Quote: Original post by Ysaneya
Travelling is the number #1 reason i stopped playing Morrowind.

This I'm sorry to hear. It unfortunately gets worse with Solsteim in the Bloodmoon add on, and there are parts of Tribunal's underground city which are just mindless backtracking.

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It sort of improved when i got the teleport/recall spell, but as the AP said, the fauna is so boring/repetitive and always agressive, that not only it takes time to walk to somewhere, but you are also slowed down by creatures you've seen 100x times and that you can instant-kill, except that you are forced to regen/sleep regularly.

And you could only recall to one place, rather than a list of places.

You see, this is the problem when games become more like real-life. IRL, there's alot of boring stuff between you and what you want to do. If you want to simply get bread, you've got to go outside, get into your car or wait for a bus, search through the store, stand in line, etc., etc.

Because open-ended games don't set the start position like mission-based games do, this is a small problem that multiplies the longer you play the game.

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I would have prefered a system ala Daggerfall - a unique map, you click on a "known" location, and you're there. Time is elapsed at the same rate you would have needed to travel on feet.

Would you care if there was some sort of story or game world element that wouldn't make that make sense? If the city were under siege, or the roads choked with brigands, which would be more important: immersion, or convenience?

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Why is there no horse in Morrowind ?

Good question. They added pack animals, but you can't ride them and they simply hold extra inventory.

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Guilds travelling is ok, but even in the main city (forgot its name) it takes ages to go from one neighboorhood to another..

Vivec was awesome the first many times I explored it, but when I had to start doing shuttle missions between cantons, that's when I really started getting frustrated and doing things like jumping off the third level to the first

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Walking is rather slow in Morrowind, i know the skill can improve in time but still.. *cry*

It doesn't improve THAT much, even when jumping around all over the place. Sorry, best save up cash for recall scrolls.

Quote: Original post by Wavinator
There was a medieval RPG that actually did this, but I can't remember the name. You could zip to any town you'd traveled to, but I believe you could only go on the roads.

Several games have implemented it. The addition I'd like to see is when people tell you how to get somewhere, it should be just as good as actually visiting the place.

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Hmmm... I guess the only way for the game to tell if you weren't lost would be if you were on a path.

Not neccessarily...if you keep track of where the person has traveled [ala the local map in Morrowind], noting that the player is in the middle of nowhere shouldn't be too difficult. Especially when you consider that the local map doesn't fill in when you're fighting in Morrowind...if you spend a lot of time running from opponents [as I did at the time], there won't be a connection between where you are, and where you came from. So you must be lost.

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What do you lose by allowing the player to skip over the graphic luster and travel just by minimap, even when lost? Isn't it their loss if they choose to summarize the map, miss out on the beauty, and be dropped back into the normal game because they used this mode rather than scouting the horizon?

I look at it like cheating. If you're lost, there's a good chance you won't survive to reach humanity. If you can just click a button and be at your destination, then there's no punishment for getting lost. If you're strong enough that getting lost is no big deal, then you probably aren't lost in the first place, so it won't affect you in the slightest.

Note that I never got strong at Morrowind. I got strong enough that ridge racers were no longer a threat unless they got a lucky blight on me. But I've never had a character above level 13 or so. So maybe getting hopelessly lost happens just as often later in the game as it does early in the game.

CM

Quote: Original post by Wysardry
The easiest way to implement a 3D map like that would be to use the existing in-game graphics/movement routines and move the camera viewpoint.

In principle, I like the idea, but you'll have level of detail slowdowns, as you'll see if you make a ring of constant levitation and keep flying up. Depending on your machine, the game may slow down substantially since you've added so much for it to draw.

But you'd still have to speed the character up or something, because moving slow in first person is just as bad as moving slow in a bird's eye view. The rate of movement needs to change, and that's what a quick movement map summarizes.

Quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
Personally when it comes to country maps in games, I much prefer an actual map layout. Perhaps a little more colorful with mountain ranges and valleys drawn in and city icons instead of dots, as long is its all 2d. Perhaps with a contour map overlay if I have to make complex movement plans.

Arcanum's map is a bit like this. It does make you really feel that you're moving by map.

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But What I would really like to see is silent hills map approach to the country map. With the game drawing in points of interest of and importantance. If you find a mountain pass that lets cut through a mountain range instead of walking around, it would be nice to see a little green line representing that pass so I can use it whenever I need to.

I really like this idea. What did that game do, though, if you had multiple points of interest near each other? I can imagine some icon crowding.

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If I have reports of enemy troop movements, I'd like to see little red icon representing the troops of that faction at their last known posistion and arrow showing their last known heading. To take it further if it was strategy game ideally I'd prefer to be able to see to all sightings of the enemy on the map so, I can attempt to deduce their plans and movements, which may lead me to an enemy base.

