adventuring and exploration *immersion* on the world map

This topic is in regards to the 4-18-13 dev chat where RG explains really great points on questing and the aspect of not having a quest log, which I agree with 100%. It is pretty clear how much detail goes into the immersion process that RG puts into his games.

That being said, I am concerned with the "current feel" of the world map and interactions with it that have been discussed in recent dev chats. It feels like the world and system in general is really being tailored to the feeling of exploration, and if you don't know about something, then you should go try it out and see for yourself, verses having the game already give you all the details and information of what you should be doing.

I love the exploration aspect and not being told what to do, which RG is doing a great job at developing thus far. My concern is the dev chats giving the feel that a cloth map, for unexplored areas, really takes away from the exploration aspect. If I have a cloth map that represents topography and structure location, then the feeling is that the game is telling me "Hey, there is a town here, a dungeon there, a..." and all that hard work the crew is putting into making you explore/adventure is really lost.

I know there are a lot of people who prefer a world map feel vs cloud coverage, and I agree with them to a degree as well, but I don't want to be told that "This structure is here, and that one is there." I want to explore things and find new things that I would not have known about if I had not ventured out on my own without having the game design telling me to do so.

I think a topography map would work better with very limited structure information to keep player immersion of not knowing anything about this world if we are being ported into it by whatever means the story line gives. This also makes cartographers needed in the game world, so if I want to by a map ahead of time so I know what the area I'm getting ready to venture into has to offer, then I will know, verses the game just telling me all this stuff is over here.

On a final note. I have not heard much said on this, but it might have been briefly touch on in the world map chat. Are there plans to have a shaded texture creep into areas we have visited before, but have not been to in a while, so that I don't know a town is under siege on the other side of the world unless an npc/pc has informed me of such an action?

**In the end, I really don't want to be informed of anything that my character has not been told about or seen first hand in the game world.**

Keep up the great work everyone! =)

 

You could also consider a effect of view of visibility, where you can only see immediately around you not due to lack of exploration but because of effects like - actual fog, dense forest, waterfall, force shield etc.

Example of walking through dense forest not being able to see very far then come into a clearing with a campfire. You get a large amount of change of light from pure darkness to being covered in orange and red light.

 

^ Great idea!

I'm really interested in having a few skills that make exploration and viewing of the world map different depending on how much knowledge or perception you truly have based on those skills.

I don't want to know a town, that I have visited before, that is realistically a day or twos worth of travel away is under siege if a pc/npc hasn't informed me of it being under siege, and if I don't have line of sight of that town due to forest, hills, or mountains obscuring the view.

 

i personally grew up with all the old Ultima games aswell and the running around on the world map view really didnt appeal to me it wasent until UO came out that accually had realistic exploration that i began to really enjoy the genre. Running around on a TOP\world map view takes away the immersion that im really there thus breaking the game for me and im sure im not alone on this

 

@Matheryn,

You could still get lost for a while on the travel map in games like U5 because of sight limitations and there were places to discover, such as small huts (Sutek, Sin V'raal), or keeps hidden in dense forests or between mountains.

In fact I've been wondering why they don't go more with that approach instead of having a fog of war. IMO, the game should be scaled to a degree that your view space on the screen should reflect the limits of your possible range of vision, rendering a fog of war unnecessary.

One of the problems with a single scale map, though I love the immersion, is that in modern games the wilderness gets so condensed and tiny. Britannia in UO was relatively small. Remember, though, in SoTA they've said that you can zoom into any hex on the travel map; so there's plenty of exploration to do.

 

yes but how much can you zoom? can you zoom in so close that it looks like your travelling across the land like UO? if so ill stay in that zoom frame otherwise it just seems immersion breaking. Dont get me wrong as i said earlier in the single games it was fantastic but for a MMO it seems too small

 

@Valice Belgraham - I was picking up that the interchange between the top level hex map and the detailed game view greatly helps in creating more -dynamic- areas to explore. If it was just a single scrolling map, it would pretty much be the same thing once it has been explored. There's not really a need to re-explore an area. By splitting the game world, I think it actually HELPS create more opportunities for exploration.

