You want to get immersed in the environment, but at the same time, sometimes you just want to make a potion and leave.

@Axoren I mean, we desperately need innovation in local transit in real life, I'm not holding any breaths for ground-breaking advancements in video games first.

Fast travel is a bit of a mixed blessing

It's easier in video games. Think about a fast travel system that functions like a Scene Transition in an actual medium.

That way it cheapens the experience less.

Fast travel does provide a way to skip boring content but whether it actually justifies the existence of boring content depends a lot on the kind of game we're talking about

I'm at the Smithy, I open the fast travel system to go to the Potion shop, game cuts to a cutscene where I'm leaving the smithy and waving goodbye and then it does a slide cut to me entering the Potion shop.

@Axoren Interesting idea, I never thought about it that way

@Axoren Then you get people complaining about unnecessary cutscenes wasting their time.

@Yuuki Tell those people to shove it because they almost had to walk.

@Yuuki [writes mod to skip cutscenes]

And if they'd rather walk, they probably still can.

@Yuuki Depends on how long the cutscenes are, and how long the loading times are

I would never endorse unskippable cutscenes.

@Axoren Or just have an option to turn them off

Maybe just do what I said but make them skippable or turn offable

@GreySage Beat me too it

@Axoren FFX is unplayable for that reason

Also: forced slow travel doesn't always have the same reason (like "because everyone else is doing it" or "because realism").

@BESW I have not heard a good argument for forced slow travel to places you've already been to during downtime.

Sometimes it's a (usually poor) solution to a problem, like in games that want you to spend more time playing them than their content technically justifies.

(See: MMOs)

@BESW (See: JRPGs)

To this day, I don't understand why WoW's hearthstones have cooldowns.

@MikeQ (See: A lot of RPGS)

@GreySage FFX also has some particularly long and dramatic cutscenes just before particularly lethal boss fights. That's real nasty.

@Yuuki PVP abuse.

A lot of WoW's mechanics seem to date back to "we used to do it like this back then" and back then, the reasoning was "we hate players".

> Dog: "I feel so sorry for people who have no dogs. I hear they have to pick up their own food if they drop it on the floor."

@Axoren Then there should be no cooldown if you hearth while PvP is disabled.

@Yuuki No, the reasoning was "We have no idea how the game will actually play, so these ideas sound like a good thing now, let's never revisit it"

@Yuuki a punishment for having died?

And since PvP servers are gone now, no cooldown when War Mode is off.

@Yuuki I'm for it. But I've never had to hearth more than once every 5 minutes.

@Zachiel That's another thing I don't like.

Dying is already a punishment.

There's a guild buff that halves regular hearthstone time

It's one of the worst places to put a really significant turn in story event because nothing cheapens a dramatic twist more than having to relive the "surprise" about fifty times. Or god knows how many shots I had to take at Yunalesca before I beat her.

I appreciate that most games these days don't have EXP loss on death.

@Yuuki Neither do I, but I can see why someone thought it was good. "Git gud".

@Axoren With a 15min cd and a 5min cd on the flightmaster whistle, it really isn't a limiting factor

@Yuuki Is it?

Durability is a dumb mechanic that makes no sense.

There's a lot of things you can do to mitigate how shitty hearthstone cooldown is.

@GreySage Exactly

@Zachiel Given that at bare minimum, you have to start the fight all over?

Yeah, I personally think that's enough of a punishment.

Like, if you want it to change, it's going to be hard to convince people that it's less of an annoyance and more of a problem.

@Yuuki Oh you're talkinga bout instances, I was talking about going around the map.

Durability systems are always dumb.

I've never played WoW past level 20

@Yuuki Durability is a gold sink, nothing more. That's been stated dev motivation

The only reason a durability system should exist is if the entire equipment system is based around it with intent for it to mean something

@Zachiel Even then. You already have to trek back to your body.

Which is another thing I don't agree with.

Like, if you actually had to have an assortment of arms, which some required rare materials to repair

@GreySage Given gold inflation and how Blizzard is now selling a 5 million gold mount, it's a terrible goldsink.

And you needed certain material weapons to fight certain bosses easier

It's not a real excuse, it's just PR.

