Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

[stillman]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

Here is the problem: Part of what makes Diablo fun is all the loot. We want to pick up the loot and deal with it. If you remove town portals, there either has to be less loot or massive inventories where you would never fill up between say 2 waypoints. The last thing any player would want in their game experience is to have to leave loot behind or make extended loot runs that involve a lot of running to/from waypoints.

The rationale of "its abused" needs more explanation. It is abused because it is a feature we use often? It is abused because when we join a new game we immediately want to be killing monsters with our party? It is abused because we can escape a fight easily(I could see a different solution for this, only allow use of town portals when no monsters are within X yards, so one would have to run away or "win" a fight to town portal)?

I'm just not sure how the game would be more fun by having less control over where you want to go with your character. If you don't want to "abuse them", then don't. Why should convenience be a feature that we would want removed?

Sorry, I don't understand the people who say "Diablo was less fun for me because of TPs". I STILL love and play diablo and the freedom to go to town whenever I want and have my friends join me instantly is one of the reasons this game is great.

There could be wandering merchants to sell your stuff to periodically. This would prevent the need to go back to town all the time. So the merchant just appears in a cloud of smoke after you cleaned out a room or 2, and you sell all your stuff to him.

I'd like to see TP's go away forever. Just give each player a survival skill or 2 to help them deal with it.

Edit: Oh wait, I just thought of this. The wondering merchant is summoned by you when you utter the magic words. Thus, he is not always intruding randomly. He's like a gini.

 

[FlamangoHellfire]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

Djinn, or djinni (plural), or if you really don't care for the preservation of etymology, genie.

I was thinking about this too actually. It reminds me of the cat in Secret of Mana, who was a traveling merchant. It would be almost cooler if you first had to save his caravan and then he would trade with you. The more I think about this, the less I think that it would hurt for Blizzard to follow cues from Baldur's Gate and similar RPGs. Not because I don't want the game to be an ARPG, but just so there are elements that keep it from becoming tedious and boring, which happens. If it weren't for the items and exp - the RPG elements of the game mind you - there would be nothing else keeping me playing. The action element of Diablo by no means stands alone. I simply wouldn't play the Diablo games solely for the action, and I think I'm not the only one. Blizzard is starting to realize this, especially after what they've learned with WoW. There have to be twists and unexpected surprises to keep the action alive and dynamic. Returning to the thread topic, I believe the nerfing of TP's is part of the grand scheme of breathing vitality back into the world of Sanctuary.

 

[Endarire]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

I enjoy Town Portal. I like being able to cast it on a whim. I greatly dislike needing to use it every minute or few in a loot-filled room to sell or stash the most valuable items, or because some mob is constantly draining me of potions, or I've been jaunted out of the world and my only options to continue are portaling or rejoining.

I also dislike D2's ease with which someone can portal to town, switch to hostile, and return as if nothing had happened.

 

[Krugar]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

@Flamango

I'm pretty sure quests in D3 will be a revamped feature that will reward players in more dynamic ways. Possibly exactly as you are describing it here. It has already been announced that quests in D3 will not be only centered around the main plot. There will be something equivalent to sidequests that will allow for a less linear game experience. It feels natural that rewards for many of these quests will fall into your category. If for nothing else, for the fact I certainly feel Blizzard would consider it a mistake to follow the exact same quest mechanism implemented on D2.

However I was more interested in your comment about towns. But couldn't understand it exactly. Would you care to explore this thought a little more?

 

[Paranoidmage]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

I agree that boss battles would be better without them. The one problem with this idea is that we can't be running across the map every time we need to go back to town. They are necessary because waypoints are too far apart and maps are too big.

 

[Myth]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

I haven't read the 5 pages, but I was surprised not to see this idea mentioned in the first 2 pages.

In response to the op's complaints about the TPs (them being treated like garbage and making players lazy), a way to fix them would be to have 2 different scrolls:

1. Keep the same TP scroll (or hell, make it a skill and give it to every class), but make it so only you can go through it. That way you can still go back to town to sell/buy/stash items.

2. Add a new scroll and make it work like the current TP scroll but make it much harder to obtain. Making them drop from monsters Champion and above would be the best solution IMO. Making them really high priced would basically make them unattainable for low levels which really sucks when you're starting from scratch (new seasons especially) where you have someone to teleport to a certain point while the group is killing somewhere else. Also, it wouldn't change much for higher levels as making money is the easiest thing to do in diablo. In just a couple minutes I can max my character's gold.

Having TPs drop-only from certain monsters would need blizzard to add a lvl cap at which TPs drop for certain players, i.e. TPs drop to players up to 45 in normal, 75 in nightmare and 99 in hell. This prevents higher levels from going back to normal and getting a tome full in less than 5 minutes.

This would be IMO, the best way to change TPs.

