Design: Out-leveling zones = Ghost towns. Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Alzelia

I vaguely remember Yoshi saying something about roaming Primals. Hopefully these guys will be in the lower level zones, so new players can get inspired watching an end-game LS take them down.

Another good way to spread out players to old zones is through crafting drops. Put some high level (non-aggroing) mobs in the starter zone that drop high level crafting mats. An imperfect example of this using 1.0 was people farming sheepskins outside LL. For my idea to work, replace some of the sheep with mad ewes that drop karakul fleece, and higher leveled people will farm them.

Like someone said before, being able to level several battle jobs will spread out the players. I think crafting and gathering does this to an even greater extent. Not only do you have 8 battle classes to level, you'll have 3 DOL and 8 DOH to level also.

However, I think the best way to mix old and new players is to place some (but not all) end-game activities in the low level zones. Hamlets and Chocobo escorts come to mind for this.

I really don't think this will be an issue in 2.0

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Oh Heck ya! While it won't be as structured as static zones, but having a mobile POI that high level players would form parties to defeat the primals. The chance of high level players encountering low level players will happen more often because of this. And being able to teleport to any of the Aetherytes would help greatly in getting to these Primals quickly ,but you would still have to run to where it is located.

This will be nice for new players, because I remember many instances in XI where a high level player raised me when I died on the battlefield. When Players paths don't cross this just never happens!

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Originally Posted by Allesasi

This sounds nice but then again it takes us back to earning your right to be in high level areas. If you can be in a high level area from the beginning of a game then it takes away from that feeling of accomplishment that comes from earning your way in the world.

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I don't believe this is the case. While the achievement to getting to an area is loss, that isn't the focus of the Primals. These are dangerous NM's more so than the normal ones that actively roam and attack people. The high level players will actively police the areas. or low level players call for help when they see one and run for their lives!.

I think it would be awesome if the primals were fairly big, and attacked the regular mobs flinging them into the air. They could also attack players. I just hope they don't have the Primals cross the main roads and pathways in the game to get from zone to zone to much. Staying close to the roads are supposed to be fairly safe areas from encountering Aggro mobs. If Primal followed the path a lot, it would make it difficult to navigate the zone. Especially if it happened to spend a long amount of time around a bottle neck in the zone, that had no way to get around it. Which happened a lot in FFXIV 1.0! Sometimes this was gating to warn a player that they are starting to enter a higher level area, but if you had a quest to get to a particular location, it was really annoying. Like a few lvl 20 quests early in 2.0 that took you to places that were lvl 30-40! or it would phase you out into an instance and when you leave the quest instance it was like OH SHIT~! *DEEEeaaathhh* lol because all the lvl 30-40 mobs in the world spawned in!

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Originally Posted by Elexia

Since we're "learning from things" one thing we can learn about having 1 universal chat channel is it gives the RMT a better way to spam people.

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This is exactly why I think the "right" way to do a global LFP or Trade channel is to make it bulletin style with template based posting. Basically you can send broadcast messages just like regular chat, but only on a template (kind of like auto-complete): Looking for Members for {location/purpose} of class/job {job/class}. Or: Looking to Sell {item} for {price}. It has a slightly higher learning curve than just typing what you want, but it completely eliminates unrelated spam (there still might be related spam, but not much you can do about that).

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Originally Posted by Elexia

Since we're "learning from things" one thing we can learn about having 1 universal chat channel is it gives the RMT a better way to spam people.

Fyi: The main hubs of FFXI were Port Jeuno for NA/EU players and Whitegate for Japanese players on most server due to the idiocy of shouts in Jeuno lol.

There will always be a hub where people gather, but most MMOs make a lot of zones barren by forcing the player out of it to the next zone through quest chaining, since once there's no more quests in an area or city, why be there? That's the problem with most newer MMOs. Also, haven't you noticed yet that most MMO Hubs tend to be where the quest chains end and there's no longer any more quests or content to do for players? Where the main dungeon hub (content) tend to be?

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Thanks you Elexia for steering the conversation back on topic.

Like Elexia was saying, the problem doesn't lie with areas players tend to gather. The problem, and the topic of discussion is creating zones which will be frequented by players of all levels. To make zones you "out level" still relevant to parts of your adventures down the road.

Quest hubs only serve to get you to the next quest hub. Once a chain of quests are complete, you have no reason to return, there in no longer any content for you to consume.

