Open World

[Ceipe]

Ok I've searched all over the place but it just doesnt seem to be newhere, is this going to be a MMORPG with a free world or is it going back to the lame Palyer limited slots world?

[Zinsian]

the lobbies and cities are pretty much open...but in game action is limited to 6

[Cruisectrl]

you obviously didnt search every where because that's everywhere

[Saner]

'free worlds' have their disadvantages.

PSU's style is better. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif

[StarWind09]

I agree with saner.
I like the psu style, it makes things seem a bit simpler. I tried out MMORPG's and just didn't like them as much as pso's setup. Although I will very much apperciate all the new areas and larger lobbies as long as the core setup is like that of pso.

[Krupp]

I don't want to play anything like FFXI again.. Ugh! I hate free worlds, it made NM camping a major downfall of the game. I'm glad PSU is not following it's footsteps because thats all a step backwards. I like to chose who I play with. =D

[Krupp]

EDIT-Lagged and then accidental double post.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Krupp on 2006-07-28 11:02 ]</font>

[Saner]

they are really not lobbies anymore, they are actual towns/cities! http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif

they intergrated the lobbies that 100-200 players can meet each other, with the 4 player shop sector from PSO, as well as all component for mission selection, etc. etc. to create these immersive and deep cities for each planet/colony.

besides the 'lobby blocks' from PSO could only hold about 20 players each. but these city lobbies can hold like 100-200 each. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif

so ya the 'lobbies' this tiem are more comfy and feel more a part of the world and stuff and people even have their own rooms their friends can visit! so ya it's much better than those mmorpgs. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

besides a 'free connected world terrain' would lag awfully with real-time combat. plus stuff like camping for mobs and stuff would be too time wasting. so Sonic Team did better decisions to make everyone happy, and since parties are up to 6 anyway, parties can have their own private missions without others hogging the spoils. and this helps prevent overcrowding and stuff when hunting and etc. etc.

[Inu_Shadi]

actually its 1000 people per lobby

PSOW: Let's talk about the online aspect of Phantasy Star Universe for a bit. How many players will the online cities, or lobbies, support?

Takao Miyoshi: Basically, about 1,000 people are ported into one server, or the lobby as you may call it.

[Pure-chan]

On 2006-07-28 10:10, Saner wrote:
'free worlds' have their disadvantages.

PSU's style is better. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif



I agree. I find that - aesthetically - seeing tens, or hundreds of players jogging around the same area, haphazardly attacking whatever spawns, is more distracting than it is helpful. Overall, I'm more willing to suspend my disbelief when viewing a handful of specialized fighters. Weapons like swords and shields are decidedly archaic, and the game's nonmodern stylings (in a futuristic setting) lend themselves more towards warriors than they do a modern army.

By comparison, seeing an entire world's worth of people - scattered across a map, standing around and casually stabbing at the closet enemy - seems intrusive in it's detraction from the epical nature of the story. There weren't 110 Luke Skywalkers, 89 r2d2's and 230 wookies running around the same area, drawing agro on the nearest mob of [Insert Creature Name Here]... (sorry, I'm not huge on star wars). Likewise, you can't command an army of Yuma's in FF... and of course, there was only one "The One", etc... http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Pure-chan on 2006-07-28 12:00 ]</font>

[Saner]

On 2006-07-28 11:41, Inu_Shadi wrote:
actually its 1000 people per lobby

PSOW: Let's talk about the online aspect of Phantasy Star Universe for a bit. How many players will the online cities, or lobbies, support?

Takao Miyoshi: Basically, about 1,000 people are ported into one server, or the lobby as you may call it.




wow I can't even imagine 1000 in Guardian's Colony floors. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif

I think he meant 'server' in total, which is divided into different versions/dimensions of each solar system and cities. and each solar system can hold like 100+ people.

because like what if Parum has like the player limit and someone wants to do Parum missions? they can't if they can't even enter the city. but then again people can freely switch between servers so um yeah.
http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif


for example you never see 1000 people in Jeuno at once. maybe a few dozen per section but even that amount lags like a sheep with an anvil on top. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif

[-Klaus-]

Uhm.

100 is actually a small number for that sort of thing.

I think the beta had around 10,000 invites.

[Ether]

On 2006-07-28 02:49, Ceipe wrote:
is this going to be a MMORPG with a free worldNo

is it going back to the lame Palyer limited slots world?Everything outside towns is instanced, with a 6 player team limit

[Saner]

On 2006-07-28 12:42, -Klaus- wrote:
Uhm.

