Too Many Impassables in Overland Map?

Does anyone else think that the impassable features are a little too much?

I know that there are going to be control points, but walking around feels a little like a labyrinth - I have to take the exact right path to get everywhere I want to go. Rivers and mountains are the culprits of course, and they are where they should be. It just seems like a continent should feel a little more open, and it certainly seems like it would be, from the concept map.

More mountain passes? Lower mountains that can be crossed? More bridges and fords? I don't know. Just want to see how everyone feels about it.

 

What gets me is that a lot of spots on the rivers look like they should be passable. If it looks like a ford.. it should act like a ford.

 

Some things looks passable but are not...

Some things look impassable but they are.

In my opinion some things should be impassible... some should be conditionally passable. For instance if a pass is overrun with undead you should have to zone in and make your way through. If it is controlled by a friendly village you should be able to pass on the overland map. If you can't fight/sneak through you'll have to find another way, like a boat or something.

There's got to be a way to give it meaning.

 

I would open up just a handful of passes. Guard them with quality random encounters, yes.

 

I would suggest cleaning up movement here by just having the Avatar/group jump from tile to tile. There is a whole host of cool possibilities that come along with the tile-based movement as opposed to (needlessly) been given freedom to move about within single tiles, such as getting stuck.

 

There is also a bit of a bug that allows you to walk fast everywhere, and equally a bug that forces you to walk slow everywhere, too glitchy to really make a report of it, if QA walks around a few times on the entire map entering and exiting towns they'll notice

 

I somewhat like that the rivers are barriers to travel. It has a way to leading one to think a bit strategically when traveling and not assume travel is a straight line.

I agree though that the graphics might be more indicative of where one can cross a river vs. not.

 

Where is my flying mount?

 

I took my first good walk around Novia the other day trying to find out what exactly is out there, and I got as far as Brittany. I found out that this place is really, really COVERED by trees all over the place, completely hindering my sight.

There might have been a path I should have followed, fair enough.
There was no indication I might run into a river, and maybe the path would've led me to the bridge, so fair enough again. Or maybe I should have been using a map.

In old Britannia you ran into some of these issues too, like if you were trying to run from Britain to Yew via serpent spine - but then you'd hit clearings that you could run up and have a better view of where you're going. Maybe there just needs to be less trees and more lines of sight?

 

Did you try to zoom all the way out, and tilt the view a bit?

 

I agree; a lot of my time in the overland map has been spent running into invisible walls and feeling like I'm navigating a maze, but one where you don't see the wall until you hit it.

 

Sometimes I feel like the speed on the overland map has improved and just when I think that I get all the slowing down. It is too slow on the slow off the road areas. I am not that much slowed when walking through forests perhaps I have to watch my footing when off road but I don't inch a long usually.

 

Agreed on the off-rad slowness. Perhaps the 'slow' in the off-road areas would be more interesting if there were roving monsters to avoid on the overland map.

 

I don't mean completely completely hindering my sight. I can see, but it's basically 95% trees everywhere for almost the entire journey. If we were still using slow travel through forests, it'd be a nightmare.

Now it's just a matter of clearing the sight paths to make the beautiful scenery of the overworld look a little more ... scenic. Instead of just trees trees and more trees.