Traveling Time gets old fast.

[Seytra]

Offline travel, crafting and whatever... at first I thought I hated it, but in fact it seems to be a great concept. After all, it is a fair alternative to people who are less fortunate time-wise. This way they have a chance of keeping up with the players who have time to play 12/7 or more. Offline-anything should be less effuicient time-wise because it is also risk-free. When traveling online, you always run the risk of being attacked, which is eliminated offline. Therefore, offline-anything needs to take into account the additional average time it would take online and merge it with the risk-factor.
Furthermore, it allows people who wish to do crafting to do so even if they don\'t like to watch their char craft for hours. Also, it is more realistic because the char doesn\'t simply vanish into stasis when the player logs off, instead it goes about it\'s everyday business except adventuring. I support this.

As for cheaters: if there are cheaters, they will cheat anyway. IF they manage to get lots of chars, they will use them online as well, maybe by running several (macroed) instances of PS and pretending to be a NAT.

The only exploit I can see is that you can flee easily, but OTOH, you can do so by logging off as well, so it doesn\'t really matter. Both can be avoided by having the char remain there for, say, 20 seconds RL time, which will be pretty deadly. However, that isn\'t nice if the player has to log off really quickly due to RL issues, so maybe this period should be left out, as this often happens due to connection loss anyway.

[Diamondcite]

I can\'t quite remember but I think it was posted else where that a player will stand there like a statue for 31 seconds or so when they hit logout, so they can\'t do cheap things like kill the game to avoid death.

Now I wonder... If you comeback before you hit your logout timeout.. will you come to life right where you stand again?
Also.. in the case of account sharing, what if someone else comes online with the same account and tries to control the same character, will the other be kicked off?

[Syzerian]

I love to travel all the way across Morrowind the only reason I dont do it so often is that it usually crashes halfway through and I forget to save (immersion does that to you I guess).
I would really hate to see teleportation but I think it would be good if you could teleport to your guildhouse as otherwise organising guild events would take far too long.
What I would like to see is an area like in Dungeon Siege where its just a massive desert with 2 pyramids or ruins that are almost unlocatable and have the desert littered with dead bodies and erie noises. I remember how much fun I had searching for those 2 pyramids and that place used to scare the hell out of me, but then I found all 3 entrances to eastern isle and then it became boring.
I would love to have to travel for ingame days but then it would probably come to people dying (literarly) just to get back to a town.

[Seytra]

Originally posted by Diamondcite
Now I wonder... If you comeback before you hit your logout timeout.. will you come to life right where you stand again?

I think you should. Also, you should reappear at this very spot if you didn\'t order an offline move, regardless of when you reconnect. Of course, if you reconnect two years later and the place where you were standing before now is a lake, or the inside of a mountain (or the mointain is gone), you\'d appear at the nearest non-fatal location or maybe the nearest town (to avoid being trapped).

Originally posted by Diamondcite
Also.. in the case of account sharing, what if someone else comes online with the same account and tries to control the same character, will the other be kicked off?

Everyone who connects after the first one has connected will not be let in until the original player disconnects. I don\'t think account sharing should be allowed. After all, it only depends on the email, and everyone will have at least one, won\'t they? If anything, they might need to officially state that they are two different players if they use a NAT, but OTOH there will be campus networks that are NATed as well so that can\'t be used as a general criteria.

[Adeli]

Account sharing seems kind of pointless in a free game. Isn\'t the whole idea behind it to share an account because you don\'t want to pay two subscriptions?

[Entamis]

Originally posted by Adeli
Account sharing seems kind of pointless in a free game. Isn\'t the whole idea behind it to share an account because you don\'t want to pay two subscriptions?

Some people are sharing accounts to make an uber character with maxed skills, since usually more time spent playing == better skills.

[Seytra]

That may be. However, in either case there is no point in supporting it in PS.

[Lyrah]

I think the ways I have seen in other games that fit into a ROLE PLAYING realm are:
skills or spells that speed up the traveler (yes these CAN be role played. Think of Bruce Lee\'s ability to move so fast that he literally was nothing but a BLUR, if he could move an arm or leg...he could RUN fast too).

In AD&D they had various forms of more or less dangerous portals...not always as cut and dried and POOF...I am here...POP now I am here. Some cost material components, others were more or less draining on the caster (no more EQ Wizzard or Druid popping all over the game ALL day long for game cash).

Various forms of game themed mounts...horses, lizards (flying or NOT), if you have a technological race like EQ gnomes you could come up with mining carts or other transport DOWN with SLOW transport of heavier items UP (some kind of pulley and cog with slave or animal in a \"wheel\" of some kind).

Coaches like the old west, carts or \"buggies\" or other animal drawn four wheeled contraptions.

Ships are the BANE of any game...why you ask? EASY..moving 3d object with MANY other 3d objects with different connections from ALL over the world. That sounds more like a NIGHTMARE than a ship to me. Plus the pathing of the ship can be irratic at times. I have actually been ON the ships in Lineage two and Everquest when the ship crashed.

In EQ the ship just went fizzle flash, blink, POOF *splashing sound of occupants* I also had an issue with the Kunark transport where either the shuttle boat OR the platform you walk onto the ship FROm the shuttle boat had a hole that was NOT visable, results were the same...SPLASH plus either a long swim or a kindly GM.

In Lineage 2 I was sitting in the MIDDLE of the ship, the ship took a WIERD turn and FLUNG me off the deck (along with about ten others) into the water, we all died and the gm ported us to the boats landing spot since we had paid HUGE price to take the boat. (I think we all got our gear back...Yeah I know I did).

When the game world is relatively small, running from point a to point b is reasonable. BUT...try that in EQ with ALL of the expansions, just running and riding boats is a day long experience. Which once there are raids, invasions and guild events and a LARGE world, having to travel would take away from the role playing and immersion factor.