open wasteland feel of Tatooine just right...

I used to like the Lord of the Rings trilogy... Then I watched Clerks 2 and Randal ruined it for me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxAEo3CWeq8

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Originally posted by Cuathon
Making an mmorpg work like skyrim is impossible. Skyrim only has to account for one autonomous individual. For one thing scaling content isn't realistic. You want immersion but encounters have to spring out of thin air? Creating a natural environment is impossible when it can't respond to the uneven influx of players. And since you can't control the creatures behavior based on the number of players trying to scale the numebr of creatures just raises the difficulty level for individuals.

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Nobody said that an MMO should work like Skyrim. What we're saying is that MMO environments should have the same design philosophy as a game like Skyrim, which in my opinion is entirely possible regardless of the number of players. If you can have as much fun adventuring from point A to point B as the actual quests you do when you arrive, you've found a game that has enough interesting environmental content to render fast travel unnecessary.

There has yet to be any MMO even close to fitting this category.

Originally posted by Vryheid

 

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Originally posted by Cuathon
Making an mmorpg work like skyrim is impossible. Skyrim only has to account for one autonomous individual. For one thing scaling content isn't realistic. You want immersion but encounters have to spring out of thin air? Creating a natural environment is impossible when it can't respond to the uneven influx of players. And since you can't control the creatures behavior based on the number of players trying to scale the numebr of creatures just raises the difficulty level for individuals.

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Nobody said that an MMO should work like Skyrim. What we're saying is that MMO environments should have the same design philosophy as a game like Skyrim, which in my opinion is entirely possible regardless of the number of players. If you can have as much fun adventuring from point A to point B as the actual quests you do when you arrive, you've found a game that has enough interesting environmental content to render fast travel unnecessary.

There has yet to be any MMO even close to fitting this category.

You missed the point. You can't set up events in an mmo like you can in Skyrim. It only works with one player. Unless you conjure creatures up as triggered events for an individual player id, in which case you lose the whole immersion thing.

Actually I do have a way to do it in line with flavor, but most games don't have that particular flavor system.

Not that I said the roads would be overflowing with action every ten feet, but why would any player "need" a road to be a mundane travel lane?  This is why no one wants to do it in the first place. I'm not talking about smothering roads with dangers, I'm talking about making the areas long the roads much more interesting so you want to get off the road and go do things.

I take it you don't do much hiking or adventuring in real life either.  Roads and trails are not just on-rails lanes that you use to get from point A to point B.  

On-rails lanes that one uses only to get from Point A to Point B sound like elevated freeways through either slums or gated suburban wastelands. Possibly the average game designer and average game player alike are necessarily more familiar with that model from Real Life.

I personally enjoyed the brief-seeming period of EverQuest wherein others were often willing to hire my wizardess to take them somewhere and maybe back again, avoiding the built-in dangers and perhaps tedium of travel by other means by seeking out another player and her avatar's abilities. But even then, some howled about being "forced" to interact with others in an MMORPG.

Originally posted by Dibdabs

Originally posted by Metentso

So if you were an Elf, an travelled to the human cities, you draw the attention of everybody, since it was strange for an Elf to travel from such a long distance. You were special and you had a tale to tell and people interested in it.

Nothing "special" about it when hundreds of other Elf, Dwarf and Halfling characters had also made the trip that week.  In EQ, an Elf, Dwarf or Halfling in somewhere like Freeport didn't merit a second glance.  Ditto with the "Evil" races travelling to each others home cities.  I think you're getting a bit carried away with the nostalgia!  I considered lengthy travel a personal achievement, especially if I was low level and it was a tough trip, but in reality nobody else thought it that much of a big deal.  Why would they?  I certainly didn't consider I had a tale to tell.  :D

           I ran a fairly low level troll through to Greater Faydark, all the way to Crushbone, and I can tell most assuredly that I was the only one many people had seen around. Guards roamed the woods all over and it was risky just taking the time to talk to people. It certainly felt like I had more of a tale to tell regarding my trip there than basically any other mmorpg has given me so far. This was original era EQ, of course, when leveling was very very slow coupled with being many peoples first mmo. 

