How do we solve the fact players feel entitled to fast travel>dev designs a game with a huge world map>intended design is for players to move meaningfully throughout the world and plan their every move>players are too used to being able to instantly teleport around the map from every other game >refuse to engage the game on its own terms and demand fast travel so they can play how they want instead of the intended experience>if it's not provided they drop the game and call it badly designed This is moving from a game design problem to a social problem where players are just too conditioned to the way things usually work in games
>>739393587don't make open world games
make it so player has to unlock fast travel point after moving through the enviroment
>>739393764Which part of no fast travel did you not understand
dont make a big open world then, make a game where the journey feels meaningful and fast travel doesnt feel needed.
>>739393705fpbpCreate an actual adventure for the player, not a themepark where they're encourage to run back and forth between attractions
For anyone wondering, the map is from the Minecraft custom map: DrehmalPretty good if you just want a sizable world to explore.>>739393587
>>739393587>How do we solve the fact players feel entitled to fast travelTraveling from point A to point B has to be different every single time. Without fail. Or traveling has to be so exciting that players look forward to it. Because that's not possible it's going to be fast travel.
>>739393587Does it at least come with a "no beans" option?
>>739393790fast travel is usually that you just press button to travel. but if you make the player go through it manually first and only after that allowing fast travel, then it fixes the so called problem.
>>739393587Morrowind solved this 25 years ago
>>739394180Morrowind is not huge by any means
>complain when there is no world map and just a list of locations to warp to>also complain when there is a world map and no list of locations to warp to
don't have a single "fast travel" system. instead have a bunch of varying ways to traverse the map with different tradeoffs and that are unlocked in different waysrunescape does this well, and funnily enough hollow knight silksong does too
>>739394150This seems like a good solution to me. Like yeah, I personally am going to explore the land I'm in, but when it's time for clean up and side quests, yes, I'm pushing that fast travel.
Morrowind had fast travel, you just have to pay NPCs to do it and can only do it if you are already at a fast travel destination point.
>>739394326Are the devs not allowed to make "cleaning up sidequests" time and effort prohibitive? Can a game exist where you're forced to make choices on what to handle now and what to leave behind forever since it's too inconvenient to backtrack?
>>739393587Just do it the runescape way and make them teleport either after finishing a lengthy quest or having to acquire expendable items that let you teleport finite times. Or go the Dragons Dogma way where you have limited fast travel points and you have to set them on the ground yourself.Fast travel should be something that only gets enabled late game, after you've done 90% of the content. Older games usually gave you some method of travel like an airship that can overcome any terrain instead of giving you a simple "teleport to a list of cities" button.
>>739393587the solution is to have smaller tighter maps full of actual content and not random fodder encounters bloating the playtime. ex, a quest that would make me walk on foot from the lower left volcano all the fucking way up to the glacial bay on the top right is not a "intended experience" a single fucking person would give a shit about missing. same goes for random roadside encounters, a hundred menial bandit encounters with like 1-2 "unique" encounters like a talking bear or some shit isn't worth the time sink either.I get some devs and players want to capture the feeling of actually exploring a vast fantasy world but such a thing is frankly fucking impossible to actually capture in a videogame
>game wastes my time>i uninstall game
>>739394508They're allowed to do that and I'm allowed to not buy their game because it doesn't respect my time.
>>739394279So? Its travel options can scale up regardless of map size
>>739393587Traversing should be dangerous, not tedious. If the point of your fast travel is to save time instead of providing safety you've fucked up.Ragnarok Online had it well. Going from town to town would only take you a few minutes at most, but there were always atl east one (or more) maps in the route that could fuck you up if you were underleveled, forcing you to either take a longer route, find an acolyte to warp you or pay for the (expensive) fast travel.
>>739394716How does it not respect your time? There are games where you're expected to not kill every enemy, to pick up every piece of loot, to talk to every character, why is this sort of map design the exception? You will never mine every piece of ore in a Minecraft world, does that mean it doesn't respect your time?
>>739394667What else you got to do nigga
>>739393587gothic just gave you a potion that made you run extremely fast
>>739394650Let's say the game gives you a quest early on at the lower left volcano to deliver something at the glacial bay top right, in most open world games like TES you could immediately open the map, teleport to the city nearest to the end location, walk the rest of the way, and then get back to the early game where you started How should devs inform the players that this sort of thing simply isn't going to happen in this game, and that you're expected to actually go through the world on your own dealing with shit as it comes up on your journey, and deliver the thing to the glacial bay only when you naturally find yourself in its vicinity, whenever that happens to beObviously you wouldn't design the quest in a way that requires the players to report back, but you still need to let them know they'll have to organize their trips and overall journey instead of being able to blitz around the world willy-nilly
>>739395029>how do you inform themBy... just not having the option of fast travel?
