Road mechanic rework / remove teleportation

[Massa]

I would like a simpler solution that is just buried markers that display when using a dowsing rod or something.

No. Then they're not as easily uninterruptible as they are now.

It's so easy to set up a road system with the tiny cost of wood to make signs. If they took glue or dreams or something additional it could not only be a resource sink but it would hopefully make the routes that ARE built to be less careless?

A weird suggestion giving the way things are going in the Visitor buff thread... why not make all roads include an optional dream in construction of the mile markers, or perhaps a large chunk of haven-magic items optionally included in the initial road marker post. If said items are used in both the construction of the initial marker and the mile markers (or simply one of them) then the road can be used for fast travel. This in conjunction with the addition of travel weariness will make roads a little more... balanced. It definitely adds to the tedium of setting up a road, which is already tedious, but at the benefit of very longer term excellent benefits. Said roads could also, reasonably, add a moderate speed boost when following the road - more so if paved, perhaps.

Just put on the dowsing rod and break them that way.

I just don't want to fucking collide with them or see them everywhere. When I was building my first wall, I built it over troll's road like 3 times. So many fucking people came because I fucked up their shit, and I couldn't NOT anywhere I went.

[Nek]

I was debating whether or not I wanted to throw out my thoughts on this because I know for a fact it's the polar opposite of most other people who like to PvP think but fuck it, I will.
I fucking despise teleporting (with the EXCEPTION of hearthfire teleporting, that shit is straight up essential). I feel that distance should play a more important role than it currently does. I hate the fact that if I live in the extreme north-west of the map and I want to harass a village who also resides in the north-west, but is allied with some other village that resides in say, the south-east section of the map, they can just use roads and have a full force deployed up there to defend with no effort and no time investment. It takes literal minutes for them to get to the other side of the map. It makes the map feel tiny and more importantly it makes your location feel insignificant and pointless.
I prefer doing small skirmishes with a small group of people over mass PvP. I like to jump in, do some damage, fuck some shit up, then be out before the bulk of the enemy gets there to roll over us with sheer numbers and roads just ruin this shit or make it so that the time you have to stay and have fun is cut severely short thanks to roads allowing you to cross the map in minutes.
I think if people want to help people across the map then they should be forced to weigh up their options for if it's worth taking that journey or not.
This makes it so that players are actually weaker and more vulnerable the further they are from their base. How many videos have you seen with people being caught out in the middle of nowhere and just running away for 3-5 minutes while their reinforcement party gets organized and goes through roads to meet up with them? I've seen a fair few tbh. I think you should be expected to do more to make it out of an encounter where you've been caught miles away from your base alone or with your one friend.
EDIT - Also there is an element of strategy lost too. If there's a big alliance of villages and they're scattered all over the map, you don't really gain anything trying to pick off the ones who are furthest away from their other allies because distance is irrelevant.

Even looking at it from the views of people who don't want to PvP, let's just pretend that most of the BIG villages settle in the south, if somebody wanted to make a conscious decision to settle down at the opposite side of the map to be safer that doesn't actually work because one way or another they will have a road system within 5 minutes of their base, so if people wanted to get to them to harass them daily they could do so effortlessly.

Personally though I'm just disgusted with road signs being plastered all over the map everywhere but the system proposed isn't exactly going to fix that either so I dunno, yo. The map is destined to look ugly as fuck one way or the other. I always prefer when it looks more wild and untouched but alas, that's an argument for another time.

Now obviously the exception to what I'm saying is trading. I've dealt with cross map trading before without the use of roads and it is not fun at all. Two people rowing towards each other for like 2 hours with their valuable shit on them dreading an encounter? Naw bro, that sucks hard. If there was a way to be able to get to trade hubs easily while getting rid of teleportation for all the other things then that would be more ideal but I've not put much thought on how that could happen.

[Granger]

Thanks for the feedback. Some questions:

Personally though I'm just disgusted with road signs being plastered all over the map everywhere but the system proposed isn't exactly going to fix that either so I dunno, yo. The map is destined to look ugly as fuck one way or the other. I always prefer when it looks more wild and untouched but alas, that's an argument for another time.

