Ideas to reduce travel time, without destoying core mechanics of the game. (very important feedback to make the game enjoyable for players with a job)

Anabolic Man

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Sep 7, 2020
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Travel time, the one of the most mentioned problems, which severely limits the number of players.


Many real life friends would like to play the game with me but all of them mentioned me the same reason why they can't play MO. The reason for this lies in the travel time. Everyone has a job and they don't have enough time to take part in dungeon events with the guild.

This is one of the most criticized points of MO and this criticism often comes from veteran players who have been playing the first game for years and understand the influence of fast travel mechanics and the problems that can arise.


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Map.jpg

This massage was one of the reasons why i made a thread about different reasons to fight. https://mortalonline2.com/forums/th...re-interesting-for-all-types-of-players.8975/



The concerns with fast travel via Moongate spots

1.-The biggest concern is that that valuables can be transported safely !
(That could destroy the trade and the economy. Fewer players would roam around. The RPK players always hope for good loot and the players who transport things have to organize a caravan and make more profit by taking the risk of a transport)

2.- That the players won't roam/travel around as much and that the skipable sections of the map might be empty. (This is particularly annoying for RPK players)

3.-That a guild can mobilize large armies much faster in a siege battle and let them move through a moongate, without having to pass certain choke points, that the defenders can guard

4.- The expedition length would be reduced. Maybe a player would get less lost. It would be easier to memorize the ways.

5. PVE Players want to be somtimes as far away from RPK Players as possible,
to have their peace, or if someone has made himself too many enemies.


Mechanics to limit fast travel and to prevent exploitation and all of the above concerns about the fast travel mechanics

1.- The safe transport of goods must of course be prevented, and could be done if the Developers restrict using a portal with stuff in your Inventory or on your horse with horse bags, and if the Developers don't place the magic moongate spots too close to cities. If these are placed 10-15 minutes away from the cities, players could still be catched. This would prevent players from using the Moongate Spots to transport valuable items or materials. Players who want to return from a raid or dungeon with loot do not have an empty inventory and therefore cannot use the Moongate Spot, but it would reduce the time to travel to the dungeon and that would make the game more attractive to players with a job and only a few hours to play.

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2. To prevent the problem that the skipable sections of the map might be player empty they would have to be filled with the most valuable points of interest beside dungeons, so people want to farm a lot in those sections of the map.

3. To prevent the attackers from having an advantage during a siege and to allow the defenders to defend certain strategic choke points they Moongate enter Location (green Dot) could be placed behind a choke point and the purple circle from the picture above (where the players randomly spawn) infront of a choke point. Depending from which side you come, so you cant skip the choke point.

The guild that is using a moongate could reach the opponent's keep faster, but the Dev´s could make this kind of fast traveling uninteresting during sieges, by adding a huge HP and stamina debuff during keep sieges or in general. Some of the HP and Stamina bar may be blacked out instead of greyed out. A debuff that lasts about as long as it would take to reach the target location in a conventional way.

This is how the problem was solved in Conan Exiles.


4. The expedition length would defenetly be reduced
but on the way home the players can get lost again, because with with my above suggested restriction the players could not use such a moongate location with loot in their inventory and Starvault could also add a cooldown for using a moongate.

5. Moongate Spots would make it easier to follow a player, but at least the player would have a debuff on his HP and stamina Bar
and the cooldown for using a gate again would become active.


As I just described in detail in this thread, it is developmentally possible to eliminate all sorts of exploits and concerns about introducing fast travel methods through various mechanics such as debuffs, cooldowns and inventory restrictions for fast travel in order to make the game more accessible and interesting for a larger audience !


A small calculation example in order to draw attention to the importance of this proposal.

A dungen run Event with the guild take 40 Min preperation time + 40 min travel time + 2h dungeon visit + 40 min travel back time = 4h and this is too long for the avarage player that have arround 2-3 h time to play the game.
A player short on time could log out after the dungeon in the Wilderness or a house. This saves him 40 minutes and if the time
for the Journey to the dungeon is shortened aswell, he could take part in guild events and would continiue to play the game.


Other Ideas to reduce travel time.