 

[JITBxvx]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

I've read up to this point regarding removing or modifying the TP scrolls themselves, but what about changing the "experience" of using one? I.e. Using a TP puts the equivalent of a non-dispellable debuff to all your stats/skills? I mean, depending on who you ask, you're either getting torn down and rebuilt from the molecule level (including all those nifty magic items) or warping spacetime to achieve a poor man's wormhole.

Wouldn't it make sense that you (and maybe even your magic items) suffer some form of temporary weakening due to that process? You could even make it a radius around a functioning TP to further discourage lowbies from using them around their higher level friends. It discourages frequent use, but leaves the function unchanged...you'd just have to be more careful about using them.

PS The traveling cat merchant in Secret of Mana is called 'Neko'

 

[AnimeCraze]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

I think it's a good suggestion then

But how will you measure if there's enimies nearby? What's nearby in your book, does it only depend on range or also the threat of the enemy?

Proximity to the TP, regardless of character lvl or anything else. Maybe add an exception to bosses having extra "threat range". It's similar to how monsters above a certain distance from your char is not generated or active in D2.

We can add a lame excuse on going through a TP when monsters are nearby will allow monsters to go through the TP as well, and since civ's can't fight......

 

[GoldenBird]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

It's all the same to me I guess, I'll adapt to whatever they choose.

The only concern I have with ridding TPs is when people join your game. If you want to fight with them, and you're in the middle of 2 wps, what do you do? You can tell them to run from the wp, but then you'd have to give them the directions to you, or you'd have to run all the way to them. And what if they don't have the wp? And sure, you can add a timer on TP, but what if you happen to take a TP trip and then return to the fighting, and someone joins right then? If there's a timer that prevents you from casting , then what do you do? Sure, it's not likely to happen alot, but when it does, it would be a real pain.

 

[CaptainDingo]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

Scrolls that instead send items from your inventory to your stash, perhaps.

The abusable portion seems to be that players themselves make the trip back as well. Such a thing would eliminate that.

 

[Kiroptus]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

It's all the same to me I guess, I'll adapt to whatever they choose.

The only concern I have with ridding TPs is when people join your game. If you want to fight with them, and you're in the middle of 2 wps, what do you do? You can tell them to run from the wp, but then you'd have to give them the directions to you, or you'd have to run all the way to them. And what if they don't have the wp? And sure, you can add a timer on TP, but what if you happen to take a TP trip and then return to the fighting, and someone joins right then? If there's a timer that prevents you from casting , then what do you do? Sure, it's not likely to happen alot, but when it does, it would be a real pain.

For the third time, you will have the option to summon your party members to the fight, its easy to anyone who just joined to be in the action right away, there is even official statement about this, I will dig about it later.

 

[zorro8081]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

I mentioned this earlier but it kinda got lost in the wash....there could be an early quest where you get a magic item that you can use to put items you want to keep or sell, in a pile in town. This way, you can still have the tp shrines or whatever, but you dont have to decide between loot to keep or drop....

 

[JonoLith]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

There were two things that were happening with Town Portals that makes it so they need to be readdressed.

A) You can portal to escape a fight.

What this does, to put it bluntly, is completely remove the threat of the fight. Any player, at any moment, can simply jump into a portal to just get away from a combat that may not be going well for them. Many of you might say that that's a tactical thing, or that it added something to the game, but what it actually does is it makes certain that you will not actually fight the monster on their terms, but rather on your terms, which ensures that game developers will never be able to actually make anything worthwhile. Players will simply escape them.

Now, there ARE some combats that did REQUIRE portals to escape from. Duriel screams loudly at me. However, this, to me, is a flaw in the design of the fight. If blizzard made that fight more balanced for specific classes (I'm thinking very much of the summoner necro who was almost helpless against duriel) then there'd be no need to actually have portals.

Ultimately, having a portal behind you that you can rush into if things go south even a little bit is something that should go away. Your game becomes differently when you're actually fighting for your life rather then just fighting until you're slightly wounded and running away in the most effective way imaginable.

B) You could portal directly back to combat after a death.

If you did die, you simply took a friend's portal right back to the combat. To put it simply, this makes death entirely meaningless. Now, I understand that no one likes being punished for death, but there should be SOMETHING, even if that something is simply running back from a checkpoint rather then porting directly into the combat again.

Again, if blizzard wants to make encounters actually challenging, they cannot have people essentially just TPing, dying, TPing, dying ect. ect. until the player eventually wins. The boss/monster needs a chance to defeat you, or there isn't much of a game.

There are certain things that have been brought up that I think are worth mentioning. Wandering Merchants are a fantastic idea. Being able to randomly encounter something that will be able to clear your bags is brilliant.

