Sorry for the horrible title of the thread.
So after bringing up the teleporter question it made me think about these three cities people are talking about. It made me think about what EQ did, which in my mind was many smaller cities/towns etc. They were all very unique in their own ways.
Then I thought about almost every other game afterwards that we have played... It seems like the MMO games moved to a model of just a couple gigantic cities throughout the world. They might have smaller quest hubs/towns, though it just never felt the same. It was either huge or just some outpost. Each small city in EQ felt like it belonged in the world even today playing on a p99 server with my wife. It's just amazing how things fit together. Like starting out as an Euridite in the darkness of Toxxulia forest, or in the snowy mountains of Halas. It was like you had a place to call home, where you came from and belonged. I personally think the huge cities are a waste of space/dev time. Though that's mine and my wife's opinions there.
With that said, I was just curious what other people thought about this movement. Do you like fewer bigger(grander?) cities or smaller unique cities.
Actually the plan, as far as I recall, was to have smaller starting villages (one for each race) that will eventually lead to one large city for that group of "allies". Think of it as Paineel, Erudin and Surefall Glade are the starting villages and they eventually all lead to Qeynos. The ally group (please correct me if Im wrong) was Ogres, Trolls and Myr...Humans, Elves and Halfling...and then Dwarves, Archai and Gnomes. Of course this could all have changed as we are still at the beginning of the lore.
Niien said:
Sorry for the horrible title of the thread.
So after bringing up the teleporter question it made me think about these three cities people are talking about. It made me think about what EQ did, which in my mind was many smaller cities/towns etc. They were all very unique in their own ways.
Then I thought about almost every other game afterwards that we have played... It seems like the MMO games moved to a model of just a couple gigantic cities throughout the world. They might have smaller quest hubs/towns, though it just never felt the same. It was either huge or just some outpost. Each small city in EQ felt like it belonged in the world even today playing on a p99 server with my wife. It's just amazing how things fit together. Like starting out as an Euridite in the darkness of Toxxulia forest, or in the snowy mountains of Halas. It was like you had a place to call home, where you came from and belonged. I personally think the huge cities are a waste of space/dev time. Though that's mine and my wife's opinions there.
With that said, I was just curious what other people thought about this movement. Do you like fewer bigger(grander?) cities or smaller unique cities.
Hey Niien! Allow me to clarify this a bit with good news:
We are not going that route any longer. The aforementioned "3 cities" are actually called Sanctums, and there are three of them: the Ashen, Silent and Frozen Sanctums (their names are still subject to change). According to Pantheon's Lore, these are the massive, monolithic structures the various Races were gathered into at the height of the Deicide War to protect them from extinction. Though many hundreds of years later, the Sanctums still stand as war-ravaged vestiges of that battle. But now the Races have emerged and settled again in varying levels of proximity around these Sanctums. The Races will have their own cities/starting areas unique to them, which will have varying shades of size, civility, faction and grandeur, according to each Race's Lore.
On a side note, if we do implement early and limited teleportation, it would likely only be between these three Sanctums. Hope that helps!
Joppa said:
Niien said:
Sorry for the horrible title of the thread.
So after bringing up the teleporter question it made me think about these three cities people are talking about. It made me think about what EQ did, which in my mind was many smaller cities/towns etc. They were all very unique in their own ways.
Then I thought about almost every other game afterwards that we have played... It seems like the MMO games moved to a model of just a couple gigantic cities throughout the world. They might have smaller quest hubs/towns, though it just never felt the same. It was either huge or just some outpost. Each small city in EQ felt like it belonged in the world even today playing on a p99 server with my wife. It's just amazing how things fit together. Like starting out as an Euridite in the darkness of Toxxulia forest, or in the snowy mountains of Halas. It was like you had a place to call home, where you came from and belonged. I personally think the huge cities are a waste of space/dev time. Though that's mine and my wife's opinions there.
With that said, I was just curious what other people thought about this movement. Do you like fewer bigger(grander?) cities or smaller unique cities.
Hey Niien! Allow me to clarify this a bit with good news:
We are not going that route any longer. The aforementioned "3 cities" are actually called Sanctums, and there are three of them: the Ashen, Silent and Frozen Sanctums (their names are still subject to change). According to Pantheon's Lore, these are the massive, monolithic structures the various Races were gathered into at the height of the Deicide War to protect them from extinction. Though many hundreds of years later, the Sanctums still stand as war-ravaged vestiges of that battle. But now the Races have emerged and settled again in varying levels of proximity around these Sanctums. The Races will have their own cities/starting areas unique to them, which will have varying shades of size, civility, faction and grandeur, according to each Race's Lore.
On a side note, if we do implement early and limited teleportation, it would likely only be between these three Sanctums. Hope that helps!
