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
>>739420229Follow the RDR2 approach and make fast travel limited and a bit cumbersome instead of removing it entirely. Only allow fast travel to major settlements, and limit where you can fast travel from. Pair this with an interesting world, random encounters, and quest-givers out in the wilderness, and players will be incentivized to forgo fast travel in favor of exploration.
>>739420229>dev designs a game with a huge world map>traveling sucks because you can't meaningfully fill it with engaging content the terms of these games sucks and they are badly designed
Stuff actually has to happen in the open world to make it worth traversing. Random encounters, emergent gameplay, AI systems interacting with each other with or without the player's presence. The only studios that get this right are Bethesda and Rockstar. Everyone else is content to just stretch the content thin over an empty world, but that's boring to traverse, so teleportation becomes a quick fix.
>>739420701>Minecraft is badly designed, says anon 739420701
>>739420501This is the way. Add fast travel with reasonable limits.
>>739420229At this point you have to design the game around the fact that you can't fast travel, and make it one of the main points of the game. As in, the travel between locations is the main point of the game and you design the gameplay around it, like Death Stranding. If you don't then traveling is inevitably going to become a chore with repeating events that slows down the game and builds irritation, because if it's not one of the main dev time-sinks it's not going to be complex enough to last for an entire game.I think limited fast travel is a good middle-ground, Morrowind kinda nailed it imo. You have stiltstriders and boats that create a limited network to locations that makes sense, like trade posts and centers of culture, but you can't just travel to wherever you want from any point and you can't fast travel to any "wild" location or ruin, only between settlements.
>>739420501They did that in DD2 and normalfags hated it. Then again we're talking about two seperate generations of players, so maybe that's the problem. RDR2 would probabaly get shit on it it came out today.
>>739420742Yeah, but also minecraft also has varying forms of fast travel too you fucking idiot.
>>739420742the devs didn't design a map for minecraft and yes minecraft is badly designed with one of the most bloated changelogs out therethe sandbox and multiplayer are the only saving graces
>>739420810Added because players felt entitled to it
>>739420501>Pair this with an interesting world, random encounters, and quest-givers out in the wilderness, and players will be incentivized to forgo fast travel in favor of exploration.That just leads to the same problems though, where when the player has traveled the path ~2-3 times they have done the quests and exploration, and from traveling in general they've seen most variations of random events and it just becomes a chore.
>>739420229Your world is not as interesting as you think it is.
>>739420882You can't circumvent traveling being a chore because it is one. If we could teleport everywhere in rl we would fucking do so, nobody enjoys commuting or driving for several hours every day.
Maybe don't include stretches of nothing?
>>739421002Brainlet argument, if we could not fight wildlife and obstacles every day we would do so, yet we play games to simulate fighting wildlife and obstacles
>>739420229>what do you mean I have to acommodate my clients>what do you mean they can just leave if they don't like the service offered>what is wrong with society?!?!?!?Anyway, I understand your argument and I think manual travel could be cool but it will never happen as long as games are a business and mass entertainment.You can create "experiences", just remember you can't force people to pay you for your "experience".
>>739420229make any that use preset teleportation points of some kind have you appear at your new location back at your starting level with absolutely nothing apart from a set of clothes.
>>739420882If you need to travel that path for the fourth time, it's obvious the game is designed to fast travel everywhere without limits.
>>739421134The stretches of nothing are there to direct the players' playstyle, the way unbeatable enemies would tell them "don't go this way"
>>739420229Just don't use it
>>739421319Using your mentality no one would have ever made Souls games
>>739421253If people can fight wildlife without any harm coming to them they would. Fighting is exciting, spending time to get to fighting isn't exciting. You can't make travel not a chore when it is not specifically exploring of the unknown and even exploring the unknown is one time deal.
>>739420229Itsuno was right when he said that you do not need fast travel if you are able to make travel interesting. Where he got it wrong is the question of how do you make traveling interesting and engaging. Cause the Dragon's Dogma 2 way of endless repetition is the best way to make players sick and tired of traveling very quickly. If you are not able to making traveling interesting then taking away fast travel is just pure stupidity.