Why do you see the proposal not drastically reducing the amount of road sign litter?

Asking as I expect players to be lazy, thus to prefer attaching their trail to an existing path (especially in case stuff like automatic stomp to dirt by traversing, or the path being paved to boost speed) instead of setting up new road signs (which would be way more work).

Now obviously the exception to what I'm saying is trading. I've dealt with cross map trading before without the use of roads and it is not fun at all. Two people rowing towards each other for like 2 hours with their valuable shit on them dreading an encounter? Naw bro, that sucks hard. If there was a way to be able to get to trade hubs easily while getting rid of teleportation for all the other things then that would be more ideal but I've not put much thought on how that could happen.

Could some sort of carrier pidgeons that can transport stuff to another character be something to solve the trade problem?

For general trade my expectation is for local trade hubs forming and merchant roaming between them, even if there should be a central walmart (as CF was in this world, but more centered on the map) as the local ones would be quicker to reach because of lower distance.

[MagicManICT]

I think it's been proposed before, but to have:
A) larger world;
B) less teleportation mechanics;

you need to have:
C) faster base travel speeds;
D) means to effectively trade (which may mean players have to restrict expectations... no Jita trade hubs here);
E) means of effective fast travel with an associated expense (we have that with charter stone travel and travel weariness); and
F) a sizeable population... means people can't play 3 months and quit. They have to be willing to stick around for the long haul to develop community. This isn't "Don't Starve" or "Rust."

@Nek: thanks for that post. You make a perfect point on what all this teleportation needs to be nerfed. Ranger Squad Bravo shouldn't be able to show up to stop you harassing your neighbors. However, they should still show up after some effort and teach you why you shouldn't harass your neighbors, maybe a bit more of a lesson because they had to go through the effort.

[Griffone]

I imagine encounters can be made a lot more interesting by letting people block roads with a fallen tree like a stereotypical ambush. This will halt all traffic at that point, not just at the 2 ends of it, making ambushes a meaningful encounter on the roads (at least you wasted your time if you hearth back or if you are on a coach - requirement to put more effort into travel, at least to get away from the blockade).

Teleportation is a very nice convenience in video games, as most of us deal with long travel time as is and is not something we look forward to. I was profoundly missing it playing lategame Subnautica and it has a small world once you have decent transportation. But in my mind current roads of H&H are too powerful for the amount of effort put in. Want to check a swamp - peek at a sign, have a heavy load - travel via a sign at no additional cost, want to be at another end of the world - just click. And all required for one is just some wood or existing stones and some overhead on top of travelling the distance.

Immersion is a delicate thing, but why is it more difficult for me to visit a neighbor than going across the world to CF? Why do I look forward to a horse in the early game just to stomp snakes? But at the same time one can argue current roads are more consistent with hearthing mechanics, but to me hearthing is different, because it binds you with your home and you have the unique authority to teleport to that specific tile.

I want to remind you that expensive teleportation can still be a thing, non-teleporting roads are not mutually exclusive with charter stones and the like.

This change would not be strictly for the better or worse, as it would drastically change travel cost. Just like others have said, putting time into travel makes transportation a big part of economics, giving reason for local trade hubs and more reasoning to live near a village. This can open a door to local resources, as one can have a more consistent source of resource in a spot without making it trivial by letting people just warp out of nowhere and grab it, like they can now.

That said, I think making travel more costly can probably achieve the results important for locality argument, as long as cost scales with distance and it's not just the initial time/resource investment of building the infrastructure.

I would vote for road-travel instead of teleportation, although I realize it can sound hypocritical from someone who hates the 60-minute J spam of Elite: Dangerous to get to anywhere.

[MagicManICT]

no Jita trade hubs here

Let me fix that:

No CF trade hubs

And to clarify: no hubs like that without some effort to get to them. I'll agree a guy in the corner of the world shouldn't have to spend 4 hours boating in to the trade port/hub because it's too time consuming and tedious, but it shouln't take 0 effort to get there, either.