Big fan of the game, but not the overview map...

Point A - Perhaps he could, but he seems to not want to do that, as the game has ALWAYS been designed to have an dual map system. He and the rest of the Portalarium team, it seems to me, believe this will not "kill sales... because it kills immersion" and many current players are evidence of that.

Point B - I, too, want a game where playing for the next 4-7 years is possible. And this is, I believe, it. Overland map and all. I reject your baseless assertion that because the game has instances and loading screens it is "stunted from the beginning".

Point C - https://www.kickstarter.com/project...of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/posts/427432

 

i would recommend watching the hangouts, they cover the reasons for the over land map (R8 or R9 post mortums i believe) namely the cost, the (i guess not so obvious) benefits of having everyone on one server, and the throwback to the way most Ultima games were. I would say we have a better chance of getting struck by lightning while being attacked by a shark than seeing this reworked.

 

No, no he can't. This has been explained to you repeatedly and you opt to ignore that.

Other than being able to play with anyone you want ever, including new players you meet? Or having your house persist to all players?

Then you haven't even remotely tried to look because the devs have addressed this in posts and videos ad nauseam.

They have been rebutted repeatedly, and you simply opt to ignore that.


This simply will not change. It isn't happening. It cannot happen. It is not worth discussing because of that.

 

I undertand just fine thanks.

 

A single server for SOTA has many more benefits than negatives. If the only negative is a handful of people are objecting because switching to an overhead view somehow breaks their virtual reality then the debate should be closed. I can come up with multiple valid reasons a single server is far more beneficial.

1) More people in game at any time without fear of picking the "wrong" server.
2) Trade, marketplace, and development will be far superior on a single server.
3) Monitoring the market and game for exploits or hacks is easier on one server.
4) GM controlled events easier to implement and produce on a single server.
5) Recognition of characters for either positive or negative acts.
6) Easier to find people to group and associate, larger guilds and more teamwork possible.
7) Resources all dedicated to maintaining and securing a single server.

I can come up with more, but believe these seven benefits far outweigh a single complaint focused on aesthetics.

 

The issue is not with instancing. The issue is with the dual scale. The overworld map is just another scene with a player cap of 8 currently. It takes even less time to traverse the length of the Hidden Vale island than it does to run between both ends of any village, town or city scene in the game currently.

There's nothing technically stopping the devs from switching from a 50:1 (made up) dual scale to a faked 1:1 scale yet retain a single persistent world if they kept everything instanced still (including the overworld). And I say faked 1:1 scale because scene sizes have zero correlation against the area it covers on the overworld based on their new map strategy. A city scene like Owl's Head can occupy a small spot on the overworld yet a wilderness scene smaller than that occupies 1/4 the Vale overworld map.

The real issue is creating interesting content on the overworld if the scale changes. That is a much heavier cost they can't take on due to current funding. Unless we're all fine with endless forests, deserts, hills, etc, with zero content in between the points of interest (scenes).

 

In all honesty I think the world map is the best feature of this game. I am not exaggerating even in the slightest either. Perhaps in its current form the map may seem a bit dry, but once we step onto the mainland, I'm sure all will agree it makes the world feel much larger. Nothing kills immersion quite like realizing the entire planet is only 100-200 sq.km in size. At the very least understand how it adds to immersion before knocking it.

 

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing the Novia overworld and how they will balance the POIs vs wilderness "regions" along with the sheer size of it compared to The Hidden Vale overworld. Plus with roving encounters coming and all the other graphical enhancements like weather, rolling fog, etc. it should be a visually interesting experience, despite the scale. I still think they should adjust that scale a bit more though, but I'll reserve judgement until I see it.

 

Ironically, a lot of the people complaining about the world map are also asking for rune books from UO so they can gate travel everywhere.

 

THIS IS NOT UO.

 

Too many players are coming to the game expecting it to be UO. The fact that it even resembles some of the core features should be enough... seriously lol.

 

and... This as I said, best feature. Ever.

 

Thought this might be useful for those with loading time issues:


A properly configured performance hard drive can make frequent loads seem insignificant at best. With all this new M.2 and sata express solid state technology available, and with Ram sizes exceeding an entire program in scale; load times are a thing of the past.

If running on a 7200 or even 10000 rpm hard disk, then yeah I could see it being a little annoying. If there is one piece of info I can pass on it is this...

Hard drives are the new bottleneck. Intel has stated that their new cpu technology far exceeds the limitations of current hard drive technology, thus the a fore mentioned bottleneck.

That being said anything you can do to limit this bottleneck is the single best performance upgrade you can get for a computer. Even (especially in some cases) older computer systems will benefit drastically by the switch to performance hard drives.

As it stands right now on a standard samsung evo 840 (roughly $90) with no rapid mode enabled, and on a standard sata3 6gb/s connection, owl's head on a busy moment takes under 10 seconds to load.

If that is too long to wait, the game could hypothetically be installed into RAM entirely by creating a RAMdisk. For those with larger than average RAM, a 32 GB system could easily load this game into ram from a SSD in a very short period of time (maybe a minute or two). Once loaded into ram the only assets you would be waiting on are the ones provided by the server, which can be optimized till the cows come home.(example loading assets while in the zone to speed up entry times, something many online games practice)

If anyone has any questions regarding optimizing a system to handle frequent hard drive access, would be glad to lend some input.

 

I really appreciate the tip. I am actually using a gaming tower with a slew of SSD drives, 16GB ram, titian black video card and a liquid cooled sandy bridge CPU over clocked to almost 5GHz. However, I recently installed Linux which is not taking full advantage of the video card. The video is good on fantastic, but I definitely get some triangle flutter. I am sure that is because I am not using the Nvidia prime driver (because it breaks my Ubuntu install),

 

That's too bad, because that would solve a lot of problems if it was lol

 

That video card is absurdly over spec for this game, if you are experiencing anything but smooth gameplay it would be related to the software or possibly your systems configuration.

You could fill every slot up with ssd and geforce titans and it means little if it is not set up right, or if parts of the system are not complimentary to each other. This sandy bridge is an i7 4770? heard tales of them going as high as 5ghz but never 100% stable. Aware that less than 10% of the chips produced were capable of reaching even 4.8. would be interested in picking your brain about it sometime.

Just an edit, I had a brain fat and mixed up code names lol, I realize you are referring to the previous generation. regardless that is impressive specs!

 

It's part of the game so if you don't like it DONT PLAY very simple, stop trolling and move on peeps

 

Yup what he said. Move along, nothing to see here...

 

the overmap is gonna be this games most controversial issue.

its extremely unpopular but its here to stay 100% theyve said already

we just need to accept their reasoning for wanting to keep it, and work out ways to fix the implications of it

 

its not trolling. many of us are really against the world map.

this game is in pre alpha, so everything is technically changeable.

no matter what you say about its intent and it being here to stay, i guarantee it will affect sales negatively even if only a small ammount