As a giant fan of R. Garriots work i must tell thee, my fellow traveler. The fact that you have to run the gameworldmap to change position makes the game somehow losing its story/integrity. And it throws away tons of gamecontent, when travelling does not happen in the same plane as youre actually playing the game in. This makes the game somehow dull. Playing the game this way makes me always forget why im playing it (and this is so unbelievably not R. Garriot like).
You say that, yet any Ultima game I've played (not that many but still), apart from Ultima Online, was an overworld travel with instances zones, be it towns or dungeons, so to say that this is not Rochard Garriot like is possibly one of the most incorrect statements I've heard about the game. Now I will admit that I would love the game far more if the OW didnt exist, but from what I've heard (or read on these forums, I'm not sure where I got the info), is that there's an issue with Unity that cant make it work any other way, due to the size of the project, and unless they would get millions in funding and hire a whole studio to redo the game on another engine, it probably wont happen.
Thanks for the comment... truly! but there's a bit of a learning curve to be dealt with because there are so many different options in our game! Unfortunately our Shroud of the Avatar has allot of things to learn about it before all is known by the player... and then they change it all again based on player feedback from time to time. "Recommendation... Guild-Mates!" I do deeply encourage you to join one of our active guilds where you can have some "on hand answers" to things that would seem obvious, yet aren't seemingly accommodated for. Chances are, that there is some answer or solution that makes the world all right again. Just come to know your guild-mates as your very own personal "Time Lord Sonic Screwdriver" Discover our world through questioning everything in our world! Guild-Mates... the Time Lord never travels into our deepest regions without one ! Otherwise I truly don't know everything I'm doing, or even then, it just helps me fake my way through things a whole lot better! ~Time Lord~
It is just a guess but I think the devs could bring together all currently available scenes and make it feel like one big scene you never leave but each solution has its pros and cons. E.g. currently they are able to add a new scene by just dropping an entrance point at the overworld map. Doing the same in the one-world-scene isn’t that easy as you cannot extend the available land. Instead you would have to remove some of the older content to make room. And even if I prefer traveling on the overworld map there are a lot of avatars who are using scrolls to instantly teleport between scenes.
Welcome @AvatarLulu. Yes the Over World map has since early development been a source of strong debate. It was imo opinion greatly improved over time in some ways but never gained enough interesting reasons to be on it in the first place. Lots of missed opportunities imo like trade wagon routes, rifts, x marks the spot, and other things. Instead it is a map full of entrances to the loading of scenes With not enough immersive world along the way. Still it is said episode 2 will strive to address this as well as many other things. I am used to the overworld map now and it has its place for short distances for me. I mainly use our teleport to zone scrolls to mark any locations in the game. Just drag it to your utility hot bar to check your locations. You can craft them or buy them. The recipe is on the alchemy NPC. You cannot check your scroll though if you are encumbered. You can even mark mines on it. Best wishes to you. I'm Majoria in the game if I can help. Anyway it's an aspect of the game and there are alot of great things to see and enjoy too such as the music system.
They are considering going forward with future episodes being a more seamless world. They are working on spawn and AI optimizations to allow for MUCH larger scene building, and the new world of episode 2 will have much larger areas, possibly connecting to one another. The idea above about dropping entrances, that's deffinately an option on paper if they choose to do it. having 1 scene's exit lead directly to the next scene. That would, however, make you have to go through a lot of loading screens to get from place to place
Yup, Ultima I through to VI (I believe) were Overworlds with "instanced" towns and dungeons. I like the Overworld because it lends a sense of scale. I think without it the world would feel tiny. (See Ultima IX) The most recent game I completed with a massive open world was Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and that only had a budget of what - 250/300 million dollars?
Unfortunately i have to admit i only played Ultima7 I+II,Pagan, Ascension and worlds of adventure 2: martian dreams. So therefore my association towards traveling in the game.
There was five years ago, when they had to start work on the game. They could probably do it now, except that the whole player-owned town thing would probably be trickier without the two-scale system. It also gives more freedom to insert new areas as desired, instead of trying to wedge things into an already gridded continent. I would, however, like to see more direct routes between adjacent areas.
A bit like how many underground's connect into shardfalls and what not? I agree, this would be fun to have!