Bottleneck zones.
These made the original EQ1 so awesome.
Zones like Highpass and Sirens Grotto that would gate you from just getting to the other side.
You didn't really get this feeling in Vanguard because you could almost always go around or fly over.
I can't wait to zone into a new area and just have a bunch of people crowded at the zoneline just waiting for enough to make a run to the other side.
My first trip from Qeynos to Freeport is one of my favorite gaming memories for sure and getting through Highpass was epic.
Anyone have a great story that involves getting through a tricky bottleneck ?
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
Zones have their pros and cons. One thing I did like about zones was that it really created a separation of areas, gave them a sense of uniqueness. In zoneless games, it seems you move from area to area, and don't notice as much the separation or changes.
But the "loading..please wait" was immersion breaking, and in the early years of EQ, was often a source of frustration as people loaded at different rates and many would crash during zoning. We have come a long way in PC power and internet speeds since then, so that probably is not as big of a deal.
Then you had the "safety net" that zonres provided, as in you could make a dash for the zone, and if you made it, you could survive. This can seque into the whole "how long should a mob chase you before giving up" with zoneless games.
On the other hand, zoning also had the possibility of zoning INTO someone elses saftey run, and begin getting pummeled by their train to zone. This was especially bad when connections were slow and your character would materialize in the new zone before your screen would display, and mobs could beat on you for a few seconds before you were even aware anything was going on.
Then you also had mountains along edges of zones, to give the illusion of an impassable object to veil the zone wall. This lead to a lack of continuity on the map at times. Sometimes you just want to go north, or south, and enter the next "zone" without having to find that "zone tunnel/canyon/crevice".
All in all, I really have come to like the zoneless scheme, but I hope that the devs can give each area a unique character that really gives you the sense of entering somewhere new/different with transitions between them making sense.
Angrykiz said:Bottleneck zones.
These made the original EQ1 so awesome.
Zones like Highpass and Sirens Grotto that would gate you from just getting to the other side.
You didn't really get this feeling in Vanguard because you could almost always go around or fly over.
I can't wait to zone into a new area and just have a bunch of people crowded at the zoneline just waiting for enough to make a run to the other side.
My first trip from Qeynos to Freeport is one of my favorite gaming memories for sure and getting through Highpass was epic.
Anyone have a great story that involves getting through a tricky bottleneck ?
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
I understand the direction Pantheon is going, but I would prefer aligned zones (ie: zoneable chunks) over arbitrary (in space) zones. With an open world design, bottle necks can form naturally with use of terrain. Flying in a MMO is soooo childish, unless the world size is as big as Dark & Light was. Otherwise flying = trivial
I understand & like some natural bottle necks... but having the entire server funneled threw same content makes the world smaller and on rails. HighHold would be great if it was the shortest path, but hard for your troubles. Instead, to travel east to west everyone takes the same 2, or 3 routes = stale game world and linear adventure.
I want full zoneable walls and multi-direction travel.
Natural variation of landscape can guide players through certain routes (mountain passes/uncrossable rivers). Established roads are sensible and safe but they should not be the only way. If you advocate that a game should not be on rails and should allow full exploration why shouldn't also be able to find our own way.
if there are critical lore/event driven aspects tha require us going through the same place then sure - if its just cram the population together, no thanks. I would lovve to be of the beaten path, hunting/gathering and follow my own internal compass and arrive at new areas via circuitous routes - or decide that i will push through the mountain trail as the most direct route knowing i am in for a fight
Hieromonk said:Angrykiz said:Bottleneck zones.
These made the original EQ1 so awesome.
Zones like Highpass and Sirens Grotto that would gate you from just getting to the other side.
You didn't really get this feeling in Vanguard because you could almost always go around or fly over.
I can't wait to zone into a new area and just have a bunch of people crowded at the zoneline just waiting for enough to make a run to the other side.
My first trip from Qeynos to Freeport is one of my favorite gaming memories for sure and getting through Highpass was epic.
Anyone have a great story that involves getting through a tricky bottleneck ?
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
I understand the direction Pantheon is going, but I would prefer aligned zones (ie: zoneable chunks) over arbitrary (in space) zones. With an open world design, bottle necks can form naturally with use of terrain. Flying in a MMO is soooo childish, unless the world size is as big as Dark & Light was. Otherwise flying = trivial
I understand & like some natural bottle necks... but having the entire server funneled threw same content makes the world smaller and on rails. HighHold would be great if it was the shortest path, but hard for your troubles. Instead, to travel east to west everyone takes the same 2, or 3 routes = stale game world and linear adventure.
I want full zoneable walls and multi-direction travel.