Atm i have 3 Accounts. I in Bakti to make 1 vs 1 PVP and small scale PVP from time to time, to farm colanos and to join a group of my guild, if they make a sator dungeon run. A second character that is looged out in a house near the Necto Dungeon, if there will be an event, so i can just log him in, when the players arrived to save 50 min travel time from Meduli and 1 character i have loged out in Meduli, if someone need help over there or if the town is getting attacked.

You will see that many players might stop playing if they have to sub multiple accounts, only because they can´t play 8 h a day ! This is the main reason why fast travel is so important !
 
Last edited:

Hodo

Well-known member
Mar 7, 2022
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Sorry but no.

I have a job, I work 10 hours a day, 5 days a week and with proper planning and time management I can find time to ride from Meduli to the Necro Dungeon in the one to two hours I may play in that session. The difference is I am not just going somewhere without guild support. I know there is a stronghold near there I can logout in. I know the route extremely well to cut down on wasted time. I also dont screw around with a thousand detours because I have the attention span of a goldfish.

All moongates and fast travel does is just lead to people moving from fast travel point to fast travel point.

People complain about the size of the map being to big because there is nothing really near them, that is an issue with mob spread and respawns.
 

Emdash

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Sep 22, 2021
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Sorry but no.

I have a job, I work 10 hours a day, 5 days a week and with proper planning and time management I can find time to ride from Meduli to the Necro Dungeon in the one to two hours I may play in that session. The difference is I am not just going somewhere without guild support. I know there is a stronghold near there I can logout in. I know the route extremely well to cut down on wasted time. I also dont screw around with a thousand detours because I have the attention span of a goldfish.

All moongates and fast travel does is just lead to people moving from fast travel point to fast travel point.

People complain about the size of the map being to big because there is nothing really near them, that is an issue with mob spread and respawns.

dude, even if there were two spawn points like "north star" and "south star" it would make the game so much more bearable. If you think about it, doing a guild run... like say let's run a dungeon, or let's go pvp... that's actually LESS intensive than running market game in multiple cities. So I gotta be like yea I'll check out Bakti on the weekends cuz it takes like 45 min ghost. Sure, I can port back, which is good, the one redeeming thing, because I know it's 1/2.

I said home priest is care bear af and it is. Anyone who disagrees probably doesn't understand. However, now that we have home priest, we need more. The game is in zones. We need to find a faster way to get from zone to zone. "Middle earth" is barren. It's like IF I CAN JUST MAKE IT TO THE MIDDLE OF THE MAP. Unless people are coming out of a stronghold or you are like at a risar camp... absolutely barren.

I actually need all 3 chars to properly do things. That's 3x the movement. Whine whine, right? I do it, tho... shit, it might cut down on my real play time. So we got people ghosting (cuz due to terrain there is no way horse is ever faster than ghosting IMO!!) who could be playing... orrr we have people spawning in places. Like I said, I wouldn't even be mad to see the etherworld completely deleted. It's rubbish content that adds lag to the server. You should just spawn at nearest priest in a set amount of time (factoring in consecutive deaths.) Maybe then port you somewhere else if you get killed a few times haha.
 
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Anabolic Man

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All moongates and fast travel does is just lead to people moving from fast travel point to fast travel point.

This is simply not true, if you get a debuff for using a moongate, if you have a long Cooldown for using it again, if you cant travel with stuff in your inventory (including loot, potions, bows, arrows, horsebags or a shield) and especially not if you put the most exiting points of interest in the areas that could be skipped.

Tbh most players have 3 Accounts atm. I have one in Bakti to make small scale PVP from time to time, to farm colanos and to join a friendly group, if someone want to make a sator dungeon run. A second character that is looged out in a house near the Necro Dungeon, if there will be an event, so i can just log him in, when the players arrived, becuase this will save me 50 min travel time from Meduli to the dungeon and the way back ! 1 character i have loged out in Meduli, if someone need help over there or if the town is getting attacked.

If we get subs most players just want to have 1 character subbed !
 
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Domtomsen

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Feb 26, 2022
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Increase ghost world speed to like 1200 + epic jumps and wegud.
I think that speeding up ghost travel a LOT would be an good option. Maybe only get the speed buff when no spirit boxes are in your inventory, so you cant easiely transfer money. Or maybe give us NPC Caravans that can bring us very fast to other cities but only with no gear(or a hefty fee they more you wear)
 

Rynnik

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Feb 11, 2022
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The game should be bigger and even harder to get across.

