If this game had no overworld..

They could be a rare spawn in some location

 

That only works if you say "what if they didn't use Unity?" because that was a direct consequence of using Unity of six or so years ago. There was going to be no way unless they created their own engine, which was completely out of the question. Unity tech of ~2013 was also the reason the oldest scenes are so small, because it couldn't really handle anything much bigger back then.

The overworld map also lets them be fuzzy about where things begin and end, instead of "we can't put anything more here, it's already full!" The scene-based architecture also lets them have players be able to share the same area, yet can start a new one when there are too many people for good performance. And it also allows for private modes. (Yes, I know they've currently disabled that, but it's due to the world being too big for the population, and I'm sure it'll be back IF we get about 10x the player population.)

With modern 2019 bleeding-edge engine tech, they could do that with a seamless world by using "layers", but there's no way they're going to rebuild the game from scratch to chase game engine tech. They're already having enough trouble keeping up with Unity changes as it is.

Basically, there's more aspects than you realize that result from the overworld/scenes architecture that all work together quite well. But I'm still looking forward to what they can do with Episode 2 with the newer tech.

 

Ummm.. RUST has no load screens from scene to scene. And uses Unity just fine. Plus the maps in RUST are ginormous!

 

After reading all or this. This.proposal would do more to un-ultima sota. I like the hark back to the early ultima games with the overland map. UO is nice but, no thanks.

 

I would prefer both options. So that each zone is linked to each other in some way so that you could essentially do what DC is asking for in the OP. But also leave the map intact, so players who want to travel that way can as well.

Maybe as you get close to leaving a scene for another scene the loading could happen in the background so it's more seamless?

 

A dungeon teleport that goes directly into the dungeon from the pot... COOL!!

Thanks for the info!

 

Correction: Unity couldn't handle large scenes with the TERRAIN tool. The terrain tool is not the only way to make terrain in Unity.

All you have to do is implement a floating origin (to fix floating point precision issues) and stream terrain data like any developers would in any other engine. That's how endless runners work; nearly every single notable one is made in Unity.

It's not bleeding-edge. All the server is doing is telling your client to hide other players from view and collision, while giving your own copy of mobs and resources.

The concept of instancing has been around since 2005; phasing was introduced in 2008.

The closest thing to "bleeding-edge" there might be is World of Warcraft's cross-realms functionality and all that really is is X-amount of servers are grouped together and they transfer player-connections to the server in the group that already has a population in a given area; any overflow would transfer the players to the next server in the group.

The same way that SotA can send players in a new instance of an area if the first one is full.

It's too late to change, yes, but these things were design decisions.
STOP. BLAMING. UNITY.

 

Problem is the devs used unity as an excuse a bunch and people took it as all of sota's issues are unity's fault.

 

I dunno peeps. Overworld kinda grew on me in all those years.

 

simple... you still need roads to traverse on lol, encounters can be spread out along some roads, and hills, etc

 

Add them to the outskirts of POTS

 

Why not 'both' zippered scenes and the overworld map.

I tend to agree with the opening post about zippering scenes together, for all of the reasons cited.

That said, overworld does provide an 'Ultima' like feel, and the underworld actually is already zippered together, so scene to scene travel often is possible, just underground.

If the overworld map stays, I think it needs some work. I generally like its looks, but that's about all I find it useful for. Teleport scrolls killed its need for travel, mounts, etc.

 

Not totally. You can't use Scrolls when encumbered and a mount could carry some things. Also we were told they would make some bigger scenes in episode 2 and I want to have horse racing

 

Borrowing from FF - imagine being able to breed horses (or similar - maybe wyverns or ?) and affect their stats - then race those to increase their stats by winning and leveling up - then more breeding - etc - introduce crafting and enchanting into the mix somehow .. fun times

 

I think this would be great, but since many clearly don't I think a compromise would be better:

PvP scenes are linked together like described, but in a semi-linear semi-graph format. The highest rewarding zones are the furthest from the edge nodes (where the overworld is accessible). So to get loot from the best PvP zones to safety, you must go through multiple other PvP zones.

To make it best, pair this change with the good loot being cursed and teleport disabled in and out of PvP zones.

 

They can start doing it in pvp zones and if it works they can try do it for everything. Even doing it slowly is ok, starting from 1 region and then extend it to the rest.