Game: Transportation overhaul.

[Tecknician]

Having just finished up some behind the scenes work I thought I would share a future update a fair amount of time in advance. Before I share what the update is, in detail, I will fore warn you I have no Idea when the update will become live as my schedule may not allow the finishing touches for awhile yet(no more than 2 weeks however.)

The purpose of this topic is to try to iron out some details before the finishing touches are added and everything goes live. Plus give players something to look forward to in the next few days. Earlier I attempted to start a topic http://forum.pokemon-world-online.net/showthread.php?tid=23823 asking for prices for the train however the response was that of confusion, so I figure I would like to clear some things up.

What is happening is more stops is being added to the train line, and hopefully using the train will become faster. The way the train is set up now, its pretty easy to use, yet still requires too much time for how little it involves. My goal was to increase the useability (adding more stops), standardizing it with that of the ferry I hope to add latter by having standard tickets, while at the same time making it quick to use.

The setup involves 3 different parts. a) You buy a ticket or pass from a ticket seller. B) you talk to the gate which checks if you have a ticket or not. C) you select your destination upon boarding the train. Currently you have to purchase a ticket every time you use the train, causing a lot of extra dialog by having to purchases and confirm your purchase all the time. This is reason number 1 for switching to a three tier ticket system.

The first tier is a single use ticket. Compared to the current system, it will take longer to purchase a single ticket and use. However, this should be geared towards players not as far along and aren't in as big of a rush.

The second tier is a 10 single use ticket purchasing option. This should be faster than the current system, because after purchasing the tickets you should be able to use the train faster. This option was geared for more experience trainers who simply don't use the train that much.

The final tier is a monthly pass. This is geared for heavy users.

The second part of going to this tier system is the additional stops being added for the train. Using real life japan map and matching up some of the same cities with stops along the train route, 3 additional cities will be added.

The first city will be added in viridian city. This should speed up going from central kanto (saffron area) to earlier areas (pallet town)

The second city will be mt silver. A popular spot should be pretty self explain why this place was chosen. Also a central location between kanto and johto.

The 3rd city will be cherrygrove. This city matches up with viridian in kanto, and is also a real stop in japan. There are other things we are looking at to take advantage of this city.

With that in mind, we knew we couldn't keep with the current train system structure. The npc for purchasing, chosing what city to go to, and all the confirmation dialog would simply be too long and not worth using the train, making it perhaps even worse. Because of this we went with a standardize ticket rate, and model, while breaking up the npcs. This would be similar to perhaps a train/subway/bus model.

The final reason, reason unknown to me , the ferry was removed and I plan to re-add the ferry and make it use the same items the train use. Making everything more simplistic and standardize. Keebacorp will be the "owners" of both transportation's allowing the same tickets and monthly passes to be used in a logical sense.

Lastly there has been some opposition to this from some staff members, so I would like to hear your feedback and perhaps come to the best conclusion. But this game is littered with shortcut npcs around mountains and other stuff. With this new transportation model, I hope some of these shortcuts are unneeded, but I realize the value in some of them. I wish for them to be complete gone unless they were also in the handhelds. From what I can tell, base on the outline I have drawn up, the only city really out of the way from this new plan is mahogany and blackthorn city. Everything else will be approx. a route away from a city with a transportation stop.


The new item added earlier is called "Transportation Ticket". Nothing major as I said.

Any post that doesn't provide value in the discussion will be deleted. Such posts include "Can't wait for this update" "Cool, good job". Feedback and discussion is a must not just comments.

 

[Tecknician]

For a example what it will be like to ride the train after you have tickets already, you will enter the station, press space bar on the gate. The gate will take a half a second to make sure you have a ticket, then transport you to the next room (making it faster than simply walking anyways). Then you will talk to the door of the train, it will ask you where you want to go, you select the destination, and will be transported to that train station near the gate. You will talk to the gate again to confirm this is where you want to be (making sure you didn't make an error and waste money) and if confirmed teleported to the other side of the gate, where you can then exit the station. Video may be made to show this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdqlAVLLymo&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

 

[drvirus]

in the past i came up with an idea to have a "teleporter" or in this case maybe a pidgeot carrier? anyway when talking to the NPC it will give you the option to pick 1 of the 8 cities, but ofcourse you need the badge for that city to be able to get there, and ofcource the prices would differ depending on how far you are from the next city. some of the staff members were against it at that time, i still dont know the reason for it though, anyway since you are thinking of making something similar to it, maybe consider something like that?

