I remember a time when potions weren't available and my Warrior had to stay at zone in begging casters for invis. The way things are now is just fine. No need to change it.
The only limitations on invis anymore are self imposed limits, with the amount of bag space we have these days you can easily stack up on hundreds of invis pots. You can then use audio triggers (either in game or gina) to ensure that you get notified when it is dropping and then use the instant recast to make sure it doesn't drop. Unless the mobs in question see invis getting around them isn't hard at all.
Because traveling to an area to join a group or do something is the real challenge of the game? Here I thought one of the goals was to let people get to working on the content in the areas they want to not the actual travel to those areas.
Yes it originally was very much so. What you leave out is that people now know everything already, the what and the where and the when. Norrath is now just an amusement park with attractions and lines to stand in. Circa 1999, you didn't necessarily know there was a place call Permafrost and you would have had an exciting, deadly, epic journey as a level 15 ogre warrior from Oggok to even try and reach it. This is really the tension between the game design and e.g. TLP customers. That old classic game world was never a safe park to play in. Those dangerous, immersive (yes and time-sink) elements just get in the way of efficient farming these days. Clumsily reintroduce some of that into the modern zones and we have a lively forum debate.
OK, next expansion, 6 zones, all in a chain, and you need faction only gained from 20 hour lockout tasks to access the next in the chain. And killing in the zones makes you lose faction.
And that is why so many other games are doing better then EQ as they actually allow for players to get to playing the game rather then focusing on the traveling part of the game. You are missing the point, people are not playing this game to travel to different places around the game world but to do things when they get there. There is no reason that people need to be wasting time figuring out how to get where they want to go but should be doing things at the destination.
No I'm not, I get your point and offer a broader perspective. Whine all you like, there are still plenty of reasons that you could acknowledge in debate. There are different types of gamer archetypes (in game theory) and two of them are Explorer and Immersionist. Norrath was designed for both of them (and the others) and some of their design elements have prompted this discussion.
What the game was designed for when they released it and what it is designed for now are not the same. At this point in the games life there is no reason that all classes should not have easy access to a reliable invisibility.
If Berserkers of all characters can have access to a fixed invisibility item, then every class should get access. Stop making clerics the worst class in the game to play, when they’re so important to raiding.
But… Either the only limitation on in is is self imposed orrrr there is currently a problem with people being able to move thru the zone. Like I said I enjoy the fact that I have to pay a little attention and switch between invis, itu and watch for see invis mobs. Add in a feature where three out of combat players can summon a group member or what ever but groups don’t need to be able to zip around a zone from camp to camp.
And I don't think anyone is saying that should go away but that people should not have to stock up on potions that can fade at any random time. It would be a good quality of life feature for everyone to have an invis spell they can depend on.
Okay, and maybe those two design points have not really changed that much. I hear you affirming to me that yes indeed it's now supposed to be an amusement park. So what's left to debate here? TLP? TLP is playing that classic game that is already watered down. Newbie zones are devoid of kos mobs, devoid of social mobs, running to city guards for your life every fight is not a thing anymore. Level 1 naked chars have max skills (10 offense) so that they can actually beat a level 1 NPC. DBG is handing success to you on a silver platter from level 1 onward. Oh but I need to be able to teleport to any group anywhere in the world! How dare they see me or attack me! Talk about Cheese.
Pretty sure that they have considering that pretty much every class has easy access to an invis spell these days and only one or two has to depend on consumable items. There is no reason these days for people to have to depend on consumable items with a random invis spell when other classes can set up an invis/invis undead that is permanent and can travel around with almost no danger. Being able to travel to where you need to go with less danger isn't getting handed anything on a silver platter.
Perhaps the converse is the real problem, handing out permanent inv/ivu has been setting lower or different expectations. My paladin has always had to rely on being watchful during travel. When I could afford the plat for cloudy potions for the first time it was thrilling to try and get into less accessible dungeons on my own. He is immersive with random danger all around in Norrath. My SoS rogue on the other hand ghosts around scouting and ignores the NPC population almost completely. Two very different experiences just by changing character class. Funneling players into one type of experience doesn't need a populated world at all. Just leave zones empty of NPC until a group settles in to spawn them. We are almost there with instancing missions and AoC. Remove kos behavior from all NPC so that all fights must be initiated by players. This has already been done in newbie zones, quest NPC, and raid encounters. Invisibility is mainly a method to remove random NPC encounters from the environment. How thoroughly that ability is handed out is part of the game's overall design. It has been trending upward for years and here we are.
Why do you keep on insisting that the difficulty in the game is in traveling to places instead of actually playing the game? Personally I think we should be finding ways to get players to the content that they want to do in a more timely manner so that they can actually play the game. There is a reason why a lot of newer games don't focus on traveling.
