size of overworlds

[callimuc]

Originally Posted by skillmaster19

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:

Originally Posted by Crono

quality > quantity

[Cubes]

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

[ffcmike]

Originally Posted by Tricxta

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)?

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.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by callimuc

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

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

[callimuc]

Originally Posted by Crono

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

[Crono]

Originally Posted by callimuc

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

[DustyPorViva]

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.

[TSAdmin]

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.

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

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.

That's what she said.

[Hiro]

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.

[Clockwork]

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.

[Crono]

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

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by Crono

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

how many levels in total was it?

[Crono]

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

iirc

[DeCeaseD]

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.