Feedback:User/Beef Mcnugget/Map Travel and Waypoints - Not Immersive

Map Travel and Waypoints - Not Immersive
User	Beef Mcnugget
Categories	World

In the most recent "Common Questions" Guild Wars 2 blog post [1], some of the first information about maps and travel were released. The first thing that is mentioned is the waypoints, which were introduced with the "Healing and Death" article. I was glad when I read from the article that when a player dies, they have the option to pay a small fee to travel to a waypoint. However, I didn't know until reading the new blog post that players can travel to a waypoint regardless of being dead or alive.

The issue with this that it will take the immersion out of the game. With the ability to map travel, quests become as simple as traveling from waypoint to waypoint in order to reach the end of the quest as fast as possible. For example, a player might take the waypoint to Divinity's Reach in order to obtain a quest from Logan Thackeray. The quest tells him to go to The Shiverpeaks and slay a giant, capture his head, and give it to a Charr Warrior as a trophy. Once he has obtained the quest, the player uses the waypoint closest to the giant, and kills him. Then he takes the waypoint to the town where the Charr Warrior resides and gives him the head. After that he takes the waypoint back to Divinity's Reach in order to get his his quest reward. I find myself doing this process multiple times in Guild Wars 1, and it is tedious and not immersive at all. I'm afraid this will happen again in Guild Wars 2.

In the blog post, Arenanet states that they prevent this by creating a small fee you must pay to travel to a waypoint, so they expect players to sometimes choose to save the gold and instead travel on foot. However, judging by the emphasis they put on how small the fee is, and the outrageous amount of gold most Guild Wars players have, my guess is that no one will ever travel on foot unless their destination is near by, or they are out of gold. I would be more happy if Arenanet made the prices for waypoints extremely high. They could also make it so that waypoints could only be used while at a waypoint. Another more immersive solution that would fix the problem all together is to make a series of mounts and boats on set paths that players could pay to ride in for a fee.

Now, lets say that the Shatterer has arrived after an event is kicked off. Since there are waypoints, what happens when someone says, "Hey, come help us beat the Shatterer." Everyone is going to start using the waypoints and there will be massive amounts of people in that one location. Possibly even enough to crash the game. Not to mention it will take away from the joy of getting rewards because EVERYONE will be able to get that item because EVERYONE will be able to fight the Shatterer the INSTANT it arrives.

Beef Mcnugget 01:53, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

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