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First hint of world size
GrayKodiak
Member CommonPosts: 576
3:27
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdnGLKlEq_0&noredirect=1
"We have not announced the details for the size of the world, but the technology..would allow for unlimited..whether or not we do it or not is something we will announce in the future"
So this is the first time I have heard any hints about the world size, it seems to at least be a good thing that big doesn't seem to be a problem. From what we know
-Moving NPC's
- Land claims in Next
- No static boss mob locations
-dynamic npc quests
It is going to need to be a BIG world for players to spread out in order to avoid people trying to camp certain likely location for npc/mob events. Possible downside to an oversized world is the old ghost town syndrome but I think I would rather risk that than go the other route and it be too small and you can't get out on your own...or don't have room to make your guild house/ player city because all the land is claimed.
We have seen the map but not the scale of the map, I am hoping there is a lot of space to explore and do your own thing as that is the essence of sandbox games.
Sandbox's need room.
....but they also need hubs for players to gather at, I am not sold on the idea that three month rally calls can build the base of the world up fast enough to avoid certain areas looking like slums.
Comments
I agree. In fact I would say a well designed dynamic world could simply "reclaim" ghost town areas. If a town is mostly abandoned, then it simply becomes reclaimed by the wilderness. It allows a world to dynamically trim itself to its population size.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
Guilds that build popular cities would benefit from the high traffic and trade that comes with it. Heres to dreaming I guess.
I believe they will go with a quit traditional sized world, considering there won't be so many wizards spires around and how much many people dislike travelling. Also we have already seen a map that looks quite traditional, a continent split up in different zones. It seems as if at least the surface level world will be pretty much what it is in every MMO. The underworld layers will be procedural generated, so they are always new.
I want at least 3 times as big as the landmass in Vanguard, and I want everything to be MUCH, MUCH more spread out than Vanguard or any other mmo for that matter. SWG was pretty spread out, but they can do a lot better now. How about 5 times as much landmass as Vanguard (if not up to 10 times as much) and everything (ie any kind of landmark whatsoever) is very spread out with very limited fast travel. If they do that plus have NPCs with daily activity cycles and realistic village sizes, then this might be the first truly immersive mmo.
If they go the opposite route (like every mmo ever) where you have 3 huts that comprise a "village" of 17 NPCs which stand in the exact same fucking location all day every day and where the next village is literally a 2 minute walk away over a couple of small hills then they can fucking forget about immersion. That shit isn't cutting it anymore.
The official Next "world" is said to be seeded by a musical algorythm and procedurally generated. After that the devs will add in special site, landmarks, etc. as well as smooth out any rough spots. The beauty of running it with an algorythm is the ability to add more procedurally generated land by simply adding more hardware.
But it's just a clone...
I agree. The technology is there. What might be lacking is the human resources required to generate enough interesting things to populate in a town.
Or wait. Maybe there's a pool of human resources ready to do just that!
SOE should consider giving us even more tools to contribute to the game. We can create structures and scenery... so why not creating NPCs? Forgetting for a moment the approval process that would be needed, we the people would be able to add a lot of color to a village when coupled with the custom structures we could backdrop them with. A nice quest building tool, dialogue tool (like the old Neverwinter standalone game), and voila... a living, breathing world.
I'll never understand why developers always put the cart before the horse.
Advanced AI like you've never seen
Unlimited potential Landmass
Non-trinity gameplay MOBA based classes but not zergy like GW2.
How about you make it and then tell us what it is, instead of feeding us magical unicorn ideas that you may or may not deliver on.
What do you have against magical unicorns? It is Everquest after all...perfectly suited for magical unicorns. I want one for a mount.
During a Gamescom interview Dave was asked if players would eventually be able to Rallying Calls. While he slyly said he couldn't comment he did say that once they created the in house tools for world generation they wanted to give it to players to create, Landmark being the first of that. He added that if they would give those tools to players then... and he finished there.
So maybe once they streamline the tools like "world" tools they will release player content creation tools. Hopefully!