I love the idea for having a TP for items, but to refine that I'd like to see specific items be able to get sent to your stash. Frankly, I'd like to see scrolls of identify go out the window too. It's an unneeded layer that they even got rid of, basically, in diablo 2 simply by having cain identify everything for free.

I do think being able to teleport to your friend's nearest checkpoint is going to be a must. It's just going to suck *** to try and get a group together if you can't do this. Will it allow people to get certain waypoints easier and so on, yeah probably, but hopefully they'll make a game where you're less interested in skipping tons of content.

We'll see on that one.

 

[jel]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

B) You could portal directly back to combat after a death.

If you did die, you simply took a friend's portal right back to the combat. To put it simply, this makes death entirely meaningless.

In softcore you can never truely die, therefore death will always be meaningless, it's just a way to interupt the flow in the game. Beside that Blizzard themselves wrote they wanted to improve the flow in the game, then if you want death to mean something, except you've to use some extra time on running, then play hardcore.

Otherwise it makes no sense there should be different rules for someone slain in combat in one game, and someone slain in combat in a second game joining the first game.

We can add a lame excuse on going through a TP when monsters are nearby will allow monsters to go through the TP as well, and since civ's can't fight......

I like games to have a sense of realism, so I wouldn't call it a lame excuse, however I still think your idea is bad when weak monsters are nearby, not only because they're not a threat to the civ's or yourself, but here is why:

Proximity to the TP, regardless of character lvl or anything else. Maybe add an exception to bosses having extra "threat range". It's similar to how monsters above a certain distance from your char is not generated or active in D2.

Blizzard wants a good flow in the game, where it's not like someone suddenly drops out of combat to stay in town for a long period of time, while other continue, or something similar, however having to find every single monster in a given proximity will either hinder the flow in the game (you now have to clear an entire area to find a single monster that you can't seem to find), or it'll make tp very abuseable once again if the proximity isn't large enough.

That's why I believe threat matters, if it's a pack of champions they'll come to you, and you can't just tp out of there, you have to defeat them, and then you can get away.

However after reading through the next couple of pages after your answer to my answer to your answer it seems like many in this thread does not read on previous suggestions and continue the debate from there, but writes their own viewpoint (which for many have already been written earlier, so it's just copying), and even taking up points that have been argumented against to not hold true earlier. In that way I think the people of this thread needs to read what others write before starting to write themselves, otherwise there's no debate, only a long list of ideas where many are repeated.

 

[Starving_Poet]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

I think enemy proximity is a bit obtuse if you want to limit TPs to non-combat situation.

Town Portals are big holes in space-time - they should take a long time to cast, where any movement while casting will cancel the spell, your defense will be zero, etc and so forth. You can try to cast it during a battle, but you better be prepared to take a beating.

 

[Krugar]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

I agree enemy proximity is somewhat confined. Even more so when we consider they move around. Just seems unnecessary the notion the usage of town portals would become an exercise in getting your distance from any monsters in the vicinity, whether you were opening a TP to get away from a tough situation, or simply because you wished to go to town.

I did appreciate however that other idea of certain places simply not allowing the usage of town portals. However, players should always be allowed some form of escape, even if this means getting in harms way. An enclosed den like Duriel's without TP ability seems penalizing and there is no necessity for the game to seek to kill the player with such lame attempts. Let monsters do that. On the case of Duriel, the player could be forced to turn a switch to elevate an escape door, but this would take some time. All the while they would have to tackle Duriel the best they could.

EDIT: In any case, it still stands my own view of this whole "problem". And that is... there is no problem. TPs were just fine. And in fact, trying to open and enter a TP to escape an hairy situation has been more my death, than my salvation.

 

[Starving_Poet]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

I agree, the town portal fix for D3 is a solution in search of a problem.

 

[AnimeCraze]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

Blizzard wants a good flow in the game, where it's not like someone suddenly drops out of combat to stay in town for a long period of time, while other continue, or something similar, however having to find every single monster in a given proximity will either hinder the flow in the game (you now have to clear an entire area to find a single monster that you can't seem to find), or it'll make tp very abuseable once again if the proximity isn't large enough.

In D2, monsters gets deactivated when you are like 2 screens or so away from them. Because of that, there is no point in making the range any larger. (they may have a larger activation range in D3, but there must be a limit) There's no problem with that kind of range. And if you cannot bother to clear out monsters in 2 screens I have nothing to say. And if you believe that kind of range is abusable, then so is running away and hiding in a corner.

 

[raveharu]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

I agree, the town portal fix for D3 is a solution in search of a problem.

No, but I think the suggestions posted here are getting more and more ridiculous.

 

[Krugar]

Re: Town Portal abuse - it's time to end it.

No, but I think the suggestions posted here are getting more and more ridiculous.

Slapping other people ideas as ridiculous, without actually taking the time to explain why doesn't earn you any brownie points. Just makes your post unnecessary.