Nexus Clash

Presented without comment:

What is your favorite neighborhood? (From any plane or breath!) What makes this neighborhood stand out to you?

What resources do you feel are necessary in a neighborhood? (Including, but not limited to building types, specific types of items, specific crafting benches)

Bonus question: Which B5 neighborhoods feel properly sized? Which ones feel too big? Too small?

Bonus question: How often do you read tile descriptions? [Every time, most of the time, sometimes, rarely, never]

(Optional:) Could you explain why?

(Optional:) What would make you engage more with tile descriptions?

This breath? Hades Tol. All breaths? Il Pozzo del Deserto and Caldera (yes really)

Resources? books

I like smaller neighborhoods. BC is fucking enormous and Centrum could be split halfway

Back in the day I used to read every single one of them, now I just gotta slay and be efficient so rarely if ever. Plus it used to be all new to me so I'd always get something new, now I can't risk READING (eurgh) and then read something I've already read before

engage more with tile descriptions, idk, give me some amnestics or let's go back in time or something

Il Pozzo del Deserto

I loved b2's different environments as a whole and would love to see such things come back. and not just because I want to RP a wizard cowboy again. Neighborhoods or maps need libraries, gunstores, places to farm alchemy ingredients, restaurants or grocery store, hospital or drug stores and a street or a train station.

Cordillera is a nice map, but its way too big and a lot of it feels redundant. Centrum Elysium and Stygia are all good sized. Purgatorio is a mess and I hate it, the diversity in locations is great, but the chains and all of the empty space and flying being basically a requirement to get around effectively makes my ancestors cry.

I sometimes read tile descriptions, I generally ignore them for houses, office buildings, ect.

1. Breath: Port Hope, solely because of the Good-Evil Port Hope Infusion War that happened recently. I've got an attachment to the place. I also really like Carousel Station.

2. Hospital and Library, healing and book-leveling is all I think is needed. Other resources are nice. Maybe a weapon source of some sort.

3. Port Hope and Great Plains feel appropriately sized. I genuinely don't know the size of other neighborhoods in any realm except Centrum. I do agree that Centrum could be split, inside the Quickway and outside of it.

4. Sometimes I do, especially in new places.

Favourite neighborhoods in Cordi:
- the area of Belmont Court between the transporter and Rosetta Library
- Port Hope
- Honorable mention to the Minglewood area near the transporter, I don't "reside" there but it looks nice.

Resource tiles: Libraries first and foremost, also because new characters use them a lot; forests/mountains for Alchemy components, outdoor tiles in general for fonts (+alchemy), a factory for crafting. I have mixed feelings about hospitals, I haven't had much luck in leveling my characters via healing. A cheap portal to bend is also nice to have nearby.

Neighborhood size: that's a tricky question for a newb, I don't infuse and honestly I rarely think about where exactly a neighborhood starts and ends... mostly when cutting/restoring power. Even then I need to look at unofficial maps in Discord... are there official maps that show their borders? The Wiki itself only vaguely mentions neighborhoods, redirecting to the two-line Districts paragraph, and having a few scattered mentions of the words neighborhood/district in infusion-related pages, for what I can find.
So, I don't even know if my comment would be useful at all, neighborhoods to me are mostly nice general names for an area. The main metric for my characters is how close they are to a transporter and to the tiles they need. I'd say that "close" is ~5 tiles or less. But I also don't think that all neighborhoods should be the same, with equivalent tiles. For example, Praxis looks like a very industrial area, which is nice for crafters, but the distance to forests is disheartening to alchemists. That's ok. Belmont Court near the transporter feels very posh. Port Hope is nice and quaint. The areas at the NW/NE/SW/SE corners might be less interesting, but I think that this kind of area away from high transit also has its uses. The Cordillera map feels nice.
Purgatorio not so much (I had to sneak a comment somewhere).

When/why I read tile descriptions: mostly when I'm in a new area, because I think they're neat, and mostly when my character doesn't fear for their life, so not much when they're outside in the open.

What would make me engage more with tile descriptions: possibly interacting with things listed in the description? Or if locations had pictures/images, I think that after seeing the picture I'd want to read the full description to know more.

