Pros and Cons of a too huge Gameworld. + Ideas for a Fasttravel Option with restrictions, so no Materials, large Forces or Bolders can be transported

[Anabolic Man]

Pros

The Devs have the possebility to add tons of new Dungens and Content like Citys in between the existing Citys.
Much more Players could play the Game, in case there is a rush on the game.

Cons

You have to travel forever to reach a specific Dungen. No PVE Player want to farm the same Dungen over and over again.

Conclusion

Sv want to live Players to stay Local. This only works, if you can find 4-5 Dungens arround every Town. Emagine the game would have 10k Players and more online.
Woudn´t it be bad, if not a single Mob would be alive in the Dungen, and woudn´t it be chaotic, if 500 People would hang arround in a town such as Bakdi. I think the Citys should be much bigger.

I know SV and a lot of Players see option like an impemented Fasttrtavel as problematic and i want to mention the reasons why.



Restrictions, so that this mechanic can´t be abused for Trading, Sieges, and that it not destoy freeroam PVP

Personally, I think that this depends entirely on the restrictions, and how such a mechanic would be implemented, so that this mechanism cannot be abused from PVP players for Sieges, that it do not ruin the trading economy or the freeroam pvp.

I think a fasttravel option would balance the PVE vs Traveltime and the Factionfight vs Traveltime. But how such a mechanic could be implemented ?

I think we should have specific Magic Places, where players could bury or place a Moonstone, to open a Moongate to another fixed Magic Location. A Moonstone should be a very expencive item, so they are not overused.


Such a Moonstone could cost 500 Gold, and i could take some time to burry the moonstone. It could be restricted to 10 Players, so that you can´t move armies to another location, and that you can´t use the Gate with Stuff in your Inventory. Just your Armor, and maybe your Weapon should be allowed.

That would limit this option to the outward journey, if a group want to make a dungen.
On the return journey, the players have loot in their pockets and would not be able to use this option.

It can't be used for trading, because materials and pets are not allowed to enter.

I think that PVE Players would still want to build a house near a dungen. For the dominator to get his stabled Pet, for the mage to get some reagents and to get a horse for the return Journey.

This restrictions would limit this Option for Footfighters, and it should take 20 Minutes for them to reach the nearest town, so that a guild can´t call
Reinforcements so easy

A safety mechanism could also be built in, to prevent large groups from being called as reinforcements. The gate could lead to a room with 5-6 more gates to different locations. There could be a 30-minute cooldown on these gates, if a group of 10 players has used a gate to a specific Location before. It could be limited to blue Players and Faction PVP Players. Some guards could be placed in that Room.

A Group, that have looted Players in a faction fight, can´t use the fasttravel option, becuase they have stuff in their Inventory. People would still have to travel arround the world with their loot, so it would not destoy the freeroam PVP.


My concerns

I really like the Idea of local Murdercounts, so that the people of a region hold together and fight together, when people from another Faction will show up. I think you won´t see much of such faction fights, if it take 2h to travel to the enemy town.

If you can´t do local PVP, becuase of local Murdercounts, you should be able to attack another town, owned by another faction a bit faster.

I am worried that everything will take too long, if the map is too huge. You need to be able to make some progress in 6 h. Most Players can´t play for more then 6 h, becuase they have a job. That´s why i think that the Taveltime vs the PVE Time need to be balanced.


The Travel vs the PVE time could also be balanced without a restricted fasttravel, if we could find 4-5 Dungens arround every City.

In Albion Online you had the possebility to travel from town to town, but only naked, to check the Marketplaces. If you had valuable Materials in your bagpack the Travel did cost so many Silver, that it would not make sense to use the Fasttravel Option.


Every game with a huge game world had a form of fast travel, to reach specific Dungens faster.

With this restrictions the Players would still have to transport their Valuables to a town, after compleating a dungen.

I think it could turn out to be an upturner for PVE Players to travel 3 h to a specific Dungen, to get arround 100 Gold loot per Player and then travel back for arround 3 h + the time you need to do the dungen.

