Is Ardoris 99.99% Row lots? Why?

All I can see are row lots. It might be better to add more lot sizes to the city.

Also are we going to have the same NPC building/floorplans over and over...and over in all the cities?

 

Yeah the generic npc floor plan runs thin. Hopefull when they have schedules this will be better. Cities should be bustling with npcs. If you rely on players to populate every town, might make for a disappointing experience

 

The cities should be unique, so I don't see a problem with Ardoris being a city that uses row houses. It is the style of the city which makes it stand out from other cities. I am hoping for something similar for other cities too. A city with tree houses only for example, like Yew...
This makes the cities in the world feel unique and gives them an individual style.

 

At least re-skin the npc buildings to give it a different feel/look than the other cities.

Looking back to UO we had cities made of sandstone, brick, marble, wood (dark/light)...etc.

Maybe its already planned after Ardoris. Or at least I hope it's the plan

 

These pictures of Old Hong Kong's "walled city" seem appropriate as Ardoris is...
A major densely populated area dose need to be represented somewhere
~Time Lord~

 

I would redesign the lot sizes in Ardoris because the current design has issues and did NOT resonate well with friends in China, Hong Kong and the Philippines I just showed it to.

Ardoris is a row house ghetto with little "watcher" spiders watching you all the time. What kind of statement are you trying to make here? This is supposed to be the major Asian-themed city in SotA. Are you telling Asians that in your game Asians have to live in a ghetto with little row houses watched by the spider gestapo because that is what your American perception of Asia is like? Even though a lot of people in Asia still have to live in apartments in overpopulated, crowded and polluted cities this is exactly what people want to get away from in games and not something they want to be classified into culturally. Besides, towns and walled settlements in medieval Europe were as crowded and overpopulated as in medieval Asia.

I also don't know how row-house-ghetto, Asian style and "city of love" work together. Maybe it makes more sense after you have added the massage parlors

Seriously, my suggestion would be to add more village and town lots, get rid of the gestapo spiders (they might feel at home in another town) and lighten things up a bit. Maybe add a park and a bit of green, a nice wedding chapel somewhere or whatever.

 

Cities by their nature (particularly walled cities) have a high population density with architecture to match. This is the feeling they are obviously trying to convey and Ardoris is just the first city they have done. I am pretty certain the design of Ardoris isn't a surreptitious statement about asian culture.

 

I don't see where Ardoris is more "city" or more walled than e.g. Owl's Head. And especially for the "city of love" in this game I would have expected something that portrays more beauty and less poverty.

 

Adding more village and town lots to every city will make them loose their individual style. Then we end up with every city being a mix of every house style in the game and then all the cities will be the same and not be unique anymore. This would be really, REALLY bad for the game and the atmosphere.

 

I agree. But picking the only Asian style city to become the row-house-ghetto might entirely kill off whatever already limited appeal SotA might still have left in Asia.

 

My main point was people with village lots wanting to live in the same city as a friend with a row lot. (Me and my brother) After having my named NPC added to this city (that doesnt appear to be there yet...) it would have been nice to have the option of placing my village lot there.

I can live with it if this is what they've chosen for the layout. Just need the ability to add vendors outside row lots now. Having to enter every house here might reduce visitors looking to buy goods.

 

How do you know this is the only "Asian" style city? It's the only city we've seen on the mainland so far, for all we know all of them could be like this. I also didn't realize that multi-story row houses = ghetto...

 

Here's an overhead view of Venice. What do you see?

 

I read the novel and looked at the known game lore. Ardoris seems the only major town with a "shogun" and other Asian inspired stuff.

 

I see lots/houses of greatly varying sizes from small row houses up to large town villas. It proves the point though, that crowded cities are not only an Asian thing.

Which brings up two different questions:

1) Should the only major Asian-themed town be an overcrowded place with small houses while other non-Asian towns in the game are more spaced out and offer better real estate?

2) Should real estate in the game be hardcore realistic or should it be more geared towards what players actually enjoy? If most Portalarium towns will be designed this way, I guess people are going to flock to villages or player towns with more spaced out layouts.

 

So, I actually feel pretty strongly about this, as one of the people who worked on the story behind this zone.

When I visited Korea and China and talked to game developers there, one of the things they told me - *very strongly* - was that they found attempts to emulate "Asian" culture by people who were obviously unfamiliar with it personally offensive, and gave many specific examples, including games you wouldn't think of as being offensive.

That is something I've personally taken to heart. Because of that, I was very vehement in communicating to the rest of the design team that Ardoris was *not* an Asian city but a merchant capitol - a blending of cultures, similar to Venice, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. We very intentionally made the city multicultural - whereas other cities will have a specific cultural feel to them, Ardoris was intended to be an old port city, and a *crowded* one, because it's a successful mercantile crossroads. As opposed to a "ghetto", I would actually argue that the city is wealthier than the norm - the row houses we've designed were patterned on New York's Manhattan, which has some of the most valuable real estate on the planet.