>>739421363Even if you design an open world game where every path only needs to be traveled once, players would still feel entitled to being able to appear anywhere at any time "to check on things"For example if you can get a temporary buff in the first town that you realize could be useful for a difficult fight in the sixth town, most players are conditioned to think "it's in the game so I should be allowed to use it" instead of "shit I'm too far I have to make do with what I have around me" IRL you'd never think this way and go back and forth through long distances for trivial things but since games feel fake players feel entitled to use them any way they want
>>739421464Demon's Souls was a budget title even at the time of its release, it's not comparable to how much modern AAA or AA games cost.Back then there weren't so many suits dictating milking established IPs and it was easier to get an interesting new game funded.Passion projects are still being made by smaller teams and paid by big publishers, it's just that tasteless AAA molochs take priority, so if one tasteless moloch fails, publishers cut small teams first to have funds for the next tasteless moloch.Also there's only so much space on the market and customers will not play new League of Legends unless it's a huge improvement over existing League of Legends while being similar enough.
>>739421712This has nothing to do with budget, we're talking about making games that tell the players how to play them vs making games by being told by players how they should play
>>739420501Far Cry 2 made you take the fucken bus
a tranny made that map
>>739421569>For example if you can get a temporary buff in the first town that you realize could be useful for a difficult fight in the sixth town, most players are conditioned to think "it's in the game so I should be allowed to use it" instead of "shit I'm too far I have to make do with what I have around me"That's exactly what it means to design a game where you will be travelling to the same places over same roads multiple times.>IRL you'd never think this way and go back and forth through long distances for trivial things but since games feel fake players feel entitled to use them any way they wantYou don't have instant teleportation over long distances IRL, do you? That's literally all the difference. Do you think people wouldn't teleport on a cold winter Saturday afternoon to a sunny beach on the other side of the world if they could?
Crimson desert had no fast travel points on the map (only in the abyss) before launch. Normies whined until they added fast travel points every few meters.
>>739421754If big money is involved, you can no longer do whatever you want because that big money is not coming out of your own pocket, you have investors to please.
>>739420882> when the player has traveled the path ~2-3 timesI'd argue fast travel becomes permissible at that point. If the player has seen and experienced everything in a region, it doesn't harm their experience to bypass trekking through it again given there's now a lower density of new content. Fast travel is detrimental when it lets a player prioritise convenience over experiencing more of the game world, which is why I suggested making the world more interesting to outweigh convenience. That said, I don't consider retreading the same path to be anything new or worthwhile, so players should feel free to skip those long trips. If devs don't like players doing this, they could add a late-game spin to early-game areas to get players to explore them again. Think the Infected Crossroads from Hollow Knight, or the 3 variations of Ashina Castle in Sekiro.>>739421025Just using it as an example. I thought RDR2 was just alright, but it's the only game off the top of my head that uses that kind of limited fast travel. It and Dark Souls, now that I think about it, although the latter isn't technically open-world.
>>739420814>most bloated changelogsWhat does this even mean? Problem with Minecraft is that it has too few changes if anything.
Maybe just maybe make the world interesting to travel through normally.The expectation would be that with worlds so fucking big, there's barely any hand crafting. There's no consideration for your time. There's very few things worth looking for. 75% to 90% of what you find exploring out there is stupid shit built around the crafting system in the game or collection bullshit, there's little incentive. If you're not going to craft an interesting world to explore, you're not entitled to engagement from people exploring it thoroughly. If I find 3 caves behind waterfalls with the same layout and the same type of reward, here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to strictly look for the next fast travel points, suck my cock and swallow my pubes.
>>739420229You used to have to pay or give something up in-game for those. At some point game devs stopped doing that. I think it's because of Skyrim? Never played it so idk if that's the case. Closest thing a modern game did to achieve this was RDR2 where the usual form of instantaneous fast travel can only be unlocked by fully upgrading your camp or using stagecoaches or trains at certain locations. And even then you there's fixed points on the map where you can teleport to. The portcrystal and ferrystone system in DD is cool too, where they're both consumable materials but makes it so the fast travel is fully customizable.I'd just like them to be diegetic and immersive again.