 

[Dracu]

lets wait for mounts then rethink this^^
Valid points raised though.

 

[Anabolic Man]

Sv need to unserstand that a lot of Players not have so much time to play 12 h a day.
Such sandbox Games are played by an older Community as games such as Fortnite. Most people have a job.

With this Fasttravel Option a Guildleader could announce a Guild Event for Friday.
Every Player of the Guild could participate.

Lets make the calculation

20 min to gear up
20 min to travel to the Moonstone Location
20 Min to travel from the Moonstone Location to the Dungen
2h to complete the Dungen

That´s arround 3 h + 2 h to travel back to town, becuase you can´t use the Moongate with valuables in your inventory.

That would be 5h.

Most Players don´t have the time to Play 10 H !
Some Players not have the time to play 5 H !

3h are perfect. Some Players would log out after the dungen. The next day their Goal/Mission would be to transport their Valuables to the next town.

SV need to make time calculations, how much time is needed to make a specific Action.

The players need to have the feeling that they can progress and move forward in the game.
Otherwise it will only be played from Nolifers.

That would severely limit the number of players, which would be bad for us. Bad for SV and their income.
In a sandbox game everything take some time, but this need a balance, between the time and the playerbase, becuase noone play a game with only very few Players. Everything need to take some time,
but not an abnormally long time, that makes the playerbase shrink too much, because many players don't have enough time to advance in the game.

 

[Anabolic Man]

Same counts for Faction PVP.

20 Min to gear up.
20 Min to travel to the Moonspot location.
20 Min to reach anohter town

20-30 min fighting + the way back with Loot or not. Depending if your group died. Then they can hit the spawn at the Homeprist option.

SV need to do time calculations !

This is better as
+20 Min to gear up
+2h to travel to the next town
+2h to travel back to your Base.

This would be too timeconsuming.

Mounts will reduce the time a lot, but everything might take too long, even with Horses. They need to speed up things.

Another excample is extraction.
Extracting the most valuable Ores ingame should take 5-6 Minutes, as it is now. I fully understand that



If you use the greater Naturus, Blast furnice and the rare apparatus in outlaw Town, you should have your Guild helping you and defend the place, but extracting Granum in the Crusher in a guarded Town should be much faster. Maybe 30-40 seconds.

Instead the refining process should take much longer.
If you combine Cuprum+ Calmine and Bleck to produce Messing it shoudl not be instant, and rather take an hour. People could build a furnice in their House, and could go hunting or do other activities during that time. Then come back to their house and collect the Alloy from the Furnice.

 

[Kaemik]

Hopefully, as the game fleshes out there is a lot of localized PvE around every town, and also as stated, mounts and the later addition of carts and ships should majorly change the dynamic. But you consider it too time-consuming to run to GK from Meduli, farm risars near GK, and return to Meduli all in the same day I think that's a good thing.

Sandboxes can tend to be a bit unlike theme parks in that many sandboxes you're intended to live a bit locally as a casual player. You have a home base you set out from to do things in a local area and generally do content in the area of your home base. I think the idea of making MO2's map bigger is to make it more like Wurm or EVE in this aspect. As long is there is the population to sustain it I think it's good that local politics will be more meaningful to the average player than global politics. And it's great for traders who will specialize in moving goods from area to area if people consider it too time-consuming to go to other areas, gather things, and bring them back.

 

[Anabolic Man]

It need a time calculation for the Alchemy profession. I was 3 h in the Jugle to find the Junglecamp. I found 4-5 Muse fruit spots.
How long will it take to make a Barrel potions. you need 15 Ingredients from different regions.
There is now a 1 character policy.

Nobody can create 5 characters and log them out at specific locations

This is a good thing as it stimulates trade, but after a long expedition you should be able to return from the jungle with more than 200 musefruit.

I did not found a single Beewax Spot.


SV would have to calculate the time to do specific things, in order to better adapt the amount of material that can be found at a specific spot.

