Cubic Castles' Navigation System – All that went wrong
Paul Riggs
Member
Legacy Overworlds, Lobbies, and Modern Overworlds:
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
A. History of the Overworld and its Significance
For a large portion of Cubic Castles' lifetime, it held 5 official overworlds with beautiful non-voxelated, predetermined terrain – Eden, Aspen, Spyre, Pelago, and Tinkerworld. With these overworlds came an intuitive way to introduce yourself to the game: You had a starter deed that you place on an empty spot of land which turns itself into a castle that you can jump into and start building stuff. The overworld would then be littered with plenty of these castles, each representing a creation made by a person from the community. The overworld would then symbolize the collective effort of all the different active players that run the community and kept the game alive. An amazing concept brought to life in this small, ever growing mmo.
B. Navigation, Exploration and Discovery
To navigate the overworld, the player was given access to a sky map, which was basically a zoomed-out version of the overworld with labels and a UI. It allowed them to view all realms displayed in the current overworld. This came with a nice filtering system for different build categories – shops, hangout, pvp, puzzle, you name it. It made it easy to discover realms that the player is actively looking for. Castles also came with a little blue flag that would display the number of people currently inside a realm, (which was also visible in the sky map) and it allowed players to easily find and hop into occupied realms and look for random strangers to communicate and have fun with. This was what the game advertises itself to be – a social game to meet, have fun and hang out with people online. Want people to visit your puzzle realm? Set its realm label as puzzle realm, sit around for a bit, maybe call a few friends, and people will eventually come. The overworld was the perfect implementation of world navigation to get people together for a sandbox mmo style game like this.
C. The Introduction of the Lobby
A few years later, lobbies were introduced. This was a change that greatly impacted how players navigated and discovered realms – some for the better, but many for worse. The lobby update came with a new block called the search bumper, which by typing in the realm name, allowed players to access any realm that existed in Cubic Castles, regardless of whether or not its deed was placed in the overworld. This had 2 major impacts to the game:
- It made it possible to find realms of players whose overworld deeds have decayed.
- Players are no longer required to place their deeds into the overworld in order to access their realms.
The lobby was an implementation that failed to immerse itself into the aesthetic of the game. You spawn in a small room, bump your head on a search bumper and interact with a non-visually appealing UI that displays lists and categories of realms that you may find relevant. Compare that to the overworld, where you are introduced to a vast and beautiful landscape you can walk around, with lots of player made castles you can visit by jumping into them. Overworld navigation felt like a breath of fresh air and a moment to appreciate the hive built by an amazing community. Lobby navigation felt like scrolling through a Microsoft Excell database and looking for that one cell.
D. The End of Exploration?
Though the lobby update didn't remove overworlds entirely, it made visiting overworlds void of purpose.
There just isn't a good reason to stay there anymore unless it was to visit a mine. People stopped placing realms in the overworld entirely. It became difficult to find hidden gems, discover creations by other people, or to simply find places with active people lurking. It was difficult, but not impossible, as many still placed their deeds for people to discover, and this was in line with the spirit of the game – it was what kept the overworld alive. Until the update that put an end to it all.
E. The Modern Overworld: What went wrong?
- Official overworlds now only house official realms
- Players lost the ability to place their deeds in official overworlds
- Players have to spend a whopping 20k+ cubits for their own PRIVATE overworld so they can place their deeds
- The sky map along with all of its features have been removed
- There is no official map that displays all the active player-made overworlds
Having one big map with everyone leaving making a mark on it i.e. placing their own realm (big or small). While keeping the town center, overworld water. Makes the overworld (the second thing a new player sees). Vast and exciting to explore, people can become neighbours, more player traffic and presence in a centralised worldspace.
The new player experience is really underwhelming when leaving your starter realm, you are greeted with an empty island with a hand full of players. You have a realm paper in your inventory that you cannot place down anywhere, the only way to discover new realms is to go to hollas (which are made by a hand full of players), not to mention searching for realms is a hopeless cause when you do not know what a realm is called.
The new player experience is really underwhelming when leaving your starter realm, you are greeted with an empty island with a hand full of players. You have a realm paper in your inventory that you cannot place down anywhere, the only way to discover new realms is to go to hollas (which are made by a hand full of players), not to mention searching for realms is a hopeless cause when you do not know what a realm is called.
