Overland map comments

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Modu, Sep 5, 2016.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Kabalyero Kidd

    Kabalyero Kidd Avatar

    Messages:
    2,054
    Likes Received:
    5,437
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Location:
    Beran's Reach, Beregost and Whyte Roc
    I think if they got the same money as Star Citizen with like so many people working on it on different countries then they might have changed their mind and went with a seamless world... anyway, I like the Overland Area... for some reason, I feel empowered whenever I run across it... LOL
     
  2. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,679
    Likes Received:
    24,294
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    • The world map is reminiscent of older Ultimas.
    • The Unity toolkit is (or at least was) limited in it's ability to dynamically load areas.
    • A seamless world would make it just about impossible to introduce new towns (especially POTs, given their sheer number).
     
  3. DepGames

    DepGames Avatar

    Messages:
    280
    Likes Received:
    562
    Trophy Points:
    28
    The world is too small. I ran across one region in DAoC last night and it took 4x longer than running across the entire map in SotA.

    I remember several years ago someone posting they ran across the entire map in Darkfall and it took 4 1/2 hours. No instances, BTW.

    Give me a world that size and I'll be impressed.
     
    Toff, Roycestein Kaelstrom and Modu like this.
  4. Lifedragn

    Lifedragn Avatar

    Messages:
    670
    Likes Received:
    1,165
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Pretty much most 80s-90s JRPGs have used this quite successfully. Sure it is more rare for an MMO, but hardly a new technique.

    Personally, I love it though. As a man with a full-time job and a family, I can appreciate being able to quickly get to where I want to go. There is a reason those other games mentioned are fairly niche titles that seem to bounce around the same player base. Accessibility is key if you want a large player base. And falling into all of the same designs that those other titles offer will just add your title to the juggling act rather than establishing your own loyal following.

    The overland abstracts away true scale, which either gets tedious the tenth time you need to travel through it or looks and feels much, much smaller when doing something like flying overhead (such as in WoW). It also allows for addition of new zones and areas of interest without having to vastly alter how all the terrain interconnects which is perfect for an in-development title. Most MMOs are by nature always in development until they shut down.

    Yes, local economies suffer. But that has to be a key decision when designing a game. Do I want to let players play with friends at the expense of local economies or do I want to let local economies take priority and sacrifice the social structure of my game? You can't really have both. Either it is too easy for me to go shop elsewhere or it is too difficult to reach the location where my friends are playing when I log in and only have a couple of hours to play.
     
    Roycestein Kaelstrom and Modu like this.
  5. LiquidSky

    LiquidSky Avatar

    Messages:
    263
    Likes Received:
    509
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Having scenes is supposed to make it so that the world can 'evolve'. The designers can swap a scene out for another one.

    Not that easy if it was a seamless world.
     
    Gix, Roycestein Kaelstrom and Modu like this.
  6. racerx

    racerx Avatar

    Messages:
    15
    Likes Received:
    54
    Trophy Points:
    3
    I dont know about you guys I am a little disappointed in the overland map. First of all it tells me no flying! Even Ultima 4 had a baloon right? There are huge Airship houses in the towns and cities. Whats the purpose of that if they aren't capable of flight? I think walking or some form of transportation to and from each town/city/zone would be alot better and using the "M" key for the overland map just to see where in the world you are is alot better. I mean look at the beautiful world SOTA has just seems a waste not to be able to travel through it or over it in a baloon or something. I remember in U4 I made it a high Priority to finally get the baloon and enough reagents to cast a wind spells so I could land in just the right spot. Oh and speaking of U4 and baloons....put a spyglass either on it or able to carry in inventory. Anyways just my 2 cents o7
     
    Roycestein Kaelstrom and Modu like this.
  7. Forseti

    Forseti Avatar

    Messages:
    29
    Likes Received:
    93
    Trophy Points:
    3
    Location:
    Moonglow
    Never thought about that, but seeing as it is the one time I need a map and have to load sotamap.com in steam browser (whoops I've ruined immersion), that is definitely true, it is not a map.

    My issue is that it kills the desire to explore. Granted, that excitement is only experienced the first few times around the map, and then everyone is ready for fast travel.

    But what we have now is akin to pond farm fishing in real life. You know each instance is going to have roughly one of everything that you'd like to gather. Not much left up to the imagination at this point. Conversely, in a seemless world, I may not want to fast travel to the next city so I can look for certain trees to cut down on the way, so I set out, and in the process I discover a cave I've never seen, now I'm fighting or running away from a bear, sweet. There weren't 8 bears next to 8 wolves next to 8 spiders and some angry skeletons and a giftbasket assortment of raw materials in a cage. Each time I leave the city it's an adventure! Not, "which pond farm do I want to fish today", or, "hmmm, let's see I need to go this way to get here and nothing exciting happens along the way so let's get on with it". People seem to interact even less in the overworld than they do in instances so having them there is almost pointless. They're either afk or on their own forementioned boring run. And random encounters don't really fix this, because they will be even more of a standard giftbasket and I probably don't even want all that soap and crap (loadscreen, etc.)

