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  1. #221
    Black Belt
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    Damn, I didnt realize this was still in Beta. Thought it was released already.

  2. #222
    Old Odin
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    holy shit how big is valencia?!!!

  3. #223
    The Defense is ready, Your Honor
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    I'm taking Black Desert so much more seriously than Blade and Soul, because it looks like they're taking their own work so much more seriously. B&A should seriously be called T&A. It'd sell even more and still wouldn't be lying about itself.

  4. #224
    A. Body
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    It's an interesting conundrum that, the bigger your world is, the harder it is for it to appeal to a larger crowd. If it takes me an hour, just to get to where I need to go do something, how do you find the time to play? How often are you going to run into anyone, at any point on the map, and if you do, how many would want to stick around if they got PK'd, just in front of their destination, and have to run an hour again?

    I'm fascinated by the game size, and the worlds that are able to be created, but outside of a few people, how do you ever get into such a game?

  5. #225
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    I look at it from the bugs and features standpoint. The larger the world, the harder it is to make sure it runs effectively, and the bigger it is, the fewer the features that populate it. Its still interesting, though!

  6. #226
    Old Odin
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kachiko View Post
    It's an interesting conundrum that, the bigger your world is, the harder it is for it to appeal to a larger crowd. If it takes me an hour, just to get to where I need to go do something, how do you find the time to play? How often are you going to run into anyone, at any point on the map, and if you do, how many would want to stick around if they got PK'd, just in front of their destination, and have to run an hour again?

    I'm fascinated by the game size, and the worlds that are able to be created, but outside of a few people, how do you ever get into such a game?
    its one Mega-Server no? so populating at beginning shouldnt be so bad (if there is enough players)

  7. #227

    Something I've said to people complaining about XIV's zones being small, often relative to XI's, is that it's not so much the size of the zone of that counts, but what the players can do within it. Comparatively, Rift and its Storm Legion expansion came with some somewhat sizable zones, Seratos being the most notorious for basically being a fuckton of empty space. Things like that ultimately strike me as a waste of developmental resources, particularly in the art and testing departments (need to make sure you can't fall through things, get stuck in doodads, etc.). How things like this affect PvP as also been noted, either in making it difficult to find prey or people getting utterly demoralized when a long trip/activity is ruined by a gank squad.

    This is probably why some form of compromise needs to be struck. Things like teleports are indeed nice, but I also understand where people are coming from when they say the make a world feel smaller. Something like WoW's flightpoints are functionally teleports, but delayed with the whole trip. From the PvP perspective, players are also safe while doing this, so in a way, it makes their world smaller, too. Maybe one thing Archeage did right was the wagons between towns thing where you could hop on and it'd go on its own. While this was realistically more for crafters carrying things that would slow them down, it was something that offered a sort of, "Sit back and enjoy the view!" while still being potentially dangerous. The only real flaw here was that the wagons were on fixed schedules, not unlike an RL bus. I'd probably encourage some form of transit like this to be "instanced" in that players could basically pay to spawn their own transport whenever and go.

    Yet, this also brings up the complication of mounts. It's kind of become the norm lately where you can just summon one virtually anywhere and go. In effect, if you don't plan on combat, you're a moron to be walking. Mounts somewhat trivialize the need for the above with the only real perk being the automated transit, but maybe even then a manual path could be faster. To be honest, I'm somewhat interested in a game taking a more realistic approach to mounts in that there might be terrain they're unwilling to scale, can fatigue after a certain amount of running, and can only be summoned within range while needing time to get to you based on their movement speed. From there, simply have stables at hubs where if you manually walked, you can call your mount there no matter how far off it is. And perhaps I'm in the minority on this one, but I'm sick of riding lizards, deer, giant chickens, or basically anything but horses. The more varied you get, the more requests you get like, "X should fly!" or "Y should swim!" which tends to just turn into that one mount you do like never being fully functional.

    There's more I could prattle on over how to make a world feel more... worldly, but I guess it's probably wasted effort for the moment. Monster eco-systems is probably one of the bigger next steps I'd tackle.

  8. #228
    The Defense is ready, Your Honor
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    I think Rift struck a great balance between size vs. shit to do in their zones. You never could run too far off in one direction without something to do there, be it a rift, a quest, or something out there to otherwise catch your eye. There wasn't a lot of wasted space just for the sake of it.

