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

I refuse to give a middle-ground answer anymore.

I think that EXTREMELY tiny boosts in travel speed are acceptable under limited circumstances.

If we didn't know that everyone can do everything without restriction, I would say that I would LOVE to once again see things like SOW or Portals... but limited to only specific classes. If you wanted a sow, you'd have to find a druid or a shaman. Those were good things! They gave reason to seek out people of a class you weren't.

Of course, without class restrictions*, really, there's no longer a possibility for this, which I find disappointing, honestly.

I would not mind if SLIGHT improvements in speed were given to guild GROUPS, or family GROUPS (only when grouped together--never as an over-all perk when alone).


I really, really think that moving to another city should be dangerous.

I would genuinely LOVE to see caravans formed... people grouping up together to make their way to another town because, guess what, it's dangerous out there!

Maybe even boats again (can you imagine??). And "coaches" that travel city to city with NPCs guarding them. You might have to help if you want to make it, though... The point of the coaches would be less to make it faster (though it would offer a small boost) and more to make it a little safer so that a solo person can move city to city if needs be.


But I will vote "NO" because I don't want my vote construed as a "yes, instant travel and accelerated travel, please!" I want my vote to matter towards keeping travel difficult, not towards dumbing it down.



*EDIT: oops, typo, lol. There are classes, but no restrictions. Forgive my error.

I completely forgot about boats. They have wizard spires so they can use those and fit in with the other games. What many are forgetting is the world will be much bigger. Not sure people will want to run around 5 hours just to get to X city to start a quest, then run back another 5 hours to finish it. I think city hubs and players (maybe 2 secondary classes) having ports. But with players make it a distance thing tied with class leveling. A druid can only port after leveling up the class to tier 2 and thats for the closest city. You have to be top tier to port the furthest distance.

Long distance travel adds to game experience, Shadows of Luclin kinda changed that up but it was still effective in keeping the world "explore-able" since druids and wizards had Spire and Ring teleportation but Planes of Power really fudged it up and made the game "all-you-can-eat NOW NOW NOW!" action which took the adventure right out.

If anything besides teleportation maybe there can be an semi-AFK caravan you can ride that depending on distance thats how long it takes to reach, which is faster than physically moving your character but still takes enough time to be considered long distance traveling. At that time players could chat, read lore, log an alt or even hop off at any location to explore instead of being stuck permanently in transit.

I feel both slow and fast travel should be available. This allows those who want the slow travel their fun and it also allows those who have limited time to play the game to have their fun through fast travel. In my opinion I do not like time sinks. I do not have a lot of free time play as I believe many other have this same issue.

As a lot of the above have said, I prefer a rewarding game experience. I feel as though the Round Table questions could have been segmented a bit more, or even paired differently. Nonetheless I like a rewarding game experience, and if that is short-lived by the fact I can have people "run me" to different areas of the map to pick up fast travel ports, the game itself becomes so much more short lived. Look at Skyrim for example. As soon as I discovered the map, and the towns, and could just teleport freely from that point on, it felt MUCH less rewarding of a game experience. It would be nice to have Markers for places you've visited, or even a few places you can "Bind" as your favorite and be able to teleport to, but I don't think there should be actual fast travel between hubs OR between outlying villages.

As Goodkitty mentioned, in classic EQ there was the "taxi" system. In FFXI, you had to wait 20m for a boat to arrive. While that doesn't sound like a rewarding experience, IT IS, and IT WAS. When your boots hit land after stepping off that long boat ride it gives the game a much more rewarding feeling, of like, wow.. I was just on a boat, anything could have happened, but we made it. Fast travel COMPLETELY takes away that experience.

I do however love the idea of player abilities being used for teleporting, etc. Now that is a good idea, otherwise I'd like to see EQN go in the direction of boats/airships/caravans, etc. To clarify: You go to a person who has the ability to teleport others - maybe even tip them for their time, and that creates interaction between players instantly.

