Fast Travel On Your Mount

From 1:27:26 in today's stream , Steven explains that at node level 3 and higher you have access to a building which allows you to get on one of your land mounts, pay a fee, and take a faster route to a nearby node.

This seemed a bit weird to me. Faster than what? Riding your mount on the normal roads? Is it a move-speed buff linked to a specific path? How would this affect someone trying to intercept and kill you? We know it's an upgradable node building, so it's definitely something special, but at the same time we've been told in the past that there will be no auto-pathing in Ashes, so it's presumably not that type of convenience.

Are there other games that do this sort of thing? How is it handled there? What are we actually looking at here?

To me that sounded a lot like ff14's chocobo runs between cities. Iirc the speed was the same as just running on your mount, but it was automatic so you could just use it and go do smth else while you wait.

I'd be ok with it having some speed buff, but also having limitations of "no mats" and "any attack on you throws you off the mount immediately", while running on your own mount wouldn't have those.

@NiKr , I certainly won't deny the utility of being able to auto-path to another node in Ashes. I simply hadn't thought we'd get that based on the previous "no auto-pathing" statements. The (vague) implication was that it might be local nodes only, which would be a bit of a limitation, but still presumably useful.

He said 'faster route' though, specifically. His language isn't always precise, and a basic "speed buff while on the road" would probably be useful. Auto-path between nodes would certainly be useful. (Though I feel it might cheapen the "large world" feeling they're going for. That's why I understood they weren't going to add it.)

A whole node building just for a speed buff seems like a bit much, but I could see paradigms where that makes sense. A building for auto-path makes far more sense (as a start/stop point, to limit destinations). I guess we're just stuck waiting for clarifications, then, if there's no obvious parallel from other games beyond "Chocobo Stables".

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That does remind me that I feel like there was some kind of invisible "road speed buff" in Alpha 1, where your stamina wouldn't deplete (as fast?) when you were sprinting along roadways. It didn't seem consistent enough for me to tell for sure if it was real or not, but the code exists! (maybe?)

Iirc they've already said that roads give you a speed boost. Maybe that was said just in the context of caravans, but I don't see a reason why it couldn't apply to mounts to.

SongRune wrote: »

NiKr, I certainly won't deny the utility of being able to auto-path to another node in Ashes. I simply hadn't thought we'd get that based on the previous "no auto-pathing" statements. The (vague) implication was that it might be local nodes only, which would be a bit of a limitation, but still presumably useful.

I saw that line as more of a differential from the BDO's auto-pathing, where you could just set a point and your char/mount would automove there. Having auto-pathing between two preset points doesn't really diminish the explorative side of the game, because you wouldn't be exploring. You'd only see the road that you run on. And with the world now being even bigger, I doubt you'd see much stuff beyond the road, so you'll still have to go and explore on your own if you wanna see the world.

NiKr wrote: »

Iirc they've already said that roads give you a speed boost. Maybe that was said just in the context of caravans, but I don't see a reason why it couldn't apply to mounts to.

SongRune wrote: »

NiKr, I certainly won't deny the utility of being able to auto-path to another node in Ashes. I simply hadn't thought we'd get that based on the previous "no auto-pathing" statements. The (vague) implication was that it might be local nodes only, which would be a bit of a limitation, but still presumably useful.

I saw that line as more of a differential from the BDO's auto-pathing, where you could just set a point and your char/mount would automove there. Having auto-pathing between two preset points doesn't really diminish the explorative side of the game, because you wouldn't be exploring. You'd only see the road that you run on. And with the world now being even bigger, I doubt you'd see much stuff beyond the road, so you'll still have to go and explore on your own if you wanna see the world.

I was gonna say "this seems off", but... no, honestly, I could see it. As little time as 3.5 minutes is, that would honestly be about right for "later node levels" and wanting things in the nearby region to feel a bit more accessible as civilization develops, without directly having a large impact on the real feeling of "world size". Particularly if you couldn't path across wilderness "gaps" because you had to stop (or at least waypoint) at Village or higher nodes at each step if you wanted to keep going. "Auto-path stations" might in fact be the answer here.