You may hate the idea but it’s true.

Fast travel of any kind is horrible for a game like this and eventually with continents hopefully it gets worse not better. Players shouldn’t even consider moving entire areas of the game for a casual dungeon run and head home. It’s not WoW. Rather In the style of EVE online people should live in a territory and engage in local activities in that area. Cross map activities should require planning, logistics, and deployment and should NOT be a casual gameplay activity.

Will players ever understand? No. But it is still the best thing for a game like this.
 
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Emdash

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Sep 22, 2021
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The game should be bigger and even harder to get across.

You may hate the idea but it’s true.

Gotta sauce this. Can you give one argument as to why that is the case? lol. Just one simple reason. You know the world is designed very poorly. There are so many single-exit choke point paths in this game. It's ridiculous. They changed either climbing or terrain because even tho you can still get up anything, it's a lot harder now! Now you have to go around all of these mountains because there are no paths. There should be a bunch of paths. Screw dungeons, give us paths.

If you stay in the same place, you believe this, but I mean, I'd even take a button you press and it's like in... 45 minutes... you will arrive in Bakti.

The best part of climbing around in MO (which like I said can get bitchy even in ghost mode) is when you finally get to the top to find all the wolfbrush there.
 

FML

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Sep 20, 2022
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I completely understand the issues people have with the travel time in MO it really is a huge factor in the game, especially with new players who don't know the map layout, even MO2 compared to MO1 it's a huge stepping stone, I came back recently and still have the old map locations in my mind and it's confused the hell out of me trying to get from even Vadda to Meduli (Where'd the big Granum rock go?) -- Personally I don't mind the roaming from one place to another, makes for interesting PVP along the way then just teleporting to A / B and zoning in and out of locations, I like the open world feel and the fact it takes 45 minutes to get from MK to Vadda on horse is more realistic
 

Anabolic Man

Well-known member
Sep 7, 2020
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The game should be bigger and even harder to get across.

You may hate the idea but it’s true.

Fast travel of any kind is horrible for a game like this and eventually with continents hopefully it gets worse not better. Players shouldn’t even consider moving entire areas of the game for a casual dungeon run and head home. It’s not WoW. Rather In the style of EVE online people should live in a territory and engage in local activities in that area. Cross map activities should require planning, logistics, and deployment and should NOT be a casual gameplay activity.

Will players ever understand? No. But it is still the best thing for a game like this.

if SV would add 2 nice ENDGAME Dungeons to the Desert i would not have to leave the desert as a PVE Player. We only have the cloethus cave and this is very bad ! North have kimuru cave (for getting a lot of tungsteel), 2 Risar dungeons for frainsteel, Spidercave, Minotaur dungeon, tephra, necro dungeon...

I think a debuff and a cooldown for fast travel would make most players travel on horse instead of using a gate ayways, if you can use a gate only once every 24h and if you do pvp you need transport parcels anyways, so you won´t use it.

Another idea to limit fast travel would be a guard that only let players wich high reputation use a gate ? Pure PVE Players ? There are so many options to limit the use.
 
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Rynnik

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Feb 11, 2022
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Gotta sauce this. Can you give one argument as to why that is the case? lol. Just one simple reason. You know the world is designed very poorly. There are so many single-exit choke point paths in this game. It's ridiculous. They changed either climbing or terrain because even tho you can still get up anything, it's a lot harder now! Now you have to go around all of these mountains because there are no paths. There should be a bunch of paths. Screw dungeons, give us paths.

If you stay in the same place, you believe this, but I mean, I'd even take a button you press and it's like in... 45 minutes... you will arrive in Bakti.

The best part of climbing around in MO (which like I said can get bitchy even in ghost mode) is when you finally get to the top to find all the wolfbrush there.
Because player empires and economic scarcity aren’t possible without space ie time ie the only actual MMO player currency to drive it.

You are welcome! Two for the price of one!
 

finegamingconnoisseur

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I'd say make it so that at 100 Riding (secondary skill) you gain additional 20% mount speed at walk, trot, canter and gallop.