>>739421868Given that most of the map is abandoned places with nothing items and climbing is the most obnoxious thing in the game, maybe they should add fast travel points. After 82 hours playing this shit I can tell you I have little interest in walking or riding from point A to point B and a good third of places I found out just by traveling had absolutely fucking nothing of substance to them.
>>739420501They fixed the fast travel in red dead 2, now you can travel anywhere from camp
I like the way gothic games did it.These were small maps. Not open world at all, but fairly memorable. If you found a difficult area, you weren't told "hey don't go this way". It was more of a challenge. You could sneak by and find an amazing reward. You could try your hand and if you beat some fucker in your way, you get to roam free, which is even more rewarding. There's a territory control aspect to it. Given how ruthless these games were at the beginning, finding any fucking loot would help.
>>739420229stop making garbage empty open world slop and then people wont feel the need to skip past most of the empty pointless world.
>>739420780RDR2 was garbage when it came out. The most braindead casual retardgame ever.
>How do we solve the fact players feel entitled to fast travel[?]1. Penalise teleporting with XP or other progression loss; reward trekking by tying XP and other awards to traversal.2. Refine Crapcom's Dragon's Dogma idea of fast travel being interrupted by game events.3. Pepper PIO's between teleportation nodes, which will be missed if fast traveled is availed.4. Use procedural generation or randomise map events, so that each travesal of a same path plays out different; even implement geographical chances -- e. g., paths being added / removed according to time progression, in game events, natural occurrences etc..5. Progress time for fast travel, so that it does not save in-game times, and tie this to missions -- i. e., so that teleporting cannot advantage players for question completion.6. Price teleportation with in-game zenny.7. Lock teleportation nodes behind progression and discovery; even hiding them behind puzzles.8. Time limit teleportation nodes by having them "attacked", "captured", "stolen", "break down" etc..9. Provide a plethora of solutions to travel -- each with their own speed, cost, and progression pros/cons.10. Design maps to be interesting, so that players will want to traverse them; not just open spaces of barren, boring area.>think out of the box instead of just copy-pasting
>>739420229I still think RuneScape of all things is what nailed fast travel>World starts out difficult/tedious to traverse>As you progress you unlock more and more travel options>Eventually you can zip around the map in seconds using various fast travel methods you’ve unlocked
>>739420229Basically this >>739420776More games need actual travel mechanics like Death Stranding. I dare say, a medieval fantasy game with Death Stranding style hiking, rope usage, and inventory management is extremely untapped ludo potential.
>>739421775how is there a reliable bus system in an active warzone that has checkpoints on every roadhow do you even pass them in the bus when they normally shoot you, do you hide in the luggage compartment or something?
>>739423160ban AI posts
>>739420229This map looks cool. Is this minecraft mod fun? never played minecraft modsIs this really all filled with content and npcs? or is it empty world?
