Lets Talk about Greater Teleport Again.

[Impaqt]

OK, Silthe gave a well thought out answer to our comments and concerns about teleporting, and the limitations imposed on the Greater Teleport spell. I figured I'd start a new thread because I dont find his answer acceptable on multiple levels and instead of this getting lost in his 400 page bug thread, I'd bring it here.

FIrst. His Response for those of you that arent following the bug thread

-Greater Teleport does not function in public areas currently. Currently missing many possible areas it could port to as well.

First, as far as working in public areas go, the first attempt at fixing that faired poorly in testing. We're hoping for a more elaborate functionality overhaul in the near future, but it's tough to know when players will see it because it not only needs to be revamped, but it has to pass testing as well. Keep an eye on the WDA's for updates.

Secondly, I'm sure the main location reference by the second sentence is Meridia. This is a bit of a sore point around here, actually, since the Meridia set up was in response to many player requests for wanting a sense of "world." "Give us wide open spaces to explore," they said. "Let us cross great distances and feel that we're traveling the world," they said. So we did and now everyone /deaths to get there. And you wonder why we sometimes get a bit tetchy.

Bottom line is that we don't want Teleport and Greater Teleport to allow people access to everything as soon as they pick up the spell. Not only is that against the rules of the spell from pen and paper, but it ruins a lot of what we can do for stories and quests. Some of the new tech we're hoping to get for the Teleport spells will let us improve this particular situation, but alas, I have no estimate as to when there will be more concrete news on this.

As far as Public areas go, I can understand some of the difficulty. Seems to me it woulnt be immpossible to code it so it only effects people In your Party. This seems to work already inthe PvP Arenas. But Thats not my sticking Point.

Meridia. DDO has been a game of Immediate Gratification. It always has been. Sure, theres the role players, permadeathers and real casual gamers that enjoy a nice stroll.... but for the most part, we are a group of peple that like to get thigns done and move on to the next thing. Making people walk 2-3 minutes is a pretty poor attemp at making ebberon feel like a "World". Traveling to the Desert seems more worldly to me. Hey, I'm getting on a Airship for travel! Sure, its still immediate, but the Landscape is drastically changed its more open than any other areas, and it just has a feel of being somewhere else. Meridia has new Mobs, and some cool graphics, but for the most part, its More of the same... Same things we've seen in Cerulean hills, Searing Heights, Restless isles, Sorrowdusk, etc etc etc etc..... I'm n ot saying its bad by any means... Its a GREAT exploerer areas. Top Notch... but World traveller? Not really. Atraxias haven is more "Different' But alas, you stuck it way int he back of House K and provided no real incentive to go there. Some nice XP..... But Atraxias is NOT a desitation for anything..... Its just a glorified Side Quest.
If you want us to have a sense of the World, Give us more Unique locations. A Vast Underground Explorer Areas... A Frozen Tundra... A rain Forest..... Expose us to some of the other climates of Ebberon. THATS how to give us a sense of the world.. Not making us walk 2-3 minutes.

And my last point...... and heres the big one....

This spell instantly transports you to a designated destination, which may be as distant as 100 miles per caster level. Interplanar travel is not possible. You can bring along objects as long as their weight doesn’t exceed your maximum load. You may also bring one additional willing Medium or smaller creature (carrying gear or objects up to its maximum load) or its equivalent (see below) per three caster levels. A Large creature counts as two Medium creatures, a Huge creature counts as two Large creatures, and so forth. All creatures to be transported must be in contact with one another, and at least one of those creatures must be in contact with you. As with all spells where the range is personal and the target is you, you need not make a saving throw, nor is spell resistance applicable to you. Only objects held or in use (attended) by another person receive saving throws and spell resistance.

You must have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination. The clearer your mental image, the more likely the teleportation works. Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible.

To see how well the teleportation works, roll d% and consult the Teleport table. Refer to the following information for definitions of the terms on the table.

and now Greater teleport

This spell functions like teleport, except that there is no range limit and there is no chance you arrive off target. In addition, you need not have seen the destination, but in that case you must have at least a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting. If you attempt to teleport with insufficient information (or with misleading information), you disappear and simply reappear in your original location. Interplanar travel is not possible. [/B]

There is NOTHING agaisnt pnp guidelines that prevents [Greater] Teleport from porting us to Meridia. Especially after we've been there once. It is Quite feesable that when we visit the twelve, they could easiily give us a description on whats its like and how to get there if youreally want to Role Play the Study and Familiarity with the location.

