Travel is gonna become boring if you have to travel the same road multiple times in the course of the game even if you have a bunch of cool stuff along that road. Eventually, I won’t give a shit about that stuff since I’ve seen it a million times. So I would hope there is still some kind of fast travel to go between places I have already been if the world is super big. Otherwise it’s just gonna feel like you’re padding the game for time to inflate a 10 hour story to take 40 hours to finish.
I think the better way to help fix this issue is random encounters, spawns, and a world that changes as the game moves along.
Moving along the same road can be made interesting if different things are happening every so often as you come through. New friendly encounters, new fights with different enemies, maybe randomly spawning treasure or scripted puzzle sequences that can appear dynamically around the whole world. Add to that a world that becomes modified by story events, maybe that road gets blocked and a different passage opens up that takes you to the same end destination, but with a new path and things to explore.
It’s not an unsolvable problem, but it is something that goes by the wayside often.
One thing to consider too is scheduled events. Imagine a couple towns get together and throw a fair along a route that connects them, and you get to see celebrations and games and vendors who might sell trinkets that are hard to track down otherwise. Perhaps the local monarch goes on a hunt with the massive party of servants and knights that might entail, with different practices for different cultures. A band of cultists clears an area for several days leading up to their yearly ritual. It’s migration season for a certain species of animal/monster. There are so many possibilities!
Even just vendors passing through can be made more interesting. Do they carry their wares via backpack or cart? Are they being attacked by bandits? Wild animals? Are they trying to smuggle goods or services somewhere?
It all has to be programmed of course, which is the main holdup on what makes it so hard to flesh out those parts of the world.
I do also see weight in the idea that, past a certain point, traveling is just boring, especially if the only thing of importance is the Main Story Quest. Travel is also often boring in real life too but we can tune it out, or find little ways to pass the time and entertain ourselves during the more mundane moments. We’re not frequently afforded that luxury in games. When you’re playing a game and dealing with the downtime going from point A to B, often there is literally nothing to do except hold down the movement keys and deal with the occasional path change/obstacle.
The point of games is to be engaging, and if there’s nothing to do while traveling but look at the scenery and surroundings it will eventually get boring. Even if the travel gets interrupted occasionally for an encounter, I think it’s arguable to say that the content is literally not travel anymore and in fact papering over a bad travel system (if the only thing interesting is the stuff you find that you have to stop and take care of). Adding more unique/transient stuff along routes is only half of the battle; work has to be put in to make traveling enjoyable in and of itself for players to want to do it instead of skip it.
But as always, the best solution to our problem is to simply add more trains.
To add to this, DD1 has quite a number of NPC’s that travel between regions and you can come across them. As you progress through the game their patterns and locations change.
I actually am ambivalent on the latter mechanic as it really makes it a pain sometimes, but it still has lots of ways that it can work well.
Depends on the reason for traveling. If you are headed down the road to a goal and keep getting sidetracked by random encounters in a way that is distracting you from the thing you want to do then they just make travel tedious.
It all comes down to why am I traveling and why are encounters on the road more engaging than the reason for being on the road in the first place.
And for the record, Itsuno does say that he thinks fast travel is “convenient” and “good” when done right.
Based on Dragon’s Dogma 1’s use of Ferrystones, as well as this mechanic returning along with oxcarts in the sequel, I think this director understands that there needs to be a balance. It’s good when it’s both properly implemented and has a purpose. You’re right that nobody wants to run up and down the same roads countless times, but it’s up to the devs implementing limited fast travel to make sure you won’t have to. Then it’s up to the player to decide whether fast travel is worth it for any given situation. Knowing when to use your fast travel and how to maximize it is a skill that you develop and should be rewarded for mastering.
But it also needs to have a purpose. In more arcadey games, I don’t like worrying about resources like that. But in more grueling games like Dragon’s Dogma, where the journey is often a very intentional part of the gameplay loop if not the main challenge itself, it fits right at home.