  9. #229

    It had its moments. I think they lost some of that with SL and NT, but any real further complaint I'd levy against them just falls into MMOs being raid-centric.

  10. #230
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    Ya I'm talking mostly about map design and the leveling experience.

  11. #231
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    I thought Rift's map design's were terrible. You couldn't go 5 yards without running into something, which i dislike. It just felt too small and too cramped for my tastes. I much prefer the wide openess of old school game worlds, but then i don't need content thrown at me every 5 seconds. Newer MMO's absolutely suck when it comes to world design mostly because the worlds they're designing have to fit around some idiot who only has 15 minutes to play and wants it all.

    Take FFXI's game world but make it seemless and without loading screens, and you have the blueprint for an amazing world. You'd have zones within zones, completely separated by levels instead of zone lines. Take areas such as Temple of Uggalepih and Den of Rancor being within each other, within zones, and turn them into public dungeons where the further you go the more dangerous it gets. I love shit like that. Zones that require multiple people to open trap doors and pressure plates with multiple levels are amazing to me. Instead we get shit that a 5 year old has to be able to do by himself.

    I'm just a bit salty i suppose but i find dev's have gone backwards when it comes to map design and zone layouts. It's all in the name of convenience but man does it suck.

  12. #232
    Formerly BGTemp // TERA Fan
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    Haha, I remember people logging out alts behind door levers in ffxi. Good stuff, I miss that too. Make it active like pressure plates and stuff, would be great.

  13. #233

    Things like that remind me of the 40-man raid concept. It sounds cool on paper, but then in practice, you're standing around Jeuno shouting for someone to help you flip levers in Eldieme or something because the need for whatever lies behind the doors will wax and wane like the tides. Pragmatically, I'd be okay with such things having to be done once, but as soon you've gotten behind, have something that'd enable a shortcut in some manner. XI eventually did this, but by then, the population had obviously tanked.

    I'll just agree Ald's being somewhat salty and waxing a bit of the typical anti-casual hyperbole.

  14. #234
    The Defense is ready, Your Honor
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alderaan View Post
    I thought Rift's map design's were terrible. You couldn't go 5 yards without running into something, which i dislike. It just felt too small and too cramped for my tastes. I much prefer the wide openess of old school game worlds, but then i don't need content thrown at me every 5 seconds. Newer MMO's absolutely suck when it comes to world design mostly because the worlds they're designing have to fit around some idiot who only has 15 minutes to play and wants it all.

    Take FFXI's game world but make it seemless and without loading screens, and you have the blueprint for an amazing world. You'd have zones within zones, completely separated by levels instead of zone lines. Take areas such as Temple of Uggalepih and Den of Rancor being within each other, within zones, and turn them into public dungeons where the further you go the more dangerous it gets. I love shit like that. Zones that require multiple people to open trap doors and pressure plates with multiple levels are amazing to me. Instead we get shit that a 5 year old has to be able to do by himself.

    I'm just a bit salty i suppose but i find dev's have gone backwards when it comes to map design and zone layouts. It's all in the name of convenience but man does it suck.
    Ehhhh... Sounds like you'd have loved Wildstar with that "everything was better when I had nothing but free time on my hands" 2002 era. Even if I had the time today, which I do occasionally, I really don't want a repeat of Breath of Fire 3's desert minigame, endlessly trudging across terrain just because its there. As long as I don't have mobs constantly nipping at my heels, dismounting me or dazing me on the first hit, I don't mind "busy" locations.

    To each their own, though.

  15. #235
    Relic Horn
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    I'm getting close to 40, pretty casual now, and don't have anywhere near the time i used to but i still prefer game and world mechanics that encourage interdependence. I'd love to get a group together and go trudging through a Den of Rancor type area today. I understand it'd be a niche market but really that's where the genre needs to go and is probably headed. I don't see many new big budget MMO's on the horizon. Just my opinion anyway.

    I also hated Wildstar. Carbine managed to hit the perfect storm of what not to do. Cater an entire MMO around the 1%, that of course already have a raiding MMO and refuse to switch.

  16. #236

    It is a mystery why map design can inspire such passion.

    As such design things for niche audiences in a game made for lots of people. One of these things is not like the other, unless that thing is a lot of obscurity.

