Chris's Release 4 Ramblings!

It's clearly in an early stage. You're arguments are valid, but they revolve around the fact that it's not a complete concept. I do believe they will eventually include all those features you listed.

 

Actually, if you look in the map threads in the R4 discussions you will see that's not entirely true. For instance, they want to keep the shield icon, not replace it with an avatar as Enderandrew is suggesting.

 

The nature of the overland map itself pulls me out of the world, regardless of the style of it. For me, its the opposite of immersion, I'm not in the world, I'm pulled out looking over it. I preferred the new style because at least it represented the actual feeling I was having while playing. I don't mind a world sectioned off into hexes, but it doesn't matter how the overland map is dressed up, I'm pulled from the in world view to look and position myself around a map. I don't personally need a detailed representation of me to select an area to move to before I'm loaded back into the game world.

I can understand the other argument, but for me, the old map actually didn't work as well as the new, but for almost all the same reasons those who preferred the old map give to support their view.

 

Cute baby (an dog), congrats about that!

I mostly agree but, yes I think 90$ of reactions abotu map were negative (or at least I saw that, maybe is not true). For me was not good at all, maybe I should see a better map of the same concept, but Im not sure. The other oens was basic but ok. I need to see it. And about the performance I just cannot play with my normal computer, crashes 100% of time just log-in. I should play in my laptop, that is slower. But I expecting that.

But some positives points also. I like the monster looks (I like less the skeletons, and probably more the kobolds), and was funny to start some kind of adventure looking for monsters and loot. And, well, we need those coconuts in R5.

 

The poll indicated about a 55 to 34 split in favor of the rooster teeth map, even tho nobody actually played it.

The mistake wasn't changing the map, the mistake was changing it without it being even close to "finished" and not telling anyone about it

 

Hopefully R5 will have a better iteration of their vision showing what a final product might look like. After mentioning that their inspiration was the Game of Thrones map I went back and took a peek. It has promise and personally I'm saving further judgement until we the next version in R5.

 

I dont know, I didnt feel that, but yes, maybe if just about to see a better quiality and finished map. The poll that I saw was not that positive and yes, most of the people that want the cloth map concern about the final quality:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-map-poll-unofficial.8630/page-11#post-159128

But the question is, the original map style really will not work well? Anyway I will keep some hope in this cloth style map. At least is an original concept. We all should wait until R5 or R6 to judge well the style.

 

Am I the only one that knew for a while that they were going to do this? (I didn't get to read through the dozens of pages in the other threads) Dom John suggested this idea last year and they liked it and I assumed all these months that this was what they may wind up doing. This release's version was a little static, and I would prefer to see more of the map (zoomed out a little) but that's something that can be worked on. *shrug* I liked it fine.

 

That seems to be the case. It was a huge shock to most of us. We hadn't heard a peep about the change.

 

Maybe a lot of folks haven't been keeping up with hangouts... it was on the table.. they just decided to try it.. I'm actually surprised to hear that it wasn't in place longer. I'm really shocked at how some people have such strong feelings about it. As long as the basic functions of the map will be similar... I'm not worried about what aesthetic choice they go with.

 

yeah i got behind with hangouts a bit due to personal life stuff.. do you remember which hangout it was in? I like trying art styles and getting feedback, etc... I do it in my own art that I do for pay with clients. I find the art style beautiful and is a neat one to use. I have myself... I think just a bit more discussion on why they made the change and more info as to their thought process would be nice... we have gotten that info from them on crafting, housing, pvp, combat, magic, skills, story... I think some ppl just are being a bit more emotional because this is one area where the communication hasn't been in as much abundance... I like to stick to being objective... but that is my choice based on my background... the overly emotional reactions both in favor and against do tend to make the forums seem have a larger bias going on.

 

I can't remember off hand... if only I had a handy site that could guide me.. Oh well lookie there! LOL

Apparently it is mentioned somewhere in this hangout:


I made a recap note:
- They worked on Dom John’s overland map idea (cloth map style fog of war). They are reluctant to show video because the art is not representative of what it will actually look like, and we know how well that went over before..

And of course this was Dom John's original idea:


I thought that he had talked about it directly to them or that they discussed it when they first saw his video.... but I don't know where that particular video is.

Now that I review this and refresh my memory, the idea they were considering was that it would be a cloth map *in place of* the "fog of war" and as you approach the areas, it would fill in with more realistic detail. The parts you never visited would be represented by what you'd see on the cloth map. Thats still a neat idea.

Anyway, it seems that they originally were going with the 3d standard style, then they also liked Dom's idea and kept that on the table all this time. It's not been implemented with much polish or depth yet which is where they went wrong I guess.

 

Yeah the lack of polish though was something some of us expected because of the change... that is normal for any major change to any feature... whether it be graphics or functionality.... But the links to the vids are appreciated... I will putz around and listen to them in the background while at work.

Thanks again!

 

This video is exactly what people need to see to understand what it is capable of... the ones who think you can't animate things.

Now, I still don't like the art direction. I MUCH prefer the original concept. That being said, if they implement the camera control and a free moving avatar (one that walks and animates like in this video) I could learn to live with the paper style.e

IF they insist on the ridiculous shield that moves around like a game piece, then I simply cannot get behind this at all. With a real animated avatar, complete camera control and the ability to roam the map, I could overcome my distaste at the artistic direction.

 

As far as I'm concerned the issue is not how unpolished it looks.

I hate the approach. Period. This looks silly, and in addition seeing the hexes is making it even worst - this looks like and (board) wargame, which is the stuff of nightmares as far as I'm concerned.

The original concept looked neat. With some graphical polish it would have been awesome. This does not looks good at all. And no amount of polish is gonna make like it as opposed to the original concept.

But to each his own I guess.

-Sergorn

 

I remember that, but they didnt speak again about that. And that one was much better.

 

I remember the Dom John video from Kickstarter, but it never seemed to have been followed up on. I guess Lori found one place they mentioned it in the above video from almost a year ago, but nearly 3 months after that, during the 3-month demo video, a more polished version of the original-style map was shown:



Note the overland map shown at 0:50-1:10, 2:40-2:50, and 7:40-7:55. I defy anyone to tell me what's wrong with that. And I challenge the dev team to put that video against even a polished mock-up of the paper map they're envisioning and let the community decide which it prefers.

It should also be noted that at the time of the Dom John video, the overland map they had been showing had a fixed camera angle, more restrictive snap-to-grid player movement, and there were some complaints about the immersion-breaking transition between the map and the internal zones (I think largely from people lobbying to do away with the dual-scale entirely at that point). I remember Don John's video was fairly well received at the time for addressing THOSE concerns, but reaction was much more mixed about actually using that visual style. So when Chris briefly commented above about how they had taken some ideas from the Dom John video, it's important to note the context and realize he wasn't necessarily talking about switching to a paper-map style. In fact, he specifically says at that time that they were still using a realistic style once fog-of-war was revealed. A lot of Dom John's other suggestions were incorporated in the 3-month demo and I don't think too many people would be complaining if they had stopped there or added the paper-map style as simply fog-of-war with a real world underneath, which is all that was even hinted at.