This could not have been said better.
The overworld is one of the first things in the game players get introduced to, and the addition of this unnecessary layer of complexity is what drives them away. In today's time, you are given a starter deed that you are unable to use unless you buy an overworld pack for 20k and spend some hours trying to make it look nice. You get introduced into New Eden, with the only navigation system being a non-visually appealing list that displays a limited amount of player-made overworlds you can visit, most of which don't even look good because of the large amount of time and money it takes to build a decent looking overworld, coupled with the limited block pallet and height limit.
"Build your own overworld" was an unnecessary concept came to life. Cubic Castles had realms and rooms for that purpose. Overworlds exist today only as an incentive to create lobbies so players can display their different realms. But the funny thing is, people were already doing that in the past! Players back then built realms dedicated to act as a lobby that linked many of their other realms together. Modern Overworlds are a solution to a non-existent problem.
Discontinued Features
Through the years, the way we navigate worlds and explore different places have changed. And with these changes, it marked the end of many useful features:
- The ability to place a realm in a public overworld for people to discover, and the ability to wander around, maybe visit your neighbours.
- The sky map, the fast travel navigation, and its excellent filtering system for activity and different build categories
- The launchpad, and its immersive way of transporting you through different overworlds
- The ability to simply visit any realm that was once recently active, which in the past was by way of visiting realms that are displayed in the public overworlds
Comments
How to make realm navigation great again?
Bring back the Legacy Overworld, the Sky Map and Launchpad along with it.To solve for the legacy overworlds’ problems in the past, i have come up with some intuitive solutions:
Overworld Space Management
- Create an improved algorithm for how overworld realm decay is calculated. Maybe make it weigh more heavily towards player activity. This would prevent dead realms with 1 million blocks built from occupying most of the land.
- Limit the number of realms allowed to be displayed in the overworld by one player. 10 would be a generous amount. This would prevent trolls from buying 100 deeds and occupying the entire overworld for themselves.
- If the demand for more overworld space is needed, introduce new overworlds over time, starting from Aegis as promised. Maybe in the future we would have more Overworld naming contests should there be a need for more.
Overworld Navigation- Each Overworld will have the official realms be at the center, like old Eden. Maybe replace Cubic Jail with Official Event Realm.
- Instead of lobbies, we could have an NPC dressed up as a wizard right beside the realms at the center we can talk to, and redirects us to a UI similar to as shown in the lobby search bumper. This would be a good and immersive way of finding decayed overworld realms.
- “Featured Realms” from the old lobby UI would have their own section in the overworld center next to the official realms. They would display as duplicate castles that links you to the designated realm when you jump inside them
Overworld DesignWith the legacy overworld, we could have the following features:
- Exploration and Discovery will be brought back to the game
- Overworlds will serve as a hive that represents the ever-growing community
- There will exist a proper navigation system with the reintroduction of the sky map and category filters
It benefits new players, and players that are looking for other players to hang out with. Back in 2015, the way I find and meet people was through the sky map – I would filter realms by activity and visit random realms that are occupied by other people. Sometimes it's a shop with an owner patiently waiting for customers, other times it may be a parkour or minigame realm with players having fun. On the most memorable times, it's a new player figuring out how to build his own realm. And it was an opportunity to help people and teach them the ropes of the game. That's personally how I got myself into Cubic Castles – A random player walked into my realm and offered to help. Gave me some nice clothes, helped me build a house and taught me where to find stuff (Thank you LeonDerek05).With the current navigation system, genuine player to new player interaction is just not possible unless the new player is in New Eden actively spamming "PLS HELP ME LEARN THIS GAME, ADD ME AND TP TO MY REALM".
And what players exactly are harmed by the reversion of modern overworlds?
- Players that bought an overworld pack
- thats it I guess?