@Yuuki Durability combats inflation, and the expensive mounts have nothing to do with it, so.. o.O?

@DavidCoffron That second question is in the category of a stupid question, with the unfortunate possibility of people putting "mechanical" and "naked" to arrive at some NSFW answers involving a particular class of toys. I am glad that others had a more charitable view, and got him something to work with.

@GreySage What's the cost to repair an entire kit at 0 durability at Item Level 400?

Does that even affect the people most responsible for Gold Inflation?

Expensive mounts take LARGE amounts of gold out of the economy in large amounts.

Assuming that the mounts cost Gold to Engine, rather than Gold to Players

@Axoren About 600+ gold. And yes, it is a sizable amount, especially since they've removed the free gold engine Orderhalls/Garrisons were

I think a Path of Exile and Warframe hybrid economy structure might be the most stable of all MMO economies.

@Axoren Yes the mounts remove gold (they're from NPC vendors), but they are one-off purchases as luxuries, they don't have the same impact as constant expenditure, which is what durability, flight path costs, and consumables are

They've increased the amount and value of grey/trash items though.

@GreySage a 5 million gold mount is equivalent to repairing your entire kit over 50,000 times.

@KorvinStarmast yeah... I tried to give as much doubt benefit as possible

Which, I dunno, might also help with inflation given that it takes up space in your bags and forces you to go back that camp rather than spending more time on more gold-productive activities like farming herbs.

Then again, not really as farming crafting mats doesn't actually produce gold.

Path of Exile style economy puts a soft limit on player wealth because you need to fill your stashes with items of the highest quality, taking up item space from the gear you actually want to use. The Warframe style of economy establishes with a second currency an anchor value for how much gold is worth.

At least, not directly.

How effective durability as an inflation combatant engine is I don't know, but I do know removing the order hall gold source has vastly reduced inflation. The evidence: The price of everything (especially Time tokens) is falling

Even allowing players to buy extra stash tabs, the effect it has is that to actually destablize the economy, large amounts of players would have to pay gregarious amounts of real-world currency, beyond what whales normally pay to MMOs

@GreySage IIRC, the price of time tokens spiked after BfA launch.

@Axoren egregious amounts?

Eventually, people stop hoarding Identification scrolls because they're not worth hoarding, so their value is protected. Same for TP scrolls, etc.

@trogdor That too

And I read an article awhile back that said the price is still rising.

unless paying that much makes you happy, I shouldn't judge that XD

@Yuuki No, they fluctuate with news, but they're falling

I tried WoW again a few months back. Even though this time I didn't have server lag problems, I just can't find the interest to spend the time on it. Cnx'd. For instances, all I ever felt like doing was playing the healbot. I actually liked doing that, but if it was five strangers, the two or three "GOGOGOGOGO" people running out of my line of sight and then swearing at me got rather annoying.

They're at 115k right now, they were at 150k+ a few months ago

@Yuuki Back in the original WoW beta, Penny Arcade wrote a review gushing about how WoW was the first MMO that didn't feel like it hated its players. Relative to other MMOs of the time, they were basically right. And looking at the progression of changes to WoW, they seem dedicated to always staying just ahead of the average curve of the "players feel hated by the game they're playing" MMO culture as it evolves.

They go up when there is something to buy with them (you can convert tokens to credit for buying other blizzard games)

@GreySage IIRC, that last part spiked the price severely.

@Yuuki yup, and then it goes back down

I remember time tokens being like 20k gold at the beginning of the xpac.

@BESW there is box full of reasons reason it surpassed Everquest with great leaps and bounds. Blizzard has a knack for fun ingredients in games.

Or 40k or something.

Sub-50k for sure.

@Ash The only thing Plat gives in P2W is a head start. Anything that can be bought with plat can be earned in like 40 minutes to an hour of directed play.

@BESW I do wish I could say they try any harder at all than that

XD

@Yuuki mid WoD they were 30k, they went up a ton in Legion

It's also a catchup mechanic for players joining the game late.

@GreySage I remember one of my friends who plays the market saying that the price nearly tripled after they announced the cross-game functionality.

