Instances + Minimap Travel = Backwards Compared to Open Virtual World

One thing that that dual map overlay seems to have difficulty with, in relationship to immersion, is dynamic discovery.

I really enjoyed being able to find things that explicitly were not on the map in continuous games (Skyrim, Ultima 7). There's just something magical about stumbling into things that are hidden. Selwyn's tower, the hut with Skeleton Key off of Jhelom, people on roads in distress, etc. It adds so much more dynamic emotion to the experience.

Serpent Isle, arguably, was a game that incorporated this experience almost entirely through its plot line. Who were the Ophidians? What happened to them? You got bits and pieces of ruin in the landscape that never made it into quest lines, explicitly. These places had new things to discover and added atmosphere to your experience.

I'm not saying every instance in an overlay map has to be pointed or have a purpose, but on a mini-map style overlay I do not feel this particular type of discovery will be as present. In fact, I don't think any discovery outside of what is proscribed or scripted by the mini-map will be accessible to the player and that means distance from the environment.

 

There's lot of ways to have hidden things on overland maps.

One example of things I am aiming in Ultima Return: you can easily create hidden POIs rather than just having POIs that are set in stone from the get go : for instance you could have an "Explorer" skill (or in a more Ultima tradition Ranger), which gives you a better chance of spotting hidden POIs, or make some areas impossible to find other way. Imagine you are travelling in the Deep Forest... you might find nothing... with the proper skill there, Iolo's hut appears!

This is a silly example, but I mean this is easy to create dynamic content that rewards some form of gameplay over another while creatin a form of exploration.

Also I think you are all underestimating the way overland maps can bring interesting dynamic content. Remember Skara Brae in Ultima IX ? You couldn't see the town before it got destroyed because it wouldn't have been possible tecnically speaking: here this would be easy - imagine the ennemis attack a city, depending ion your arc multiple outcomes are possibles... and the city map could change accordingly (city destroyed, city saved and reconstructeur, city under ennemy control or some such). This sort of stuff is very hard to do in seamless environment.

And of course, there's nothing preventing POIs themselves to he huge and offer a lot of exploration like the latest Ultima games.

So basically I'd argue oth approach have their pro and cons... and both are equally Ultima ish.

-Sergorn

 

I agree its ashamed if they make dual scale world year 2013
No to mini-map for travel!!!
Walk in a Pokemon world that suppose be a serious RPG, Betrayal

 

OP is 100% correcto!

 

I agree. Open world.

 

You do realize that you can enter into any hex you wish for a bit of discovery.

 

+ Keep the SPO, FPO for carebears and newbs, hell... KEEP OPO if you want but ... PLEASE make a REAL MMO like UO but better...

I dont want to play Battlefield 4 UOcopy instanced 32v32 battles and interactions

 

I hope you can at least move between scenario's without always going back out to the over world map. Even if they are just a random version of each tile type stitched on. If i'm in a forest tile scenario eg. Forest1, and the next tile is a forest, then stitch on Forest. If the next tile is a mountain then stitch on a mountain.

If i go out looking for herbs and explore a scenario, then i dont want to have to go back to the world map and move to the next tile to enter the next scenario. If they can tile them on the world map without seams, then they should be able to tile them on the scenario level. When i'm done collecting my herbs i can use the over world map to "fast" travel back to town.

I would prefer a mono scale open virtual world though.

 

I think this game is a little bit outside of the box and obviously different from your standard MMO or Multiplayer RPG that has been released up until now. I absolutely LOVED UO and I'd give anything for this to be a remake of that, but I think they are going for something a little different and they are striving to do what others have failed at up until this point. I think regardless of how they do the travel and exploration of the world they are going to make a FUN game, which is all I care about now.. I am sick of the games that feel like work.

 

I like the dual-scale approach from the perspective that it's much easier to pop in new encounters/pieces of content to keep the game fresh. (like the original Fallout's random encounters; if you could always find the TARDIS in every game at the exact same location, it would get old fast)

And there's much more to "immersion" than just having an open world... I only lasted about half an hour with Oblivion, found it boring and lifeless. Ultima IV and Fallout, however, keep me playing late into the night... I had maps to chart my adventures, books to root through for clues and information, note pads to jot down important clues and routes and interactions, traded secrets with fellow players at school, etc.

