Overland Map Feedback [Merged Thread]

The overworld map is a scene, had a thought. Could it be possible to make it a scene, like other scenes. From there we could go into the scene we are currently standing on. To do this,basically make the Avatar smaller, much smaller. That's about it.

 

In short: I LOVE and ENJOY the new camera view. A huge step forward. The size-difference between Avatar and the rest of the world/objects feels good Now, I would love to see a bit more sharpen textures. Some soil textures looks a bit washy.

 

The freedom you get with the new camera has its pro's and con's. I like it such that...my god, it feels so much more...free. It feels like we've been shackled and if this freedom were to now be taken away it would be rage quit inducing.

But...I absolutely cringe and hate it for some of the reasons Lord Darkmoon has shown. Some of those problems could be fixed, such as smarter camera auto-zooming because man that was extremely annoying. To say that it's simply now behaving like a regular scene is true -- but that's always been the case. The overworld has always been simply a scene with scaled assets. The problem is that terrain height differences are denser and thus this problem is exacerbated as it happens much more frequently. And some of the problems likely will not be addressed, such as the giant Avatar unless he's scaled 1:1 with towns. And the off-scale between world objects, such as houses vs. trees vs. plants, etc. can be improved to some degree but unlikely at this point. But I do hope they at least give it a shot and see if making all world objects the same scale improves the experience.

Personally, I will not be zooming in so close or panning my camera down so low when moving about the map. I too liked the previous isometric (or even top-down) view, but will likely find a good balance point where it's not too low or not too zoomed in to cause these issues mentioned above. Not sure I'd need an option to limit the camera movement, as it will be a self-correcting problem due to how annoying the current issues are with doing so. Even with this new freedom, I found myself using the previous camera's angle and zoom level, but liked that the freedom was there when I wanted to just stop and look around.

And I also hope they do have a real in-game paper map of Novia that operates just like the town maps. After all, the overworld is just another scene to explore (and get lost) in.

 

If everything was to scale I think I may be able to find it more interesting, however, it still looks and feels simply like another game. Maybe I'm just not old school enough but the last game I played with a map like this was the second Legend of Zelda and I loathed it. I actually love the art work on the hand drawn map and just wish I could use that to travel with. As it stands now I just want to get off the overworld map as quickly as possible.

 

LB had spoken at one of his appearances about the angle changing to be able to see the sky for tracking astronomical convergences and other night sky events.

 

God mode, isn't it wonderful! Too bad we don't get paid for this B.S. like the Devs. But then we do get to experience something we may never have before; namely, living with a game from it's beginning to its end of going public. It does put you in your true position as awesome don't you think? We all have our grand moments of brilliance. This game allowed you to manifest that fact in your life for all of to see. Okay, I admit that is true but it is not as good as having the game be finished just the way you want as far as crafting, housing and combat. Well at least the game gave you what you deserve for what you have accomplished in your real life. Now if they would just give it to you in the game. You will have to wait until January at the earliest.

 

Really? You didn't play a single RPG during the ps1/ps2 era? Which legend of Zelda was this.

 

I don't understand the discussion about the scale. From my pov i have no problems with a big Avatar.Why is the experience better with a scaled Avatar? Ultima 5 had also a big Avatar compared to the world objects. Is there a psychological trick with the correct scale? As i wrote i like that. It gives me a bit Ultima 5 retro feeling. For me a matter of taste.

 

The problem is that from a top-down perspective it is not as apparent that we are such big giants. It's a matter of perspective. Looking down on something is different than looking straight to something or even up.

My idea was to automatically shrink the Avatar when we zoom down and to let him automatically grow when we zoom up.

 

I really do like the new overland map freedom, but I must admit that Lord Darkmoon's video does a good job of illustrating the worst aspects of the current camera autozoom. I would personally rather disable the autozoom even if it meant sometimes obscuring my character behind terrain. I'm sure if I could set my own zoom level, in time I'll find a distance and angle that consistently works for me.

 

The overland camera definitely needs to be tweaked.

 

Shh, it is much better than it was, you can always tilt it up Besides many of these things happen with camera in normal scenes as well.

 

Same here - I haven't experienced that particular giant view. I find that if I don't twiddle the zoom controls I have an overland view similar to the R16 one, only better.

 

I finally was able to find some time to play last night so I wanted to add my feedback too. I found the map to have a much greater freedom than I had previously experienced.

In prior releases, only being able to see my immediate surroundings was a huge annoyance. Now, I have the freedom to pan around and get the view I felt was lacking before. I can also see the town labels from quite a good distance away.

Thank you and good job team!

 

Then we need a new camera behaviour in general. No automatical zoom when objects block the view but a fixed distance between camera and avatar according to the manual zoom factor and if an object blocks the view then it should become transparent.
Other games do this and it works well. Why do we have this strange automatic zooming?

 

I love the overland camera freedom in r17 but agree that the freedom is crushed with autozoom. I have had no issues with autozoom in overland but I have constant gripes with it in regular scenes. Can we simpky have a setting to turn it off? I have no problems with having to mouse look around something I purposely walked into but I can't stand having to constantly fuss with the zoom.

Added to zoom frustration is the fact that often (always) camera settings and heading do not persist with scene changes. It is confusing coming out of a random encounter not facing the same direction as when you went into it, and I swear I keep having to change my zoom when I change scenes.

 

All they have to do is restrict the camera from moving below a certain level so it doesn't ruin the effect of scale and might also have the benefit of not interacting with the map objects (which seems to cause the zooming)

 

Those of you who want travel speed to be faster on the overland map, how do you expect we could have pvp events on it ? Like a caravan that needs to be protected... how can we have that if everyone if "flying" around the map and reaches destination in 2 minutes. Dosen't give very good odds to catch one...

Why does everything need to be so convenient... its not going to make anything realistic or remotely roleplayable...

 

My opinion has remained unchanged. Although it does look nice, here

unfortunately the gameplay remains so poor in this view that it is really hurting the whole game more than what seems anyone from the company seems to be aware of (afaik)..
Maybe they do know.. I hope so.

Still, it remains, I don't see that any length of thought or design went into this and it really suffers from a whole slew of complicated issues ranging from
movement
perspective scaling
fun
purpose
multi-player
single-player
lacks any previous Ultima styled experiences (except maybe the awkwardness of Pagan)

IMHO I think this terrible overworld experience is going to stop this game from ever holding onto any significant playerbase.

 

When roving encounters are introduced, when you can meet NPCs on the overland map, when things are happening on the overland map and you can discover things like new scenes appearing during certain events then the overland map will get a much deeper purpose than just traveling from scene to scene as it is now.

But the new camera and especially the auto-zoom is hurting the experience, imho. Many people might think that this is a substitution for an open world when you now roam around in third-person mode. But then you see the different scale and the sizes that don't match and it just looks awkward. I think the perspective should have stayed in isometric mode. But at least the auto-zoom needs to be substituted with a zooming that stays at the distance that you select without constantly changing and objects "in the way" becoming transparent.