  17. #237

    I'm still trying to figure out what's so awesome about Den of Rancor, personally. Realistically, there wasn't much "trudging" through it. You stealthed up, went to where you needed to, then whatever after that. That was kind of one of XI's faults and I dare say inspired the proliferation of true-aggro type mobs in later expansions. Likely what upped any source of real danger in the XI world was the general inability to shed aggro without zone lines or very niche things like Hide and/or scent/weather/water shenanigans. Go in prepared, odds are you were okay with, say, the only possible threat coming from aggroing a bomb at the lantern lighting. If you had a party for the ZM, the tonberries at the gate should've been no threat at all if aggroed.

    But that's more or less looking at it mechanically. Stylistically, I guess it's a temple in a jungle that tunnels worming around it? Maybe they were intended to be part of the temple, but the Kuluu got 'berried first? I guess the contrast doesn't enthrall me all that much while realizing MMOs tend to be incredibly trope-y about environments. Even trying to think back on my policy of having things to do being more important than more real estate, Rancor's kinda lacking. ZM-related stuff, WSNM, Hakutaku, path to Leviathan, coffers for some jobs then a couple niche NMs, maybe? Granted, I realize XI was more a bare bones kinda game back them, thus a bunch of quests didn't get associated with the zone, but there is a middle ground between that and "tripping over shit at every step" isn't there? Even though, again, I feel that's a bit of an exaggeration.

    More of a personal want is that waiting to play actually shouldn't overcome playing. That's partly why I grouse over this genre being so dungeon-dominated now. Queue for an hour as a DPS just to get a 20m dungeon with likely little to show for it? No thanks. And this is kinder than olden XI or shit Wildstar tried to pull.

  18. #238
    The Defense is ready, Your Honor
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    Yeah... its not like there was ever a thing that involved a group of 20 people not sneak/invising and fighting their way through. It was literally sneak, invis, go wherever, sit there, do the thing that usually involved killing a single mob, then leaving. What's so amazing about... that? The Den was literally a cave. I think at some point it had some water in it. Mostly it was a cave, that was brown, that had snaking tunnels and I believe a pit or two.

    Interdependence? Do you mean depending on the whm to cast sneak/invis on you to get past all the trash mobs that you don't feel like wasting time with? Do you mean depending on the blm to D2 you after you killed the single thing that you sneaked/invised to? I need more context here of what you enjoyed and why, because right now its sounding only like you enjoyed it because you were at "that age" when you played it.

  19. #239
    Mithra Ero-Sensei
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    Hated true sight aggro and non resetting mobs in FFXI back in the day. You know how annoying it is for someone to run to the exit with 50+ mobs, and you can't go in with your exp group because soon as you step in your dead, you don't even get time to notice all the aggro.. your just dead O_o

    I don't think it was more of a "sense of danger" it was more of a sense of point and laugh as people ran for their life all over the map dragging shit all over the zone. The sense of danger came when they just said fuck it and died right ontop of your exp party with all this shit that aggros anything near them.

    You want a sense of danger, thats what FFXIV did... stuff that aggros you from a mile away, dismounted you, slowed you and did 2-3X the damage of what it could do in melee range every 1-2 seconds. Back in those 1.X mor dhona days with those Lv90 mobs or something... those were the days. Get slightly near anything BAM 5,000+ damage from 50y away /dead

    Anyway, I prefer one of or both of these for my gaming experience usually.
    1. Fast mode of transportation
    2. Quest/quest hub close to each other

    I don't exactly find crawling at snail pace 30min to a quest hub to walk another 15min to an area through hostile shit storm jungle to do a quest. Only way I would find that fun, is if I got to take out my rage by killing people on the way there and back.

  20. #240
    Relic Horn
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    Didn't mean to shit over this thread with my MMO ideals. Lets just say i'm not happy the direction the genre has taken and would prefer to go back to a more tight knit community based model that old EQ1/FFXi used (minus the bot bullshit). Everything I've seen from Black Desert leads me to believe it'll be just another 1-2 monther with nothing to do other than some terrible zerg PVP. It's a shame because i like a lot of the aspects of it.

    A general MMORPG design theorycrafting thread would be fun to discuss this sort of stuff though.

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