I'm sure SE are creating the F.A.T.E. system to entice players back to areas. However a similar system in GW2 (dragon events) people have timers for these events. They only show up around the spawn window for the dragon. Once it's over they scatter.

SE in their previous MMO created interest in lower level areas with prospects of NM hunting for rare valuable items. Connecting higher level areas to lower level areas, creating a crossroads of players. SE made some dungeon hunting areas multi-tiered. Meaning an area that had something for players who were at different stages of their adventure. Garlaige Citedel comes to mind. the entrance supported players leveling in thier low 20's the bottom area supported players in their high 40's low 50's. It hosted a spawn for Serket a HNM for a large party to hunt. The Citadel was also an areas associated with players on their AF quests.

At any point of time the citadel could be active in some way. If Garlaige Citadel was designed in todays MMO philosophy you would enter the citadel around level 20, complete it's quest chain, defeat the NM which is level appropriate for this zone, and gather any valueable items the zone holds. Once you've completed Garliage you have no reason to ever return. Making the citadel a ghost town at an early point of the games life.

Now for those of you thinking I was the game to be just like XI, this is not the case. I can only use examples of games I've played. The most significant games that I do have this experience with which pertain to this topic are SWtor, GW2 and XI.
In SWtor you had clear hard defined level spread for each planet (zone). You completed a hub moved on to the next, once all the hubs on the planet where clear you moved to the next planer (zone).
GW2 also has hard defined level spread for thier areas, but lure players back to outleveled zones by placing special events. To not trivialize these events they adjust your level down and deflate your stats to match. But these events are few and far between.

From these 3 games, I would like to see SE, follow their lead and borrow more from XI zone design then GW2 or SWtor.

@OP:

I like the idea of linking high lev zones to lower lev zones. Makes me think of games like Blaster Master and Metroid that required back racking once you unlocked a particular weapon skill. (lol maybe a "rock crusher" skill that opens a blocked tunnel that will cave in behind you.)

Regarding the comment about Uldah, I noticed that too. Everyone gravitated to a single starting city. I guess it got to the point where people started going there just because thats where everyone else was going but I don't get why it got so popular in the first place. (Thancred?) That a bad theme I notice with many games like this, people make a particular zone popular then the rest become "Ghost Zones" Simply because thats where everyone ends up. Sometimes there isnt even anything special about the zone. It would be nice if from time to time SE did events that would cause people to gather in a particular older zone, like the swimsuit event. Give other reasons to be in that zone aside from a pass-through for other content.

It's just a shame it's a easy problem to solve if you don't allow free teleportation to everywhere with no limitation.

Seriously the only free warp should be to a region, then your on your chocobo from there.

U'ldah was a strategic choice based on mechanics.

I did Leve Crafting in all three cities and the time it took to get to the crafting Leve issue character, the time it took for the Leve Desk to spawn and respawn in U'ldah was 25% of what it was in Limsa or Gridania. I literally spent half my time waiting for stuff to show up on the screen there.

Yup Ul'dah was the best choice for a number of gameplay reasons. It was seen as the center of the games world since it in the middle of the other two cities. Gridania's zone design was horrific, no one wanted to level there. Limsa's bridges and towers were annoying and time consuming. Ul'dah was the perfect balance with all the major NPC services compacted neatly together on a single street near the Market, Ather Crystal and leve counter. With simple open zone design for leveling outside.

Plus the main story line took you to Ul'dah repeatedly. And the market system was annoying and tedious as heck at first with no search feature, checking the three cities markets was a big waste of time, better for everyone to cram into Ul'dahs markets and just hang around there.

After that then I'm sure the mob mentality set in with everyone going to Ul'dah because that's where everyone was.

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Originally Posted by Virtuso

Yup Ul'dah was the best choice for a number of gameplay reasons. It was seen as the center of the games world since it in the middle of the other two cities. Gridania's zone design was horrific, no one wanted to level there. Limsa's bridges and towers were annoying and time consuming. Ul'dah was the perfect balance with all the major NPC services compacted neatly together on a single street near the Market, Ather Crystal and leve counter. With simple open zone design for leveling outside.

Plus the main story line took you to Ul'dah repeatedly. And the market system was annoying and tedious as heck at first with no search feature, checking the three cities markets was a big waste of time, better for everyone to cram into Ul'dahs markets and just hang around there.

After that then I'm sure the mob mentality set in with everyone going to Ul'dah because that's where everyone was.

