Area Size Design

[Sincra]

As it stands there are three approaches to area design sizing.

This poll is aimed at serving an opinion of the community to a preferred direction of these three.

The three in question are:
Large, broad areas with much open space that take time to cross. Good examples of this is the Shyr Farmland areas, the newer content between Stonehold and Arelith forest, Minmir lake and the redone Jungles.

Mid sized, they can take some time to cross but generally are many areas that make up the same distance as a single large. See the Wharftown Coastal Road, Swamp roads and Cordor Sewers for an example.

Small sized areas, these are cramped and short, they may be part of a set or a standalone item. Examples of this are the Campsite, the bandits palisade near it and the Arcane Tower, something you can cross expediently without movespeed increases.

[Second Breakfast]

Small areas, unless it is a playhouse/theater, in which case, medium areas are acceptable.

(There should be more playhouses and theaters that players are encouraged to use. I am not counting the Magpie.)

[Marsi]

I prefer a grid of small, well-formed areas.

No-one likes run-walking around massive, empty areas, why must we tell ourselves that we want Skyrim-esque open world immersion? I've always seen Arelith's small, abstracted size as pro-social and critical to its success in the face of other servers with enormous distances to travel between population centers.

It is fun to get lost in vast wilderness occasionally. But the wilderness should be opt-in, off-road. Everyone loses when the main roads are wound through the entirety of the landscape.

As beautiful and well-crafted as the 1.69 areas are, I've always felt them to be an intrusion of singleplayer RPG design.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

i am very vocal about this topic but i will try to summarize

anything larger than 17x17 is excessive (and sometimes even 17x17 is excessive too).

in the old days before the volunteer developers/Beamdog/etc that came after Beamdog cracked open the code and fixed the asset limit, we had to use big areas because there was physical limitations stopping it, but after that limitation was lifted, it makes no sense to abide that anymore

i prefer a mix of very small areas for interiors ranging to medium size areas for theatres (like second breakfast said) and for outdoor areas and some dungeons. i think this is reasonable and fine.

[Kythana]

I prefer a grid of small, well-formed areas.

No-one likes run-walking around massive, empty areas, why must we tell ourselves that we want Skyrim-esque open world immersion? I've always seen Arelith's small, abstracted size as pro-social and critical to its success in the face of other servers with enormous distances to travel between population centers.

It is fun to get lost in vast wilderness occasionally. But the wilderness should be opt-in, off-road. Everyone loses when the main roads are wound through the entirety of the landscape.

As beautiful and well-crafted as the 1.69 areas are, I've always felt them to be an intrusion of singleplayer RPG design.

Perfectly sums up the majority of my thoughts.

I always dread going to Shyr or Lake Minmir because there is nothing to see while you're running along. These huge wilderness areas might be interesting to see the first time, but on subsequent visits, it's just an exercise in running.

Whenever the minimap starts scrolling is when I know I'm going to have a bad time.

I think the best example of this is something like Balmora in Morrowind. The town is relatively small and abstracted away from its actual large size in lore, but it feels massive and great because there's so much stuff compacted.

[Ellisaria]

Whenever the minimap starts scrolling is when I know I'm going to have a bad time.

I came here to post exactly this. Smalls and mediums are the dream.

[The GrumpyCat]

The thing about large areas, for adventuring... well it really comes down to writwork IMO.

Most writs have a theme of
*go to area X
*kill Y amount of creatures on level 1
*Kill Y amount of creatures on level 2
*Kill boss on level 3.

There's variation in that of course, but I think a lot of people would agree the above is fairly and roughly standard for writs.

If your levels are small, then this is something that can be done within half an hour.
If your levels in the above are vast, sprawling mazes, then - especially if you're not entirely familiar with them, your adventure can take hours to complete, making it far less desirable.

Thinking about it, this also has a kick off on resource gathering stuff too. Resource nodes regenerate at a certain rate if an area is empty. If an area is huge, then I'm spending more time there, more time getting out of there, and thus resource regeneration is - at least in theory, slower. So doing a loop of say, IDK, forest of Dispair for wood may be a lot more fruitful than looping the Minmir Lake, because of sheer timing issues.

Speaking personally I quite like the large areas in some cases, but I wouldn't like to see them utalized too much, especially not for dungeons.

