What's the word on zones?

Zindaihas

Don't know if this topic has been addressed yet, but if so, I missed it; so I thought I'd bring it up.  Is Pantheon going to be broken down into zones or is it going to be a zone-less world?  EQ, as one of the first MMORPGs, was divided into zones; Vanguard was one of the first (if not the first) to be an open world.  Which route is Pantheon taking?

Since it's a pretty simple question, maybe I can make the topic more interesting by asking what the positives and negatives are of each.  A no zone world seems superior on the surface, but it does have drawbacks.  The biggest, I believe, being the memory requirements tend to slow down the performance of the game.

I actually have no problem with zones provided they are made as smooth and seamless as possible while traveling from one to the next.

Geeky

Major zones.  No instancing.

Zones or no zones don't bother me.  Instancing does bother me, but at the same time so does never being able to get a mob I want, so there's that.

I believe a lot of what VR says and what they are trying to do, but if anything is to change in their game, I think the introduction of instancing will be among the first major change.  Along with instant travel of some sort.  (Larger and more accessible than Wizards Gate travel)

Amathe

I always liked zones. They were somewhere to run to when being chased. Very handy in a game that permits trains. 

delete5230

I don't mind zones as long as their very large... The larger the less noticeable.

Replicas and having copies of zones suck !!!  


Last year I played retail EQ2,
I was a low level like 9 or 10 and needed to do this small cave that required a small group of maybe 2 or 3 players. I didn't know anyone yet and the game was linear, so I figured simply wait outside someone should come along.  

Well, no.... Everyone was scattered among several replicas. The best I could find is a player standing AFK outside. 

Ended up having to skip it. ESO sucked for this too !

svann

No zones!

And no leashing!

= you pull it you kill it

Scot

Zones are a non-issue for me, as long as they are not too small and loading times are not huge what's the big deal?

Hawkaya399

Things mentioned so far in this thread about zones:
..Pros:
....1) potentially smaller memory footprint
....2) nearby zone entrances could act as an escape from certain death (like trains)
..Cons:
....1) loading times for zone changing

In past MMO's, zoneless worlds might have had rubberband (or other) lag. More here:
https://www.engadget.com/2014/04/04/ask-massively-what-happened-to-open-world-mmos/

I've played some zoneless MMO's. I've liked Wurm Online. Being a sandbox, I think it was forced early on to figure out how to stream content real-time, and thus solve some of the programming troubles with zoneless worlds. I also played Shadowbane, and  it's in the same category. I never felt like them being zoneless hindered my ability to play them.

I hate instances, but I understand why they're so popular. They cheaply solve many technical issues--and some gameplay complaints like spawn competition. But they don't have to be the answer. Spawn competiton can  be somewhat resolved with teleportion abilities/spells or dynamic spawning (or other). For example, in Diablo 2 the monsters became stronger when more players were on the server, thereby increasing the content.

Zoneless worlds can use teleporters to mimic non-linear travel (as well to save your butt from a train). In fact, I'd argue a remedy is required if trains are allowed. If mobs don't leash to their spawn point, it's worse. Teleporters aren't the only option though. Feign death or pacification or hiding abilities could work.

Lokero

I definitely prefer seamless loading in any open-world game.

Amathe said:

I always liked zones. They were somewhere to run to when being chased. Very handy in a game that permits trains. 

Trains are a moot issue concerning zones.  Getting enough distance or leaving behind enemy territory is plenty of logic for trains to give up the chase.  Zone-lines were pretty exploitable and cheesy, and I'm sure it will be that way in Pantheon, as well.

I would, however, like to see a little more dev creativity with that stuff, such as territorial markers that visually represent borders and such, rather than invisible transitions.

Ex.  The goblin tribe has human skulls hanging at the edge of their territory to mark their turf.

kitarad

In Everquest the train never stops until you see Loading please wait.... either you die or zone.

svann

The design idea of Vanguard chunks was right imo.

Load the chunk you are in plus the 9 adjacent chunks.  Then when you cross a chunk line you need to load (at most) 5 new chunks but you have all the time in the world to do so.  It only needs to be completed before the player crosses the entire new chunk.

VG failed that design because they did not correctly figure how much memory they would need and had to redesign it on the fly.  This cause lag when crossing a chunk line, and also made it so mobs could not cross chunk lines.  They mostly fixed the chunking lag but they never were able to make mobs cross chunk lines.  That part is important because it led to players cheesing the chunk lines.  Not just losing agro but using it as a method of hitting the mobs without them able to hit back.

But I still think the ideal was sound.

Mendel

svann said:

The design idea of Vanguard chunks was right imo.

Load the chunk you are in plus the 9 adjacent chunks.  Then when you cross a chunk line you need to load (at most) 5 new chunks but you have all the time in the world to do so.  It only needs to be completed before the player crosses the entire new chunk.

VG failed that design because they did not correctly figure how much memory they would need and had to redesign it on the fly.  This cause lag when crossing a chunk line, and also made it so mobs could not cross chunk lines.  They mostly fixed the chunking lag but they never were able to make mobs cross chunk lines.  That part is important because it led to players cheesing the chunk lines.  Not just losing agro but using it as a method of hitting the mobs without them able to hit back.

But I still think the ideal was sound.