>>739393587I got a couple of solutions.- make it NG+ exclusive- make a reward for zone completion and FT is unlocked as part of that reward- make each fast travel respawn mobs (maybe slightly more powerful per FT used BUT do not up their xp given or items dropped)- tie it to a an ending/gameplay style (use FT and you're on the red path to get red ending, not use it and get blue ending - associate achievs with it)- make quests time dependent - go on foot/via mount and time passes normally - 1min ingame = 1 min irl. use FT and you advance by at least 24 hrs. by the time you FT and try to do the 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc objective of the quest you're out of time and the quest fails- put a % chance to get killed per FT and lose some loot/items at random. not risking that big boi shoulders. put some lore behind it, see Doom 3, you got stuck in some Hell on your way and got killed that's why you died upon the loading screen's end- tie it to difficulty and keep content unavailable on that difficulty (only easy allows FT and you don't have x side quests, x equiment rarity drops etc.)- make it an auto-travel, although on fast forward with chances of random encounters that can stop it so that you don't get off your chair to do other things
>>739393587>move meaningfully throughout the world and plan their every movethat's fucking stupid.Give me an armed attack helicopter and I won't use the fast travel system. How about that.
>>739395163The players are still conditioned to want to go solve quests as soon as they get them, let's say it's not a map wide quest but rather a town-to-town one, ideally they'd collect everything in the first town and then move on to the next, without informing them about the nature of the game they might get the one quest and immediately head to the next town, not realizing getting back to the first one is going to be very inconvenient
>>739393587>How do we solve the fact players feel entitled to fast travelMake normal traveling enjoyable and a core part of the gameplay. Like driving in GTA and similar stuff (like CP77), or resource hunting in survival games. You can also make fast-travelling part of the world, like Morrowind.If you can't use any of these options because of how your game is designed, the only real solution is to replace the open-world with hub-world connected to various small open-ended maps. This will reduce the unnecessary backtracking and still give the player a sense of open-ended exploration.>intended design is for players to move meaningfullyThat is almost never the case. Open-world maps are designed to be impressive, but not necessarily meaningful. "Planning their every move" isn't a thing if resource management isn't a core part of the game.Players will "demand" fast-travel because the world is too big and and each part of the map pretty much dies after you are done with the "single-use" content (completed all combat encounters, found all collectables, etc.). For example, in Skyrim, there is no reason to travel normally between riverwood and whiterun besides one fixed world encounter, one random world encounter and a few buildings. Horse-riding is also terrible because of the limited stamina.
>>739393939This.I remember Infamous 1 and 2 having good enough traversal systems that it was almost always more fun and interesting to physically travel to a location rather than use the regional fast travel.If you expect players to just hold W the whole way and have nothing interesting to do the whole way then you, the dev, are the one at fault.
>go to an area and clear everything>go back and find out there is a quest or something you missed that wants you to go to the area>have to waste time going all the way back
>>739395621>Make normal traveling enjoyable and a core part of the gameplayYou mean Just Cause and Far Cry
>>739393705FPBP.>duhhh how do we solve the problem of players not wanting to cross vast giant empty spaces?!?Yeah, this is a real mind-bender. How about you don't have all the giant patches of boring empty space?
>>739393587>instead of the intended experienceGo fuck yourself. Devs with that kind of mindset always make the worst fucking games, that are meticulously overbalanced to the point that everything in the game is boring.
>>739396073ADHD meds now
>>739394810play other games that are: FUN
>>739395795Yes, the intended design is that you don't clear everything
>>739395795See >>739394180
>>739393587I don't think you can. You will just have to deal with the fact that people like that aren't part of your audience and also with the fact that video games are inherently interactive and as such they may not play the "intended" way.You can try to design around it to encourage the "intended" experience, make exploring the world rewarding and interesting so people aren't inclined to skip it. You can also try to make travel in and of itself fun and add various mechanics to improve the experience. Ultimately the player will likely run into the "problem" of having to go back and forth between the same destinations more than once. Even if travel is fun at first it will eventually become uninteresting if the player goes back and forth on the same route, so as the game progresses the ease and speed of travel - at least across visited areas - should improve.You can look at Satisfactory maybe. The map is quite large, there is no fast travel and you start off being quite slow. You're not just slow but you also aren't very well equipped to deal with some of the more difficult terrain either. As you progress through the game you just get speed upgrades, jumping upgrades, a parachute, a jetpack, some vehicles and so on. There's a tool to let you ride on power lines, tubes you can build to get from one place to another, trains and other shit. There's no fast travel though, but not only do you get upgrades but you can also build your own infrastructure to facilitate moving along quickly (even some whacky shit that can shoot you up in the air and quite literally across the map). I don't think I've ever really seen people requesting fast travel in the sense of teleportation in this game.
>>739393587No fast travel is good if you want to move from point A to point B once. It becomes a problem when you need to move from point A to point B for the fifth time and there's NOTHING to keep the trip interesting. There are better ways to waste time, that's all. We all already spend a lot of time driving or walking to places irl, we don't need that kind of downtime in videogames. It's almost like making the player have to eat and drink, shit and piss, shower, sleep, and jerk off from time to time.If you want to solve your issue you need to go all in on the random events happening in the game world. I'm not talking generic bandits/wolves showing up in random places, I'm talking entire villages randomly popping up, entire dungeons(and unique too, not just copy-pasted from a pool of 5), unique traders, unique loot, unique NPCs, come across an enemy camp, see a fight between two warring factions unfold, stumble into a miniboss, and more.Make the player WANT to spend time moving. Unique and fun ways to go fast would also help. Right now games allow you to whistle for a magic horse or steal a car, and cars at least let you drive through shit or jump off of ramps. Allow that, but also allow a grappling hook, a glider, a jetboost, and allow players to mix and match to create crazy fast ways to speed through even a gigantic map that demand at least a little bit of skill to pull off.That, or just allow a fast travel button to get to the story content or the next dungeon faster, because that's the thing that attracts players in the first place.
