Faster travel in open world - is it on the roadmap

[lammaer]

I'm really interested in the open world map gameplay (thas what I like), but doing missions in that is epic painful and boring due to the was distances between my base and the target areas. Even having mounts, it takes plenty of time to trael, especially when there is a multi stage mission.

Maybe just generatning the missions with closer location to the base, or the possibility to build outposts between the maps and fast travel betwen them....

Anyone knows if the devs have something in their bag to address that, or even realised this "issue" (maybe its just me and the community is fine with it)?

[Remedial Tester]

Maybe the launch/landing pad, that's in been in the 'future content' part of the changelog. MIGHT do something about it, but I wouldn't hedge my bets on it.

I think they know, and it's intentional (and has to do with how the missions were originally made/designed vs today). But since mounts weren't always a thing. I want to say they don't want it to be too long of walk, well ride nowadays.

[Pantheria]

This is why I now use mods, JimK has an awesome teleport pad. So once I build more homesteads in different regions I can simply teleport to them. Vital when once I have them all established to be able to move fast between them to be able to check on all the animals and that they have adequate food and water. Gives me time to explore where and build without the travel which can be interrupted by storms or angry animals.

[Rekal]

Fast travel hasn't been on any road map I've seen or hinted in any of the updates. What you're experiencing is one of the downsides of Open World. Start the operation, run run run with the best gear so nothing can randomly challenge you on the way, complete the objective, run run run back to start next one.

If you played in mission mode things wouldn't seem so boring. Mission mode would be start the mission in a new location every time closer to the objectives, gather resources from a place you've never/rarely stopped at before while surviving the critters who can be a challenge early on with limited drop gear, build a temporary base in a new location, craft up the gear your skill level needs to complete the objective - leave quickly and rely on our skill with inferior gear, or take your time to build up the best gear again - run to complete the objectives, optionally scan for and collect the exotics, call in your drop ship to leave - no running back home required.

You end up doing a larger variety of things in Mission mode from start to finish so it doesn't seem like you're playing a walking simulator. Since there's nowhere you've really already been to setup on the missions there's no point to the fast travel idea.

[Eventide]

They know Open World is a popular mode. One of the developers has written about experimenting with a track-and-train system, as a side project. (Don't hold breath, the idea might not have left the pencil-on-napkin stage.) I shudder to think about the amount of metal it would take to lay track across Olympus - yet it would be perfectly in keeping with the rest of the game's hardcore balance for it to take metric tons ;)

From recent Reddit AMA:
https://old.reddit.com/r/SurvivalGaming/comments/1glfq2s/developer_ama_rocketwerkz_dean_halls_studio_who/lvtxz22/

Originally posted by thedeanhall | CEO | RocketWerkz:

We actually did a full development on vehicles. Including a really cool component system that worked great with our orbital meta unlock tree and the missions.

Unfortunately, it did not work well with the dreaded UE-stutter being made much worse. Additionally, it just wasn't fun. We like to play our features extensively and the vehicles were just universally found to not be a good experience.

We iterated on options, and ended up finding tamable mounts to be the better option, at least for now.

Originally posted by RW_Exctoris | Developer | RocketWerkz:

There was an intention to add vehicles early on and we did a lot of prototyping and it really didn't work the way we wanted and didn't feel great.

We realized that we would have to completely redo the maps to make them work correctly with specific paths built in mind and that didn't really work with what we wanted Icarus to be at the beginning, a new tough world.

We transitioned to mounts which we found filled the gap we wanted to fill in a more natural way and solves the logistics issues we wanted to have without being overpowered.

Originally posted by RW_Exctoris | Developer | RocketWerkz:

The answer here is maybe, in general there have been ue4 performance issues with moving across the map at incredible speed, but also the terrain is not built for it.

I mentioned in an above comment that vehicles didn't feel great when we did prototype and test them in the past.

When I have some time we might try some kind of train, where you can build tracks to move around. Nothing confirmed yet but will be cool to at least prototype it.

[lammaer]

I really appreciate your insight guys.

While the vehicles could be interesting, they wouldn't solve my issue (except if they are flyers :D )

I could really imagine some simple solution, the possibility to launch the pod, and get it landed on some predefined spots what was at least visited once....
Or maybe the launchpad....

The mod I will take a look, Im not against it if its not cheating and reasonably "priced" to build :)

[Trik]

Originally posted by lammaer:

I'm really interested in the open world map gameplay (thas what I like), but doing missions in that is epic painful and boring due to the was distances between my base and the target areas. Even having mounts, it takes plenty of time to trael, especially when there is a multi stage mission.

