Open World

I post this as positive feedback, not otherwise, I like Shroud of the Avatar, I'm journeying through Highvale Outskirts for the second time and noticed how big the map is, and how open world it feels. And I think about other games with smaller budgets being open world, and wish SotA could be open world too. Perhaps it's not a possibility with this engine, I don't know. Old games that are long gone that were open world had an entirely different feel to them, the possibility of many players on 1 giant map attracts players like a magnet. Many players on the same map. Either way I like the Highvale Outskirts map, maybe an impossibility, but, no loading screens and fully open world, that would instantly change the game to an extreme.

 

Highvale outskirts is one of my favorite scenes.

 

There is one thing I like about this game that most players won't care about. In the old days, we had 8 levels. if you had 800 hit points, you were a bad ass.

Now I've seen players with 1000 hit points or more. So, when i look at any screen, I can say, okay, you're about 4th level (> 5th level).

This is kinda neat because it corresponds with Old school, way old school, Ultima savegames

 

But to stay on topic, I think the loading could be hidden better than it is.

Load in the background and let us potter around scenes while you do it, it would help.

 

Okay so I've thoroughly explored Highvale Outskirts, I like the size, it's gigantic compared to every exploration scene I've explored so far, I'm new to exploring every scene, I think it'd be cool if the game was 20 Highvale Outskirts connected, and instead of loading screens you'd get the delay across servers, like in UO, but I know that would be a re-making of the game. If anything I just hope to find more large scale open scenes like Highvale Outskirts, looking forward to Episode 2, but I just started Episode 1, I'm trying to finish every quest, and I can't tell the difference between the main quest and the side quests and I keep picking up tons of quests as I talk to every NPC. The quests in Highvale are unique though I am enjoying them.

 

Yeah all the starter zones were made with the new style (large map) in mind. I love the way Bloodriver Outskirts, Highvale Outskirts, and Solace Bridge Outskirts were made and I wish they were around when I was starting the game for sure. The new ones and uncloned ones seems to be following suit as well. There are some limitations with the engine though I do not know what the hard cap is for # of players and # of battles/npcs engaged in combat etc a zone can handle at once. May be something to ask @Chris or the other devs to get a general idea of what they can do now and, if they focused on it, what would be their max if they could bump it up any. That way instead of just hoping for, or asking for something that's not possible due to the constraints of the engine, that we could offer suggestions based on what we know *can* be done with the current engine in those regards.

 

We'd definitely have subscriptions then.

What they did to drastically reduce server costs, and make buy-once-and-play (or even single-player), more feasible, was that the player's computers ran the scenes. If you're in a scene with multiple other people, one of those people running it. The clients check into central server to do things like report harvest actions, kills, etc... but the actual creatures running around, etc, are ran by the players. It's a 2p2 model, essentially.

That also means that the entire world cannot be ran by a single person's machine. So it needs to be broken up. WoW makes you pay a monthly subscription so they can run large, beefy servers... and even then, they're probably broken up by continent.

 

Explanation of Dual Scale Map. I understand your want for open world, I wanted the same as well until I watched this video. @Chris explained why they made that choice.

 

I wish to have more diversified scenes in term of monster level. I think in big regions like the highvale outskirts there should be a wide range of monster classes from easy T1/T2 up to spots with
highend monsters T5 or above. Upper Tears is one of those regions that has this concept in a rudimental way, beeing a T4 Area with a highlevel spot behind the waterfalls. That would drive the highlevels
also into "Low-Level" Maps and force the exploration of the maps. And the mix of players on a single map would be good as well. High levels could help to lower levels etc...

 

Yea, I prefer open world too. But since that is not going to happen, when they redo the scenes make them bigger.... wish we had a huge dungeon where everyone can explore in at the same time..... allowing single players in at the same time allowing in groups, pvp'rs etc …..

 

Going to have to go in the opposite direction

Highvale outskirts is one of the worst zones.

Solace Bridge outskirts is done much better.


Open world just makes travelling a pain. Look how many zones are in this game.