The problem is that you give, give Give, then all of a sudden you stop..... Getting to teh Titan raid was rediculous... You added the Twilight forge to the Greater teleport list..... Awesome.... We still have to run around those tunnels to do the Prereqs for the raid, but we now have a shortcut.

Taking away shortcuts does NOT make DDO feel bigger. taking away Shortcuts does not make us want to Explore more. Taking away shortcuts makes us find new ways to get around the system. (IE. /Death to port to meridia) You Constantly Underestimate the playerbase. And you constantly set presidents you later no longer follow. It gets quite frustrating.

To finish off, Please dont take anything here negatively regarding the actual explorer areas.... They are fantastic..... I love to wander around in em killing stuff..... On My Time.... Not the assembling parties time. Let people who WANT to explore Explore..... Let people who want to get to a quest, get to a quest. The 2 are not Mutually exclusive. Very Few People want to spend 5-10 minutes walking to a quest...... Catering to those people is a mistake. Seriously, Dev time is better spent elsewhere.

[Yaga_Nub]

Secondly, I'm sure the main location reference by the second sentence is Meridia. This is a bit of a sore point around here, actually, since the Meridia set up was in response to many player requests for wanting a sense of "world." "Give us wide open spaces to explore," they said. "Let us cross great distances and feel that we're traveling the world," they said. So we did and now everyone /deaths to get there. And you wonder why we sometimes get a bit tetchy.

There is a difference between wanting to travel and want to roam a wide open space.

Yes we like the wilderness areas but they are basically quests. We want to go in them when we want to do a quest (in this case the wilderness area itself).

We have never said that we wanted to waste time traveling between quests or cities.

Silthe, I challenge you to find me all the posts from the past that said "We want to spend time travelling." Wide open spaces to explore yes, extra travel time no.

[Borror0]

We still have to run around those tunnels to do the Prereqs for the raid, but we now have a shortcut.

God I hate those tunnels.

Silthe, I challenge you to find me all the posts from the past that said "We want to spend time travelling." Wide open spaces to explore yes, extra travel time no.

Exactly. I hate walking for nothing, but I love to run a quest... it's not the same.

[Turial]

Though it would be a lot of work it seems like they could add flags for particular locals to the teleport and greater teleport spells or even flags in quests for DD locations (cool, yes but less important for this discussion).

A flag could be as simple as how an explorer point works.
You enter the volcano mouth after fighting your way there and the game recognizes it as a teleport flag area and updates your "quest log" with that location. That location being in your quest log work as a flag which unlocks a destination for your teleport or greater teleport spells.

Now this can be a restrictive thing in that they can say teleport and greater teleport scrolls only contain enough energy to go to particular locals while the spell innately cast will give you access to all your flagged locations. This gives a reason for players to travel around a little bit to odd places so that they have access to the fast/easy transport system. Problem with it is that it restricts the power of the spell for sorcerers who dont choose to have it loaded as one of their spells. One could argue back and forth about the balance that brings between wiz and sorc but its not for here.

A flag could also work in how a quest works. One talks to a NPC and they grant you the ability to teleport to that location. That ability may come as a focus token (less appealing) or as simply a new location that becomes colored in (previously was greyed out).

Those two suggestions would be ways to allow for a wider variety of teleportation locations while still making people explore the first time and then giving those people a way to bypass that if they so choose. Those that want that distance feel can still make the run. I do every time and I enjoy it but my enjoyment of a mechanic shouldn't preclude others from a magical bypass.

[Strykersz]

You would have though from Vanguard's relatively quick collapse on travel that people would have learned; gamers don't want to spend a lot of time just running somewhere. It isn't fun, it isn't immersive and it isn't whatever other buzz word of the day you want to try and put on it. Knock it off.

p.s. There's a reason travel is measured in random encounters in pnp. If to travel from one town to another meant that you had to stop playing for 10 minutes/6 hours of travel time, people would think it was a stupid rule and ignore it, not a way for the players to grasp how big and expansive the dm's world was.

[jjflanigan]

I just don't see what the big deal is. The time to run from the 12 to Meridia is almost exactly the time it takes to run from Meridia to one of the quests. I'm not seeing why it's such a huge deal for people.

[MysticTheurge]

I just don't see what the big deal is. The time to run from the 12 to Meridia is almost exactly the time it takes to run from Meridia to one of the quests. I'm not seeing why it's such a huge deal for people.