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Originally posted by Cuathon

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Originally posted by Vryheid
 

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Originally posted by Cuathon
Making an mmorpg work like skyrim is impossible. Skyrim only has to account for one autonomous individual. For one thing scaling content isn't realistic. You want immersion but encounters have to spring out of thin air? Creating a natural environment is impossible when it can't respond to the uneven influx of players. And since you can't control the creatures behavior based on the number of players trying to scale the numebr of creatures just raises the difficulty level for individuals.

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Nobody said that an MMO should work like Skyrim. What we're saying is that MMO environments should have the same design philosophy as a game like Skyrim, which in my opinion is entirely possible regardless of the number of players. If you can have as much fun adventuring from point A to point B as the actual quests you do when you arrive, you've found a game that has enough interesting environmental content to render fast travel unnecessary.
There has yet to be any MMO even close to fitting this category.

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You missed the point. You can't set up events in an mmo like you can in Skyrim. It only works with one player. Unless you conjure creatures up as triggered events for an individual player id, in which case you lose the whole immersion thing.
Actually I do have a way to do it in line with flavor, but most games don't have that particular flavor system.

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Nobody with a brain think's that it's possible to exactly imitate a single player RPG in MMO format. This isn't some profound observation you're giving here. Nobody even suggested that developers try to copy the event format of Skyrim, so I don't know why you bring this up.

What annoys me is that you're using this as a strawman to attack an unrelated but widely supported argument for the future of MMOs simply because they both admire Skyrim's design philosophy. The fact is that most MMO travel environments are shallow as hell, and simply saying that players should have fun talking to strangers while traveling across barren environments is not a reason to get rid of fast travel.

Originally posted by Vryheid

 

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Originally posted by Cuathon

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Originally posted by Vryheid
 

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Originally posted by Cuathon
Making an mmorpg work like skyrim is impossible. Skyrim only has to account for one autonomous individual. For one thing scaling content isn't realistic. You want immersion but encounters have to spring out of thin air? Creating a natural environment is impossible when it can't respond to the uneven influx of players. And since you can't control the creatures behavior based on the number of players trying to scale the numebr of creatures just raises the difficulty level for individuals.

---

Nobody said that an MMO should work like Skyrim. What we're saying is that MMO environments should have the same design philosophy as a game like Skyrim, which in my opinion is entirely possible regardless of the number of players. If you can have as much fun adventuring from point A to point B as the actual quests you do when you arrive, you've found a game that has enough interesting environmental content to render fast travel unnecessary.
There has yet to be any MMO even close to fitting this category.

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You missed the point. You can't set up events in an mmo like you can in Skyrim. It only works with one player. Unless you conjure creatures up as triggered events for an individual player id, in which case you lose the whole immersion thing.
Actually I do have a way to do it in line with flavor, but most games don't have that particular flavor system.

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Nobody with a brain think's that it's possible to exactly imitate a single player RPG in MMO format. This isn't some profound observation you're giving here. Nobody even suggested that developers try to copy the event format of Skyrim, so I don't know why you bring this up.

What annoys me is that you're using this as a strawman to attack an unrelated but widely supported argument for the future of MMOs simply because they both admire Skyrim's design philosophy. The fact is that most MMO travel environments are shallow as hell, and simply saying that players should have fun talking to strangers while traveling across barren environments is not a reason to get rid of fast travel.

I am not using a strawman. Get bent. The system used in Skyrim is not feasible in an MMO. So someone needs to develop a system that is. But although the result of Skyrim's system is great, its implementation is not useful for an MMO.

I have traveled in games plenty and I like long travel times. In fact I am fine with fast travel as long as people are willing to pay a price. I would prefer if people were motivated to travel slow but in some cases it would be reasonable to travel quickly. I prefer systems not constrained by class, but I don't care if every player can fast travel. Exploring the world should be incentivized enough that people choose to do it even with the option of fast travel available. There are a lot of ways to make this work. The question is whether there is a financial incentive to do so for developers. If players are willing to sacrifice money and time spent on graphics you may be able to do it, but players generally want perfect graphics and hard to produce gameplay.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Making an mmorpg work like skyrim is impossible. Skyrim only has to account for one autonomous individual. For one thing scaling content isn't realistic. You want immersion but encounters have to spring out of thin air? Creating a natural environment is impossible when it can't respond to the uneven influx of players. And since you can't control the creatures behavior based on the number of players trying to scale the numebr of creatures just raises the difficulty level for individuals.