[Dr. B]

I voted for more massive areas, but as Marsi said, I'd want to see them off the main roads. Massive wilderness areas that you can get utterly lost in are cool. I am aware of a line of argument that smaller areas that force people to bump into each other are good for RP. But those areas will already exist on the main roads. And also, interruptions aren't always good for RP--in some cases they can interrupt conversations, events, and ambience that drive the storytelling experience. There are things it would be cool do be able to do in the wilderness without a certainty of being discovered, like performing demonic rituals or having a clandestine meeting of guardians of the forest. I don't think there's a lot to lose from adding huge wilderness areas as long as the latter are opt-in. Also, it gives fugitives a place to go. Fugitive RP need no longer be an utterly punishing experience. You can actually disappear, at least for a little while, and it'll be harder (but not impossible) for people to find you.

[Sandrow]

I vote for mid sized region. No more large sized mazes. (;_;) Complex transitions and runing around for hours without mobs or resources regeneration makes me feel lonely. And many small/tiny sized regions means many transition ambush.

Besides, it would be more convenient to create chances of RP for a short period of time, in other words, within a hour RL, instead of those requires a whole afternoon or until the midnight.

[Amateur Hour]

I'm maybe the one person on the server who genuinely loves the Skalfell, so I'll speak to some of the benefits of large areas when used wisely, because I think there are some things the Skalfell does really well that other large areas don't.

For those who don't know, the Skalfell is a set of large expanses that make up the level 16-19 portion of Skal. There aren't many line-of-sight breaks, and while there's some twistiness, it's not a maze that makes you regret not playing a ranger or taking early LM levels, so it's relatively easy to navigate. You're probably not going to be heading up that way at all unless you have writs in the area to complete. And while you're trekking, you really feel the difficulty of just plain getting to the dragon that you're supposed to slay. Resource management becomes a real consideration because you need to save some firepower for that big boss up ahead. It makes a ton of sense that you'd need to travel significant distance to be able to reach a dragon's lair. That distance also serves to fill the role of the "kill X enemies on floor 1, 2, and 3" quest objectives. It just feels very classic tabletop adventure to me, and I love it.

Compare this with Minmir. It's sort of two maps in one since you can't get from one side to the other, so there's a high chance people could be on the same map and never encounter each other even if they're hoping to. People will wander around lost, and while they're wandering around on the map lost, all the resource spawns become effectively disabled - and there's a lot of them! Compare also to the myconid region of the Skaldark: huge maze, difficult to see. It gets frustrating.

I feel like large maps can work really well when:

• traversing the map (note: not killing things on the map, simply TRAVERSING it) is considered part of a writ when designing an area, but you're otherwise relatively unlikely to wander onto the map. This, to me, is the most important thing.

• it's one single area that doesn't take a birds-eye view to navigate, so parties are moderately likely to encounter each other if they happen to be on the same map (hard to roleplay when it's physically impossible to encounter people).

• there aren't many resource spawns, so people don't get frustrated trying to farm resource spawns that won't be respawning quickly.

• there aren't very many of them. Its power as a tool to make you feel like you're going on an EPIC journey wears off really quickly with overuse.

Smaller maps are preferable if you want mazes, resources, points of interest where people hang out for long periods.

[Royal Blood]

I would suggest a Hybrid approach but favor like small area design

In my opinion, there are a lot of large areas and the details become painfully repetitive. Like the Cordor crypts or the kobold mine where you just zigzag an entire map length of the same pattern of pathway. Or the orc tunnels or ogre tunnels, 4-5 levels of almost the same cave design with very little aesthetic or unique ness to the caves.

Make the areas small. Make them detailed and leverage every bit of space you can to fill it with like engaging elements.

The hybrid comes into play with areas like Minmir. That space benefits from the open world design and I find it, despite being large, to be unique in many ways. The design is much more thoughtful then olde zones and the hill-y landscape allows for all kinds of cool pathes. It feels good to travel.

Going back to large areas though, having done some dev work for other servers I think large scale is a trap a lot of devs fall into. Far, far more impactful is to reduce your canvas size and just focus on filling it.

Last suggestion, if you go big, go small! Break a big zone into smaller sections. Focus on filling out each section to complete a larger zone then you kinda get the small zone feel in a large zone.

[Edens_Fall]

i am very vocal about this topic but i will try to summarize

anything larger than 17x17 is excessive (and sometimes even 17x17 is excessive too).

in the old days before the volunteer developers/Beamdog/etc that came after Beamdog cracked open the code and fixed the asset limit, we had to use big areas because there was physical limitations stopping it, but after that limitation was lifted, it makes no sense to abide that anymore

i prefer a mix of very small areas for interiors ranging to medium size areas for theatres (like second breakfast said) and for outdoor areas and some dungeons. i think this is reasonable and fine.

