To Be Or Not To Be: The Map

FWIW, I completely agree.

The early demos showed animals on the overworld map to suggest a living world. They showed whether or not a city was currently under siege, or if the protection tower was working.

The current map doesn't reflect a living world. It reflects something static.

 

Just like in Ultima 4 or 5 I would love to just roam around on the map, experience the world and get the feeling of walking around in world and not on a map.

Camping would be great on the map as well as seeing monsters and animals roaming around, engaging or fleeing them and discovering some secrets, talking to traveling merchants and heroes etc. It would be very similar to a monoscale map like in Ultima Online. Just zoomed out.
But even if they would add more interactivity later on and just let us walk around in the overworld view I would prefer the 3D map view as it gives the impression of being in a world instead of being on a map.

I would like to have some sort of limited visibility like in Ultima 5, just like it was shown in the first version of the overland map.

But the paper map is just that, a map and not the world. It would be really disappointing if they decided to cut the world exploration aspect from the game.

 

Everyone agrees that the world feels static ... the hard question is 3d - 2d ... they definitely want to add animation; but animals is a big ?

 

Which is what I suggested it needed. You add details like some animations and weather/day to night/random events and that map isn't as bad as people are making out, at least to me.

 

I agree that with animation, the current map can be improved, but I still greatly prefer the style of the old one.

 

I love much more the old style, or even one whole world without map. But is hard to make a good qualification of the "ink" style map, since the one in R4 look like a first demo.

 

I prefer one world, but I understand the logistics/thinking aren't in its favour.

 

Mono-scale? I would prefer that as well, though I understand why they went dual-scale map and if done well, I can be quite happy with it.

 

Original 3D Overland map like the prototype or bust.

-Sergorn

 

As I fear that we will never see the old 3D overland view again and that the devs want to stick with the Browser Paper Mario map I thought about how to improve it.

Let's put all the other things aside. If they want to cut out the world exploration - fine... Let's keep it to the mechanics if they want to stick to the paper map.

Right now there are some odd mechanics with the map and I think that in order to make it work mechanics wise, some things need to change. Let's keep in mind that the devs want the map to be only a means to travel from point A to point B.

1. Remove the free movement on the map. It is pointless and strange. If you want to have a map mechanics then make it like in Baldur's Gate or Skyrim where you have some points of interest on the map and you click on them and auto travel there. Shoving a flag around on bland hexes is really strange and boring as nothing happens at all on the map, so why walk around on it if it is just a means to travel to the next location? When you overhear NPCs talking about a new location it could pop up on the map. Bigger areas like cities could be there right from the beginning.

2. Remove the ability to enter every hex. Now this may seem radical but let's think about this. I guess that there are thousands of hexes in the final game. But there won't be thousands of individual scenes. I believe that there will maybe be three to four different forests, meadows, swamps etc. Do we really want to enter hexes all the time that all look the same? Where you have to walk the same paths over and over again in order to get to the one tree standing in the same place every time? This can become tedious and boring very quickly.
So if we take the Baldur's Gate map mechanics why not put a few special gathering points onto the map, too? So you leave a scene and see the map. Some locations you already discovered are shown as well as some gathering areas like a deep forest and swamp. And you just click on them to fast travel there. The instance automatic would stay the same so that there would only be a certain number of players in one instance at the same time.

This would make the map a simple travel mechanics, the map could look stylistic like some of you want and I guess it could be implemented into the game very easily. It could also be expanded more easily by adding special scenes to it.

Of course I still want to have the old 3D overworld view back and with it the ability to get a substitution for exploring a zoomed out world.

But let's face it. I doubt we will get what we want and you cannot explore a map. So why squeeze a feature like strange free movement onto the map when it doesn't make sense at all and feels strange and out of place? If the devs want to keep it simple and easy then keep it simple and easy and make the map a map and not something that wants to be an odd mixture of the old view and a map as this does not work.
Create a stylistic map with auto travel to some locations and be done with it.

 

Yeah I dunno. There should be unexpected things that happen on the map. whether you explore it or not.

There has to be some way for you to discover "hidden" things too.

I'm not real confident R5 will have a full solution for us. I think we're going to have to see some drastic improvement

in the next couple releases and you know maybe a tri scale map situation is the best solution.

 

Indeed, like how I thought I'd had a random encounter on it (when it snapped into loading an area even though I'd clicked nothing and was halfway through moving).

That kind of Dragon Age thing of being pulled out of map movement for random encounters would be neat, I think.

 

Yes, but the current map also has a long, long way to go. What's to say the finished version won't be showing such things in the pop up and paper style?

I fear a lot of the reaction to the paper map is almost along the lines of people assuming it's what the final version will look like when devs have been explicit that it's super rough and early days for it.

 

I've done a lot of tabletop gaming in my life, something of a forgotten art these days.

Random encounters are amazing. Sometimes you have to veto them, but they always bring something unexpected.

They were honed to perfection from ultima IV onwards. I'd like to see some of that legacy in this game.

There was nothing more chilling than a sea serpent or daemon encounter, just when you were running out of food, just when you were poisoned, man. that was good

You know maybe if PvPers can catch you on the main map, that might be a cool play mechanic. You want to travel and avoid them. Whole bunch of skill progressions associated with it too.

There needs to be that danger feeling associated with leaving safe zones

 

There could be random encounters on the map. So when you are on the map and click the location you want to travel to, the flag moves there rather fast. If there is a random encounter, the flag stops and you are transported to a battle scene - similar to Dragon Age.

 

I don't like these ideas at all, sorry. 1) It takes away the ability to have hexes have different scenes dependant on weather/time/date etc...you could have at 12 midnight every day hex(whatever hex used for example) has a gathering of witches. Your suggestion severely limits that. 2) Random map events like volcanoes and meteor strikes will become simple map locations with no surprises on the way. 3) As you move a long the map you may have surprise encounters and possible events. To me there is still some exploring with the map that would e destroyed if it was switched to your idea.

 

1. There could still be different scenes dependant on weather, time, date... There could be an indicator on the map telling what time and weather it is.

2. The random map events would still be there and there could be surprises while travelling to the events. It would not be that different.

3. Same as 2. When clicking on the location you want to go to, there could be a random event taking you out of the travel-movement just like in Dragon Age.

Moving around freely on the map with next to every hex being the same is pointless imo. The travelling gets drawn to unneccesary length and entering every hex is pointless, too if they all look the same. So it would be better to speed up travelling on the map and have fewer but more interesting locations as well as random encounters along the way - just like in Dragon Age/Baldur's Gate. This would be much more in line with a travelling by map system.

 

I still don't agree.

Think of this. Every time you move into a hex it has a predetermined scene it loads, except every random time(or other reason) it may possibly load a new map with something interesting some unique to that exact hex. Then each hex is an exploration, there is some exploration still. This also makes the game feel a lot larger then a few clickable areas. Not to mention you want to enter forest and mountain tiles in order to harvest. There are many good reasons beyond those that I can see to stay with the current design.

The only reason i could see to go with your idea is to streamline and that wouldn't be what I am looking for.

I fully expect them to add weather and time to the current map.

 

Did the devs confirm that they plan something like that? And even if they do, this could work with my idea, too. When you enter the gathering areas on the map, there could be some random events there too, from time to time.

Exploration on a paper doesn't work imo. As you do not get the feeling of exploring a world. The map as it is now is a map on which you move a flag slowly around. It takes too long to get to the points of interest and it is boring to look at a paper map for this long. As the map is meant as a means to travel to locations I think that it should be as fast as possible. Just imagine if you want to travel from one end of the world to the other and you have to click from hex to hex and watch how this flag slowly moves around on paper...
Also I doubt that many people will click on every hex to enter it once they realize that they all will look the same. So they will keep clicking on those hexes that are next to their city in order to harvest ressources. So it doesn't make sense to be able to enter every hex and thus it doesn't make sense to freely move around on the map.
With a map system like in Dragon Age the devs could concentrate on making fewer but way more detailed and interesting scenes.

And the exploration aspect has been taken out of the game with the 3D zoomed out world view. So if they go with a map they should do it in way that makes sense imo.

 

I think it might be helpful to backup for a sec and clarify/set some terminology: Map versus Overland View.

What we were shown in R4 is in fact a map. No matter how much it gets dressed up it will still be just a map. It would perhaps be best to think of it as little more than the cloth map which is such a fundamental feature of RG games: oh so necessary, but ultimately static in function. From that perspective the devs could have it easy: a simple, static map would meet the case (perhaps pan and zoomable with the ability to place parchment stickies with our own notes a-la Ultima Underword). Heck I'd settle for a really good PDF I can print tabloid size at Staples for $4.

The crisis that many of us are feeling is that the map seems to have surreptitiously taken over what we thought was going to be "the other half" of the game: the Overland View, which in simple terms looked to have been a "zoomed out" view of the not too distant surroundings (as it was in Ultima 4). I for one never saw it as "the map", but rather more of a "change in scale" and not usable at all as a map in that you'd never be able to zoom that far out (hence you still need a static map of some sort). I saw it as something which was going to make our fragmented world not feel so fragmented.

Point being, its not that we don't like the "map", rather it is the omission of the "overland view" which is so very jarring. In other words any map is no substitute because the two were not synonymous in the first place.