Waypoints? Good or Bad?

[MalazanFan]

The thing is waypoints are equivalent to flight paths common in other mmo's just with the inherent timesinks removed. You dont have to run to the nearest point first no do you have to spend X minutes waiting to arrive. You can argue instant travle is immersion breaking but how much is your immersion broek when your tabed out bored for 5 minutes while going from point A to B? Either way you still have to manualy discover point A and B yourself before you can teleport.

Timesinks are a product of the P2P market MMO because the more time you spend waiting for timesinks the less time your doing what you want to be doing, consumeing content. The slower you consume content the longer they can keep you paying 15 a month on the same amount of content. IF you wanted to meet up and play with a friend in another zone which would you prefer, A: 20 minutes to run there, B: 10 minutes to ride there, C: 5 minutes to take a flight path there, or D: 2 seconds to open the map and port there? Either way your probably not haveing any fun while waiting to arrive, option A and B you do have the option of stoping for stuff but your probably ignoring everything in your path to get to your friend while option C your just stuck waiting regardless.

I'm not sure what these paragraphs have to do with what I wrote. I didn't express any opinion on waypoints at all. A tad bit off topic, yes, but I think discussing other forms of travel should be okay.

Mounts are strictly for geting somewhere faster than you could arrive on foot. IF your just exploring following the DE's there's no point as your either following NPC's or are killing your way through something. If you want to get somewhere specific further away, ignoring all in your path, agian there's no point its just a needless timesink. On its basic level your argument is Walking is too much of a timesink, we need mounts to reduce that timesink, but instant travel is to fast so lets keep that timesink. If your going to keep the travle timesink there's no point in reducing it with a mount and if you want to make things faster, thereby reducing the timesink why not just remove that timesink altogether?

1. I don't think their only purpose is getting somewhere faster. They could be used in rollplaying or just looking badass, among other things I'm sure.

2. That's not my arguement on any level. I never said or implied that we need mounts, that walking takes too long, or that waypoints are too fast. My arguement was for more choices, and against the conception that only things that are 'necessary' should be added to the game.

3. I disagree. See above.

Edit: spelling / grammar (still probably missed some)

[Arkenaw]

It's very, very hard to contain my fury when I read arguments like this. You have to find the waypoints to activate them. How is immersion broken by not having to run across pointless landscape you've already seen? If you hate them so much then don't use them nobody is forcing you to use them, otherwise stop complaining.

[nameuser]

I think theres too many of them..

didnt they say there will be like 15 waypoints for each zone? Doesn't that eliminate traveling around the world completely? every time you want to go somewhere else you just teleport? that doesnt make much sense. I like the feeling of a massive world you have to travel around by yourself, it makes it feel more real.

[degonite]

I don't understand these threads , If you want to explore , then do it.. no one is holding a gun to your head saying take the waypoint or die. Just like in WoW for insance there are FP's or portals I can take anywhere when I first started playing did I do it? No beacuse I wanted to explore and see everything for the first time. Can I do the same thing for GW2 yes! Will i want to explore the same places over and over again and rather just use a Waypoint to get places faster YES. Seriously people play the game the way you want no one is forcing you to do anything.....

I for one do want to be runing places that take 15-20min when I rather be playing the game, I don't want to be on a "flight" that takes 10-20minutes I want to be PLAYING the game waypoints best idea ever. If you want to explore do it like said play the game the way YOU want. You have to find the waypoints first anyway so you have to explore and find them first anyway.....

[Malthurius]

Way Point Arguments
1. Possible breaking of Immersion - Yeah, instant transport can be Immersion breaking, but so is tabbing out during a flight path, maybe even more so, and it wastes your time.
2. Discourage Exploration after discovering Way Points - However the game will greatly reward exploration, and you'd have much more fun traveling yourself and looking around.
3. Instant Travel apposed to Mounts - See argument 1 about immersion, but ArenaNet likes putting in prestige items so if you collect mounts there will be other things to collect (Possibly things to get by exploring, fancy that). Mounts serve only to get to places quickly and Way Points give that.
4. Development Time - It takes much less time to make Waypoints to everywhere than it does to create 50 or so mounts for every race and not look absolutely retarded when riding on it (Imagine Charr on Horse). I believe Blizzard has proven to us that new models and animations take months to create. (Sarcasm)
5. Less Travel more Actually Playing - Hey... I'm playing a video game... why am I playing a video game? To have fun. Is pressing forward for 10 minutes to get somewhere fun? Is Watching a flying mount take you to where you're going fun? Is instantly getting to where the action is fun? Yes.
6. Dynamic Event System Supports This - Hey... there's a giant dragon event going on, and I'm on the other side of the area... guess I should mount up and run over there? (10 minutes later) Well crap, the dragon is dead... guess I should go back to what ever I was doing. (5 minutes later) My friend just logged on and he told me there is another dragon event going on on the other side of the world... screw it, I'll never make it. (Insert Waypoint Here) My buddy said there is a dragon on the other side of the world (Click Waypoint) Let's do this! LEEERROOOY!!!

[Deleted]

Waypoints are good.. i think , but atleast better than mounts
A great place a guild can gank inc enemies that have bad conection

[degonite]

Waypoints are good.. i think , but atleast better than mounts
A great place a guild can gank inc enemies that have bad conection

No world PvP

[Deleted]

Not famous hubs or ppl that love to kill others for fun ? PK ? (never played GW1)

[Durzlla]

Nope there won't be world PvP in the questing area, but gankers can still go to the ever ongoing WvWvW and do their thing, basically it's a never ending AV.

Not quite Maklor.... it's a more epic version of vanilla AV, you know back before it was teh PVE abomination it is now?

[degonite]

Yeah think vanillia AV when it comes to WvWvW , AV now is who can run to the otherside faster.

