Quote from: Kian on December 11, 2010, 09:41:58 amThey could even be going the route of having a starter city depending on which sect you belong to and have other cities where the sects are trying to take control. I guess we'll all be left to speculate for some time but to add to my point above - its not called City of Darkness...Exactly. I don't expect there to be only 1 vampire per 100,000 mortals, like in PnP... but I don't want everyone I meet on the street to be a vampire, either. To keep the flavor of the World of Darkness, there have to be multiple cities, and mortals have to outnumber vampires, even if it's only a 10-1 ratio. The whole point of the Masquerade is "Humans outnumber us; we must keep our existence secret."It is also important for individual vampires to be able to make a difference in their city, if they are successful enough. If there's only one city and 10,000 vampires are vying for control of the city's police department, who has control? An alliance of 500 vampires cannot become Prince of Mega-City, or even just the city's Primogen. People have stated numerous times in this forum that they don't want the WODMMO to be "WOW with fangs." Well, I'll come right out and say that I don't want it to be "EVE Online with Fangs", either. When I ask who the Prince of the city is, I don't want the answer to be, "Oh, the Fangula Conglomerate runs this city."The reason that the "(Insert city name) by Night" books were so popular is that each city had its own flavor. If CCP wants to start with one city, that's okay; but there have to be more than one as the game progresses. Nobody expects each city to be the size of New York City or Los Angeles; they can feel big, without being true scale.
They could even be going the route of having a starter city depending on which sect you belong to and have other cities where the sects are trying to take control. I guess we'll all be left to speculate for some time but to add to my point above - its not called City of Darkness...
Based on that, why do you only want one city if theres no difference?
Why would each in-game city only be one city block?
Wheres your source on " have flocking "forests" haphazardly tacked on between them" maybe they'll have convincing looking forests placed gently between.
Why should I care what goes on in a district across town when I'm competing with 10k players to hold my own city corner anymore than you would care about what happens in different cities?
Would travel be easy between cities as in Bloodlines? Who knows, probably not if there is a day cycle and vamps had to stay underground( I'm sure they wouldn't force PCs to sleep). so that would make travel difficult, right? Not to mention the fare on a cab from NYC to LA.
The Gangrel would get restless in one city.
All you're arguing for is a different aesthetic.
Screw this easy travel shit. Put cars in the game for those who have Drive skill, make tons of open highway space between the cities and make people actually TRAVEL there. The World of Darkness is more than just cities. Its forests, jungles, ruins, towns, highways, abandoned buildings, and anything you can imagine from the real world. I say include it ALL.
Quote from: Aydoo on December 12, 2010, 02:28:02 amScrew this easy travel shit. Put cars in the game for those who have Drive skill, make tons of open highway space between the cities and make people actually TRAVEL there. The World of Darkness is more than just cities. Its forests, jungles, ruins, towns, highways, abandoned buildings, and anything you can imagine from the real world. I say include it ALL.See, that's not exactly something that will attract people.
Quote from: Aydoo on December 12, 2010, 02:28:02 amScrew this easy travel shit. Put cars in the game for those who have Drive skill, make tons of open highway space between the cities and make people actually TRAVEL there. The World of Darkness is more than just cities. Its forests, jungles, ruins, towns, highways, abandoned buildings, and anything you can imagine from the real world. I say include it ALL.Include the entire world? Okay; of course, it'll take them another twenty years to build it, and we'll all have to take turns using the computers at NASA to play it, but I suppose it could be done As for the day/night cycle comment a few posts back, I can't see the game launching with day present, not when everybody's playing a Vampire. Essentially telling your entire playerbase "go away" every twelve in-game hours seems like a self-destructive business plan. Maybe when the game has a few expansions under its belt, and at least part of the playerbase could experience daylight, maybe then I could see them adding day in some form. Although, it would make more sense to me to implement day and night as zones, rather than the more traditional day/night cycle (to avoid the aforementioned "go away" scenario).
They won't be big at all. I expect each city would be one block tops.All the twelve million players in WoW could live comfortably in one proper-sized city. Multiple cities also brings up a problem: why should anyone care what happens outside their own city? Furthermore, depending on the ease of travel, the feeling would not be multiples cities, but one city with different districts.
The distinction between one big city and numerous tiny cities is purely artificial. Mechanically they'd work exactly the same if travel between different cities was possible. Sure, they'd LOOK like different cities because they have fake-looking "forests" haphazardly tacked on between them, but they would essentially function as one unified fiefdom. Having one good-sized city with different districts spread between different factions would FEEL far less tacky that having hundreds of tiny villages split between different factions.All you're arguing for is a different aesthetic, one that I find to be disagreeable. Why is having multiple cities so important? In practice they'd still be treated as one entity if there was travel between them. Power blocs would emerge and take control of them, and for all intents and purposes they would function like one city with a few D&D monster-infested parks and annoyingly gridlocked streets.In Bloodlines, for instance, travel between different districts was a short taxi ride. The difference between multiple cities in the MMOG would essentially boil down to that. If travel is an easy taxi ride, then multiple cities would function as different districts of one city. If travel is a difficult and dangerous walk through D&D monster-infested forests, then most people wouldn't bother to travel, which would defeat the purpose of having a unified shard.There are no benefits multiple cities have over multiple districts of one city, and they would function exactly the same in practice. Justify it to yourselves all you want, but these "cities" will end up just being a long string of pretentious city districts with delusions of being in different cities. "Oh look, the New Orleans district! And right next to it, the New York township! And just down the street, the Los Angeles Quarter! One taxi ride away, Amsterdam!"
Who cares? That's a stupid argument. I'm trying to argue on the basis of some semblance real-world logic here.
Also I totally agree with the 16/8 Night/Day cycle. That seems to fit the whole tone of the WoD games while giving more leeway to the kindred and is less restricting.