[Game world] Smaller maps, more servers

[Sench 1]

After setting up a local game server, I noticed two rather important things.

One, islands are largely reused in this game. For example, we have island shape idenitified as "Cay_A" in the internal files. It has 4 types: equatorial (_EE), equatorial variant b (_EE_B), tropical (_TR), western tropical (_WR). Each variant appears in the game world twice, except tropical which does so three times. However, they all have the exact same shape, and the climate differences between the four are negligible, so effectively you have the same island appearing 9 times.

This is the rule, not the exception. Each unique island shape has several climate variants, some with sub-variants, and almost all of these are used in the game world twice, with few used once and some used more.

Of course, an island like "Mnt_C" has desert, tropical and tundra types, so those are more varied despite the same shape. On the other hand, this is how many times it appears in the game: 3x _CH, 3x _CH_B, 2x _CL, 2x _CL_B, 2x _ET, 2x _ET_B, 2x _ET_C, 2x _ET_D, 3x _TR, 4x _WF, 2x _WR, 2x _WR_B, 1x _WR_C, 6x _WU. The two-letter code signifies the biome, and the added _B or _C signifies variants, like an obelisk being in a different place. So we get 6 completely identical tundra islands, 8 almost identical east tropical islands, which are likely very similar to west tropical and "generic" tropical as well, etc.

Again, this is the rule, not the exception. Identical, near-identical or very similar islands appear in the game world many times over. Worse yet, some "event" islands (where power stones are found on the official map) aren't uniquely shaped, either. "Mnt_R" has 2 "event" variants (desert and arid biomes), and that's with a total of 8 event islands. And then it has 6x _WU, 7x _WU_B, 7x _WU_C, 7x _WU_D variants. To reiterate: 27 islands with the same shape and biome, split into four groups of identical islands.

At this point I should mention that the islands in each starter region are identical, most are used in two regions with a similar biome, and starter islands share their shape and biomes with some non-starter ones (so their sub-variant is having the NPC port). That's several islands with 8 identical copies in the world each.

The other important thing about the game world is that about 95% of its surface area is open sea, where practically nothing happens. Now, in a game about pirates, you should have more sea than land. But the ratio doesn't need to be quite so dire, especially since so little happens at sea (at least in the present state of the game).

That was the prelude, now for the suggestion. I understand some of the reasoning behind a map this big, and all of the reasons behind reusing islands. But is it necessary? The game world is redundant. It takes upward of 10 minutes to travel between two islands in the same region, upward of 25 to get to another region. The main quest (and character progression being tied to it) forces you to travel all over, spending many hours on uneventful sailing, and while visiting different corners of the world, you will see some new and exciting things... but mostly the exact same islands over and over again. Why have a massive world of 225 regions when you need to visit at most 7 to see all the unique stuff?

You need to separate players? Separate servers will achieve that more efficiently, taking away their ability to get to someone else rather than putting it behind hours of waiting. You need to keep players together? Smaller maps will once again achieve that more efficiently, with players taking less time going to do something and more actually doing it. Most of the world is irrelevant to any single player. A player cares about: their current region, their home base region, possibly regions around their home base (on PVP servers). That's 10 regions out of 225. Set a server to 25 (5x5 grid) and suddenly you have 9 servers with more stuff happening than you had in that 1 oversized server, without any part of the world feeling out of reach. It shouldn't take hours of waiting (current state of sailing) just to see a different environment. And let's be honest, nobody was taking "40000 concurrent players" seriously anyway.

TL;DR:

1. Reduce map size severely - I'd suggest a 5x5 grid instead of the 15x15 as it is now.

2. Increase island density somewhat - sailing between islands takes too long. Reduce island visibility range if performance is an issue.

3. Only use each island shape once, at least for islands where base building is intended (ice caps are probably okay to rehash), or at least make the variants very distinct (massively different biomes and decorations) and still don't use one shape more than 3 times (with a smaller world it shouldn't be a problem).

[Nokim 16]

If they make maps smaller there will be no room to avoid sods, and to fight others i open sea or avoid them as well.

[fingerguns 1]

Sounds like you should play on an unofficial server with active admins!  there are plenty available that meet these descriptions.