Awesome, it helps me ;) Sounds very interesting. I think the lore and its manifestations into game mechanics are going to be brilliant. I can see already at this stage in development that there will be an incredible amount of depth between the lore and how we as a community interact with it.
Joppa said:
Niien said:
Sorry for the horrible title of the thread.
So after bringing up the teleporter question it made me think about these three cities people are talking about. It made me think about what EQ did, which in my mind was many smaller cities/towns etc. They were all very unique in their own ways.
Then I thought about almost every other game afterwards that we have played... It seems like the MMO games moved to a model of just a couple gigantic cities throughout the world. They might have smaller quest hubs/towns, though it just never felt the same. It was either huge or just some outpost. Each small city in EQ felt like it belonged in the world even today playing on a p99 server with my wife. It's just amazing how things fit together. Like starting out as an Euridite in the darkness of Toxxulia forest, or in the snowy mountains of Halas. It was like you had a place to call home, where you came from and belonged. I personally think the huge cities are a waste of space/dev time. Though that's mine and my wife's opinions there.
With that said, I was just curious what other people thought about this movement. Do you like fewer bigger(grander?) cities or smaller unique cities.
Hey Niien! Allow me to clarify this a bit with good news:
We are not going that route any longer. The aforementioned "3 cities" are actually called Sanctums, and there are three of them: the Ashen, Silent and Frozen Sanctums (their names are still subject to change). According to Pantheon's Lore, these are the massive, monolithic structures the various Races were gathered into at the height of the Deicide War to protect them from extinction. Though many hundreds of years later, the Sanctums still stand as war-ravaged vestiges of that battle. But now the Races have emerged and settled again in varying levels of proximity around these Sanctums. The Races will have their own cities/starting areas unique to them, which will have varying shades of size, civility, faction and grandeur, according to each Race's Lore.
On a side note, if we do implement early and limited teleportation, it would likely only be between these three Sanctums. Hope that helps!
Yay!! Loved Vanguard in all its variety. :) Thanks for the update. :)
Argento said:
Good because as beautiful as new targanor was in VG it was a pain isn't the rear to navigate and render on some PCs
ah yes I remember that..lots of hitching, you had to turn 360 degrees so your computer would "remember" it all in that area. Was a bit annoying. Yup. Same with volumetric clouds had to turn them off. Lots of little glitches here and there. Pathing, mob fighting you goes underground...to get it back up so you can hit it, you backed up ..it would follow you. :P Chunking....oh the memories, still was a a beautiful game world.
Well I would think (and hope) that with today's tech and Unity 5, even large cities shouldn't be a problem anymore. From my playing experience, for example GW2 and ArcheAge have really large and beautiful cities, which are also quite unique in their appearance. And there wasn't much if any lag in them (from what I remember).
But I'm glad to hear that there will be smaller starting cities for the different races, instead of them all starting in huge hubs!
Joppa said:
Niien said:
Sorry for the horrible title of the thread.
So after bringing up the teleporter question it made me think about these three cities people are talking about. It made me think about what EQ did, which in my mind was many smaller cities/towns etc. They were all very unique in their own ways.
Then I thought about almost every other game afterwards that we have played... It seems like the MMO games moved to a model of just a couple gigantic cities throughout the world. They might have smaller quest hubs/towns, though it just never felt the same. It was either huge or just some outpost. Each small city in EQ felt like it belonged in the world even today playing on a p99 server with my wife. It's just amazing how things fit together. Like starting out as an Euridite in the darkness of Toxxulia forest, or in the snowy mountains of Halas. It was like you had a place to call home, where you came from and belonged. I personally think the huge cities are a waste of space/dev time. Though that's mine and my wife's opinions there.
With that said, I was just curious what other people thought about this movement. Do you like fewer bigger(grander?) cities or smaller unique cities.
Hey Niien! Allow me to clarify this a bit with good news:
We are not going that route any longer. The aforementioned "3 cities" are actually called Sanctums, and there are three of them: the Ashen, Silent and Frozen Sanctums (their names are still subject to change). According to Pantheon's Lore, these are the massive, monolithic structures the various Races were gathered into at the height of the Deicide War to protect them from extinction. Though many hundreds of years later, the Sanctums still stand as war-ravaged vestiges of that battle. But now the Races have emerged and settled again in varying levels of proximity around these Sanctums. The Races will have their own cities/starting areas unique to them, which will have varying shades of size, civility, faction and grandeur, according to each Race's Lore.
On a side note, if we do implement early and limited teleportation, it would likely only be between these three Sanctums. Hope that helps!
Thank you Joppa, that definitely helps and I know you guys will make it awesome either way it has to happen! It seems more often than not that I see a post by a dev or fellow community and it gives me goose bumps just thinking about how like minded the devs and community are here. A lot of us grew up together making/playing the same games and it really does show with the majorities mentality. It gives me proof that in the not so distant future we will be traveling together full of a curiosity in a brand new world full of great wonders!
