A Change to the Spawning

[Armulus Satchula]

Currently the world is too large to support the number of characters playing. It is possible to find ghost town after ghost town after ghost town. My suggestion isn't to completely scrap the old system, just to allow it to be more configurable.

The idea is to create larger more populated towns. The populated towns will eventually grow large enough that towns can once have outposts again. There should also be "urban sprawl" where players leave their cities and settle down the less crowded places.

Spawning rates could be controlled by continent. On one island a town requires 2 people. On another island it requires 5 or another one it could be completely turned off. If the player population increases again, turn islands back on or lower the spawning requirements.

Maybe have an option not to let English characters spawn on a Polish island or don't allow Polish on an English island. Sure the idea is neat to have different languages interacting, but if a town has two English speakers and 3 French, it is just not going to work out.

This world has boats and they are pretty easily accessible to the majority of players. Even if you can't own one, a large boat can hold more people than you'll probably ever find to go with you. Maps have mostly been charted for the known world so this wouldn't completely restrict access, as anyone could go there if they so desired.

[DylPickle]

Just so I can understand the functionality behind the idea:

If this was implemented and you were in charge of it, you'd have more populated islands spawning at 2, and less populated islands spawning at 5, so population could be corralled to the more populated areas?

[Armulus Satchula]

I have a feeling that the reason a lot of people quit is because they are bored. Increasing the spawn to 5 would help the larger towns who are on lower population islands. This would force players to spawn in the bigger towns of those lower population islands instead of a town with 2 or 3 people or even just people traveling around the island. This should cause less deaths as players actually can have more interactions with other players. I also imagine that, as those towns grow, people would slowly spread away from there if the server population were to rise.

If we can increase the population of towns this would also help chew up some of the resources that have been building and building. Such as the town I am in that over 200,000+ grams of a valuable resource.

However, I would want to possibly keep spawn rates the same for some of islands. Treefeather maybe as an example. The main purpose of this is simply just to limit the number of places characters can spawn, funneling them into a smaller areas around the world.

[Doug R.]

An interesting suggestion, but if we don't have an events filter, we'll just see a mass exodus away form the larger towns because of the "noise."

[Armulus Satchula]

That would be the urban sprawl then. When i started playing, Tircqi had like 40+ people in it.

The exodus would start growing towns around that. The towns would get 5 people and then be added to the spawning locations. If that place got too busy. Players would spread again.

[Surly]

An interesting suggestion, but if we don't have an events filter, we'll just see a mass exodus away form the larger towns because of the "noise."

I agree with this. We need a mixture of "simmers" and "RPers" to have successful towns. Until we get that filter, the simmers (and I'm speaking from personal experience) will just leave the bigger towns.

In short, I think the idea is fairly solid. But only if we can fix the Events page first.

[Armulus Satchula]

An interesting suggestion, but if we don't have an events filter, we'll just see a mass exodus away form the larger towns because of the "noise."

I agree with this. We need a mixture of "simmers" and "RPers" to have successful towns. Until we get that filter, the simmers (and I'm speaking from personal experience) will just leave the bigger towns.

In short, I think the idea is fairly solid. But only if we can fix the Events page first.

Probably not a suitable place to respond to this, but... A good start to fixing the event page would be to aggregate the whispers like Facebook does for similar responses. "You see 20 whispers between (name, name, name)

[Tiamo]

How would this work out for smaller language groups in general, and for smaller language groups spread out all over the world in particular (with a lot of 2-4 character villages)? I know at least one language group where this would cause serious problems for players who want to spawn more than 3 or 4 characters.

[Armulus Satchula]

I think its fine for language groups to travel and interact with each other, but i find it more annoying when a town has two main languages. I'd probably say whatever language group dominates the town is what spawns,.

[Polt86]

I've seen it work fine with two major languages in the same town, I've even seen and been involved in a town that had three. You learn to skim over the other language's dialogue (if your character hasn't learned the language), in much the same way people have mentioned skimming through (or completely skipping) the mostly meaningless drama that goes on a lot of the time in their character's own language.

[Surly]

I've seen it work fine with two major languages in the same town, I've even seen and been involved in a town that had three. You learn to skim over the other language's dialogue (if your character hasn't learned the language), in much the same way people have mentioned skimming through (or completely skipping) the mostly meaningless drama that goes on a lot of the time in their character's own language.

...except many players don't, get bored and leave...

[DylPickle]

..except many players don't, get bored and leave...

Mine. I can't be bothered to stare at a language I can't understand.
I'd make it so that language groups can only spawn in their own zones again.

[Comy]

..except many players don't, get bored and leave...

Mine. I can't be bothered to stare at a language I can't understand.

Same here. It makes me less and less interested in the character, to the point where I'll probably starve it out if it's a newspawn or just leave if it's an older character.

[Vega]

Maybe it's my "translator" mind, but I like playing in bilingual towns and all that "learning" stuff...
But, well, I've always spawned in towns where I understand the other language. So it helps...

[Armulus Satchula]

Boats still exist and people are welcome to travel to wherever they wish. You can't stop that. I'm also not saying languages should be confined to islands but to towns. That means a french speaking town could only be one road away from you.