100 is actually a small number for that sort of thing.

I think the beta had around 10,000 invites.



oh well um the beta did have around 10,000.


but now they are testing with an 80,000 population in-house and simulations too.

but I still think each 'lobby' will hold maybe 100-200. it might sound small, but that's actually far more than PSO had back in DC where each block could only hold about 20 each.

but if it is 1000 for like one town/city, that is pretty impressive. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif

but I get confused with the whole server and lobby thing cause I think servers (1000 pop.) contain multiple lobbies (100-200 pop.), and then groups of 6 warp to their personal missions.

but ya 1000 might actually be more logical for a lobby/city.

[Zinsian]

oh god...1000 people in a 360 server...gonna take some time to mute out the random kids screaming http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_no.gif

[Sev]

PSO Blocks did hold 100 at a time, the lobbies in a block didn't hold that many but you could always transfer into one. So sometimes you'd see about 30 people in one lobby.

1000 people is a pretty big number and through all of the stages of the Guardian Colony, through all the floors, it can be done. Especially since they always simulate that crowded feeling with all of those ghosts wandering around. Just replace those with player character models. 100 or 200 people across all of the colony would make them few and far between if you think about it, these areas aren't really small.

So 1000 probably means exactly what it says. 1000 people per lobby all at one time spread across those different floors. It'll be crowded, but nothing that people couldn't deal with I think.

[Zinsian]

Lol heres what im guessing. For Xbox 360, the game is voice proximity designed like most xbox live games.. while the game itself (stats, characters, and etc) are all one server, the voice servers will be split according to the areas divided. this will surely reduce the lag, since the voice lag in PSOXbox really pissed me off.

[Phaze37]

Ceipe, why do you prefer an open world? Back when I first started PSO on dreamcast, I felt a bit jealous of the other online RPG's that had an open world. Until I actually tried some of those MMORPGs. I found World of Warcraft to be incredibly frustrating, because there would often be large groups of high-level players camping the mobs that I needed to fight in order to complete my quest. So I never got a chance to complete those quests. The players who just ran around killing low-level players for fun didn't make the game any less frustrating either. And how much time have you spent simply travelling between objectives in WoW? I spent more time travelling in that game than I did killing, and to me that's a huge waste of my precious gaming time. In PSU you'll spend very little time travelling because you can just simply teleport to the location of your quest. Besides, dungeons are instanced in WoW, and every quest in PSU is essentially a dungeon. If you want to meet up with large groups of people, you can in a city. If you want to kill stuff, you and your party get your very own instanced dungeon (even if it looks like a forest) and you won't have high-level showoffs coming in to steal your mobs and ruin your fun. People can join your party in the middle of your quest, but if these people are just there to ruin your fun the party leader can kick them.

PSU's system also makes it very fast and easy to form a party. You don't have to run around begging other players to help you, you can simply join another party's quest in progress. PSO's system worked great because it made it possible to just turn on the game, join a lobby, join a game, and you could be killing monsters with a party in less than 5 minutes. Compare that to the amount of time it takes to form a party in FFXI or WoW. PSU's system will be very similiar to PSO's. I couldn't get into WoW simply because I can't sit down and play videogames for hours at a time. I have responsibilities. I need a game that I can play for half an hour at a time, and PSO is the only online RPG I've found that lets you do this with ease. It's fantastic because you don't need to get hardcore with the game to have fun with it. And it's all thanks to the game's lack of an open world.

Instanced areas are a good thing because it gives you the means to seperate yourself from the fun-ruining morons who always make a significant portion of the playerbase in any online RPG.

[Inu_Shadi]

On 2006-07-28 13:57, Zinsian wrote:
oh god...1000 people in a 360 server...gonna take some time to mute out the random kids screaming http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_no.gif

hahaha nah, it will have a way to make it divided, I think oO

[oShojino]

On 2006-07-28 14:38, Phaze37 wrote:
Ceipe, why do you prefer an open world? Back when I first started PSO on dreamcast, I felt a bit jealous of the other online RPG's that had an open world. Until I actually tried some of those MMORPGs. I found World of Warcraft to be incredibly frustrating, because there would often be large groups of high-level players camping the mobs that I needed to fight in order to complete my quest. So I never got a chance to complete those quests. The players who just ran around killing low-level players for fun didn't make the game any less frustrating either. And how much time have you spent simply travelling between objectives in WoW? I spent more time travelling in that game than I did killing, and to me that's a huge waste of my precious gaming time. In PSU you'll spend very little time travelling because you can just simply teleport to the location of your quest. Besides, dungeons are instanced in WoW, and every quest in PSU is essentially a dungeon. If you want to meet up with large groups of people, you can in a city. If you want to kill stuff, you and your party get your very own instanced dungeon (even if it looks like a forest) and you won't have high-level showoffs coming in to steal your mobs and ruin your fun. People can join your party in the middle of your quest, but if these people are just there to ruin your fun the party leader can kick them.