in almost any MMORPG there are teleporter to take you from 1 city to an other i dont see the reason not to have 1 here, i mean even in pokemon games there was teh "Fly" HM to take you anywhere you want.

as for the prices i think it should be 500 for the nearest city and keeps adding 500 further and further it becomes, so that players wouldnt mind using it at all, since its cheap.

and if you add this option then there wouldnt be need to change the train station, maybe adding 1 stop to the MT. Silver would be nice though.


at anycase as for what you are planning now, i think instead of cherry grove it should be blackthorn city if you want to make it multiple stops, because thats the hardest point to reach and has the dragons den, and its not hard to get from blackthorn to cherrygrove at all, its 1 downhill route

 

[Tecknician]

Issue I find with that, is because of the limitations of pwo, it would be... ugly. I have no knowledge of the other MMO games you play, but the ones I am familiar with usually have fewer towns and further distance in between as far as traveling. That said, if you were to add things like HM you would eliminate usefulness of trains/boats ect. As a mmo things needed to be treated differently than in the handhelds. Your idea was actually the first thing that was thought up, apparently a common idea.

Much of this idea was trying to imitate real world real world examples. Namely bus lines. On bus lines you pay to ride it and not for where your destination is. This is primary why I went for a 1 cost for all. Likewise it makes more simplistic, and from my experience, the more simplistic the less trouble caused by players who don't even try to understand.

 

[psychosamm]

I think this will be an excellent addition to PWO. Though this made me curious, would the train quest still exist as it does now? Or would it be altered? Considering there would be 2 stops in the same region one could argue that even if you hadn't made it to the 2nd region yet you could still find them useful. However if it's looked at more as a luxury for the trainers who have reached the 2nd region then that's all good too.
Also if Cherrygrove is going where i think it's going, you'll perhaps add another ferry there as well? That would make 2 ferries in Johto and 1 in Kanto. Maybe consider switching the Viridian stop with Fuscia? In that case you could also have a Train/Ferry city in Kanto as well as Johto, since just south of Fuscia is the ocean. But of course that is all assuming that's what your possible plan is... If not then disregard that little section.

As for the prices on tickets it seems that buying single tickets would be more of a hassle than buying a bundle, so perhaps you should make the single tickets cheaper than the bundle, otherwise no one would buy the single use ones.

 

[Dr.brock]

Its really a good idea
I think this will help a lot.
And 2nd thing you can add one to Blackthorn city, for dragons den, and one for Johto Safari. Both are in exactly opposite corners of Johto, so takes a lot time to go there.
Or to Johto Safari : You can add ferry stop as there are seas ..!!

I wish i could see the animation of travelling inside train and ferry.. that'll be really entertaining, going by enjoying the journey

And I would also like to suggest to make it like a real metro.. Like All trains go at a particular time like at an interval of 5 mins, and like 0-50 number of passengers can board in a train, and then it stops at every stop in game, the one which where you have to go, be ready for that stop, when it comes
It would be really exciting this way
Similarly for ferry..

 

[Gjole]

As for the prices on tickets it seems that buying single tickets would be more of a hassle than buying a bundle, so perhaps you should make the single tickets cheaper than the bundle, otherwise no one would buy the single use ones.

The players that don't have much money, and need to get somewhere fast will buy the single use ones, it's the same as in real life, if you want a 2L Coke it's cheaper going by price/liters, but then you might not have the money and just buy a 0.5L Coke which is more expensive going by price/liters

 

[BlackSeven]

Going with what Dr.Brock said, I also agree on Blackthorne city, its quite a hassle to get there, if for example coming from New Bark Town, You have to go around the whole region just to get to Blackthrone, though I'm unsure if the train is the best method to get there, a simple shorcut NPC in the Route below Blackthorne would do for me tbh.

 

[Orean]

I wish i could see the animation of travelling inside train and ferry.. that'll be really entertaining, going by enjoying the journey

Unfortunately, any new animation changes will have to wait until a new client is on board.

And I would also like to suggest to make it like a real metro.. Like All trains go at a particular time like at an interval of 5 mins, and like 0-50 number of passengers can board in a train, and then it stops at every stop in game, the one which where you have to go, be ready for that stop, when it comes
It would be really exciting this way
Similarly for ferry..

The problem I see with this is that this would become unnecessarily time-consuming to most players, and one of the goals with the overhaul of this train system is to make it overall convenient and readily usable to players. The real-world operations of a train system would necessitate this, of course, but in an MMO, this system has no necessary constraints; being constraint-free, it will divvy up the passengers as well, avoiding any condensation of passengers at any given time, eliminating the need for any queue system.