If all it takes for a great game is to provide an open world, then The WarZ is a great game.

I also find dual-scale more consistent with the game's D&D roots... very rarely would you role play every step of an adventure, and very rarely would you uncover every secret it had to offer.

 

I pledged good money to Lord British to make a game the way he sees fit. I will wait for the product before passing judgement.

I do not believe monoscale worlds have an absolute leg up over a dual scale world.

Eye candy isn't everything. Are seamless transitions really all that important? In the end, nothing replaces a solid yarn - something that has been sadly missing in most of the modern games we've seen on the market lately.

I am sure the colourful folk at Portalarium will deliver if we just let them do their stuff.

 

+1 to open world

Ultima6 removed it and it should stay that way. The switch between in town and out of town is really bad, and how should defense and attack of towns work? We gather all at the map over the town and then attack? and by chance we made it and then we are in the town .. ehh ?

I do not see neither beauty nor requirement to do it.

 

BTW: how will we ever to see that views like this one?

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=21

I do expect to see the beautiful country and not only a drawing in a box, that I could never see in the game. The later reminds me back in the old dais, where those games have the beautiful shots of dragons and landscapes and the actual game art is ascii art or very limited 4 color block art ...

So looking at those and hoping, it could be the way, that the minimap IS the fast travel and you also can choose the slow travel if you like...

 

I guess I have a very different perspective. I've tried many MMOs in the last 6 or so years. Warhammer, Aion, RIFT, GW2, TERA to name a few. They have an awesome launch, get 1 million subs. People cry and cry about the queues and how there aren't enough servers...they add more servers, they add transfers, everything gets more and more imbalanced...and then the whole thing craters and they're down to 100-200k subs.

You have to keep people on one logical server with intelligent instancing. Any MMO out there that can is trying to do exactly what they're doing. If you don't chop up the map like this, I'm not sure you can make the encounters fluid and dynamic without anything feeling under or over populated.

 

I'm keeping an open mind and waiting to see what they can do with the dual scale map. I'm sure they will give us that sense of exploration we desire, in a limited way with the overland map but more so with the 3rd person / first person view when dropped into an instance. However, what they won't be able to achieve to some degree, I suspect, is the sense of travel.

Exploration will be great within the hand crafted scenes, but once you exit it, you'll more than likely be at the same spot on the overland map. You could have explored for hours within the instanced scene, thinking you 've traveled some distance, but once you exit, you really didn't go anywhere. I think that feeling is lost, unlike in more traditional monoscale MMOs -- even if those only give you the illusion of traveling across a vast world. With SotA, you can't get there, so to speak. You have to break immersion and go up to the overland map to do any sort of travelling. That may be fine, who knows. I'll wait and see.

 

I'm likely in the minority here, but I play, predominately JRPG's and MMO's so a pretty good mixture of monoscale and dual scale worlds.

If there is one thing I would hypothesise, it's that the mapping model doesn't define the immersion.

The most immersive game I have played in a long time, Persona 4, has a dual scale map and even allows you jump between areas via a pop up menu. However I find myself immersed because of the story and characters, as opposed to the PC's method of ambulation.

Final Fantasy Games have also had moments of great exploration even through world maps. Searching for chocobo's, finding out of the way continents with side stories and so on.

Intuitively it's easy to make the case that monoscale is more immersive, but even in games like this LFD/LFG tools work in the same way as world maps to an extent (Being able to fast travel and interrupting game time with a loading screen). Instancing does the same, physically (digitally?) ripping your character from the game world to a personal area you know others cannot reach.

Personally I'm happy with either and for all the posters who are unhappy with the dual scale, was it not clear that the game was being built for a dual scale map? I mean, most of the footage is of the world map and even one whole dev blog is on crafting rivers for the world map.

I don't think it will change and I don;t think it's fair to ask them to compromise their vision.

The camel is a horse designed by committee after all.

 

I would agree, the immersion can be affected by everything from the story, characters, world, emotional connection, music, art, etc. It's great that you don't have any issues with this. But some people do and are giving constructing feedback here.

