What I like most about this Concept.

[Osamaru]

Yes, we can say that procedural generated world will be empty, without a lot of things to do.
But, when you start talking about things on the scale of EARTH itself, then you get into some crazy possibilities.

I can imagine towns and villages popping up around resource areas.
Cities built to exploit dungeons.

Even if the "hand built" starting area is small, and quickly overpopulated, People will be constantly spreading out to find new places and new things.

This game is an Explorers DREAM game. I can imagine some people doing nothing but that and selling locations.

Sure, one of the biggest complaints about giant games with procedural generated PoIs and such, is that things become to "samey". And that's fair.

And here's the best part. If they do it right, like EVE Online, and make it so that the Economy is heavy player driven, with players having to build and construct things everything but the starting areas, then that really wouldn't matter.

Now that large forest full of rare hardwood or that mountain with lots of metal in them. THOSE Are the PoIs you want to find. They're the kind of things explorers are going to sell to the guilds and gamer groups out building their towns and cities and nations.

Again, EVE Online is a Perfect example of how these kinds of things work.

Even if we go super generous and say that there's a constant 200k concurrent players across all playforms (super unlikely unless it gets really popular) it would still take YEARS to even some of the more distant places.

Now, I know I'm hyped, so I'm definitely going to take this game with a grain of salt. No Man's Sky promised similar things, and we know how THAT turned out. Even if it DID do right by the players after the fact.

That said, the fact that we're AT THIS POINT were we can actually make entire new worlds and explore them, have me so excited! I can't WAIT to see what comes of this and if LNF can live up to its Potential.

[grimgary]

Originally posted by Osamaru:

Even if the "hand built" starting area is small, and quickly overpopulated, People will be constantly spreading out to find new places and new things.

Doubtful there will be a handbuilt starting area for all players if I get your meaning here. It will likely be something like No Man's Sky where each player starts in some sort of random location, alone (or maybe with friends if they come in at the same time as a group). This isn't an MMO, thus it will not have such social structures like a starting hub. There may be some sort of 'magic' hub like the Anomaly to be found however. Unknown at this time though.

Originally posted by Osamaru:

Sure, one of the biggest complaints about giant games with procedural generated PoIs and such, is that things become to "samey". And that's fair.

Oatmeal is one of the biggest problems of procedural generation development and developers like myself. Oatmeal meaning that while there is content, it becomes harder to comsume as you always have more oatmeal to eat. There are solutions to mitigate this that can be worked in, but you will still eventually see the pattern of proc gen somewhere eventually.

I think players expectations of what this game is and how it will operate need to be tempered towards what Hello Games has already developed. I see them as having just incorportated the tech from NMS to here, which will include the way multiplayer will work. Instanced to a small group. But we just don't know. I just doubt it will act like a huge open world server in which everyone is just 'there'.

[Osamaru]

Originally posted by grimgary:

Originally posted by Osamaru:

Even if the "hand built" starting area is small, and quickly overpopulated, People will be constantly spreading out to find new places and new things.

Doubtful there will be a handbuilt starting area for all players if I get your meaning here. It will likely be something like No Man's Sky where each player starts in some sort of random location, alone (or maybe with friends if they come in at the same time as a group). This isn't an MMO, thus it will not have such social structures like a starting hub. There may be some sort of 'magic' hub like the Anomaly to be found however. Unknown at this time though.

Originally posted by Osamaru:

Sure, one of the biggest complaints about giant games with procedural generated PoIs and such, is that things become to "samey". And that's fair.

Oatmeal is one of the biggest problems of procedural generation development and developers like myself. Oatmeal meaning that while there is content, it becomes harder to comsume as you always have more oatmeal to eat. There are solutions to mitigate this that can be worked in, but you will still eventually see the pattern of proc gen somewhere eventually.

I think players expectations of what this game is and how it will operate need to be tempered towards what Hello Games has already developed. I see them as having just incorportated the tech from NMS to here, which will include the way multiplayer will work. Instanced to a small group. But we just don't know. I just doubt it will act like a huge open world server in which everyone is just 'there'.

While I don't doubt it will be most likely be instanced, or at least "Layered", what we've heard so far suggests it will be a persistent world. I.E changes will remain for everyone, as players and change the environment.

My hope is that these persistent elements will extent to how players interact.
So say someone builds a town. That town will be present for everyone, and if you enter the town, you get placed in the same instance/layer as everyone else.

We've already seen similar things in No Man's Sky, to an extent, and its not a stretch to imagine they'll expand on that. Granted I'm saying all this with a grain of salt, don't get me wrong.

I'm not trying to say "OMG! BEST GAME EVER! CONFIRMED!"
Rather, with what they've already show capable of, the possibilities with LNF are IMMENSE.

I will say I'm of the personal opinion he'll definitely be at least a starting area. Why? Because one of their stated goals is community building, and sprinkling 20-30k people around an area the size of the actual EARTH doesn't work for that.

So i'm a proponent of the idea that we'll all start in roughly the same area, and be encouraged to spread out and explore.

