Enter New Kaineng City ... and it's all about complain ... [Merged]

[Duilyon.7658]

Kaeneng is a huge disappointment for me. Really love the look and feel of the map but the amount of stuff to do there is sad. 

 

I ran around it for hours exploring but there's no chain quest events. It's all one and done. And then the meta. That's it. 

 

Legit more content in LWS maps. I expected some fun social events to do with other players. There's NO ONE in the maps instances I've been in. Unless the meta is going. 

 

The other zones are way better than kaeneng. Might be my least favorite map Anet has released just because there's minimal amount of content. 

[Cynder.2509]

I wouldn't say Neo Kaineng is that difficult to traverse. It's just really big but I love that. I'm having more trouble with Echovald Wilds because it's exactly like Tangled Depths and I often get lost there. 

[Quietas.4891]

Has anyone else come to the conclusion that New Kaineng is poorly designed? It was obviously designed around mounts and to showcase Jade tech. It was not designed as a living city and is rather shallow in my opinion, if not boring.

Why is it needlessly vertical?
Where are the wide stairs, ramps, and other easy access routes?
Where are  the people?

Unless the city was built after Jade tech was developed, why is the whole place designed around it? The city is huge vertically and there is no valid reason anyone would do so. Access is pretty much only available through zip lines and really narrow stairs. How are people to get around. How are building supplies to get from the lower levels to the upper levels. How does a farmer (no farms btw) drive a pair of oxen pulling a cart of goods to market?

This is obviously a modern style city with a lot of real life style ammenities which suggests a large amount of citizens. Look at all the tall buildings, they look like apartments for large numbers of people. The amount of NPCs is really low and combined with the really low player counts it makes the place look dead.

Overall I think New Kaineng is like a lot of EoD. It's flashy and cool looking, but both lack depth.

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Quietas.4891

[Gorem.8104]

3 hours ago, Quietas.4891 said:

Has anyone else come to the conclusion that New Kaineng is poorly designed? It was obviously designed around mounts and to showcase Jade tech. It was not designed as a living city and is rather shallow in my opinion, if not boring.

Why is it needlessly vertical?
Where are the wide stairs, ramps, and other easy access routes?
Where are  the people?

Unless the city was built after Jade tech was developed, why is the whole place designed around it? The city is huge vertically and there is no valid reason anyone would do so. Access is pretty much only available through zip lines and really narrow stairs. How are people to get around. How are building supplies to get from the lower levels to the upper levels. How does a farmer (no farms btw) drive a pair of oxen pulling a cart of goods to market?

This is obviously a modern style city with a lot of real life style ammenities which suggests a large amount of citizens. Look at all the tall buildings, they look like apartments for large numbers of people. The amount of NPCs is really low and combined with the really low player counts it makes the place look dead.

Overall I think New Kaineng is like a lot of EoD. It's flashy and cool looking, but both lack depth.

 

It just adds to the feeling that EoD needed more time to be developed - especially when I heard that Anet expected players to fill the gap of empty places and lack of NPC's but then launch EoD with bugged instances causing maps to be empty even at launch. Can't wait to see how actually empty EoD maps will be after awhile. Cause it seems these area's were designed just for visual appeal and not npc practicality. (And some don't even like the visual appeal). A one and done zone and then abandoned. 

[Duilyon.7658]

35 minutes ago, Gorem.8104 said:

It just adds to the feeling that EoD needed more time to be developed - especially when I heard that Anet expected players to fill the gap of empty places and lack of NPC's but then launch EoD with bugged instances causing maps to be empty even at launch. Can't wait to see how actually empty EoD maps will be after awhile. Cause it seems these area's were designed just for visual appeal and not npc practicality. (And some don't even like the visual appeal). A one and done zone and then abandoned. 

 

 

I just don't get why people would even gather there if there aren't constant fun events to do...can't even grind there. There's NOTHING TO DO!

[witcher.3197]

13 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

especially when I heard that Anet expected players to fill the gap of empty places and lack of NPC's

This is either a very bad excuse on their part or shows a fundamental lack of understand of how people play MMOs.

We've had cities as big as an entire maps since launch, and 99% of people would pick a tiny corner and congregate there, where the services are. The rest tends to be empty. Only a handful of people would want to log in to afk and chat next to their favorite food stall.

Edited March 4, 2022 by witcher.3197

[Quasi.5281]

With the release of IBS, we saw some new techniques with how environments are presented. But in New Kaineng City, they seemed to not use some of these amazing new techniques, and it has me feeling like a huge opportunity was missed on New Kaineng City.

 

This is all opinion from someone who's opinion doesn't matter, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

There's two major queues for our senses that make us feel we're in a dense city: sound and people. Without either one of these, it feels uncanny, which is exactly what New Kaineng City feels like for me.

