Traveling in games is weird

Started by Legend, Jun 27, 2022, 06:36 PM

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Legend

It's almost always based around loading screens and menu navigation. In Mass Effect for example I never think about a planet being hundreds of light years away, I just think about the time it takes to load into the ship, open up the map, load into a system, and then load onto the surface. It often feels like they should just let you open the galaxy map anywhere and go directly to your destination.

I hardly ever feel like traveling matters. It tends to just take a few minutes at most which is long enough to get annoying but too short to be interesting. Games are at their worst when you're just popping from location to location. At that point you're effectively playing the menus.


kitler53

i think you were pretty effective in explaining why "the metaverse" is such overblown garbage.   facebook is going to bankrupt on this endeavor.   playing TMNT shredder's revenge online with a friend on voice chat is the best part of the "metaverse".  

...but more on-topic.  yes.   having replayed some classic snes games with my son this year i'd say your explanation is a lot like "save points" on legacy games.  needing to physically travel to a specific location to save a game is basically dead and games always pick up at the last check-point now.   it felt archaic and dumb to tell my son to backtrack to the last save point because it was time to turn the game off.  

it's just as dumb and lame if you have to travel to a specific location in order to "quick travel".  


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the-pi-guy

I think a big part of the issue is that traveling isn't the main part of the game. Mass effect is an action rpg. So is Skyrim.

Traveling isn't a core part of the experience. It's usually not the reason you're playing that game. It ends up being a distraction. So it either has to be short, infrequent or it has to be fun. Making it fun isn't the point, as it's not a main mechanic. Making it short limits the size of the game you can make.

Making it infrequent feels like the usual end result.

i think you were pretty effective in explaining why "the metaverse" is such overblown garbage.   facebook is going to bankrupt on this endeavor.   playing TMNT shredder's revenge online with a friend on voice chat is the best part of the "metaverse".  

I have no clue what the relevance here is.

If anything, traveling sucking is a boon for the metaverse.