size of overworlds
 

i'd like to discuss classic servers in terms of their overall size and organization. it seems that each server in this theme always aims to have a giant 100 level overworld when it seems that the same atmosphere could be produced on a 30 level one.

it's been discussed before about how these bigger overworlds tend to end up as wasted space. player's naturally gravitate towards two or three spots on the overworld, so they only need so many levels for them to spread out on. with some good organization, all the places and events you need to provide to players can be placed well within a level or two of these spots.

so we know that (besides for maybe some exploration affect) these bigger overworlds generally do not get used, and yet every new server that has been put under construction (or reconstruction in some cases) seems to aim at bloated overworlds. is there some sort of expectation by the PWA which demands for a larger-than-necessary overworld, or is it just that people think a small overworld would suck?

for levelers, you cannot seriously consider these monstrosities to be an easy task? especially for those preparing an overworld for construction, it seems quite time consuming to make and design 100+ levels when you could make 20 levels and accomplish the same goal...

I don't really quite get the point of posting this thread. This is already quite obvious.

Classic is already downsizing their gmap greatly, and UN has had plans (that will probably never come to be) to downsize the gmap.

Current Classic tab servers will probably never downsize. Classic is an exception because they decided to redo everything.

Its a lot of work making a new gmap that also includes everything the old one does, in a way that makes sense and also allows expansion. It takes planning, and time. Thats just something a lot of people do not want to do. Its sad, but true.

On the note of new server; I think its just the mentality that "Classic servers have huge overworlds...I need a huge overworld!"

It's hard to tell for sure, "bigger is better" tends to be a very common mentality anyway, though I definitely get a lot of "ur map sux ipod map is way better y u not have swamp town havent u been working on it 4 13 years?", "I liked the older map it was more of a world", "ur telling me u dont need LATs so y is ur map so under developed?" etc.

Not saying this should apply for all servers but in the server im developing I like to have towns spaced out as it gives you that kinda travel feel. Each town has its advantages and activities to do. Having a small map of 30 levels is too crammed. While you do present a good point I don't think there is much point in this thread since it all depends on the server type. In UN if they shrunk the map I don't believe it would be as much fun as it takes away some of the adventure element, same applies for zodiac.

However for new player worlds I do think they should take this approach and not aim for a giant and never get it all done. My main post is while this is a good idea it all depends on the server idea basically...

log on atlantis

I wonder what it is you're trying to say :p

It's never been stated by the PWA that in order to meet Classic qualifications you need a certain level requirement, you just have to prove that your server content is competant enough to withhold a playerbase. It's been discussed a few times whether or not a server with 20 overworld levels could qualify as long as it had enough content to maintain the server and every PWA that responded in these threads said they were more than willing to pass such a server if it existed.

As for why more people don't attempt small-scale servers, that can really be one of two reasons. As stated earlier in the thread, they might be modelling their server after the current Classic servers and are assuming the PWA demand massive worlds.

The more likely scenario is that the current ideas for playerworlds are bordering on the line of having their own separate game only developed and launched using the Graal development platform. Every server idea lately is some MASSIVE project that really demands having a large overworld to support it. RPG type servers are a good example, same with "Multi-theme" servers where players can jump to different worlds.

To make a long story short, there aren't any playerworld inspection restrictions on overworld size, it's just the current "mood" so to speak when it comes to designing your own server.

quality > quantity

In some cases but would you rather play an old server like the old classic with stacks of quests and activities or thor's classic(in its current state)?

<3

atlantis

didnt mind playing classic in 2006/2007, where there was little to do but pk/spar/events. i dont care for quests and think they're highly overrated.

People should just do what they want.

Agreed. If they think they can manage it its ok. And to be truth... I´d prefer making the map big, because you can still start making a small town, whatever. Else you have to edit the gmap every time, maybe add the warps to the new map (still don´t know what they are good for in gmap) and so on. This would make much more glitches adding it (except you are good in it) so why not big from the beginning on?

Zodiac has the largest map and 50% of it isn't even finished.