This, but with large areas for wild, undeveloped locations. I feel the larger areas create more of an open "I'm outdoors, look at that unspoiled view!" Feel while city/developed areas should feel more cramped, like you know . . . A city.

[PowerWord Rage]

I'm always in favor of larger area size for dungeons or outdoor because the world is vast and it make sense that travelling from Point A to Point B takes sufficient long time to reflect that despite the fact that we already have Portals.

For Cities, i will suggest medium or small size because of latency to avoid overcrowding of population and causes the server to start having hiccups.

[Eyeliner]

Large is fine with two comments..

I am not a fan of the twisty maze outdoors like you’ll see on the Skal tundra. Where long paths dead end and you have to backtrack often and you’re expected to memorize enormous, very similar looking areas. It just feels like a pointless time sink and I don’t have the patience for it. Mazes make sense in dungeons, caves and perhaps some remote and obscure areas but I hope future large outdoor surface areas that will be frequently used won’t have these dead end paths and let you have multiple ways to get from point a to b.

Second, if it’s a large and empty feeling area it’s hard to make myself walk through it if no one else is around. I don’t know if that even matters, but I find myself losing patience and running through them if I don’t have a mount.

I guess I do prefer more compact areas in general, in no small part because I only have 10 hours a week to play and want to make it count. When I spend 20-30 minutes just crossing a few zones I really feel it.

[Seekeepeek]

if the map start to pan/move when your moving in it, it's to large and should be burned with fire.

[perseid]

Speaking purely from a player perspective, I don't hate larger maps but I feel like they have to justify themselves. If I'm going through a massive area and there's small details that reward exploring it strewn around like bits of inferrable lore (npcs, statues, rubble), hidden pocket spots, etc. then I tend to really enjoy it. On the other hand, some areas I find just feel big for the sake of being big and maybe there's an argument to be made that it helps the wider region feel larger but even then I think it can easily become excessive and mostly just ends up discouraging me from ever wanting to come back because by the time I've finished fully exploring the area I feel like I wasted my time.

[Amnesy]

I prefer small to medium-sized playable areas, the part of the map that the PC can travel and interact with.
I don't mind doing larger areas where less than half is traversable and the rest serves as landscape (like on mountain ranges, with lakes and sea shorelines).

As for housing, I like them small. I've always found a small exterior hut with a very noticeably large interior as immersion-breaking.

[satan]

I love exploring the vast wilderness, it would be cool if there were more tucked away cool semi hidden stuff to find...lore wise.

With that said for dungeons and... functional areas, I don't wanna be running for 15 mins in between resource nodes or spending an hour in a writ dungeon.

So. Both. But separate

[Old Lies Die Harder]

Mid and small sized areas are ideal. They are more manageable to build, less system intensive for a game that runs wonky on many pcs, and funnel players and their characters into areas where natural encounters with each other can occur.

Large areas are difficult to populate with interesting landmarks, leading to bland and featureless areas that waste player time with lengthy traversal times. They also create a ships passing in the night phenomenon as far as roleplay encounters (hostile, neutral, or friendly. Doesn't matter. If you can't encounter players, you can't interact with them.)

Also for areas of all size, for the love of god stop populating areas with narrow, intestine-like tunnels that fold back on themselves repeatedly like the Troglodyte caves in Skal, or closing off alternate routes or shortcuts in favor of a single path of switchbacks (see: magical river appearance near Glorag Mur). People are here to play with each other, not wait in a Disneyland line.

[IAmSwampFoot]

I large areas if they are densely populated with enemies. For instance the caves going down to the Jarl. This can be a fun adventure. Those large areas with few enemies and fewer players just become a slog.

Bare in mind I'm using my stealthy Ranger as a reference. I can stealth from group to group, but in those big areas with no groups, stealth just isn't fun. And running isn't exactly part of his character. No one builds a stealth character to run out of stealth for a lengthy map.

Small maps are just.... Meh. Less opportunities for encounters (which may have an impact on the writ you are working on) and less to discover as the area is too small to add a ton of visuals, resources, and RPable finds.

Mid-sized maps can offer the best of both, but are limited in their ability to offer encounters. Unless it's a map like the Battlegrounds.