My problem with Blood Bay

Blood Bay is a huge map and it features probably the best vistas the game has yet to offer.

... But check this out:

If you're coming from Brittany (you know, what's most likely going to happen), you get on that tiny little boat and you're in Blood Bay.

Awesome!

Thing is, is that the towns themselves are on the other side of the island and the ONLY way to get there is to traverse there on foot. It's a huge map.

When I was done with my business in town, I figured I'd have my fill for the day and decided to leave. The closest exit leads you to Graff Island... to the far eastern side of Novia. If you actually wanted to go back to where you came from, from within Blood Bay you have to traverse the island again on foot.

Let me reiterate: You don't go across the island, you go AROUND it. Did I mention that it was a huge map?

This looks like a really promising area for PvP as a central hub but it's just not easily accessible. I had thought that the towns would be near the middle of the map with paths leading to them from all sides... but nope. It requires boats just to go from one end to another... but there aren't any.

Good luck to anyone who's looking to explore the area for the first time; make sure you have plenty of time to kill. It's a beautiful place.

P.S. - Stealth is completely broken on the island. Aka: it doesn't work.

 

We'd like the main entrance to put you closer to the towns. We're working on ways to get around the huge island right now. I agree. One thing @Sannio wants to avoid is making it a quick shortcut to circumvent the continent using boats. It does make Graff Island more relevant though! =\

 

Some pathways to many islands does indeed seem a little drunk. Coming from an Elads Lighthouse resident Anyone know a quick way to exit Brittany from central?

 

exit to menu... start on overworld map... LOL

 

To exit Central Brittany to Novia take the red balloon that is next to the wagons right where you enter the scene or the boat right next to the dock across from the crafting center, or the wagon next to the farming supplies vendor

 

Regarding entry and exit to Blood Bay. I'm all for restricting travel, but I'm worried about spawn camping. (in all PVP scenes)

Currently in Shardfalls the approach is to randomly spawn players into the scene with a small invulnerability window. However there's often a lag between when you can take over your player, see what's going on, and determine what your first actions are. In the case of Blood Bay, that doesn't happen, you enter and exit at the boats.

What I'd like to see is one or preferably both of the following solutions:
1. For appropriate scenes, add NPC guards that make it near impossible to spawn camp a static area where everyone knows where players spawn in at. Anyone in the area that goes into combat mode should be attacked.
2. The other approach is to allow the spawning player to be invisible until they move or take an action. This would allow them to see what's going on, acclimate themselves to a new scene, and decide if this was really something that they wanted to be involved in. If they spawn in and see 50 people waiting to gank them, they would have the opportunity to spawn right back out again.

 

The island has TONS of resurrection shrines so I'm not too worried... maybe they should replace them with Chaos shrines so that, if you do die, you appear somewhere else. I'd like to elaborate on the idea some more and add a logic where it only randomize your respawn location if it identifies that you've died by the hands of players.

If I end up in a place where I don't want to be, it doesn't make the place any more relevant in my eyes.

I'm glad to hear you guys are working on a solution. What if the blimp could make 3 stops? Town(s), west side and east side of the island? It's not too fast, the blimp can keep rotating around the island, you get a good view and you have a visual cue on how to traverse the island.

 

When you initially spawn into Blood Bay, your location is not random. Even if it were random though, it could very well put you in a compromising position that would be needlessly stupid and unfun.

 

Nor would I expect it to be. The last thing I want is to be disoriented every time I load in Blood Bay; which is something that I can accept after death. I came from a boat and the boat should dock at the same location. Nor would you want to encourage players to zone in, see that they're not at the place they want to be, zone out and try again until they get their location.

This also has the side effect of allowing the level designers to craft the "entry experience"; to give visual cues to guide the player. If I spawn and just face a flat wall, there's not much to it... but if I spawn facing a path, a tower or a town, then it becomes that much more interesting and approachable. It's a bit weak but the level designer did something like that in Blood Bay if you come in from the Graff Island: you can spot faint path(s) made out of torches that'll lead you to the town(s).

 

It's a pvp zone, you have to give it more thought than "I came in on a boat, so I should be at a dock".

If we don't change that, you'll learn very quickly why I'm right about this.

 

I sort of like it, it makes Blood Bay more or less part of Graff area, but with a connection to Britanny and the rest of Novia. I like that. Though I agree that it would be nice to have bit more options at "Britanny" entrance, I think it is perfect spot for winding path up in addition to beach left and beach right.

 

Listen, I'll be the first guy that'll cry foul when simulation and role-play is set at the expense of gameplay. Instinctively removing any aspect of common sense in an attempt to protect PvP players from PvP isn't the way to go either.

I don't need to be reminded of PvP from you.

 

My messages on these forums are more geared towards the developers eyes. In this case, I wanted to appropriately keep the goal of having a fun experience in mind when designing these areas. While your personal preference might be immerssion over the practical, immerssive gameplay doesn't help reduce customer support tickets or keep PVP fun enough that people want to continue to play it. If someone shows up on that dock and is ganked immediately resulting in loss of items, they're not going to be very happy about it no matter how immerssive the experience was.

I'm trying to think of a good game design that supports a wide range of playstyles, not just yours, not just mine.

 

Like protecting PvPers from PvP when they're in PvP towns? That shouldn't involve pretending to know more than the next guy. The difference between you and I is that I don't claim to know what's good for everyone else. I share my personal experiences and then I do as much of an analysis to determine why or how I feel a certain way.

I wish people would just stop with the bull, share how they feel about certain things and let the developers do their job to figure out how to build their game. It's insulting to everyone involved.

... It's like you don't even bother to read any of my posts... so I'm not going to bother with yours anymore.

 

I think if the geysers gave you a little more distance, you could use them to (very obviously to any PvPer watching you) cross the island that way. It would be telegraphing your position, but it would be a fun sprint.

 

Would love geysers to buff your speed as well as jump ability...

And chained geyser jumping could be awesome activity


On a side note, since the flying airship is so slow now, I might like to see one or more of them around the scene.

 

Why can't the spawn-in location be a game enforced no-kill zone where everyone shimmers with a blue forcefield if necessary?
Sure, campers can surround the zone-in location, but it wouldn't be instant zone in-kill.

 

It's not the most eloquent solution, but I agree that's better than nothing and solves the bulk of the problems.

 

@x_Selene_x & @Net ... I didn't even know that the geysers did anything. While it's a cool idea, I'm hoping for something that's a little more newcomer-friendly. A "Hey! This is obviously meant for traveling" kind of visual cue. I seriously thought that geysers were nothing more than decorations... or that they'd burn you.

Also, geysers weren't there/visible when I wrote the OP. I was certainly surprised to see them when they patched them in.

 

Holy molly that opens up most of the island! That's great! But...

Issues/thoughts:

• It's un-intuitive. It's a very arcade "90's platformer" style of doing things, which is great and all, but the game's trying to be "realistic". So no one would ever think of jumping in unless they were explicitly told that they're jumping platforms... or that they're suicidal. It feels very "King's Quest V; throw the pie at the Yeti" as far as figuring things out. Your solutions should match the tone of the game. At the very least, if the platforms up on the mountain were more directly aligned on top of the geysers, it'd be a little bit more obvious.
• How are you supposed to get down? I tried jumping back down to the geysers (figured that if it's not going to burn me and enabled me to jump, that it'd cushion the fall) but I ended up dying.