I think what some players here are talking about is simply that they feel that immersion of travelling the world is broken to varying degrees as they travel across the map, since they are switching from an instance to an overland map. I would tend to agree if only in reference to game world travel, as there are two distinct modes that players are constantly switching between. You're correct that loading screens and zoning can break immersion in this regard as well, but it's not as jarring as switching your viewpoint between an overland map and an instance view in 3rd/1st person.

Also it's not so much that folks here aren't aware of dual scale maps being a design goal. I believe most fans understand why they're doing it that way. They are simply offering their constructive feedback, since that's what the point of this Kickstarter was about. Most aren't asking them to compromise their vision. They'll make the right decision based on our feedback, even if it means finding some clever ways to solve this using a dual scale map.

And what a beautiful animal, that camel. I've always wanted one ever since watching Lawrence of Arabia 1000 times as a kid.

 

I'd also have to go with the I prefer this dual scale map system and I'm looking forward to it.

1) It's different, why should they feel they have to do what every other MMORPG is doing?

2) did you feel any less immersed in Chrono Trigger because of the dual scale map?

Those seem to be the primary arguments, a lot of modern games use dual scale maps still and people don't complain, but they think an RPG has to be this certain way because all of the others do it. And you should use these mounts and portals like the others do. I just don't believe it.

I'm sure by now most of you have seen chris's explanation on how it helps right? New content can be added at any time to any hex or random rare events you have to search for and track down, if you were running through the world on a map you'd just stumble across it, this leads to more exploration and re-checking of the world. It will lead to vastly superior gameplay. I'm also not so sure about how "small" these areas will be, I believe they can make each hex any size they want once you enter it, plus they can make you start at any point in that hex they want, so you might have to search for the exit etc.

 

1) Not asking it for the sake of it being like every other MMORPG. Some folks are asking for it for very specific reasons as stated above and in other threads.

2) Nope, not any less, for that type of game. You played Ni No Kuni recently? Great game.

You're correct, some modern games do have dual scale maps. And some don't.

Again, nobody's arguing against the benefits of the dual scale map. We all understand its benefits and what it can bring to the game. I'm looking forward to those types of things.

Ultimas have had both kinds, dual scale in the early games (U1 to U5), and monoscale for the rest (U6 to U9, SE, MD, UW1&2, UO). I like them both.

The sense of forward progress in exploration and travel in a single mode can still be achieved with a dual scale map, even if it's a simple simulation of connected instance travel. So technically, folks here aren't necessarily asking for monoscale map design. They're asking to recreate the feeling of a single mode of exploration and travel when they want it, and overland map for other times.

And as noted in another thread, the entire underworld catacombs area will likely just be a huge series of connected instances. There is no "overland map" for it that you constantly switch out every time you exit a connected instance. Instead, you just go from instance to instance, but perhaps there are multiple exits that take you back to the overland at different spots. How is that any different than what folks are asking on the overworld?

In the current case, you exit on the same spot in the hex map, as connected overworld instances are few and rare, and they dump you on the same spot in the overland map as where you entered. And who's to say there won't be multiple catacomb areas that you can only enter via different spots on the overland map? Those underground catacombs could easily be connected to each other via instancing, and in that sense you can get to point A to point B on the overland map via underground instance travel exclusively. Now, just do the same for the overland map and I think most folks would be fine with it -- and it's still a dynamic dual scale map with instances. Nothing to do with monoscale map design. The entire overland world doesn't need to be completely fully fleshed out for every hex using a monoscale map.

I'm personally a big proponent of the dual scale map, but I'm also a big fan of huge monoscale worlds to explore. I think the devs are clever enough to simulate the feel of the latter using the design vision of the former, if there's enough fan feedback on it.

 

Currently there is no sign or indication that they are considering what you wrote. I like that idea and would be happy to have both. Fast travel on the map and slow travel however I like.

I also have absolutely no idea how exploration in the current design would work. Like Nethack? You press f-key on the current hex and the game engine tells you if anything valuable is in that instance? Or do you simply stumble over it? Or do I go to any hex and then enter the instance and run around searching for something valueable?

I must admit I have not recognized that fact in the pledge phase, maybe I did not pay attention to that fact.