Instancing?

I'm a recent pledge. Very glad to be here!

One of the things that I'm a little skeptical about is the amount of "instancing" in SotA. I've only been in the world for a couple of days now, but I'm hoping that world ends up feeling more vast than how it feels now. One of the most beautiful things about a good world is the ability to get lost. I remember times in UO where I would hop on my ostard outside of Vesper and just start wandering. Does anyone else feel that the world doesn't feel vast enough yet? And how do you feel about the amount of instances and how they seem to be relatively small?

 

Shards are instances. This mega shard system allows them to manage all players under one world.

 

I like the dual-scale, but I a waiting to see how large the mainland feels, because the Hidden Vale does feel pretty cramped. I'm also hoping the adventure scenes are made larger.

 

Definitely feel the same way redfish. I'm curious to see if the adventure scenes are larger. Sometimes I feel like I run out of running room in some of the scenes! And believe me, as a new player, I find myself running away a lot!

 

Everything is small right now, because you've been spending your time in Hidden Vale. As the game continues in development, the world will grow more.

 

I don't mind a dual scale world but I would like a few instances I could get lost in.

 

Hi and welcome Cuno. I too want to run accross more land. It has been mentioned by the development team that perhaps they will merge some hexes for more room. They are aware of our thoughts on this so that is cool. I am sure it will work out. It is sometimes
difficult to see the whole picture since we are missing so many of the pieces There are the pieces of 'only what they want us to see and test', and 'only what has been developed so far'. So we have a journey in front of us, glad you joined us.

 

Ardoris is a good sized town. I'm hoping we'll have larger wilderness scenes and more of them moving forward. Right now, scenes take a long time to load. Collision data is not pre-baked. LOD is not pre-baked. There are a lot of things that can make scenes load faster in the future.

 

I am feeling similarly as far as size of instances goes. I do not mind the instances per se, but would like to see them be much larger inside if we are going to have them. It does have the feel of not being able to "explore" much inside before you start fading to black reaching the borders, at this point within open-world instances.

 

Maybe the Devs will hear us! Like Aries, I don't mind the instancing but I want to explore more in them. Find strange caves, hidden spots, unusual landscapes and maybe even run into a monster that is way too powerful for me! I will say that Obsidian Keep was relatively large compared to other spots. I know that we are still in Alpha, but I really hope we get a huge world to explore and get lost in. Thanks for all of the replies!

 

Dual-scale is one of the best things in this game. It reminds me so much of the old single-player Ultimas and is one of the few things that really screams single player into the faces of even MMO fans

 

this is part of my problem with the world map, I spend more time zoning in and out of instances than I do actually playing the game

 

The devs have said that scene loading times will improve greatly when they optimize it. I am counting on it.

 

The map isn't the problem. The length of the load screens is. That should improve moving forward.

 

Have you been to Ardoris yet? I get lost everytime.

 

This +1000000000000

 

I got lost in a castle's basement.

 

But was that during one of the maze events?

 

I got lost in a hedge maze! ! !

Ardoris isn't too bad though, you just sort of have to understand the layout. Its nice to be able to get lost in a city though, and turn around alleys and dark corners -- only to find robbers waiting for you! -- I hope they don't abandon large sized cities.

 

Sadly no. It took me 20 minutes to find my way around the basement. It was mostly empty and all the rooms looked the same. I kept going around in circles. I thought perhaps there was a trick to going up the right stairs or something. At one point I was about to warp out of it.