RKBBQ wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 5:17 pm What is your favorite neighborhood? (From any plane or breath!) What makes this neighborhood stand out to you?

I can't remember NW neighborhoods, and I don't interact much with them this time around because I have had trouble finding out where the borders are on the map and thus feel like I have no point of reference. However, Ash Harbor is my favorite because my Lich lives there and can summon skellingtons without needing the summon corpse skill.

RKBBQ wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 5:17 pm What resources do you feel are necessary in a neighborhood? (Including, but not limited to building types, specific types of items, specific crafting benches)

Depends on the type of neighborhood - not all of them should have all resource buildings. However, having a smithy-type thing close to a resource building where you can find related items (such as chunks of iron and wood to make hatchets for example, instead of just steel for daggers and swords) is nice and convenient.

RKBBQ wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 5:17 pm Bonus question: Which B5 neighborhoods feel properly sized? Which ones feel too big? Too small?

Can't really comment because as mentioned I don't really know where they start and end.

RKBBQ wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 5:17 pm Bonus question: How often do you read tile descriptions? [Every time, most of the time, sometimes, rarely, never]

Really only if they're short or if I'm hunting at night (and look for the bold text). Usually only have the description open if I want to know who else is on the tile.

RKBBQ wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 5:17 pm (Optional:) Could you explain why?

See above.

RKBBQ wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 5:17 pm (Optional:) What would make you engage more with tile descriptions?

The descriptions feel like a wall of text, or at least they did until I wanted to give a proper answer to this question. It's only like 3 or 4 lines. But they don't have the buttons I need to interact with the world nor the character list that either presents a threat (in case of hostiles and possibly neutrals) or a safe-ish area (with friendlies) and screen space is already precious enough. I think it boils down to not liking scrolling and the description pane taking up a bunch of space with everything going on. Maybe split the character list off into a separate pane? Icons or links to the wiki in the text itself so you know at-a-glance whether the tile has a smithy, books, whatever?

What is your favorite neighborhood? (From any plane or breath!) What makes this neighborhood stand out to you?
No favourites, I think? I'm loosely attached to Praxis for thematic reasons, and Port Hope was a nice starting out spot and the sight of some fun activities and battles, especially early on.

What resources do you feel are necessary in a neighborhood? (Including, but not limited to building types, specific types of items, specific crafting benches)
I think good alchemy component sources should be located, not necessarily in EVERY neighbourhood, but perhaps in adjacent ones. I don't mind the notion that there should be a little travel involved to gather rare or useful components, but something not too painful would be preferable.

I think books hold lesser importance with B5 exp changes - unless you're grinding them or T1.

Bonus question: Which B5 neighborhoods feel properly sized? Which ones feel too big? Too small?
Nothing new, but Belmonth Court feels huge.

Loosely related commentary, but I think Great Plains feels too empty, and the edge neighbourhoods (Sleepy Hollow, Pheasant Hills, Fiddlers Green and Fenwater Meadow) feel odd - possibly their shape, but I also don't have a great sense of where they start and finish. Might just be me!

Bonus question: How often do you read tile descriptions? [Every time, most of the time, sometimes, rarely, never]

(Optional:) Could you explain why?

(Optional:) What would make you engage more with tile descriptions?
Basically never - I'll sometimes read them when there's a badge there and there's some flavour text related to the badge. Or if it's like, a water tile that someone has left graffiti on, just because I think it's amusing to see "there is a rock here" in the middle of the ocean.

Much as with others, I'm usually moving around to do some particular business and don't want to sit and read at risk of being ganked by a passerby. I'm also aware that the tile descriptions are mostly similar in form, so they kinda blur together. If they were perhaps briefer or only focused on things worth reading, I'd maybe take more of an interest.

What is your favorite neighborhood? (From any plane or breath!) What makes this neighborhood stand out to you?

From B5 the current most-used is Praxis in Cordillera for very pragmatic reasons - concentration of resources and gateways to other areas. Flavour wise it's Vanillahalla so not much to recommend there. I have only briefly stopped by some of the Purgatorio locations in B5 so no real feelings there just yet although the undead sea area looks intriguing. Flavour-wise the Centrum-Cordillera dynamic (B5 equivalent of the Isle of Gates to Valhalla) but that doesn't seem to have been fully executed.