The income through different professions need to be balanced.
I don't think many players will buy potions, if they coudl reequip their Character 5 times
for the costs of a single potion.

 

[Anabolic Man]

Hopefully, as the game fleshes out there is a lot of localized PvE around every town, and also as stated, mounts and the later addition of carts and ships should majorly change the dynamic. But you consider it too time-consuming to run to GK from Meduli, farm risars near GK, and return to Meduli all in the same day I think that's a good thing.

Sandboxes can tend to be a bit unlike theme parks in that many sandboxes you're intended to live a bit locally as a casual player. You have a home base you set out from to do things in a local area and generally do content in the area of your home base. I think the idea of making MO2's map bigger is to make it more like Wurm or EVE in this aspect. As long is there is the population to sustain it I think it's good that local politics will be more meaningful to the average player than global politics. And it's great for traders who will specialize in moving goods from area to area if people consider it too time-consuming to go to other areas, gather things, and bring them back.

I talk about the size of the map.
With a certain size of the map, such an option becomes more and more important. Albion Online and Ultima Online was also a sandbox game with full loot.

The travel time and the PVE time, in which the players hunt Monsters inside a dungen must be balanced.

4-5 local dungens near each town would balance the traveltime/Pve Time as well.


From a certain size it takes too much time to start certain activities / expeditions. it will be problematic to reach the Jungle from Tindrem,
when there is a huge waterfall that leads into the jungle.

 

[Skydancer]

I think there is absolutely room for some forms of fast-travel. Fast-travel != carebear.

We do have home priest and ether travel is really fast now, plus mounts incoming though. Later down the line the possibility of teleportation magic or at least etherportals with spiritism too.

An example of fast-travel I think could fit into MO2: https://runescape.fandom.com/wiki/Wilderness_obelisk

• Platforms that teleport anyone on them to the next platform after powering up
• Fixed locations
• Often camped by PVPers

Spoiler: Possible Lore Explanation

Lore: Shinarian devices left behind after their civilisation vanished. Nobody knows how they work, but fortunately they figured out how to activate them.
There are a handful scattered throughout the land and while they can allow people to move great distances, it's not without cost and risk. Should there be an enemy force waiting for you on the other side you will have no time to prepare a defence a nd may be cut down where you stand. Because of this risk, many travels prefer to stick to the roads and travel by horseback for the ability to have more control over their journey even if it takes more time.

Just make the positions strategic, not too close to any town so people still have to make a journey to and from. The issue with this though is that it lowers time and risk(although one could say risk is higher as there is a predictable spawn location for obelisk users)

And Kaemik is right too - I think the intent here is that big journeys across the continent and to dungeons might end up being multi-session adventures, one session to travel there, one session at the dungeon and another session home. Guilds might end up arranging groups days in advanced and it's expected that everyone will be at the dungeon by x time so the actual dungeon session can go ahead without delay.

 

[Eldrath]

There are multiple ways to mitigate a big world without compromising the claim that this is the "most hardcore MMORPG". Even though SV themselves have dismantled that claim bit by bit already.

I don´t think fast travel is necessary or even helpful in the long run. There are a million other games of higher quality that offer a soft and handholding experience. If I wanted to play those games, I would. If SV decides to measure the quality of their work against others in the same arena it won´t end well.

 

[Vakirauta]

I personally like that the map is so big, if it will be filled with mobs and plants to not leave it empty as it is now.
Also heard from some non-pvpers that it will be safer for them.
I believe that too much emptiness will be filled with player houses and settlements.
And we don't have horses yet - those could make a difference.

 

[Anabolic Man]

There are multiple ways to mitigate a big world without compromising the claim that this is the "most hardcore MMORPG". Even though SV themselves have dismantled that claim bit by bit already.

I don´t think fast travel is necessary or even helpful in the long run. There are a million other games of higher quality that offer a soft and handholding experience. If I wanted to play those games, I would. If SV decides to measure the quality of their work against others in the same arena it won´t end well.

