Feedback request: review of recent zone changes.

[Voices of the Wheel]

All,

Since last year, we've been making some zone changes. Primarily choking up wide open zones and reshuffling things to draw people to Andor, in the hopes of creating an environment where people actually bump into eachother there.

We'd like to hear your feedback on these zone changes. Some of the zones affected were:

• north of Watch Hill/ south of Taren Ferry
• the swamp west of Whitebridge fade/connection to Caemlyn road
• the area north-east of Caemlyn
• the zones south-east of Caemlyn/connection to Far Madding road

Are we on the right track with leaving rooms in place, but simply removing connections? Or would you prefer to see another method when it comes to treating wide open zones? Any other feedback you wish to provide related to zones?

[Rico]

To preface this statement, I only play sporadically, and am not the normal player. I don't use ZMUD or have a map. Everything is by memory input on Wintin, so when changes are made they tend to throw me off a bit. =P

If the design is to push people into Andor, Puny is the best person to ask about how the chokes have limited his ability to raid. From what I've seen he's been able to slip off to Cairhien without a problem, and he's more or less the only DS I've seen in Andor.

Hard task to drive players together with a mud this size. 60k rooms / 30 players in my time zone. That's a lot of space per person.

[Rig]

They are grrrrrrrrr8.

[Landon]

It would be nice if there was a bend in the road all s 1e 2-4s from TF, but mainly because I dislike 5+ N/S rooms in a row. It's not a huge deal since sw pk isn't active, and it's got nothing on TV or Tear road. I like the changes southwest of wb fade, but again, it doesn't really get used. If you're trying to get people to pk there, move support into the area.

Can't comment on the SE Caemlyn changes. Think I pk'd Puny once after northeast caemy changes, but he didn't go to that area and chasing around trolloc rogues is just awful in general. Again, if you want people to use the zones, there needs to be some sort of minor mob support.

EDIT:
I mention mob support and pk, because frankly it doesn't matter if a zone is a wide open box or 50 N/S rooms in a row if you're just xping/exploring.

[Taziar]

I like the overall improvements to room layout instead of just having 10x10 boxes but I think the connections were too severely removed. Both Southeast and Northeast Caemlyn are now pretty much just dead ends where before they felt like an area. This style of zone building could create areas of the mud no one will use and restrict travel too much. The amount of connections were over the top, creating too wide open of a design, but removing all the connections?

Southeast Caemlyn
I primarily used the connections between The Hills of Kintara zone and The Andorian Countryside West zone to short cut over to Aringill. With all of the connections gone I will probably never go into that zone again. I do like how this has returned the Kintara zone back to the original layout before the addition to the Andorian Countryside, but having just one connection down near the bandits would be nice.

Northeast Caemlyn
This zone saw the most of the "football field" PK strategy over the years since it's creation in this area of Andor and I think the overall idea is good except I wonder why there is still 14 connections along the zone line with the Aringill zone to the south and southwest? With the entire center of the NE zone walled off it has just created the same football field as before, only slightly smaller and with only one entrance. Perhaps remove half of those connections between Aringill zone and break the walled off section into two sections, one entrance from the west into its own walled off area with the other half accessible by the current entrance on the eastside. Perhaps a high search door between.

Thankfully the river connection was left between the NE zone and the Manor zone south of Aringill, thanks for keeping that.

Changes west of WhiteBridge and North Emonds Field

I have not re-mapped these areas yet and don't have enough information to give proper feedback.

Note on zone connections
Geographic continuity is important to the feel and atmosphere of exploring Randland, as an example: the removal of the connection from Diagan gate Far Madding and the Plains of Maredo created a dead end that in my opinion has had no discernible benefit. It has stopped me from visiting Far Madding completely. Single connections can create choke points for PK blocking and facilitate other aspect of game play that are important.

Taziar

[iria]

have only had time to look at s of TF zone, great changes imo, choked it up nicely so it actually makes sense to chase there.

[Cosmo]

I feel like the elongated bit just north of kaf is a little annoying more than anything. So many times you are spamming north and end up in that long nook. Would probably be better adding an east exit from 2e 4n of kaf (picture below for reference). The general area is chokey now and there are good blocks west, north and south of the zone so it shouldn't really impact anything other than removing a bit of an annoying section and probably make it more user friendly for players unfamiliar with the changes who are stumbling their way through the zone.

Would also love to see a no channel patty inside a trapdoor below kaf in this zone, preferably one with mobol that trips you to fall down into it if you're not Seanchan and bonus points if there can be a damane immune to the no channel inside and with an auto locking door.

http://imgur.com/a/Xxx9k

[Santino]

What Rico said in his last lines. And Taziar brought up an important point as well with his zone connections.

Changing primary connectors makes little sense to me. Fm is a great example, and I'm going to use Taziars example with south fm to Maredo for this. I imagine the possible reasons it was done was to put all players on equal footing with learning the new areas, and to force players through chokey points. But overall it just renders certain places useless. It would almost be better to just scrap the entire area with the south side to Maredo gone. It would be like closing off the eastern side of Tear that leads into the drowned lands directly, and forcing players to use the dweller route to circle through to the east.

Yes it could potentially, and potentially is the key word here, make things more chokey. But you have to weigh and compare narrowing a zone down, and completely destroying primary travel routes via connector removal.

That said, I approve of most, specifically north ef changes. It's just the primary travel connector removals that I have an issue with.

[Razhak]

These changes on the periphery of the andor zones are fine by me.. But I would advise against changing the core Andor zones: they are quite possibly some of the best designed zones in the mud and works of art

Do not repeat the "new blight" debacle!

[Voices of the Wheel]

What some of you call ease of travel equals ways to avoid hubs to others, which is not a good thing in a multi-player game.

The thing with zone connections is that in conjunction with ease of travel, they also make for ease of fleeing and ease of becoming virtually unkillable. Some people have said to me "but if a zone is too chokey, a newbie won't be able to run". No, if a zone is too open, anyone with a modicum of skill can live forever, which is especially problematic considering there are less chasers these days and the average skill level has gone up. Pkers get bored, frustrated and leave. Considering someone who runs already has an advantage, it just became too much.

It's a delicate balance, for sure. Every zone being like Tar Valon road would be stupid. But imo all the connections that were added at some point, e.g. Rhahime, Garen's Wall, Cairhien Road and so on opened up the center of the map too much. As for mob support in every zone, that is hardly necessary. Something to draw people to any given zone, yes. Which obviously won't work for every zone in the game, since there's only so many lures: exp for a certain level, cash, herbs, eq, etc.