From 56fd9e78d0622b94070c9aa5348f1bbd60731037 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Relintai Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 17:30:22 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Added a design document for zones. It has a design phylosophy that I think will work, and I plan to follow it for now. We will see whether it will be proven or disproven. --- design/zone.md | 99 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 99 insertions(+) create mode 100644 design/zone.md diff --git a/design/zone.md b/design/zone.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0f6b2611 --- /dev/null +++ b/design/zone.md @@ -0,0 +1,99 @@ +# Zone Design + +This is currently the thinking I plan to follow on roughing out the first few zones. + +This is a high level overview on how zones should be designed. +Note that art should trump these (like when things becomes monotonous, etc), these are just guidelines. +Look at this as a staring point. + +## Notes + +MMO = A Massively Multiplayer Online Game + +## Problems + +### I want complex MMO-Esque classes in the game. + +Levelling also actually need to serve as a tutorial. + +### The game should work well in single player. + +Levelling needs to be shorter than in MMOs, because it will be boring otherwise (MMOs typically make levelling slow, +in order to help people meet and quest together). However this makes traditional levelling slow and extremely tedious +in a single player setting. + +This also means that zones need to be extremely big, and that you need to create tons of them. + +For example Vanilla WoW has something like 18 (Kalimdor) + 22 (Eastern Kingdoms) zones not counting dungeons and battlegrounds. +Something like this is really cool, but unnecessary, and will not work well. + +### The game needs to support multiplayer. + +Especially if the classes work well, it would be a wasted opportunity not to have it. +However the game shouldn't be an MMO, as MMOS are designed in a way where you NEED to have certain numbers of players +per server in order for everything to function properly, which is a big issue, if you don't have enough players. + +IF (and that's a big IF), the game turns out really good, people will likely want to have mmo like features, +but that's out of the scope of this particular project, stuff can be reworked like that in a different repo +IF and WHEN the need arises. + +### World Scaling + +Since the game will need to support both single and multiplayer I'd say that world scaling (like the one in skyrim, and in WoW) +is out of the question, especially since I was (un?)lucky enough to see multiplayer player + world scaling in action in WoW. +It does not work well, especially not in PvP. + +Now there is a way to scale worlds, that I think will work in this case, which is a "new game +", or diablo solution. +I think this will be implemented, especially before there is enough content to level a character, but even after, +it will be able to give optional content to people that want it. It will be similar to Diablo II's difficulty, +except maybe it could go on for more (that could mostly be used for multiplayer challenges). +It should not powercreep gear though (it should drop better gear, but only up to a point +- Also I think gear should be hand crafted -). + +Note that the World - Viewport separation in the engine is preparation for this feature + dungeons to be able to work +on servers. + +### Levelling cannot be too fast + +Since I want classes to be complex, this means they will need to have lots of levels. (Not yet sure how much.) +I'm pretty sure it will be 70-80-ish. + +If levelling is too fast, players either outlevel a zone without really being able to finish it, or +if mobs are scaled to a levelling setup like this, then the end of a zone will be way too high level, +and it will look awkward. + +WoW actually used to have this problem before they did the level squish, and levelling rework at the end of BFA. +(To be fair, I think they caused more issues with the levelling rework, but let's ignore that for now, +as it's really irrelevant.) + +### In essence + +The main issue is that levelling has to be slow, but not too slow, also the world cannot be just scaled around +the player like in Skyrim. + +## The solution + +I think I came up with a base setup that might work. + +A normal run-of-the-mill zone should be similar in size to a standard MMO zone. This will give lots of leeway. + +A subzone is a quest hub with it's perimeter. Usually I saw around 5 of these in a zone in MMOS, +that I ended up messing with. Note that it does not really have to be a normal quest hub every single time, +so it doesn't get boring. + +### Zone Setup + +The starter zone should level players from 1 to (around) 12, as the lower levels can be quite boring before you really +start to have your class spells. This will have to be baked in into the stats. + +The next zone should level players to around 20. + +After that each standard zone should give around 5 levels (1 per subzone) if you can finish the entire zone in maybe an hour or 2, +not counting optional dungeons. And of course not counting artistic variations. + +This would ensure that zones don't need that much gap in mob levels, while the thing won't get boring, and repetitive. +Also less quests to create. + +This will get fine tuned when I get to it, but I think this is likely a good figure to be aiming at. + +