Adventure Journeys Concept

[Sandpark]

I think an open zone would be fantastic even preferred. I just think it would probably be instanced. If by chance it was implemented to perfection and was good. I can see the content getting swamped with people which could cause server issues. Unless I am misunderstanding what shared phasing does?

[Shurrikhan]

I think an open zone would be fantastic even preferred. I just think it would probably be instanced. If by chance it was implemented to perfection and was good. I can see the content getting swamped with people which could cause server issues. Unless I am misunderstanding what shared phasing does?

Shared phasing, while an oxymoron of sorts, would mean that a zone is generally phased so that each player or party is in an instanced version of the zone at any given time — simply put, a "phased zone" — but with certain exceptions to the rule, or differing degrees of instancing, such as around certain hubs. Essentially, the zone would seem very much a typical open world zone at the oasis or canyon base hub, etc., but as people start vanishing off into the sandy winds, even if you were to chase after them in the exact same direction they're going, you'd be unable to find them, and might well end up with entirely different terrain or content at those coordinates. As for some of the crazier possible features of this system, you could even have certain landmarks that players discover could rephase them together, either automatically (their auto-generated map has a chance to seed a particular doodad or feature that would work as a landmark, allowing passage into another party's instance, etc), or could be charted down on maps that you could then trade at the wholly shared hub in order to pin down some of the auto-generated elements of your particular journey for some amount of time.

Let's say there are some 20 landmarks, each with a certain theme of auto-generated area around them (perhaps a stream flowing by, lending consistency in so far as there having to be area above and below it, and likely connecting to another landmark found by a stream). They each have certain rules and patterns to their placement. The seed accomplishes these rules by starting from a given landmark and pattern matching to all others. As such, at least a few landmarks, according to the map's ruleset, are likely to be found in fairly consistent relative locations, but which set of landmarks those will be depends on the seed. The seed is assigned to players in chronological order; the closer in time you enter the desert, the more likely you are to have similar maps. Simplest way that I can put this sense of overlap: if you were to yell from atop Eagle's Crest, only those players within range of their version of Eagle's Crest in their own maps would hear you.

The way you combine parties after entry, if that should ever be allowed, is by matching rule-sets. For instance, if one party creates a bonfire or leaves a carving where the river passes through the shadow of eagle's crest (intersecting patterns), that will appear on other instances, and approaching it with both parties present in their respective seeds will make them visible to each other. As in the above example, at least one such relative positioning of landmarks between Eagle's Crest and one of its patterned nearby landmarks or connectors will exist in both world versions. You'd have to find that one.

Granted, the idea that people could combine parties at all means that you'd need perhaps a second level of balance. Scaling for one to eight people in a single party may be a simple enough matter in itself, but what of multiple parties? And how quickly should groups of one to three be able to find each other vs. a total of over eight players? For this, I give you sandstorms. While sandstorms also occur naturally (randomly) within the zone, they also increase in frequency and severity as the player count in a given relative position (e.g. position in the same mini-zone, named after it's landmark, or some smaller area around the landmark) increases, making it harder for people to find each other. The fewer people, the easier it is to find others and join up, perhaps even automatically combining world seeds where activity is so sparse and far between as not to affect each other. The more players... the more the game balances. Start off in an alliance of three parties, and sandstorms may literally blow you apart.

That's on average, at least. That's not to say that this mechanic is invariant. Particularly clear days may have a reduced effect, and carrying certain quests may further reduce it, as many any other number of things. It's just a way to keep the zone at a good mixture of instanced and open play, and to carry a good level of mystique. There could just as easily be daily resets that cause the actions of one party to open up new paths for others, optionally (sending back a scout, be it player or NPC, to the hub) or automatically, such as discovering some old machinery somewhere to be salvaged, where the resulting salvage allows access to another ruin. Or it could even have weekly progress, server-wide. I just figure it's best to have the systems for the intended open/closed gameplay first, perfecting the wholly single party enjoyable time-sink model first, and then add on these larger, more amazing events later.


...Well, that went on about five times as long as I thought it would. /rant