If you joined after Mag was vaulted, then you can't farm Mag. However, you can farm the new hotness, trade with other players for Plat, and buy Mag Prime from the market.

This is a very healthy thing for an MMO because Semi-limited gear stops being a "You had to be there" thing

Whereas in other MMOs having to do that with the base currency means putting in about as may hours as the people who were there when it was released to get that content.

Or, the Korean MMO method, where you can just buy and sell gold because it's expected and encouraged over there.

Which, hilariously, emulates the Warframe Model, in a way

I last warframed several years ago

Backtracking a bit, even if durability is primarily a goldsink, I personally think it's a poor goldsink. Get rid of it and if you really think its goldsink functionality is important, increase the price of flight points and, I dunno, levy a minor resurrection tax. It's the same thing except that durability has the dual effect making you have to go back to a hub to repair your gear (unless you have a repair bot).

I understand it has changed a lot.

@Ash They've removed a lot of the luck elements to loot mechanics, allowing players to influence their loot distribution and hone-in on the items they want from the true farming maps. And for the most part, most missions can be completed with any frame. You just need to understand the benefits of being who you are and what weapons you bring with you to the table.

If you do go back to it, I recommend getting a weapon kit you're familiar with and building a Stealth or Tank frame to start until you get the better hang of it.

Alternately, given everyone the ability to buy repairs without going back to a hub.

@Yuuki I agree that Durability is a terrible gold sink. It's pedantic.

The salient problem with durability, imo, is that it forces you to periodically not enjoy the game so you can get back to enjoying the game.

I'm sorry you didn't have fun with it to the point that it was upsetting.

That's really rough.

@Yuuki eh, at this point a mount with a repair vendor on it is very available, making it not really an issue to repair. I think I've had trouble repairing my gear maybe twice in the last 5 years. I agree it could be better or automatic, just to avoid the few times it actually matters

@Ash Well, it's great you can cope with it. I'd be all "why is there lots of other people who can enjoy this wonderful game while I can't".

(which is more or less where I'm at with shared narrative games.)

@Ash I almost tore my hair out on some of the War Within stuff.

@Ash Yeah, the Mammoth was the first mount with a repair vendor, and it only costs like 5k iirc. The yak and the dinosaur are harder to get.

The most recent story mission I played pulled that "forced slow walk" on me, and that was hell. Other than that, it just requires you to think "critically." And by "critically," I mean think like the devs for those puzzle sections.

@NathanSantee Hello, you were the one with the questions about items carried, right?

@Ash I'm constantly annoyed at how they didn't put an AH in the new continents. Like, sure you could get the mount, but 5mil is a little steep for me

Their justification is that they want people to go back to the old capital cities, but ugh.

@Yuuki Then they should have thought of that before making all those continents and calling them content :P

Zuldazar looks great but it's horrible from a player accessibility perspective.

The crafting trainers and scrapper require you to go down several flights of stairs.

There's a story option that allows you to take mini flight points to go back to the central hub, but those flight points are one-way and there's not one that goes from the hub to the crafting area.

@Yuuki The player-city portion of Boralus is pretty nice, basically everything is on one central plaza or down a hallway. The non-city portion is a freaking maze designed to keep you from ever getting anywhere (including the PvP building)

The Garrison/Order Hall-equivalent table is also far away from the central hub.

You need to take an actual flight point if you don't want to spend five to ten minutes traversing the city.

@Yuuki I don't think WoW has ever had content as vertical as in in BFA. Every zone has stairs or ramps everywhere.

@GreySage I like the diversity and Zuldazar definitely looks pretty. It's just that it's a shame that that aesthetic is marred by how annoying is to get things done in the game.

Like, regular average things that you need to do all the time.

@Yuuki My first impression on getting to Kul Tiras (alliance main) was that the devs spent way too much time on placing doodads and making the zone pretty, and not enough on making things functional

@Ash I got lost in Dalaran, is it worse or better in Boralus? XD

@trogdor Much, MUCH worse

oh my

good lord Blizzard why? why??????

@trogdor I mean, Dalaran was a circle.

@GreySage have I mentioned before my sense of direction is horrible?

