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Hex Population Feedback/Discussion

Discussion in 'Release 3 Feedback' started by NirAntae, Feb 23, 2014.

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  1. NirAntae

    NirAntae Avatar

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    So, now that we have experienced it first hand and seen what "up to 64 players per hex" feels like, we can comment intelligently on that limit.

    Personally, I think the towns could use a few more (Owl's Head) and cities, which will be even larger, could definitely use more... Owl's Head feels just a bit on the empty side. But villages (Braemar) are a little on the crowded side already at 64, and wilderness hexes should be half that at -most- to preserve the 'in the wild' feeling.... imho of course ;) Some of the 'nearby' cultivated hexes or in areas that make strategic sense for it, can always allow larger numbers, to facilitate large(r) scale battles.
     
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  2. High Baron O`Sullivan

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    is everything.
    Would be nice to have a 100 minimum for cities
     
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  3. Mitch [MGT]

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    Definitely agree. Cities should be "bustling" (128 people?) but villages should be quiet (32 people perhaps?) All in line with immersion.

    I'd like to see a variety of hex sizes for instances, quiet forests and wide open fields (for guild battles).
     
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  4. Greymarch

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    Do we know if they plan on having more NPCs in the towns and cities? It feels empty not just from PCs but from a normal community standpoint as well.
     
  5. mike11

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    Imo still very crudely implemented. From the way DS was talking in the R3 q and a, I can see the need to recode from scratch once more design desicions are hammered out.

    Things such as not relying on players to effect instances, real sorting according to given rules, blocking and friending instances, all the different types of instances, dealing with crowd dispersement, etc
    This easily the most complex and crucial factor for seamless multiplayer play.
     
  6. Lord_Darkmoon

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    The more NPCs in towns the less immersive it will be, because those would be static NPCs without personalities etc. This would not be in line with the single player Ultimas, that Richard Garriott wants to recreate. So it will be really hard to balance this...
     
  7. mike11

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    I agree, I dont get why they are making such small NPC areas... Not at all like the classic Ultima or UO.
     
  8. Greymarch

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    Why would they be static with no personalities? Every Ultima game had loads of NPCs with personalities and their own schedules etc. Would be nice to see a few building inhabited by NPCs around town, as well as farms etc around. But who knows.
     
  9. NirAntae

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    It's definitely still early in the process, and there is a lot to be done. However, there's no harm in discussing it and pros/cons/opinions now that we have a feel for what it 'actually' looks like.

    As far as the NPC numbers - I think the "town centers" have a good proportion of NPCs, but the outlying areas feel very abandoned. More NPCs other than the occasional guard that wander the edges (farmers or hunters or the like, or kids out playing, etc.) would make it feel less abandoned.
     
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  10. tekkamansoul

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    You mean like the dozens of peasants and farmers and shoppers and guards that say nothing that are already in? :)

    They've already gone into the "let's make it feel populated" territory over the "let's give everyone a vibrant personality and importance to the plot".
     
  11. NRaas

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    Agreed.

    Even if said characters all had the same conversational personality in the beginning (ie: "I don't speak to outlanders, buzz off"), having them wandering around looking busy would help immersion in my mind.

    After that, as side-quests become available, the devs can pick from those "filler" characters and flesh them out on a "as needed" basis.

    I mean really, I'm sure most characters are simply going about their daily lives, they don't care about you or the outside world.

    ----

    Remember, we are talking about having 20 to 40 possible townships in Episode 1 of the game.

    Having unique personalities for all NPCs in every town is going to take a *long* time, so having some filler in the mean-time does not bother me one bit. :)
     
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  12. mmoredfalcon

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    So we are talking about limiting the amount of people in one area? Not overly sure how this part works. So say I have my house in XXX village/town/city. That city is maxed out with 32 or 64 players most of the time when I am logged on. Does this mean that most of my login time will be wasted trying to get into my home city and house? I don't mind cities looking full but if it is going to effect my online time that I can't get to where I want to be...well that kinda sucks. Having a very low number for a small village is not a good thing. A guild meeting, a house party, an event of any kind could keep people who need to be in the area, out of the area. I honestly don't see how this could be a good thing.

    Mind you I may be misunderstanding the whole thread here...:confused:
     
  13. NRaas

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    There can be any number of individual instances running for one hex map.

    In the example you provided, where the main instance is full, a new empty instance will be spun up for you to reside in. You can then do your town thing (albeit alone until another user enters the hex and is sorted into your instance).
     
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  14. Kal

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    there will be more than one instance in that scenario and your house is in every instance
     
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  15. mmoredfalcon

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    Ohhh...ok...thanks for clearing that up for me.
     
  16. smack

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    I hope that every NPC gets as much attention it can get so that they are memorable and worth talking to and worth learning about and worth doing quests for. Also, there are close to 1000 backers that are eligible to create and name an NPC. That's 1000 more NPCs distributed across 20-40 towns in the game. And I do hope that it's more than just a name but that these backers also get to create some limited amount of dialog. Otherwise they would be "filler" NPCs which isn't a bad thing....


    Some of the more popular mods for Skyrim were to add "inconsequential" NPCs to the game. They had very little dialog but added to the immersion of the world, such that you see non-quest based NPCs that have various schedules. Some stayed in their own cities, others actually traveled between them. This was needed because Skyrim was just an absolutely massive single scale world with very little NPCs to fill it with. Sure, some of the backer-created NPCs might end up in this category but that's OK too.

    But regarding town population, we definitely need a scalable player cap for each type of instance, which I also posted about in this thread. I really think even Owl's Head can support 128 players easily. I mean, even with the 66 player lots that's more than the existing cap. I would go so far as to say it can handle 256 players comfortably. If the public crafting station is crowded, people will move on to another town or use player crafting stations. But that's the point. Crowded places are crowded. The game doesn't need to force balance on that, but it can help with creating interesting social spaces within each town so that players have other areas to go to. And smaller villages or dungeons or whatever, sure, that limit can be lower. It's all part of the play testing and balancing we'll help with. And I can see these caps being variable and changing over time per location based on player activity.

    And yes, this implies future client performance optimizations to enable taking these caps higher and higher.
     
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