Travel Time

[ggrotz]

This is an odd question to describe, but I'll try anyway... What is acceptable to most when it comes to "travel time" within a game/mod/whatever? What I mean by "travel time" is the amount of time it takes pushing the button, steering the character, whatever, to get to a particular objective without doing anything otherwise. Is there a point to most where it gets boring to do that? Any good examples?

[bobby 55]

How about in Anachronox where you have to take Boots and Party from a surface station (hotel like), to the Red Light District. There are some long empty corridors with lots of nothing but walking there.

[Jonas]

Somewhere between GTA4 and Far Cry 2.

[Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar]

Somewhere between GTA4 and Far Cry 2.

San Andreas exists almost solely as a study in how far you can travel before it gets boring. Some missions are fine, others are only just, others are excessive.

(and yes, I'm in a broad sweeping generalisations mood at the moment, so feel free to ignore the broad sweeping generalisation in this post and just focus on the bits that are actually useful and somewhat intelligent).

[justanotherfan]

For me, travel time is irrelevant. I like things to be fast though. So, essentially it matters how long it takes before something new happens rather than how long it takes to get somewhere.

Anachronox was terrible for that. I remember the first level driving me mad with the elevator etc. San Andreas had things to do while travelling, and once you got the maps/routes right, a fast car would get to the next city quickly. A good example I can think of Travel Time would be Deus Ex's Lebedev Airport level; you go all the way through it, complete all the objectives, get to the plane, do your thing, and then you have to walk all the way back through the nearly-empty level to get back to the helicopter. Need the speed aug for that game sometimes. It's one of the things I praised TNM for, that you'd fight through layer after layer of a dungeon, kill the boss, and then take the elevator back.

[loony636]

I swear I thought this topic was going to be Doctor Who related.

Far Cry 2 was hopelessly excessive, with the endless driving leading to me removing the game from my computer and immediately giving it away to one of my friends to avoid me playing Ultimate Frisby with it.

Assassin's Creed (number 1 that is, I haven't had the chance to play the sequel yet) got it spot on. Fast travel was integrated seamlessly with the already set up plot-devices, so it all worked well (and, most importantly, resulted in me not uninstalling the game in frustration).

Most linear FPS games (e.g. Halo) get it just about right, but the bigger issue there is actually getting the driving mechanics not to be shit. Open-world games suffer the most from the phenomenon of open-world = ridiculous distances to travel, but as long as you've got a horse (Oblivion), car (GTA) or fast-transit system (Assassin's Creed, etc), and the distances aren't too far away, then most games manage to hit the sweet spot. Games that miss on this particular game mechanic, however, go in the "never ever play" pile for me.

[Jonas]

I find that I can tolerate travel times a lot better when there's driving or flying involved because it involves a constant low-level test of skill - there's always the chance that you might drive off the road and crash if you zone out. This would be true in Far Cry 2 as well, especially because the game has very bumpy African dirt paths with weird turns and obstacles, but it was ruined by the constantly respawning checkpoints which got really really annoying. It would've also been true in GTA4 with its bustling city full of other traffic to avoid, but that was ruined by an incredibly frustrating lack of checkpoints forcing you to make the same damn drive every time you failed a mission. Rockstar needs to hire some actual game designers, frankly. I shit you not, they have no designers. At Rockstar, design and implementation are the same thing.

It worked really well in Mercenaries 2, incidentally, because every transportation sequence was a completely mental rolling action sequence involving explosions, tanks, car jumps, smashing through blockades, and hijacking helicopters. I don't really require that level of commitment, but it certainly helps.

[Hassat Hunter]

It would've also been true in GTA4 with its bustling city full of other traffic to avoid, but that was ruined by an incredibly frustrating lack of checkpoints forcing you to make the same damn drive every time you failed a mission. Rockstar needs to hire some actual game designers, frankly. I shit you not, they have no designers. At Rockstar, design and implementation are the same thing.

It has been some time, but doesn't GTA IV have the same system as GTA San Andreas, in that you can fast-forward a driving sequence to location if you already ride it once but failed afterwards?
Atleast they have implented alternative dialogue if you need to repeat a mission. Which is cool if you fail once (you get new convo) less cool if you aren't that easy to kill (you don't get to hear all).

[justanotherfan]

I didn't do the missions in GTASA. GTA4 has the subway/train thing, but the travel time from the street up the stairs to the train annoyed me so much I never used it. Nothing happens, you can't do anything. All I would use it for would be to run up to the train, start shooting people, and take the train to escape when police arrived.

I think Jonas is right about the skill test helping a lot. In GTA I normally just play around, often shooting cars in the middle of nowhere, trying to cross the state with as many stars as possible. If I'm not doing that, I'm minimizing travel time by driving as fast as possible, which has a challenge that minimizes the boring roadtrip.

[joe_peter]

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[williamab]

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