>>739420776Morrowind in particular actually has a very interesting system. There are actually a ton of ways to travel, all subtly different.>"Bus services": silt strider, boats, Mages' guild teleportation>the most obvious way to fast travel even for beginners, though MG is a bit more obscure>require reaching the location to travel, only go to major settlements, you have to travel in the wilderness by other means>consume a bit of gold for travel, which makes them practically infinite in midgame but limited in early game>not every travel point goes everywhere, there's a complicated network of where each particular travel point goes, which requires either knowing how the network works and planning your route or spending additional time and money to reach the place you want, with possibility of being distracted by a town you didn't intend to visit on a way>this is the canonical way people travel in-game, and it's obviously there so the game is designed around the fact you will use it eventually, though you can ignore it>Almsivi Blessing and Blessing of Temple>immediately teleport you to one of the two local temple varieties with no way back>mostly meant to escape from danger or dungeons, but you can use it to fast travel>the location you teleport to is the "nearest" temple of the "right" variety, where you will go isn't obvious, fast traveling either requires planning and knowledge of surrounding towns or you will go to a place you didn't expect and have to leave it, which promotes exploration of that place>consumes spell scrolls or potions at the beginning, you can learn the spells if you have enough mana, skills and gold, more expensive than "bus">obviously only goes to towns(cont)
>>739425309>Mark/Recall>a customizable fast travel method, allows you to forever be able to fast travel to location of your choosing, even in the wilderness>the main limitation is you only get one, so you have to choose where to put it>the secondary limitation is you have to have gone there and explicitly cast a Mark spell right on that place>consumes scrolls or potions at a faster rate than Almsivi in the beginning, learnable by midgame>requires planning and prioritization to use>mostly meant to go to annoying locations far from settlements which you need to visit often for some reason, cuts down busywork to get to those if you planned it>walking>incredibly slow in early game, steadily gets faster and less annoying as your character progresses>you learn flying and water walking by midgame which massively cut down on terrain obstacles>you can exploit alchemy or enchanting to give yourself measurable boosts to speed; this is admittedly a bit too easy even in the beginning, but requires knowledge of the game systems and gold>so this option gets more convenient and less annoying as you go through the game, which incentivises using it instead of your growing arsenal of fast travel methods>the only way to get to most places in the game, including almost all of wilderness, though other methods can cut down on travel time>flying admittedly might make you skip POI almost as much as "bus" does, but it's still better marginally better, and you can't spam it until pretty late into the game>unless you know the exploits, which feels pretty rewarding on its own>flying speed is still tied to walking speed, so you still have to deal with that too>maybe the most critical part of what makes MW's fast travel workIt is pretty insane how well-designed everything is. Every travel method fills a niche.I don't think it will necessarily work for every game, particularly if you don't have a lot of towns in your game, but it might be a good baseline for most of them.
>>739425354I like a spell like Mark/Recall, it lets you set a nice checkpoint, head home with the impossible to spell Almsivi or Divine intervention, and then come back to continue the adventure.Palworld has a similar thing if you don't build on your last Pal base, you can use it as a mobile checkpoint by deconstructing and rebuilding at current location.Also I thought early game speed meta was get BoBS and nullify the Blinding.
>>739420229Make survival mode with no fast travel. Really Skyrim anniversary edition did this perfectly. Except the survival mode sucks ass because you need to eat way too much and all the cooking recipes require salt even if you were to eat the food immediately, but that's besides the point.
>>739420501>Follow the RDR2 approachMorrowind did it better.
This is the actual game design issue
>>739425697I think it is but I think it's technically an exploit and I'm not sure the developers intended it. You have to know the boots exist in the first place to even use them. I was talking about how it was probably intended to work.Though you might be right, I'm fairly certain that you will get faster as you play the game if you bother to raise Speed ever, but I'm actually not sure how viable it is to use alchemy or spells to get faster, now that I think about it. I think it should be viable since alchemy and spell/item making are broken in general but I don't think I ever tried it myself.
>>739420780The traversal of the world wasn´t DD2 biggest issue. The corridors you´d have to take, coupled with the same encounters spawning on the exact same spots is what made travel in DD2 a slog. >normalfags hated it.maybe that´s why it wasn´t a issue for me, cant speak for these plebs.
>>739425697>>739425354>>739425309>all those words>not a single mention of jump 5000Pathetic. Also BoBS are encountered on the way to Balmora, aren't they? You have to go to some coastal place to actually get them but I remember finding them just doing initial exploration.
>>739420229You stop making games for retards.
>>739420229Slightly off-topic but it's kind of surprising there aren't that many custom Minecraft worlds for playing normally in especially since worldgen is so boring nowadays. Imagine installing mods and colonizing that fantasy landscape with factories and a train network.
>>739420229>feel entitled tostopped reading there
>>739426705>imagine installing a mod for minecraft>that turns it into knock-off factorioJust play factorio?
>>739426745NTA, but Factorio was directly inspired by Minecraft industrial mods. So technically it's Factorio that is knockoff modded Minecraft.
