If your level wasn't an issue - how many hours/days/play sessions should you generally need to spend in a zone to see and do the majority of interesting things there? Should those be something that you have access to all at once, or should you find yourself coming back to the zone again and again over time after visiting other parts of the world to uncover more of it?
It's a simple question but I think it's one we don't often talk about because we get fixated on things like leveling speed. But I think part of making content last is trying to make sure there's depth to it as well as replayability, so I'm interested in what people think would "feel" right for a zone.
I think it should differ from zone to zone. Not every zone needs to have multiple areas of different character levels, nor have areas not available to those of lower level or lower character skills (such as requiring a high climb skill to get to). But it would be nice for a lot of zones to be this way. As for time, it should also differ depending on the zone. But I would think a couple of hours for outdoor zones and 4+ hours for indoor zones if you weren't trying to actually level or anything would be a good target. Of course if you're in there trying to get XP and level it could take you many more hours to accomplish seeing the whole zone, including having to make multiple trips back as you level and gain access to new areas.
Nephele said:If your level wasn't an issue - how many hours/days/play sessions should you generally need to spend in a zone to see and do the majority of interesting things there? Should those be something that you have access to all at once, or should you find yourself coming back to the zone again and again over time after visiting other parts of the world to uncover more of it?
It's a simple question but I think it's one we don't often talk about because we get fixated on things like leveling speed. But I think part of making content last is trying to make sure there's depth to it as well as replayability, so I'm interested in what people think would "feel" right for a zone.
As long sa it takes. I know that sounds like "waffle words", but it's the truth. There are different factors at play. Complexity of zone, size of zone, points of interest in zone, speed at which someone explores, etc. are some of the factors. All of that said, yes, some things should be "unlocked" as you level up and your perception skill levels up; however it should be organic, not some sort of arbitrary gate.
Too many different factors and types of zone to say. A dungeon should be much more difficult and slow to move through than an outdoor zone, for example.
My overall answer would be... however long it takes to find every little thing... plus quite a few hours to make sure!
Also, I love to come back to zones several times for things like level ranges, collections, faction work, lore investigation, etc.
Nephele said:how many hours/days/play sessions should you generally need to spend in a zone to see and do the majority of interesting things there? Should those be something that you have access to all at once, or should you find yourself coming back to the zone again and again over time after visiting other parts of the world to uncover more of it?
From a year old interview of Saicred: "I’ve loved exploring, for testing purposes of course, which has lead to some pretty interesting discoveries hint hint. Terminus is one of those places you can explore 10 times over and find something new each time by simply taking a slightly different route."
This is what I want, and hope it is common throughout the zones of Terminus.
For overworld areas, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say minimum 48 hours of gameplay exploring constantly and knowing exactly what to look for... That’s only 12 days of 4 hour sessions. (probably creates much more time invested...months total maybe...after adding quest content and then battle content). Then add dungeons to that...
That said I’ve never seen a dungeon that big...doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. Just need a resting spot here and there.
All that gives me the feeling of being in an mmo...tons of people in my zone and few in sight
I would like to be able to explore a zone, find some places that I can mess around in now and some others that look way too scary. Later come back to that same zone and check out those scary spots again.
Same can be true for dungeons in my opinion. But it doesn't have to be true in every zone.
Nephele said:If your level wasn't an issue - how many hours/days/play sessions should you generally need to spend in a zone to see and do the majority of interesting things there? Should those be something that you have access to all at once, or should you find yourself coming back to the zone again and again over time after visiting other parts of the world to uncover more of it?
When you exclude questing and killing mobs within that zone. Aka how long will you enjoy traveling within one area...
If the scenery allows for a good amount of diversity, I'm ok to take a good 6 hours (with play sessions of 2 hours). 8 to 10 hours of just exploring one area, all be it very diverse, will really struggle to be remembered. I think that makes sense. So this means, I'm pleased to invest 3 playsessions of 2 hours to explore 1 area. Without question or killing mobs. That really seems a good enjoyable experience.
Taking this into consideration and adding questing or perception to this...well the world is my oister. There is no time limit to that. You can't really saturate the feeling of exploration of a zone, as long as it's divers and stimulating by some fashion.
I like the entertain the idea of coming back to one area to discover things I didn't come across previously. Or wasn't able to explore. There is such a thing as a desire for mystery. One can only hope, VR takes that into consideration when building a world. Even with X-amount of expansions to come. It wouldn't be that bad to have locations within an area be unaccessable untill the 5th expansion. (just hitting a number here) But boy what a tease would that be.