Maybe just generatning the missions with closer location to the base, or the possibility to build outposts between the maps and fast travel betwen them....

Anyone knows if the devs have something in their bag to address that, or even realised this "issue" (maybe its just me and the community is fine with it)?

where do you finde this kind of mission all misions is max 1h most is done in 15min

[lammaer]

if the mission is on the other side of the map.... :)

[william_es]

The original concept art for the game showed a pretty cool skeletonized folding backpack atv. A control stalk folded up, and wheels/struts folded down. The whole thing fit in the large G slot space.

But it never made it into the game, probably for the reasons that eventide pointed out from older posts by the devs.

Ultimately the best source I've found is a combination of talents, gear, armor, and modules that simply lets you're character run like a gazelle. If you combine it with the inaris "neves" pickaxe which gives -40% overburdened weight penalty, I can run at nearly full speed while GROSSLY overloaded.

I am on the 2nd null sector mission, and currently carrying 542.1 over 181 weight. And still running at nearly full speed. I ran across the grasslands, the west/east lava zone, and the entire north/south lava zone in about 2000 of the 14000+ timer for the mission. All while nearly overloaded three times my normal weight limit, and without having to worry about a mount getting killed.

[Rekal]

Originally posted by Trik:

where do you finde this kind of mission all misions is max 1h most is done in 15min

In the C0NT4CT Device you have two options. The SMPL3 Missions which are probably the ones you're referring to. Short ~15 minute affairs that are generally just time wasters.

There's another tab on the C0NT4CT Device that brings you to Operations. Operations are the full missions you can chose from mission mode, but made playable on your Open World map.

The missions were translated almost straight over to Operations and that includes locations. Which is the OPs issue - the Operations can send you all over the map regardless of where you base is positioned. If you build your base in an out of the way area you have a lot of trekking to do to get to the objectives.

[lammaer]

Originally posted by zombygunner:

It sounds fun sure but i think it would get old fast because there are not many poi's or things to look at making the fast travel only useful for getting iron and things like that.

Thats a nice obervation, thats another topic for me. I also feel the map (at least the standard where I started to play) is pretty bland, after 2 mins in a biome it seems I saw everything. Same with caves, it quickly lost its joy to find and explore them...


So exploration doest seem to be a big deal here, the main gameplay is rather about climbing the tech tree and unlock more and more gadgets to play with.

[lammaer]

Originally posted by william_es:

.... If you combine it with the inaris "neves" pickaxe which gives -40% overburdened weight penalty, I can run at nearly full speed while GROSSLY overloaded....

Dont know if it is Open world specific, but the mission rewards are pretty small, so it take ages to unlock stuff in the "space shop". Actually this tied to my original problem: missions in open world takes lot of time with little return.

I'm not unfamiliar with grind (spent like 5000 hours in Ark as a farmer/industrialist), so its not because im impatient :)

[Remedial Tester]

Generally speaking, and in the context of the mission style of gameplay (Still have to sort of, do this in open world). You're meant to spend the extra time after completing a mission, mining exotics.

This is a rough run down of how it's originally went. You get contracted to X thing, and you have Y amount of time before some extreme storm wipes the map. While you are paid in Ren for the job. You happen to be, orbiting the only place known to mankind to contain deposits of a new exotic material. And since no corporate or government entities that want to be liable for the people mining said exotics, so it's up to you. To do it yourself, to get rich, or die trying.

[Rekal]

Originally posted by lammaer:

Dont know if it is Open world specific, but the mission rewards are pretty small, so it take ages to unlock stuff in the "space shop". Actually this tied to my original problem: missions in open world takes lot of time with little return.

I'm not unfamiliar with grind (spent like 5000 hours in Ark as a farmer/industrialist), so its not because im impatient :)

This is another downside of Open World. There's no teaching moment on what you're here on the planet for - to make money collecting exotics. It's technically in an Operation but only becomes available after you complete a few others.

If you don't get that far into the Operations or pass them off as a waste of time you never find out about Exotic Extraction unless you pour through the tech menu and read all the flavor text.

You can start to collect Exotics this way as soon as you reach biofuel level tech and it is the fastest repeatable way to accumulate wealth staying exclusively in Open World. Here's a guide on topic: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3121617137

[lammaer]

Many thanks mate, so far I just found 1-2 exotic nodes in the caves and got some limitied amounts from assignments. I asn't really familiar with this extracting...