>>739420229Why do you want to sell a bicycle to crippled people?The first answer is that you don't MAKE people feel less entitled to fast travel, you market your game to people who are looking for games with large maps where you're not forced to fast travel. Some players will want to fast travel and skip cutscenes no matter how good your game might be. You don't aim for the insatiable crowd.Therein lies the second answer, you have to make the map feel inviting enough and connected enough that the target audience won't feel forced to fast travel.You know the "one more turn" effect? How those kinds of games just pull you in and you forget that you've been playing that "one extra turn" for the past 3 hours now.You make the map interesting, you give goals for players to pursue both local and global.You make exciting quests that you run into no matter where you are so you don't feel like in a shitty MMO where only the start- and end point of a quest matters. You have to make the middle part feel like an actual journey.One more option, encourage fast travel but make it cinematic. Have the character actually traverse the land in real time or perhaps as some sort of a montage and the player is able to press stop whenever they wish.Have to fast travel from one side of a mountain to the other? Make it LOTR tier journey montage and if something interesting catches the eye of a player, let them stop it right there and jump into the action.
>>739420229why do fantasyfags love retarded worldbuilding like this? completely retarded map
>>739427180>Make it LOTR tier journey montage and if something interesting catches the eye of a player, let them stop it right there and jump into the actionThis is the only good ideas in this shitty thread.
>>739427257
>>739426351>BoBS are encountered on the way to BalmoraMaybe, I actually don't remember. I played the game only one time like a decade ago, some details are blurry to me.But even if so, you can still just miss the item, and nullifying Blinding but not Speed boost sounds more like an exploit than intentional. But maybe it was intentional, I don't know. It's just a bit weird how it works if you think in in-game logic.>not a single mention of jump 5000I think this is kind of an obscure option. But I think I never even found Tarhiel in my playthrough so maybe I'm biased.I think most players, when they found the scrolls, would just use them once, kill themselves, laugh at it and then forget they exist. You kinda need some understanding of in-game mechanics or spells to know how to use the scrolls right. Admittedly, just knowing feather fall exists is enough, but it's still something the player might not think about. It's certainly not as prominent as silt striders or Almsivi Intervention.Also, since I never used it myself, I don't know whether you can actually choose where to stop once you jump, so I kinda doubted whether it was a viable method of fast travel in general.If it is, I figured it's more of an endgame mildly exploity kind anyway. It's nice but not something you design the game around.
>>739427402Last I remember doing it, it was a spell and I don't think you need feather fall for jump 5000 so long as it lasts until you land. Specifically jump 5000 too because it was far enough to save you time but not far enough to make it a problem to get where you're going. 9000 would pretty much clear vvardenfell in one jump.
>>739421253You're fucking stupid I'd take a job as a gladiator fighting animals RIGHT FUCKING NOW the modern era is so fucking gay and lame
>>739427339is there actually a connection between spain and the arabian nights?
>>739427517I thought that was France. Map is edited badly.
>>739427517Supposedly, spanish were among the first -if not THE first- to translate the One Thousand and One Nights into a european language.>>739427603Anon, it's just rotated by 90 degrees...
>>739420229We only have so much free time in a night. QoL features are important. Games with large worlds and no fast travel are meant for players with unlimited time, not ones with lives outside vidya.
>intended design is for players to move meaningfully throughout the world and plan their every movewhen did this happenI disagree with everyone saying there needs to be quest givers thrown around everywhere. This just makes me collect a shit ton of boring quests I only feel compelled to do to clear the journal and makes you backtrack to random places which is the opposite of what you want
>>739425982>>739427180>picsPeople won't like the answer to how to make this happen:Time has to progress in the game world. There have to be things the player can miss if they waste all their time "completing" an area instead of traveling somewhere else. It can be as simple as quests with time limits.
The problem was already solved almost 25 years ago. Fast travel takes in-game time, money and you need to be in a settlement to engage with it, because it's a service provided by other people. If you're good with magic (or have enchanted gear), you can do some teleportation by yourself, but with major restrictions.People in the world need ways to get around, so why shouldn't we just make those ways available to the player?
