Gate Travel

[Siayajin]

This may have been answeree already but is there any plans to have spells such as recall and gate or is travel going to be walking everywhere?

[Wrentia]

I hate to keep bringing up EQ, but here again is an area where I think their designers are just plain wrong. If you are going to have focal points for tping (druid rings/wizzie spires), wouldn't the majority of these be located in a town? Even if they are from an older civilization, wouldn't newer civ's want to build near an obvious power point?

I also like Might and Magic's teleport model....You can set a point, and all tp's go to a city or return to your point. You have to travel to each city to get the spell for that city.

Also the entire idea of not allowing melee's to bind with an NPC to facilitate player interation is bogus. Online games need as many money sinks as possible, and this one is perfect. The player interactions consists of "Can anyone bind?" "I'll bind you" Join group, cast bind, disband group, "Thanks" "np".....

Anyway, just some thoughts....

-Wrentia

[Dyson]

Personally, I never liked the UO system of Recall or Gate. Having to have to buy a rune to "remember" where I want to go is ludicrous. I'm highly in favor a custom "marking" system, where players who have access to any sort of Teleport spell (which should be fairly high level) decide "okay, I like this place. I'll add it to my list." When they cast the spell, the list pops up, and they select where they want to go. If that particular spot is blocked, the system automatically tries for the next nearest spot, with an increasing chance of failure or error as spots "just nearby" aren't 'known' as well. The system should also have some sort of "hotkey binding" option, so I could hit SHIFT-T and teleport to my Guildhouse if I get in trouble, or something.

[Scrote]

You know, in one of the original MUDs (it was called "MUD") - about six thousand years ago - you had to play the game a lot and become a powerful force before you could become a Wiz. Once you became a Wiz you could teleport around and perform all sorts of mischief on the lowly scrotes beneath you. I feel that was a very nice reward for being a dedicated player and enjoying the game.

I think that concept could be applied to one of these newfangled games. I'm all for NOT having any gates/portals/(cheap)NPC teleporters around. I think being able to leap around a continent without much effort takes a lot away from the setting. I'd be tempted to say it encourages a more jaded attitude from players who don't feel they need to invest time and effort into getting to know the land their PCs are living in but that's just a wild guess. However I do know that if players are allowed to easily teleport to far away places regularly and cheaply then NPCs should be too.

Having a mass-transit teleport system in place would wreak havoc on the economy as we know it. Caravans? Trade? Value of rare (meaning: they're not found around these parts) items? What about defense? Why not teleport entire armies around?

And on a more esoteric note think of what it'd do to diplomacy? A lot of conflict stems from ignorance, being able to keep in touch with faraway places and witness them for yourself does wonders for curing ignorance. Just a hypothesis but this could arguably lead to the world being a much more peaceful one than what I hope it'll be.

So I throw in my vote for making teleport (in whatever flavor is decided - recall, teleport only to known areas, whatever...) available only to extremely powerful characters and NPCs.

The NPCs could and should charge for this service and they should charge dearly. The PCs ... well, you can't control them but you can limit them (as long as it makes sense in-game). The idea of being able to teleport should really be like a reward. Not a reward for repeatedly killing the most monsters over and over but a reward for being a good player, for reaching a certain status, achieving a number of accomplishments... and any other reasons you can think of. I'm not necessarily advocating that it be a personal decision on someone's part - just saying it should be rare. Only the most powerful casters or the most blessed PCs should be able to handle it.

If the world is badass enough that you don't NEED to travel across the world - because everything you need to have fun is around you - then players won't be missing out.

And they'll be gaining so much more - the thrill, the adventure and the uncertainty of travel. That is something that should really play a huge part in these games. That's something I'd love to see in Arcanity.

S'right,
Scrote

[Rolfe]

Right. That's something we've thought of too. Funny that we often come to the same conclusions that you guys do. In particular, D&D comes to mind when I think of travel. You don't just teleport to where you're going, march in to a dungeon, and go to the room where the mob you want to camp spawns. You go on an expedition that often lasts several days at higher levels. Adventures often span several sittings in D&D. I'd like to have that in Arcanity. I don't just mean that if you want to go hunt around the Dwarf city, you have an hour long run over to the dwarf city. I mean that there should be places that there IS no dwarf city... no city at all for that matter. There should be places with very little traffic because only level 30's or higher can get there, and if you're level 50 you have no reason to be there. In EQ, for instance, to get to a level 40 place, you likely walk right past a level 20 camp and several level 10 camps. It's like a damned freeway with offramps all over the place. It's not uncommon to see newbies prancing through the higher level areas. It's dumb. I believe we can recreate the adventure party expedition feel that D&D has.

[Dyson]

I'm not familiar with the EQ level system; is a level "50" roughly approximate to a level "20" in D&D, or what?

Also- since there aren't any classes, with Arcanity be using 'levels' at all? Since the game is based around skills, it seems a bit backwards to try and label characters into "levels." At any rate, I think it'd be a good idea to conceal most of the "technical" info from the player, so there won't be any "I'm level 39," "Well, I'm level 41" sort of nonsense. More vague descriptions like "Adept" "Journeyman" and "Master" appeal to me.

[Wrentia]

Its a little hard to compare levels in EQ vs. D&D. Basically EQ started with 50th level being the most you could achieve, and raised that to 60 with the expansion. So 60th is the highest attainable experience level.

Anyway, I hate level or skill caps. Realistically I never stop gaining expereince, and I can never learn every detail about a skill. If I want to sink all my training points into one skill, I should be able too....no matter how fast that character will die in a combat situation.

-Wrentia

[Rolfe]

No, Dyson, there are no levels in Arcanity. EVERYTIME I post an example with levels, I put up the disclaimer that although there actually won't be levels in Arcanity, it's easier to relate an example using levels. I didn't post the disclaimer this time because I figured everyone got the idea.

[Dyson]

Okay, okay- The question was mainly for the translation of the EQ level system (btw, thank you Wrentia). I was wondering about your phrasing because it was late; I'd forgotten the disclaimers and was wondering if something had changed. My memory isn't the best after long days...:)

[Cynycal]

thats what i'm saying...or something...anyway hi guys