Shark's suggestions of what should be changed

sharkinajar

@Zool Should be pretty quick to set up an ox-pulled cart that takes people back and forth for 50g or something, no?

Wulfric

+1, I pretty much agree with everything Shark has written down.

I have a few additions too.

As for the fast travel:
I would suggest making an item like "Caravan Ticket" that can be purchased from a Ravens prestige store. (with a small appearance of 1x1, maybe like the alchemy recipe cards)
A store should be available both in Tilverton and somewhere in Arabel (Murdered Manticore is perfectly fine). I would suggest a price of 15 prestige points / item.
I would place down a caravan right after you arrive in the Desert from the Moonsea Ride (some nice placeables) where you can talk to the Caravan Master or some other NPC and you can ask them to get you to somewhere near Tilverton. The destination should be somewhere in the middle of the last area before Tilverton so you still have a chance to meet with some bandits, but it's not a murderous travel anymore.
At the other end, there is a nice caravan texture too, and the Caravan Master NPC that can take you back.
The dialog options can be pretty simple, and the option where the Caravan Master agrees to take you consumes one of your Caravan Tickets and ports you to the other waypoint. Should be a really simple thing to do.

EDIT: of course the dialog can be extended and tweaked to give players a challenge. Maybe a small "quest" like you can bring them bandit heads and be awarded a ticket. Bandits could drop heads when killed and you can take them to the Caravan Master and they reward you with a ticket for 5 heads and they thank you because you helped them clear the route and made their journey safer

Wulfric

As for class balancing:
Before I made Zenrin, I actually wanted to roll a monk. Tried a human monk, messed around here and there, but frankly it was unplayable. I almost died on every starter quest, I had to continuously chug potions. Healing was fine, because the Rat quest (and only that) gave me lots of healing potions, but others were a mess. I always walked around with less than 100 gold, because I simply couldn't survive without the ridiculously expensive potions compared to quest rewards.
Monks (dunno if pure only, I'd say 80%-ish monk) really need a WAY cheaper store for themselves to be able to survive. They need HP too, +1/lvl, monks really have to divide their abilities, at least they don't have to invest that much in CON.
TLDR: monks are pretty much unplayable, they need immediate fix.

Having been playing a rogue, its very squishy and being alone is a death sentence. Rogues work really well in groups, but for me (in EU) it's not always an option. If player counts are low, we need to let players to explore and do stuff alone. Most classes are able to do that just fine, but rogue sucks with that. I have no real damage output if it's not sneak attack. I have to chug crazy amounts of potions to just survive some exploring or quests and still most of the server is cut off. (Some potions can be crafted easily so that's a help)
Yes, rogues should stealth through everything, and that's perfectly fine, but then we need good rogue gear that gives a good amount of bonuses to stealth (hide, move silently). Make some OUB Rogue items that give something decent to that. Since I don't know what the mobs' listen and spot bonuses are I leave that to the team to come up with a reasonable number. Otherwise if you fail a roll or a mob rolls better, you are simply dead. Period. And you need just one failed roll...

That's it for now, I may have some more thoughts later.

Cadiz

@Wulfric
this caravan thing could actually be expanded into a quest - traverse a single map (rather than 2 large ones) after speaking to the npc (just outside tilverton or at the strrt of the moonsea ride where the last npcs are) so that you still have to walk some of the distance but it is a level appropriate encounter - but a guaranteed one.

this ought to help lowbies to move, but would probably be detrimental to higher levels as a level appropriate encounter is worse than the normal spawns on the road (or could be deliberately made that way anyway!)

O-louth

Makes sense. Caravan city equals caravan quests.

Zool

@sharkinajar said in Shark's suggestions of what should be changed:

@Zool Should be pretty quick to set up an ox-pulled cart that takes people back and forth for 50g or something, no?

Yes... but like I said, that's not what we want.

@Zool said in Upcoming features:

Travel between Arabel and Tilverton

We are painfully aware of the vast amount of travel between Arabel and Tilverton, and as those two areas are a lot more focused now due to the Tilverton Ravens and other things, we want to address this, as the team see's it as a design issue.

We do not want to remove any areas.
We do not want the distance to be unrepresented in game entirely.
We do not want to remove the chance for player/player banditry between these two places. (no portals or other instant travel methods then)

Zool

Also...

So, with the above in our minds, we're currently working on a way to resolve the design issue.

We have a couple of ideas and we're still deciding on the final implementation.

The two main ideas we are considering are:

1

Being able to get a "caravan" from the area just outside the outskirts, which takes you to the area in the middle between Tilverton and Arabel. You can then continue on foot, and get a separate caravan after traversing the rest of the area.

This would mean you have to travel 2 areas on foot (which bandits have access to), and utilises assets already in place - it does mean we'd have to consider various things in those areas however, and couldn't add anything "unique" as such, to the travel.

2

Being able to take the trade route (hitch on a caravan) - You would arrive in one of two new areas (which bandits could also enter) after having gotten off the caravan. You must then traverse those areas, and at the end come out close to your final destination. This allows unique things to be done in these trade route areas. Does not interfere with current areas, but does require creating new assets.

Both ideas should work, and would allow the choice of a player to either take the long road, and go adventuring in the areas between the two locations, or, take the fast route to simply travel between the two.

Zool

It just doesn't get done instantly.

Again though, for the sake of transparency, I'll be 100% honest.

This system is fucking boring to make and while it really should have been the first thing I did after release (and was meant to be done before) -it's boring as fuck to make-

I don't enjoy making boring things.
I have interesting things in my life.

That's why it's not done yet, because it was way more interesting to the make the Precept Mental suppressants, or the Greywatch bone breakers.

Acemvi

Given the overbearing workload as-is, I'm more in favor of option 1 rather than 2, especially if the caravan drops you off somewhere in Griffon Hill (makes sense as there's a small outpost there anyway).

I think reusing existing assets in a way that makes sense is always a plus.

Puffy

Suggestions and feedback reviewed, with changes implemented.