Travel is too slow.

[Ketrai]

The map is slow to traverse. You can't see in the fog of war, making it harder to traverse. Every tile is near identical. And your character slowly walks through them with no option to speed it up. In fact, swimming is faster than walking places.

Solution?
Remove the fog of war from random tiles. Let people click the other end of the map to move swiftly.

Add an option to speed up the walking animation. (step delay)

Rework the travel system entirely. In games like fallout I&II, you travel on the overmap, with the occasional random encounter. Which then puts you in a small map tile. Now, why not something similar without entirely eliminating having to walk across map tiles?

Let players pick a route to their destination. Either fast (through the forest/wilds) or slow (focusing on roads). Depending on the amount of overmap tiles you have to cross, you'll have to walk through a random amount of tiles part of your route. You can always still choose to enter any tile, and points of interests will be marked when you pass over them.

Make the maps SMALLER. Too empty to be filled with a lot of nothing.

From what I can tell the devs want to add a caravan system to do this instead? I feel like whilst it could be an option, it might detract when a system with random encounters can offer more engagement. It also likely won't solve the issue that walking through ten tiles to a dungeon takes forever in realtime hours.

[|Revenge|]

The map being big and not entirely filled is intended, as this update was meant to be more a foundation for others to come than anything Else.

The Caravan system Will be more useful once other cities are implemented, i believe, that's why they don't do It in any other way. It makes Sense to enter a caravan with other people ir you want to travel large distences, and as a mercenary you will probably be hired as a guard. Now that i think about It, this game Will be quite big once It is done.

With that Said, travel can be monotonous, there are ways to speed the game up by 2 or more times with outside apps. Just be careful not to die because you took one to many steps.

[Ketrai]

Originally posted by |Revenge|:

The map being big and not entirely filled is intended, as this update was meant to be more a foundation for others to come than anything Else.

The Caravan system Will be more useful once other cities are implemented, i believe, that's why they don't do It in any other way. It makes Sense to enter a caravan with other people ir you want to travel large distences, and as a mercenary you will probably be hired as a guard. Now that i think about It, this game Will be quite big once It is done.

With that Said, travel can be monotonous, there are ways to speed the game up by 2 or more times with outside apps. Just be careful not to die because you took one to many steps.

Don't get me wrong. The travel is just as bad at release as it is now. In a game like CDDA (catalysm, dark days ahead) you travel just the same. Tile by tile across a huge map. But you have systems to speed it up (animation/delay) and get warned as soon as an enemy walks into view. It's that core I'd like to speed up, and preferably without outside apps, feels like I'm emulating pokemon and setting the gamespeed to 2x like that.

For the caravan system, If it's done like the original fallout games, or something like atom RPG. No complaints there. It's a fun, relatively repeatable job system.

[Maloney]

Other Options:
Village elders sell 'maps' again but change them to work like a fast travel/town portal consumable.

Verren Taxi to places already visited.

Verren Taxi waiting for you outside a quest dungeon when you clear it to save the walk home at least.

[Thew]

Yeah, I agree in general. Travel could use some help to make it more interesting and less of a time sink. But I'm not a big fan of fast travel most of the time, because it makes the world feel much smaller and less immersive.

I do like your idea about having a button to toggle the game speed between normal and some kind of fast mode. This has been done very well in many games at this point, and would be totally optional. The question is, how feasible would this be? Is the speed of everything hard coded or is there a global timescale that could be manipulated? Does the enemy AI routine run during one frame or is it spread out?

I think an optional speed boost, along with a more filled-out world and the caravan system would be enough to make travel in the game feel much better.

[Owlie]

I definitely agree to lots of the point you made. Except for the fog of war reveal, you already suggested for CCDA like autotravel, why ask for that? Plus you can already click to walk on unrevealed portion of the map and character will autopath over obstacles. And why make the map smaller? I'm not even going to reason against why it's the worst suggestion i've seen so far

I agree about encounter, The issue I see had NEVER been about travel time, it's more about lack of variation in things you could encounter. It's all bandit and snakes, then even more bandit and snakes. Travel feels boring after some times. Thank god podcasts exist, otherwise I would stop playing this game a long time ago.
Random travel encounter and more enemy type that appear on the road could be used to spice things up so Yeah, I do like that suggestion despite of me disagreeing with many of your posts.

Even came up with examples:
>Hunting group of ghouls, harpy, or crawler due to tile proximity from their nest, clearing their place would become a strategic choice and you can realistically earn reputation and money form doing so
>Different danger that appear between night and day like roaming undead and battlefield looters.
>A rogue knight or Mage's apprentice asking you to have a duel
>Merchant with a broken cart, asking for your time to help them fix their wheel for extra pocket cash and small rep gain
>Bandit robbery in progress and you get the choice to help, wait it out, or even pick the side of the brigands
Probably a lot more that I can come up with.

[Og-the-Trog]

I think "boring travel time" isn't something to be eliminated. Travel is/was a big part of adventure, and actually having that in the game is a big immersion gain for me. No hand-waving it away for the sake of excitement-addled gamers, if that old fort is a day and a half hike into the boonies we just have to pack with that in-mind.

Even still...I'd prefer an option to speed-up movement over the current solution of throwing bandits at the player every other tile for "excitement". There is too much human-based combat now, I much preferred the quieter woods where the main threat was wildlife and ambushes were few and far between.

[Ardjun]

Travelling through the countryside can be fun for the first 4 hours, then it just becomes boring and tedious. With the addition of CoG it's simply unbearable. From my side i'm waiting until this is fixed, there's no much sense playing the game until then.

[Lord Aeducan]

I know it will never be a thing but a rideable mount would be rad. We already have stables and horseshoes in the game so horse maintenance mechanics are already implemented, They just need to add riding animations and a whole horse combat skill tree lol.