If the scenery is all the same flavour each corner you turn. My attention span or to put it differently; the appeal of the zone will decrease with the amount of diversity lacking in that area. It would be up to VR to fill in the blanks on how they envision a certain region and call it divers enough to be stimulating explorers. Overall it would be less then 2 hours, the more monotome it is, the sharper the decline of interest and willingness to spend time in there. With a really barren area being the bare mininum.. that would make 30 min's tops (to see it all, that is).
So, the reason that I brought this question up is that in several discussions last week with other community members, I was a little dismayed to find that there was a general attitude that zones exist to be consumed and then you move on to other, higher level areas. Not only do I think that's a seriously limited way to lay out content in a world, but I also don't think that's what VR is actually going for in Pantheon. We should all know this in theory, but it seems like many of us still fall back on what we know from older games which is where you go to a place between Level X and Level Y, and then you go on to the next place from level Y to level Z, and you never go back. This then leads to an expectation that expansions and similar have to add a significant amount of new places for you to go, presumably at higher levels.
While players absolutely should be encouraged to travel around to different places as they level, and while expansions absolutely should add new places to explore, I believe that taking either of these things too far damages the integrity of the world in the long run. We have only to look at many of the aging MMOs out there to see zones that are completely abandoned and devoid of life, with the majority of the playerbase crammed into increasingly smaller parts of the world. We like to hate on instancing around here, for good reason - but folks, that kind of design leads directly to instancing.
I'm not calling anyone out here specifically but the point I was hoping to get across to everyone is that we need to stop viewing zones through the lens of level ranges. We need to start thinking of each zone as an interesting and unique place in the world - complete with its own population, history, and points of interest. And that might entail content at all level ranges. You might come and go from the place dozens of times in your journey as an adventurer, for various reasons. Ideally, we should never be "done" with a zone. And while new places will always be awesome, the launch game should have enough places to see and things to do that those expansion areas can be added to the game for better reasons than "high-level players need more things to do."
I realize I brought this topic up in a kind of weird way, and a lot of you may not have understood what I was really getting at. A lot of the responses above make that painfully clear. But that's why I asked the question - I wanted people to really think about it, and not just fall back on old arguments or on what other games have done.
I'll try to find a better way to do that next time I have something like this I want people to really think about.
Hand crafted zones fundamentally have a limited amount of content. Once you have memorized it (your mileage may vary person to person) there is nothing new to discover unless the content changes over time. only if the content is designed to be dynamic or changing overtime will there be a reason to return to handcrafted content. I do think there is a way to design handcrafted content that can respond to player density, player levels and changes to the environment without requiring a rebuild to the entire zone. A technique like that would be very beneficial to VR as they have limited manpower to create additional zones. Finding ways to reutilize the same zone at multiple different tiers based on need would be a great way to maximize the output of their limited manpower.
Dynamic content though is obviously very difficult to design, test and implement. There are plenty of ways it can go wrong and frankly it takes somebody with a great deal of vision to come up with the proper relationships for it to be both meaningful and enjoyable.
Nephele said:I was a little dismayed to find that there was a general attitude that zones exist to be consumed and then you move on to other, higher level areas
Some treat MMORPGs like any other game. Mario 'beats' that 'zone' and double-jumps onto the next.
They are missing out on a lot of the experience (and the point of RPGs), obviously, but that's up to them.
As long as VR doesn't make the game with them in mind (and they aren't) then that's ok.
I'm beginning to believe there are truly some players that will never 'get it' and that's ok.
It can be an interesting activity to try and open their eyes, but sometimes you have to let it go, or get 'dismayed' often.
Playing about 3 hours per night and more on the weekends, it took me 2 months to get out of Antonica in EQ2 circa Nov 2004 to Jan 2005. Roughly 2 months from level 1 - 20, then. I guess it depends more on the leveling curve and the actual size of the zone in terms of the amount of content in it, and less on the physical size of the zone. A slow leveling curve means a smaller geographical zone packed with content can seem phsyically larger, as was the case when I first played Antonica. Also, lack of mounts or fast travel increases the feeling of large regional size. Combine that with a slower leveling curve and I think you can have a very satisfying experience even in a zone that isn't gigantic.