Removing some Extraneous Areas
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So a few nights ago I did some questing in the mountains, something I haven't done in over a year, and I was reminded why I absolutely detest going up there and questing.
Getting to these places is a god damn chore. It's boring. I'm sure whoever made the areas worked real hard on them but most of them are totally useless in that they do not contain anything other than empty space and the occasional mob to kill for no xp and no reward. It makes walking around this server a chore unless you have unlimited time and patience (which most players do not.)
I could excuse this bloat of areas if these areas were full of content, but most of them barely even have crafting or placeables let alone quests or dungeons in them to make them worth visiting except for those at the very far reaches of the server. It is just empty space to walk through and it's horrible.
I know I'm not the only one that feels this way.
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+1
If you are walking up the mountains it takes 25-30 minutes, plus another 25-30 on the way down. It can really consume the entire night if you want to go out there. And players should want to, some of the funnest quests on the server are out there -frost giants, frozen war, dwarf rescue. The map where the warm waterfall quest (Storm Horns, Tempest Valley) is a good example. It is 3x the length it should be. -
Yeah. I've never done frozen war just because of how long it takes to get there
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I remember this thread, there was a note about large areas.
Here are my thoughts:
I think, too, that smaller areas with more focused content are far better, although I can understand that DMs don't want you to be able to just run across the hullack or the stormhorns in a few seconds.
From a "DM point of view" I see the following problems:
- Traveling should take time and effort.
Those areas are technically far away from Arabel and it should be hard to reach them. For now I see that it's implemented by means of traveling through a huge area (sometimes really maze-like) and have a higher chance to trigger an encounter. You cannot go through the entire (for example) storm horns with one set of buffs, because the travel takes time, and this makes sense imo.
But... - Creating an area with massive content is hard
We have a huge number of areas, but not much builders or DMs that have time to finalize and constantly improve them. (I think.)
Thinking about proper placeables, context, fun stuff, aesthetics is a very time consuming task and frankly I don't know if players would really stop at them and RP it out, or would just run forward. At first, it's cool, but when you are there the second, third, nth time you won't really stop at those anymore.
From a player standpoint:
What are the options, if I want to walk around the storm horns, gather some stuff, then return?
It would be very, very, very hard to convince anyone to do just that. Not because they would die, or it would be too dangerous for a proper party, it is just purely unrewarding. Those guys will be already higher level (so even a frost giant would be 8, 5 or 0 XP), we won't find any monster loot drop, but probably everyone will use a lot of consumables. It would take around 1 or 1.5 hours while we just get through the areas and do nothing, and it's really hard to RP anything there, because there is just no content. Yes, some trees, some encounters, a few placeables (mostly markers for treasure, or 1-2 XP markers), but nothing you can tell a good story of while being there. If you want it to be rewarding, you have to do quests, but that adds another hour or two. Then it's gonna be either explore or quest, and 99% of the time it will be questing.If we could, somehow, reduce the amount of pure walking in the emptiness, that could let time for RP and other stuff and would encourage players to go there more often and have more fun.
- Traveling should take time and effort.
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a suggestion, removing the large trek across the area with a smaller map and a single line of trek rather than the three currently in place but have a transition midway that uses something similar to the old lost script to potentially place the party on a different map that is guaranteed to have a cares based encounter appropriate to the region with transitions either end to link with the existing map.
this would cut down on the "just walking", though cares spawns on the map would still be appropriate, and would basically force most parties to have to buff for the journey in case they are thrown into the encounter in the variable rarea and cant handle it. This would be appropriate for the supposed length of journey in as much as it drains buffs etc but does effectively make the time taken to reach these further regions less.
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Suggestions and feedback reviewed, with changes implemented or pending.
