[Miller]

https://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/view/Moon_Gate

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I think the funniest thing about this is that travel was still deemed pretty inconvenient for people even after this change; so they added in another mechanic on top that lets you teleport anywhere for a fee. (With some location specific teleports that are straight up free, no less.)

That said, I actually do like the four spots on the map on paper, they reward you for map knowledge but with how they currently function only for very specific periods, it's more of a time waster to think about it. If it ever got changed, I'd hope it'd at least be up for half of an in-game day instead of a few hours.

But pretty much everyone I've spoken to has said "It's too far away from fast travel spots for me to want to go there."

I think this is something I didn't really stress enough in my post; I've had plenty of personal talks with players about meeting up and either they or I go 'Ugh' at the prospect of doing the roundtrip around the isle just to meet up for RP or a simple trade. There's been plenty of times where I was personally considering to run off towards an LFG but it's on the absolute other side of the map so I instead hunker down, check nearby locations or just log off. For people that have a singular character, this is usually not the end of the world with the recent update to deeper sending; when people have alts, it becomes increasingly more annoying. This problem honestly is only going to get worse as the map gets bigger and bigger.

remember when we had pixel movement and dev added a "run" button that made us move faster
i wonder if having a run button that just exists by default would make things less awful,

I think a run button would definitely help for sure, but all it would truly accomplish is making things faster. Which don't get me wrong it's very much needed at this point, but if the expectation to travel by foot from place to place is kept, there should be something that incentivizes sticking around in the maps that aren't strictly designed to be hubs. So there'd at least be a reason to hang out there from time to time.

Sure, but only if we re-add players being dense and unable to walk through other players.

Only if we can deal blunt damage by ramming into people at high speeds. Lemme tackle someone for unscaled strength you cowards.

One thing I would like to tack on is the concept of "first time play experience". Korvara's maps are pretty, with a lot more attention and detail put into them. There are things to see, nooks and crannies to explore and find things in and quests integrated into the world even (though whether or not they're always valuable is up for debate). However, this sort of stuff is only really worthwhile your first time, or maybe first few times, running around exploring because, once you get to know everything and what purpose it serves, you don't really care about it anymore, especially if it's simply a gathering site for a craft you don't have, or it ends up just being another empty cave or one with static low level mobs.

I think the "first time play experience" thing can apply to a lot of Korvara's experience and how it differs greatly vs the experience of those who end up sticking around and getting to know the game, but in terms of travel specifically... I don't need to stop and smell the roses or appreciate how nice the 2D sprites that were bought from a webstore online look. I understand and appreciate that a lot of time and effort was put into them, and the incentive to try and have RP be more dynamic or appear in more random places, but these things at an inconvenience to gameplay or user experience, or even at an inconvenience to finding RP is not a solution.

I'd honestly like to hammer this in even more from Ruby's post.
These maps are beautiful, stunning even at times, seriously I adore the new autumn zone greatly; I don't want anyone to get the impression that I don't want to hang out in them or I think they're 'bad'. But when I want to get from one dungeon to another...Let's say; Terra Flama to Black Mire, both are very popular grind spots. I'm not going to want to really roleplay along the way as a long time player unless someone really tried their best to stop me midway; I'm more than likely going to these spots to get done with the grind as soon as possible. At that point, travel becomes nothing more than a waste of time and inconvenience, to the point where I've made this thread now.

I think there's honestly one thing I failed to mention in my original post.
Getting Deeper Sending on new characters even if you know what you're doing is pretty annoying. While I don't explicitly have a solution for it I think it's partially why travel can be so cumbersome sometimes; if you wanna roleplay on a new character, you're forced to undergo a rather time consuming endeavor to make it slightly more convenient. I don't really want to get too much into it, since I think it honestly would need a thread of its own to talk about.

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Yeah I think the Duyuei/Geladyne highway map was very rough on release due to those ledges, I think out of the original Korvara maps it was my own personal favorite; but the tileset led to some of the most frustrating traveling experiences I've ever seen in a video game due to how dark it was at night at the time. Thankfully this has been alleviated a fair amount with the astrology talent.

That said, I do agree that pathing/transitions in some of the maps could use some slight adjustments to be more intuitive instead of having to purposefully aim for specific warp points to save time if nothing else. But I feel like that's a low priority compared to the solutions I've personally proposed because it throws more work onto the mappers for very little time saved at the end of the day.

[Poruku]

Put a plant in every highway with a tasty fruit that grows each hour and gives xp and doubles your movespeed for 5 minutes. Mm, fruit