PSU's system also makes it very fast and easy to form a party. You don't have to run around begging other players to help you, you can simply join another party's quest in progress. PSO's system worked great because it made it possible to just turn on the game, join a lobby, join a game, and you could be killing monsters with a party in less than 5 minutes. Compare that to the amount of time it takes to form a party in FFXI or WoW. PSU's system will be very similiar to PSO's. I couldn't get into WoW simply because I can't sit down and play videogames for hours at a time. I have responsibilities. I need a game that I can play for half an hour at a time, and PSO is the only online RPG I've found that lets you do this with ease. It's fantastic because you don't need to get hardcore with the game to have fun with it. And it's all thanks to the game's lack of an open world.

Instanced areas are a good thing because it gives you the means to seperate yourself from the fun-ruining morons who always make a significant portion of the playerbase in any online RPG.



Firstly, PSU's "Universes" each held about 500 people in beta, that was the cap, you couldnt get in if there were more than 500 people in that universe that time. Also there were 6 Universes per non combat area.

Now, as to Phaze, you're taking the worst aspects of Free roam in different games and lumping them all together. So I'm going to give a very broad counterpoint and show you why free roam is good.

Free roam persistent world, the bread and butter off mmorpgs, they not only give players a vast open world to explore... but they also give more freedom and risk. However its hard to get right and many developers have screwed it up, but there have been many other "instances" within gaming that have gone ary (take platforming for example, people still screw that up). These are the things wrong with free roam

Zones: This is a horrible detriment to free roam, it not only objectifies monsters to a certain place.. but also bosses. Also, it takes away from the seamless transition from place to place taking away from the exploration factor and realism. With a zone its always "enter here" and "exit there", with a seamless world you have a wide open area that isn't so defined. A seamless world is a world you can wander around in, as well as the monsters, which leads me to my next point...

Specific Area/Point Spawns: Or SAPS's is another injustice that has been done to free roam. Having a specific point or small area where a monster spawns that drops valuable items or is a quest monster is a big no no... especially if these items/quests are of a high level. FFXI is a very bad case of this, in which most of the NM's spawn very long hours apart on a clock (every 3-24 hours) and spawn usually within the same ammount of grids, to worsen this fact its within zones. In real life all sorts of creatures move around where they please, but tend to stay in a large area (such as a rainforest , forest, swamp etc). This should carry over to MMORPGs Free roam, when a boss wants to come out he'll come out (not on some timer) and he'll damn well go wherever he pleases (or she) as well as the other monsters in the game. Now I'm not saying that they'll wander clear across the world as soon as they spawn, but rather move at a more realistic pace randomly as well. They will have a tendency to stay in a larger area (much like alligators and swamps, or parrots in the rainforest) but they'll have the ability to move much farther out (provided they can live sufficently where they live, like a penquin boss for example wouldnt move into a desert or hot areas).

Fact is monster/boss spawns need to be more randomized in a seamless area and they need to move around alot more. This will eliminate "camping", which is also very bad for Free Roam.

Drop Rate/Crafting: This kind of goes hand in hand with SAPS's, I believe getting quest items (off of non normal mobs) and rare items should be more about the chance encounter rather than killing it enough to get the uber drop. When Fafnir the ManEater comes out and you defeat him, you sholdnt just hope that he drops some piece of a equipment, you should get the materials to make that item... this gives the player a better sense of achievement and less reliance on "luck" (although there still will be, since you will have to rely on the luck rate of your craft succeeding). As for normal quests and quest monsters, there should be enough of a gap between either level or skill level (depending on system) that quests at your level aren't beneficial enough to higher level players. For quests that involve a rare spawn or boss monster, there should be items that force pop or "draw out" the monster for that quest, with a reduced chance to drop Rare Items or eliminated chance if that quest is repeatable (so the quest isnt abused). Also, the bosses strength should be proportionate to the monsters around it.. a level/skill level boss of say.. 55 shouldn't be around monsters with a level or skill level lower than 45 imo. If you're able to fight the monsters around the boss you should be able to fight the boss (with some aid via items or one/two extra people..unlee you're overhunting (read fighting shit thats way too tough for you and barely living after one fight). Lastly, rare items made at your level / skill level should not be as beneficial to higher level / skill levels.

