New Travel Idea to Some Dungeons

L

Lyte

Dalayan Beginner
Instead of discussing the patch and the pros and cons of the new travel system, what about some better methods of "travel" that better suit the population yet still promotes and maintains player interaction?

Apparently, one of the problems with SoD is that players like to congregate in one "main" city; this is actually just human nature doing it's thing. However, what if we divided the cities into level ranges?

For example, Newport could be Levels 1-20. Outside Newport in the surrounding zones (less than 5-10 minutes travel from Newport?), there are various Level 1-20 Dungeon Teleporters; HOWEVER, the teleporters do not take you directly to a dungeon.

Instead, you group up in your groups, enter a specific Dungeon Teleporter, and are put through a journey/trial/whatever, where you have to travel through some tunnels while fighting series of mobs (from the dungeon you are heading), then fight a mini-boss before arriving at the dungeon.

The journeys to various dungeons should drop very little loot or experience so people do not want to just keep repeating the trips. They are simply a better way to fill 30-minutes of travel time.

This ultimately serves many purposes:
1) People WILL congregate no matter what; however, by utilizing different cities as different "jumpgates," players will still spread throughout the world and utilize every city. The perk is that same level players will be congregated in the same area but still have access to a wide variety of dungeons.

2) This new Dungeon Travel system still promotes interaction, because you could balance the "journey to the Dungeon" to be only beatable by groups of certain levels. Simply put, I'd rather play the game for 30 minutes, then arrive at a dungeon and play some more, rather than auto-follow-afk somebody for 30 minutes until we finally arrive... and oops someone has to go in 30 minutes.

3) This allows you to connect dungeons that are not physically close to a city within much more reasonable travel times.

4) This allows you to manually separate the population to utilize different cities and you provide them with an incentive--all the players within the level ranges WILL be available to group, and they WILL be able to reach any dungeon they wish via Dungeon Teleporters (if they can handle the encounters of the travel!)

5) This makes travelling to dungeons entertaining and FUN! Not a 30-minute trek that requires no real skill, and is a drain on a casual player's time of play.

Note -- Only SOME dungeons could utilize this new travel system, not all. (Or else people will complain that half the world is no longer used.)
 
It doesn't have the negatives of instancing that the admins' do not want.

i.e = you cannot farm loot in the journeys to the dungeons, and secondly, you cannot repeat them over and over again for experience (as you can adjust the mobs to give very little exp).

They are simply a way of "fun/exciting/challenging travel" towards a specific dungeon. But I guess you prefer to run 30 minutes auto-afk on someone else, because that's a great usage of time.

A challenging 10-minute journey to a dungeon is much more entertaining, promotes group interaction, etc etc...
 
The idea sounds good, but there are several factors you must consider.

The player base has different play times. So the people that normally play in the early morning hours would not have the same group possibilies as the main time.

The early levels of any game can become extremely old for a game if you know all the quests and what you have to do each time you want to level. Given your idea, every character would know what he will be facing every level up to his/her highest. At present depending on what class/race you pick, determines your starting city and it will be differnt each time, having to learn the new areas as well as the quests to do.

From what i've seen every city has a quest for an amulet. So with time and effort, you can get a portal necklace to which ever city your willing to work for.

It may cause some issues for players to begin, spread out across the world, but by level twelve, you can make your way to meet up with your friends. It usually takes about that long to get some cash built up. At least in SoD there is a /cmd bind. Granted in live they eventually added SoulBinders. But it used to be you could only bind in a city zone and on top of that you had to ask a Int/Wis caster for a bind spell to be cast.

Just my feedback.
 
zodium said:
You seem to have mistaken our forums for the Diablo III development forums.
Click to expand...

Haha, maybe.

But my brother and myself started with Steel a couple months ago and chose Frogloks... and boy, it was hell. No groups, no players even, and we couldn't get out of the zone at all for a long time. We couldn't meet the rest of the guild (partially because we didn't know zone connections well yet until we found the maps)...

It was tough.

It just seems for brand new players to SoD (or even EQ), starting in Sadri Malath would be a big turn off, possibly enough to make them quit the game thinking the rest of the game was similar... and this is where my suggestion sources from.

With the new Translocator changes, it seems even harder for brand new players to get into the game if they choose certain races.
 
Zaphyr said:
The idea sounds good, but there are several factors you must consider.

The player base has different play times. So the people that normally play in the early morning hours would not have the same group possibilies as the main time.