1. The map's audio is empty. It sounds like a ghost town. We have audio that is more inline to an empty warehouse with palm trees inside, complete with echos, than a huge, hustling city.
2. There's no people. I was expecting the streets to bustling with life and activity. In the "main streets", there'll be like two or three people standing around. 

 

There's obviously some performance concerns when you start cramming a bunch of NPCs in a map. However, you don't need Planet Coaster -levels of population simulation to make it feel populated. In Grothmar Valley, Anet showed us that it is possible to cram more NPCs in by making the NPCs apart of the background itself and not really an interactable entity (I'm assuming. I don't know). Other maps like Rata Sum and Lion's Arch get a pass because they came out assumingly before this new technique was a thing, but why wasn't this new technique used in New Kaineg City? With how much bang-for-buck these already existing solutions bring, this seems like a huge missed opportunity.

 

/rant

 

New Kaineng City environmental let down aside, I'm enjoying EOD so far. Excited to see how the other maps are!

[Joraan Adenard.2061]

I agree, Kaineng feels empty (and it's not because of instancing, 100 players wouldnt make this town more lively).

 

Environmental sounds is a great idea, didnt think about that ! Even if the streets look empty, metropolis sounds could help with the immersion.

 

I also think that more dynamic events are needed. With how big and (supposedly) populous this city is, there MUST be stuff happening, right ?

[AoAkinari.9248]

The loading screen of kaineng ... thats how map should look like. To be fair, there're very little details on new maps, first map has some foliage, but echovald? forest? just roots, roots everywhere and all maps lack any environmental details, playing on max settings but it feels like playing on lowest, textures are low quality, no npc's, no light effects, no particles effect ( only some effects are whenever void is present, some shaders and that dark floating gue thingy).

 

Its simply bad.

[Quasi.5281]

53 minutes ago, Joraan Adenard.2061 said:

I agree, Kaineng feels empty (and it's not because of instancing, 100 players wouldnt make this town more lively).

 

Environmental sounds is a great idea, didnt think about that ! Even if the streets look empty, metropolis sounds could help with the immersion.

 

I also think that more dynamic events are needed. With how big and (supposedly) populous this city is, there MUST be stuff happening, right ?

 

I've thought about the events thing, with the "Metal Concert" from Grothmar on my mind. Imagine bustling streets of background, non-interactable NPCs and small, quick little events (by real, normal NPCs) popping up. Jade bot drops a sack of fruit, quick 20 seconds to pick them up. A naga steals someone's bag, quick event to, uh, subdue them. Hell, make it a karma farm.

 

I agree. Great, easy opportunities like that, which has been done before (I love my Grothmar example, clearly), would make the city much more immersive.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Quasi.5281
added a thing

[Quench.7091]

I think the issue is that it's not consistently full looking. Not enough garbage in the slums. Should be hobos around trash fires. Tons of whitespace! They probably had to do it, though. Most maps don't have this level of detail. Maybe they had to spread themselves thin?

Edited March 4, 2022 by Quench.7091

[Bingus.4236]

It's better for it to be a bit empty feeling than fall over performance wise because of NPC spam.

[Deadly.3298]

On 3/2/2022 at 3:53 PM, witcher.3197 said:

Cantha was one of the best parts of GW1. I'm reluctant to even call the EoD continent Cantha because it doesn't really have much to do with Cantha. Hence why the hype is followed by a massive letdown.

They continue to stray too far from the game it was literally named after. I'm not sure why they didn't just name this a new game if they didn't want to follow literally anything  from GW1. It's becoming quite an easy excuse to just "sink" every important area from GW1 rather than recreate it.   I will say this is the best they've done story-wise since GW1 though, that's not saying much.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Deadly.3298

[Faridah.8431]

Old Kaineng doesn't even resemble old Kaineng. I mean, when did Old Kaineng have all these tall stone towers? Not saying I expect there to be a bunch of old wooden shacks still from 250 years ago, but should still be some.

[Gorem.8104]

4 hours ago, Bingus.4236 said:

It's better for it to be a bit empty feeling than fall over performance wise because of NPC spam.

And yet, Grothmar valley worked well and is one of the most praised maps in the game. And what did that have? A LOT of NPC's interacting all over the map. And a LOT of npc's (and players) Rocking out at the awesome concert which apparently gw2 writers wanted to talk down in EoD with Majory being a moody teenager about it. 

 

Grothmar is awesome for so many reasons, and one of them is the sheer number of NPC's in the zone. And yet a City. a giant city that has buildings super tall and could house thousands of NPC's, feels empty. 

[AoAkinari.9248]

3 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

Grothmar is awesome for so many reasons, and one of them is the sheer number of NPC's in the zone. And yet a City. a giant city that has buildings super tall and could house thousands of NPC's, feels empty. 

 Agree totally, grothmar has waaaay more details than eod maps, or drizzlewood south, feels way more richer (as a landscape), they honestly could do it more. I really hope they will add something in the future.

Edited March 5, 2022 by AoAkinari.9248
misspelling