Lastly, Open PvP: This is a good concept, but its almost always done wrong in every aspect I've seen so that its always one person has total domination and the other one gets completely raped. First off, the combat system in most Open PvP system is click-to-attack, hit-fkeys-to-spam-skills. This is very bad, as it doesn't allow much in the way of combat tactics, only who can spam the most damaging spells/skills the fastest while wacking eachother.. if the combat system gave you more control (like PSU) it would come down to skill rather than who can mash buttons the fastest. Secondly , murder/ganking (read: higher levels/skill levels going around and one shotting lower levels/skill levels) should have a higher penalty. When the killer/ganker initiates attacks too much (not just kills, I think that these people should be punished even if the other player defends or even kills the attacker) they should be flagged to a degree..and as they continue this way they should be flagged more so. As their degree of flaggedness (for lack of a better term) rises, law officials will be more alert to the suspect (perhaps even wanted posters going up after a while, so that players may get the chance to bring the killer to justice) and either kill on site (if they're dangerous enough) or condemn the user to menial tasks (in the form of a rewardless quest). This gives the killer risk for going around and killing, solving meaningless kills for the most part.

The best Free Roam system I've seen to date would be Saga of Ryzom and Lineage II, in those games the world was seamless and you could swim/run hell even climb if you were good enough running up a side of a hill or mountain (too bad there wasnt a real climbing option).. however neither of them were perfect (too bad you couldn't jump ><, can't in PSU either =/).

I know its long, but basically FFXI and WOW are horrible examples of free roam and Guild wars is an example of how too much instancing is bad.

Free roam not only allows for chance encounters between strangers, but also for exploration and massive alliances to take on large ammounts of monster (say a monster stronghold for example). With PSU's system, its impossible to go fight with your guild or a large group of friends to take on tougher monsters, and thats one of the most fun things to do in mmos imo.

PSU would be perfect if the dungeons were instanced and randomized, and the rest of the world was free roam.

Phew that was a long post

[Cruisectrl]

i hate being in a huge world with an ass ton of others because when the game starts getting more popular the game gets lamer and lamer. I prefer games where you gather a party and go in. Like PSO games. I played WoW and games similar and they were kind of boring. And you cant stop Free PvP and theres always really good people who keep Kill stealing, etc. too many flaws. With just a few people, you have that much less chance of encountering flaws. I dont know how to put it exactly but oddly i hate it.

[Krupp]

I never want to play an MMO again after my experience with FFXI. Even with the free roam it's lame. Why would I want to compete with tons of people over a damn mob that pops once a day? Say I even get the claim on the mob and it doesn't drop the item I need. Time is wasted!
Also about looking for party, PSU is great in a way that you don't need to wait for people to get something done. In FFXI it would take me hours upon hours looking for a party as a Samurai. By the time you organize a camp in the higher levels with the travel time and all, someone already has to leave.
PSU should stay this way because it will offer a different kind of experience from WOW and FFXI, if you want free roam go to FFXI and regret it.(jk about that haha)
Anyway, Free roam no thanks. Give me my closed game with 6 people, props to sega for not making this an MMO.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Krupp on 2006-07-28 16:29 ]</font>

[voxie]

If PSO/U was based in an open world, it just wouldn't be the PSO/U we know and love. It's pick up and play style is worthy for both long-term and short term player moods. I hope it never changes. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

[Ash1ey]

On 2006-07-28 16:12, voxie wrote:
If PSO/U was based in an open world, it just wouldn't be the PSO/U we know and love. It's pick up and play style is worthy for both long-term and short term player moods. I hope it never changes. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif



Exactly! Couldn't have said it better myself http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

[oShojino]

I figured none of you would read my post, seeing as you're all bringing up the bad points that need to be changed. Just because a world is free roam doesnt mean you have to spend hours looking for a party, Lineage II and Saga of Ryzom were solo capable, FFXIs devs just got lazy and multiplied stats/strengths of the monsters far beyond the players according to level so that youd have to have a certain party setup to get "fast exp". In FFXI its possible to take 3-4 people and fight toughts, and em's but its hardly worth the effort and time. As for ksing, that didnt even exist in FFXI once the monste was claimed..however if you didnt keep enough hate on the monster it would go unclaimed (thats one of the things FFXI got right, but still needs some work) this aspect is also unaffected by free roam, the same could happen in instanced games...the only difference is that you get exp for the kill so it doesnt matter as much.

