Quote:
Originally Posted by DustyPorViva
There's a bit of a difference between designing an overworld for a single-player campaign and one for an online environment, and that's kind of the problem with Graal. In Zelda, you can design a world that opens up progressively as you play. Yet in an online game that can be a sort of a cripple on the actual online experience. Suddenly you're locking out the player from the majority of the other players, and a community is very important in an online game. Not to mention the fact that a single-player campaign as a beginning, middle and end... you typically want to avoid that sort of design online because you want players to come back.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but it takes a lot of effort and sometimes it pays to focus more on things that benefit an online experience rather than a single-player one. Not that that has ever stopped me from designing my overworlds with progression and exploration/questing in mind.
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Classic was actually this way initially (and pretty successful pre npc-server, mind you).
Several locations could not be reached without a hammer or a certain level of gloves (white or black rocks..)
You are underestimating the player / community mentality; most will not congregate where there are not a large following (Hence why outside of Burger Refuge was the spot...)
edit//also,
Back in 2005-06ish, I had started tiling an overworld with this same progressive theme in mind.
Attached is a screenshot of that map, but the main MMORPG/community experience would have centralized on the center island, every other island would have to have access granted via quest progression.
I still have a lot of resources (mind you the Scripting language was about 1-1.5 versions younger then...) if someone decides they want to put together a team for a project like this.