From other periods, the Caldera and Nifleheim. The Caldera was one of the more flavoured areas of earlier times, huge in scale and had the feel of a lost world. Nifleheim with it's corpse-free summoning mechanics and the Victorian combo of Gothic / Weird West was a revelation coming from Valhalla.

IMO the aesthetic / feel has to come from the implementation, backed by mechanics and intent. Both Caldera and Nifleheim had specific resources and challenges that defined their character really well.

What resources do you feel are necessary in a neighborhood? (Including, but not limited to building types, specific types of items, specific crafting benches)

None are absolutely necessary, it's the intent behind their placement that's important. There should be uniqueness that informs diversity rather than homogenisation (same argument applies to class design as well but that's another kettle of fish). Resources are abundant almost everywhere. The area of Cordillera that feels most unique is the woodlands / hunting area in the N precisely because of skewed resources. Travelling to get something should be part of the game.

Currently the mechanics provide very little incentive to be anywhere other than Cordillera. There's little reason to stay in (or go to the effort of claiming territory in) Stygia or Elysium that I can see. Admittedly I'm still T2 but that's a perennial thing e.g. for demons the usual question is 'how quickly can I get out of Stygia?' and it seems no different in B5.

Bonus question: Which B5 neighborhoods feel properly sized? Which ones feel too big? Too small?

I expect there might be an argument that Cordillera is too large, and a related argument that Purgatorio is clumsy. It makes sense that if only Cordillera territory is counted in the overall infusion war and victory conditions then it is a large area to be fought over.

Bonus question: How often do you read tile descriptions? [Every time, most of the time, sometimes, rarely, never]

Most of the time.

(Optional:) Could you explain why?

Some of the descriptions are wonderful thematic nuggets. Others are just amusingly broken and have been for some time.

(Optional:) What would make you engage more with tile descriptions?

In games dev it's called toys or keys or attributes. Things with which you can, if astute, interact. Lit building shadow descriptions are one such crude example. Ever noticed that there is no noise in the Nexus?

What is your favorite neighborhood? (From any plane or breath!) What makes this neighborhood stand out to you?

Port Hope is my favorite. It has everything you need in one are and just feels much more like a small town than other areas.

What resources do you feel are necessary in a neighborhood? (Including, but not limited to building types, specific types of items, specific crafting benches)

Breweries for food, targets and booze. First aid/medical building, factories/forest for comps and library.

Bonus question: Which B5 neighborhoods feel properly sized? Which ones feel too big? Too small?

Port hope, great plains chaplin gardens with forest, and merrior feel great. Belmont should be 2 sections.

Bonus question: How often do you read tile descriptions? [Every time, most of the time, sometimes, rarely, never]

Sometimes. I tend to read the graffiti most of the time.

(Optional:) Could you explain why?

I tend to worry about getting seen and killed off when I'm moving around in the open and the description are rather long.


(Optional:) What would make you engage more with tile descriptions?

Bolder flavor items in the description, maybe. If I see something interesting I may stay longer to read through it all. The longer I play the game though the more I become interested in the smaller details of the game, so maybe just time playing is enough .

What is your favorite neighborhood? (From any plane or breath!) What makes this neighborhood stand out to you?

Tie between Chaplin Gardens and the part of Belmont by the transporter. I like the layout/distribution of resource buildings, the connected interiors in Belmont, and the overall vibe of the places.

What resources do you feel are necessary in a neighborhood? (Including, but not limited to building types, specific types of items, specific crafting benches)

Brewery, Corner Store, Pharmacy/Hospital, Library, Bar, Forest/Mountain, Factory.

Bonus question: Which B5 neighborhoods feel properly sized? Which ones feel too big? Too small?

I don't think any feel too small. Belmont is too big. Choral is slightly too big.

Bonus question: How often do you read tile descriptions? [Every time, most of the time, sometimes, rarely, never]

Sometimes

(Optional:) Could you explain why?

I like the read natural font descriptions or descriptions that are new in some way. Once I've read it I usually don't read that tile description again.

(Optional:) What would make you engage more with tile descriptions?

If they were more dynamic and if they affected the game somehow.