PSU can be a pick up and play style with a free roam world, you could have dungeon warps for instanced missions within the dungeon... or you could just go outside and start fighting, and then meet up with friends if they're online. Free roam doesnt restrict these things, monster difficulty (FFXI) bad claiming systems (Lineage II, RO), and broken PvP systems (WoW, L2 somewhat) hinder these things. It just happens to be that they were placed in the free roam world, doesn't mean that they're the definition of a free roam world.

The only thing Free Roam effects in the end is length of transportation and exploration. In PSU beta you knew what all the maps were since they were hand fed to you, and a level was posted so you knew what you were up against. Travel to the places was also instant, so you didnt have any need to explore anything. With Free Roam we could explore more, take chances and see what we could fight.. meet up with people/friends to party with if we wanted.. and we could use vehicles to their full extent. We wouldnt know the whole world because we couldnt be instantly warped to any/every part of it.

Thats the benefit of Free Roam.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: oShojino on 2006-07-28 17:06 ]</font>

[Cruisectrl]

i read it but i was pointing out the still obvious negatives where you are pointing out the possitives ad the negatives

[Fleece]

SWG was the only game where free roam even mattered, you got shit loads of exp for finding things on the planet, me and my friend would drive around all day looking for things when we first got it.......theres nothing quite like stumbling across jabba's palace.

every other MMO ive beta tested or bought had rubbish free roam and FF's free roam was the WORST, Free roam where basically every area was just a large room........

[Miyoko]

I personally think free roam, or "open worlds" are lame. I much more prefer instanced stuff like this. Random asscakes can't come and grief you.

[Cruisectrl]

i agree

[Chiba-kun]

I like some kind of middle ground. I like being able to roam, but i also like having a well defined path. Hopefully psu is somewhere in that healthy middle.

[oShojino]

On 2006-07-28 18:49, Miyoko wrote:
I personally think free roam, or "open worlds" are lame. I much more prefer instanced stuff like this. Random asscakes can't come and grief you.



This would also be possible in an instanced game, if pvp was enabled. There are free roam worlds that dont have PVP, so again this doesnt apply to free roam. Many of you keep associating things like ksing and pk to free roam, when they do not go hand in hand. Its like saying the internet is bad because it has hackers. Hackers aren't part of the internet, they just are in the internet. Just like these features arent part of the free roam world, they're just in the free roam world.

A free roam world is simply a world that exists (zones or no zones) in which it is possible for all other players to go to the same place you are at (ie non instanced). Thats all it is, it has nothing to do with ksing or pking.

The only downside to a free roam world is if you're lazy and don't like to travel/explore. Also, auto assualt gave exp points for finding areas.. I think that doing something like that and perhaps filling in the map (like how its done in dungeons) when you find and explore a section of the map would be a good idea.

[Garroway]

I think the infrastructure for a larger game is already present in what I've seen in the articles I've read. It seems to me that it wouldn't take much to add larger areas that accomodate more people in the future, so larger events aren't completely out of the question, just not immediately. Instancing and Free Roaming both have their advantages and their flaws but in my opinion it seems that PSU has the potential to expand in such a way that it takes advantages of both schools of game worlds.

[oShojino]

Don't get me wrong, I like instancing in some cases (especially timed missons or capped fights or even in dungeons) but I think being fully instanced in all situations but towns is both isolating and boring (one of the reasons I left GW). I believe theres room for a mesh as well, if they opened up areas as weve seen in offline pictures for vehicle, leveling (perhaps?), and events/quests it would increase the fun factor of the game..and they wouldnt have to make so many missons.

[Jife_Jifremok]

On 2006-07-28 20:59, oShojino wrote:
The only downside to a free roam world is if you're lazy and don't like to travel/explore. Also, auto assualt gave exp points for finding areas.. I think that doing something like that and perhaps filling in the map (like how its done in dungeons) when you find and explore a section of the map would be a good idea.