In response to the post above, @Larc: This game won't have levels, so if there isn't teleporting, it doesn't mean you won't be able to progress through content, it doesn't mean you won't be able to get places, you will just find the way to suit your playstyle just like everyone else will.

How much time you have to play a game should not change the fact the developers have to think about what is going to make their game a success for the long haul. This is not a level based game, so everyone is going to adjust and play how they see fit. I personally don't see fast travel as a successful means of transportation, rather it will progress people through content at a horrendous pace, even those who don't have much time to play.

@Devs: Don't sacrifice the integrity of the game because a group of people may or may not want to progress more quickly than others. If you add Teleporting, it will only ADD to the problem of people progressing through content at a sickeningly fast rate, and leave the people who want a more casual pace even more in the dust. It only feeds into itself in a bad way, and in the long run I think you would be happy to have said you stuck with your gut and did what you thought was right for the WORLD.

I would love fast travel with via teleport spells again. Boat rides!

Option 3 should have been split up into two different answers.

I am all for having to travel to the location at least once on foot or by mount. I also like it when you have to call upon a sorcerer or druid to help you get somewhere faster, it promotes interaction between players. I like being in a zone trying to kill that goblin or orc and seeing that crowd of people coming through on their way to a dungeon it keeps the world alive for me instead of just seeing goblins for hours on end and no players bc there is nothing in the area for them.

Having the choice to use it is what cheapens the exploration experience. When everyone is forced to travel the long way more chance meetings happen, which can strengthen the community. Remember, adversity brings people together, and what is more intimidating than traveling an unknown land? Those with experience shelter those without it, and friendships are born.

One thing that I loved about Everquest was the idea that travelling was a core mechanic to the game. The world felt vast because you had to navigate through it. Actual landmarks were how you travelled, not mini maps or whatever.

Player teleports, Selo's Travel, SOW and jboots etc were essential abilities and items that contributed to that.

I prefer the world where players control the travel mechanic.

If you plan on including mounts, fast travel won't be necessary.

Just leave me to bask in Norrath's beauty!

I wish I could've given two thumbs up.

Regardless of the outcome of the poll, I just hope the devs don't do another video explaining to us that they added fast travel for everyone because we don't want to limit our options.

If I hear one more dev say, "they don't want to box themselves" or "paint themselves into a corner" or "we don't want to limit our options" I will not play this game.

I really actually liked this idea in the way that, hey if the Dragons kicked everyone out such a long time ago, possibly we don't HAVE any accessable wizard spires and such active yet, so as the game starts there is no fast travel but as the world increases some people unlock the ability by having a Rallying Call to reactivate the combine spires in some locations. Still make it 100% PC controlled (EQ1 Wizard/Druid ports) no free rides (even tho most did it for free)

well mounts i think are in (or i read something wrong) if they aren't, we still have travel skills. Not a huge fan of mounts though may be ok in this game due to size.

remember

EQ - 111111

EQN supposedly - 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

So running around won't be as it once was. But we shall see.

I think it's great to have choices, but my history with MMOs has shown me that if a player is given multiple choices to get to their goal, they will take the easier of the two. This means that if fast travel is available, players would choose to utilize it.

I do not like fast travel as it makes the world very small. I would rather like to see a a specialized class that can support the rest of the community. There must be limits to getting quickly to the Frontier of the game. Much like the early days of EQ where Wizards and Druids had their own portals scattered around the world. Make the cost of the teleportation significant enough where players must weigh the difference between travel time and instant travel.

A lot of people are talking about how they don't want easy fast travel (like PoK), but nobody's talking about why, and that's a problem, because there are a lot of reasons why.

First of all, the journey adds to the aesthetics of the game. How can a world feel epic in size if anyone can get anywhere within five minutes?

