Another random question:
Has anything much been said about what will be around in launch yet?
Personally, I think too many games overshoot when they start and then have little to add later (so they have to get creative, like changing the size of the planet or adding new planets to have anything worth adding down the road in content patches or expansions). I'd like to see a game start off with just a couple capital cities and a main continent and add the other stuff in over time. For one thing, it means the players aren't diluted across entire worlds right from the start, and for another, it means when that new capital city gets added, it makes sense and feels organic. It's like the city was always there and we're just now getting access to it rather than it just suddenly appeard from a dragon fart or something.
Likewise with new continents having to be added to the planet (because we've already explored all the existing ones) instead of having places that we see on maps and think "Man, wonder when we'll be able to go THERE?", along with the feeling of adventure when you finally get to go to that place that you've been wondering about all this time.
Maybe I'm alone in this and everyone else wants the entire planet/map/capital cities from the very start, though. But either way, I was wondering if anyone knew or had any information on what the plans are?
Since they put all the "good" races on one side and the "evil" races on the other and the "neutral" races on another, I'm guessing they won't do this (if they had at least one major city of each "faction" on the same continent, then it would more likely be possible to start with just one...), but I'm wondering how much is going to drop on day one. :)
The plan for launch is 1 starting city per race. 3 continents with 3 starting cities per continent (good/nuetral/evil). Lvl 50 cap has been mentioned.
There has been talk that we would receive an updated atlas for years. The continent whitethaw is to the south according to the lore but it isn't visible on the map. That could leave the white, snow covered area to the north on the current map open for future expansions...and who knows what else might be included to the south other than whitethaw?
Hopefully it is understood but...all of this type of info is still up in the air and subject to change.
My personal opinion is similar to something you mentioned in another thread Ren.
I wouldn't mind a lower max lvl on release. Minimize the power creep right from the beginning. Maxing at 20 or 30 would be fine with me but that isn't how things are being tuned currently. Sure it was a different system but, when DDO launched max lvl was 10 and it was great imho.
It shouldn't be that hard to keep large areas available for the future - a continent is a large place. One thing they almost surely will do is keep quite a few areas available for housing, assuming that they still plan housing to come after release, and still plan it to be real world not instanced, as in Vanguard. The great future Pantheon landrush!
I entirely agree that using all the territory is a *bad* thing - to the point where I would like at least one unexplored and unreachable continent on the world map for future use.
When all you have left for an expansion is travel into the past, the future, or space things can get much too wierd.
Though I suppose in a world created by bringing the various races from other places it would be unsurprising to have expansions take us to some of those other places.
Planets are huge. Just think about Earth and how many continents there are - and how difficult it was/would be to travel given the likely technology levels of Pantheon. Terminus also has the tantalizing lore of forming from fragments of other worlds and other times. The possibilities are literally endless - including the collision of new world fragments with Terminus in the future, introducing new environments, new creatures, new races, new history. IMO, it would be a sadly missed opportunity to not take advantage of this potential!
Maybe they have changed directions - as you say the discussions were a while ago - but I believe they had a Vanguard type system in mind for personal housing. Guild housing I don't remember discussion of.
Personally I wouldn't be bothered by instanced housing since landscape housing developments tend to be spread out and largely deserted.
Though maybe they can come up with reasons to actually be outdoors and visible where one lives. Such as crafting stations with all necessary amenities that give a bonus over crafting anywhere else.
Well...one has 7billion people...the other is to be determined.
dorotea said:Personally I wouldn't be bothered by instanced housing since landscape housing developments tend to be spread out and largely deserted.
Instanced housing is far superior in almost every way. It lets us have higher decor counts, greater customization (they could even let you customize ground, sky, lighting, whatever), and there's no worry about accessibility as there would be enough room for everyone to have a house. As someone who LOVES player housing and loves using it to flex creative muscles to design unique builds, instanced housing is a must!
Fulton said:Agree with other about size. While they may call them continents, the land masses in gaame are more like countries than continents. And adding more continents is almost endless.
Actually many game worlds are barely the size of small cities in square kilometers/miles (LOTRO being an obvious exception to this). In EQ1 you could run from Freeport to Qeynos in well under an hour without SoW. The average run time of a 26.2 mile marathon is 4:47:40. I think EQ1 had around 300mi2 at release (this included the two ocean zones).
This is why I impress upon the developers the importance of scale. The world needs to be huge, literally. The more often we feel small compared to all that is around us the better. This is especially true if we are to ever come across creatures that dwarf us in size (dragons, giants, etc). I think back to my first trip to the top of Skyshrine in EQ1 or my first run through Kael Drakkel. These zones were the first to actually make me feel small and insignificant.
