Town Portals: Good or Bad for ARPGs?

Having the ability to quickly get out of combat situations or not is only one aspect of getting rid of town portals. I think combat locks and timers are a bit awkward. If you are gonna have town portals in the game, why would you not be able to use them when you wanted?

What I am more interested in is the atmosphere that getting rid of town portals creates. The main reason people go back to town are to get health/mana potions and to sell items. D3 will get help curb the need for this by that cube thingy that breaks down items, scroll of wealth, and the fact that slain monsters drop health globes.

I think this will allow for a much richer atmosphere in the game as when you are in a dungeon there won't be a way to get back to the safety of town. You simply have to push forward until you find a waypoint or find the next town. And I think that will be really cool.

d3 is also going to have the artisans who stay in a camp near where you are adventuring . they are vendors who buy , sell , repair , and craft . blizzard seemingly only wants you to go back to a real town when a quest requires it .

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a cast time wont really prevent abuse. you can slap a 30 second cast time on it and people will just cast it before combat and run back to it if needed. a combat lock is the best way to go if you want to avoid tp abuse.

I didn't say it should work in the same manner as in diablo -> cast portal and run through it.
It could work similar to a sorc teleport.
Cast it (5 sec cast time when you can't do anything like run/fight but you can decide to interrupt casting and run away further) and you are taken to town.
Only downturn is that it can't be used by teammates, it will be your personal trasportation.

All in all TP desing or even existence should depend on many things we don't know currently

How PvP (PK) issues will work?
we know pretty much nothing about mosters behavior.
How frequently ppl need to get to town/safe area to update quest, refill inventory?
And so on and so on.

About locking it in fight there must be some conditions to lock like distance to nearest monster or time since last fight etc etc.
And no matter how devs will decide to set them there will be always whining that's too far/long or the opposite.

another possibility is to simply make them very rare, if having tp scrolls requires a lot of expensive trading or luck then getting out of combat with one won't seem like cheating.

making them very rare would limit the main use for them to much i think (jumping back to clear up inventory/earn some money by selling)
player would probably save them up even more to espace combat only.

A cast time might be the good solution.
If u have the time to cast for like 5 seconds without interuption, then u would also have time to run away.
If hit by something the cast should cancel, or otleast jump back a bit.

tps would be alright if you couldn't run back through them. That way you would only use them if you reaaally need them. Also remember there are way points.so you could tp out then go back through the way point. Would break immersion allot less too. Also where are these town portals going to be in town with 500 players : P

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Oasisbhrnw wrote:

The main reason people go back to town are to get

add to that real life breaks. i have 3 kids and need to be able to jump up a lot and fast so having a tp will help me out there. not so worried about lack of tp in D3 since my kids will all be moved out before it even hits beta but for PoE my baby girl will probably just have turned one when beta is about to start

I have to agree with Apoc23... when my boy is getting into something or crying, I'm tp'ing out of there. I don't want to have a death penalty because my kid needed me. The game doesn't have to be "real life" like because it is still a game. If you hate what tp's do, ask for a special no-tp league.

How long would the combat lock be? Do you wait a minute when your kid starts crying? No, you cast the portal and go. It's an arpg, you are in combat 99.9% of the time.

The only abuse about town portal I disagree with is when you die and use it to come back quickly and throw yourself against an encounter over and over. That can be stopped with a timer on portal use after death or something.

that can also be stopped with closing your portal when you die and make it so you can only use your townportal


also combat lock should not be anything near 1 minute. 5 seconds is more than enough. once a monster starts chasing you the lock begins so you cant run away and cast then do a circle and enter. once engaged you are locked then 5 seconds after monster dies you are allowed to use it again.