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Concern about Town identities

Discussion in 'Release 4 Feedback' started by Vanhailm, Mar 27, 2014.

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  1. Vanhailm

    Vanhailm Avatar

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    I understand that the game is in an early Alpha but atm I feel that the town are ... blands. Ther is imho too much space devoted to player housing vs actual town buildings.

    I'm all for controlled player housing rather than rampant but right now are too small for my taste: Owl's Head has 3 "main" building vs 66 player lots and Kingsport is again 3 "main" building vs 28 player lots.

    What is your opinion on the town's size ?
     
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  2. Blacklisted

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    I had the exact same thoughts... I'm still new, this being my first test, but I imagine, like UO, we won't have too much reason to be in other people's homes most of the time, so why are town's completely full of player housing? It seems similar to throwing up a bank in the middle if Ice Island (UO) and calling it a town because there is a bunch of player houses around. Seems like a waste when only 5% or so of a town is even usable by a player without a home...

    Like I said, I don't know all the details yet, but it was a bit disheartening trying to explore my first town (Owl's head) only to find 1 crafting station, 1 tavern, and a million player plots...
     
  3. Sargon

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    I admittedly haven't had time to log in to Release 4 yet, but I have had similar concerns based on previous releases. I have found it difficult to locate the important buildings/locations among the sprawls of player houses and lots. There is also nothing that really sets the town buildings apart from each other and the "sameness" of everything makes navigation of towns very confusing.
     
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  4. Jin

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    While I think much of the style is going to come in late I agree. Only the most high end housing would have been found within the walls. Maybe an expansion of the suburbia around towns could give that player village feel without taking from the city itself. On the other hand in smaller villages there wouldn't really be large city buildings. Just a collection of houses and a centralized market so it is dependent on the style of city itself. I'll have to wait to do some more exploring :)
     
  5. Ashlynn [Pax]

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    This is a concern a few others and I have brought up before. There's a danger down the line that ALL of the towns and villages will consist of a small central NPC core and lots of plots that are dominated by only one or two specific house types (whichever offers the most space or what have you).
     
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  6. argyle

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    Maybe its me, but I felt the cities in UO had a very distinct feel to them. Everything in Trinsic felt like Trinsic. There was a different style architecture and look. I just haven't gotten that from the 3 towns included thus far. I just wish they felt more distinct than they do.
     
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  7. Braumeister

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    In defense of the sameness, and this is only my conjecture, they could be going for a similar look among the towns and villages of a region. The towns thus far are all on the same island and within a relative short distance of each other. When the mainland opens up, we may find different styles of architecture for the various areas. Just my guess on that. There are different style homes, so I feel that the towns will follow.
     
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  8. G Din

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    Exactly !! Spot ON !! I asked about this in a dev hangout.
     
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  9. Malchor1

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    I just get the impression that towns/villages/cities will be packed with houses, npc vendors will be needed for very little given the emphasis on crafting
     
  10. Vanhailm

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    I totally agree that they could limit the architectural style of the houses that can exist in each town/region but imho they won't do it because of the $$$ each one has to invest in the housing system.

    BTW keep in mind that the game can also be played completely off-line, so in that case what will the player see ? Empty lots ? Random houses ?

    In a solo RPG you can have "filler" buildings but most of the time they either won't be open to the party or if you're able to opent than have some sorts of stuff going on inside (usually not quest related). In a MMO truly empty building don"t really exist. So with SotA sitting in the middle they will have to tackle the issue.

    To me the best thing to do with the players lots would have been to limit them drastically and put them outside town gates mixed with "farms" for smaller city and mixed within city quarters in bigger cities, with maybe a couple high priced lots in the city center itself.

    Another idea would be to have "player" cities, that is some spots on the map that isn't a named city but a place with a small core services and extra player lots. You wouldn't need a lot of NPCs or Quest marker but each could have a small distinguishing feature.Guilds could decide to move their asset to one specific spot and GvG combat could escalate with some sort of "siege" of the town.

    Also with having these secondary player cities the DEV team coudl easily add extra ones if needed as they are just a new node on the overland map.
     
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  11. Dhimmi

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    thats indeed a concern, but as RG repeatedly stated player housing is a major feature in this game. so i guess they have something worked out to alleviate this problem without imposing the freedom of the players ( much) i think.
     