It was almost as easy to navigate as the Chaos Temple in FFI (a straight line)

I am sure I have but maybe not here?

@GreySage Magic is a flat circle.

anyway, it's real bad, navigation is probably one of the most challenging things I ever fight in any game

Also, Dalaran is/was a small circle.

@Yuuki it's really really really bad

@trogdor I had trouble finding things in Dalaran too, I'm not disagreeing.

But the BfA zones are so much worse than Dalaran.

I think if I ever played the game again,.. it sounds like I would never get out of Boralus

let alone find anything there

At least in Dalaran, the shops all had signs that you could mouse over to see where a profession trainer likely was.

@Ash same except Oggrimar

In Zuldazar, there are no signs.

@Ash there were fountains in Dalaran I fell into

trying to get to the bank or something

And there are no distinct shops, trainers are jumbled up and some are next to other unrelated professions.

Dalaran is probably the simplest city ever designed. It had one area for all the tradeskills, Alliance/Horde areas on opposite sides, with Banks slightly rotated from there, with the main story hub in the giant tower

@GreySage it's really bad, yeah XD

on the plus side, I did relatively enjoy constantly circling around the place

@Ash Thank goodness for dungeon finder and meeting stones

I was happy not to have to go to the entrance to instances to get in anymore

or like, actually talk to people to get a group

or any of that stuff XD

@trogdor But you still have to do that if you want to do Mythic(+), ugh.

Trying to find dungeon entrances the first time for Mythics were anxiety inducers

instances are my favorite part of WoW,..... but unfortunately it has all that grinding and questing and leveling and shop finding you have to do? soooooo

Or at the very least, you need at least two people to do it and summon you to the entrance.

@Yuuki eh, high level but normal instances were my jam

I actually only tried like a 25 man once and hated it anyway

Oh jeez, raiding back before they implemented Flex.

@Yuuki also, I assume those only started existing maybe after I was no longer playing WoW

You had to get either 10-man or 25-man.

@Yuuki eww

I am pretty glad I was into the game in that middle space

There was basically no point in attempting a 25-man raid with less than 25 players because that's what the raid was balanced around.

@Yuuki there were absolutely no 5 mans huh?

Granted, it's still easier to raid with 25 people than, say, 20 people.

@trogdor Raids have never been 5-man.

@Yuuki oh I just mean 5 man instances at all

But before flex, there were only two difficulties.

ok yeah that's what I meant

With flex, boss health (and damage?) is adjusted slightly based on the number of members in the raid.

Hey, way back in the day the only option was 40

It's still easier to do the raid with the player cap, but at least now it's mathematically possible with 20 people or something.

@Yuuki Boss mechanics are adjusted too, so if the boss puts a debuff on 5 people in a 30man, he'll do the same to 2-3 people in a 10man.

@GreySage I still have nightmares of cross-timezone 40-mans.

20+ minute downtimes because two of the healers have to eat dinner or something.

@Yuuki Or just everyone died, we didn't have an out of combat rezzer, and everyone has to run back to the middle of MC again..

Someone has to go back to town because they're out of buff reagents...

Five of the Hunters ran out of arrows...

Anyone who thinks they're going to enjoy WoW Classic has a pretty serious prescription for nostalgia glasses.

The raiding portion of it had so many stupid hoops to jump through, and it was just plain HARD

Although I do miss spamming my macro whispering 6 different paladins to each give me a different blessing every 3 mins

@nitsua60 I think there are stories of software developers doing that

@nitsua60 lol

@nitsua60 Just call it homework.

that's what teaching is, slowly making enough people who can replace you and are grateful to you that you can just disappear and make them do all the work while you still get paid :P

Or a group project.

Kids love group projects, I hear.

it's the perfect evil plot, is teaching

@trogdor That last clause, though... that's the one I still haven't figured out.

(Like many hobbyists, I find that taking the leap to monetization is tough.)