I've found that many worlds are just not worth exploring that much, like in SWG's vast wastelands of boring mobs and ghost towns. (This was as of a couple of years ago, long before its "NGE". It may be different now.) Auto Assault at least had stuff to salvage from the rubble you found, but exploring that game's world also felt largely unfulfilling outside the quests. It doesn't help that mobs that con red or purple are nigh impossible to hit. Maybe if they kept the fast EXP-gaining system like it had during its "weekend trial" beta stage a month before its release, exploring in AA would have been better...

It's a shame, since games could benefit so much from exploration if the worlds actually had some fun stuff in them. Like the offline-only game Oblivion, where dungeons were scattered all over the place and you needed to explore to find them.

As for travel time, I don't mind it since it makes the world feel more like a world, but some games call for teleportation straight into the action, especially if they're very mission-oriented.

[Sev]

The problem is oShojino, even after reading your post I still prefer the way PSU is. It has more to do with the normal negatives that you speak about. Kill stealing sucks, but what's worse is when your in an area and can't even get access to the mobs you've set out to kill. Sometimes there just aren't enough mobs for everyone, you can go elsewhere, but that doesn't always work out your way... And of course, there could be a speciffic reason why you came to that area in the first place. You either have to beat out the competition or wait.

Camped mobs, over-crowded areas, areas where PVP is always enabled, regular griefers, latency, there's alot of reasons why people would just prefer a closed off world. Personally, I don't like epic battles of 40 people on one monster because they can get kinda mundane... I prefer smaller groups, it makes each person count alot more and they just don't become death number so and so. If they can actually perfect a game with a system like PSU and it's free roam at the same time, I'd probably try it out. All in all though, I don't really care about running into people in the field... To me, it's a place for battle, not socialization, I don't need to be distracted by anything but monsters or my teamates when I'm in a group.

There's alot of good points to free roam, and some bad points as well. It's all just preference really, it can take away from the game for some while it enhances the experience for others. Jife_Jifremok brings up a good point though... Some please just are worth exploring, it's awful when you're basically just running through a zone just to get to the other side. You should at least have something to look forward to, something to catch your eye, or something to gain for all that travel.

I've never played Saga of Ryzom but I have played Lineage II, you're right about the world... It's just that to me, everything else sucked. Especially soloing since the grind took unholy amounts of time.

[hypersaxon]

After playing Final Fantasy XI, I'm glad that PSU is going to be NOTHING like that hunk of junk.

[DrewSeleski]

Yeah, my biggest problem with open world is how long it takes you get get everywhere, as in FFXI. I mean, I'm sure it would be okay if you could make the entire world interesting to walk through but that would truely be a spectacular feat.

[zandra117]

Open worlds wont work in PSU mainly because of the hack and slash fighting system. Imagine if you were in an open field when a horde of booma like creatures spawned, all of a sudden 50 people completely own the horde in like 5 seconds. Wow, that battle was intense, I only managed to tag one enemy before it was toasted by 12 different people's techniques at the same time. It works in other MMOs because they have the point and click fighting system which makes battles longer.

[Fleece]

This games been in the making for years with the ps2 in mind......so you cant really see them scrapping their entire graphics engine because a few people who dont like PSO/PSU's instanced areas can be pleased while the entire community gets shafted as SEGA turns fully away from the ideals of PSO for just a handful of people.

[Saner]

zandra, it's really about lag. because a crowd of people doing actions freely, unrestrained by delays, would produce a lot of lag if there's too much action happening in the same sector.
So it's great they stuck with real-time combat and smaller areas than large areas and combat system that's too slow and boring and semi-automated to even stay awake. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif

and oShojino, the more missions, the better. I mean its great we can finally have a party of 6 this time, I mean that's good enough for company as any. and the cities will be packed with people.

so based on the pros and cons, two+ parties sharing the same mission/field would just become a race for mobs and exp and drops, etc. etc.

so instancing is a great benefit for this game. and virtually makes the worlds feel even more huge because groups of people are not squished into the same realm of space they are hunting in.

http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/burger.gif

besides the lobbies feel more like cities now so that's a great place to kick back and relax and enjoy the large communities that make things more lively and stuff around town. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif

also, those hot spring checkpoints or whatever, ya more than 1 party can be there, so ya that shows they are taking extra steps to make the universe feel more connected without overdoing it! http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saner on 2006-07-29 09:45 ]</font>

[Emrald]

Free world....I mean I like the half freeworld half non....and plus six is a lot of people to take on one mission with you...