Vanguard - Brad speaks about the seamless world and itemization

[Braen]

First here is the link to the thread...

http://www.vanguardsagaofheroes.com/...495#post227495

Now for his tidbits (Brad-speak in bold):

1. We will try very hard to slow MUDflation by making the new items in expansions and such better in many ways but not that much better than older items -- we've made mistakes in the past by putting in much better items in expansions in order to make those expansions more attractive and doing this too much was a mistake, especially long term and in considering the overall health of the game.

2. We will have an expansion team AND a live team, the latter's repsonsibility to refresh the content of the 'old world'... this is something we didn't do nearly enough in EQ and are determined to do a much better job this time around. Plus, with a seamless world and lots of real estate, we can not only refresh/revamp existing areas in the 'old world' but also add new dungeons and others to the 'old world' quite easily with a patch.

Next someone asked about adding content to a seamless world compared to a zoned world:

You can do it with either zoned games or seamless games... with a zoned game, you just add a connection point to a new area and you can then transfer into the new zone.

The advantage of a seamless world is that every square foot of the world is actually there. If you could take a look at, say, an internal map of Thestra, the entire continent is there and then dividied into a grid. We focus on 'corridors of content' -- areas with the most points of interest, dungeons, etc., where we expect players to travel and frequent the most. Off the beaten path, however, instead of just running into a zone border, you can just keep going. This gives us the opportunity to, via patching, plop a castle down in an area that was previously just a field, or a dungeon entrance into the side of a mountain into which you can suddenly just walk (no zoning).

By making extremely large areas, more than we can at launch fill with detailed content, it leaves us plenty of room for the Live team to easily add new areas as opposed to in a zone based game finding some point to create a link to another zone. Both work fine, but the seamless world allows the addition of content in a more seamless manner

This also gives us plenty of room for people to place houses, start player run cities, and a whole lot of other ideas that we have but will have to wait for post-launch.

It is true that by adding new areas to parts of the world that are already there we will be affecting the area around where we place the new content. But I think that's a good thing -- it makes the world feel more dynamic. Where there was once, for example, just a relatively empty swamp patrolled by wandering monsters, after a patch a haven for undead could appear, which could then be tied into the lore and ongoing storyline.

Obviously, there was to be care involved and forethought -- you don't typically want to suddenly plop down, say, a level 40 fortress teaming with aggro mobs only a kilometer away from a newbie area, but barring this (which would just be bad design and planning) I think the seamless approach is a lot more immersive, dynamic, and exciting.

Then someone was concerned about expansions and itemization making the old world obsolete:

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree there -- I think a lot of items in Kunark and Velious were far superior to those found in the 'old world' which led to rapid obsolescence and a lot of areas previously heavily frequented relatively quickly abandoned in favor of the dungeons and other areas introduced in the latest expansion.

While one does want to introduce new items to entice players to explore the new areas found in the expansion, it should be done carefully and the 'old world' revamped preferably around the same time to keep the whole world, not just the new expansion territory, attractive and filled with players.

[Faille]

what incentive is there for a company to revamp old world stuff? I know brad and co want to do it, and I'm sure they'll try, but its not like we haven't heard that before. Once the bugs that need to be fixed and inbalances and tweaks start rolling around how can a company put zone revamping into any high priority on the list of things to be done?

[Braen]

Originally posted by Faille
what incentive is there for a company to revamp old world stuff? I know brad and co want to do it, and I'm sure they'll try, but its not like we haven't heard that before. Once the bugs that need to be fixed and inbalances and tweaks start rolling around how can a company put zone revamping into any high priority on the list of things to be done?

To add to replayablity.

Think about it. In WoW you can create an alt... But since WoW is a very quest oriented game you have to do the same old things over and over again. They aren't adding anything to the 1-50 game really anymore.

Now what if every time you started an alt, your experience was different not because of the different race/class but because the Live Team has changed the encounters, quests and lore fo the "old World"

Replayability is a HUGE part of this market. Very few people have one toon they only play. Most have 3-4 alts. Imagine if every alts proigression was different becvause the devs kept the old world fresh and new?

[Nakilos]

what incentive is there for a company to revamp old world stuff?