Going with what Dr.Brock said, I also agree on Blackthorne city, its quite a hassle to get there, if for example coming from New Bark Town, You have to go around the whole region just to get to Blackthrone, though I'm unsure if the train is the best method to get there, a simple shorcut NPC in the Route below Blackthorne would do for me tbh.

Should there be enough transportation points, for both the train and ferry system, to cater for a fair amount of the desired locations, would you find it okay to do away with the NPC shortcuts? Do note that the price of a single ticket is intended to be no more pricey than the cost of even the cheapest shortcut services provided by NPCs around the regions—let alone the cheaper-scaled prices of bigger bundles.

 

[subhaKING]

Please make cheap price for "transportation ticket" _^

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

Nice Idea, however I would place the train stations in more useful locations if the main goal is to lessen hassle and time for players. Mt. Silver is a wonderful Idea, as we've all known the pain of having to make a trade and leaving Mt. Silver to do so. I think Veridian and cherrygrove wouldn't be very useful though. Mt Silver is close enough to pallet town / Veridian for it to take it's place. Everything in kanto is pretty easy to access anyway, but if you did want to add something I could see Fuscia to allow quick access to the ferry if need be. I Agree that instead of Cherrygrove blackthorn be used, ad the dragons den will continue to be a popular hunting/training spot, and can be somewhat of a pain to reach. I would however prefer to see 2 extra trains in johto (blackthorn and another lower level city) than one in blackthorn and one in fuscia, as the bike path is more than sufficient IMO. As for the thought behind making the stops similar to real places in japan, I think it would be lost on the majority of players anyway, so functionality should be key.

 

[Jacollo]

I like the idea of extra stops. It's nice.
I also have a question, will the distance between destinations have any effect on ticket price?

For example:
Going from Saffron to Goldenrod will cost x pokedollars. Going from Saffron to Viridian y pokedollars. (x>y)

 

[Tecknician]

No, distance does not affect pricing.

 

[BlackSeven]

Should there be enough transportation points, for both the train and ferry system, to cater for a fair amount of the desired locations, would you find it okay to do away with the NPC shortcuts? Do note that the price of a single ticket is intended to be no more pricey than the cost of even the cheapest shortcut services provided by NPCs around the regions—let alone the cheaper-scaled prices of bigger bundles.

Lets see, off the top of my head the shorcut NPC's that I can remember are,
Mt.Moon bypass NPC
Digglets Cave bypass NPC
Ice Cave Bypass NPC
Are those it? I feel like there might be more,
Either way as far as the Mt.Moon NPC, I would be fine it was removed -if- theres train stations in Mt.Silver,
Same with Diggelts Cave,
As for the Ice Cave one, I'd be fine with it if there was a train in Blackthrone, otherwise, I'd like to see it remain there as I've come to hate that cave ^-^

All in all, my personal prefrence for train stations would be Blackthrone, Goldenrod, Mt.Silver, and Saffron. I wouldn't really add another one in the Kanto region just because I feel Kanto is pretty accessible and all cities are fairly easy to get to from Saffron, Viridian is a meh location for me because I just don't think theres anything useful in the Viridian/Pallet Town section of Kanto, and even then Mt.Silver is fairly close.

 

[CheckeredZebra]

*Comes in as staff*

I agree with what players are suggesting. Please add some sort of faster transportation to Blackthorn (could be through other means, such as a Cable Car that starts on the route after mahogany). Not only is Blackthorne precluded by an ice path filled with ice puzzles, it's impossible to return to once you leave it from southern cliff's ledges. The place is a hassle. In the handhelds it isn't a problem because of the HM fly, but we don't have it here and if you're looking for convenience...blackthorn is VERY inconvenient. Plus, it contains a popular hunting/training spot, giving players reason to come and go often enough.

On top of that, you have to get to mahogany first, which you have to surf over on and off or go through a cave to reach. Mahogany itself has no real reason to visit aside from Gym training and the Lake of Rage, which isn't that useful imo. (I'm sure something interesting could be added later, but for now the place is a bit empty.)

We currently have a transportation/escort NPC that skips icepath for you in exchange for $15,000 per trip, but it's a huge ripoff. At the same time, if you aren't going to add blackthorn to the metro line or a cable car or...something, please don't remove the skip NPC and look at adjusting its price.