I never played enough Vanguard to have any knowledge about their implementation of chunks, but the 5 (at most) loads is right on.  It's the preferred solution for any game that dynamically evaluates adjacent areas.  Some implementations of Conway's Life use variations of this solution.  The issues with 'cheesing the chunk lines' probably came from Vanguard deleting the old zones from local memory too soon.

Mendel

Lokero said:

I definitely prefer seamless loading in any open-world game.

Amathe said:

I always liked zones. They were somewhere to run to when being chased. Very handy in a game that permits trains. 

Trains are a moot issue concerning zones.  Getting enough distance or leaving behind enemy territory is plenty of logic for trains to give up the chase.  Zone-lines were pretty exploitable and cheesy, and I'm sure it will be that way in Pantheon, as well.

I would, however, like to see a little more dev creativity with that stuff, such as territorial markers that visually represent borders and such, rather than invisible transitions.

Ex.  The goblin tribe has human skulls hanging at the edge of their territory to mark their turf.

That's a description of a territorial boundary as opposed to a physical zone (area) boundary.  Almost all creatures that have a territory know where their boundaries are.  Wolves, predatory cats, bears all do (scent markers).  People have fences and 'Keep Out' signs.  Why would goblins be any different?

centkin

kitarad said:

In Everquest the train never stops until you see Loading please wait.... either you die or zone.

Actually if you run fast enough to put them far enough behind you, you can log out before they kill you.

Quizzical

Well of course there will be zones.  The game would would have to be tiny without them.  The real question is exactly what those zones will mean.  If the zoning is all done under the hood so as to be invisible to players, that might make the game world look pretty seamless, but that doesn't mean that the zones don't exist.

Making the loading happen on the fly and invisible to players mostly wouldn't be that hard to do if the game is willing to make installing the game on an SSD and possibly having plenty of CPU cores (to do whatever processing needs to be done when assets are loaded) part of the minimum system requirements.  Most games aren't willing to do that yet, but we might be getting closer.

Or maybe not, as some years from now, OEMs might think it's easier to convince people to buy a computer with a 10 TB hard drive than a 1 TB SSD that costs the same amount of money.

svann

kitarad said:

In Everquest the train never stops until you see Loading please wait.... either you die or zone.

Indoor maybe, not outdoor.  Hasnt been infinite trains in years.

kitarad

svann said:

kitarad said:

In Everquest the train never stops until you see Loading please wait.... either you die or zone.

Indoor maybe, not outdoor.  Hasnt been infinite trains in years.

Really I did not know they changed that because when I played you had to run to the zone while spamming "train to zone''. Well it has been an awful long time I think I was there till Vellious then a brief time for Luclin and I did play a lot on P99 and it was the same there. Sometimes even 15 minutes later the mobs turns up. While I was in Steamfont Feddi Dooger chased me to the zone into Ak'Anon as recently as last year.

Adamantine

svann said:

The design idea of Vanguard chunks was right imo.

[...]

But I still think the ideal was sound.

Um ... I'm not aware thats what they ever actually planned to do.

You always had the loading times ... those never improved, just the computers I used for playing became faster. With a SSD you could get really good loading times.

But yes if its properly implemented then what you describe would be the ideal. Thats how like for example Morrowind already did it.

For the record, if you use the "current chunk and all chunks around" scheme then you have to load 3 chunks whenever you cross out of a zone - except in the extremely rare case that you cross exactly one of the edges diagonally. Its just that you often have to load 2 more as well if a player crossed first in a west-east direction and then very fast afterwards in a north-south direction, or vice versa.

I also would like to point out that in this system, you better keep space for 16 chunks total in memory, otherwise a player who circles around the edge of four chunks will introduce very fast and pointless mass loading and unloading of chunks. If you have space for 16 chunks, they will all be loaded after the first circle and then nothing at all needs to be done anymore.

Alternatively you could load chunks with a sensibility to the actual position of the player. Like when he's in the northern western part of the chunk, you dont really need any southern and eastern chunks yet. There also should be an area in the middle of both west-east and north-south axis that you can cross without any reaction - so if the player circles in the middle of the chunk, nothing happends at all. This way only four chunks need to be held in memory at any time, though three of them would need to be loadable pretty quickly. It would be less efficient overall then using a higher number of smaller chunks.

And dont forget - for something like Vanguard with its insane viewing distances, you also need preview versions of the chunks that show the same area at much lower resolution. Ideally of course you would want the game also to show the curvature of the planet at greater distances.

Either way all these things didnt happen in Vanguard. You crossed a zone frontier, you had to wait for a moment. Instead of having a preload of the next chunk in the background.

Amathe

There are going to be trains (FAQ 14.2 "In fact, with our better mob pathing, they can be even more dangerous") and there are going to be zones (FAQ 20.00 "Pantheon is a zone-based game). 

So I expect to see some EQ style trains to zone, though even more deadly.

Thebeasttt

Seamless worlds take infinitely more design time so I vote zones.

Nightbringe1

 svann said:

No zones!

And no leashing!

= you pull it you kill it

Incoming to Freeport: every mob from West Karana through Commonlands, with a quick detour through South Karana to pick up any strays

I'll be gating back to Ak'anon once I hit the port.

Mikeha

Zones over an open seamless world?   

/SMH 

Adamantine

Thebeasttt said:

Seamless worlds take infinitely more design time so I vote zones.

What the frak ? No they dont. I doubt a well constructed framework would need any additional resources.