fazool said:Well, some cities in EQ were horrible. And being large made their horrible design all the more painful.
The city I hate the most is Crescent Reach. It's a mess. Right after that comes Katta Castrum (TBS). What a mess and jumble of garbage.
The combination of awful *AND* large are painful. At least a tiny city you can get out of quickly. Qeynos was a cheese-maze but it was small so tolerable.
Now, conversely HateB was pretty nicely sized - a little crowded but my favorite zone of all time.
Original FP was great.
An interesting thing might be for VR devs to poll players on scoring all zones and cities. then tally those up and see if there are any huge iwnners and losers, then look at those and see if there is anything in common with the ones folks love and the ones folks hate, including size.
That's true of a lot of games. Sometimes cities or zones are just great and loads of fun to be in. Other times they fall flat. You and I agree on the original Freeport. It may or may not be a popular opinion, but I hated that revamp so, so much. I still can't stand when I go back to have to go through that city, and prior to the revamp, it was my favorite city to go and chill in. Now it's just so dark and boring.
I think the problem with any zone in this case is you need it to be fun to be in, even if it's dangerous. And a lot of that comes down to design, atmospher, and sound/music. I mean I didn't really like running through Rivervale, but that music was so catchy it would get stuck in your head. lol Music and sound are so very important to a good zone.
As for Thronefast. Have to wait and see I guess. It was far from complete in the art video, so more stuff may be added. Also it's zone-based, so being on a mountain-ish area, there's always the chance it could be like Telon and have an inner-mountain section we haven't seen. Or maybe not.
In any case, I've seen a lot of MMOs with small scale cities. Meridian in RIFT wasn't really that big. The largest part being the main scholar type building that had several small floors. It's hard to say until we get to see it first-hand when all content is in and the final sizing done.
In the end I expect they'll be as big as they need to be for the purpose they need to serve. But I do like a grand scale city as much as the next person. ;)
This thread has made me go back and look at the stream again, I'm a combat junkie so i didn't really listen enough the 1st time i saw this stream (sorry about that VR) but now i see it again and i am really seeing it and hearing it with full attention (awesome comentary btw)
So I have to say..
The city is absolutely amazing, so well thought out and from what i see and expect is also well and truly big enough. The purpose and planning that has gone into this city is incredible... honestly I am so glad i watched this again, it is truly awesome and has invigorated my enthusiasm.
Well done VR, I was just to hungry to see more combat last time so I was only half paying attention.
Its really hard to judge if this city is to small or to large. Dependent on what time frame and what country your judging by, it varies. The middle ages covers about 1000 years give or take. One constant is far more folks lived in communities of 100 folks or less then in towns or cities. Again this varies dependent on country used as a reference but around 80 percent to 85 percent of the population lived in these small villages, hamlets and farmsteads.
This is an mmo and a fantasy setting thus trying to compare it to our world is a bit silly. Its really up the the devs to decide the size of their fantasy seat of power, village, town or city.
Mod Edit: Remove a bunch of white space at the bottom of this post.
Thank you for the reports. Thread cleaned up, official warnings given via PM.
These personal attacks, trolling and general antagonising behaviour - will not be tolerated on our official forums. I suggest those people re-read the official guidelines and step back, take a breath and reconsider their place within this community because if this behaviour is continued, their memberships and access to this amazing community will be revoked.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1595/pantheon-developer-forum-guidelines
The discussion, for the most part, has been great, I enjoy reading a lot of these posts and will clean up and give warnings now (for most threads), instead of closing threads down and ruining it for everyone else, so please keep that in mind before clicking that "Post Reply" button in future, if need be, step away from the computer for a few mins and come back with a clearer head before proceeding to post.
I hope this remains an isolated incident and look forward to reading many more good posts on this subject and others.
“The term suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief has been defined as a willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe something surreal; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment.”
All i really wanted to impart into this thread was that we all needed to take a step back and suspend our disbelief. All too often we are critical about fantasy elements when we should apply a level of SoB and move along. When we become so critical of specific elements we lose track of the bigger picture. The “why“ of all things.