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Cities should = LOTS of people
turkwhip
Member Posts: 25
Here's something that kinda bothers me about pretty much all of the MMO's I've played so far, and I've played a fair number of them (though not all by a long shot), aren't cities supposed to have lots of people in them? I know that the people in the cities should ultimately be the players, but that NEVER seems to be the case. I always imagined these places as having 100's (if not 1000's) of people milling through them. In fantasy MMO's there would be shouting people selling everthing, regular people traveling, caravans, entertainers, soldiers, children, theives, people fighting or yelling at one another, people singing or playing instruments, and lotsa mood. You would see people cooking things on open fires in the street... and the smoke that filled an area as a result. Building may catch on fire, sending others running through the streets in a panic to put them out. Streets just packed with people! Sometimes it would be hard to move through the busier areas... so you would travel backstreets (and risk getting mugged). SO many possibilities... but I just don't see it. I see wide empty streets. I see huge empty buildings. One person over there I get a quest from in three levels. One down there I just got a quest from. And two more over there just for window dressing and they do nothing at all...ever. And all of it just waiting for the crowds to arrive that never do.
Maybe this is harder to do than I think it would be. Maybe there would be too many textures for graphics cards to keep up with. Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe there could be a way to suppliment a cities population based on the number of PC's in an area. More PC's = less NPC's... and the reverse would also be true. I don't know. Cities always seem to be a failure to me. Basically a boring place to visit. And that seems to be a major loss.
Is it just me? Or do others agree with this assessment?
Comments
Although i agree 100%,the problem is that our PC's cannot handle it.We will no matter what lag like crap.I can use FFXI as an example a VERY low poly game and you get too many people in one area,even the fastest PC comes to a crawl.So now you got fast machines lagging imagine the older machines,it really m akes for a frustrating experience,i have been there and do not like it.
Now i do like active players moving about cities,but i would like to see more games utilize some kind of time limit for those that go afk causing needless lag.Something along the lines of force warping players to there homes or some nearby non lag area.How many times have we been angry at players who go afk sitting right on top of a NPC that we need to talk to?tons of times and it is real annoying.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
PC's can handle this easily.
Back in the day of the "make you think" MMO there was a game called Everquest. When you went into the city, say Freeport, people where everywhere. You would go next door to East Commonlands and people where shouting their wares, trading and having a blast. And many other cities were busy as well.....
But this was a long, long, time ago in.....you get it........
And this was a game 10 years old. There are no PC limitations to doing this, it has been done.....until they came up with the Bazaar and the Plane of Knowledge. Then the cities emptied. EQ2 had full cities at launch too. They stayed fairly busy until things got centralized again.
Sadly, these games seem to be gone. It's all about instant gratification now. That's why I can't find an MMO. I try them all the time but nothing really floats my boat. Runescape cities are full, but my young kids like that one, not me.
Playing EVE online currently. Started MMO's with EQ Velious, played EQ2, DAoC, CoH, AO, SWG (pre NGE), Planetside, DCUO. Played briefly cause I didn't like: WAR, WoW, VG, etc. etc.
I remember Dark Age of Camelot had a great city atmosphere on the Alb side of things prior the first major expansion , Shrouded Isles (SI). It seems to me there were 4 great places to meet for Albs : Emain (for rvr), Pryd Bridge, Lyonese border and of course Camelot City.
As soon as Si came out , the game started to slowly die (for me). Si was great but it killed the viberant and laggy city of Camelot. I loved all the players there , but damn! Back then my machine (Dell PC) chugged me through Camelot for the first few mins upon entering. Nonetheless it was a great place to get things organized, bought, stored, crafted, guilded... you name it.
After Housing the nail was put in the coffin for the city. It turned into a ghost town. TOA was a poor edtion as well, but housing basically brought you a ghetto for player/guild houses , that offered you everything the city once did.
At least now it has picked up again a bit, it is not totally dead, but it will never re-live the glory days of release years.
This may not be a popular suggestion, but I think the NPC 'filling' of cities that I suggested in original post could be handled client side. As more PC's exit, the client would pick this up and sub in more NPC activity on the client. You could even, if you want to go to extremes, handle it much like an optional graphics selection. This wouldn't be my first choice, but it would allow those that don't care about city mood to remove it. I would personally like to see this as non-optional... but that's just my opinion. If it was non-optional, it would allow minor quests that relate to the increased activity. I could see this working especially well in a game like AoC where you generally can't walk through people.
Well if the filler NPCs are just for looks, meaning you can't really interact with them, then you could do it as a graphical option, just like how many games have options for ground clutter or atmosphere effects and the like.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
Lots of people = needless clutter that slows down framerates. Bad idea.
I don't think that lag would be the problem these days; our broadband speeds are going through the roof so I can't imagine it would be cripping to have 500 people together at once; hell, back in UO days we frequently had large guild meetings and that was in the day of the 56k modem.
The problem would likely be based on framerate; graphical stuttering when trying to render 500 people at once would be pretty horrific in a graphic-intensive game like AoC for example, but I think a vibrant city could be achieved by means of using perspective changes/zooms to reduce the rendering to a more accessible level.
For example; you enter a city and instead of the typical over-the-shoulder 3rd person viewpoint that the bulk of the game entails, the camera zooms right out and gives you a big birds eye (or isometric, whatever) look at the city and all its inhabitants.
It would allow for the game engine to use Level of Detail to show a large amount of activity without pushing the framerate through the roof and causing everyone playing on a 1+ year old PC to rush for a fire extinguisher.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Or do what ANet did with Guild Wars.. show other people in low res in towns.. easily 50-100 people on screen at once and no lag even with my old pc..
Btw. Ryzom has a lot of npcs wandering in towns and it looks lively and it's does work on my pc too.
Of course people now want AoC graphics so I guess developers don't want to show too much people at once to help increase the framerate.
I'm not going to lie, that low rez in towns thing in Guild Wars drives me nuts. As far as I know, you can't turn that off(at least I couldn't find an option) and it was really annoying because my machine could easily handle high rez in towns.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Or so you think.
Not to sound fanboyish but I think Aion has great city atmosphere. There are always alot of stuff going on. I have never seen a game that has towns / cities that feel so alive.