 

[Dr.brock]

Should there be enough transportation points, for both the train and ferry system, to cater for a fair amount of the desired locations, would you find it okay to do away with the NPC shortcuts? Do note that the price of a single ticket is intended to be no more pricey than the cost of even the cheapest shortcut services provided by NPCs around the regions—let alone the cheaper-scaled prices of bigger bundles.

Lets see, off the top of my head the shorcut NPC's that I can remember are,
Mt.Moon bypass NPC
Digglets Cave bypass NPC
Ice Cave Bypass NPC
Are those it? I feel like there might be more,
Either way as far as the Mt.Moon NPC, I would be fine it was removed -if- theres train stations in Mt.Silver,
Same with Diggelts Cave,
As for the Ice Cave one, I'd be fine with it if there was a train in Blackthrone, otherwise, I'd like to see it remain there as I've come to hate that cave ^-^

All in all, my personal prefrence for train stations would be Blackthrone, Goldenrod, Mt.Silver, and Saffron. I wouldn't really add another one in the Kanto region just because I feel Kanto is pretty accessible and all cities are fairly easy to get to from Saffron, Viridian is a meh location for me because I just don't think theres anything useful in the Viridian/Pallet Town section of Kanto, and even then Mt.Silver is fairly close.

I think Mt Moon Bypass NPC should still be there, for new players, who dont have train pass or cant buy train ticket, because that NPC costs only 500$, enough for starting players
Others can be removed when train stops cover them

 

[Ramsey]

Great idea. Will you be adding Train Stations to the actual maps so you can enter them as buildings?

 

[Puar]

*Comes in as staff*

I agree with what players are suggesting. Please add some sort of faster transportation to Blackthorn (could be through other means, such as a Cable Car that starts on the route after mahogany). Not only is Blackthorne precluded by an ice path filled with ice puzzles, it's impossible to return to once you leave it from southern cliff's ledges. The place is a hassle. In the handhelds it isn't a problem because of the HM fly, but we don't have it here and if you're looking for convenience...blackthorn is VERY inconvenient. Plus, it contains a popular hunting/training spot, giving players reason to come and go often enough.

I think that would ruin the lore of Blackthorn.
As the "Dragon" city it has an aura of mystery and seclusion.
For example if Mt Everest had a cable car to take you to the summit, wouldn't that ruin the adventure of climbing?

I vote getting to Blackthorn should remain inconvenient, if anything make more maps and expand the puzzle. Make the players suffer a little to get there this way they appreciate it more

 

[CheckeredZebra]

*Comes in as staff*

I agree with what players are suggesting. Please add some sort of faster transportation to Blackthorn (could be through other means, such as a Cable Car that starts on the route after mahogany). Not only is Blackthorne precluded by an ice path filled with ice puzzles, it's impossible to return to once you leave it from southern cliff's ledges. The place is a hassle. In the handhelds it isn't a problem because of the HM fly, but we don't have it here and if you're looking for convenience...blackthorn is VERY inconvenient. Plus, it contains a popular hunting/training spot, giving players reason to come and go often enough.

I think that would ruin the lore of Blackthorn.
As the "Dragon" city it has an aura of mystery and seclusion.
For example if Mt Everest had a cable car to take you to the summit, wouldn't that ruin the adventure of climbing?

I vote getting to Blackthorn should remain inconvenient, if anything make more maps and expand the puzzle. Make the players suffer a little to get there this way they appreciate it more

Then you would also be arguing that the official game's method of "flying to blackthorn" was bad. =P

 

[TheKraken]

*Comes in as staff*

I agree with what players are suggesting. Please add some sort of faster transportation to Blackthorn (could be through other means, such as a Cable Car that starts on the route after mahogany). Not only is Blackthorne precluded by an ice path filled with ice puzzles, it's impossible to return to once you leave it from southern cliff's ledges. The place is a hassle. In the handhelds it isn't a problem because of the HM fly, but we don't have it here and if you're looking for convenience...blackthorn is VERY inconvenient. Plus, it contains a popular hunting/training spot, giving players reason to come and go often enough.

I think that would ruin the lore of Blackthorn.
As the "Dragon" city it has an aura of mystery and seclusion.
For example if Mt Everest had a cable car to take you to the summit, wouldn't that ruin the adventure of climbing?

I vote getting to Blackthorn should remain inconvenient, if anything make more maps and expand the puzzle. Make the players suffer a little to get there this way they appreciate it more

the first time there, yes. after that its a bit ridiculous....and absolutely not cool to add more ice path is annoying enough