[CF-Devel] big world - big problems

[crossfire-devel at archives.real-time.com]

Palfy Tamas wrote:
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      I can't help not telling this:
     
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      This bigworld map idea missed it's point. On the small world maps peepo
     
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      felt like doing some discovery. Now, even _familiar_ (from non-bigworld
     
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      servers) areas are extremely hard to find. Not to mention, some quest
     
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      sites have been moved to different locations.
     
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      I speak of experience: now players don't have a clue where they should go
     
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      or where they can find quest locations. Even previously notorious
     
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      locations are considerd secrets 'n' stuff. And what does this whole thing
     
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      gives in return? Well, nothing. Exploring has no point. We have to
     
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      admit: there are _no_ interesting new locations, only painfully boring
     
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      wastelands which are sooo random (!!) you don't have a chance to know
     
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      where you are - the map is visually unmemorizable. (And this is one of
     
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      the biggest problem. It's too easy to get lost.)
     
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      I know devs don't like being criticised for they do their job for free and
     
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      they want for the best, I appreciate this. But please, honestly think
     
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      about this, and try to ask the question: Why bigworld map? Maybe it has
     
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      lots of opportunities, but in it's current state it's not even half ready
     
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      to consider it worthy to use.
     
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      I really don't want to scold the work of the devs with this mail, I just
     
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      want you to think about it as impartial as possible.
     
     
  A few notes in addition to what others have said.

  The perception of the bigworld map can vary greatly depending on the size of 
hte map window you are using (a 25x25 map window will have a different 
perception compared to using an 11x11 map window).

  The bigworld map is certainly work in progress.  But one of the main reasons 
we went to a large map scale was crowding on the old maps.

  Whenever it came time to put a new quest or whatever on the old maps, it was 
pretty difficult placing the new maps more than about 10-15 spaces from another 
quest already on the maps.  It was really overly crowded.

  Now it may certainly be the case that the current maps are a little sparse, 
but that is a good thing - if they were so built up that we were looking at 
redoing them or starting another new continent because of that, only a year or 
so after making those maps, I'd say we're doing something wrong.

  That said, most stuff in general stayed in the same relative locations.  If 
there are quests or NPC or messages/whatever that are giving wrong information 
about quests (saying go east when you need to go south or whatever) please post 
specific examples and we can get them fixed.

  If the issue is that some things are in different locations than they used to 
be, yet the NPC's and whatnot have the correct info, I'd say tough luck.  Trying 
to appease that basically amounts to never making any change what so ever that 
may change the game (one could start to then complain about changes made to 
archetyps, or most any other change).  The real solution there is to just set up 
or play on a server that is running some snapshot and never plans to update.



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