please add six million dollar stretch goal to abandon dual scale map

Heh, you honestly think they will get rid of the dual scale map?

 

16000 hexes with the potential to be changed at any given time or 8000. I think I will stick with the 16000

 

A small quote from a Darkstar post:
That transparency comes with a price. It means that we will share ideas that may change, or may not work. It means we need to have a trust with each other that it is all right for us to share without being locked into a promise that we might not be able to (or should not) keep. One of my favorite mantras is: "The only constant is change."

I believe the overland map comes under (or should not) keep.

 

Except of course you read that literally....overland map was part of the kickstarter campaign....I'm willing to bet it stays.

 

Do you honestly believe they will change a 1000 of these, after the launch they have to get down to producing episode 2 then another 3 after that.

 

About as much as you believe they will get rid of the hex system.

 

Sadly, the hex system does seem to be a mill stone around the neck of this game.

 

Founder rewards were kickstarter campaign but were sold off for a year. changed
One house per account were kickstarter campaign rules. changed

So basically if it raise's money they will change anything, if not we are stuck with it.

 

So you agree 16000+ pointless Hex's, and halving the map & adding 40 unique scenes was a better option.

 

I would agree with that personally.

 

Just like any classic Ultima, that is a certainty, I agree.

Right now, we don't see that many "hex" properties at work.. It will be interesting to see how it works out, they need to work on it more.

 

No, it's 16000 hexes I can skip passed at will because of the overland map. If I had to travel through that amount of space to get from point A to point B then we can talk about needing to trim some pointless space.

 

You don't like to explore vast open worlds gathering resources fighting & discovering hidden places and quests discovering towns.
How far apart is point A from Point B, you don't cover a full map on a journey.
Sounds like you are thinking hexes were you may have to enter 16000 instances to complete a quest, but I think they will be marked clearly on the hex to lead you on your quests.

 

I have played my share of MMO's, so many of them have wasted space with nothing to see. How is this any different.

 

Any space that is part of a greater whole is not wasted.

 

Zone to zone travel along the templated hexes might not work unless they're different enough so it doesn't feel like you're going in circles. Seriously, look at the current Novia map and you can see the faint hex grid. Even at 64 x 64 hexes (it should be 128 x 128), you can see the repetitive nature of having to traverse the same variation of Forest01 through Forest05 many times over for example.

Again using the 64x64 current map. Look at travelling from Harvest to Point West. There are 7 hexes in between if you followed the coast. Those will likely be variations of Plains01 through Plains04 and repeat. Ok, not so bad you say, you only repeated twice. Now try going from Harvest to Opalis along the road. You will travel through 24 repeating PlainsRoad variations, with one Bridge scene and a Control Point in between. Now, double all those numbers for the 128 x 128 map.

It simply won't work when the scenes repeat over and over. You will be continually looking at the overland map wondering where you are and wishing you could just fast travel there. The only way zone to zone travel is going to work is you either build every scene unique and logically connected (which they can't do due to budgetary constraints), or you do shortcuts and skip all those hexes via a zone connection map.

With a zone connection map you simply choose the least number of intermediate hexes that would be necessary to travel between any two POIs on the map. That would reduce cost tremendously while at the same time ensuring all scenes are unique and with the added benefit of shortening travel time through unnecessary repetitive hexes.

So with the 64 x 64 map, you'd have 4096 hexes at most. But using this method, you only build the 100 POIs and any necessary intermediate hexes in between along the connection map. You'd reduce the hex count by at least 90% that you'd have to build. More likely even greater than 95% if there are choke points (like there are on this map) where all travel must go through between areas of the map, reducing your connection map even further.

 

So we are back to 16000 is better than 8000.

There is an advantage to the hex system.

 

I never saw a pink llama. There are so last year, as some posts.

 

You all are shooting yourselves in the foot with this idea. This world will be changed everyday by us.. Everytime someone buys land devs will have to re-write the map.

Dude think about all the work that is for the world you want?

Jesus it will be more than 6 million. Have you seen how big these zones can be? Take a trip to the island of Vengeance, you can get lost there.

With the way we have it now I go buy a city and tell the devs how I want it and bam they plug in the file and done. It just wont work. I play NWN2 hardcore roleplay that is TRUE immersion.

 

Hi

While I'm not a big fan of the dual scale map, I can see the reason for it.

It's a more active way of changing zones, the alternative would be going into a portal of some kind and suddenly appearing in a new location.

That sounds more like Star Trek, then a game set in a rustic setting.

You would also have to create a real environment for all the area you are traveling through.

It is pretty obvious that this game is supposed to cash in on the nostalgia of the old games that we all played years ago.

I can remember many games that had this type of zoning, going way back to my old Nintendo.

I can't really see a lot of young people getting into this game.

They have grown up running games with more sophisticated graphics and game play.
If you compare the environment, character models and animation in something like The Elder Scrolls Online to SOA, then SOA looks pretty primitive.

The market for this game is people who loved the old games and want that feel again.

Mike