Pretty areas or fast loads?

Ben DeVeny · Post by **Ben DeVeny** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:15 am

Personaly, after seeing some REALLY fascinating areas in Hala, with the Mirador haks, and some painstakingly sweet things that our housing manager has made with his own two hands, I am really tempted to say that the long loads are worth the wait. A fairly up to date computer should be able to pull the areas in, withing a reasonable time.

I voted pretty. Just curious what others feel.

Naieth · Post by **Naieth** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:31 am

Candy for the o) !

The fact that stuff loads pretty fast for me affects that, off course. But pretty areas are amazing to explore.

Krator · Post by **Krator** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 11:06 am

Small areas + eyecandy + small loading times for me.

NWDuneAuron · Post by **NWDuneAuron** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 1:20 pm

Load times suck the big one. Pretty areas are no good if they crash you out constantly.

Pathos Street · Post by **Pathos Street** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 4:02 pm

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Fifty · Post by **Fifty** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 4:11 pm

I prefer a decent balance. IMO, a set like Mirador is not worth it for what it adds to an areas load times. On the other hand, I like the use of plenty of placeables to add some flavour.

Alphonse · Post by **Alphonse** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 4:13 pm

small areas with some character > large bland areas

teleri · Post by **teleri** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 5:18 pm

Fifty wrote:I prefer a decent balance. IMO, a set like Mirador is not worth it for what it adds to an areas load times. On the other hand, I like the use of plenty of placeables to add some flavour.

Well I hope you feel differntly when you get to outlands where miridor is the primary hak...

Vercongetorix · Post by **Vercongetorix** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 5:34 pm

Every time I wander through the temple district in Kuras my computer begins to sound like my 87 year old great aunt with emphazima (however you spell that). I actually now avoid the temple district entirely up there because it's such a pain, and that's with a 128mb video card.

Edit: Not that it's not pretty and all, it's very well made especially the temple of Toran. Of course if there was a temple of Mikon in there I'd be more likely to spend time there.

Post by **Nighthawk4** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 5:51 pm

I prefer a reasonable sized area, with some character - something of interest.

I remember when Hala started - they had HUGE areas. My first visit was to take part in an event - a sort of DM welcome to the new server. I logged in with a new character (they were not linked so all characters were new). I had already received some directions, so I left the start area and set off to the town. Every area was enormous - at least 16x16, some of them just a bridge over a chasm - for several areas in a row, with each one at least 16 squares long. There was nothing but open grassland with a road or the bridges. It was easy enough to find the way, but deadly boring - and very slow on a Dialup as I was then. One area away from the Town, I met a couple of minor bandits. Bang - Dead. Guess where the respawn point was? Right back at the start. A long pointless maze and then I was back at the start point - with all that distance to travel to retrieve my level 1 property. What was the point?

I did retrieve my property, with some help from other players, but it was a long time before I visited Hala again.

On the other hand - consider the Wilderness. It is supposed to be a long way from Mikona to Elysia and it does feel like that. However, it is not just area after area of barren nothingness - it has character and interest - and dangers of course. But it is worth visiting. The original Hala was not.

As the old saying goes - 'Size is not important'.

It is the character which is important. Anyone can string together large empty areas. Even I can do that and my Toolset skills are practically zero. It takes artistic talent to make somewhere worth exploring - which is what we have here on Avlis. Thanks to the skill of the Builders.

Fifty · Post by **Fifty** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 5:55 pm

teleri wrote:
Fifty wrote:I prefer a decent balance. IMO, a set like Mirador is not worth it for what it adds to an areas load times. On the other hand, I like the use of plenty of placeables to add some flavour.
Well I hope you feel differntly when you get to outlands where miridor is the primary hak...

I have absolutely no intension of going to Outlands.

Should IG events ever require it of me, then I already have all the SS haks downloaded, but I won't be going sightseeing.

Not because of anything against Outlands, but because going off-world rarely interests me.

Ben DeVeny · Post by **Ben DeVeny** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 8:28 pm

[*steps up and thumps the mike*]
NightHawk, you just described my first trip to Deglos, only you left out the part about nobody being there, PCs or NPCs.

I never saw the Hala you describe. The hala I know is damn pretty! If NWN is going to stay competitive with the flashy games that are coming out, with really advanced graphics, my personal opinion is that the more "ambient" haks should come into play. Even the castle hak can be atmospheric if people spend the time to throw lots of stuff around, not just put a chair in the middle of great big room. (me is not ranting btw).
Hamlet did some toolset stuff for our guild and I was floored. CAN NOT WAIT for it to come in! She wrote me that she was concerned that it would be rejected for having too much "stuff", but honestly, if you continue to cater to the lowest comon denominator, things just aint gonna grow, are they?
[/*steps back from the mike and walks quickly away]

Tigg · Post by **Tigg** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 11:28 pm

longer area loads don't really bother me and I love pretty stuff!

lag while you're in the area is evil, though, heheh

loki70 · Post by **loki70** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 2:05 am

Vercongetorix wrote:Every time I wander through the temple district in Kuras my computer begins to sound like my 87 year old great aunt with emphazima (however you spell that). I actually now avoid the temple district entirely up there because it's such a pain, and that's with a 128mb video card.

Edit: Not that it's not pretty and all, it's very well made especially the temple of Toran. Of course if there was a temple of Mikon in there I'd be more likely to spend time there.

Blasphemer!!!:P

I went with less candy, faster loads, less lag, less wheezing of my comp. Used to have a character that was LG. The DP was such that half the time my character die, so did my comp

Wyrmwing · Post by **Wyrmwing** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 8:46 am

I like eye-candy, but I like it more that more people are able to look at it

Dirk Cutlass · Post by **Dirk Cutlass** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 8:54 am

Not too bothered about the loading time, but I have trouble with my graphics cards when there is too much of a certain type of "eye-candy".

One particularly bad area is in Visimontium - the area with all those waterfalls just north of the lake. My FPS drops to about 7 there, making it virtually unplayable. The only way I can actually move is to zoom in very close to my character and face into the mountain so that I don't see any waterfalls.

I also have trouble in those areas with lots of sand effect sprinkled on the floor, for instance the entrance to Deglos (it used to be much worse, but they improved it a great deal).

Eef · Post by **Eef** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 9:06 am

I'd like a good mixture of both.

teleri · Post by **teleri** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 5:42 pm

I did a lot of reseach into load times and what slows down a system for load. (:

the outlands standardized on areas that are 10x10 or 5x10/10x5 with very few exceptions (Xaos <cough cough>) everything will be in those sizes I also limit the number of visable placeables for the most part and try to not do overlap both of which cause server side pathing issues which in turn causes lag. Soon soon ,,, mumhahahaha

The World of Avlis

Pretty areas or fast loads?

Considering that loading time is affected by how much stuff is in an area, you as a player would rather see:

Pretty areas or fast loads?