I've been delving in and out of a lot of MMO's lately, some old and new, killing time really while I wait for Pantheon. Along the way I have gathered some thoughts about what I like and what I don't. It's interesting returning to some of these games with a critical eye and with the knowledge of Pantheon on the horizon.
The one criticism of MMO's which tends to stick out for me is the lack of space. I'm not referring here to the size of continents. There are games like Elder Scrolls Online which have huge continents but are filled to the brim with creatures and resource nodes. EQ2 was poor in this respect too, you couldn't move without bumping into something to pick up.
I'd like Pantheon to be much sparser in terms of content. It would be great if resource nodes didn't dominate the landscape. It would also be great to have space to just be with friends, and soon to be friends, outside of city zones. Just my thoughts. Some of my fondest memories of old MMO's were in areas where I practiced kiting, or went fishing with friends, or just stood about chatting as we waited for people to log on.
Would you prefer lots of content everywhere or should there be space to be? Perhaps you can recall a time you made use of such space? Or maybe you can present an argument for greater content? I’d be interested to know what the community thinks.
Blood
I don't know about sparse, but more authentic maybe.
Yes, I have noticed resource nodes can be plentiful in many games, and the fact many of them have glowing auras around them so you can spot them from 3 zones away, just takes away from the discovery.
I also always wondered what the bandit I was beating the snot out of did to his brethren, since they stood a mere 20-30' away and did nothing to assist him.
Many games it seems they are afraid to have any open space. Where I would prefer for example, that if you have a bandit controlled area, that the "area" is not littered with 1 or 2 bandits every 100sqft, but rather that a small group 3-5 (or more if the area permits it), area grouped together in a spot within the area, and that spot can be random. If someone kills that small group, another could spawn anywhere in the same area. Never really cared for the "X" marks the spot where the mob spawns concept.
I agree.
One of the things that I think helps make the world feel large is that you actually have to move (a lot) to have an experience.
So you can't just stand somewhere and kill a rabid bear, harvest a magic mushroom and find a buried scroll. You actually have to go out LOOKING for those things, meaning there is a lot of empty space.
I too agree though not entirely for the same reasons.
I find it enormously frustrating if most areas you can barely move without a new mob or set of mobs attacking - even if you stay on the roads.
It isn't so bad if gray mobs ignore you and the aggro range is small, and if mobs only follow you for a reasonable distance. But if 90% of the world is almost wall-to-wall mobs its really hard to enjoy the scenery and explore.
Granted we do need mobs and risk of being attacked but not over and over and over - no reasonable ecology can support that dense a population of predators/bandits.
Assuming no good reason for having a lot of mobs. If I decide to explore the camp of the Dark Lord's main army I have no legitimate complaint if there are a *lot* of soldiers around.
I agree. Every square inch of a zone shouldn't be packed with things. Hell, I would like to see zones that have large empty spots that are only populated with stuff during procedural events. Like where the spawns only come out at night.... or during rain storms.... or during snow.
I agree, Bloodfire. In ESO, it's a beautiful game, but I feel like there's TOO much detail. Not only too many mobs, but too much of everything...... I cannot see the mobs sometimes cause they're almost camouflaged amongst all the detail in my view, and then it's too late and I've aggroed them. Not to mention eso's zone loading times are terrible. Sometimes running right in the middle of a zone it decides it wants to reload the zone. Another example, Guild Wars 2. So many mobs, and also so many fast respawns, it gets annoying when I just want to run back out of a cave I fought my way in to, only to have everything respawned in no time.
These two games of course, and others of their type, are designed for quick short, easy fights for the player, so they have to have tons of mobs and fast respawns. Since Pantheon is being designed with slower combat and longer fights, I hope things will be less congested.
Since you asked for a personal example - the most recent one, which was a few years ago: in Project1999, I was on my druid in Firiona Vie, at the Swamp of No Hope zoneline. A lot of zones in EQ had the long stretch of space before getting in to the meat of the zone. So the druid was a good level for the forest giants that had a hut just inside the FV zone, so I'd pull the three of them, and pick up a random blue con on the way back to the empty area and quad kite them there. I got one out of the two forest loops I was looking for.
Space to be is important, but IMHO it is more important for mobs to be where they belong,
bears and boars belong to the forest at night, bandits belong to unguarded roads , undead belong to a cemetary...
there is no sense in mobs spawning on the main road outside the castle, nearby cave, sewers, bandit camp in the groves etc...
more mobs density at the lair, and more sporadic when you farther away.
It is a balance, of course. Too few enemies and either people have to stand in line and take numbers to kill them, or the respawn rate has to be ridiculously fast. But as MyNegation says there can be *some* rational logic to where different enemies are.
I note that empty areas give room for later introduction of housing (assuming housing is planned for after launch and will be landscape not instanced).
I note that reasonable amounts of empty space make the world look larger and, paradoxically, more complete.
If a city is surrounded by adventure areas and then half a continenet is empty it *looks* as if things were released before they were really done. If adventure areas are scattered around it *looks* as if things were finished but they didn't cram everything together. All for the same amount of developer effort.
I note that an objective is to bring high level characters back to lower level areas. Empty spots that tribes of high level enemies can wander into about the time higher levels are running out of other things to do is one way to accomplish this. Expansions and new content releases don't need to be set in the tradional new continent or outside the borders of what we know.
I agree with the OP. I think having the extra space in zones allows for the players imagination to fill in the gap. With too much stuff going on, a lot of times it no longer feels like a game, but a job collecting all the available resources, killing all the mobs around for the most xp, etc; it's just overwhelming in most cases. However, that's not to say the other extreme is better. If there's too little things to do, then players will lose interest. So, like many have said, it's a balance.