Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link
It seems you're are making Master Li an influential character in the story (or at least to what's happening in Graal City), so if he carries such influence, why wouldn't he be able to create an outpost somewhere a bit closer to the city, or arrange for easier transportation from his place to the city?
|
Weighing everything up Master Li's was the ideal location for a central quest hub.
The ninja encampment is as close as you can get to Graal City before you hit that line where in placing several buildings you'd be infringing original locations, which I'd imagine would probably generate even more complaints (justified or not, again we're trying to find a balance).
Ofcourse there wasn't anything stopping us from packing all of these places into a single building, or hiding Master Li's/a different hub within some warp. On the other hand it's always been a public intention of ours to try and limit the amount of waste space on the overworld and provide different areas with something of interest or purpose. With the combination of the starter content and Master Li's we've accomplished this in 2 areas that throughout long periods of the past have been virtual wasteland.
I would say that the only other location which could possibly be any more central, but without that potential downside of older players opposing the change of an old location, is the level directly above level14.
As it happens this is where we intend to place the eventual GC Studios. This is something I think would be more appropriate as this will have purpose regardless of a players questing progress. Master Li's or a different hub is only going to be as purposeful as it currently is for what is only a portion of the overall planned quest line.
When it comes to constructing the storyline itself, there wasn't really much alternative for a character further within Graal City to build the player up in the same way Master Li has. Again there was the option of coming up with something entirely new, just this time rather than it being a matter of old vs new we felt Master Li's was ideal largely due to the fact that he's a master of combat, and that Sister Gertrude > Master Wong > Master Li would be a good connection.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying what we have is perfect, but I think it's pretty effective for what we intended to achieve on both a players perspective and a developers perspective.