Multiplayer mode Novia and Cities

THANK YOU Devs for this really awesome feature.
Multiplayer = More people = More populated cities = More Immersion


Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation. --Robert H. Schuller

 

I completely agree

 

X3

 

As someone that spends 98% of their time not in multi-player mode, I am glad that it will make the game feel less empty but also sad that I will no longer be able to choose when I want to be social in the town that I live in.

The first option that I can think of to continue my hermit ways is to move to a less populated and far away town...which I don't like since I've lived in the same house since a little bit after persistence. Eh, where there's a will there's a whale bone!

 

It is a fantastic change.

 

Whilst I mainly support the change, but ideally with some tweaks for dedicated RP group players, I fail to see how having a bunch of players all running around in white shrouds or hawaiian skirts, spamming aeo spells and doing dance emotes in towns makes sota more 'immersive'. Quite the opposite I would have thought.

 

It will be nice, but I'm refraining from joining the chorus on either side for two reasons (that somewhat cancel each other):

1. I already see loads of people in game, especially in Soltown, Owlshead, Resolute, and Aerie. New and mid level players are out in force. It's the veteran players who are squirrelled away. Ironically, they are the ones who are debating this topic. The newbs likely will never know it even happened

2. People don't usually respond. I'm in the same timezone as Moscow and Baghdad, so that might be a factor, but about 80% of the people I bellydance infront of, salute, or hail don't respond at all and eventually walk away with no response. So, seeing them running around is nice, but more avatars doesn't necessarily mean more socializing, though you folks in the West probably have different experiences.

I don't envy the developers this choice, but perhaps the intensity of this debate will encourage them to adopt a somewhat more nuanced solution.

 

That's the thing though. No one that I know of is arguing that the way it is now is the best that it could be. Everyone understands that private adventure scene instancing currently results in a lot of private town instancing and that a large percentage of people would prefer private adventuring and public towns.

The real choice is between the forced public towns method that's about to go in and something similar that would allow people to seamlessly adventure privately with public towns, while allowing people that don't want that to opt out. With the latter option, you still get all the benefits, as a large majority probably prefer shared town instances, but you would also maintain a core game feature that is somewhat unique to SotA and very important to some players. If someone can make a reasonable argument as to why 100% forced map and towns is better than simply having separate mode options for town and adventure with social defaults, I'd be glad to listen, but so far no one has done that.

 

I'd be inclined to think of moving to a more out-of-the-way location as an adequate solution if current tax rates didn't seem to require keeping an active vendor maintained to afford your land. I don't think there's much row housing available in the more obscure places so the free oracle money doesn't help there. I can look around though in case I'm wrong on that. Though even if I am, row housing isn't nearly as much fun if you get a lot of joy out of farming or landscaping.

If it wasn't for the how-to-pay-rent-without-a-trafficked-vendor consideration, I wouldn't mind moving since there are nice places in the world that probably only fellow recluses are likely to be attracted to. But while that would satisfy me personally, it would still take away from the amount of player-made content and deco sales made by people who like to make nice spaces for the public but aren't as extrovertive in their socializing desires.

 

There are NPC-Towns, PRTs and POTs. May setting all PRTs the same as the adventure scenes while NPC-Towns and POTs are forced open mode will help?
People who want(needs) to play solo online / offline may have their home in a PRT while all others enjoy the open mode.

 

There's mileage in that (reviewing what is an adventure scene) but it may need more work or not be feasible.

As I understand it, RP Groups or folks with a requirement to remain non interactive would require all towns with Npc Vendors (for trade and gold earning) and towns with Npc's offering Quests or quest hand-in's to be classified as Adventure scenes so that they and their group can go solo in them.

 

Perhaps POT governors could have the option of setting their own town as force open/choice open.

This would allow some choice, and it could be an important selling point for governors attracting a particular sort to their towns.

 

yes! they already control whether it's pvp-flagged, this would be appropriate.

 

My original reaction to this change was an equal amount of pro and con. I thought the appearance of higher population is good for the game, but I also had concerns for me and others who wanted to use the private modes to "hide" from the crowd if/when we wanted to. That option was one of the biggest reasons I backed this game because I knew that I could get my own private game world (or even private for a small group if preferred) without having to worry about competing with others for the content.

I also liked that you could travel on the overworld in private so that nobody could see which scene you were entering (and potentially follow you in).

I have thought about this a lot over the past week or so and I don't think the negatives are as bad as I originally thought. Yes, people will still be able to see which scene you go into, but as long as you are set to private, they won't be able to follow you in. Knowing where I am doesn't mean much if they can't actually get there, right? The only benefit really lost was if you wanted to secretly sneak into a PVP zone unnoticed. However, those are open PVP and are not meant for solo risk free game play so this may actually be a good thing.

That leaves me with only 1 big concern left... the performance issues with higher population on my crappy work comp or laptop. Hopefully, performance overall will continue to improve so that this becomes less and less of a factor. If it does, then I'm all for this change.