content density is a stupid concept

[DarkCloud_PK]

you do not need to have dense content all over an overworld or whatever the hell it means.
find me an mmorpg that doesnt have people congregating in a select few areas, and some of the times idling there. this is what online communities tend to do, and usually this is where the community aspect of the game kicks in.

why would you want to spread out the players all over the place with dense content everywhere? the amount of players on any server that doesnt have iphone in the name already has a thin amount of players, why thin it out more?

last time i checked, every mmorpg with a 'world' style, usually has open areas to explore.

i wonder why those people who played servers with large amounts of players back in the day tend to reminisce back to the "good ol' days"?
must have been all that content density...
oh wait might have been the lack thereof

[ffcmike]

I don't know if this is an attack on Classic specifically or to do with the recent related discussion regarding this type of thing but where are your examples?

There aren't really any servers that do have a high density of enjoyable content spread around its overworld inwhich to judge, and you can hardly call the Classic server that did have a central area inwhich the community congregated but lots of surrounding empty space with a sparce amount of content a success.

Plus if I remember the "good ol' days" correctly, there was alot of open space, but there was content spread around it intended to draw you out to it.

Also has it occurred to you that in theory the more enjoyable content there is, the higher your playercount tends to be, and therefore the more freedom inwhich to expand further you have?
(lets assume you've used up 90% of the available space in your current overworld and so the expansion is necessary).
Size of the overworld and the amount of content should really go hand in hand with eachother.

[kia345]

Originally Posted by DarkCloud_PK

last time i checked, every mmorpg with a 'world' style, usually has open areas to explore.

Unlike most mmorpgs, Graal doesn't have much to do during exploration. Not many servers have anything just scattered around a big gmap to "explore" and adventure in. There's no reason for players too spread out.

[Kamaeru]

See: Majora's Mask.

Smallest overworld ever, dense and rich with secrets and things to do. People to see. Events to take place, and at different times.

By adding a three day event time line, they can instead of creating a new area for the player to visit, create a new event to occur in the same place on a different time.

It really doesn't get much simpler to explain than that, folks.

Area too small to hold all the content? Schedule it to occur or exist at different times. This theoretically means a day/night system cuts the amount of overworld space you need by half. Meaning the overworld space needed in Majora's Mask's development was effectively cut into 1/6th of that which they would have needed to create the same amount of substantial content without a three day time system.

lol

[Dark_Zeratul101]

I disagree, content density is a great concept.

[Kamaeru]

Darkcloud's not a bad guy, I like him. He's a good dude.

He just doesn't know much about game design.
And he's a little stubborn sometimes.

I would never hold it against him, he is a good worker and to be honest, if I had a team-up with someone like him where I came up with the ideas and he scripted them, I think that would work out decent.

[ffcmike]

Originally Posted by Kamaeru

See: Majora's Mask.

Yep, certainly one of the best examples, push the fact that it's a Zelda game to the side one moment (as obviously they're all successful) and consider how few "waste" levels there were, you could always find something either obvious/hidden/accessible by time related events wherever you visited, the game wasn't as successful or didn't contain the sheer quantity of gameplay as it's predecessor however I believe they did a better job in designing it.

Originally Posted by Kamaeru

if I had a team-up with someone like him where I came up with the ideas and he scripted them, I think that would work out decent.

Hello.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by Kamaeru

See: Majora's Mask.

For a second there I thought you were gonna post "See: Graal2001."

[Kamaeru]

No, but on an unrelated note it could use more attention.