Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

True, launch was rough. I'm currently running VG on SSDx2 in raid0, so I hardly notice load times, but there is still the slight hitch when crossing a chunk.

So.... Aradune, please get it right this time.

Soygen_sl said:

Are you trolling?

Everquest was zoned.
Vanguard was seamless.
Vanguard cost 5x more than EQ.
Vanguard spent most of its money on art.
Seamless therefore costs more than zones because of those art charges.

Is this really what your brain is telling you when taking all of the above into account?

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What are you not getting?

Flake_sl said:

Fuck flying mounts right off.

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This is my life moto

Seamless worlds require you to stream in assets as you go. They also mess with large tree structures in that you have to keep track of an extra transform for where they are in the world (not a big deal). Nowadays if you have much in the way of character customization you need to be streaming anyway. It is cheap to do now that multi core machines are getting more common.

Back in the EQ day all the major game engines loaded the entire "level" up front and that was all you had to work with. I'm fairly sure it still works that way. My games all do that, it's way easier.

I think any game that succeeds on the level they're working at will be a test of compromises. While I want a huge, open, seemless world, I know it's probably not that feasible. That doesn't mean I want a world where zoning from one area to the next requires running down a hallway only vaguely colored to match the zone you're leaving and turning left. EQ's best zone transitions where the ones that made sense in the context of the world, like crossing a bridge, going through a tunnel, the entrance to a cave/dungeon, the Highhold area paths cut into cliffs area, etc. The shitty transitions were in the middle ofa forest you have an invisible wall and eventually a green colored hallway.

Make a world where there are natural choke points, natural boundaries and logical places a player would choose to cross to a new area. Make each logical area built as a zone, but load actively/seemlessly ala WoW (usually). Do it well enough will feel like part of the world where you've found a natural barrier and the logical point of access to a new area, not a reminder you're playing a game that needs to load a new map.

Vanguards problem wasn't that they tried to make it seemless, but that the design of the world was to be built in squares no matter the landscape. Hell, had they had chunks be natural boundaries instead of pre-determined squares maybe they could have found the tech so you wouldn't have the problem that still persists to this day where middle of a field you freeze because the game has to load the new area (or I think technically it's because the game has to load your character to the new area?). The problem was world design not matching up to technical design. And of course the world design being to see how vast you can make an empty plane. We don't really need that. We'll still feel it's a world if there are a lot of barriers funneling us, as long as they're natural and not forced.

Isn't seamless and zoned the right answer? Just seamless on the gameplay level, zoned on the technical?

Caliane_sl said:

seemless vs instance is a purely hardware/network issue. it has nothing to do with art assets.

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You mean zones?

Planetside 2 does it flawlessly, btw. Three continents to zone between, but as far as I know, I've never hit a hitch moving across a map.

I'm sort of a tech newb, so, am I just not seeing the zones or totally oblivious to the hitches?

I always thought there were even too many starter areas in EQ. Neriak, for instance, was an awesome city and could have easily supported troll and ogre starting characters.

Vanguard was the worst, by having a ton of races, so a ton of starting areas. The starter village to racial city to continental city (with a dozen quest hubs in between) to me is a failed design (thanks WoW?), even when they were cool like in Vanguard. It's spending a ton on assets that won't be revisited and aren't really relevant to the game's bigger picture.

Of course, the worse example is also in Vanguard, where all the races on each continent were forced together in what was some pretty patchwork lore. Hey, there's a dark elf in the human starter area, so it all makes sense, right?!

Have a few cities, with a few of the game's races logically starting there, and I'll be fine with it. And make the cities places players revisit. And make there be faction that can be gained so I can revisit a city that is closer to where I want to be, even if I started the game kos to them.

And no flying mounts (until a later, max-level expansion).

Am I the only one that liked Zones?

Amaru_sl said:

Not to sound ignorant, but how does instancing a zone take any less art then having it be a seamless transition into the next zone? I think you are confusing it. VG spent a ton because of the obnoxious size of the world (this might be where the art cost thing is comming from?)

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Yes as you and Creed pointed out. I'm talking about all the extra art assets used to connect the various dungeons, towns and other pois in vanguard. You could theoretically make a very small seemless world equivalent in size to vanilla eq's faydwer zones. However, in that case, I'd would suspect the seemless faydwer would feel much smaller than the zoned faydwer.

zzeris_sl said:

I can't believe I'm hearing any support for technological problems from 15 years ago. Seamless please. Zones...really?! In 2014? Is this serious? If Brad's team couldn't handle making this game without the old EQ type zones...then he needs to find some real talent.

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Vanilla WoW was zoned. Just seemless transitions.

@Yanger. EQ zones were cool.

Tannlin_sl said:

True, launch was rough. I'm currently running VG on SSDx2 in raid0, so I hardly notice load times, but there is still the slight hitch when crossing a chunk.

So.... Aradune, please get it right this time.

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Once i got an SSD all I could think about was "why not do a BD deal where Vanguard is included in every SSD purchase", when SSDs were very "techie" and bleeding edge..

zzeris_sl said:

That was in 2004. This is 2014 and the game will release in 2016 probably. I think the unity engine can produce better tricks than vanilla WoW. I get your point but I don't want anything resembling old EQ from the tech front.

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so no training to zoneline?

As I said I am with zones for practical reasons.

But honestly, thinking back to EC and WC and the Karanas or Duskwood and the neighboring zones makes me think that small zone lines are just for player funneling. The art in all those zones wouldnt change by switching between seamless and zoned. So assuming Unity allows for it out of the box or with small additions they could go seamless as well. They shouldnt though if it requires a massive rewrite, that seems like it would defeat the point of a licensed engine.

I hate the ideas of shit like mobs leashing because you got x yards away and shit. all of the ups and downs that came with zones being 'limited' tech, I liked. I like being in a dungeon and feeling FUCKED trying to run to the zone line and training everyone. I like that in big outdoor zones! I like the huge variety of texture work and areas you get pressed against each other (I'm not sure you COULDNT do that seamlessly, but it'd be super jarring even if you did. When you're zoning it doesn't seem so apparent. I mean, you can go between the stormy snow in Everfrost into Blackburrow and into Qeynos Hills and it's a grand total of like 100 yards, and not really blink an eye. The texture variety I see in most seamless games is shit too. EQ looked way better than most of them because of having super focused art direction on a zone by zone basis imo. Again, do I know it couldn't be done? no. But it sure seems to be what happens.

@Yanger yeah an issue with seemless is that it seems to always come with mob leashing. You don't really need super smart Ai to make trash mobs challenging if they all behave like gnolls in black burrow.

I think zones are more efficient - no worries about spending time on transition art or miles of mountains separating POIs