And one of the most loved that´s why everyone plays it. Otherwise no one would play it. Kind of goes to:

imo a 10x10 overworld for a classic server is pushing it.

Graal Development is a completely different environment now to what it was then.

Back then practically anyone out of what was a larger amount of people could fairly easily contribute to a servers content by being able to work offline and use and use a lot of built-in resources without many problems, and thus there was a lot of content but most of it was fairly simple or basic.

As Graal has become more of a Development platform the capabilities have clearly moved forward but sadly they have become more exclusive to what seems to be an elite (scripters). So quite clearly updates now are generally far better than they were then but nowhere near as frequent, and perhaps for other servers less streamlined due to the larger time gaps.

If you think about it, the current and old versions of the server are largely geared towards the circumstances of the time. If you were to swap them around to the opposite time period I don't think either would be received well.

people dont play zodiac because of its horrible overworld, lol.

Ok maybe I expressed it wrong. What I wanted to say is that even through a horrible overworld, people don´t say that this server is horrible and won´t play it. So it´s not only the overworld making a server good

it means people don't care about levels

I don't care about size as long as the content justifies it. I actually hate small overworlds that try to cram everything into the smallest amount of space possible. There's nothing wrong with a little wiggle room. It's when we go back 10 years to when the level generator was just released and everyone thought that generating the largest overoworld EVER would be a good idea.

In my experience, when people want to make larger-than-normal maps, it's because they intend on making it into an adventure map with lots of exploration and what seems like vast fields of nothingness between towns, but run into the most common problem on Graal: Lack of imagination resulting in no sub-quests, random loot/levelling dungeons, etc in between. Zodiac went with this kind of idea and it worked out nicely balanced with such dungeons and whatnot spread throughout the map, but they weren't always going to be in your vast surroundings to stop by. There are still places you have to wander aimlessly with nothing interesting to do. Zodiac's downfall on there is possibly that most of their fillers are levelling dungeons and (though increased over the years) less quest stops hidden out there making it quite boring for higher levelled players to just stop by a dungeon now and then unless they were to loot some drops.

There is an upside to aiming for a larger map, but you have to get your imagination and creative streak behind it, otherwise you will end up with vast wasted lands that could better be compacted into a smaller map.

That's what she said.

for those of you on board with the idea of big overworlds, what do you think about the task of making the overworld itself. shouldn't you aim to be small at the start so that you can expand outwards later?

i think it's hard enough to put all the various systems and NPCs together without also having to handle hundreds of levels, especially nowadays. keeping things small would be a great benefit to new classic servers.

I always had the ascerition that any server I would make, I would have small gmap's for single areas.

Town? Gets its own gmap.
Forest? Gets its own gmap.

Desert, caves, and every other area all get their own gmap, which would be available to warp to via airship or teleportation or something via a nice looking map. :3

Sorta like val's, but without the walking around to visit them.

did any1 play valikorlia in 2003? now THATS a giant overworld )

how many levels in total was it?

it took atleast 10 seconds to scroll from the upper-middle to the low part when u pressed M

iirc

It's all personal preference, you can't just go around telling people that they should make smaller maps just because YOU think they should. It's what they think/want to do that really matters.

even if their project is so large that they'll never conceivably complete it?

You're right, it's all personal preference. Much like horribly ugly GFX and crappy ideas are all personal preference.

Small is nice ^^

Things like forest areas etc don't need to be on the main overworld nor do various islands, they can have their own maps with some sort of link to justify it such as travelling by boat to arrive at the island (a lot of worlds prefer instead to make you swim or have bridges connecting them) or perhaps going into a cave system and then arriving back outside in a forest.

This way the actual travel around the overworld itself to the various access points to these other areas is quick allowing people to easily meet up without having to run for ages.

Big worlds can be fun if there's effective transport (such as 2001 and the train) but then I think the trains themselves were infrequent and the drasine's entertainment value wore off after a while. A more-frequent train would have been a lot more enjoyable - such as every 2-3 minutes!

But then I don't want to support the big overworld argument as it takes too much time to level it all and distracts from content the players will appreciate more - such as using that time to think up and develop quests and other interactive things.