There were many routes from Qeynos to FP, the main 2 being the good route over the concrete bridge and the evil route thru SK into the lake and mts and thru S. Ro. You could go other routes if you chose. My first run from Qeynos to FP, at the low level of 10, took me 2 hours and 15 min. - no deaths. The longest part of it was getting thru HpH because I wasnt aware of the 'evil route' yet.
A great bottleneck was Kithkor Forest. If you arrived at either end of it at night, it paid to wait till daylight. After midnight the dead came out in the forest. That zone was truely one of the most frightening I've run thru. Even newer better graphic games just never invoked the same feels as that zone.
EQ was never 'on rails'. So many paths to explore. So many quests leading in several directions.
Yes I agree, 'loading.....please wait" was irksome. But it was part of EQ. at that time, I knew no other way of getting from one territory to another. Dying on zone in, dtdt, and landing in the middle of a train - well that was part of the game world.
Like having the boat sail out from under you in middle of OOT, such wonderfully creepy foggy open ocean and nothing there but you :).
There was not "many" routes, there was but 3.
You could never find your own path, or spend hours climbing mountains looking for the right ledge to jump to, to find/make your own paths like in Vanguard, or ArcheAge, etc. If zones walls all touched another zone (ie: Vanguard) the path you take to get somewhere, is your own. Not funneled..
Granted, I do like some natural bottlenecks and rights of Passage (ie: Grotto), but traversing a whole Continent (east to west) should not be limited to Highhold pass, Gorge of Xorbb and Lake Rathe.. That is just 2 less paths than it took to get to the moon. EQ traveling was on rails. No matter what Zone you entered, you typically entered it the same way everyone esle did, and exited the exact same spot. Unlike the Karanas, in which you can zone across at ANY point. Or VG where you could cross chunks at any point.
I hope zones are rather large, to remove the fishbowl effect..
Hieromonk said:There was not "many" routes, there was but 3.
You could never find your own path, or spend hours climbing mountains looking for the right ledge to jump to, to find/make your own paths like in Vanguard, or ArcheAge, etc. If zones walls all touched another zone (ie: Vanguard) the path you take to get somewhere, is your own. Not funneled..
Granted, I do like some natural bottlenecks and rights of Passage (ie: Grotto), but traversing a whole Continent (east to west) should not be limited to Highhold pass, Gorge of Xorbb and Lake Rathe.. That is just 2 less paths than it took to get to the moon. EQ traveling was on rails. No matter what Zone you entered, you typically entered it the same way everyone esle did, and exited the exact same spot. Unlike the Karanas, in which you can zone across at ANY point. Or VG where you could cross chunks at any point.
I hope zones are rather large, to remove the fishbowl effect..
I think the change to more open zoneline was a change to the EQ engine. What I really appreciated about zone entrances/exits was when they started appearing through zones and not just along the walls. Howling Stones from the canyons in Overthere; Old Seb from the middle of some ruins in Trakanon's Teeth; Plane of Growth entrance was good too. Something to just keep us thinking, keep us exploring.
Some zonelines and paths should be funnel points so long as the design calls for it. Forcing passage through an area can be a natural barrier based upon level or other difficulty.
What I do not want to see, ever, is the hub-zone, that one zone which gives you quick access to multiple dungeons at once. Gates of Discord, Omens of War and most of the expansions beyond that all took the hub approach. 1 permanent zone connected to dozens of instanced zones. That is just lazy programming.
Hindsight is 20/20, but I'm not sure how having more ways to connect zones would have really improved EQ. Honestly, if anything made EQ feel "on rails" (such a misapplication of this term) it was a lack of zones, not limited connections between them as they were very logically gated by the terrain. You can argue that the world was small, but connecting each area from any adjacent point can really (and has) lead to some drab designs. The linear path up to high pass from the Karanas is still, to this day, one of the most epic memories in an MMO. I think back to the more "open" worlds, and I can't think of any places that gave me that feeling.
Some zone connects were actually entirely open (WC/EC, WK/NK), while others were funneled by the terrain. I don't know how much traveling some of you have done, but unless you are on completely flat terrain, both civilization and transit tend to "funnel" based on the geography.
Agreed Dullahan. In no way did the funneling of traffic in EQ through 3 zones cheapen the experience, and, I agree - it often increased the the epic feel. Also, as you stated in a lot of real world "epic" terrain examples there is funneling. You aren't going to be able to scale the mountains in your vehicle, you have to drive around them or take the windy, mountainous pass - it's really no different.
