A few months ago I made a post about path and road generation in Ashes of Creation. The recent Dev Diaries about the Node Tool and Building tool really got me pumped about the idea I had again.
This is the old
archived post:
I think one of the best ways to make each server feel like a different place would be to have the majority of roads & paths generate based on where players are walking. The more players walk a path, the more it develops. (Trail > Path > Road)
On launch day, there are no roads. People venture out into the wilderness.
After a few weeks or so, some small trails and paths are cut into the wilderness where players have been walking to do quests, dungeons, and between trading freeholds.
As time goes on the roads are upgraded. They get wider and more developed as more people use them. Once the path reaches "Road" status, maybe the city ruling the node can vote on options for the roads(but not paths or trails). They'd spend tax money to upgrade the surrounding areas roads. Better roads could provide light in the nighttime or movement speed increase. They could have guards posted once every few KM if you are a military node. Economic nodes could upgrade their paths to have benches and fancy flowers or marble paths.
Roads could also fade away into paths, trails, and then wilderness again if no one is using it. Lets say there's a path behind a freehold that goes back to a copper mine, but the copper runs out and the path goes unused. The wilderness claims it back over time.
Exceptions to this would be the roads and paths associated with certain already existing elements in the world. If there's a quest that leads to a witches hut in the backwoods, you could set it so the area around the witches hut doesn't develop paths as players go to find the witch.
The system would have to be balanced in a way where the major roads would take a long time to fade to paths, and trails would fade within a few days. Buildings would probably need a ruleset where they could be built over trails and paths, but not roads(unless it's a certain type of building like a gate where it requires a road).
I'm fairly certain this was available as a plugin in Minecraft, and I absolutely loved the heck out of it. Seeing my path to my little farm and mineshaft develop over time really immersed me and I've never forgotten it.
I'd like to update that I actually found the Minecraft Plugin I mentioned. It's called
Trails. They even have a GIF example:
Honestly, the few ideas I spitballed in my initial post are just the tip of the iceberg. Someone in the old thread mentioned having a path develop to someone's Freehold with an epic tavern or a group's guild hall and being able to use your funds to upgrade the road in your designated area.
