OK, here''s an interesting design delimma... I''m wondering if repetition could be a good thing. Let''s say you''ve got an RPG that starts out with 1 city / town. The player could explore this town, get to know all the characters and locations and secrets and such, and it could all be fun. Now let''s say there are 10 towns. The game is bigger, takes longer to complete, but if the locations are interesting and diverse enough, this could still be cool. Alright, now let''s say there are 100 towns. Or 1000. At a certain point scale would seem to makes your locations meaningless, and this seems bad. My first instinct would be to say, "scale it back, 10 towns max." But then I started wondering: If towns were generic places that provided certain services (say, hospitals, hotels, guild chapters, police, etc.) then maybe scale wouldn''t be a problem. Generic might be a good thing, because you wouldn''t care about the interesting character / nature of a place... rather, you''d only be concerned whether or not it had what you needed. (This assumes you''re doing other stuff outside the town like exploring or fighting monsters) What do you think? What if there were 10 special towns and a 100 generic ones? Or do you think that a game should only include the places that are interesting? (And, if so, how the heck would you do a Star Wars type game with all the towns and cities it''s universe would have?) -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

That''s how Daggerfall (have you played it?) was. It had hunderds of (randomly generated) towns with only about 10 or so that were kind of special. Well, not all that special, just much much bigger with a little more deail.

When you went to another town it didn''t really matter much to you as a player. This was a bad thing IMO. Maybe it could work in some games, but basically I think it''s not a good thing. Plus, the other bad thing IMO in Daggerfall was the inclusion of fast-travel. Not only did you go from one generic town to another but you got there immediately (game-time days passed but basically to the player it was immediate).

So, perhaps if you don''t use the fast travel and let the player explore outside the towns it may work well.

Good topic though...I never thought of it possibly being a good thing, but it may work.

I agree with Nazrix, Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall is a prefect example of this, and it shows how terrible it is.

In my opinion:

Generic -> Repitition -> Boring

So don''t do it. The only place it can accepted is in game where it is practical for things to be randomly generated. For instance, in Diablo (bad game, anyway) it makes sense because it is intended for network play by varying party members. By regenerating dungeons in every game you can make the game fun for people who has already ocmpleted it and those that has completed has no advantage over the newbies.

I can''t think of any other cases where generic-ness could be good.

Jacob Marner

Yeah, and in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind they''re making a point not to do this because of so many players not liking it. They''re scaling it down and making it more detailed as you mentioned, Wav.

I don''t think "generic" is ever a good thing, but I have a small caveat there:
If you need "generic" towns, that means they have a bunch of attributes that you can vary randomly. You HAVE to do this, so there''s at least the illusion of a purpose and an identity. If you really do it right, it could even develop an identity. But players need to be able to set apart locations, or they will simply be pointless.
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quote: Original post by MadKeithV

I don''t think "generic" is ever a good thing, but I have a small caveat there:
If you need "generic" towns, that means they have a bunch of attributes that you can vary randomly. You HAVE to do this, so there''s at least the illusion of a purpose and an identity. If you really do it right, it could even develop an identity. But players need to be able to set apart locations, or they will simply be pointless.
( Insert map stand in dungeon after x minutes )

Okay, what if most of the action happened outside of the town? For instance, let''s say this was a hack & slash heavy fantasy CRPG: You''d be outside the cities kicking butt (or getting your butt kicked) and towns would be no more than a place to fall back to. Rest, heal, re-equip, right?

Maybe you ask "why have them, then, if that''s all they do?" Well, what if you don''t have a town portal? This then means that the town you encounter out in the wilderness, generic or not, is going to be a friggin'' relief to find and you won''t care that it is generic! All you''ll want is the doctor, the armory, the market, etc...

The reason I''m pushing so hard for this is that it seems EXTRAORDINARILY inconsistent to have 1 or 2 towns in the middle of a vast kingdom just because you can''t come up with unique content for every one.

I mean, after all, I''ve seen people arguing for character realism since I got to this board. Doesn''t that apply to setting as well?????


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Just waiting for the mothership...