[grimgary]

Definately with ya on the community building. But one of the joys for some people was the ability to be alone in the galaxy by starting in their own little single player point in space (in NMS). I don't think they will get rid of that. Which is why I doubt there will be a starting hub. But like you, I say this without actually knowing.

I feel that the community building will take work in and of itself rather than be planted on top of the player's head. Much like finding out where other people in your area and drifting toward that direction, and like gravity those larger groups may drift together.

Cheers!

[Osamaru]

Originally posted by grimgary:

Definately with ya on the community building. But one of the joys for some people was the ability to be alone in the galaxy by starting in their own little single player point in space (in NMS). I don't think they will get rid of that. Which is why I doubt there will be a starting hub. But like you, I say this without actually knowing.

I feel that the community building will take work in and of itself rather than be planted on top of the player's head. Much like finding out where other people in your area and drifting toward that direction, and like gravity those larger groups may drift together.

Cheers!

I think a lot of that will still be possible, honestly.
Remember, this thing is suppose to be as BIG AS EARTH.
To compare, NMS planets are smaller than Ceres, and Ceres' diameter is only about as big as Texas is wide.

This place is going to be MASSIVE on a scale we've never seen before. If someone wanted to wander off into the wilderness and never see another player again, they absolutely could. Even IF the world was a "true" MMO with everyone on the same layer/instance.

[Tooslow]

The ideal game for role-players would be the one people are theorising that this one will be. I suspect they will be very disappointed. No economy was shown.

Also, I thought it was supposed to be many times Earth's size. Otherwise it's going to feel crowded after 20 million people descend on the equator.

[Osamaru]

Originally posted by Tooslow:

The ideal game for role-players would be the one people are theorising that this one will be. I suspect they will be very disappointed. No economy was shown.

Also, I thought it was supposed to be many times Earth's size. Otherwise it's going to feel crowded after 20 million people descend on the equator.

I think you're underestimating just how big the Earth really is.

8.5 million people live in New York. Almost 2 million of that is Manhattan alone.

Even if we assume the game attracted 20 million players, which is 4 times the active player count of WoW, AND they all decided to gather around the equator for some reason, that would STILL be a huge play area with tons of space for everyone.

[Tooslow]

Originally posted by Osamaru:

Originally posted by Tooslow:

The ideal game for role-players would be the one people are theorising that this one will be. I suspect they will be very disappointed. No economy was shown.

Also, I thought it was supposed to be many times Earth's size. Otherwise it's going to feel crowded after 20 million people descend on the equator.

I think you're underestimating just how big the Earth really is.

Oh, I am not. I was very specific about what I said. With no brake on expansion people will crawl all over that sweaty belt like ants on an ice cream truck crash. There will be websites co-ordinating it.

NMS has a lot of co-ordinated mapping going on and the scale s exponentially exponential compared to one planet. Wait and see, it's not worth me trying to convince you, especially at this early stage. The planet will be multiple times larger than the surface area of Earth.

[Osamaru]

Originally posted by Tooslow:

Originally posted by Osamaru:

I think you're underestimating just how big the Earth really is.

Oh, I am not. I was very specific about what I said. With no brake on expansion people will crawl all over that sweaty belt like ants on an ice cream truck crash. There will be websites co-ordinating it.

NMS has a lot of co-ordinated mapping going on and the scale s exponentially exponential compared to one planet. Wait and see, it's not worth me trying to convince you, especially at this early stage. The planet will be multiple times larger than the surface area of Earth.

Again dude, no, you don't.
The circumference of the Earth is 24,901 miles, or 40,074 kilometers.
Lets assume every single player decided not to wander beyond 30 miles away, north or south, from the equator for some reason.

That's STILL 1,494,060 square miles of explorable game.
That's several MAGNITUDES larger than any MMO ever released (not counting Minecraft)

And That's just a tiny FRACTION of the entire area of the game. Literally like 0.5%.

Even if we give the game a good estimate and say we've got 200k people regularly playing, a game world the size of Earth won't be fully explore for YEARS. Maybe even a decade or two, depending oh how much freedom we have to travel.

The only way a map like this becomes "crowded" is if the vast majority of players decide to purposefully congregate into a very limited area.

Which, again, if you don't like, you can up and leave to a LESS populated area.

[MadDawg2552]

The first thing I'm going to do is build pillars every 5 feet in a 100 mile by 100 mile radius around my starting area so no one can build anything remotely near me.

[Osamaru]

Originally posted by MadDawg2552:

The first thing I'm going to do is build pillars every 5 feet in a 100 mile by 100 mile radius around my starting area so no one can build anything remotely near me.

While this is obviously a joke, imagine actually coming across something like this? Discoveries like that will be really fun.
Even if. and lets be honest, this will likely be true, a lot of them are dongs.

[MadDawg2552]

Originally posted by Osamaru:

While this is obviously a joke...

Yeah, it's a joke. It's also a reference to Ark: Survival PvE servers where every single one has someone that built pillars every 5 feet so no one can build anything.