[CF-Devel] On teleportation

[crossfire-devel at archives.real-time.com]

Sebastian Andersson wrote:

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      The problems with fees, as always, is that they matter less and less
     
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      the more powerful the character becomes, hence they can be viewed as
     
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      a punishment for low level characters. Those characters that already
     
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      have to pay for word of recall, those that don't have town portal.
     
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      For high level characters they are only an annoyance, they have to
     
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      visit their appartment to fetch some money from the piles.
     
     
  But of course, that is true in many other areas of the game.

  It is really a choise on the player - do they want to spend the money to get 
their quickly, or save the money and walk there?

  Right now, players have to make the choice - do they haul out every piece of 
equipment from the dungeon, even those right in town, and take the time to do 
so, or do you just grab the better stuff (magic, meets value density, etc).


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      There is a fun element with the big map, you got to explore and find things,
     
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      something that wouldn't happen if all the dungeons are put in the city.
     
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      It also makes the world slightly more "real". There is also a bad thing
     
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      with it. Once you've found it, the fun goes away and it leaves you with
     
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      a boring "lets walk for 5 minutes from A to B".  That would of course
     
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      be fun if something fun would happen along the way, but it doesn't right
     
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      now. (Adding random encounters would, in my opinion, not make it more
     
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      fun, only harder for new players and prolonging the journey time for
     
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      higher level players.).
     
     
  Any idea for interesting events?  Not really related to this problem directly, 
but something to keep in mind.

  I agree that spending all your time walking back and forth wouldn't be 
interesting.  By I typically find for me play that maybe it takes me a few 
minutes to get to the dungeon.  But then I'm spending hours in the dungeon itself.

  Arguably, the bigger waste of time is waiting for sp/grace/mana to get back 
up.  But same point on that - buy that healing or magic power potion to save 
time on that - follows same point above - this hurts lower level chraracters who 
don't really have the money to spend on that.


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      Making it easier to reach more dungeons would of course mean that more
     
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      dungeons would be cleared out since people wouldn't have to waste their
     
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      time doing boring things, like walking the same paths over and over.
     
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      That should be countered with more dungeons, not making it harder to
     
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      reach them, if one wants players to enjoy the game.
     
     
  I agree - more dungeons would be a good thing.  Easier said than done however.

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      Another thing to consider is to rebalance some of the dungeons.
     
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      The "interesting" dungeons are interesting because they have a high
     
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      reward/risk factor. Dungeons that are cleared all the time are cleared
     
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      because they give better rewards compared to the risk compared to other
     
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      dungeons. Dungeons that are seldom cleared out probably have a too
     
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      high risk compared to the reward (or it is too annoying to get there,
     
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      they give too little reward for the journey etc).
     
     
  True.  But hard to get perfect balance.  Within the game, balance can differ a 
lot based on class/race selection (if your class/race has high fire resistance, 
any dungeon that is largely fire attack against the player is much easier, so 
they are more likely to go to those).

  But dungeons that never get cleared out probably have some problem.  Given the 
amount of money and exp currently in the game, I'd be a bit reluctant to give 
them more treasure - it would seem the problem is that some other dungeons give 
out too good a reward.

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      As a player, I don't want to end up with some "random" map, I want
     
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      to get to a map that is suitable to my level or to a map that contains
     
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      an object I am looking for (a certain spellbook etc). I feel that timed
     
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      teleporters would be next to useless (well, they would be fun the first
     
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      few times, just like most things are). If I have to wait a while for
     
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      the right teleporter to be active, I would rather walk to it from
     
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      the nearest point I can reach via some other portal. If it happens
     
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      often enough, I will not even bother looking that that timed teleporter.
     
     
  Well, teleporter destinations based on time would be more for game color and 
whatnot (they shouldn't be random - you should be able to know if moon is XYZ, 
it will take you wherever).

  This doesn't fix the general problem of it being a bother to get to some dungeon.


  As said, one could have a teleporter shop, with way onje teleporters, that put 
players near (100-150 spaces?) of the dungeon.  Sure, low level players still 
have to make the choice - do they pay, or do they walk?  For high level players, 
this wouldn't eliminate travel time, but would certainly reduce it to a minute 
or something..

  The problem with diablo type teleporters is you need some mechanism to say 
this is an OK place to teleport to.  The current town portal code probably won't 
work, as most likely your target teleporter will disappear (map reset) over 
time.  That works fine for town portal - can't portal into the treasure chamber.

  My understanding with diablo is they specially place various checkpoints, 
which is what you can then teleport to.  Crossfire could do the same thing, but 
if we're going to do that, why not just put teleporters out there (one could 
arguably doing something like checkpoints right now pretty simply - have the 
checkpoint object insert a marker into the player object.  That marker then lets 
the player activate a teleporter in town that gets them there).


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