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(Design) How do you keep Racial Faction cities populated if each race has its own city?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
Hey I was wondering what you all feel would be the best solution for populating a Faction's playable Race city, if each race has their own city within the faction that all players races of that faction can travel to.
I been looking back on WoW, and I remember back in the day, Darnaress was always unpopulated. Then that Draenei city was added, which also wasnt populated.
Well if there is a game with 4 races per faction of 2, similar to vanilla WoW, and each had their own city,
How would you make it so that each city remains populated, and spread the player base out over these many cities rather than having them packed into 1 or 2 cities (Stormwind/Orgim in WoW for example)?
Should cities get somehow get Portal(instant travel) from other cities as a option, to encourage players to go there without effort?
What you suggest?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
Well it would be extremely hard. Since it seems like each race has a very varied amount of population based on how popular each race is. I feel like no matter what you do, short of limiting each race to only enter their own town, the town with the highest population playing that race will always have more players from each race flock there. In wow it's orgrimmar and stormwind. Aion it's the two big cities. It's always just the two cities with the most population that everyone hangs out at.
I don't actually understand what you are saying in the body of your post, but to answer the topic question, I would have content that is relevent to players regardless of what their standing in the game world is. Whether they are new players or have been around for a while, they should be able to find something to do that is rewarding and/or unique to that area (which is highly subjective, but it could be either a challenge, the acquistion of resources, or, my personal favorite, both).
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Maybe an mmo started from the ground up without a duel faction system(ex Horde v Alliance) and more of many many factions, with you starting out with the best faction of you're home town and the ability to increase faction with others would keep each homestown more populated. I don't know if that would cause any issues with battlegrounds or the want for open world pvp, but that seems like the best chance for keeping hometowns from becoming ghost towns.
Rereading you're post I realize you want to know how a two faction game would avoid ghost towns. Perhaps constantly shifting "bonuses" in each city would help. Such as blacksmithing does better in city A this week and will randomly switch to another city next week. I believe the trick is giving people incentive to go somewhere else after a hub has been established. If there is a reward for going somewhere, and staying there for a period of time, it could keep each city populated, if only once every month.
Higher population servers?
Of course the population in Aion is situated in the two biggest cities because there are only 2 cities. The rest are outposts.
Well I guess it depends on what your end game is gonna be if its themepark based then the easiest solution is to set up endgame raids strategicly placed around the major faction cities, not to close if there is going to be world pvp (rethinking that some of the best world pvp i've had in wow was fighting for control of Kara lol). That might help but ultimately the players are going to have there favorites, portals can also help.
I remember how little sense it made to me that If I caught the zep I could fly to UC faster then taking a flight path to thunderbluff. I think in terms of pop horde was spread out a little better back when I played. Org was the highest but UC always had people in it, and even TB was never completly empty, now SIlvermoon CIty was like an fancy ghost town.
Now if you doing a sandbox type I dunno you could give some kind of bonus but if its to good then your forcing the issue and sandboxers tend to be not so keen on that.
Guild Wars 2 is handling this in a couple ways it seems.
First, each player has a home instance which is located in their starting city. This home instance is tied to each player's personal storyline. That alone would be reason for each player to keep going back there from time to time to progress it.
Second, each city has 5-6 unique minigames per city (shooting gallery, bar brawl, keg basketball, etc). Giving each city unique content is a way to ensure that each get used.
Third, there is free instant travel between cities. This lets new players play with their friends in any newbie zone they wish regardless of race. The game also features a system which automatically scales you down in power when you do events lower level than you, allowing you to really revisit any lower level content at any time. Both these features I think would encourage people to spend time in different areas and their corresponding capital cities.
Finally, and probably least importantly, every city has a very unique feel. People might simply feel more at home in one or the other. There's no disincentive to spending time where you want since it's no hassle to fast travel anywhere else once you want to leave town.
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I was thinking about fast travel between cities. But heres is the problem, that GW2 wont have. and thats WORLD PVP.
Wouldnt fast travel between cities hamper World PvP, if Major Cities are a part of end game World PvP?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Race specific AH and vendors with discounts for that race would be my suggestion. Lets say normal price to sell on AH is 5%. Listing at your own race could be 2.5%... enough so that it would be worth the while for sellers to use their own.
Also race specific class trainers. There might be a mage trainer in another race's city, but he won't train your race.
Have each city be central to an important content hub.
(Darnassus is in the middle of goddamn nowhere. Let's act surprised when nobody goes there!)
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It's not a population issue, rather a proximity and utility issue. Players will migrate to the city that has best combination of accessibility and needed shops/NPCs. My suggestion would be to forget trying to artificially spread the players around. Designing the game world to work against normal human behaviour usually results in either the addition of rewards/bonuses to coerce players to divide up or penalties to drive players awy from where they wanted to be, but the players will often just find the best way to min-max that and you will still have an empty town.
Towns that rise and fall with palyer usage was an idea toyed with in AC2, but I don't think it was implemented all that well. Maybe something similar to that might work, but one would have to be careful that thwy don't end up with one faction getting built up and then everyone simply flocking to it because it's much easier to make use of an exisitng benefit than try to work up one of your own.
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First, have servers that have a population larger than WoW's 1000 (per faction). WoW is really on the low end for server pop, Which leads to lots of dead areas. Second, make all major cities fast travel hubs and and don't make one city the main faction hub like Org./SW in WoW with the cata portals. Looking at PreCU SWG, You could expect healthy populations in probably 5 to 10 cities. Bestine/Anchorhead were PvP cities, Mos Eisley had roleplayers and newbs, Coronet was 'the' transit hub, Dantooine had a grinding/leveling hub, and of course another major city was Theed.
The reason certain cities are chosen as hubs for factions in games is because
1. The least spread out city is the easiet one to get everything you need done in.
2. A city that allows all classes to get their upgrades is more likely that for ease of travel it will be used.
3. A city with all the trade skill places are also more likely so you can train everything.
4. The city that looks the nicest is also more likely to be picked.
So in order to have equal population in cities you have to either all have the same amount of stuff located in it or have pieces of each in the city. 1 city has 2 trade skills and the others have 2 each so those trades are located at each. Teleports in the cities is in my honest opinion would just make everyone teleport to one city and go to other when they NEED to.