Plan a route from Graff to Elysium and imagine having to walk thru the breadth of every adventuring zone, city, pot, control point along the way.

I like the overworld map. It looks good.

 

I would prefer a big open world, but I like the overworld map also. I just wish the scenes were just 10x bigger at least.

 

I'm not really sure on any open area mmo's on smaller budgets that have what SotA has actually. Even Crowfall had a kickstarter budget of $1,766,205 (by which some would think they should have the complete game with that amount) and they're still collecting money to develop it (over $7 million now and going). I guess if we want to have some bigger open world scenes, we may have to limit what's done in them so the engine can handle it. Like, if you want some kind of RvR/PvP contests, matches, arena, siege, may have to keep it limited to smaller instances and still have a cap on the number of participants per. I do like the idea of eventually reaching a state like that. Camelot Unchained had to build an engine specifically to accommodate having so many fighting in an area for RvR & sieges due to limitations of the Unity engine, but that was their focus. We've actually got a lot more going on in SotA, which may hinder us in some areas, instead of just being streamline for just a couple of similar aspects.

 

Yeah I preferred the soltown catacombs when it was open to all players, I was told that wasn’t the case, but it wasn’t that long ago, maybe someone complained ppl were camping the chest room, camping chest rooms is what draws players into a game to begin with

 

There’s a low budget game that’s open world, except the cities, so the entire world has no loading screens, except when you enter a city, would be cool to see something similar to that, dungeons/cities having loading screens makes sense but the open aspect draws players in, i know it’s too radical to implement but it’s just something to consider

 

Wow! That's very interesting and seriously quite genius. It makes a good deal of sense now as to how and why things operate the way they do with this game and the engine.

I'm perfectly fine with this mode of operation, because I don't know if we'd have this game without this kind of system.

 

This is why I like Norgard Fens as a scene, because it feels like there's a lot of exploration, and you have to move and about out to explore and find things and find enemies. I don't think all scenes should be necessarily big, but some are way too small, and exploratory aspects of gameplay cuts down on grinding a bit and makes the game world feel more natural.

Though, I also think it would be great if there were more connected scenes, like they do with the underworld. I'm not talking about connecting every single scene as a replacement for OW travel, because I would find that contrary to some of the goals of the game. But for instance, if there's a N forest and a S forest, there might be a hidden grotto that connects the two.

Also, for instance, if you've been to Upper Fortus, you know there's a log ride. It would be nice if going on the log and letting it take you out of the scene eventually dropped you at a "Lower Fortus" scene near the river mouth, for instance. In between, there could even be a special "river scene", that's only accessible through the log ride, that has a special dungeon entrance through the rocks on the side of the river.

So, more creative stuff like that.

 

I also think it allows them to do a lot of fun stuff that the devs didn't think of.

So the devs have talked about,
- Dynamic map that can change radically with things like meteors, volcanic eruptions, ice, plague etc.
- Easier to update content,
- Selective and phased instancing for story and MP,
- Simpler travel system,
- Lower costs of developing a huge wordl,

But also think about these things,
- Treasure systems where locations only appear on the map when you have a map or get tipped about it, sort of like gameplay in some of the Monkey Island games,
- Similar systems for player created quests,
- Camping system which functions as LFG, where people can see your campfire on the map and join a map instance with you,
- Weather system where you can see weather above a scene on the OW before entering it,

I think there are definite advantages to the approach they're taking.

They ought to know though, some scenes are way too small, and there is a certain fun of pushing out in a scene and exploring, and finding hidden places, and transversing scenes, etc. So they should think about ways of reconciling the two models.

 

[QUOTE="redfish, post: 1089733, member: 13040"
They ought to know though, some scenes are way too small, and there is a certain fun of pushing out in a scene and exploring, and finding hidden places, and transversing scenes, etc. So they should think about ways of reconciling the two models.[/QUOTE]

I believe most of these are the earlier scenes such as many in the Hidden Vale that could benefit from some retooling/recreation. Others like the Encounters work better with a small-sized map.