Second of all, a lot of groups and meeting of friends happened in EQ because of the limitations on travel. How many Blackburrow groups would there have been if PoK portals had been in original EQ? How many Kurn's Tower groups if it had been added by Kunark? Sometimes, limiting players allows them to visit content that they otherwise would not have. Furthermore, that Kurn's Tower issue brings up another point: Roleplaying. It's pretty hard to roleplay an Iksar grinding for exp in Crushbone, but Kurn's Tower? It makes sense in some ways. By limiting group availability in zones that aren't prime for loot or exp or whatever, you're also limiting roleplayers in either their ability to roleplay, their advancement abilities, or both.

Third of all, it's my understanding that EQNext is supposed to have a firm focus in exploration, and that's something that any good MMO needs to have. Again, I stress the issue here that limiting players in some areas can allow them to visit content that they otherwise would have not visited. To take an example from Skyrim, right now I'm spending very little time actually exploring the world because I have no need. Because of the way fast travel works and the fact that I'm mostly focusing on quests within city walls (not intentionally), there's no need to explore. How many of us had our first taste of zones, especially ones with interesting artistic styles, as transitionary zones? The Emerald Jungle is an excellent example. It doesn't serve a whole lot of purpose outside of a transitionary zone between Field of Bone and City of Mist, but it's an absolutely amazing zone from an aesthetics standpoint and it adds so much to the game to have to travel through it.

These are just three points. Personally, I'd like it to be classic EQ style of fast travel: There are some class abilities that have it (though I don't know how you'd limit it with the multiclassing setup), but for the most part, you run and take the boat and things like that. Keep in mind that this is from someone that, during the Trilogy, made the journey as a level 9 Barbarian Warrior from Qeynos to Kelethin and then died without a bind, meaning I had to make the journey a second time within a week to get my corpse. I understand full well that this sort of travel setup could have consequences, but I think that the benefit to players from it far outweighs the downsides.

I think that visiting a place once is a little too lenient, which is why I say that I don't like that. I think, perhaps, if you've spent a lot of time there, universal fast travel might not be such a bad thing, but once is just not enough, in my view.

In my honest opinion, I believe that exploration should be the staple of an open world game. Once you discover cities, or major way-points, there should be a way to move more quickly between them without relying on players, but not instant. I believe that there should be class-restricted skills to teleports players to cities as well as a few of these major way-points.

Well i can go either with capital city hubs or players. But i would like all that based off quests OR leveling up skills to have distance as the changing variable. But for a game this big, not sure if we will be wanting to run around for 4 hours to get to one outpost.

I think "Fast Travel" in regards to Guild Wars 2 and FFXIV devalue the expansive world and thus make it feel smaller and gives a player a sense that they can reach any location at any time. While it annoyed me during my playtime in World of Warcraft, "Faster Travel" like traveling via bird with a delayed travel period, or waiting for a boat, really sold the feeling that I was in a larger world. During my play through of FFXI there were spires in which I could teleport to with the assistance of a White Mage but no other form of faster travel except for airships and ferries (which connected the continents), although unlike some other MMO's you had to experience the airship and ferry travel time. I think a healthy mixture of spire travel and delayed travel would be best. As annoyed as I was at the time experiencing both of these methods of travel, I can tolerate it for a world that feels large and I can become immersed into, rather than the feeling of entitlement such I subscribed to in more recent games and eventually feeling as if there is no part of the world I shouldn't be able to reach in fifteen seconds cast time.

Even if it is not forever changing it still should be a world. If you have to travel from point A to B you will actually see players in the world instead of only seeing players at the destination and this helps in fostering an actual community.

What is the point in the migration of mobs in EQNext if you can just fast travel to many locations because including towns, outposts and dungeons really is a lot of locations. The fast travel to dungeons is what killed any sense of the world in most MMOs. Instant travel also kills off the journey. A part of the journey is traveling from point A to B. The inclusion of fast travel is slippery slope. If you include only a little bit players will eventually want more and developers pretty much always give in.

If you want to go back to the sense of community you had in EQ 1 do so, most fast travel features go against this.