Road mechanic rework / remove teleportation

[loftar]

The reasons (gameplay wise) that makes me prefer actual movement through the world is that teleportation:

• removes encounters (as you skip everything on your path) which effectively makes the world feel way more lifeless than it actually is
• removes locality by folding the effective map dimensions down to a tiny fraction, making it irrelevant where you an other things are located
• removes the feeling of accomplishment when travelling

Surely it's convenient to be able to hop over to the (literally) other side of the map to buy a loaf of bread to go with the stew that is currently cooking in the cauldron.... but I really question this ability to be fun or the experience of such a trip being rewarding.

To be sure, I don't want to pretend that I actually disagree with your arguments. Fast-travel is a slightly problematic mechanic even in single-player games to me, for a number of reasons. All the same, however, the following counter-arguments are also true:

• "Encounters" with people zipping past at unnatural speeds and never responding to you because they have their client in the background anyway are hardly much more meaningful than not having them to begin with.
• The main effect of having to dedicate an afternoon to go trade at the CF is that the CF will always be mostly empty.
• To the extent that this travelling mechanic is handled automatically by the game while you don't have to look at the client, there is hardly much of a feeling of accomplishment to it anyway.

In my mind, the greatest problem with travel right now is probably that it makes every trading hub except the largest ones on the map more or less irrelevant, as there's no need ever to visit them in favor of the larger ones; this obviously being related to the point of invalidating distances. I think there are several ways of alleviating that particular problem, however, including but not limited to travel weariness.

[iamahh]

I think HH managed to stick to what actually works in game... because I noticed there are a lot of exciting ideas that seem reasonable on paper but just fall flat when put in practice... it's like OSI model versus TCP/IP...

[DDDsDD999]

[*]Random encounters in the wilderness are no where near as meaningful or interesting as the encounters stuff like community fair or visiting villages actually provides.

Debateable.

I mean, if you don't go to markets nor have anywhere to go, I guess. But I'll trade more items, see more people, and hang-out with people more often in a week at CF than an entire world's worth of random encounters. Most random encounters are just one (or both) sides running away instantly, knowing nothing good can from it.

[*]I think you should be able to visit things that aren't directly near you without just being a massive chore.

Along that reasoning everyone needs developer teleportation abilities.

I don't think that's a reasonable argument against my point.

[*]Clicking in a direction for hours isn't an accomplishment, nor fun, nor interesting.[/list]

You don't seem to have read my longer post on page 2, there wouldn't be constant clicking in one direction for hours.

Sorry, having your client afk for a few hours. That makes it much more of an accomplishment.

[Granger]

One could argue that encounters, even at unnatural speeds, are better than not experiencing them at all - when playing a MMO.

While I acknowledge the argument that a visit to the CF would take (substantially) longer than now, in the setting of the game these equivalents of shopping malls/walmarts seem unreasonably - and I agree with loftar that they are only possible as they're reachable from everywhere basically instantly (and the biggest wins).
I would prefer to see bigger (still small compared to CF) markets in realm centers, small markets at bigger villages and 'mom and pop' sized setups (that function as waystations along roads or as outlets of production settlements). This would make locality matter, give opportunity for actual trade (instead of bots running auto-trade scripts that arbitrage the only one mall), differences in pricing depending on region and transportation of stuff between places being a possibility to generate a profit from (given the map supporting regional differentiation intead of being as uniform in production ability as it currently is).

I see the point of travel being boring when you just have to wait for it to be over, but on the other hand it being non-instantaneous would lead to you prefering shorter distances (again, locality) and the always looming possibility to run into a roadblock (which currently is non-existent as you simply peek and if you don't hear the alarm click LMB and move on) should give some suspense (plus there would be landscape to enjoy) and motivate to not minimize the client in the meantime.

Regarding the argument of DDDsDD999 about 'travel taking hours' I can only say that traversing the map should take a while, should you want to hang out in certain places quite often it would make sense to settle within a reasonable range to it. Or spawn an alt, which is the usual method of choice to deal with mechanics in H&H anyway.

[tigerlrg245]

without the teleports living next to a town/market will actually have an impact, which is an interesting thought. of course charterstones should stay but since they need to be visited once it could keep exploration relevant.
It is kind of annoying to see the world plagued with road signs, short paths are usesful though, travel to water or to a cave, cross a river etc.

Maybe next world provide a limit on the length of the road? or would people still use multiple roads sewn together in a slower way?

[Luanes]

Why not make both?

Teleportation: each step with lower range, each step high cost

Running fast: each step with higher range, each step with lower cost

[ricky]

I would simply like to see roads require some serious infrastructure (pavement in this case, maybe even more) to greatly reduce the road clutter. perhaps there would even be road hubs that form due to the hefty resource/time constraints.

instead people just dedicate an hour to build a road to the northern swamp, a road to their southern mind, three roads east because there's a few rivers and they dont want to carry a boat...

[Attas]

What about making water (and maybe cliffs) actually block roads paths? That way the roadmap will be composed of a series of small roads crossing "continents", with people having to swim/use a coracle to cross the rivers.

Logistically those crossing points would contain not only a road-end at each side of the river, but many other leading to other parts of the continent. So it would increase encounter probability and make people 'feel' how long the road actually is.

[tigerlrg245]

What about making water (and maybe cliffs) actually block roads paths? That way the roadmap will be composed of a series of small roads crossing "continents", with people having to swim/use a coracle to cross the rivers.

Logistically those crossing points would contain not only a road-end at each side of the river, but many other leading to other parts of the continent. So it would increase encounter probability and make people 'feel' how long the road actually is.

At least shouldn't be stopped by shallow water
and it would be kind of a blow to horses

[MinionTwo]

I dont know how feasable this option is, but looking at the discussions, this is what i have come up with...

Step 1. allow wagons and carts to traverse a road, following the road signs but not teleporting.
step 2. create a "bridge".
Option 1: This would act like 2 ends of a road with no little milestones between it. it's purpose is to traverse deep water and would have a range of 40 squares. this number was chosen because I have not seen a river wider than 30 squares.
Option 2: Possibly act like a raft with a limited range of movement. unsure if this would be feasable without object Controlled Objects.
step 3. Allow only empty knarrs to teleport. this will allow the saving of beached knarrs but limit the ability to teleport huge amounts of product.