Faster travel is bad but a faster travel mechanic woud be great, becuase of the size of the gameworld. This specific magic Places could still be located 20 min away from the next town.
It should take some time to reach a specific Place but not an endless ammount of time, becuase this would reduce the playerbase too much and the world would be too big for the ammoutn of Players.

 

[Xunila]

I like the new and larger map very much, because the game becomes much more local! And when thinking about the next years with some more continents the game becomes even more local like in the last years of MO1 with Sarducaa as second continent. In case of much more players than in MO1 we need a larger map.

If you want to farm a certain dungeon, then start to build something up in that area and take this of part of the game for several weeks.

 

[Rhias]

I like the new and larger map very much, because the game becomes much more local! And when thinking about the next years with some more continents the game becomes even more local like in the last years of MO1 with Sarducaa as second continent. In case of much more players than in MO1 we need a larger map.

If you want to farm a certain dungeon, then start to build something up in that area and take this of part of the game for several weeks.

As long as the game allows you to somehow live out of your own small village I'm fine with it.

 

[Anabolic Man]

I like the new and larger map very much, because the game becomes much more local! And when thinking about the next years with some more continents the game becomes even more local like in the last years of MO1 with Sarducaa as second continent. In case of much more players than in MO1 we need a larger map.

If you want to farm a certain dungeon, then start to build something up in that area and take this of part of the game for several weeks.

The dungens are somehow related. In the riser dungens you could find keys that could be used in another dungen. I like this Idea that secret Quests.

 

[Anabolic Man]

As long as the game allows you to somehow live out of your own small village I'm fine with it.

As long as you have enough dungens it won´t be a probelem. If you can find 4-5 differen´t dungens near every city.
Imagine 10.000 Players would play the game. Imagine 5000 Players like to do PVE aswell.

Would it be fun, if you are forced to do the same Dungen over and over again, if you have 100 People inside a specific Dungen, and need to walk 30 Min through a dungen, till you find a Mob that is alive.

We already had this situation happened in the risar Dungen with just a few Players, that make Duels in Gaul Kor, becuase they want to farm Claidgifts.

The magic of these magical moonstone places could fade over time, until more dungens are implemented into the game. It would still make sense to build up a small base if you want to farm a specific dungen more frequently.

There could be even tougher restrictions, so that only players with maximum reputation could acquire these Moonstones.


I agree that it is a good thing, if everything takes a little longer, but it shouldn't lead to the problem, that only 1% of the interested players playing this game, because they don't have the time to advance in the game, or to make PVE. Becuase the traveltime/PVe TIme is not balanced.
I know enough players who have never seen the cool creatures from MO1
and the game world in this game is 6 times as big.

Players with little time could do all professions. They could simply collect a few stacks of materials, and then use them to make and sell items. To be a PVE player, you had always be a Nolifer.

 

[Anabolic Man]

And we had a lot of cool creatures, many of the veterans not even have killed.

 

[Anabolic Man]

 

[Senusret]

Its the not the destination, It's the journey.

fast travel would ruin the game imo

the randomness of encountering someone on a journey is part of the excitement

the distance between towns and communities helps to create unique cultures... people in Bakti dont follow the same rules as groups in Fab for example..

I'm interested in the opposite of your suggestions in fact.. what happens if we make the world bigger, the distance between cities and town much greater?

imagine a journey from Meduli to Fabernum as a massive endeavour, requiring supplies, a caravan, and lots of danger from bandits and hostile players. That is the true potential of this genre.

It shouldnt be all about dungeons and pvp. what about trading resources over great distances, economy, and war between those guilds that control the resources of their area.

fast travel would ruin all of this.

 

[Vakirauta]

There is an edit option below btw

 

[ElPerro]

Fast travel would destroy the economy and sandbox feel of the game, gonna be a no for me.

I'd like to see anyone be able to tame low level horses for travel tho, with alot of horse spawns around the map.