Regarding housing: It has been more than a year since we last heard anything about it, but what was said at the time was that they were thinking about "outposts" that a guild or group could set up and maintain only in designated places in the world. The idea was that if your guild was hunting in an area you might invest in building an outpost there as a base of operations. Outposts would have limited services so folks wouldn't need to run all the way back to a town. Once your guild was ready to move on somewhere else you tear down the outpost or let it expire, which enables you to set up a new one somewhere else.
Or at least that was the concept that was talked about. It has been long enough that I would not be surprised to learn that things have changed :)
I am a huge proponent of in-world housing and I could write volumes on how I think it should be handled to both make it a more integrated game feature, and to avoid the scale problems other games have experienced. However, in order to really do any sort of in world housing well, you need a LOT of white space in zones. Even if the game just sticks with the outpost concept, to make that really work on a server with thousands of players and hundreds of guilds, zones are going to need to be very, very large. If that white space isn't there, they are better off not having outposts or any housing, and instead focusing on npc towns and villages.
Don't get me wrong, the ideal for me would be full on player cities and towns with in-world housing, but to do that right and scale so that most players could have a house, the world has to be built with it in mind.
I agree that the continents need to be huge. The maps we have seen so far doesn’t really show how big those areas are. I’d like to see a bigger map that showed some scale to it. I know that’s not likely given all the devs are working on. I’m really looking forward to housing both personal and guild, knowing that will come far after launch.
This thread got a bit derailed talking about housing. Just understand, whatever is decided in that department, it has never been planned for release and it is very unlikely that will change.
FAQ: Housing isn’t currently a planned release feature. Doing housing properly is a big deal. We don’t want instanced housing or open world housing where urban sprawl takes up half the world and people can’t find a place to make their home. Post launch, we are looking at some ideas that affect gameplay such as Outposts that guilds could set up in areas appropriate to their level, and other players could visit their outpost. When they are done, kind of like the Wild West, you can pick up your wagon of stuff and move your Outpost. Again, this idea would be a post-launch feature.
All 9 races have been confirmed for launch, and their starting cities have been spread across 3 continents, so on launch day you will see:
Reignfall: includes home cities of "evil races": Dark Myr, Ogre, Skar
Kingsreach: includes home cities of "good races": Halfling, Human, Elf
Whitethaw (not shown on atlas yet): includes home cities of "neutral races": Dwarf, Archai, Gnome
The world will certainly feel big, but this is also a fairly small team, so it won't be so big that they won't have room to expand. There will always be expansions. They haven't told us about an exact limit to the size of Terminus that I'm aware of, and the lore is so geniusly crafted in a way that there's really nothing stopping them from writing in a new planar Collision to add a new race and/or continent to Terminus down the line.
Bazgrim said:All 9 races have been confirmed for launch, and their starting cities have been spread across 3 continents, so on launch day you will see:
Reignfall: includes home cities of "evil races": Dark Myr, Ogre, Skar
Kingsreach: includes home cities of "good races": Halfling, Human, Elf
Whitethaw (not shown on atlas yet): includes home cities of "neutral races": Dwarf, Archai, Gnome
The world will certainly feel big, but this is also a fairly small team, so it won't be so big that they won't have room to expand. There will always be expansions. They haven't told us about an exact limit to the size of Terminus that I'm aware of, and the lore is so geniusly crafted in a way that there's really nothing stopping them from writing in a new planar Collision to add a new race and/or continent to Terminus down the line.
At one point, VR mentioned reworking the map and the respective locations. Wonder when that will come out.
dorotea said:When all you have left for an expansion is travel into the past, the future, or space things can get much too wierd.
Though I suppose in a world created by bringing the various races from other places it would be unsurprising to have expansions take us to some of those other places.
Vandraad said:
Actually many game worlds are barely the size of small cities in square kilometers/miles (LOTRO being an obvious exception to this). In EQ1 you could run from Freeport to Qeynos in well under an hour without SoW. The average run time of a 26.2 mile marathon is 4:47:40. I think EQ1 had around 300mi2 at release (this included the two ocean zones).
As RL cartographer I have always been very interested by scales and 100 % agree with you . The scales have indeed a major , perhaps the biggest , influence on the feeling of immersion . When you are supposed to be in a whole virtual world/planet , you cannot but compare to the planet you know - the Earth .
However the problem is that on Earth you can accept to spend 7 hours to travel from Paris to Montreal but this is only because you compare (subconsciously) 7 hours to your life duration (say 700 000 hours) . Then this journey is only 1/100 000 of your life and this is pretty much negligible .