Sarim said:
Well I would think (and hope) that with today's tech and Unity 5, even large cities shouldn't be a problem anymore. From my playing experience, for example GW2 and ArcheAge have really large and beautiful cities, which are also quite unique in their appearance. And there wasn't much if any lag in them (from what I remember).
But I'm glad to hear that there will be smaller starting cities for the different races, instead of them all starting in huge hubs!
I wasn't speaking against huge cities due to technical or performance related reasons. I also didn't convey that in my opening post and I apologize for that. I personally think that the huge cities looked awesome, though... I also felt there was a lot of uselessness to them. They were big without purpose, and that's were my bad title came from.
What I wanted to express was my feeling that the smaller cities in EQ seemed to serve a purpose for almost every area of them. In almost all of the games we have played after EQ have added bigger and grander cities with equal parts of uselessness. They are just huge empty cities that just didn't feel like they fit. When you were a youngling in EQ the city walls were your protection from the big bad world. The guards were my saviors on many many occasions and in many locations throughout the land. So what I'm hoping is to get that same feeling from these new lands/cities/towns.
Zoeii said:
I love the idea of each race having their own little starting area. It reminds me of the way EQOA was. I also loved that there was a good bit of travel between the cities. My first run to Freeport from Tethelin was such a fun trip full of dangers. I hope there will be incentive to return to the starting cities, like racial quests for instance.
I hope that the zones are well mixed with high level and lower level dangers so that the higher and lower levels can mingle together. Creates a stronger community I think.
Niien said:
Zoeii said:
I love the idea of each race having their own little starting area. It reminds me of the way EQOA was. I also loved that there was a good bit of travel between the cities. My first run to Freeport from Tethelin was such a fun trip full of dangers. I hope there will be incentive to return to the starting cities, like racial quests for instance.
I hope that the zones are well mixed with high level and lower level dangers so that the higher and lower levels can mingle together. Creates a stronger community I think.
Absolutely. I often use The Feerrott from EQ1 as an example of our goal for the content "spread" of our different areas. Just sit and think about how wide the level-span of content was in that zone. It won't necessarily be that pronounced in every area, but we always want to stay away from 1:1's.
We also want to design this spread into our underland areas/dungeons as well, appropriately so.
Joppa said:
Niien said:
Zoeii said:
I love the idea of each race having their own little starting area. It reminds me of the way EQOA was. I also loved that there was a good bit of travel between the cities. My first run to Freeport from Tethelin was such a fun trip full of dangers. I hope there will be incentive to return to the starting cities, like racial quests for instance.
I hope that the zones are well mixed with high level and lower level dangers so that the higher and lower levels can mingle together. Creates a stronger community I think.
Absolutely. I often use The Feerrott from EQ1 as an example of our goal for the content "spread" of our different areas. Just sit and think about how wide the level-span of content was in that zone. It won't necessarily be that pronounced in every area, but we always want to stay away from 1:1's.
We also want to design this spread into our underland areas/dungeons as well, appropriately so.
Here's to hoping you have the Pantheon equivalent of EQ1, with it's high-level giants and griffins pathing through the low-level areas at random and killing any newbies who didn't get out of their way.
I think that both large and small cities/towns/etc. have a purpose to serve and I don't think either should be excluded. I know basically what you mean about large cities in a lot of mmos but I know that it doesn't have to be that way, you can have a well built large city that is full of meaning and not just feel like its there as fluff. I know this because I feel like that is what I have experienced.
Wellspring said:
Joppa said:
Niien said:
Zoeii said:
I love the idea of each race having their own little starting area. It reminds me of the way EQOA was. I also loved that there was a good bit of travel between the cities. My first run to Freeport from Tethelin was such a fun trip full of dangers. I hope there will be incentive to return to the starting cities, like racial quests for instance.
I hope that the zones are well mixed with high level and lower level dangers so that the higher and lower levels can mingle together. Creates a stronger community I think.
Absolutely. I often use The Feerrott from EQ1 as an example of our goal for the content "spread" of our different areas. Just sit and think about how wide the level-span of content was in that zone. It won't necessarily be that pronounced in every area, but we always want to stay away from 1:1's.
We also want to design this spread into our underland areas/dungeons as well, appropriately so.
Here's to hoping you have the Pantheon equivalent of EQ1, with it's high-level giants and griffins pathing through the low-level areas at random and killing any newbies who didn't get out of their way.
Haha, one word to describe that..... Respect, or.... SOB!!! The giant is chasing me!!!
This could be an issue. The starting cities in EQ were fairly small; there was a tavern or two, a place for class trainers, etc. Basically when you go somewhere to buy food you'd occasionally meet someone else buying food. That was a good thing.
