So if Town Visuals are to be reworked, what are your thoughts?

akabear

This month`s twich session mentioned a few sailent points about the current design status.
One of which was that the towns at various stages of development were more leaning towards mechanics and place holders in the previous tests and are under review for improvement and development.

What are your thoughts about changes; going to happen, could happen, and suggestions and thoughts in general?

akabear

Fundamentally, from my view, the towns need town planning, master planning elements brought in and I am very excited to hear that what was on display during the tests is a not what was intended and it is being refined..

Personally, I do not see a significant difference between some of the game design to a good few of the real life city & town planning / master planning. There are a lot of similarities and also a range of issues.

Some random thoughts that I touched on in earlier posts.

Social
Many of the testing buildings appeared to likely have activities, functions that required a player to enter to partake in.. This is fine, but consider that open sided venues, market stalls, window sales ports etc keep the player activity in view and contribute to an apparent vibrant and active city.
Activities within a building do not contribute to a social, active and vibrant city as much as outdoor, exposed ones.

Test the scale of various vendors, congregation points with test crowds, see how the scale of the space feels with x number of predicted players at that point.

Circulation
Moderate the scale to the pedestrian and vehicle circulation routes through the city, just as outside. Circulation paths need to scale from major to minor with the same mindset of highways, roads, driveways, paths and tracks. And mindful of formal vs informal: simplistically gridded and arranged, informal organic

Cognitive References
Whist there is a jump in each stage of a node as it evolves and grows, in order for one to orientate oneself within a city, if there is a substantial period of time between stages, then a degree of congitive references would ideally be carried forth.. meaning for example that if a town grew from say,

a) from a village to town then a series of existing buildings are carried forth and the newer town replaces some buildings but keeps a few so that there is a building of wayfinding (rather than resetting) and a sense of advancement (rather than demolish all, and replace).
b) town to city, vacant plots become buildings, and scale, height of existing buildings increase, some infill
c) city to metropolis same but greater scale

Wayfinding
Elements within the city that help to orientate oneself so that you can workout where to go without bringing up a map or reading the compass.. they should be fall back elemets. There should be logical placement and visual elements to assist orientation and a visual language of the building design to identify purpose for certain buildings and if the language is done well then signage is secondary.
(first round of thoughts)

Dygz

Yes.
As I type this, I realize maybe I was more concerned with the NPCs being outside of the buildings and causing street congestion.

But, yeah, the crowding in the villages was very disconcerting. Obviously, better city-planning seems necessary.

New World city layout is great. But, I still check the map.
I think those are not mutually exclusive.

Visual language of building design will probably be difficult to maintain Stage to Stage since the racial architecture can change.