Fast travel in EverQuest Next: love it or leave it?

It's not like it matters. They have there mind made up for whatever they are gonna do. This Roundtable is just a PR stunt to fake player input. That's why the questions are structured so poorly and the options are often double barreled or loaded, or leading. Anyone who has taken even an hour of psych 101 could make more valid and respectable polls.

I believe the reason GW2 did it the way they did it was because their system didn't involve mounts. I believe that was part of their formula and reason for doing so. And I believe that is how a game should balance it's travel based on what other alternatives there are. I thought it wasn't that bad of a job at least.

I agree to a point..
I can see that I just cannot stand the concept of Instant travel.. Make it a boat, or even a sky ship, that takes players where ever they paid to go, just make them have to sit there and ride it... Make it to where you have to wait at the spires..

People miss out on alot of stuff because they dont ever get to know anyone.. A boat ride fixes that.. even if the boat ride is only 5 min from Capital city to capital city.. farthest possible distance.. 5 min.. who does not have time for?

The problem isn't the fast travel. The problem is there is nothing in those zones anymore of interest!

This is what happens in theme park games! Are you really crying that I run through a level 45 zone at level 60 to get to my level 60 zone?? Because that's what happens. If I can't fight anything challenging there, if the zone hasn't changed since the last time I was there and if I can't gain anything of value there, why would I stop there??

That is why you'll only see high level characters leveling up mining or herb collecting in old zones, there's nothing there of value to them! It's not because they can get on a gryphon or teleport... even if they couldn't they still wouldn't stop in the zone!

I feel like people making this argument actually never played WoW for any realistic amount of time.

Maybe they are flying over because they already spent 100 hours thoroughly exploring that region? Forcing people to run through it would not make a zone better.

MMOs for today's marketplace have all failed miserably, if you look at the track record of the last few years.

it makes me sooo happy that only 7% of people want immediate travel to anywhere!

I say fast travel along ley lines ( major city landings, temples, etc.) with player summoning abilities (ala mage) and player obtained transportation (druid,wizard) in the end, everyone will probably obtain all of the porting abilities and be able to swap out any location on the fly any way. I like the idea of boats or caravans to reach out of the way places.

As a final thought, I think portals to non hub areas should be reserved for people who want to specialize (abilities buried high on the class progression trees).

Agreed. Being able to cast some form of portal spell as a spell casting class of some sort, should NOT be synonymous with "I've been to <That Place>, and now I can immediately go there whenever I choose!" They are 2 very different applications of "Fast Travel". IMO the former being acceptable, and the latter being unacceptable for an RPG.

This should also have been clarified better by this post. I've been clarifying in most of my posts the difference between Instantaneous Fast Travel (e.g., teleporting, gating) and Fast Travel such as Mounts, or some Vehicular type transportation.

Traveling on a mount or in a vehicle is NOT the same as "teleporting", and should never be classified as such.

And suddenly the ruined city in the wilderness is just a quest hub.

Emergent AI should theoretically change the orcs behavior, most likely after being killed a few times, they won't be there. Or you'll adapt and stop walking through them. Changing your behavior or theirs, avoids that conflict.

You've learned the brownies don't like your bushwhacking, so you find a different, maybe longer path, but lower risk.

Then you finally manage to kill the cult leader at the dragon temple. All of that effort goes into that victory. It all becomes part of the story, your story that you are playing.

Fast travel is like reading a book, but skipping all the parts in the middle just to read the end. Some people like that, sure, but what's the point if there is no adventure.

The problem is you are looking at it as if the only good thing out of all of that is raiding the dragon temple, and if all the middle stuff is that bland, we might as well have instances with a dungeon finder, because essentially, that's what you end up with when you skip all the middle stuff.

This is a game with no levels.
This is a game with emergent AI generated dynamic content

If those two things actually pan out... you won't have the case where there is "nothing of interest in an area anymore" - will you?

We will be tiered in skills and equipment, but a newly created player and one that's been around a year can still group up and play. The player that's been around longer will be "stronger" but we do not know by how much at this point, is it minor, or major?

When I'm talking trival, I'm talking about "no need to ever, ever, go back to an area". Given the Heroic calls, crafting, harvesting, the main overland is going to be very much in play for those of all tiers. In most mainstream mmos, once a person hits max level there is literally no reason to go back to over 90% of the zones in the game unless their powerleveling someone.

But anyway, that's what I meant by trival zones. Going ten feet outside Qeynos and expecting extreme and ever changing challanges.. is well... of course that isn't going to happen, but that wasn't what I was talking about. I am pretty sure all of us that are good alined will spend a lot of time -IN- Qeynos though. Again in most mainstream mmos, some towns become ghost-towns rather quickly.

I understand no mounts, but with the new Rune of the Travelers any class can now have the permanent 25%.