If we go all Gondor (gorgeous but huge) on the starting cities, we'll barely see each other, even when seeking the same thing in the same city. Having just played Cabilis (EQ Iksar starting city) for the first time, I suspect that'll be the upper limit; although it was very large, there was still only one real gathering point for each function.
I've no problem with large or gigantic cities, but that's only if the city is very functional, has fairly well defined areas, and is visually appealing. Thinking back to VG's large cities, New Targonor, Khal, Ahgrahm, Leth Nurae, and etc, I think overall they met this goal, but there were instances where I did start to feel some cities were a little too cluttered or parts of the city were desolate in relation to functionality. Khal, was a great city, it looked great inside/outside the city, it was easy to navigate, you knew where the crafting area and bank was (heck, there was signage), and every area of the city had trainers so not part of the city was desolate.
Xeravik said:
I've no problem with large or gigantic cities, but that's only if the city is very functional, has fairly well defined areas, and is visually appealing. Thinking back to VG's large cities, New Targonor, Khal, Ahgrahm, Leth Nurae, and etc, I think overall they met this goal, but there were instances where I did start to feel some cities were a little too cluttered or parts of the city were desolate in relation to functionality. Khal, was a great city, it looked great inside/outside the city, it was easy to navigate, you knew where the crafting area and bank was (heck, there was signage), and every area of the city had trainers so not part of the city was desolate.
The big issue with large cities is what to do with them as you state. If they serve no purpose, there is no reason for players to go to it. I know a lot has changed in terms of technology and demand but I would love to see a bazaar type area again or even something similar to how SWG did vendoring. I hate global auction houses. Also, in vanguard, you reserved areas for players to construct houses. Why not somehow tie a similar idea within the city. I know it would be limited space, but maybe guild/player housing within the city would keep popular cities booming.
Wow, Niien, I couldn't agree with you more! While a few big cities would be nice. I'd rather break up one of the big cities and have a half dozen smaller cities for spice. Good lore, in my opinion (and good lore makes a world), has texture. I'm so tired of walking through the very obvious ladder to max level. This zone is for X levels, and it leads to this zone for the next ten levels, etc, etc; and then you have the max level zone or zones. EverQuest was so rich because everything was all over the place. You'd go back to old level to explore content you grew up on fearing, but could at last take on and gain such a sense of mastery, all the low-be's cheering your name for felling the infamous, roaming hill giant.
I want a world where I have to travel to find spells and items. I want to have to sneak into the dark elf city to get my enchant silver spell because I can't even be a jeweler without it. I want to discover a "well-balanced" longswords from the Shady Swashbuckler (and want them to actually be worth the money!). I want a world that's relatively safe around the big cities, but dark and scary at the edges of civilization. I want big towns where I can resupply, and little towns where I can find vintage items. Put the "greater light stone" on a merchant in the "underdark." Put the best bag merchant in the sleepy town of Loomville where all the best cotton is grown. Hear, hear, for small cities and textured content!
There are also a few tricks to make cities that are large in lore appear large to the players in the game, even though the PCs are in a fraction of the presented city. Imagine Anor Londo from Dark Souls, NYC from Deus Ex, the city and tower in outside areas of Devil May Cry 3, the Hidden Camp overlooking Caldeum in Act II of Diablo 3, and so on. Since this is a zoned game, this could be easily implemented.
i remember in the 90s when video games tried to give that type of feeling that they are in a city environment by having a cityscape behind them (especially at night) which created a feeling of "oh, this world is inhabited and alive, yet so far and distant away" that is really special. The above examples do that as well, and wouldn't mind this technique used in Pantheon if the lore called for it but design has to congest the player base together to make the city feel even more populated. :)
Vortikai said:
There are also a few tricks to make cities that are large in lore appear large to the players in the game, even though the PCs are in a fraction of the presented city. Imagine Anor Londo from Dark Souls, NYC from Deus Ex, the city and tower in outside areas of Devil May Cry 3, the Hidden Camp overlooking Caldeum in Act II of Diablo 3, and so on. Since this is a zoned game, this could be easily implemented.
i remember in the 90s when video games tried to give that type of feeling that they are in a city environment by having a cityscape behind them (especially at night) which created a feeling of "oh, this world is inhabited and alive, yet so far and distant away" that is really special. The above examples do that as well, and wouldn't mind this technique used in Pantheon if the lore called for it but design has to congest the player base together to make the city feel even more populated. :)
I think this is called, using a little movie magic =). Basically fill the area with objects that seem to fill it up. A good example of this(if there are any FPS players) are from the Battlefield series(at least 3 and 4). Although they have fairly large playing fields normally, If you ever have a decent sound setup, they can make a 64 player game sound like a 400 person game. They do a excellent job of using ambient sounds and random debris to make it feel like stuff is happening constantly when in reality it's only 64 players.