[digitalize]

I would rather have ground mounts as they arent immersion breaking, also i thibk that instant travel make the world seem so small(only what i think it would feel like).... But i will say that i dont like mounts in pvp so hmmm

[Deleted]

I would rather have ground mounts as they arent immersion breaking, also i thibk that instant travel make the world seem so small(only what i think it would feel like).... But i will say that i dont like mounts in pvp so hmmm

You're going to need a better agurement than that to persuade the GW community.
Since you can only instant travel to certain points that you have to unlock, so there's still running about places to get to things after, the game is designed to feel huge while you're on foot, not on a mount. The instant travel is there for people who want to use it, and for people who have short play times(the majority of MMO gamers).

[Deleted]

I wouldn't mind 0% mounts with instant dismount on damage. Who actually likes flying in WoW anyway? Waypoints are there to prevent that you have to walk the same route over and over.
You want to play the game and not to walk all the time right?
- If you answered yes, good! Use waypoints!
- If you answered no, then thats fine as well! Walk as a happy man to the place where you need to be and enjoy the world!

[Blackmist]

Compared to flying mounts, waypoints are great.

[Sunseeker]

Like all things, you don't have to use them, you can of course run from point A to point B.

Personally I'm fine with waypoints, but I think they should still be fairly limited, such as in towns/outposts/hubs or near dungeon entrances, with some sort of fair cooldown on the use of traveling that way(since there are no mounts, then keep it short like 10 minutes).

[rhandric]

Like all things, you don't have to use them, you can of course run from point A to point B.

Personally I'm fine with waypoints, but I think they should still be fairly limited, such as in towns/outposts/hubs or near dungeon entrances, with some sort of fair cooldown on the use of traveling that way(since there are no mounts, then keep it short like 10 minutes).

The purpose of waypoints is to get into action quickly, if there's a cooldown then "quickly" becomes less well defined. The cost of waypoints already acts as a small cooldown, as (depending on the cost) people will be likely to use them in moderation. As the cost increases with distance, and asura gates being free (last I checked), it'll likely be common practice to wp to city a, gate to city b, then wp to your destination, assuming that route is shorter and cheaper than wping directly, which, again, adding a cooldown would prevent such a practice.

For non-combat abilities, cooldowns just add to the time played, (usually) without having a purpose other than to keep you playing. Since GW2 is B2P, the encouragement for you to continue playing is in having fun, not having time sinks or grinds associated with other MMOs.

[MalazanFan]

I would rather have ground mounts as they arent immersion breaking

In my opinion, any sense of immersion that might be harmed by waypoints will be more than made up for through personal story and DEs. Even though FFXI had many immersion-breaking aspects (portals between every zone for example), I felt much more immersed in that game than any other MMO I've played almost completely due to the personal story.

[Merendel]

I would rather have ground mounts as they arent immersion breaking, also i thibk that instant travel make the world seem so small(only what i think it would feel like).... But i will say that i dont like mounts in pvp so hmmm

I dont know if they were done like wow ground mounts can be prety damn immersion breaking in and of themselves. Have you ever wondered where we pull those things out of?

MalazaFan. I apologize if I was projecting the arguments of other people onto your arguments when I answered but I still stand by my stance on the subject. The world appears to be designed such that if your just exploring and geting involved with whatever you come accross you shouldnt ever have to spend more than a minute or two runing between destinations, many times much less than that. They've designed the travle speed such that your not soposed to feel like your runing at a crawl all the time like most other MMO's that need mounts just to move at a reasonable pace. IF you just want the asthetics or RP value I dont mind but we dont need them for the speed boosts like other games do.
Still almost everybody that wants to do away with the waypoints argues in favor of mounts in the same breath. "World feels smaller if you can teleport anytime you want" then why make it smaller by makeing mounts to run twice as fast? "Its immersion breaking" So is tabing for a flight path or pulling a mount magically out of nowhere. There's also precedent in world for teleport technology, admittedly normally with a portal on each end but it could still be explained in game. I frankly think folks arguing for adding in extra timesinks by removing way points or making them non instant are a bit touched in the head. I can all but garentee if they played wow they'd have taken an avalible mage port over a flight path any time they could. Why because its damn boring being stuck on a rail flying over the same land for the 100th time.

[MalazanFan]

Thanks. I'm all for waypoints. I agree with everything you said in the first two paragraphs of the last post; in fact, many of those thoughts had already occured to me. I'm just all for mounts too, and it seems to me that many people that want the waypoints do not want mounts and I'm not sure why. More choices, I say!

[Merendel]

Thanks. I'm all for waypoints. I agree with everything you said in the first two paragraphs of the last post; in fact, many of those thoughts had already occured to me. I'm just all for mounts too, and it seems to me that many people that want the waypoints do not want mounts and I'm not sure why. More choices, I say!

I dont mind them for asthetics but I dont want them as a speed booster. The point is to not feel constrained by travle time, you should always be haveing fun or at most haveing to walk to the other side of the room to have that fun your looking for. If they add mounts and they boost speed then you will always feel slower if your not mounted makeing them feel manditory. We've seen the effect in wow. Once you've tasted your first mount or movement speed increase normal run speed seems to take forever to get there, once you have an epic mount a normal 60% one feels slow, and so on for flying mounts. Feeling like your going slow when you could be going fast is always a drag hence why I'd rather they didnt start down that slope with speed enhancing mounts and the like. If they want us traveling at a particular speed I'd rather we did that all the time instead of only going that speed when mounted and feeling slow the rest of the time.

Now if they wanted to add a minigame or something involveing jousting or whatever sign me up. Cosmetic mounts? I'm a bit meh on the subject and dont care but if folks want em I wont stand in the way of that.