It's permanent sprinting, and everyone can instantly teleport to anywhere in a zone they have already explored.

You know what I find myself doing in GW2 now? Teleporting to each boss WP in a matter of mins. to see what I can kill next. That's so lame.

I didnt realize how WP's would trivialize already trivial content. End game really is "re-roll" and spam-farm the 2 week long events.

Oh come, now. That doesn't mean EQ1 is suddenly popular and that it should be re-made. Yes, there's been no "new WoW" but by that standard there's only been one success, which is WoW.

Could we make it Expensive to Quick travel? if its a lvl 45 zone and your lvl 60 you should have bank by then?
Also I think they addressed this in the EQN panel, they want to make it to where your constantly revisiting old zones.. however don't quote me on that one cause I am not 100%

I voted for Pc port with limits. And let me ex-plane what I am thinking.

Lore already stats that the Wizard spires were just discovered and that it needed a necklaces to activate. So working within this concept I propose wizard spires/druid rings be a Rallying call or some sort of huge server quest. Or just a hard quest similar to epic weapons. Using the spires is something that has been lost and just rediscovered in the first book(unless I am missing something). Hence, we need to rediscover what they are and how they work, but they would not work like the books in PoK. They would only unlock the PC ability to port from or to these location like in EQ. Druids could port from anywhere but would always end up at a druids ring. The Wizards (this time) could work the same way. Or limited like in EQ1 but be able to transloc you to bind or another spire.

Now, going from city to city on same continent fast travel I say NO. Let the players help each other like they did in EQ1. It allowed them to make some cash and help other players. LOL the taxi drivers of Norrath. From Kunark to G.Fay for example would need a boat ride until we rediscover spires/rings on Kunark.

Now that said, From reading the options they gave use to chose from. I can already tell you that they will ADD UP all other percentages and put in instant travel of 5 minutes or less. They have already proven that the majority vote per choice does not matter. They have it already decided and are just Hyping up the game for Landmarks winter debut.

I'm torn between the "fast travel with limitations" and "only between hubs" options.

On the one hand I like the idea of needing to explore to unlock fast travel locations. On the other that could be used to describe GW2's Waypoint system, which was by far the worst instance of fast travel shrinking a game that I've ever run across, so I don't necessarily think that this answer means exactly what folks are intending it to. Not on its own.

What I really want is a return to the Shadows of Luclin era of EQ fast travel. For those that weren't around this was a time where each continent had a spire that would allow you to port to a central hub in the Nexus. From there you could port back down to any of the other continental spires. The spires ran on a quarter hour (? pretty sure) schedule, making any trip using them at minimum a 20 minute affair on top of the rest of your run.

While I might shorten the timers to 10 min on the ports up or down, a big part of this is that 'waiting on the bus' downtime. I like this better than flight paths because it's a communal action, perfect for meeting new folks, or chatting and roleplaying.

Another big part of the attraction is that while spires may shorten a very long journey, they didn't take away the need to navigate terrain the same way that flight paths do. I think we need at least some way to shorten our daily travel needs, while still experiencing the game world.

Another reasonable option for me would be to address the reasons we tend to require fast travel by reducing the need for daily in game commutes. If I need to travel back to a city or quest hub multiple times a game session to sell my vendor trash then a lack of fast travel quickly becomes a major hassle. If I can stay out in the wilds for a long time because my inventory can handle the drop rate appropriately then I don't much care about being able to come and go quickly.


Give me ways to access mail, vendors, auctions, and crafting without needing to return to a major city five times an hour and I'd be happy to give up my fast travel. Unless that happens I want a reasonable and well balanced travel system that keeps my commutes to a manageable level.

Doing both isn't an option. Doing both is just fast travel. Fast travel will always destroy slow travel.

You can't tell the "slow travel fans" to go travel the empty zones while the majority of players fast traveling past them.

It is human nature. Everyone will use fast travel if they can. The game will be popular at launch and die quickly. It is the current trend.

You simply can't have your cake and eat it too in this genre. It has been proven not to work. Make casual (solo friendly) games or... Make hardcore (social) games.

I just hope they dont force you to scale down. Honestly, I like being 50 levels higher than something and killing an entire village of Murlocks or Aqua Goblins because they killed me 50 levels ago. And I also like to run past them and not have them attack me.

EQ2's system was the best. Optional Mentoring system.

Tiers are essentially flatter levels. Don't believe me? There's a wall between T2 and T3, so clearly they're meaningful in some way, but I agree, it's not the segmented mess (hopefully) of older games.

• No, you'll still find harder content in T3 than in T1.
• I agree some form of travel through the lower tiers is reasonable.
• Even if this problem is very negated, which I think it will be, there's still plenty of reasons for fast travel, in some form, in EQN.

no levels in the game thus you can not do this in theory.