Because I'm not usually running from "The twelve right at the entrance to the Vale."

I'm running from "The wand vendor in house J through the marketplace to the twelve, up the ramp to the Vale entrance, then through the Vale to Meridia. And then sometimes on to a quest."

Not to mention those times when I get invited to a raid group while I'm not in Meridia and I have to drop group to actually get there. (Didn't we realize this was a terrible design mechanism back in Module 2?)

[Impaqt]

I just don't see what the big deal is. The time to run from the 12 to Meridia is almost exactly the time it takes to run from Meridia to one of the quests. I'm not seeing why it's such a huge deal for people.

You just Doubled the time it takes to get to a quest.... For absolutely no good reason.

No one is advocating Forcing people to teleport...... If you prefer to run, thats certainly your choice.

If the Timing wasnt such an issue, why can you stand in meridia and count dozens... If not hundreds of deaths over the course of an hour?

[captain1z]

,


and now Greater teleport


There is NOTHING agaisnt pnp guidelines that prevents [Greater] Teleport from porting us to Meridia.
.

You are absolutely incorrect sir. Amazing that I can say this, Ive been on the receiving end many times.

"Areas of strong Physical or magical energy may make Teleportation hazardous or even impossible" as the spell says. Teleport and greater teleport have some of the same restrictions.... this being one of them.

I think the Meridia being not only influenced by the plane of Lamania and also conflicted by the plane of Shavareth would qualify as a very strong magical energy that would indeed make travel hazardous and seemingly impossible.

Thats not the reason why technically speaking we cant port there but it would make a compelling arguement.

[captain1z]

In an effort to be constructive......

It would be cool if you could complete an optional in one of the major quests in each area in order to have a new location added on to you teleport list. Great for RP and not everyone could port to everyplace automaticly having never been there, and concistent with PNP GT is another matter that could be worked into it by use of a smaller sidequest in a lesser dungeon.

[Impaqt]

You are absolutely incorrect sir. Amazing that I can say this, Ive been on the receiving end many times.

"Areas of strong Physical or magical energy may make Teleportation hazardous or even impossible" as the spell says. Teleport and greater teleport have some of the same restrictions.... this being one of them.

I think the Meridia being not only influenced by the plane of Lamania and also conflicted by the plane of Shavareth would qualify as a very strong magical energy that would indeed make travel hazardous and seemingly impossible.

Thats not the reason why technically speaking we cant port there but it would make a compelling arguement.

Nope, that argument fails as the Guy from the twelve could port you to Meridia if you didnt want to help fight the devils.

[MysticTheurge]

Nope, that argument fails as the Guy from the twelve could port you to Meridia if you didnt want to help fight the devils.

That and devils use Greater Teleport to port around.

If they can pop halfway across the Vale, I find it hard to believe that we can't port into Meridia. Heck, I mean there's one teleporting around inside the Shroud. If anything was going to interfere with teleportability, you'd think it would be that.

[captain1z]

Nope, that argument fails as the Guy from the twelve could port you to Meridia if you didnt want to help fight the devils.

DOH!!!!! uh yeah...well I almost had u there almost



(I think if I can prove 1 of you guys wrong one day the will actually let me have my title of forum troll and a troll avatar....dare to dream still)

[Ghoste]

First of all: well thought out op, good constructive criticism.

Second: /signed

[Memnir]

On the matter of teleporting to a place you've already been... why, we have that mechanic already in place, don't we? Sure we do - the Ogre Magi in Gianthold. He'll only teleport you once you've completed the flagging quest located near the exit location.

My solution: Have an NPC associated with The Twelve who will teleport you to Meridia when you've also done all the flagging quests. This way the players who want to teleport can do so, and dropping from a Raid Group to get to the center of the Vale is no longer an annoyance. The Devs are happy, at least going by Silthe's reply, since players would need to discover/jog to Meridia in the first place and need to earn the right to teleport out. And, players who like to take in the sights can still run out as they can now.

My suggestion for the NPC assosiated with The Twelve to facilitate the Teleport would be Veheer. And don't move him very far from his position in the tent crater. As it is now, it would be a perfect place since it's so centrally located.

[Mad_Bombardier]

Nope, that argument fails as the Guy from the twelve could port you to Meridia if you didnt want to help fight the devils.

Except that he is an Augur of the Twelve and has the knowledge to get past the protective anti-teleport magics. Just like Bazbeaux can send you out of Meridia. I always assumed it was teleport prevention put on Meridia by the Twelve to keep the devils from Teleporting inside the outpost walls.