Well for one, its already there. In theory I'd think this would mean less work than creating a new zone. Just adding new drops/tuning upwards the mobs there to be more challenging or something. Ideally I think at any given time devs want gamers to be in most of their zones and have as few "dead" zones as possible, ie zones with nothing of interest/worth to do, the logic being as long as players are doing something, they aren't thinking about cancelling their accounts.

Also when expansions come out, people feel that is all there is to do (because that is generally true especially for high level players), so making old content new and interesting just provides more options. Either way, its always in the best interest of a MMO to have as much content as possible, or if not necessarily new content, new carrots to chase.

[Braen]

Also they keep mentioning "patch" and "Updating old content" in the same thought. That leaves to beleive you will be seeing lots of content patches.

If I remember correctly, another Microsoft published game did monthy content/dynamic patches...

[findar]

ashron's call?

i wouldnt say that just because microsoft is the executive producer(read bank account) behind a game means they control key elements like that. i was going to make an analogy towards pizza about this but it really didnt make much sense :/

[Braen]

Correct. They had monthly storylines and content.

[Lenardo]

in wow you can play 4 chars to atleast 30th level without repeating content. with planning you could probably get to 50th without repeating any/much content.


as to brads comments.. sounds good hope he pulls it off

[Surlok TP]

i wouldnt say that just because microsoft is the executive producer(read bank account) behind a game means they control key elements like that. i was going to make an analogy towards pizza about this but it really didnt make much sense :/

NCSoft,which is the Producer for Lineage/2 City of Heroes,Guild wars ETC has specific rules to what particular game they will produce and I can't see why Microsoft would be any different.

NCsoft Requires that the Game Developers make available one Content update per Quarter in a year at least.This is a good thing and a bad thing, don't know what they dictate as a content patch either in terms of Size or what additions it makes to the game.

I assume in the case of City of Heroes that it is size of the content patch,which seems to be why for the first year The design team was so slow with bug fixes and whatever else.They wanted to dump them into the content patches rather than have them be seperate and lose out on the extra changes they could pass off as new content.This seems to have changed for that particular design team recently,perhaps because of the outcry from all the WoW players from blizzard doing something similar I don't know...


But if Microsoft is handing out the money,and Ncsoft is already doing it,then I don't see why they can't insist on regular updates or whatever else players feel they need to continue subscriptions.

[Froofy-D]

Cool. Sounds like the world will be a bit more dynamic. Something badly needed in MMOGs.

[Jait]

Originally posted by Braen
First here is the link to the thread...

http://www.vanguardsagaofheroes.com/...495#post227495

Now for his tidbits (Brad-speak in bold):

1. We will try very hard to slow MUDflation by making the new items in expansions and such better in many ways but not that much better than older items -- we've made mistakes in the past by putting in much better items in expansions in order to make those expansions more attractive and doing this too much was a mistake, especially long term and in considering the overall health of the game.

2. We will have an expansion team AND a live team, the latter's repsonsibility to refresh the content of the 'old world'... this is something we didn't do nearly enough in EQ and are determined to do a much better job this time around. Plus, with a seamless world and lots of real estate, we can not only refresh/revamp existing areas in the 'old world' but also add new dungeons and others to the 'old world' quite easily with a patch.

Next someone asked about adding content to a seamless world compared to a zoned world:

You can do it with either zoned games or seamless games... with a zoned game, you just add a connection point to a new area and you can then transfer into the new zone.

The advantage of a seamless world is that every square foot of the world is actually there. If you could take a look at, say, an internal map of Thestra, the entire continent is there and then dividied into a grid. We focus on 'corridors of content' -- areas with the most points of interest, dungeons, etc., where we expect players to travel and frequent the most. Off the beaten path, however, instead of just running into a zone border, you can just keep going. This gives us the opportunity to, via patching, plop a castle down in an area that was previously just a field, or a dungeon entrance into the side of a mountain into which you can suddenly just walk (no zoning).

By making extremely large areas, more than we can at launch fill with detailed content, it leaves us plenty of room for the Live team to easily add new areas as opposed to in a zone based game finding some point to create a link to another zone. Both work fine, but the seamless world allows the addition of content in a more seamless manner

This also gives us plenty of room for people to place houses, start player run cities, and a whole lot of other ideas that we have but will have to wait for post-launch.