At least in terms of travel you can make it work like Skyrim.  SWTOR's fast travel options are extremely similar.  You can't always fast travel on demand (30 min cd) and you can't do it instantly (6 sec activation) but it's still really close.

but in terms of the content of slow travel it can't really be the same.

lol, i have been walking....yes WALKING quite a lot while playing SWTOR.  its kind of funny seeing everyone else run run run everywhere.  they look at me like I must be an NPC :)  don't think I have seen another soul walking in that game..guess what, there is a walk/run toggle :)  I feel like there is enough scenery to look at as i travel to warrent walking in this game and it adds to that "long travel time"  feel.

Originally posted by Lexin

People are lazy and they want everything within a month. Do I really need to say anything else?

More like people have jobs and familiies and actual ~lives~ these days and don't want to waste it doing mind-numbingly boring things like walking half an hour just to get to a spot where you grind mobs for hours for a percentage of your level bar. I understand there are lot of kids playing games that have nothing better to do with their lives (well, they do, but they won't) but the larger majority of the MMO audience realize that in the end, it's just a game. And if you spend more of it preparing to play, rather than getting to actually play it, it stops being a fun passtime and just becomes a waste of time.

A lot of people are failing to take into account the repetitiveness of an MMO. No world, no matter how lush and vibrant and well-made, is going to be interesting enough to explore hundreds of times unless it actually changes along the way. The MMO world doesn't have a way to do that now. So yes, while it's fun getting lost the first few times, evetually you've explored all the world that's been created, you can't get lost anymore, and you've explored all there is.

Now, travel is just a boring void of time spent with Numlock (or whatever the auto-run button in your game is) on while you alt-tab to set up your music playlist or talk to people on Vent. Yes, most of us want to be able to skip that part, and that's why those options are now available. No one is forcing you to use them, so if you want to take the long road by all means, go for it. But the only reason you have to ask for that feature to be forced on people is because you don't want to do it by yourself, but you know no one else wants to. So essentially, you're asking that devs force everyone else to do something they despise just because you enjoy it. Put that into perspective, for you?

Originally posted by gaeanprayer

Originally posted by Lexin

People are lazy and they want everything within a month. Do I really need to say anything else?

More like people have jobs and familiies and actual ~lives~ these days and don't want to waste it doing mind-numbingly boring things like walking half an hour just to get to a spot where you grind mobs for hours for a percentage of your level bar. I understand there are lot of kids playing games that have nothing better to do with their lives (well, they do, but they won't) but the larger majority of the MMO audience realize that in the end, it's just a game. And if you spend more of it preparing to play, rather than getting to actually play it, it stops being a fun passtime and just becomes a waste of time.

A lot of people are failing to take into account the repetitiveness of an MMO. No world, no matter how lush and vibrant and well-made, is going to be interesting enough to explore hundreds of times unless it actually changes along the way. The MMO world doesn't have a way to do that now. So yes, while it's fun getting lost the first few times, evetually you've explored all the world that's been created, you can't get lost anymore, and you've explored all there is.

Now, travel is just a boring void of time spent with Numlock (or whatever the auto-run button in your game is) on while you alt-tab to set up your music playlist or talk to people on Vent. Yes, most of us want to be able to skip that part, and that's why those options are now available. No one is forcing you to use them, so if you want to take the long road by all means, go for it. But the only reason you have to ask for that feature to be forced on people is because you don't want to do it by yourself, but you know no one else wants to. So essentially, you're asking that devs force everyone else to do something they despise just because you enjoy it. Put that into perspective, for you?

I have developed a dynamic conent system that makes long travel part of the gameplay. Of course the thing is implemented in a text based mmo because of time, money, and possibly technical limitations, but we will see if it moves to 2d/iso or something. Making the world change is pretty hard though.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Cuathon

Making an mmorpg work like skyrim is impossible. Skyrim only has to account for one autonomous individual. For one thing scaling content isn't realistic. You want immersion but encounters have to spring out of thin air? Creating a natural environment is impossible when it can't respond to the uneven influx of players. And since you can't control the creatures behavior based on the number of players trying to scale the numebr of creatures just raises the difficulty level for individuals.

