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Node Separation - will there be enough world content between nodes?

DarkTidesDarkTides Member
in General Discussion
Based off of what Steven was saying, Node to Node travel on foot is 5 minutes? But then he also said mounted travel, I believe from 1 end of a node area to the other end of the node area was also 5 minutes...

Of the 85 nodes, how many can be occupied at once and what happens to NPC content, if all nodes are filled by players? Does PVE content suffer?

Comments

  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
    The way the node system is set to work, not all nodes can be populated at once.

    About half of the nodes are likely to be under level 3 at any given point in time.
  • LudulluLudullu Member, Alpha Two
    I think the "node to node" was meant as "center to center". And everything around the node is its zone of influence which is full with content. And you'll always be in a zoi of some node (this will have to be confirmed, cause that "buffer nodes" thing is still unexplained).

    If a node hasn't lvled up much, its content will be low lvl and limited. The more people do stuff in a node, the higher is its potential to grow and have more content. Well, as far as I understand the system they've laid out so far.

    In other words, the content will be plenty if there's a lot of players around.
  • AzheraeAzherae Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Other way around.

    More PvE opens up as more dungeons open up.

    Games are very large once you start having dungeons.

    Overworld PvE is good, but from what I have been taught of Lineage (sadly I never played Lineage OR ArcheAge) a lot of the principles of this game 'rely' on conflicts that you would want to put in dungeons, even if just to increase the 'risk' of dying and to keep it away from players who are not currently interested in it.
    "I blame society."
    "For what...?"
    "Just about everything, really."
  • LudulluLudullu Member, Alpha Two
    Azherae wrote: »
    Overworld PvE is good, but from what I have been taught of Lineage (sadly I never played Lineage OR ArcheAge) a lot of the principles of this game 'rely' on conflicts that you would want to put in dungeons, even if just to increase the 'risk' of dying and to keep it away from players who are not currently interested in it.
    L2's content was mainly separated into solo/small group and normal group one. Pretty much all of normal group content was in dungeons. Pretty much everything else was either soloable but hard or just meant for small groups.

    And if I understood Node's system correctly, the dungeons will grow with Node's lvls and those lvls will grow with player activity. So imo this would be the perfect player funnel. Players will go to more active nodes (especially at higher lvls) and then go to their dungeons which will put them against each other in the fight for the limited content in those dungeons. To me that sounds perfect, mainly because that's literally L2's content system (well, w/o building up towns).
  • DarkTidesDarkTides Member
    We have moved from a 103 nodes to 85 nodes; and there's a few reasons for that. One, when we were doing the calculations behind how- in Alpha 2 and in the game- we want these vassal structures to exist, we had more nodes than what felt meaningful and we wanted to condense some of that those curated story arcs and hooks into the environment and realm around the areas to be more bountiful at a lesser node value: meaning bringing down the node count so that we can increase the richness of each of those nodes more than what was at 103.[7] – Steven Sharif

    This implies to me that players taking up too much space is an issue.

    In another video I watched, it referenced how wide open the spaces were between cities, in ArchAge, and they were filled with emptiness. That means they should have added more PVE content in those areas.

    I personally would not rely on filling up that emptiness with players and I'm glad they condensed the content. Did that add more content? Sounds like it was just moved from the removed nodes to existing nodes.

    I will reiterate how important it is for NPC armies and factions with a dominating presence to be present and in your face, with the capability to conquer territory as we do with nodes.
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