Example: One day I could be hunting for animal skins in the forest at the base of a mountain. Lush meadows, dense copses of trees, mountain views, etc. A week later I could hear a rumor in a tavern that the mountain I was just at was a dormant volcano that unexpectedly erupted. I could now go back to that same hex and discover dark crevasses filled with lava, blackened trees, lava tubes to explore, etc. The whole area needs to be re-explored. This type of change is much much easier to implement for a game developer than changing a large portion of a single map.

As for the cloth map overlay on unexplored areas, I think the idea is that the map would display very very general locations, ones that most people already know about. So, the general location of major cities would be known by most people, even if they had never been there. But, they wouldn't know all the more detailed things along the way - the small villages, gypsy camps, caves and abandoned mines, etc. Those locations would only be found through exploration. You may get general directions from people in town for these locations, but you will have to find them for yourself.

 

@ beastvold

Your interpretation of the mapping system has left me deep in thought and where at one point i was swaying more against the hex map i now am swayed back towards the middle again

I never really considered a more indepth version such as your before and i can indeed see how that is definately a good posibility.

thankyou

 

@beastvold yep that is also how I view the dual scale map being a much more interesting tool for exploration than any mmorpg has done before. We'll probably find ourselves checking random hexes for fun to see if anything has changed in them, even if we hadn't heard anything yet.

I also preferred the fog of war system myself, you don't know what you cant see. what will be fun is if sometimes what our map shows should be there, is completely different, so that could actually be more fun than a fog of war. Just like roaming the country side in real life and finding something differs from a map.

I personally didn't care for dom jon's changes he showed in his video.. and i enumerated the things I thought it removed from the game for fun gameplay. But I also played and enjoyed Civilizatoin 4 and 5 a lot which is what they sort of modeled the overworld map off of... and there are plenty of highly rated RPGs that use the dual scale map that are new. Ni No Kuni I really enjoyed.

 

Wanted to revisit this topic to see if there had been any updates or mentions of the world map system at this point.

Great points in here, and wanted to follow up that a light fog of war, or graying out, coming back over previously visited areas would really help keep the immersion in needing to revisit areas in an ever changing world where a forest or ruins might have exsisted weeks before, but changed due to whatever world circumstances.

 

If you noticed in the 6-month video recently, they did not show the world map / overland view. It doesn't look like it's ready to be revealed just yet. I too would love to see an update on it! Complete with whatever fog of war system and weather and all that jazz!

I wonder if it will look anything like the upcoming Age of Wonders 3 or they're still shooting for Civ 5 which, although still nice, is going to look dated when SotA ships in late 2014.

 

Morrowind was not imersive even though it was FP all the way. Also, quick transit was simply "black out" then you there. A cop out like taking a date to a movie instead of dinner or a theme park. If that is the only option than overworld travel on the world map works better.. I don't much mind it as I played the first five Ultimas that way. Ultima 9 did suck when traveling by ship. Just boring, don't know why. In SotA The world is so big you can't just walk everywhere in FP but a more interesting looking map would be nice, even if dated. I personally am not too enthused with the way I see SotA overworld map right now but it doesn't need to be cutting edge, just more interesting than a tall "Paul Bunion" walking over trees and mountains.

 

Caveat: There has been many updates in the past week or so regarding the world map, so I suspect there will be some kind of updated reveal soon.

We don't know what "double the map size" meant. It could have meant reducing the size of hexes to 0.5 degrees from 1.0 degrees. It could have mean't making the map 9600 hexes instead of 4800 hexes. It could have meant making the map twice as large north to south and east to west, resulting in 19,200 hexes.

With respect to fast travel, a bit of perspective on the current map may help. From what has been shown so far, travelling on the overworld map is pretty quick. It takes just a few seconds to traverse one overland hex, in the overland map. Based on the original map, that means it's about 3 seconds per degree.
Keeping that in mind, on the current map, at 40'N, if you walked from the west coast to the east coast, it would only take between 210 seconds and 350 seconds (3 or 5 seconds per hex). Naturally, mountains could be impassable or it could be much much slower within a non-road hex, but even so, even if it were tripled in duration, were still talking about less than 20 minutes to cross the entire EP1 continent, by using the overland map.

Using roads, it's likely considerably faster. A single 10.0 degree region (10 x 10 hexes), could take as little as 30 seconds to traverse in one direction. There may not be much concern regarding the impact of fast travel if simply using the overland map is this convenient.