fast travel / money problem solved

[TheFearlessOne]

So, I just finished the last quests today (the only thing I really have left to do is to get that 5th crystal thing). I've been trying to keep myself away from the forums to avoid any spoilers, but now that that's out of the way, I decided to join and give out my opinion.

Mostly, in this fast-travel question, I agree with sdevaney. The tough thing about traveling isn't really running from one map to the next, it's the constant stopping for meaningless battles in between. Therefore, I think the best thing here would be to have an option to "skip battles", so to say. Basically, if the creature you would be facing is "very easy" for you (or, possibly, even an additional level below that), it just moves out of the way and lets you pass. Even if it was directly blocking your path, you could still walk over it or something (I'll leave the exact mechanics of that to the developers).

Now, we could have a button in the character menu which turns the "skip battle" option on/off, or, to make it more complicated, we could have a quest to acquire that skill (it doesn't really make much sense to me to have a quest for it, but these days, we seem to have quests for everything). Additionally, we could even have an "advanced" menu where we could see which creatures we can skip and which ones we can't (it could also double as a bestiary, which would greatly improve the game IMO), and maybe turn "skip battle" on/off for individual creatures (so that when I'm lvl 100 and I'm farming for some items from a specific monster, other mobs can't come and bother me). However, this could again become too complicated.

The main issue I see with this is the "double attack" problem. Sometimes, there are several creatures blocking your path, and the only way to pass them is to attack two (or, indeed, in one specific location, even three) at once. For these situations, it would make most sense to consider those two/three mobs as one monster, and then evaluate their difficulty as a whole to see if you're allowed to pass without a fight, because sometimes, an individual creature can be very easy, but two or three at a time could pose more serious problems. I'm not sure if this would require a lot of code or if it's even possible (I don't really know that much about programming, except the very basics), but it's basically just my solution to the most obvious problem I see with my suggestion, and other solutions are, of course, welcome.

Anyways, I think skipping battles could make the long journeys a lot less time-consuming, but it wouldn't ruin the "reality" behind it like I feel the quick-teleportation ways would.

[nether]

Here's my thought... I just bed traveled from bwm to remgard to finish a quest. I know you could call that abusing game mechanics, but what's that all about? Fast travel is in the game guys, and it works well

[Sarumar]

Welcom to the forums TheFearlesOne, intresting idea.... I love to see that the weakest mobs got panicked and try to run away

[Taledus]

For the lower NPC's to detect and move out of the way would require a very complex AI system. I'm not sure this game can currently support the algolrithm required for this.

[phydeaux]

For the lower NPC's to detect and move out of the way would require a very complex AI system. I'm not sure this game can currently support the algolrithm required for this.

I haven't looked at the code for the new ai yet, but having low level mobs run away could probably be implemented through it somewhat easily, although I believe I saw a post from sdevaney earlier about it being either chase or help/pack right now... But not entirely certain there.

[TheFearlessOne]

They wouldn't really need to run away (although that would be more awesome, visually), but I guess you could either occupy the same spot as them, essentially "walking over" them, or you could just have them disappear like they were killed, only without a fight and no xp/loot awarded (running away without the need for any actual AI for it). That couldn't be that hard to code, could it? It sure doesn't sound that difficult.

[sdevaney]

For the lower NPC's to detect and move out of the way would require a very complex AI system. I'm not sure this game can currently support the algolrithm required for this.

I haven't looked at the code for the new ai yet, but having low level mobs run away could probably be implemented through it somewhat easily, although I believe I saw a post from sdevaney earlier about it being either chase or help/pack right now... But not entirely certain there.

Currently we use the mob types (insect, humanoid, ghost, etc) to determine what their behavior will be.

[TheFearlessOne]

Another idea that I had last night would also involve the "bestiary" type addition to the game.

Basically, the game would count how much you've killed every specific monster (once again, I don't know how difficult it would be to code, but it doesn't sound very complicated). Once you reach a certain fixed number of kills for that specific monster (something pretty high, let's say about 1000), you can turn the "skip battle" option on/off for that monster, basically skipping all battles with it if you wish to do so. It would also add a nice "You've killed X of [monster name]". I've always loved games with additional stats like that.

[sdevaney]

Another idea that I had last night would also involve the "bestiary" type addition to the game.

Basically, the game would count how much you've killed every specific monster (once again, I don't know how difficult it would be to code, but it doesn't sound very complicated). Once you reach a certain fixed number of kills for that specific monster (something pretty high, let's say about 1000), you can turn the "skip battle" option on/off for that monster, basically skipping all battles with it if you wish to do so. It would also add a nice "You've killed X of [monster name]". I've always loved games with additional stats like that.

The game already tracks how many of each mob you kill.

I don't like the idea of being able to just turn off battle with a mob because you have fought it a bunch of times.

I've always been a supporter of showing those additional stats that are collected somewhere.

[spooky]

I would like an option for fast travel. I'd go with the caravan idea - It makes most sense in this setting, although magic isn't really far-fetched either.

So travelling should definitely cost money, proportional to the distance travelled. There could also be the chance of encountering bandits that want to rob the caravan, again, the chance for that would increase with the distance. Fainting in such a battle might lead to the caravan driver just fleeing and leaving the player behind - he wakes up with just a little HP and maybe a status condition and minus some of his gold because the robbers took it.

Caravan travel would of course only be available from town to town - maybe only the big towns. And all quests on the way and in both cities need to have been completed.

Another thing that just occured to me - caravans are very uncomfortable und travelling in them would be tiresome. That means your HP goes down while you travel; the longer the travel, the more HP lost. So the possible travel distance is limited by your current HP. My thinking on this is the following: When I arrived in Prim and there wasn't a bed readily available, I was already low on HP and going back through the cave wasn't a very pleasing option. If there was any way of fast travel, it could be used in a situation like this to go back to an earlier city with an inn without dying and losing the exp (Well, beside the fact that there were still incomplete quests, but anyway). This would also apply for travel by magical means - after all, casting magic is exhausting and might as well cost HP.

So, travel should cost money, HP and has a certain risk (in the case of caravan travel, bandits; magic travel, ending up somewhere else entirely - with low HP, so you coudln't just travel away again).