I think my favorite thing about a zone model is that it created a scenario of do or die when you got aggro. "Do" might be running, it might be fighting, but it often created some very tense moments and made you think carefully about how you traveled. This also creates the unfortunate effect of trains, which nobody is a fan of, I suspect, but I think even with trains I personally prefer zones.
The only real benefit to zones, IMHO, is the distinctive feel you can create immediately. I my self prefer the zoneless model. Being able to run to a zone line to escape is an artificial mechanic that never sat well with me, and promotes trains to zone "CHOO CHOO INC!".
I like the ability to explore. If I can see it, I wont to be able to reach it - to see what's beyond it.
Essentially, I guess I'm against artificial game machanics. I resist anything in a game that allows people to use a mechanic to gain advantage that could not be logically explained in a real world scenario - allowing for suspended belief with regards to magic etc.
I appreciate that the devs have said they have learned from VG in that system requirements are not going to be high this time around. However, gaming PC's and internet speeds are at a point these days where I do not accept that zones are still a necessary requirement for performance reasons.
Well, even VG's world wasn't truly seamless. You hitched when you hit the chunk and the mobs didn't chase you across the "chunk-line." The only real difference is there was no "Loading Please Wait" screen and the backdrop off the next chunk could be seen. I'd much rather sacrifice realism at greatly increased performance. As far as the trains go, that was more due to implementing leashing than it was creating a seamless world, and, I'd much rather have trains to zone myself.
Hieromonk said:Aye, lazy design and very cheap.
That is the difference of a game world being outward... VS upward and linear. Along with Kunark, there should have of been more Antonica zones to flush that Continent outward. Fill in the voids.
Just a reminder that EQ was the first of it's kind and designed in the mid 90's. It had its faults looking back on it, but it was amazing for its time. And still is, imo, the gold standard of gaming.
Hieromonk said:There was not "many" routes, there was but 3.
You could never find your own path, or spend hours climbing mountains looking for the right ledge to jump to, to find/make your own paths like in Vanguard, or ArcheAge, etc. If zones walls all touched another zone (ie: Vanguard) the path you take to get somewhere, is your own. Not funneled..
Granted, I do like some natural bottlenecks and rights of Passage (ie: Grotto), but traversing a whole Continent (east to west) should not be limited to Highhold pass, Gorge of Xorbb and Lake Rathe.. That is just 2 less paths than it took to get to the moon. EQ traveling was on rails. No matter what Zone you entered, you typically entered it the same way everyone esle did, and exited the exact same spot. Unlike the Karanas, in which you can zone across at ANY point. Or VG where you could cross chunks at any point.
I hope zones are rather large, to remove the fishbowl effect..
I see your point and think you're correct in that there were 3 basic ways across the continent. But, remember too that the game was designed in the mid 90's and launched in 99. There was nothing like it at the time, EQ broke new ground in just about everything it did. Also, that it need only 2 really: one way for the evil races (thru Lake Rathtier and the mts.) and one for the good (HHP). Also, the time it took to run from Qeynos to FP made more than one route exhausting :). My first run with no deaths (level 10) took 2 hours and 15 mins. and that was becasue I took the HPH route as an SK as I didnt know any better.
EQ had very little 'fishbowl effect' 'imo. EQII at launch most assuredly did. True that the EQ trees close up looked like 2 dimensional oragami trees and the mountains were awfuly pointed running along the top of their wall. But running thru the Karanas or floating on the raft at night in the middle of the OOT was open and did not feel at all fishbowl like to me: and real in a way never experienced before in a game world. I loved just about every zone in EQ. The clausaphobic zones were built that way on purpose if you consider it: Kithkor Forest comes to mind. One of the scareist zones I've ever traversed in any game.
It is easy to play EQ today for the first time player and then to list all the things wrong with it: but most do not consider the fact of its place in time and its limtiations based on that time.
Today the graphics are really sad, in comparison with todays. But I recal the De'vs saying that they had put most of the pixels into the face of the character rather than the body. We had 8 faces to chose from and some of them were just amazing. So very different from each other. So much more so that most of todays avatars with the same basic face and hair and eye color being the main diff.s.
Sorry to ramble. Just wanted to say that Everquest was not know to us as Evercrack - without a reason.
For me the zoneless nature of Vanguard and even Rift made for great exploration adventures. I really love being able to go everywhere and climb up ever hill, which most zoned games don't allow. As a Bloodmage in Vanguard I'd climb up to the highest points and levi across to different areas exploring and looking for new caves and points of interest.