[MysticTheurge]

Except that he is an Augur of the Twelve and has the knowledge to get past the protective anti-teleport magics. Just like Bazbeaux can send you out of Meridia. I always assumed it was teleport prevention put on Meridia by the Twelve to keep the devils from Teleporting inside the outpost walls.

Which would make for great logic in giving people access to teleporting into meridia, say, with the first level of Twelve Favor.

[Mad_Bombardier]

Which would make for great logic in giving people access to teleporting into meridia, say, with the first level of Twelve Favor.

I agree. Give Geriatrus something to do. And give us something other than Eldritch Device access (which we should have anyway for finding the missing members of the Twelve) for 40 favor.

[Impaqt]

Except that he is an Augur of the Twelve and has the knowledge to get past the protective anti-teleport magics. Just like Bazbeaux can send you out of Meridia. I always assumed it was teleport prevention put on Meridia by the Twelve to keep the devils from Teleporting inside the outpost walls.

OK, thats fine... Greater Teleport Puts you Right Outside the gate...... And Since thats an instance, we'll just assume we ported tothe gate and then walked in.

next "Problem"?

[Redd]

OK, Silthe gave a well thought out answer to our comments and concerns about teleporting, and the limitations imposed on the Greater Teleport spell. I figured I'd start a new thread because I dont find his answer acceptable on multiple levels and instead of this getting lost in his 400 page bug thread, I'd bring it here.

FIrst. His Response for those of you that arent following the bug thread



As far as Public areas go, I can understand some of the difficulty. Seems to me it woulnt be immpossible to code it so it only effects people In your Party. This seems to work already inthe PvP Arenas. But Thats not my sticking Point.

Meridia. DDO has been a game of Immediate Gratification. It always has been. Sure, theres the role players, permadeathers and real casual gamers that enjoy a nice stroll.... but for the most part, we are a group of peple that like to get thigns done and move on to the next thing. Making people walk 2-3 minutes is a pretty poor attemp at making ebberon feel like a "World". Traveling to the Desert seems more worldly to me. Hey, I'm getting on a Airship for travel! Sure, its still immediate, but the Landscape is drastically changed its more open than any other areas, and it just has a feel of being somewhere else. Meridia has new Mobs, and some cool graphics, but for the most part, its More of the same... Same things we've seen in Cerulean hills, Searing Heights, Restless isles, Sorrowdusk, etc etc etc etc..... I'm n ot saying its bad by any means... Its a GREAT exploerer areas. Top Notch... but World traveller? Not really. Atraxias haven is more "Different' But alas, you stuck it way int he back of House K and provided no real incentive to go there. Some nice XP..... But Atraxias is NOT a desitation for anything..... Its just a glorified Side Quest.
If you want us to have a sense of the World, Give us more Unique locations. A Vast Underground Explorer Areas... A Frozen Tundra... A rain Forest..... Expose us to some of the other climates of Ebberon. THATS how to give us a sense of the world.. Not making us walk 2-3 minutes.

And my last point...... and heres the big one....



and now Greater teleport


There is NOTHING agaisnt pnp guidelines that prevents [Greater] Teleport from porting us to Meridia. Especially after we've been there once. It is Quite feesable that when we visit the twelve, they could easiily give us a description on whats its like and how to get there if youreally want to Role Play the Study and Familiarity with the location.

The problem is that you give, give Give, then all of a sudden you stop..... Getting to teh Titan raid was rediculous... You added the Twilight forge to the Greater teleport list..... Awesome.... We still have to run around those tunnels to do the Prereqs for the raid, but we now have a shortcut.

Taking away shortcuts does NOT make DDO feel bigger. taking away Shortcuts does not make us want to Explore more. Taking away shortcuts makes us find new ways to get around the system. (IE. /Death to port to meridia) You Constantly Underestimate the playerbase. And you constantly set presidents you later no longer follow. It gets quite frustrating.

To finish off, Please dont take anything here negatively regarding the actual explorer areas.... They are fantastic..... I love to wander around in em killing stuff..... On My Time.... Not the assembling parties time. Let people who WANT to explore Explore..... Let people who want to get to a quest, get to a quest. The 2 are not Mutually exclusive. Very Few People want to spend 5-10 minutes walking to a quest...... Catering to those people is a mistake. Seriously, Dev time is better spent elsewhere.

/signed

Well stated