As for the watchers, they relate to the Oracle, the antagonist of the game. We specifically have not revealed much about that part of the plot yet, but we wanted to communicate that Ardoris is NOT Owl's Head - that it very much is an Oracle's city, and the watchers are, well, watching. There very much was NOT a latter-day poltical metaphor intended; that's not to say that we won't try to address issues such as those (I happen to believe there is a place in gaming, like other entertainment, to make such points), but that is not the case here. In fact, if there's any parallel in modern China I used in Ardoris's story, it would be a positive message, not a negative one - specifically Hu Jintao's goals of a harmonious modern society (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Harmonious_Society). Most NPCs will respond to "harmony" as a keyword, though I hope to add significantly more content next release regarding this.

The intent of Ardoris was NOT a dark ghetto watched over by the secret police, but a wealthy city of commerce, harmony and, well, love (that being Sequanna's virtue). If anything we showed did not communicate that, my sincerest apologies.

 

personally i enjoyed the design, layout, and overall feel and tone of Ardoris. I wouldn't mind living there.

Unfortunately, I was hoping to open a pub there, and that doesn't seem possible with only row lots available. (Yes, I know there are a few regular lots, but they will most certainly be snapped up very very quickly.)

 

Exactly. And to complicate it even further: players often look for something different in a game than what they have in RL.

As long as it is the only major city in game with a Shogun, NPCs with Asian names and curved roofs it will always remain "the Asian town" though. Unfortunately, as soon as you add Asian architecture or characters with Asian names to a place you already begin to walk down that difficult slope of designing an Eastern place while being a Westerner. If Asian players are part of your target audience, maybe you should include somebody native in that culture in the design process of parts in the game that touch on Asian culture (or could be confused with it). This could be informal or part-time or it could be people from the player community.

Row houses are the cheapest real estate in game. No matter what prefabs you let people rez there, it will still always be the cheapest type of real estate in the game in terms of deed cost and upkeep. Manhattan real estate is not valuable because it is good, but because of the central location. You could, of course, make row house lots in Ardoris highly desirable by adding unique amenities to Ardoris and thus turning it into valuable Manhattan style real estate, with the profits of that high location value going to whoever is fast enough at claiming the best spots. But wouldn't that raise fundamental balancing issues?

I see. If this is a feature of most main island cities and nothing that is particular to Ardoris it might not be an issue then.

You said above that Ardoris should not be an Asian city but a general merchant capital. Wouldn't NPCs talking about "harmony" in a sense that resembles Chinese understanding of that concept contradict this? You should also be aware that any direct comment or reference to Chinese politics and, worst, the ruling party there, can only go wrong, no matter if positive or negative. It is like a non-American commenting on American politics and controversial political ideas. A lot of Chinese identify with their government and leadership. Others do not. Many non-Chinese Asians do not. You don't want to get caught in the middle here. My suggestion is to abstract philosophical and political concepts from the countries/societies they exist in RL and plant them into a context in the game that does not resemble the RL culture/society you found them in. Maybe a Nordic looking tribe in SotA would be a better protagonist for things that resemble "socialist harmonious society" and to play with the ideas/concepts more freely than you could ever do in a city run by a "shogun". This would also help you avoid cliches.

 

Whoa whoa whoa whoa..... Ok.... I know I'm going to be breaching some forum etiquette by calling someone out, but Prince Guni... you do NOT need to try to defend Asian culture. If those friends of yours are taking offense to it, then they're either in the minority or all my friends (I'm Asian and have a LOT of Asian friends) think in a completely different wave length compared to yours and we LIKE the designs. In terms of the Architecture, it's supposed to have been influenced by previous Avatars in the past and has changed the culture in that region permanently. The original subject matter will be skewed and modified to reflect the change in times as well as accommodate for the difference of lifestyle that is present in the game. My girlfriend, who is a Chinese foreign exchange student that is studying architecture, found nothing insulting about the idea of a Western developer creating a town that has Asian influences (would you like for me to get a quote from her? She took a class on cultural influences last semester on how it impacts design and could probably make a hefty paper about what's in the game). We are only exploring the first continent (island?) of the game so this will not be the only Asian themed town as the game grows so we may be seeing more Asian cities that are spread out. When I visited Portalarium I was about to data dump a lot of information about Asian Architecture to Stephen (in Beijing all the historic buildings typically have a set of animals or deities on the roof corners and the number of animals represent which building belongs to who and another design that the houses have are these small steps you have to step over when going through a door and that the height of it also determines the stature of who you're visiting and is also an influence on the myth of the Chinese undead and it is supposed to keep them out since they move from one place or the other by hopping) BUT I chose not to because it's supposed to be THEIR interpretation of it.

The world of New Britannia is supposed to have been influenced by many Avatars of the past and those influences on the world will include the culture they brought with them. If something like a town that has hints of Asian culture is going to offend your friends then why aren't they rioting against Bethesda for making the Blade's from Elder Scrolls wear Samurai looking gear, or Blizzard for making Russian Buddhist Monks, or picketing against the publishers of Dungeons and Dragons for adding the "Oriental Adventures" rulebooks? Hell, if they DIDN'T add an Asian town I'd be confused since they explained how there were multiple Avatars in the past, and if one of them was an Asian then I'm sure he/she would have influenced the world. Don't try to create a crusade against what they're designing until we see the whole picture, especially since those who you're crusading for don't feel the same way.

 

Hm.

Well, I understand the logic. However, when you consider that there is essentially a fixed price on housing, and the town is almost entirely filled with the cheapest housing available in-game, that point of view doesn't really hold up.