[Berserkr]

I'm not completely against a way to travel faster back through your already cleared fog of war to get back home, I mean if you take the exact same way back nothing is going to happen to you at all, you already cleared it out on the way there, going back should be faster, honestly I would still love to see a key remapping for the hold down middle mouse/scroll wheel so you can scroll the map tile with the arrow keys vs holding down and dragging.

[Owlie]

Originally posted by Og-the-Trog:

I think "boring travel time" isn't something to be eliminated. Travel is/was a big part of adventure, and actually having that in the game is a big immersion gain for me. No hand-waving it away for the sake of excitement-addled gamers, if that old fort is a day and a half hike into the boonies we just have to pack with that in-mind.

I'm leaning very heavily on this. OP is kinda suggesting the removal of travel because it's boring. I think the better solution is to make travelling not boring rather than removing it entirely by adding fast travel on top of making the map smaller.

[Ketrai]

Originally posted by Thew:

I do like your idea about having a button to toggle the game speed between normal and some kind of fast mode. This has been done very well in many games at this point, and would be totally optional. The question is, how feasible would this be? Is the speed of everything hard coded or is there a global timescale that could be manipulated? Does the enemy AI routine run during one frame or is it spread out?

I think an optional speed boost, along with a more filled-out world and the caravan system would be enough to make travel in the game feel much better.

This should be completely possible. In the current build, you already go faster whilst swimming and slower whilst wading. Proof of concept the walking speed isn't hard coded.

[Ketrai]

Originally posted by Owlie:

Originally posted by Og-the-Trog:

I think "boring travel time" isn't something to be eliminated. Travel is/was a big part of adventure, and actually having that in the game is a big immersion gain for me. No hand-waving it away for the sake of excitement-addled gamers, if that old fort is a day and a half hike into the boonies we just have to pack with that in-mind.

I'm leaning very heavily on this. OP is kinda suggesting the removal of travel because it's boring. I think the better solution is to make travelling not boring rather than removing it entirely by adding fast travel on top of making the map smaller.

I'm not suggesting the removal of travel. Merely softening it so you don't have to physically walk through every tile. Example. Instead of making a ten tile journey take 10 different forest/field maps. Make it take a third, rounded down/up. So 3-4 map tiles. This preserves the pretty maps and sense of journey without it being tedious. Even better? Add game options to configure it. So people who think a third is too short can always opt for more maps per trip.

[Ketrai]

Originally posted by Owlie:

I definitely agree to lots of the point you made. Except for the fog of war reveal, you already suggested for CCDA like autotravel, why ask for that? Plus you can already click to walk on unrevealed portion of the map and character will autopath over obstacles. And why make the map smaller? I'm not even going to reason against why it's the worst suggestion i've seen so far

To clarify. It's a bit hard to properly use terms for this. But I don't mean the overmap here. I mean the individual forest and road maps for example. The ones you walk through, fight enemies in, and pick up berries. I would look into making those smaller. They're absolutely huge.

[brown29knight]

Originally posted by Owlie:

Originally posted by Og-the-Trog:

I think "boring travel time" isn't something to be eliminated. Travel is/was a big part of adventure, and actually having that in the game is a big immersion gain for me. No hand-waving it away for the sake of excitement-addled gamers, if that old fort is a day and a half hike into the boonies we just have to pack with that in-mind.

I'm leaning very heavily on this. OP is kinda suggesting the removal of travel because it's boring. I think the better solution is to make travelling not boring rather than removing it entirely by adding fast travel on top of making the map smaller.

I agree with this. What I believe is needed is more variety in encounters, shorter maximum distances (in map tiles) to contract dungeons (max say, 7 tiles) and a return to both paper maps, and higher respawn rates, so that the way back to town from the dungeon is as interesting (and deadly) as the way to the dungeon was. The constant pairs of foes on roads is repetitive and when you get to level 6-7 the mancatcher/dog combo that pulls 13 foes down on you at once is just annoying. With more variety of encounters, the trip will be as interesting as the destination, and the trip there and back being difficult and interesting is part of what has made Stoneshard so awesome in the past.

[Leeroy]

- Considering fog of war, I dont see it as an issue. At each tile you know if there's anything interesting based on a map, so you dont have to full clear every tile, only those that have point of interest, or a random dungeon (i think it also registers on the map when you enter the tile even before it is discovered).
- Completely agree on animation speed. This is the case where "immersive" becomes tedious after the first run to the dungeon, it completely kills enjoyment of the game, at least it totally doesn't satisfy my autism. And even if the whole map is covered in some form of quest/dungeon locations in the future, having an option to speed up travel for those couple of empty tiles in between would be nice.
- Considering fast travel, do you mean fast travel as in skip the travel and simulate it, and only return player to the map tile if an encounter if generated, OR pointing a destination, and character traveling to it as an "autopilot", like removing the constant clicking at the edge of the map, but still looking at your character traveling through each map tile?
The second option is more to my liking, cause it doesn't eliminate all possible small dangers, like encountering a snake, a bandit, wild animals, swimming and rain (which can damage your armor). This is cool, but doesn't seem like a feature you can just code in overnight. It needs global map pathing algorithm, two of those, for road and off-road travel, local map pathing (for on-road only), ability for the game to resume auto-travel upon loading the next local map, and user interface. These may seem as an easy features, but I suspect that some of those may not even be supported by the current engine and require a significant rework. So, I'd not count on autotravel of this type to be added anytime soon.
- I dont see individual map tiles as an issue, if the map is more populated (which should be the case as the content is added), and distance to dungeons is reduced, as suggested above (but my personal preference is 5 tiles away from the town maximum), with more spots for caravan to travel to, and increased animation speed, then travel should not be as boring.