>>739427641>it's just rotated by 90 degrees...It's rotated by 270 degrees, clearly.
>>739420229OP feels entitled to a dick up his ass all the time
if players feel the need to use fast travel your game is bloated.
>>739427710>missable time gated contentgood job you just killed your game, people will get livid over it and demand no time pressure modes even on short specifically designed for it games, putting that into 100h+ rpg will decimate it.
>>739426745In Factorio you are building factories for the privilege of building more and bigger factories.Minecraft factories make it easier to gather resources without going full creative mode.
>>739425309>>739425354Plus some more obscure/later game options, like the Propylon Indices and the scripted teleport items. But it can't be understated how much of an impact is made by the gradual improvement of your own personal mobility. Even without everything else, not being stuck at a slow jog makes the world much more enjoyable to get through.
>>739428078That's why I said people wouldn't like the answer. But it's true.
>>739427517Got invaded and ruled by Arabs
>>739420229Give players the ability to move physically around the map, fast. Faster ground travel or even aerial travel. Make fast travel extremely limited and only to specific points on the map to force exploration. Make it cost some amount of money to fast travel. Make transport that allows for a fast travel system.
>>739427697>I disagree with everyone saying there needs to be quest givers thrown around everywhere. This just makes me collect a shit ton of boring quests I only feel compelled to do to clear the journal and makes you backtrack to random places which is the opposite of what you wantThis.If you don't want your players using fast travel then you don't need random events or quests or any other checklist bullshit.You just need travelling around to be fun/engaging and you need the time the player is expected to be travelling to be well paced with other gameplay elements.GTA 4 will always be my favourite game in this regard. The exaggerated car handling and the street design meant that it was actually engaging to drive. Weaving through traffic and around corners wasn't hard, but it also wasn't something that you could just shut your brain off and go into autopilot to do. The map was large enough to give the impression of a big city but also small enough that you could usually get from where you are to where you want to be in less than 2 minutes. And the world is interesting enough to enjoy just existing in for a couple of minutes while listening to the in game radio.
>>739420229Make movement feel better. I'd feel more inclined to explore shit if I had access to moves like Mario's jumps or Batman's grapple and glide.
>>739420810Minecraft's Nether approach was one of the smartest ways of doing fast travel.
>>739431065If you don't build highways, Nether travel is slower.
>>739420229>a game with a huge world mapThis is your first mistake. You do not have enough interesting things to fill up a huge map, guaranteed. Condense it. And then also keep giving players faster and faster movement tech as they progress.
>>739431152You're assuming that the purpose of every game world is to host content
>>739431274that is in fact the purpose.
>>739431630It is in fact not
>>739420229How do we solve the fact players feel entitled to fast travel>be developer>design fuckhuge map.>no fast travel because fuck you >place mission spot in the north>player have drive pick some joe shmoe driving 10 minutes to south (completely irrelevant to the story)>actual mission is driving another 6 minutes to the south east to some dump >OBJECTIVE: kill badguy69, don't let him get ahead. "kill that mofo">badguy 69 drives to the southwest, assuming you didn't kill him in 30s or so>joe shome says "thank you homie, you a true gangsta" and gives you some cash >have to pick new mission from the same guy way back in the north>repeat 50 timesgee i wonder why people like fast travel
>>739431676real game tetris mogging dogshit procedural and open world faggotry as usual
>clicking on a map to instantaneously teleport to a locationEWWWW, UGHHHH CASUAAAAAAL TRAAAAAASH>opening a text box, clicking on it and being instantly whisked awayGenius level design! I love this little giant isopod like you wouldn't believe
>>739420229I like how Might & Magic VI approached it:>ships sailing between ports>coach companies traveling between inland towns>all of them have their own route / schedule which requires some planning on your part>they cost money and time>can get you to a lot of places, but not everywhere>there is fast travel, but it might not always be your best optionThey kind of fucked it up by making flying too easy too early in the game, but that's another story.