    Alas, this was my first heartbreak when it was announced. At the time, sota had raised about $1 mil. And the obvious answer to this thread back then was lack of funds. I remember thinking to myself, "I wonder how much it would take, $10 mil?" Never thinking they would raise that much. But as it turns out, the way the money was raised set it stone that this couldn't be done (PoT). It's literally like people paid to make a game that is worse than it could have been.

    That being said, they can still make a great game out of what we have now, it just won't reach that level. I believe they can polish and flesh out the instances enough to where it's still quite fun and the system we have can be and already is entertaining.
     
  8. yarnevk

    yarnevk Avatar

    Messages:
    402
    Likes Received:
    804
    Trophy Points:
    43
    If the OP wants overland travel to take a long time then could enter every scene along the trail and go off the beaten path where random encounters are more common. While the devs could add background preloading in case you go into nearby scenes, as long as you do not complain about loading lag for scenes you do not intend to go into. I do think that if enough memory they could always have loaded the overland map so it does not cost exit time.

    Yes the backdrop walls are lame, instead they should just tightly cluster poly trees so you cannot get past them to see the billboard trees and backdrop walls. Obviously since some towns lets you exit the backdrop walls, not being able to do it in encounters is by design of challenge with little escape. The leveled skulls do not ruin my immersion, it fits the trope of fantasy that the victims skulls are piked at the entrance as a warning to others.

    The hex crawl map is good simulation of what D&D has long had as a playstyle, a hex crawl top level map with possibilities of random encounters that take you to local maps - so you do not spend months traveling the coast hour by hour to get from one dungeon to the next, unless by design the adventure is intended to be on the road. You can still have local economies if there are working control points with PVE or PVP risk that cannot be bypassed, this does not require distance time, just difficult challenge that requires merchants hire expensive guards. Adding a immersive fast travel (wagons, balloons, ships) needs to be affordable only to the wealthy merchant and increase cost of goods sold outside the market, then you would still have local markets with local merchants.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2016
    Roycestein Kaelstrom and Modu like this.
  9. monkeysmack

    monkeysmack Avatar

    Messages:
    632
    Likes Received:
    1,463
    Trophy Points:
    105
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    your mom's house
    No, the world is not flat. Novia just doesnt wrap around the whole world. There are many other continents on New Britannia and they will be revealed in the future episodes. So, it makes sense you can't travel from east coast to west.
     
  10. Modu

    Modu Avatar

    Messages:
    66
    Likes Received:
    191
    Trophy Points:
    8
    OK, sure, we used it back then. In a modern MMO, it just doesn't feel right to me.

    I think the best comparisons were to the old Ultima games. I mean sure I enjoyed those, a long time ago. I guess I just expect something new and better considering our technology has improved greatly since then.

    :rolleyes:
     
    Baalice and Roycestein Kaelstrom like this.
  11. Animosh

    Animosh Avatar

    Messages:
    180
    Likes Received:
    278
    Trophy Points:
    18
    These checkpoints can easily be ran around and avoided faster than they can be ran through
     
    Modu and Roycestein Kaelstrom like this.
  12. DepGames

    DepGames Avatar

    Messages:
    280
    Likes Received:
    562
    Trophy Points:
    28
    "A long time" shouldn't consist of endless loading screens. Talk about immersion-breaking.
     
    Toff, Baalice, Modu and 1 other person like this.
  13. VZ_

    VZ_ Avatar

    Messages:
    691
    Likes Received:
    688
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    East Coast
    I really love the overland map. Please don't make us run through each zone, lol (though I know this won't happen)

    My only criticism over it is I wish you could select which entrance to use into towns once you've discovered them, but there's a whole topic about that in a thread already.

    Would be nice to cast buffs in overmap too, some extra strength would help a lot getting my poor overencumbered ars across the world
     
  14. Last Trinsic Defender

    Last Trinsic Defender Avatar

    Messages:
    360
    Likes Received:
    559
    Trophy Points:
    43
    How do you "ran around" Nightshade Pass or Eastreach Gap? The idea of the checkpoint is that they are not evadable ...
     
  15. Modu

    Modu Avatar

    Messages:
    66
    Likes Received:
    191
    Trophy Points:
    8
  16. Gix

    Gix Avatar

    Messages:
    2,203
    Likes Received:
    4,014
    Trophy Points:
    153
    All it does is, if there was flying, you'd zone out of the scene and go on the Overworld as a flying entity instead of your avatar... and you'd be able to go over mountains (something they might not want us to do).
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.