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You made some very good points! Hadn't thought of it that way. With any luck ARR will balance things out a little bit. Still being a central point cant really be changed but Grid looks like it has really opened up. I've always been drawn to the forest type places myself and was disappointed with 1.0's design.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

It's just a shame it's a easy problem to solve if you don't allow free teleportation to everywhere with no limitation.

Seriously the only free warp should be to a region, then your on your chocobo from there.

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the truth.... to bad everyone requires instant gratification these days... no time to wait for airship, chocobo.. must have NOW.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

It's just a shame it's a easy problem to solve if you don't allow free teleportation to everywhere with no limitation.

Seriously the only free warp should be to a region, then your on your chocobo from there.

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In FFXIV people didn't want to spend their anima. There were times when after the group has been made the leader would ask if anyone could port because he didn't have any anima this often lead to an awkward standing around for about 5 min then someone would say, fine ill port.

Kind of glad they getting rid of anima for that reason alone.

Thank you for bringing this up. This is always lurking in the back of my mind. Some good ideas posted in response here as well. I will also gravitate towards how FFXI handled this problem - at least in the early years of its life. I appreciated the fact that the starting towns and surrounding areas were not complete ghost towns. It makes me sad to see ghost towns in my most favorite games because the developers were so tunnel-sighted about the end game, forgetting about the little guys or people like me that like to relive old memories (or level up a new job/class).

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Originally Posted by KittenStomper

the other thing that FFXI/V has that other games do not is... even if you level your main class/job to 50 you can still level new class/jobs therefore going back to the starter areas and sort of starting over.

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In other games they're called 'alts' and achieve exactly the same thing.

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Originally Posted by Apricoth

Thank you for bringing this up. This is always lurking in the back of my mind. Some good ideas posted in response here as well. I will also gravitate towards how FFXI handled this problem - at least in the early years of its life. I appreciated the fact that the starting towns and surrounding areas were not complete ghost towns. It makes me sad to see ghost towns in my most favorite games because the developers were so tunnel-sighted about the end game, forgetting about the little guys or people like me that like to relive old memories (or level up a new job/class).

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Which period of XI are you referring to, because by the time I started in April '05 the only time I saw high-level players outside of Jeuno was as they flashed past on chocobo, rented from the Crags. I hardly call that any meaningful interaction between lowbies and highbies and the world being populated.

I'm sure this has been said but i'll say it any way. The best way to keep each town/area alive is to spread out content, give each town something big to want to participate in and desireable even beyound the level cap. Like for example:

Limsa = Arena
Uldah = Gold Saucer
Gridania = A harvest contest area maybe?(Going by the traits of each city)

High and low lv NMs distributed evenly and the higher lv NMs in lower lv areas should have a faboding about them to clue the player in that they arent the average variety monster. Like rather than a regular Bunny NM that no one bats an eye at till they are face first in the dirt. Make it a giant undead Bunny. Its fur visibly made up of many dead bunnies, exuding bunny souls and perhaps the music changes to darker tones as you approach it/do battle with it. Those sort of visual and audio cues will tip players off about the incoming danger as well as remove some of the frustrating reasons for dieing to them.

"1 minute i'm fighting lv 5 bunnies then all of a sudden another bunny appears and kills me >.<"

"1 minute i'm fighting lv 5 bunnies then all of a sudden the music changes to scary horror tones, i look around and see a giant undead bunny and it killed me.... atleast i know to run when i hear that music next time D="

The same should be said for instanced dungeons, quests, FATES, gatherable materials and etc etc.

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Originally Posted by Kraggy

Which period of XI are you referring to, because by the time I started in April '05 the only time I saw high-level players outside of Jeuno was as they flashed past on chocobo, rented from the Crags. I hardly call that any meaningful interaction between lowbies and highbies and the world being populated.

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Oh, I was not speaking of interaction with high levels. I was speaking of just seeing people in general. :D

I don't think FFXIV really had this issue of deserted areas because everyone was crammed into one area. The main issue it had was the lack of content... for anyone of any level. Ul'dah was the cancer that only starting over could cure and that was because it's location became center and stayed center due to a sad lack of any system of efficient travel. Once Anima was freed up and we had chocobos and airships, the world became travelled a bit more.

But only ARR could fix Ul'dah

Instances allow people of high level to hang out in lower level areas. Such as how Hamlets were actually in 20-30ish areas.

So instead of making complicated systems to keep the world active and mixed, just saturate the area with content for different levels and you'll find people in all the areas.