Journey Back (Town Portal) - Additional Information and Background

As a gatherer I like the skill, makes all of my trips one way, regardless of how I come back, and with the invisibility shrine it's the safest way of getting at least one zone from portal. People talk that there are "more gankers" or "larger groups", that was always possible, they just weren't pushed enough into it. About campers, they were always there as well, so the only new addition to the game is the Journey back skill, everything else is just a new thing to complain about.

Still it wouldn't be fair of me to not mention that the amount of gankers and size of those groups does vary from (time)zone to (time)zone, so it's your mistake if you die couple times from not knowing but it's your fault if you continue to die from the same mistake.

As a solo adventurer
I am rather pleased
to find that this feature
has improved my ao life.

The aggro jerks still have safety in the form of hideout retreat but this TP gives solo gatherers a safe out, too.

Quite pleased and, in fact, sufficiently pleased to come back here and share this news with y'all.

Bravo @Eltharyon

I'm glad sbi didn't listen to the old "community" who don't want to see this game evolving, people are still dying, good gankers are still killing.

This new feature, only made black zone more "democratic", and now everyone has a chance of banking some loot, not only portal gankers like before.

This is not a "old community" versus "new community" issue. And what is even the point in framing it like that? Both old and new players were similarly affected by portal ganking. And the warnings were certainly justified since the journal back feature goes against some principles of Albions design. While the journey back feature turned out for the better other ganking nerfs did have the effect that ganking got even more unfair. Nowadays you see increasingly very large groups for example. Are you happy with being ganked by 20 people with no chance to get away? Is this a better situation than being ganked by invis/portal gankers? Before you were ganked by smaller groups and the odds of escaping was much better than they are now.

Ganking is never fair, dying to 20 people or 5 people has no difference for me. both have the same effect on my inventory.
But again at least now i can gather some resources and recover what i lost using journey back.

since this add, i gather a lot in a cheap set.

it's nearly 500k-700k and tp back
and so continue...

maybe add a cost which augment with the number of use per 24h help a bit?

I'm a returning old player. I used to be one of the ones rolling around with 8-20 direwolves ganking every person we found in the old caerleon connected black zone. The idea that it's a new thing is laughable. Hell, literally when the game launched people would follow people leaving the black zone portal as a group. Back then you could regular attack instantly on dismount, only spells had a cooldown, and they'd use one person to break your gallop while the others got ahead of you.

Large gank groups have always been around. They did eventually make solo dismounting and ganking players basically impossible against someone competent. While that might have hurt solo gankers, it also means you're not dead-on-sight against a gank group even when mounted. A worthwhile change.

I enjoyed my bandit time but eventually I wanted more, and the inability to get reasonable small-scale fights in the open world got me to quit the game. I could easily spend an hour to get one actual fight. The new patches are a game changer. The roads in particular are so much better with journey back. You don't have to choose between staying withing a couple zones, literally taking notes on your path home, or ending up across the whole world and trying to take an insane trek home. They feel like viable small-scale content now. Just dive in, travel deep, and return home when you want. I mean, does anyone really enjoy horse simulator? This puts more time on content in the world, not just riding around for 15 minutes.

Honestly even the new 5 second dismount cooldown is good. Before, one mob tag or mistake and that was death against a competent group if you weren't already near a portal. Now if you play well and invested in a decently fast mount, you should be okay. You can obviously screw up and die, but given perfect play from both sides what should be the outcome? Should a group of 10 gankers be able to kill anyone they see if they play it perfectly? Or should someone be able to run if they play it perfectly? As someone who has been on both sides many times, I gotta say it's better if the player can run. You can't do any content on a mount, nor are you totally safe on a slower transport mount. There's still risk for any meaningful reward, but letting people get to actual content is a good thing.

With regards to journey back, this time their theory nailed it. More focus on content out in the world, less focus on circling choke points for players returning home. If the game had a seamless world this would be less of an issue, but as long as you gotta zone in/out of a few places, camping them would be an issue. While the knee-jerk opposition is understandable given the nature of AO, the devs did a great job implementing it in a unique way that enhances what Albion is about, rather than taking it away. Well done.