It is true that by adding new areas to parts of the world that are already there we will be affecting the area around where we place the new content. But I think that's a good thing -- it makes the world feel more dynamic. Where there was once, for example, just a relatively empty swamp patrolled by wandering monsters, after a patch a haven for undead could appear, which could then be tied into the lore and ongoing storyline.

Obviously, there was to be care involved and forethought -- you don't typically want to suddenly plop down, say, a level 40 fortress teaming with aggro mobs only a kilometer away from a newbie area, but barring this (which would just be bad design and planning) I think the seamless approach is a lot more immersive, dynamic, and exciting.

Then someone was concerned about expansions and itemization making the old world obsolete:

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree there -- I think a lot of items in Kunark and Velious were far superior to those found in the 'old world' which led to rapid obsolescence and a lot of areas previously heavily frequented relatively quickly abandoned in favor of the dungeons and other areas introduced in the latest expansion.

While one does want to introduce new items to entice players to explore the new areas found in the expansion, it should be done carefully and the 'old world' revamped preferably around the same time to keep the whole world, not just the new expansion territory, attractive and filled with players.

A Dev admitting they've learned from their mistakes? Shocking. No, honestly, I think hell just froze over.

But caution is needed. While I bitch just as much as anyone about Mudflation in Eq1, it is okay for expansions to add a slight overall increase to both DPS and AC/mitigation over the previous incarnation. The problem with EQ, like in Kunark was day 1, we were finding leather tunics off giants that were better than Planar gear. Not to mention those GER's Without putting words in hs mouth, I'm guessing were more likely to see a Kunark where *comparable* gear drops, but you won't see increases to your max outside the end-game areas/quests of the new expansion.

As for seemless worlds, I dunno, somehow they seem "smaller" to me. It seems far far easier to create unique settings when you use zones. When you zone there's a suspension of belief. You can go from Neriak to Lavastorm and believe it, even though you never saw a red glow in the air ahead of you. It's not that I have anything against seemless worlds, call me old fashioned.

Anyways, good stuff as always Braen, keep em coming!

[Kolle]

After awhile all content should be completely changed. Think back to EQ1 when they added frogs and kicked the trolls out. It was a real change in the game that seemed to mean something. You could go and look for yourself or experience it by starting a frog or a troll.


If we take that idea and improve on it then apply it to all old content...I think we'll have a winner. Not that exact situation, obviously, but things change in a big way that makes a difference. Not something that just changes and flips back in a week after a server event is over.

[Clericnon2boxed]

I wish they could put in more realism, like weather that has influence on what gear you are going to wear.
Are you going to ride on a horse into a desert wearing black platemail ? Things like temperature shoudl really be introduced, not only for the worst lava.

[Braen]

Well I know this is an old quote by Brad, but it fits on what you want... Had to do some digging to find it.

Personally, I'd want gameplay to actually change based on season, time of day, weather, special days, etc. Special effects are cool, but having them effect the gameplay... the outcome of a battle.. the formation of a strategy prior to an upcoming battle... the decisions I make in terms of equipping my character for an upcoming adventure.

That would be cool.

Link: http://www.vanguardsagaofheroes.com/...?threadid=4206

Who knows if it will make it in? But at least he has it in his mind about somethign he would like...

[Nakilos]

Personally, I'd want gameplay to actually change based on season, time of day, weather, special days, etc. Special effects are cool, but having them effect the gameplay... the outcome of a battle.. the formation of a strategy prior to an upcoming battle... the decisions I make in terms of equipping my character for an upcoming adventure.

Guess he never played FFXI. As I recall different days of the week affected spell efficacy, tradeskill success/failure (using opposing element crystal combines on different days would cause more failures, or higher quality combines), the phase of the moon affected the tides and success/failure with fishing. It was small enough to not be crippling, but enough to say you would want to do certain combines on certain days for example.

Pseudo realism can be annoying if done wrong. "Warrior LFG, I can only wear cloth today, platemail causes me heatstroke in the desert".