YES! At a simplified level, this is more like Civilization, but with the ability to zoom into a 3D mode. Now, it would be extra work to put together the icons for the map and logic for their movement, but it would be another way of making you think the world is much, much larger than you are.

You could show this for enemies and allies, and get a view of where battles were taking place so that you could avoid them, or pitch in, or scavenge. That is, if it were a dynamic, changing world.

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Although I relize I may have gone off on a tanget at the end their... oh well.

:P Well, since I'm working on a Role-Playing Empire Game, I did have an ulterior motive.

Quote: Original post by Run_The_Shadows
I disagree. Part of Morrowind's draw was that there WAS this huge world that you could wander through. As far as 'quick travel' why bother?

Welp, I think because by the time you've explored the land thoroughly, you're into doing the missions and following the storyline. At that point, you want to accelerate what happens next. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the bleak wastes of Solsteim up north of Vvardenfell, where you're trudging through countless snowscapes that look the same after awhile.

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Most of the major cities had either Silt Strider ports or teleportation. Any place that didn't wasn't too far away.

Sorry, I've got to disagree here. Just making your way through Vivec or Ebonheart (especially if you were just passing through on your way to the Mournhold teleporter in Tribunal) took as much as 10 minutes. Getting up to the camps in the northeast could take even longer, especially on the Nerevarine missions where you have to shuttle back and forth proving yourself.

Now, if you had something to DO, that would be fine. And in the beginning, you do: You look at the beautiful scenery, you sneak past or attack monsters, and you explore. But it's the missions where I think it becomes so much worse. And I think, rightly or wrongly, it gets compounded by the natural impatience you have when you're just trying to get to a place. ("Are we there yet? Are we there yet?")

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Morrowind's travel scheme was just fine. Running around was, for the most part, very optional.

Did you play Bloodmoon and Tribunal? No silt striders in those two places, and while both aren't as big as all of Vvardenfell, they're all pretty freakin' huge.

I think this is also probably a problem of higher level characters. Lower level characters are running from everything from rats to Dremora Lords. Since I can now kill a Golden Saint in one hit, I notice it more.

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But that's my two cents on the matter.

Good to get some loyal opposition to liven up the discussion. ;)

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Now if you're talking about a world larger than Morrowind's, that's another matter. The level of detail and amount of interesting spots in Morrowind is what made running around worth it at all. If you were in a hurry, you could just teleport/silt strider to wherever you needed to go. If you just wanted to wander around, that was also available. However, wandering around left you with tons and tons of interesting caves and other stuff to see and do.

Consider, though, just for a moment, a world that's 10x the size of Vvardenfell with no corresponding loss of interactivity. There'd be a boatload of caves, crypts and little hidden enclaves. But after awhile, even THAT becomes repetitive, because you're not really surprised. You know caves are going to likely have brigands, miners, monsters or bad mages. You know that crypts are going to have monsters, or more rarely mission specific characters running around. After awhile, with a limited set to start with, there are only so many variations on a single theme.

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Most worlds aren't that interesting, for a more barren world I'd suggest looking at something more like Arcanum. A valid comparison because it also allowed you to trudge across the landscape by hand(albeit at a horribly slow rate) or simply 'quick travel' by setting waypoints that your characters would directly to, occasionally being interrupted for random events.

Right, I liked this about Arcanum. We're probably saying the same thing: Give us a mechanism to get to the good stuff faster.

Quote: Original post by Conner McCloud

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What do you lose by allowing the player to skip over the graphic luster and travel just by minimap, even when lost? Isn't it their loss if they choose to summarize the map, miss out on the beauty, and be dropped back into the normal game because they used this mode rather than scouting the horizon?

I look at it like cheating. If you're lost, there's a good chance you won't survive to reach humanity. If you can just click a button and be at your destination, then there's no punishment for getting lost. If you're strong enough that getting lost is no big deal, then you probably aren't lost in the first place, so it won't affect you in the slightest.

Well, actually, they give you a cheat even when you're lost via Divine or Almsivi's Intervention. Pushing a button would be like having a built-in Intervention.

But let's say you've got an option to travel to those places where you've been. Even when you're lost, you can scroll the map around and see the general direction of a major town, like Balmora. Even if the quick travel button oriented you (something you can quickly do yourself) and went by straightest line and that line went through more unknown territory, that doesn't protect you from getting into it with even more dangerous monsters. And isn't it only the monsters that make getting lost any kind of a challenge? If you took them all away, getting lost would be boring.

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Note that I never got strong at Morrowind. I got strong enough that ridge racers were no longer a threat unless they got a lucky blight on me. But I've never had a character above level 13 or so. So maybe getting hopelessly lost happens just as often later in the game as it does early in the game.

Unfortunately, in Solsteim and the underground warrens of Mournhold, it's just as possible at level 39, which I am, as level 13.