I'll use Albion Online as a reference, when I joined their Beta almost a year ago the player base was so big that the map was not big enough causing an extreme over populated world. within minutes multiple groups would be running up on your farming spot to either try to fight or steal your kills. During the day I could barely get any experience because of spawns being down or constant fights and only in the late off hours could I really power level my character without any interruptions. This is something we are far from having. The world is extremely too large for the current population. We need to make it much smaller so more interaction happens to distract us from the grind and bring more player interaction in the game. I suggest we remove cairn,ruby,yssam,nif. In return you would need to take some of the Island specific mobs and put them on Agon (Human lands Fire Dragon ftw). More importantly this would chunk out so much wasted land in the world. The devil spawn is the only mob spawn that is fought over everyday and this should tell you something. We have too many spawns causing no need to fight over the majority of mob spawns. Everyone is in their own part of the world leveling uninterrupted to the point of boredom and this isn't okay. There are too many houses, too many village control points, too many cities. Albion online would have dozens of sieges everyday because of the demand was so high and not enough resources. Here we have too many resources to where "everyone is allowed to have a piece of the pie" when the point in PVE in PVP game is to initiate conflict of interest. If you remove part's of the world and make it smaller it will help tremendously with interaction which is content within itself. and this could also allow you to use the removed areas to revamp, restructure and use them as patch content in the months to come. You don't need to use my idea exactly, but no one can deny that the world is too large for the current population.
While I agree the map is too small, you have to wonder at the scope to which these devs want to tackle. A major revamp of the map seems too much. Player interaction can be changed by new mobs, new events, and more pvp centric assets added to the world. If the most fun thing to do is an event on Niff or a wandering 100 foot giant of death on cairn, people will go there. So content, content, content, and then portals to everywhere to make the map become smaller. Much easier to do. IMO.
I like this post so much. This map is way too goddamned big for the population we have now, and even what we can expect at launch. This game would feel absolutely alive if the islands were gone, or maybe get rid of 2 of them at least.
It's being realistic. Think of the population towards the end of DF. That is roughly what we can expect at launch. I'd be happy with that, but, the game still felt largely dead.
Oh yeah? So I want to be a millionaire, I should go get a million dollar car and house now. "Since it will happen" That would make me never become one and end up in debt and losing everything. I think your response is failed by logic. You work with what you have not what you want. They need to work with what is here and make it more appealing and to do that they need to remove a large chunk of the map. Giving more constant interaction to the current player base to keep the current player base.
I think you guys are being dramatic. The fact is most people don't want to grind a character up that is going to get deleted. I am a fan boy so that's why I and I am playing and I am guessing all of you are doing it for that reason as well. Most people won't. UDL could have as little as just me to as high as 20 plus at launch. You can't count numbers till the game launches. I know that's hard to base a game off of but with df closing then a free maxed character beta where everyone got to feed their appetite, Explains why people are not playing. Most people do not like to waste their time. Myself included, but Darkfall is worth it.
he said "plan for" as in strategize, make a plan.... not go beyond your means to try and be something you aren't Pop is low though. Not sure what would work and what wouldn't
I am not playing because I am a casual and that shit is getting deleted. I am sure there are others like me.
I don't think the map size is the issue. I like that there is an expansive world out there and you can farm in peace when needed. What the game needs is more hot spots for PvP, meaning a more lively world with more things to do. Which is what the RoA devs are working on.
Yup many of my friends are on hold too . Cant invest time in grind just to do it all over again. In reality we will se much more populated servers on release also servers be more alive since most of eu gonna play here. --- Post updated ---
The islands should be population gated. Like franchise said, move all the valuable stuff from the islands to the mainland, and lock access to the island holdings and extra resources until the population reaches a certain level. For example purposes only, lets say a base population of 25K is suitable for the mainland. When it hits 25k, 1 island opens. When it hits 30k, another, etc. The only thing the islands do is spread the population. The resources of the islands should be duplicated to the mainland, and closed until the playerbase needs the landmass. This is nothing new. This happens to every game. Hell, look at WORLD OF WARCRAFT. The largest population MMO ever, and they had dead servers. They handled it by merging servers together. They realize that empty zones is shit for everyone. Remove Agon's empty zones.
Lack of pvp hotspots is not the issue. There are over 100 PVP hotspots in the game that many are available at any given time. All spread throughout an insanely large map tthat has a very small fraction of the population it requires. There is too many PVP hotspots and one hotspot can be over an hour ride to another you can go hours at a spawn other than center map spawns without being interrupted and forced into boredom and logging off. The only thing we are lacking is players for this map. put everyone on one island or agon only and you won't be able to go 20 min without having to fight for your mob spawn. --- Post updated --- Good reference, the choice of closing the islands is both a business and game decision. You acknowledge the map is too large to sustain a player base and you fix it.
We saw what happened with Unholy Wars when they made the map smaller. Nothing changed. People need to understand that this is a beta. Alot of people are playing the game like it's launched already.
You do not want to change the game to cater to a lower population you simply need to continue creating the game that you envision and eventually once the game is that where you wanted for release then you begin your marketing campaign to bring in the numbers that you would like for the game do not alter the game so that you can support it properly with a smaller player base that is incorrect thinking
at this point we should actually be shooting for a few thousand. It's one thing to hope for the best, but planning for an unrealistic goal isn't smart. To me though if they can implement changes necessary to allow the users to craft the world such as build our own houses, hamlets, and cities wherever we'd like. The landscape would change dramatically and we could force our own conflicts even if they are just between home owners. Part of the issue IMO is that AV just sprinkled hamlets and cities all over without any real thought to why it would bring conflict. Same with mobs, dungeons, and loot. Regionalization will help some, but still the reality remains that everyone allies up and gets a portal network to all the close enough places. Conflict just ends up being "for fun" instead of by necessity. There is no easy solution to this. Lot of people playing ROA just want it to be darkfall as is. If population is what we are after going to have to be a lot more than that. Otherwise just accept the population for what it is and cater to those still hanging around.