In a game it is very different because the life duration of a heavy player playing 30h/week for 10 years will be 15 000 hours and for most much less . So what your brain will tolerate as "acceptable" travel time is approximately 15 000 / 100 000 = 0.15 hours what is some 5 - 10 minutes . But you are right , most MMOs are far below that - f.ex FF14 which is a very well designed game has all zones which can be crossed in 1-2 minutes .
EQ and Lotro were not far from an ideal travel time which was consistent with the RL travel time ratios . Because of this travel time constraint, the scales of MMO worlds are always much much smaller than real worlds and planets . For instance if you take West Karanas , probably the biggest EQ zone , it's size is less than 1 km ² . Whole of Norrath is a sphere with a diameter of some 40 km so your perception of the game world is a very small asteroid whose surface is 100 000 times smaller than the Earth .
And it is no coincidence that the ratio 1 /100 000 for the surfaces is similar to the ratio 1/100 000 which is what people approximately consider as acceptable travel times compared to their life duration :) So I am pretty sure that Pantheon's scales will be very similar to that too . The Pantheon world will be perceived as a sphere of some 40 km of diameter and the large zones as something which has a surface about 1 km² . If it was smaller , people would feel it like FF14 , e.g too small to be a world and if it was larger people would complain that travelling takes too much time .
Hm, I've never heard of this scaling argument, but you make a great point. I've talked with friends before about how small game cities are. For example, have you heard of 7 Days to Die? It's one of those zombie survival type games in perma-playable-alpha on Steam. But I play it with friends on the standard (Navazgane) map. It's interesting that the towns and cities, while seeming large things when you're playing with 2-4 friends and looting abandoned towns while fighting zombies (which have higher respawn rates and the more difficult zombies), most are actually VERY SMALL. Like...the equivalent of 8 residential blocks is a mid-sized town in the game, and the largest cities are probably only the size of a very small irl town.
I remember playing WoW in Vanilla/BC, and whilel there were Mage portals, they were only to the largest cities. Otherwise, you had to take the boats or zeppelines. Although they were mostly loading screen wonders (the "travel time" was mostly wating at the dock for it to arrive, and you didn't get to see the transit in the middle until they added the TB<->Org one in Cataclysm which physically flew across the Barrens), it still took real life time to travel around via boats and flight paths/taxis. Of course, this was made worse when WoW first got rid of, then readded city portals...except ONLY to the "main" capital cities, which made all of the other cities ghost towns...
FFXIV's problem, IMO, when it comes to travel, is the teleport stones are everywhere. While this is pretty damn convenient, it makes the Chocobos (taxis) MOSTLY pointless (some small settlements can be taxi destinations but not have teleport crystals, but most of the world tends to have teleport crystals somewhat liberally, as opposed to just in the capital cities like the old WoW teleport portals). The actual travel time is pretty decent, being 2-4 minutes in the smaller zones from 2.0, and the larger zones taking 5 mins or so to traverse (longer or shorter depending on if you have flying or not unlocked, which you do zone by zone, not globally). FFXIV's zones are just a BIT too small, but not REALLY too small, imo, especially the zones with far flung places that aren't near the teleporters and that you can't fly in (like the East Black Shroud when you get up in the Slyph/Ramuh area).
I also think one thing to remember in zone design is to make it traversable. WoW lost a lot of people when they got rid of flying, but only part of this was due to getting rid of flying. Part of it was that the zones were obnoxious to traverse without flying. Compare a zone like Mulgore (Tauren starting area) or Arathi Highlands, which are hilly, but relatively flat without a lot of weird crevases and stuff to disrupt your path. Now contrast against newer expansion zones like the Spires of Arak in Legion, which sometimes you could see your objective, but it would take you half an hour to get there because there was a small crevase between you and it that you had to travel half the zone to get around. It wasn't intuitive and it felt really clunky. SOME zones being that way is okay, but EVERY zone being that way screams "time sink -> more money in sub fees from people taking more man-hours to do content". It wasn't an organic "the journey is the point", it was having to go a long way just for the sake of going a long way, without really getting anything added to the experience by doing so.
Well designed zones are a wonder to behold and a joy to play. It doesn't even mean that you have to be able to get anywhere, or get there easily (although there IS something really cool about being able to see a mountain in the distance, and then being able to simply walk there if you want to, even if it might take a few hours). But it does mean that travel needs to be intuitive and organic, not designed to be a time sink for the sake of being a time sink.
But I love the idea of a ratio, and that seems like a pretty good metric.