The early levels of any game can become extremely old for a game if you know all the quests and what you have to do each time you want to level. Given your idea, every character would know what he will be facing every level up to his/her highest. At present depending on what class/race you pick, determines your starting city and it will be differnt each time, having to learn the new areas as well as the quests to do.

From what i've seen every city has a quest for an amulet. So with time and effort, you can get a portal necklace to which ever city your willing to work for.

It may cause some issues for players to begin, spread out across the world, but by level twelve, you can make your way to meet up with your friends. It usually takes about that long to get some cash built up. At least in SoD there is a /cmd bind. Granted in live they eventually added SoulBinders. But it used to be you could only bind in a city zone and on top of that you had to ask a Int/Wis caster for a bind spell to be cast.

Just my feedback.
Click to expand...

As far as I know, only Rivervale, Grobb and Newport have port necklaces? Stormkeep/DHK too but they are not necessarily cities.

You are right, by level 12 you could meet with friends, but with the new portal system, this is even harder to do so. Look at my other post on why I suggested this idea to begin with and what I am trying to fix :)

I don't think it makes a difference that every character would "know" what he will face every level up to his or her highest. All the current cities and their quests still remain the same. The only addition would be EXTRA dungeons with these extra journeys. Sure, the characters might be in the same city every time for a level range... but isn't this better than some cities never being visited at all? How many times have you been to xyz city? 0. I bet a majority of players can say that line :O
 
As having recently come back to the game, there is alot that has changed. I recently went to Athica and was doing some of the quests and noticed it asked if i was ready for a token of athica. I was guessing this would be a port neckalce as the other cities have. So I'm not 100% sure which cities have them or not.

Yes there will always be some focal point of gathering. It used to be East Commons for selling, then eventually moved to the moon. With the new system that has been put in though it helps to not have to be in a bizaar type area to sell. It allows you to sell from anywhere, thus eliminating one of the primary reasons for a gathering area.

But I don't belive that making cities level ranged for grouping is the answer, nor the transporting to dungeons.
During these "trips" to the dungeon, especially at lower levels. If a person dies, how would that be handled. Would they have to start over? Then there is the use of these paths by higher levels just as a means for transportation, where the mobs would be trivial. Back when the game first came out, Wizards and Druids were highly respected for their ability to transport groups to places. Those classes took a hit from the addition of Luclin. They became almost trivial with the addition of PoP.

In a sense it's getting back to the way the game was when it first came out. The whole spire transport system that was put in with Luclin allowed for players to move among the continents, but that was all. North karana, Odus, Felwithe, Kunark and Great Divide. I was very glad I had left live before Planes was put in as I can only imagine how much of the game was lost by players simply being able to transport among the cities. The thrill of making those runs throug Kithicor at night. Woo hoo!! The choice of which path to take to get from Freeport to Qeynos. Do I go down through rathe mountains and up through the karanas? or do I risk the run through Kithicor and head through the Pass, or maybe I should risk the run through Rivervale on sneak through the beholders pass. You learn the zones, you learn the dangers. That is what makes the game fun. Not simply killing x monster to get to this location. (yes i didn't forget about the fire pots in the middle of the ocean between felwithe and kunark. however the dragon and no bind area didn't make it a normal sense of travel).

The current xp modifiers already help on getting people to explore more than sitting in one area grinding away.
 
Well I didn't really like it when the transporters dissapeared. I mean lets face it, there is not a huge player base on SoD. At lvl 23 I often cannot find a group, even if I am willing to travel. Now removing the easiest, and often only way of traveling accros the map is making it nearly impossible for grouping. How I agree, wanting all the cities to have players in it is a good idea, but when there are really only 10 or 15 players in the same level range, and some are 2 boxing or just want to group and it will take the others 2 hours to get to where you are and they just don't want to travel I am being forced to solo, which I really hate because in my opinion, Everquest is a game that you work in a team with other people and have fun, not being by yourself most of the time. I don't know how, but if there was a way of making it easier for people to gather and find groups, it would be really nice.

And I didn't think removing the transporters made the game more realistic, people never walk anywhere. They rode horses, trains, bikes, cars, planes. But yeah, it would be really nice if there was an easy way for people to gather and group because soloing really sucks =(

//edit//
Well, technically there are 1 or 2 level 5s in their starting zone, and often they do want to group, but what I was talking about was a full group killing fast and getting 200% xp bonous.

//another edit//
It just happened to me. I was in Greenmist Jungle and there was a group waiting for me in Erudin but I couldnt get there because no one would port me. So the only thing I could really do was quit because I dont want to make a new character.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom