What is so terrible about Navezgane?
It's not terrible, I prefer to play on it, however I have been trying to understand why others don't, or what could be different about it to help instigate more people playing it over RWG.
I think he nailed part of it, but thinking Nav is too small is weird, I have played long games there and still never explored it all in a single play-through, let alone exhausted all the POIs/loot. Honestly if I did anything to Nav it would be to shrink it, not so much to remove area as much as address the more important point he made that I agree with most: POI density.
Sure there are clusters of buildings in Nav, but they are too few and too far apart at that. The RWG cities are
so much more expansive, and I strongly believe that is why people prefer RWG over Nav. I always play my first new alpha drop game in Nav, this is the first time I gave up early and switched to playing RWG, albeit with one of the pregen maps. Why? Because I spawned on the East side, a combo of how sparse all those buildings are combined with my already basing up there and knowing first hand how slow early game is from that area. I could've moved, sure, but unless you shack up in or near Diersvill early game in Nav can take forever until you get a vehicle. Now I like these challenges, but am not always in the mood for them. So I just went pregen and am diggin it, but that's my SP game...
I am also now in an MP game and we are in Nav, preppin for night 14 now, me and a total noob(their first game ever)and it's going really well... but that's mainly because we live in Diersvill. And the new location for *spoiler* is actually super helpful(you probs know who I mean and where, just don't wanna ruin it for others). But I know Nav well, I just don't think it's good for new players on their own, exploring it can be a ridiculous mistake and waste of time/energy more often than not. I just think, in it's current state, it is best suited for experienced players because it is more difficult overall by comparison. Again I personally prefer Nav, I just get why so many others do not.
In summary, and from all my experience in Nav, what might help? I think mostly a rebalance and redistribution of POIs, maybe even not all that much, and you guys could just work on that each coming alpha until gold, and hopefully make it better by then. But rebalance how? There are just way too many long roads of nothingness between areas, simplest fix might be putting, either moving or making new, POIs along the roadways... more akin to irl really. Especially the long interconnecting roads between clusters. I do think it has gotten better, much better, but still needs work, and there can still be patches of nothing, just not so damn many, and the empty areas should be more in-between and away from the roads, not on them. Roads should, for the most part, have the highest density of POIs, but stretched out along them more evenly, not clusters separated by nothingness. Anyway, again I have noticed improvements already, just keep doing that I guess. I rly think it is just minor balance issues in layout. I'll be happy either way, but if we want more new players in Nav then it could help. Plus I predict the Navezgane map will take on a whole new level of "must play" once the bandits and fuller story, with distinct factions and corresponding POIs, are in place.
But seriously we listen, but ultimately the decisions on how to solve things or even consider them as a problem are up to us.
