Genesis Forums

Ydred wrote: Now it is oh everyone go hunt mobs you never have (ever?). Cause they arent fun to hunt or we would have long ago.

This was from a topic of imbue changes, but this prompted me to reopen a topic raised when Genesis population dwindled.

Size of the donut (as in number of rooms) has steadily inflated over the years.

Consider the history (a bit lengthy, but there is a point):

Back in the 90ies, when there were frequently 90-100 players online, up to the point where there were queues (sometimes for an hour or more) to get into the game, there were what domains?

1)Sparkle (smaller than now), not properly a domain, but still;
2)Terel (reasonably similar to what it is now in size; Legion of Darkness, Benton, dragon, some other stuff),
3)Emerald (larger than now, since many areas are closed? not sure, never was one of the places I knew well) ,
4)Shire -- GH, +hobbit areas, Bree, barrows, the road towards
5) Rhovanion/Misty Mountains was just opened at second half of 90ies I believe,
6)Gondor -- I think also smaller; basically Great Eastroad, Edoras, Minas Tirith and surroundings, some Ithilien with haradrims. Helm's Deep(?)
7)Some Krynn -- very very small, I think. Basically think ~20% of what Krynn seems to be now. Krynn has grown so much during the past 15 years that it now has how many domains actually?
8) Re Albi -- just a city, + some surroundings + Kaheda (now Dragon Order)
9) Calia was way smaller than now in terms of rooms, no Gelan, no sea.
10) Kalad -- some Kalad at least. Gladiators. Not sure how much that changed.
11) Faerie as newbie area with exits to Krynn afai remember.

No Raumdor, no Avenir, no Faerun, no Khalakhor, no Gont/Earthsea (was supposedly later linked to Re Albi, you could find Ged there and quest for true names), no Cadu. No Kalaman, Kendermore, Icewall, etc.

From (OCC) guilds it was Rangers, Calia, Knights, Mystics for the "goodies"; Vampires (of Emerald) for the "baddies".
Kaheda monks, Gladiators for the neutrals, but frequently played for the baddies.

I have a feeling there should've been some more occ baddie guilds, but I think DAs opened more towards end of 90ies, as did AA and MM.

From racials it was Travellers, Rockfriends, Dunedain, Grunts, some weird elvish guild (Wildrunners I think). Gnomish race itself, and race guild opened a bit later; kenders were still in the future.

There were but 2-3 lay guilds: Minstrels, Heralds(also, I think, opened more towards end of 90ies), maybe 1-2 others. Smiths opened at about the same time as AA probably.

---

So what we had back then was a pretty vibrant game, where you reasonably frequently saw other players, teamed up with them. And while there were places and times where people were "waiting in line" for some mob grinding places etc, there was by definition more player interaction.

Then came the 2000ies, when the player population dwindled and at the same time more and more content and guilds opened, smearing the online players across much larger number of rooms.

In the end you could go for days in Genesis without encountering a single human being. Which I feel made it pretty sad for a multiplayer game.

Now the situation in terms of number of players has improved, however, I wonder how much of fluff do we still have -- how much of the content is irrelevent, place filler, empty shells (such as Raumdor and Farun appear to my -- admittely untrained and unexplored eye -- at the moment), which add practically nothing to the game, but provide yet more places for people to be lost in, without having to interact with other players at all.

How about purposefully pruning some of the areas in domains, so that we have less of the useless rows of rooms and more domains, which pack interesting things in smaller areas?

I believe it would help with:
a) people meeting more people, which I believe is good in a multiplayer game;
b) having better chances of finding imbues due to the way current system works [wink, wink], and
c) having less code to maintain and support, thus reducing the backlog of things to do for the current generation of wizards.

The donut doesnt need LESS options.
It needs MORE options.
Progression not regression.

Instead of closing things down, things need to be fixed instead.
Like that useless blight called Khalakhor.
Fantastic theme pissed away by no content.

Kalad.
Old defunct domain that needs some fixers.

Faerun.
Fantastic idea wasted by copy/pasting the worst features from a defunct old domain.

To close down things would only result in more people going away.
Bring something new and wonderful and people will get curious and come back again.