At least in terms of travel you can make it work like Skyrim.  SWTOR's fast travel options are extremely similar.  You can't always fast travel on demand (30 min cd) and you can't do it instantly (6 sec activation) but it's still really close.

Skyrim was used as a loose example of a more live world anyway.  The point is that even in an MMO, a lot can be done in the world design that would make adventuring and exploring while traveling much more exciting.  I listed a bunch of things several posts back that are not specific to single player RPG games like Skyrim.  It wasn;t about converting Skrim as is to an MMO.  It's about learning some lessons from it and applying them to MMOs.

Originally posted by MindTrigger

Skyrim was used as a loose example of a more live world anyway.  The point is that even in an MMO, a lot can be done in the world design that would make adventuring and exploring while traveling much more exciting. 

For that to work, one would have to get rid of level disparity, especially if players need to be grouped to complete tasks or fight certain mobs. Without a significant shift to another progression system that is more tolerant of solo endeavors and unlike levels in groups, all that adventuring and exploring content would just be a nuisance for the majority of players as their goal is to reach their destination without impediment. The diesng you suggest works in games like Skyrim because it doesn't make a difference to the player if they level or not. In the majority of level-based MMOs, the guy that plays MMOs the way he plays Skyrim will consistently end up behind the curve of his group. Most adventurer/explorer types in MMOs are already familiar with that procedure even in the current state of these games.

Eh, I remember when making a long trek over multiple zones on your own was seen as a rite of passage in Saga of Ryzom and a good way to weed out weak guild candidates. But I guess those were different times.

Originally posted by Methos12

Eh, I remember when making a long trek over multiple zones on your own was seen as a rite of passage in Saga of Ryzom and a good way to weed out weak guild candidates. But I guess those were different times.

Now there's a pickup line that's sure to impress.

"So, what do you do for a living?

"My job is not important, gal. All you need to know is the number 'three.' That's right. I'ma three-zoner in Ryzom. Unscathed passage everytime. Soooooo... your place or mine?"

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by MindTrigger

Skyrim was used as a loose example of a more live world anyway.  The point is that even in an MMO, a lot can be done in the world design that would make adventuring and exploring while traveling much more exciting. 

For that to work, one would have to get rid of level disparity, especially if players need to be grouped to complete tasks or fight certain mobs. Without a significant shift to another progression system that is more tolerant of solo endeavors and unlike levels in groups, all that adventuring and exploring content would just be a nuisance for the majority of players as their goal is to reach their destination without impediment. The diesng you suggest works in games like Skyrim because it doesn't make a difference to the player if they level or not. In the majority of level-based MMOs, the guy that plays MMOs the way he plays Skyrim will consistently end up behind the curve of his group. Most adventurer/explorer types in MMOs are already familiar with that procedure even in the current state of these games.

 

Again, Skyrim is simply being used as an example of how exploring can be fun. Dynamic content can eaisly be implemented into MMOs. I'm not even talking ahout big tihngs. Something small, like randomly generated teasure chests, mini-bosses, rare metal from meteorites that fall from the sky, resources or anything that gets you out and about. You're right, though, people that are strictly task-oriented won't really be concerned with random crap that happens just off the road; it's a different mentality, a mentality that has taken over the industry and produced countless WoW clones.

Also, part of your argument seems to imply that a system that favors exploration wouldn't be beneficial. Why couldn't it? If your goal is just to wander out and find content, instead it simply being put on your plate, then who says you can't level effeciantly doing so?

I'm a big advocate of diversity in a market. There shouldn't be one type of MMO. I imagne that the people getting annoyed at this system can keep playing WoW, or TOR, or any of the million facsimiles. However, there are limited options for this style of play.

Originally posted by blognorg

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by MindTrigger

Skyrim was used as a loose example of a more live world anyway.  The point is that even in an MMO, a lot can be done in the world design that would make adventuring and exploring while traveling much more exciting. 