Raidan said:Agreed Dullahan. In no way did the funneling of traffic in EQ through 3 zones cheapen the experience, and, I agree - it often increased the the epic feel. Also, as you stated in a lot of real world "epic" terrain examples there is funneling. You aren't going to be able to scale the mountains in your vehicle, you have to drive around them or take the windy, mountainous pass - it's really no different.
I actually think that funneling people through certain areas for travel leads to people having more opportunities to socialize and meet new people. It's just like how night clubs put butt funnels at entrances to their dance floors, to force people going to or away from the dance floor to meet each other and have to go around each other, it promotes interaction.
How many times would you meet someone in passing and talk to them in EQ, all the time! Do you remember doing this in many MMO's since? Not ever.
Graysilk said:Hieromonk said:Aye, lazy design and very cheap.
That is the difference of a game world being outward... VS upward and linear. Along with Kunark, there should have of been more Antonica zones to flush that Continent outward. Fill in the voids.
Just a reminder that EQ was the first of it's kind and designed in the mid 90's. It had its faults looking back on it, but it was amazing for its time. And still is, imo, the gold standard of gaming.
Yes it was and always will be the gold standard in my book :)
Bottleneck Zones - I don't mind Bottleneck zones. It was always pretty intense running through Blackburrow when I was level 10 trying to move between Everfrost and West Karana.
Zone Layout – I like the zone layouts to be set before quest and enemies are put in. I like the feeling of the world being there before humanoids or monsters moved in. The game shouldn’t be sculpted for players but players need to conform to the world.
I like bottleneck zones for a few reasons. Most have already been stated here, but I think that a big part of defense in fortress planning is making sure people need to go the way you intend, so you have the upper hand. When zones are designed like that, it adds some immersion to the game because the various factions would likely force the enemy hand and build a fortress where they control the entrances.
I also agree, no flying mounts or flight paths please. Let's stick to mounts, running, boats, and ports.
I also like the "behind enemy lines" feel of needing to seek through an area with real consequences hanging over head. "Hope my invisible doesn't wear off here" or "hope no enemies see invis" etc. When you can just go around, that fear goes away.
One other thing I'd like to see in this game is zones like PoSky, with lots of little islands that you needed to key to port around to. Eventually you could jump from one island to the other, but not always and it added a bottleneck to just the zone itself despite actually being open air.
I'd also like to see consequences of falling off things in this game. Who can forget the first time they fell off Kelethin as a newb? Or falling off the plane of sky and and landing in freeport? Or falling off the ledge leading to highpass RIGHT near the top? And god help you if you fell into "The Hole." These are the sorts of mechanics I think makes a game great. If you can simply use your super natural mountaineering skills or flying mount to go around, it trivializes a LOT of otherwise awesome mechanics.
One thing I don't see people considering is how do you prevent people exploiting mobs that have finally "given up". Make them immune until they get back to where they were aggro'd like other modern games? Regen at rediculous rates? What about running off raid bosses? What if person A runs a mob 100 yards, then person B runs it another 100 yards, so on and so forth, when does it give up? I don't like zones necessarily either, but they served an important function.
Arksien said:I like bottleneck zones for a few reasons. Most have already been stated here, but I think that a big part of defense in fortress planning is making sure people need to go the way you intend, so you have the upper hand. When zones are designed like that, it adds some immersion to the game because the various factions would likely force the enemy hand and build a fortress where they control the entrances.
I also agree, no flying mounts or flight paths please. Let's stick to mounts, running, boats, and ports.
I also like the "behind enemy lines" feel of needing to seek through an area with real consequences hanging over head. "Hope my invisible doesn't wear off here" or "hope no enemies see invis" etc. When you can just go around, that fear goes away.
One other thing I'd like to see in this game is zones like PoSky, with lots of little islands that you needed to key to port around to. Eventually you could jump from one island to the other, but not always and it added a bottleneck to just the zone itself despite actually being open air.
I'd also like to see consequences of falling off things in this game. Who can forget the first time they fell off Kelethin as a newb? Or falling off the plane of sky and and landing in freeport? Or falling off the ledge leading to highpass RIGHT near the top? And god help you if you fell into "The Hole." These are the sorts of mechanics I think makes a game great. If you can simply use your super natural mountaineering skills or flying mount to go around, it trivializes a LOT of otherwise awesome mechanics.
Quoting Ark, although Raidan and others have voiced similar opinions, because we completely and absolutely agree here! :D
For myself, the ability to completely shift the mood of the environment is a great pro for funneled zones. I would rather have the choice of "loading... please wait" or just a gradually changing landscape on my screen while 'zoning'. For immersion, I would use the landscape.
For folks who had trouble 'zoning' back in the day, or today, I don't see a huge world like VG being easier on their machine.