Amberlee wrote:The donut doesnt need LESS options.
It needs MORE options.
Progression not regression.

Instead of closing things down, things need to be fixed instead.
Like that useless blight called Khalakhor.
Fantastic theme pissed away by no content.
...
To close down things would only result in more people going away.
Bring something new and wonderful and people will get curious and come back again.

Closing down things that nobody uses wouldn't result in anyone going away, as nobody who knows about them would care. And at the same time somebody who is exploring the donut wouldn't be wasting his time on some godforsaken piece of no content where he wouldn't even meet others.

Closing down things that nobody uses wouldn't result in anyone going away, as nobody who knows about them would care. And at the same time somebody who is exploring the donut wouldn't be wasting his time on some godforsaken piece of no content where he wouldn't even meet others.

There is already a huge benefit to teaming. And people dont for reasons of their own. It is not cause they are out exploring unknown places.

Much gets done in the game world in many places you must not know about. It isnt the norm persay, but that doesnt mean others dont find much of the world, usable. Especailly the quests. I think only Khalakhor gets unused unless an ogre killing town for skulls or perhaps a few herbs (there are very unique herbs in khalakhor that I think are not found elsewhere).

Genesis should be much much bigger. 20000 rooms isnt enough. It should be 50000. And if they are fun and well done players will go there more often. RP domains such as Khalakhor have failed miserably to my knowledge.

A world is huge.
This world should be huge. Bigger, not smaller.

I'd suggest finding new people to code new quests instead of culling rooms.
Adding new things will intrigue older players and boost traffic in those areas.

And also, the decline in players at the 2000's time period was probably due to next to no people knowing what a text-based game was anymore. And those who did were old enough to be too caught up in responsibility to play games.
Blame HD graphics and societal aging.

Anyway, More content = more pleased players.

Melarec wrote: I'd suggest finding new people to code new quests instead of culling rooms.
Adding new things will intrigue older players and boost traffic in those areas.

That's why I was specifically talking about rooms, rather than content in general. Although I have read discussions here, which talked semi-seriously about there being too many guilds around, too, making them small and fragmented.

Anyway, More content = more pleased players.

Not neccessarily. As I said in the OP, 2000ies was a time of large content influx, which happened together with population decline.

Anyway, my point is not that one should cut off some domain or place just because it "seems" too big.

Rather, I wanted to draw attention to the fact that for a game improvement, environment needs to be somehow in proportion to both the player count and to what the game feels it should promote. If Genesis wants to increase player interaction, more tightly packed content will help that. If Genesis likes players to roam around in grinding teams, best bet is to give lots of room for them to do that, so they don't interfere with each other. The ultimate version of the latter is an offline Moria game.

Faerun.
Fantastic idea wasted by copy/pasting the worst features from a defunct old domain.

This, particularly with the drow guild, was definitely one of the biggest disappointments I've ever experienced in Genesis. On top of the lack of content, the copy/paste, the release of it had so many bugs that were specifically geared toward one ranger growing larger at the time.

Not neccessarily. As I said in the OP, 2000ies was a time of large content influx, which happened together with population decline.

The population decline had nothing to do with that.

M59 released in 96 and I played that for a time while playing genesis.

Then I think Everquest in (1999?) released and drew many gamers and MuDs declined.

Asherons Call not long after.

Gamers moved on to the next new thing and many still do those. I came back for abit in 03' but WoW would be more my enjoyment.

And then there are the gamers who married a spouse who dont understand gaming and just quit for RL.

I think growing into our 30s and MMORPGs (it was more complex than land mass within genesis) killed Genesis.

Ydred wrote:

Not neccessarily. As I said in the OP, 2000ies was a time of large content influx, which happened together with population decline.

The population decline had nothing to do with that.

I am sorry, you seem to miss the point.

Zestana wrote:

Faerun.
Fantastic idea wasted by copy/pasting the worst features from a defunct old domain.

This, particularly with the drow guild, was definitely one of the biggest disappointments I've ever experienced in Genesis. On top of the lack of content, the copy/paste, the release of it had so many bugs that were specifically geared toward one ranger growing larger at the time.

That too.
But not only.
The entire domain is a disaster.
Top that with wizards with no ambitions of making it good.

Makes me sad.