That way, most nearby regions will be around 10-15 minutes away for players with maxed Riding skill.
 
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Hodo

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This is simply not true, if you get a debuff for using a moongate, if you have a long Cooldown for using it again, if you cant travel with stuff in your inventory (including loot, potions, bows, arrows, horsebags or a shield) and especially not if you put the most exiting points of interest in the areas that could be skipped.

Tbh most players have 3 Accounts atm. I have one in Bakti to make small scale PVP from time to time, to farm colanos and to join a friendly group, if someone want to make a sator dungeon run. A second character that is looged out in a house near the Necro Dungeon, if there will be an event, so i can just log him in, when the players arrived, becuase this will save me 50 min travel time from Meduli to the dungeon and the way back ! 1 character i have loged out in Meduli, if someone need help over there or if the town is getting attacked.

If we get subs most players just want to have 1 character subbed !

I often travel from Meduli to Bakti, to Tindrem, down to Jungle Camp back to Meduli. I dont need a fast travel system, I rarely do it in ghost mode, I will ride a horse. It takes me about 20-30min at most to get to Bakti from Meduli if I stop and farm a few things along the way. It is not a big deal.

I understand not everyone has an hour to dedicate to play, but if you dont have an hour perhaps dont play a open world sandbox, find a nice instant action game like Conan or Ark.
 

Emdash

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Sep 22, 2021
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Because player empires and economic scarcity aren’t possible without space ie time ie the only actual MMO player currency to drive it.

You are welcome! Two for the price of one!

The currency is time spent doing 'work' like mining, not travel. PvP drives economic scarcity. There were player empires in MO1. It was more personal. I never wanna be like "Hey so and so has a huge empire!" and I reply "Oh yea, never been there..." It might sound theoretically cool to have to set out for an hours long trip, but it fails in this circumstance. Artificial time gates prevent players from contributing to the economy. This might be seen as a balance, but if inflation is high, that means mats aren't balanced. Any inflation should be able to be handled w/ mats. The world is plenty big. There are already places that people don't go.
 
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I would like to see the Tindremic and Khurite towns have teleport to capital city shrines added in cities that will move a player to the respective capital city if they are dead and in good standing with that empire. I really feel like the capital cities should have more draw to them.
 
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seriousSam

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Sep 15, 2022
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I like long trips, solo or group trips, the feeling of slight danger when transporting cargo or the excitement of catching cargo carriers, raiding the steppe in search of the same raiders or farming, ambushes in the bushes along the road to the jungle and much more. Any kind of fast travel kills that atmosphere. yes, I have to plan my trips a few days in advance to combine them with work in real life, but that's why me and my friends who think the same way, we play this game
 

Fearce

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Mar 3, 2022
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I loved the rune system in ultima online. There was not less pvp with it.

With TC we will have enough hot spots for PVP outside of cities. Our major problem is that you can walk/ride around for hours to find somebody and to have some real pvp and not just some outnumbering and slaughtering of noobs.
So why not add in runecarving system where you can mark your rune on a spot and you can teleport or create a portal to this spot. The main spots will be dungeons that are getting marked and this is where pvp hotspots will be.
There will be pvp all over the place where its valuable to farm. All what it does is safe you time by not running hours to get somewhere.

My Idea:
Let us mark runes with the ecumenical school. Let us teleport and create portals with level 100 in it.
You can not teleport inside of a dungeon and you can not teleport out of it.
You can not teleport when mounted.
Your weightlimitation for a successfull teleport is 50% of your carryweight.
Teleportation and creating a portal takes 60 seconds of cast time and you can not do it when in combat. So you are not able to get out of a fight and immediately disappear.
Runes are not bound items so you drop them on death and people can loot and get to know your teleportspots.
You can name the rune like you want, so you could set up traps with it like people done it in Ultima Online. It was real funny and dagerous to check on peoples runes.

I really think that this will not hurt us and would be just a quality of life thing PLUS centers player interactions to some spots without the need in riding around for ages.
Yes you could potentially carry stuff with it but you are not thinking ahead. Where does all the stuff comes from? From valuable places! And these places will be dagerous now and crowded.