World map travel needs some changes

[Creslin]

I was loving this game is acts 1 and 2, but then I realized in act 3 I wasn’t enjoying it as much. I think this is largely in part to how traveling on the world map works.

In acts 1 and 2, the map was relatively small, but it opens up more in act 3. It’s pretty common to have to travel for two days or so to reach a destination. And this traveling is…not fun.

It’s just watching your party token move on the map until you get a random encounter or have to rest. And both of these are also annoying.

Every random encounter consists of two loading screens, and some of them, like the merchant, aren’t even fights. So you literally are just forced to endure two loading screens for nothing.

Then the rests. You can’t just click on rest and it happens. You have to go through the entire UI, watch your party comments, and then have a loading screen. So yet more tedium.

And to make all this worse, sometimes your destination is just reagents, has an enemy too strong for you to beat, or a puzzle you can’t solve yet. So you feel like you just wasted 15 minutes of travel tedium for nothing.

I feel like at this point I spend like 75% of my time just moving around the map, or moving my crusade army around the map.

The core game here is awesome and I want to play it, but the tedious travel system keeps getting in the way.

I feel like the game could seriously benefit from fast travel to any node you have been to before. Just tell me how long it will take, and tell me how much corruption I will get from the journey, and put my party there. I don’t see the need to watch my party move down a line, manually click through the rest screen multiple times, and deal with irritating random encounters…some of which are just forced loading screens (merchant).

They could even give an option to not skip time so that you could move your crusades around and fight army battles while your party is traveling.

I feel like this is something so minor in terms of how important it is in the game, but so major in terms of how much it kills the experience.

Thoughts?

[Fluff]

ToyBox will help you.

With movement speed of the party and armies at world map.
With insta rest button without any loading screens.
WIth many other things optionally.

I wish i installed it earlier than in Act 5. It would save me probably ~20-30 hours or so.
And it's not a cheating at all when game design is bad and wastes your IRL Time.
Time >>> anything else.

[urartu]

Sometimes there are other types of encounters and you can cut down travel time significantly by building teleport circles. Map is part of exploration and rest mechanics are there as a stopgap.

It is fine as is to be honest. Maybe they can add more random story encounters and more varied shopkeepers but then skeleton shopkeeper can be configured to sell other things with dialogue.

[Creslin]

Originally posted by Tusk_Luv:

ToyBox will help you.

With movement speed of the party and armies at world map.
With insta rest button without any loading screens.
WIth many other things optionally.

I wish i installed it earlier than in Act 5. It would save me probably ~20-30 hours or so.
And it's not a cheating at all when game design is bad and wastes your IRL Time.
Time >>> anything else.

Great tip!

[Izuzul]

you can upgrade the forts/settlements you capture from demons. build a few up and you get an option to upgrade from outpost to bastion in your crusade management. once upgraded you can build a teleportation circle. you should also build one in drezden so you can just port back to town after questing.

[ColonoscoPete]

Random encounters and resting are part of the game, that's just how it is.

It is dumb that you can't choose to ignore the merchant like you could in Kingmaker. It even asks if you want to ignore him, but then doesn't actually give you a choice. Which is beyond stupid.

You can skip the resting comments with spacebar.

The destinations literally tell you if they're just ingredients, when you hover over them.

Build teleportation circles.