A suggestion for simplifying the portal system

I'm a long-term vet, recently returned to the game after a break of a few months. I find the new portal system to be counter-intuitive, illogical, and difficult to explain to new players.

There are a few things I don't understand. The first of which is why I have to pay to travel to some settlements but travelling to others is free.

Case in point. If I travel from Bristugo to Desert's edge, I have to pay to do so, same for Dryart, Frostwatch and Last Stand. I can go to Harro, Mithril's Anvil and Selen from Bristugo for free though? Why?

I can go elsewhere in the world and port from A to B and the rules are totally different.

I don't understand it, and as a long-time resident of the new player assistance channel on Chaos server, I don't like having to tell new folks that the mechanism by which they move around the world requires a PhD in Chaos Theory to understand (forgive the pun).

Secondly, the new portal lists that show regions seem to limit the player to only being able to port to another destination in the same part of the world, resulting in multiple jumps to get where they want to be. Why? Surely the whole point of the portal system is to move someone in time and space instantaneously to anywhere else in the world. Every portal should lead to everywhere (quest completion dependant). There is a money sink opportunity here, which could be counter-balanced by a player driven economy with regard to travel scrolls or the like.

Thirdly, there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to who can travel where. I don't understand why I have to attune to some destinations but automatically know where others are from birth. I'd suggest the game would be more fun if everyone, at the beginning, had to attune to everywhere. Example. I have to attune to Parsinia, (just down the road from Kion) in one of the early quests by running there. I remember this as being an exciting and dangerous quest back in the day, yet nowadays I can roll a new character and port much further than that without seeing the game.

I would like to suggest a simplified portal solution.

1. Give every destination 1 pad and 1 portal only. Do away with the concept of Hubs / guild portals / settlement portals etc..etc.

2. Make every portal in the game lead to everywhere. Employ drop down menus' and sub menus' so as to avoid huge lists.

3. Charge a portal fee based on distance travelled x level of character travelling x number of resources they are hauling. If the character doesn't like the fee, they can walk (or fly/glide/hop) until they reach a portal that is closer to the destination they want, thus incurring a lower fee. For me it makes sense that I should pay more for porting all the way across the world as opposed to just down the road.

5. Make it so everyone has to attune to everywhere. (May well increase the market in travel scrolls)

Thoughts?

Hey Horatio, I recognize your name from long ago, welcome back!

I generally like your ideas.

I suggested something similar awhile back. I called mine the "Superportal" where the ring was a larger ring in the hub cities (Genevia, Bristugo) and suggested they have all destinations on a single ring. I do think slightly larger rings make sense so that dragons can appear to fit thru them :)

But doing single rings in all cities instead of the 2, I think would be good, even if its just the 2 sets of destinations on one ring.

Not sure why the separate ones were used, I think way back when it made the client laggy when too many destinations were on a single ring (but I might be wrong on that). If that was true, it's likely that these days it wouldn't be the same issue. Maybe it was transmit lag, as in the information having to come from the server. Not really sure. But I think it would be worth experimenting to see how a single ring with all the destinations in one place would work.

No idea if drop down menus could be done in the current ui. we can sort by the columns though. Maybe the separate rings were to try and simplify the lists... but having 6 rings to pick from isn't simple either. They are color coded now which helps a little.. but not much. I still haven't learned what color is what except I think Blue is cities...

The distance traveled equating cost makes sense, but if the teleporter templates are used in multiple places that's probably not possible. If say the ring in south march is a copy of the one in Selen for example, then the distance to Aughundell would be different, and therefore the cost should be different. It makes sense but isn't really required to make the gates more logical. Plus some destinations such as Saritova island, which cannot be reached on foot by bipeds from the mainland, some cost exceptions would have to be made. At least a few of those destinations would need to be free. So the costs as they are aren't too big of a concern to me atm.

But I do think that all the places with double rings, Dralk, Aughundell, Kion, etc. could have both sets of destinations combined into 1 ring would be good. And the hub cities, try adding a larger single ring and putting all the destinations on it.

One other thing, to make the rings easier to use, the destinations with a prefix need that prefix separated into a different column, or made a suffix. So that Cities: Aughundell is instead Aughundell : City. This would be so that everything is alphabetical, and you would see Aughundell listed before Bristugo. As it is now Bristugo is before Cities: Aughundell...

With only a few exceptions, completely agree that all destinations should require attunement. All the remote dragon ones already require quests. Trandalar shouldn't have any immediately available destinations. There's a way to port there from the top of tower of sorcery. Then once there you can get attune quests. Saritova, again that's one where at least one or 2 destinations would need to be immediately available for use, say the Saritova destination. From there one could walk to the rest. (Or a quest on mainland attunes you to the Saritova pad, or the whole island). And even though you can reach the top of shepherd's mountain on foot from Bristugo, that's a helluva run :) (Fun tho, I've done it). So maybe one destination there that's also available or quest is done elsewhere. But yeah way too many places don't need attuning that should. Just makes the world feel smaller, and you miss out on the adventure of finding everywhere, the journey is important too, not just the destination. To be fair, a lot of places t1 and t2 have had the destinations reset to requiring attuning, only old chars that already had them got to keep the destinations attuned. New players do have to run around to those.

You can run from Mahagra to the top of Shepherd's Mountain on foot with 0 porting if you feel adventurous.. =)

I like the idea, makes one explore istaria more.
Some destinations unnaccesible to bipeds/hatchies should be considered though, through a quest from the "mainland" as Guaran said.