Lol

All you have to do is sign up for trogdor's course on evil teaching

And pay ludicrous sums of money of course

Just don't ask me to teach navigation unless you feel like literally throwing money away

I'm not that evil

@nitsua60 Try teaching someone how to fly, and then a decade later they are the one administering your check flight. 8^O

Lol

Now I have had an actual evil thought of becoming a driving instructor with the goal of telling all my driving instors they are too old to drive now

@trogdor Even better, teach your son to play Starcraft, and then three years later, he's schooling you! 8^O

@trogdor heh, that's a good one if you don't mind the occasional zinger for a riposte from one of them. 8^D

@KorvinStarmast hmm I feel you don't understand, I will always be better at everything than everyone sooooo

@KorvinStarmast the best they could possibly do is a cheesey M.Bison rip off

@trogdor well, that's sorted. :)

Lol

@trogdor Good news, Boralus is the Alliance capital. You'll be getting lost in Zuldazar instead!

And no flying. That's cheating.

(Literally there's no ability to fly on your own in the new content, they'll release that later.)

Lol

I assume Zuldazar is still really confusing though

More annoying, really. Very very big, tedious to traverse.

wow

I will say, I think WoW cities are actually pretty cool

I think they usually actually look pretty awesome

but a lot of them also seem to be designed to get you lost?

Dalaran was probably one of the only ones not,.... like that

I still got turned around there a lot (har har circle pun) but yeah

that's me

@Ash Horde, mostly

@Ash I literally never got an Alliance character past level 20

I have had some free to play ones, I did get them to 20 because that was the cap level for it

during Wrath and Cata I had at least,... 3 I think max level Horde characters at one point

probably Cata

Wrath only two I think

BfA?

ah latest expansion I take it

from the perspective of someone who isn't in it,... but was in the game a bit,.... the Aliance NPC's I ran into sometimes struck me as a little,.... horribly racist

not the players mind you that's not what I am saying there

I am sure Blizzard wasn't always going for that but you know

Warcraft III did actually have a whole campaign that shot off from the point of the Alliance treating the Blood elves like absolute garbage

so that may have colored it for me XD

just a bit

@Ash in reality though, I still can't grok why the Horde and Alliance still have to,.... fight

besides the buisness model being tethered to that of course

they made the game with two sides and they probably are really scared of removing those sides

and maybe people actually still like that a lot too

battlegrounds are fun

(if you like that stuff anyway)

@trogdor But, also the players.

@Ash Also all of Pandaria.

"Hello, example of Orientalism that will be used in textbooks for decades to come."

@Ash But really the best part is how in newer expansions, when they give you a "slaughter these sapient beings" quest they sometimes tack on a reassuring "Don't worry they're irredeemable so you shouldn't feel bad."

Like they know it's a problem now, but they don't want to actually change so they literally just throw some Thermian justification at it.

It's not even subtle! I saw one where the quest-giver actually said something like "This may seem cruel, but it is necessary because they are corrupted beyond redemption. Do not feel bad."

Close but no potato, Blizzard.

@BESW well but I wanted to make it clear that that wasn't a blanket statement

Some of the players are indeed,... A little bit horribly racist

@Ash thats kinda what I mean

The Horde as compared to the alliance, from the perspective of a guy who has mostly only played Horde,...

It's like Blizzard is subtly racist against some or possibly all of the Horde races

And cultures and stuff

hi

hu

While the Alliance gets to be played up as this grand cooperation between ,.... Well allies

Even though I have proof that says that isn't the case entirely

Because, just to re use an example, Warcraft 3 had a pretty damning thing to say about the Alliance at one point

if your done

If you allow lore from previous games,... The Alliance is actually partially at fault for some of the horrible stuff that happened in burning crusade

@NathanSantee done now yes

i have an idea that i would like to run by some people

this is way more helpful if your playing with the optional weight rules because then you riding horse can't carry much without being effected

so what if you had a war horse that you rode and a donkey that followed behind to carry your stuff.

to stop him from running

hey there @NathanSantee, welcome to the RPG.SE lair btw :)

you fix a grapple hook to a chain

and when you get in to combat you through it so it catches a tree or something else sturdy

that's the idea

any thoughts

this way your stuff is safe and you can fight on horse back

hello?

is this thread dead?

will somebody give we feedback on this

@NathanSantee no but people can take a widely variable amount of time to answer questions here