Of course it is not new. What I meant is that the number of large groups (10+ players) increased and the number of small groups (about 3ish players) decreased. But the black zone is big so this may be different in other regions.

I agree that the feature is not as bad as I thought, as the tax it's quite avoidable sometimes.

Though I'll say ganking in the maps close to the portals seems more alive than ever, groups running around in Direwolfs everywhere.

Yeah from the news here it seems like the TP feature has turned out for the better but still see a lot of things about even bigger groups appearing. Tbh I don’t know how the groups of ganks are getting bigger, since legit the game is player by humans, how the frick their more players ganking every time there is a ganking nerf, because then there would legit have to be tons of people actually playing the game to make bigger and bigger ganks.

I also noticed how when we players have a point on how their was a fair few draw backs on the carebear features, there’s that one player that says “keep crying”.

Also still have yet to hear anything about SBI fixing any of the issues that are constantly being spoken about in the bugs section of the forums, or even them mentioning any of these issues, and all you get there is just a limp response of “fill out this survey of the issues you currently have and your mobile devices spec info”.
Like can they just even mention any of these issues in a dev talk so that the player base that faces these issues can have a little peace of mind that SBI actually listened (for once).

Also realized a few other games are in the same situation with incompetent developers just not doing anything other than just trying to throw their game down the trash (mainly found this out after taking a good long break from the forums).

Can we please have the journey back feature for roads hideouts with more reasonable prices?

I am resurrecting this thread for a moment just to say that I was totally wrong thinking that JB was going to be a big mistake. So far it turned out that it was mainly a positive addition to the game and hasn't really ruined anything.

I know many others who feel the same. Just wanted to share.

Change is always scary. But the one thing we know is that things never stay the same.

I was mostly afraid of T6+ resources dropping in value but surpringly they... have... slightly increased... since then? How?

Im in still it being the worst change in years. And now with the mists its going to get even more shitty~ 15 sec cast time is way to short~
At least my guild convinced me to stay in the game...

One of the best things happened to Albion. Go out, fight, repeat. 24/7 h content to to this function.

After four months of "Journey Back", I have an ambivalent view of this function.

In fact, it makes for a great time saver in the Open World. You can travel deep into the Outlands and not have to worry about a boring and time-consuming journey back. This helps not only gatherers and fame farmers, but generally everyone who has little time to play.

But the atmosphere in the Roads of Avalon has been destroyed. They are no longer a maze. The challenge of finding your way through the Roads has been lost. If you get lost, you can always press the "home button"; and this I find extremely boring.
I miss the times when I traveled the Roads with a pounding heart, not knowing how I would get home again. And I miss that moment of joy when, with lots of treasures in my inventory, I suddenly found a portal to the Blue Zone.

Should the "Journey-Back" function in the "Mists" work the same way in the next major update as it does today, a lot of potential would be wasted here.

I think Journey Back in roads is in a good place.
The cost is very high, which encourages you to walk back home or at least to find any royal continent zone. Saving 200-500k in JB costs is impactful.
When you are stuck behind a depleted portal after your group content is over, you now have an option to pay and save time instead of just waiting 15 minutes or logging out and coming back later.

One issue is journey back to your roads hideout within the same zone. It's the same zone, it should be as inexpensive as from a bz next to portal town to that town.

Another odd thing about it is how the cost to journey back to a hideout from a blue zone is based on blue zone prices, not black/roads prices. This is very convenient, but so cheap it's immersion breaking.

What are you talking about? Have you used the system chat?
It shows all the locations you have visited.

Your review sounds like "I liked to create problems for myself."

I think everyone was wrong, one of the better features added to the game over the years, a few issues I still have with the zones with world bosses.... total silly that people are able to place scouts at the entrance and use TP thingy to escape. yes its a solid 8/10 after the time