  12. Vanhailm

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    I totally understand that player housing is a major feature but again they presented the game as potentially being played either solo or with a small group of friend. In those case the "fixed" empty lots would just feel as wasted space.

    I'm not sure if the DEV team will be able to do it but my gut feeling is that they should start by creating interesting towns and cities and develop the player lots after. Heck since the cities are "instanced" in some way they could even expand the instance to allow more player housing in the suburb with a patch if needed.

    Again I understand that we are in early alpha, but right now Owl's Head and Kingsport feel just like place holder rather than true cities. And it's really a shame because they have some interesting NPCs.
     
  13. Aegis159

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    I do agree that these "Towns" and "Cities" really don't feel unique and are frankly rather lacking in amounts of buildings in general to be considered towns, let alone cities. There's plenty of room on all of the town/city/village zones to add some more individualized buildings to make them actually seem like they're large enough to be called what they are. In Braemar there are 6(?) buildings, half of which cannot be entered, (when it first launched one could enter the homes with the balconies, but were locked out for some reason later in the testing due to issues. I didn't check them this round honestly). This isn't a village, it's a homestead, hehe. Owls Head is better, with it's small bit of buildings on the main road up to the castle entrance, and then the central marketplace inside the castle walls, but there is absolutely no sign of where all of these villagers that maintain/sustain a town of that size would be living. And Kingsport.... That "town" doesn't make any sense. It's supposedly the "King's Port" and yet half of the buildings in town are boarded up? And where is everyone in this town living at? Let alone the point that it's not much bigger than Braemar is.
    Scale is a big deal, these "communities" should better reflect what type of location they are.

    Thinking about it now, these almost seem as if they're placeholder towns rather than what we'll be seeing in the actual game...
     
  14. NRaas

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    Well, I believe they probably are the actual towns, though I'm sure they will be revised over time (I mean there was a giant castle lot in Owl's Head now, that was definitely not there the last time around).

    However, I gather they were the *first* towns to be designed and implemented, so appear rough around the edges because of it. Much like the housing styles have been progressively getting better, earlier work simply looks "off" now.

    ----

    I am intrigued to see how the scheduling simulation will operate though. Will characters wander out of town to "go home" at night, or will they perhaps use a user-placed lot to simulate their home property ?

    I mean, there certainly are enough of them to use as NPC housing. A similar approach was used in the Sims 3 for instance, where the local crowd fillers would simply chose an inactive home in town and vanished behind the door for the night. :)
     
  15. Aegis159

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    Yeah that intrigues me as well. Where are these people going to go? Will it be like the new SimCity where they travel to the closest available homestead and use it for the night, then leave in the morning only to end up at a different location the next night as some other NPC got to their previous location first? And again, where are these locations? There are no NPC homes right now.
     
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  16. Kaisa

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    I am hoping they are placeholder towns, because none of them really seem like real towns. Owlshead and Kingsport especially just seem like player housing spots with a few npc places thrown in. Though I do agree of the two Owls head is the better one. There really needs to be some npc houses and other buildings in towns for it to feel real.
     
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  17. DNA Cowboy

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    Yes, I completely agree with you, it makes me wonder if Housing hasn't been a little over-stated against everything else; however, it is early days yet and I am sure the towns are just placeholders, I cannot believe for one moment that R4 is how the game will look in October.
     
  18. Kaisa

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    I certainly hope not but we will see!
     
  19. Sunsanvil

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    What town? All I've seen so far is fantasy-suburbs with grossly over-sized houses.

    But we're flogging a dead horse here (in that there are more threads/post debating the emphasis on player housing than I can even keep track of). Still, since you brought it up with a somewhat fresh context, yea, feels like there is almost nothing but player housing.

    The simplest quest mechanism is unproven, NPC dialogue feels like nothing more than a tech demo, combat remains an elusive mystery, and most recently there is rampant dissent over the very nature of the overland view (...or lack thereof)... but darn it, the SimAvatar thing sure is working like a charm.
     
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  20. Wagram

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    How can something only about 2% to 5% of players will have be regarded as a major feature of the game. Personally I think it is just a future add on shop cash cow to entice people that want to play house if the actual game fails on release.
     
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