>>739394180Morrowind has fast travel
>>739393587Gta still has the best fast travel system. Rather than a dumb icon press teleport, you call a cab, you ride on the cab and if you don't wanna wait you skip the journey
>>739393764is that not how fast travel works in every game? you need to have visited a location first to fast travel to it.
>>739402103It's not available everywhere instantly, it costs money, you still have to plan your fast travel route (taking different modes of transportation into account), you have to plan your mark/recall spot because you can only have one at a time, and you can circumvent fast travel entirely by using speed buffs, jumping and levitation which are fun to do in their own right. What's the issue?
>>739402630>What's the issue?nta but all of that is just a way to bypass open world traversal, which sucksgating fast travel behind progression or limiting it really doesn't solve the issue
>>739402630I'm saying it doesn't answer the question the OP posed. It doesn't take much effort to reach a point in morrowind where you're basically a couple of minutes away from everything with all the warp spells and travel points
dragons dogma 2 is close to the proper solution imo>fast travel only available by default in the 2 main cities (after having visited them)>throughout the game you can acquire portable fast travel points that you can place anywhere you want (extremely rare, ~3-5) so you can customize where you fast travel to in the future>need to spend a rare resource every time you use fast travel (genuinely rare, makes the player have to weigh whether fast traveling is worth it)>wagons travel along dedicated, common routes, such as between major cities and lesser towns>can board the wagons from their launch point at towns/cities or find them along the road, press a button to "skip" the trip>even if skipping, enemies can interrupt the trip and require you hop off to defeat them>wagon is vulnerable and can be destroyed by both yours and the enemy's attacks, forcing you to walk the rest of the way>the game has day/night cycle and some quests are affected by time, fast travel is true teleportation, allowing the player to visit destinations without progressing timejust replayed DD2 and honestly, it's a fine system. The scarcity of ferrystones (enables fast travel) really makes you reconsider when you want to fast travel. yeah, sometimes hoofing it is a slog, but that's what makes the game feel big.
>>739393587you can't. morrowind handled the idea perfectly and most people still hated it.
>>739402768But the game's implementation of fast travel is not a compromise in the slightest, it adds its own gameplay interactions and I just listed options where you don't even need to use it.>>739402779Well for one, that's because Morrowind's map isn't that big to begin with, and it's only true if you know the map. Learning Morrowind's map is one of the most important ways of learning the game so of course you should be rewarded for it. Moving to any specific location is always going to be a multi-step process depending on what options are available to you.The player has an underlying desire to move around quickly in any game, you can't just fucking remove that from the player, what you're asking for is impossible. Instead, what a game can do is turn moving quickly into an engaging system in its own right, and of course reward the player for taking advantage of it properly.
>>739393587>intended design is for players to move meaningfully throughout the world and plan their every moveIntended it may be, but is it fun and engaging in repeated journeys across the land?
>>739395406>The players are still conditioned to want to go solve quests as soon as they get themThat's absolutely wrong. In the absence of time limits, many players (especially the completionists, who are the ones who'd actually bother with quests like your example) prefer to scour the map area by area to minimize backtracking and timewasting.
>>739393587Depends, are we talking about open world games or specifically open world survial crafting shit? because the latter is INFINITELY worseTake for example Grand theft auto>enjoyable traveling via various vehicles and methods, with even an immersive taxi or train system that can get you where you want>no cancerous inventory managementThen you have something like Outward>enjoyable traveling via immersive camping/ration system, and lots of fun POI:s to explode>encourages you to carry what you need, everything else is pretty much optional as you can find upgrades instead of being forced to buy or craft themAND THENyou have open world survival crafting cancer:>unenjoyable travel where you have to go to all over the map to do basebuilding chores, such as one corner of the map to get iron, one corner to get pine wood, another corner to get dragon bones ETC>no matter where you go, or where you settle, the game is CONSTANTLY asking you to return back to your base to upgrade and build>literally have to build several bases just so you don't have to walk 90miles in order to empty your inventory that's always full and making you overencumbered because the game's design is to have you collect EVERYTHINGThe answer is simple, don't make a map that's too big, and if you do, give the player fitting mobility (IE where winds meet, where you're literally jumping over mountains)and secondly, don't make inventory management nightmares like survival crafting games.I believe I speak for everyone when I say that everyone hates inventory management, EVEN people who play extraction games.Nothing sucks more than having inventory full and then finding cool shit and having to spend 2 mins sorting inventory and deciding which cool shit you already picked up has to be sacrificed
>>739393587Add trainsGoing to distant places requires going on a comfy train ride