The fairest way of implementation here would be to have the modern overworlds converted into realms under the same name, and the overworld blocks converted into ordinary blocks (Overworld ocean into water, etc. Or maybe even introduced as an entirely new block under a different name due to its differences). Stamps and other assets used in the modern overworld that will carry over to legacy overworlds would be relocated into the player's inventory. Players that own overworlds will be refunded 20k c, and that would be the end of it.1. If a realm was not accessed in the last, let's say, six months, it would be (not deleted) removed from the overworld.
2. Overworlds would start very large, and new ones could be added as time passed.
Did I cover all the issues?
https://imgur.com/a/GFmvD1x
It's pretty clear that majority of the community are not artists. They do not know how to create a good landscape or don't have time to put the effort into it, which is understandable. Defaulting to overworlds with predetermined landscapes solves the problem and puts everyone on equal footing.
Overworlds were intended to be a hub where people are brought together. Not a private lobby to showcase your 7 realms.
Hence why I call for a rollback to the legacy overworlds.
As for this proposal:
2. Overworlds would start very large, and new ones could be added as time passed.
Did I cover all the issues?
In the comment above, you'll find mine which I think would be harder to abuse.
- Personal overworlds would be placed inside the main overworld (with their unique "overworld" skin)
- Jumping inside would take you into the personal overworld, where you could access the owners realms and mines, like how it is now
- Going through the exit portal of the realm or hitting the door button (which would replace the search button in personal overworlds) would take you back to the main overworld
In essence, the practical use of the personal overworlds (i.e. private mines, easy access to your own realms) would be kept while the "exploration" of the old overworlds would be brought back, as the only way to find realms other than ones placed inside the overworld would be to go into the main ones and search for it.Overworlds were originally intended to be a hub that brought different people together. It was not intended to be a private lobby for your realm collection. In the past, we had people creating realms that acted as dedicated lobbies, which functioned the same way as modern overworlds. And with my suggestion, you will have your own modern overworld archived as a realm, acting as a functional lobby like what players used to do before.
Modern overworlds benefit the individual but harm the community. They keep the players divided and encourage them to build their own bubble.
That would just add another layer of complexity into the game, and brings old problems brought by lobbies back to life. If players are not required to place their realm in a public overworld (and instead access it through their private overworld which would be difficult for other players to look for), there won't be any real incentive to use public overworlds at all. Historically, the introduction of the lobby caused all overworlds but Eden to be a ghost town. The same thing would happen if private overworlds are still a thing that coexists with public overworlds. And the distinction between private and public overworlds would be difficult to digest for a new player, especially if it's a concept introduced to the player as early as 10 seconds into the game.
Lobbies would then be accessed through a special building near the overworld's center, which functions similarly to New Eden's "My Home" castle.
This saves the developers the headache of figuring out how to convert this to that, as they only have to rename a few things to what they more closely represent. And only minor additions that won't overwrite existing concepts.
This is an alternative to my proposal which suggests overworld conversion to realms.
As we can see, SirK asks us how us qbees how we travel about day-to-day. There's a good quote from BJDware in there too. I wonder what BJD would think now....
1. Public overworlds and skymap would be back, allowing people to find realms they never would have searched up using the search bumper or new search. That would also allow us to use realm style tags in search, making finding good shops or game realms ever so much easier.
2. Lobbies would also be back, letting people who are in a hurry navigate easily to realms they want to find.
3. Private overworlds would stay the same except for these changes: One, you would no longer be able to search for realms inside the overworlds, which would prevent the players who own them from camping out in there own world, a universe controlled by themselves alone and not at all good for player interaction which is the most important part of MMOs. Two, they would be placed in the public overworld along with all the other realms. Three, mines would disappear from them as it would keep things from being super complicated with mine entrances, and since the dream of having private mines is impossible anyway from having a limited amount of servers for each mine.
Thats it. All there is to it.
Now hopefully @SirKewberth reads this.
Overworlds turn into realms, and all overworld only blocks (like realm spots) would become useless, realms would disappear from their spot atop realm spots. Overworlds have deeds, so nothing else is necessary.
Well, a couple things need to be changed, things that were added after "the update"
Fishing would not only work in the then unavailable overworld water, but also in the waters surrounding the overworlds. (and perhaps in regular water too? I want tropical fish!)
Hunting grounds would be spread out across the overworlds, and would still have overworld water in them.
And "That's all Folks!" :)