Travel is gonna become boring if you have to travel the same road multiple times in the course of the game even if you have a bunch of cool stuff along that road. Eventually, I won’t give a shit about that stuff since I’ve seen it a million times. So I would hope there is still some kind of fast travel to go between places I have already been if the world is super big. Otherwise it’s just gonna feel like you’re padding the game for time to inflate a 10 hour story to take 40 hours to finish.
I think the better way to help fix this issue is random encounters, spawns, and a world that changes as the game moves along.
Moving along the same road can be made interesting if different things are happening every so often as you come through. New friendly encounters, new fights with different enemies, maybe randomly spawning treasure or scripted puzzle sequences that can appear dynamically around the whole world. Add to that a world that becomes modified by story events, maybe that road gets blocked and a different passage opens up that takes you to the same end destination, but with a new path and things to explore.
It’s not an unsolvable problem, but it is something that goes by the wayside often.
One thing to consider too is scheduled events. Imagine a couple towns get together and throw a fair along a route that connects them, and you get to see celebrations and games and vendors who might sell trinkets that are hard to track down otherwise. Perhaps the local monarch goes on a hunt with the massive party of servants and knights that might entail, with different practices for different cultures. A band of cultists clears an area for several days leading up to their yearly ritual. It’s migration season for a certain species of animal/monster. There are so many possibilities!
Even just vendors passing through can be made more interesting. Do they carry their wares via backpack or cart? Are they being attacked by bandits? Wild animals? Are they trying to smuggle goods or services somewhere?
It all has to be programmed of course, which is the main holdup on what makes it so hard to flesh out those parts of the world.
I do also see weight in the idea that, past a certain point, traveling is just boring, especially if the only thing of importance is the Main Story Quest. Travel is also often boring in real life too but we can tune it out, or find little ways to pass the time and entertain ourselves during the more mundane moments. We’re not frequently afforded that luxury in games. When you’re playing a game and dealing with the downtime going from point A to B, often there is literally nothing to do except hold down the movement keys and deal with the occasional path change/obstacle.
The point of games is to be engaging, and if there’s nothing to do while traveling but look at the scenery and surroundings it will eventually get boring. Even if the travel gets interrupted occasionally for an encounter, I think it’s arguable to say that the content is literally not travel anymore and in fact papering over a bad travel system (if the only thing interesting is the stuff you find that you have to stop and take care of). Adding more unique/transient stuff along routes is only half of the battle; work has to be put in to make traveling enjoyable in and of itself for players to want to do it instead of skip it.
But as always, the best solution to our problem is to simply add more trains.
Edit: slight restructuring/grammar
To add to this, DD1 has quite a number of NPC’s that travel between regions and you can come across them. As you progress through the game their patterns and locations change.
I actually am ambivalent on the latter mechanic as it really makes it a pain sometimes, but it still has lots of ways that it can work well.
Depends on the reason for traveling. If you are headed down the road to a goal and keep getting sidetracked by random encounters in a way that is distracting you from the thing you want to do then they just make travel tedious.
It all comes down to why am I traveling and why are encounters on the road more engaging than the reason for being on the road in the first place.
From the article:
Based on Dragon’s Dogma 1’s use of Ferrystones, as well as this mechanic returning along with oxcarts in the sequel, I think this director understands that there needs to be a balance. It’s good when it’s both properly implemented and has a purpose. You’re right that nobody wants to run up and down the same roads countless times, but it’s up to the devs implementing limited fast travel to make sure you won’t have to. Then it’s up to the player to decide whether fast travel is worth it for any given situation. Knowing when to use your fast travel and how to maximize it is a skill that you develop and should be rewarded for mastering.
But it also needs to have a purpose. In more arcadey games, I don’t like worrying about resources like that. But in more grueling games like Dragon’s Dogma, where the journey is often a very intentional part of the gameplay loop if not the main challenge itself, it fits right at home.