COMMUNITY - FORUMS - GENERAL DISCUSSION
Traveling

Maybe this has been discussed before (and my apologies if it has), but what's to keep traveling from settlement to settlement, much less kingdom to kingdom from just being, well, boring? I love the fact that CoE is embracing the realistic aspects of world-building and all the little details that go with a world based on physics and all that. In fact, it's one of the reason's I jumped on board as soon as I heard about it. But, to be honest, I'm not looking forward to spending hours if not days watching my character walk/run across landscape. If a player isn't exploring, and just wants to go from point A to point B, what's to keep them engaged?

Personally, I plan on staying mainly in town and the nearby areas for this reason. I'm fine with that. But I'm worried that we'll lose players because they are used to "fast" travel or auto-pilot mechanics (where they can click on a command and the game travels them there - ex. flight paths in WoW). Is there a plan to keep traveling from being monotonous (perhaps an OPC command, or random encounters)?


Tentative plans: To'resk, looking to settle in the Kingdom of Riftwood, NA - W Angelica.

6/25/2019 7:30:22 AM #1

As far as I know devs have confirmed that you can order your OPC to travel to a certain location. If your OPC encounters bandits he will react according to his programming.

Keep in mind that the Soulbound engine will throw various encounters and other events in your direction every now and then.

If you travel a lot between two points you could also take a different path each time.

Riding a mount can reduce travel time quite substantially.

6/25/2019 3:04:03 PM #2

This is one of those things where people are either going to love it and play the game or hate it and not play the game. The distance factor and lack of instant travel options are fundamental to the design, which is something I like as well, but it's also not a static thing and could change with time. Players could conceivably research faster modes of travel (hot air balloons? mechanical vehicles?), much like people did in the real world, or construct shorter routes with better technology (bridges? tunnels?) if the need or desire is strong enough. The evolution of technology is also intended to be a part of the game.


6/25/2019 3:42:41 PM #3

Another aspect of the game, a lot of players may find they don't really have motivations to travel. It's not like a standard RPG where you HAVE to explore the whole world to do every quest/mission/etc. While I'm sure even the average player will want to see the world, the scale alone makes it so that those actually willing to put in the time reap a much higher reward.

The other thing is, even given the scale of the world; it's still only about the land mass of Texas, or smaller. (at launch) and traveling its entire distance tip to tip, has been estimated at only 2 days as the crow flies. This means that most cities/towns would take about as much time as they do to reach in most standard RPG/MMO's that, even with fast travel, require you to visit a place first. So luckily we wont be making month long voyages across empty plains, thankfully dashing the plans of a small party of travelers named "Donner"


6/25/2019 6:59:03 PM #4

Well there is going to be random chance encounters like bandits, Potential points of interest, landscape you can explore, etc.

But yeah, when you boil it down I agree with Hieronymus. The game isn't being tailor made for everyone, it's being made to be a certain way. Some players simply won't like the lack of fast travel, the persistent characters, or the survival mechanics, and that's ok.

Barring that, I expect most title holders to be putting forth decent effort into making their domains interesting. So hopefully there is a bunch of player made content on top of all the generated content after expo :D


7/23/2019 5:21:45 AM #5

In the Duchy of Mytharbor, we have plans in place to make the land live up to the name.

I won't spoil it by saying any more...but we view it as the nobility's obligation to create the conditions necessary for players to have adventures ;)

7/23/2019 2:41:59 PM #6

Ever play Elite: Dangerous?


7/23/2019 3:36:14 PM #7

There will probably be a "grind" quality to traveling. That said, the story engine should provide random excitement to traveling. The plan is not to have a static world where things happen in preset locations -- where traveling between one and the other is boring and uneventful. The plan is to have something more like the real world -- where traveling, especially through unknown or dangerous territory, can be very eventful indeed.

I've always hated fast travel and the min-max playstyle it produces. I also hate the truncation of distances it allowed -- you shouldn't be able to go from the arctic to the jungle by walking through a door. It breaks immersion for me and turns the game into a set of puzzles, rather than a world. As I understand it, Caspian shares that frustration and started this project specifically to build a game he wants to play (an immersive world not a series of set-piece raids).


Count of Frostale, in the Duchy of Fioralba, in the Kingdom of Ashland, by the Grace of Haven. The above opinions are mine alone and do not reflect those of my Kingdom or Duchy.

https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/17117/naw-the-duchy-of-fioralba https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/14124/naw-kingdom-of-ashland https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/30605/of-contracts-and-commerce-a-tldnr-post https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/31835/on-taxes-rents-and-ancestral-lands

7/23/2019 5:40:31 PM #8

Posted By Beathan at 11:36 AM - Tue Jul 23 2019

I've always hated fast travel and the min-max playstyle it produces. I also hate the truncation of distances it allowed -- you shouldn't be able to go from the arctic to the jungle by walking through a door. It breaks immersion for me and turns the game into a set of puzzles, rather than a world. As I understand it, Caspian shares that frustration and started this project specifically to build a game he wants to play (an immersive world not a series of set-piece raids).

I could not agree with you more.

All the best road trips are as much about the journey as the destination.


We Are The Many... We Are The One... We Are THE WAERD !!!

7/24/2019 2:10:53 PM #9

What’s to keep them engaged is working towards things that’ll increase their survivability. Buying/training a faster mount to escape the dangerous wildlife, buying the most suitable clothing for the climate, buying better armoury against the bandits. Then there’s working towards boat travel up the rivers, inventing vehicles or improving on existing ones like the sled.

Once all that is done and we can travel further and faster, we still have the world to travel. And because us humans are quite sensitive, power hungry and ego-centric there’ll always be disputes which lead to interesting outcomes, some of which could affect travel. If there are Counts and Dukes now who want more than what they’ve already got, imagine the politics once we actually get in game and they see the opportunities.

The biggest boredom threat to COE will be how quickly it is to get to the end game. Which is why it’s extremely important not to write off pvpers and hostiles as griefers and demanding the devs implement some mechanics to protect them. Because for as long as there will be player threats and wars, there will be engagement and reaching the end game will be much harder.