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

Even Gandalf the Grey rode Shadowfax!

That being said, ONLY CASTERS should have instantaneous travel. No "mariner's bells", no "hearthstones", and no freely accessible Wizard Spires, or Druid Rings.

The fastest travel available to the standard player should be buffs (e.g., SoW), ride-able mounts, ships, carriages, or other vehicular travel. NO instantaneous fast travel outside of that provided by magic spells being cast by Magic PCs! And for the love of all that is sacred can we please refrain from mounts and vehicles that move 100s of KPH/MPH. That is unnessecary.

NO requiring you to visit "the long way" first. You should have to visit "the long way" EVERY time, except when being teleported by a powerful magic wielding PC.

I'll say it here, for most likely the FIRST time in this thread: Instantaneous Fast Travel is the Bane of RPGs. There is no RPing when you can easily jump from one end of the realm to the opposite with a simple and readily-available click of an token/item.

Fast-travel to visited locations, depending on how it is implemented, could kill the feeling of size in the game. GW2 has a system that requires you to unlock fast travel locations, and it's pretty terrible because you can fast travel from anywhere.

Fast travel requiring player abilities that are hard to acquire or exclusive to certain choices is fine, but letting anyone travel to visited locations is terrible. I'm beside myself that these would be lumped together, and unfortunately it tells me that the devs want it one way and want to be able to point to these polls when some people complain.

Fast travel should only be unlocked after you've actually traveled to that location. I don't like the idea of new players immediately accessing any point on the map without first experiencing the world.

My only issue with giving classes teleports is eventually literally everyone will be able to have them in this game, instead of them being restricted and thus being rarer. When everyone can have them, it does rather make it more fast travel than I prefer, personally. Although I suppose if the world is big enough you still have to walk for an hour to get anywhere -from- the spires/rings.. *shrug*

I will be VERY disappointed if it ends up like EQ2 where a bell can takes you everywhere.. Really killed that games community. I am kosher with druid ports and player based teleports. I really think that waiting for the boat added alot to the game. I made alot of friends fishing for sandals.. I would really like to see player ships as well.

I would like to be no fast travel and big world reason is how wow was in the beginning when a lot of people are around pvp and interesting things happened and if we all had fast travel just teleporting away we will never see that special interaction that makes mmos really fun

"Fast travel with limitations, such as only via player abilities or requiring you to visit "the long way" first."

Exploration is very important in my opinion. You lose a lot of valuable gameplay by having instant access too all towns and areas without having to travel at first. I hope in the means of fast travel, you mean "Fast traveling by flying mount, boat, or carriage" or such. I'm not sure how fond I am on the teleportation method. My first MMO used that, and it was awesome, but at the same time I loved the travel in other games such as WoW where you would take a flying mount to locations and would be able to see the terrain. It gives it sort of a realistic feel and sense to the gameplay.

Hubs because i don't want to run around for 5 hours getting from city to city. I can deal with player classes having a port skill maybe when leveled you get further distances to port.

But people should explore, not run out kill a goblin get the quest item port back.

I voted the exact same way. Based on the poll options I know what SoE is leaning towards, considering three options are in favor of fast travel, one is not and one is about having no preference.

I think some kind of limited fast travel would be acceptable. I definitely think you need to discover the the fast travel hub through exploration first, but then have a fast travel with time limits. Some will argue that fast travel can cheapen the exploration experience, but just because it's there doesn't mean you must use it.

You should be able to fast travel to major locations (towns, outposts, hubs, dungeons, etc.) that you've visited before. Having to walk to the same places over and over again is boring and adds nothing to the game.

Also, the "fast travel ruins games/exploring/communities/etc" arguments are a load of BS. Having the option to fast travel doesn't remove your ability to walk and explore if you wish to do so. Stop blaming optional game mechanics for your OWN CHOICES.

Make it EQ1 like! Only druids and wizards can port for a few PP
Let the players interact with each others!

could even have a huge quest that takes a while from release to do, to get a portal thing and lets you choose which capital city.

I dont even know if that should be allowed, its a lot of fun being a newby and having to hitch a ride with a veteran, forced interaction make for a better game, at least in my point of view. Which isnt by any means law, just how I would like to see it. Forced interaction makes for a very social game.. I do remember playing EQ1 being a dark elf, making it to Crushbone, made a lot of friends being forced to group. This should be a HARD game.. EQ1 started out that way and became too easy.. EQ2 the same.. now EQ2 is sooo simple..its laughable..

Tie it into the world in realistic ways.

1. Wizard portals exist but only from wizard tower to wizard tower and only for members of that organization.
2. Boats exist, but they run on their own schedule.
3. You can rent a horse that is trained to run a fixed path at a normal horse speed
4. Players can eventually learn spells that help also, speed increases for overland, portal creation at high levels, group portal creation that cost components etc.

One of the biggest world killers is when overland is a ghost town because everyone uses instant travel/fast travel options.

This could also be a great source of fleshing out the game;

Boats
Four options
1. Very expensive boat on demand
2. Normal boat which costs some money, runs as it is scheduled
3. Slower cheaper boat that runs left often
4. Cheaper normal boat that has a chance of you not ending where you belong due to it sinking or screwing up its navigation

Horses
Safe route horse that takes longer time and is not as quick
Unsafe route horse that is quicker route but chance a MOB knocks you off and tries to kill you

The key for me is travel should cost money that actually is enough to matter but has a cheaper option that some can use with a risk associated.

Is it your choice if your group requires you to use the fast travel route or they'll kick you? Same with your guild. I'm curious now. Going off of experience, PoK was one of the -major- things that started to kill EQ for a lot of people, and its main issue was fast travel. *shrug*

As far as having to walk to the same place over and over.. well. The world is forever changing, it will always be different. And hey, you can always take a different route instead of following the path. Explore for a change. Stop blaming the world for your own choices.

I agree they are grouping our choices together from the poll far too much. Choice D should not be grouped in with choice C simply because it is closer to C than to A. I was disappointed to see they did with the 'Modern concepts' round table. 47% of the community resounded with a NO, with everyone else in either YES or the grey area between, and they took that as '53% not saying no'.

Agreed NO SPOON FEEDING please... please.. stop making these games so damn easy. I cannot tell you how many people I have talked to who cant stand how EQ2 changed into what it is now.. Insta travel is a game killer...

I would like to see fast travel severely limited, and I would like to see the world size expanded to be downright HUGE. Now normally this would mean "I can't play with my friends, because I'm always spending hours trying to get to them, then I finally get to them and it's time for me to log off".

So this is how I propose to fix that. Guild Caravans. Have a "Guild Caravan" that is composed of one or more wagons of varying sizes and abilities, that is able to be driven by the guildmaster or officers who are given permission to do so. In addition to this, whenever you log off, you have the option to "travel to the caravan while offline", which will take time depending on how far away you are in the game, with a maximum of 16 hours. If you log in during that time, your character will be placed somewhere in the game world that is roughly equivalent to where you should be given your offline travels. Once your character gets to the caravan during offline travels, he/she will stay with the caravan, so that when you log back in, you're with your guild, wherever they went.

The caravan could also carry with it extra stores of goods and services, such as armor repair, food, drink, training, basically stuff the guild halls had in EQ2. These caravans could level up and flesh out as the guild grows. Maybe at some point, have the option of converting the caravan to a keep or castle, but that's another story and not relevant to the discussion at hand.

Nooooooooo taxi's