Vertical Terrain Layering in MMO World Design

sunandshadow

One of my favorite things about the MMO Perfect World is the way some locations have a flying zone with its own monsters and quests layered above the normal ground zone.  It was a real epiphany to me when I first experience that, although I think to some level the game spoiled its own flying area design by giving one race the ability to fly at level 1, while the others all graduate into exploring the sky when they are given a slow starter flying mount at level... 25? 30?  The start of midgame, anyway.

Today I felt a similar epiphany when I was reading a story about a planet where the water table was far below the surface, and due to this subterranean rivers had carved out huge cave systems; you could travel 200 miles under the surface and come out in a different country.  So I was wondering, do any existing MMOs have an underlayer that's a whole world map with its own ecology of critters and fungi rather than just dungeons?

anemo

I think you could do some cool things with such a world.

Have the surface be utterly large, pretty much just existing as scenery porn and good hunting land.  No fast travel, flying, or similar.   Then have the time to get between cities being somewhere past the hour range.

Then have the first layer set up so that each step you take is like taking 2 steps, the next layer like taking 4, the following layer like taking 6, and on and on.   meaning that if you want to get to the other side of the world "quickly", you form up a party and navigate at the depths that it can handle.   

With the design goal being that a well equipped and sized party can get anywhere in the world quickly.   You could even set it up so that raid bosses don't even have that great of rewards, and instead you just get to leverage the ability to get from point A to B with a full inventory.  Would work great in a game that has local markets/AH.

Scot

Sunandshadow is nearly asking for two MMOs for the price of one.

Its a great idea and could be used to re-use resources in a way players in MMOs might not find too cheap. So you could have the zones avatars live and quest in, also be the zones avatars fight a realm verses realm in when you transfer to the "historical battle" that once occurred in those regions.

Possibly working better in a SF MMO where you could use the second layer as virtual reality of a fantasy MMO where it is the shadow realm that sits next to the "real" one.

Scorchien

I would say Moria in LOTRO would be closest to what you are asking .. of games that are available

Po_gg

CO has that in each zone   and if your main travel power is something aerial, you can use those spaces as soon as leaving the tutorial.

It is a more logical setting too, since it is not "layered above", it is the same zone at once. For example if you are overwhelmed by mobs and want to get away upwards, you can bump into patrols up there (and if possible the mobs left down will try to follow, like non-aerial mobs in MC will run to the nearest building and run up the fire escape hoping they can shoot you still, from the top of the building).

The "graduate into the sky" part is there too: since both parts are the same zone, if you can't fly you can simply ignore the sky, but in those places which are mandatory (for the story, for example in Vibora), there are ways to help the more "grounded" heroes to get up there.


edit: of course that was just the base setting in mind. Since everyone can have two travel powers, and vehicles are arrived into the game, in practice everyone can fly now, in one way or another.

Steelhelm

If developers would at the least scrap world design based on questhubs, that would be a great first step.

cameltosis

Whilst I'm not really on board with simply having zones that are underground, I do wish developers would make better use of vertical movement. 

Certainly out of all the MMOs I've played, all zones are basically flat. They may have hills or cliffs, but every player is basically on the same flat bit of terrain. The only time that seems to change is when you're fighting over keeps in PvP, they tend to have multiple levels. But, they're usually pretty limiting. 


So, I'd like to see more vertical terrain that we can traverse. Maybe having walkways and ledges for archers to stand on in boss fights. Or walls, trellises etc that we can climb up and down. Ledges on cliffs that we can hide on etc. There is definitely a lot of potential still unexplored when it comes to zone / level design and if we combined that with much better movement mechanics it could really open up the possibilities to players. I'd really like terrain to become much more important in combat beyond being used to simply break line of sight. 

Loke666

Guildwars 2 did this for the HoT expansion, maps generally had 3 layers with different ecology. It was a bit of a mixed feeling, sometimes it was good but it often didn't work as well as the devs hoped it would.

Having layers on the same map can certainly work, particularly with an underworld in caves under the normal gameworld but the flying thing rarely works well in MMOs besides on a few floating islands.

The thing is that if you have flying in your game you need good flying combat as well or it will just be a feature that makes your gameworld smaller. Now, I could certainly see something like Dragonlance pulling that off in a fun way but the flying mounts I seen so far in MMOs are rather poorly made and can't really be used in combat.

You more or less need to make the flying part into a combat flight sim (no matter if you use a dragon, a plane or a sci-fi styled ship) to make it good enough. People usually do love flying mounts when they first get them but they usually just kill the exploration and risk of travel the land for us. If you want to include a sky layer you need to make it as good as walking or riding.

Also, weather should affect flying so you might find yourself stranded due to a thunderstorm or blizzard.

Po_gg

Loke666 said:

You more or less need to make the flying part into a combat flight sim (no matter if you use a dragon, a plane or a sci-fi styled ship) to make it good enough.

Why? I mean, the whole "flying mount" line of thought...

As said above, CO has this since start. (probably CoH had it as well, but maybe not that much)
Your character can be aerial (with several different travel powers), and you can use your skills up there too. There are mob groups on the ground as usual, and there are mobs in the air. If you're on the ground, you avoid the aerials (unless you aggro them with superjump or a ranged attack), and if you fly you can avoid the ground mobs.
(and if you fly up very high, you can avoid the aerial patrols too)

The "flying mounts" part applies too, after they added the vehicles, but their damage vary and more limited. Vehicles are more just a tool for non-flying characters than the only/best way of aerial combat.

(there are exceptions of course, like the *Foxbat Nighthawk event's boss fight or Sky Command rampage... you don't defend this
without a sturdy vehicle   I mean you can, if you don't have vehicles or aerial powers you get a hover disc for the time of the fight, but that's quite slow and you won't be much help against the incoming carriers and choppers... though you can punch the jetpacked foes.)


edit: under Foxbat I obviously ment the other goofy guy who brought us the vehicles   https://youtu.be/sUtp443qWPU  he has an annual event with an aerial boss fight)