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
this would also mean that the world should expand or shrink depending on the amount of players...but how can this be done
And what everyone have to consider is, that EQN will not be the usual deep vertical progression themepark with different leveling areas starting from lvl 1-5, to 6-10, to 11-15 and ongoing.. instead it is much more about horizontal progression, with just a little vertical progression.. with other words all the world will be all the time available for all players, and instead the world is more or less divided into different difficulty areas ranging from tier 1 to 4.
Which will come down to that tier 1 areas are areas for solo content from the very beginning. After progressing vertically tier 2 may be solo content, too. Tier 3 and tier 4 will be more difficult content and most probably only viable for groups or at least a bunch of players.
With other words, the world will feel a lot larger, because every area will be interesting all the time, and not be abondon because you level through it.
About the unlimited size. Yeap.. they can generate a empty landmass, like we will see it with EQN Landmark rather fast.. but nevertheless in EQN every area will most probably afterwards worked at.. like we have seen in the recent terraforming vids. And you will have nevertheless serverrestrictions.. as they already said.. every contintent will be seamless, but to travel from one to the other continent you will most probably have a loading screen.. with other words different zones, and the capability to have those different zones on different servers. With other words.. nothing is unlimited without certain constraints.
And therefore they said theoretically.. which means practically not.
I hope it is really large, to include relatively empty land masses for players to build on...and I hope they frequently release additional procedurally generated terrain for players to build on.
I can just see patch notes saying they are going to expand the western borders open for settlement and then on patch day players rush the land to stake their claim. If open world pvp it will get so brutal lol.
If they dont release more pliable land and have a fairly small world thats ok too since there is still the hope of working the land and exploring caverns which we know will be periodically procedurally generated to mix it up.
I hope SOE realizes there are HUGE risk and dangers in allowing for an organic world.. What I mean here is that there needs to be strict controls as to where people can go and not go.. This not only applies to using a 1 server concept, or multiples., but it applies to cities and hot locations in the game.. Every game I have played there always becomes ONE hot location where all the sheep gather.. Theed, Naboo, or Dalaran, or Common's tunnel.. etc etc.. If server populations are not controlled directly or indirectly, you'll end up with 1,000 plus in one area like an army of ants and guess what?
CRASH.. Every dev knows that there are unwritten limitations on population density, and the trick will be how to keep that from being exceeded and causing problems not only on the game servers, but client side as well.. SOE better be very alert about allowing people to gather anywhere, anytime unless they want problems..
They can't do it.. and they are very well aware of it. If everyone would start at one point.. the server would crash rather fast at the starting rush.. and therefore we always had different starting zones.. Not because it was cool and stuff.. but because it was absolutely necessary to spread out the people, especially in the beginning somewhat... Nowadays most do even preorder headstarts to spread the people even more .. because you can't have a few thousands player in one place.. your server will crash.
JITA
indeed, i am hoping they will have a race/deity type starting area based on lore.
Still want BIG world size, where guilds can claim land and build a hall/city/market. if its destructable then PvP would be amazing. It seems that cities will also have maintainance needs of rsc/$ so if the guild falls... the city crumbles by environment or orcs looking for a new home.
mmmmmm
That's a really great point. (I have my doubts, though, about whether EQN will have a world sim this robust. There is also the issue of letting player-owned buildings decay or be destroyed by the world. While I'd like to see it, many players would be in an uproar over that sort of thing.)
Re: millions on one serve,I think having the technology to create one massive world doesn't necessarily mean that you should. It's a balancing act. Population will inevitably fluctuate and, ultimately, decline. What happens when the world you scaled up to accommodate 3 million people now has 600,000 in it?
Having a dynamic and scalable world actually creates a new set of problems that have to be dealt with to avoid a lifeless, barren world.
The ideal game would of course have thriving, bustling cities as well as vast wilderness for players to explore. I don't think this is actually that hard to accomplish. And a dynamic world makes it a lot easier to achieve. The problem in most games is that characters are forced to access static content (e.g. quest givers of the appropriate level) in areas that are clearly supposed to be busy, but are rarely visited by players. Dynamic content should eliminate that phenomenon, at least.
I have a sneaking suspicion that by the way that's worded and by watching videos that the world is going to be split into smaller chunks with barriers in between.
Like instanced zones for example.
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