For that to work, one would have to get rid of level disparity, especially if players need to be grouped to complete tasks or fight certain mobs. Without a significant shift to another progression system that is more tolerant of solo endeavors and unlike levels in groups, all that adventuring and exploring content would just be a nuisance for the majority of players as their goal is to reach their destination without impediment. The diesng you suggest works in games like Skyrim because it doesn't make a difference to the player if they level or not. In the majority of level-based MMOs, the guy that plays MMOs the way he plays Skyrim will consistently end up behind the curve of his group. Most adventurer/explorer types in MMOs are already familiar with that procedure even in the current state of these games.

Again, Skyrim is simply being used as an example of how exploring can be fun. Dynamic content can eaisly be implemented into MMOs. I'm not even talking ahout big tihngs. Something small, like randomly generated teasure chests, mini-bosses, rare metal from meteorites that fall from the sky, resources or anything that gets you out and about. You're right, though, people that are strictly task-oriented won't really be concerned with random crap that happens just off the road; it's a different mentality, a mentality that has taken over the industry and produced countless WoW clones.

That looks good on paper and sounds great in theory. Your best bet is to actually walk through your idea with the consideration of other people inthe game world. The issues become glaringly evident. With all these cool triggers and events, are they visible to the rest of the playerbase? Accessible by the rest of the playerbase? What happens to the chests and bosses that aren't cleaned up?

You'll quickly find that the solutions are in the form of phasing, instancing and other manners of  basically taking the player or small group out of the multiplayer experience and into a single player or small group experience, separate from the persistent multiplayer game world.

It's not that "The Industry" has some collective groupthink that has them stuck on a single path. What you are suggesting - dynamic content can be easily implemented - looks great on paper until you actually walk through it and see how it actually plays out. 

It's not that it cannot be implemented but that the best implentations are at the expenseof the multiplayer experience.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by blognorg

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by MindTrigger

Skyrim was used as a loose example of a more live world anyway.  The point is that even in an MMO, a lot can be done in the world design that would make adventuring and exploring while traveling much more exciting. 

For that to work, one would have to get rid of level disparity, especially if players need to be grouped to complete tasks or fight certain mobs. Without a significant shift to another progression system that is more tolerant of solo endeavors and unlike levels in groups, all that adventuring and exploring content would just be a nuisance for the majority of players as their goal is to reach their destination without impediment. The diesng you suggest works in games like Skyrim because it doesn't make a difference to the player if they level or not. In the majority of level-based MMOs, the guy that plays MMOs the way he plays Skyrim will consistently end up behind the curve of his group. Most adventurer/explorer types in MMOs are already familiar with that procedure even in the current state of these games.

Again, Skyrim is simply being used as an example of how exploring can be fun. Dynamic content can eaisly be implemented into MMOs. I'm not even talking ahout big tihngs. Something small, like randomly generated teasure chests, mini-bosses, rare metal from meteorites that fall from the sky, resources or anything that gets you out and about. You're right, though, people that are strictly task-oriented won't really be concerned with random crap that happens just off the road; it's a different mentality, a mentality that has taken over the industry and produced countless WoW clones.

That looks good on paper and sounds great in theory. Your best bet is to actually walk through your idea with the consideration of other people inthe game world. The issues become glaringly evident. With all these cool triggers and events, are they visible to the rest of the playerbase? Accessible by the rest of the playerbase? What happens to the chests and bosses that aren't cleaned up?

You'll quickly find that the solutions are in the form of phasing, instancing and other manners of  basically taking the player or small group out of the multiplayer experience and into a single player or small group experience, separate from the persistent multiplayer game world.

It's not that "The Industry" has some collective groupthink that has them stuck on a single path. What you are suggesting - dynamic content can be easily implemented - looks great on paper until you actually walk through it and see how it actually plays out. 

It's not that it cannot be implemented but that the best implentations are at the expenseof the multiplayer experience.

 

          How does something like a randomly spawning treasure chest look good on paper and sound good in theory yet still not transition well to a multiplayer experience? Or even the other suggestion about rare meteorite metal? The issues are not presenting themselves to me in a glaring manner. Those two things that were mentioned aren't exactly events. More like randomly spanwing resource nodes akin to resource nodes as seen in WoW (perhaps they can make the treasure chest spawn in a few discreet, variable locations). Oh, the chests that aren't looted also sit around being discreet untill someone does loot them.