Town Portals: Good or Bad for ARPGs?

I think this is wrong question.. If Town Portals are good for ARPGs in general?heh :) It really depends on the game.. For example.. TPs in Diablo 2 were a bit problem because it felt like a cheat in some way but at the same time, if you would remove TPs from Diablo 2, it would bring much bigger problems..

So ..for example Diablo 3 is build around fact, that TPs are not here.. So health globes, waypoints or breaking items to crafting stuff.. these things helps a lot with overall feel without TPs.. but what about PoE? I am not sure how PoE will handle potions, inventory space and boss fights .. but if it will be similar to Diablo 2 , removing TPs would be mistake.

I don't see whats so bad about using tps to exit fights.
For example, the Duriel fight in D2.
You NEED tps to resurrect your merc, or get more health pots, etc. Why is that a bad thing?

cuz its not supposed to grind a boss down with constant going back to town.
u should enter a fight prepared and fight till death, not run away like a little schoolgirl constantly.

Look at the alternative...you die, you lose all your gear, so you go around killing weaker enemies, collecting good gear, and resurrect your merc. Then you go fight Duriel again...and you die again.
Rinse and repeat.

Maybe that play-style appeals to some, but not to all. TPs provided an OPTION for people who wanted to use TPs to escape from tough spots. You don't have to use them if you don't want.

yes, if u choosed a bad skillbuild u can struggle in Diablo 2, especially with duriel.
But when we are talking about TPs in PoE we need to remember a few things that are diffrent here.
-First of all, the death penalty aint decided yet. I hope that we dont need to pick up our corpses like in D2.
-The total diffrent skill system. If u fight a boss, and notice that u cant beat him with ur current setup, u can figure out something else and use diffrent skillgems.

Im strongly against TPs to be used as combat escape method. I dont mind them as transportation device with limits, but please dont do it like in D2 where u could basicly run away from everything with a simple TP.

i like fast travel and i do not care if ppl use tps/teleports as escape mechanisms . never played d2 but did plenty of corpse/tombstone runs in eq/daoc
*horrible game design+5% TOTAL xp loss* .


if ppl are worried about winning a boss fight through attrition simply make all map present mobs heal completely when a player leaves the map .

I definitely don't want the fun sucked out of the game simply to prevent some people from abusing TPs. I mean really, using 30x TPs to finish off a mob means killing REALLY slow...are you sure that kind of abuse is leading to anything unbalanced?

I'd rather see the D2 style of TPs than most of the suggestions on here.

In diablo 1, if you didn't buy town portals, you had to run up 20 floors to get back to town.(I have no idea how accurate that actually, is, its been a long time since I played

Running sucks. I dont want to run, I want to kill, and progress the game. This problem gets even worse if, like me, you are a compulsive hoarder. Because I will, given the option, pick up every piece of worthless loot and town portal back every 15 minutes to sell it.

The best solution, imo, is to make it so that it can only be used outside of combat(also, make it collapse as soon as combat starts, so you cant use it to run away, and to give it a long cool down. that way the easy escape from that supposedly scary environment isn't always there.

I agree with Morbis. If there had been such a thing as Running Away skill in D1 then I would have had it maxed out. Especially as a ranged character. You would not see me through the cloud of shredded sandal smoke.

But yes, having to travel humongous distances to the nearest waypoint or other shortcut to town really really sucks the joy out of a game when a well designed TP system keeps the flow going without becoming a quick bail out on tough fights or tight spots. The key is a cool down timer or non combat activation system.

Why punish the average joe for the desires of a portal hating uber twitch reflex endowed masochistic minority of players?

d1 had townportal scrolls , the portal closed once you went back to combat loc from town *ps1* . you could keep a portal active by having the player who did not open the portal go through 1st and return 1st . didnt matter much as the scrolls were inexpensive , primarily useless but funny bug *ps1*.