There are two potential problems that I see in introducing porters:
1) People can respond to relic raids faster.
Since defense has the advantage, if will be further buffered and lead to more of a turtle meta. However, players are smart, and will circumvent things when possible. The circumvention here is to use off-hour raids, while there is no defense. This leads to a meta where game-changing events (swapping of relics) occur while nobody is around. This seems like poor gameplay. Granted, off-hour raids already exist, but this decision of having porters to border keeps seems to incentivize it further. Did the staff see this perspective, and what was their response to this?
2) Zones will be become dead.
I believe a sign of good game design is that areas are re-used repeatedly. In MMOs, I believe it's particularly important to maximize interaction between members of the community, as this genre of game is a social game. When you bypass zones entirely via teleportation, you have no interaction between people who travel out of necessity (high levels) vs. people there to level (low levels). The newbie zones will become a once-used thing, and then unused by anyone above that threshold. This unfortunately reduces the interaction rate of players, and high levels will no longer stop to buff your group, or chat for a moment. With a certain leveling speed, some zones are likely to become entirely dead.
There are other ways of getting around zones quickly. Permanent increase of out-of-combat movement speed in home-zones, for example. Faster horses. I think it's even possible to have teleporters in some instances where they don't directly interfere with socialization.
Was this perspective examined?
1) People can respond to relic raids faster.
Since defense has the advantage, if will be further buffered and lead to more of a turtle meta. However, players are smart, and will circumvent things when possible. The circumvention here is to use off-hour raids, while there is no defense. This leads to a meta where game-changing events (swapping of relics) occur while nobody is around. This seems like poor gameplay. Granted, off-hour raids already exist, but this decision of having porters to border keeps seems to incentivize it further. Did the staff see this perspective, and what was their response to this?
2) Zones will be become dead.
I believe a sign of good game design is that areas are re-used repeatedly. In MMOs, I believe it's particularly important to maximize interaction between members of the community, as this genre of game is a social game. When you bypass zones entirely via teleportation, you have no interaction between people who travel out of necessity (high levels) vs. people there to level (low levels). The newbie zones will become a once-used thing, and then unused by anyone above that threshold. This unfortunately reduces the interaction rate of players, and high levels will no longer stop to buff your group, or chat for a moment. With a certain leveling speed, some zones are likely to become entirely dead.
There are other ways of getting around zones quickly. Permanent increase of out-of-combat movement speed in home-zones, for example. Faster horses. I think it's even possible to have teleporters in some instances where they don't directly interfere with socialization.
Was this perspective examined?
