please add six million dollar stretch goal to abandon dual scale map

This thread could have 1,000 pages of support and it still won't happen.

You're asking them to re-architect the whole game basically, and that simply won't happen at this stage of the game.

You're not just talking about how the world is presented visually, but also how instances are done and much more. This is an impossible request, and thusly not worth discussing. And since the devs have gone on record previously saying this isn't open for debate, this thread should probably be closed.

 

I say this thread stays open until the tug-o-war thread is closed.

 

I disagree with your wide reaching generalization.

By extension, you are saying that WoW was "better and more immersible" than every Ultima before UO, all of the Infinity Engine games, Wasteland 2, the Fallouts, and Divinity Original Sin.

Which is a bit silly.

 

You can have a crappy game without zones, and a great game with zones. That's not the point.

The point is that all things being equal, it's better to have an open world than one where you have to zone. Most (all?) people would rather not sit and watch their computer load a new zone.

All this is irrelevant since SotA will be instanced and we know that can't change. But let's admit the obvious when it comes to game mechanics.

 

I don't necessarily agree with that either, because introducing that mechanic forces you to make compromises in other areas. It isn't better, or worse. It's just different.

 

I agree with the original post 100%. Dump this clutter and link the zones together like the original Everquest. Fast travel is a plague that is wrecking our good games. Please consider adding 45 minute boat rides too. Thanks.

 

I am pretty sure that all UO fans are about to agree with me. And not only UO. While all other games are crap like ArcheAge and ESO which went casual way but casual players are not stable. Today they want this feature and tomorrow it is another casual game released and they are gone, but UO still has more players than ESO, for example. So, going back to my request, do this, instance-free world. I am not a big fan of deck with limited number of skills/spells you can use. For me its better to think which skills you are going to use and make your deck but in your head and not being limited by the game mechanics. But it is fine.

 

At this point they'd have to start over almost completely from scratch and no, 7 million would likely not be enough.

 

The only way how to avoid instances altogether and still keep all the players in the world is to run the game on supercomputer and stream video output to players. I think it is doable (with way more money than $7M), however there would be other drawbacks like net traffic and lag.

 

Personally I prefer the instances with the overland map, especially the way it is looking now. There are so many benefits to doing it this way.

I just hope there are some instances that are a bit more wide open for exploration.

 

No thank you.

With instancing we get the three best features of the game:

Selective multiplayer, without instancing this would be technically infeasable

Changing world, like with solace bridge they can add and change locations at will, the upcoming sieges etc all this needs instances to be feasable

PvP zones (and thus indirectly consensual PVP)
Etc

So thank you for your input but no thank you.

 

To add to spoons List. It also makes it easier to deal with growth. For example they can just drop another instance to provide room for more housing or other content.

I do love full open 3d worlds but there are still very many limitations to that with todays tech. I hope that someday we will have such a beast. For now though we get more this way.

 

It would be possible to minimize some of the negative appearances of instances; such as loading times between zones, and the need to use the overland map as transitioning tool. As players move towards the edge of a map (either open world, or forced through zone exit points) the game could start the instance selection, and asset loading process. This way by the time you arrive at the edge of the map the next zone is already loaded. It probably would be better to load an X sq meter radius of zone content instead the entire zone... In any case, I don't know if this is a limitation of the Unity framework, or if it's just development time for Portalarium.

I too wanted to see something like this done, and was advocating for it, many month ago. Given the way the zones and instances are implemented now, my guess is that there is too much forward momentum to keep things as is, so changing it will be too expensive.

 

As I stated you want selective multiplayer - casual game... No full loot, no skill based, as It already is, not to be ganked on your way from somewhere to somewhere, just like WoW bgs... choose the instance and either PvP or PvE. It's casual man... just for a month. When you are limited on freedom.. Here you can hit the enemy and here not due to some invisible wall/field/whatever... It is not sandox that many of us love and many still play the game which was released 17 years ago. And how many of SotA fans still playing Morrowing or Gothic 1 or 2?

 

That is funny. I played every one of those games and loved them tenfold above WoW. I guess you just don't comprehened my reasoning.

 

Merged threads with duplicate topics. Feel free to continue discussion about making an instance-free world a stretch goal (and keep it on topic please), but it is not likely to happen since SotA by design from day 1, has been built around an instanced architecture.

 

No. Honestly, even if they went for a seamless, single-scale world with no map, instancing would be good. You want empties that should feel empty to feel empty, and areas that should feel full to feel full. I don't want to go down deep into a dungeon and see 100s of player waiting around camping for the boss to re-spawn. The only way to control that is through instancing.

You're comparing to ESO, but ESO didn't instance enough, at least during the betas. You got this type of mass camping of bosses in ESO all the time.

 

I suppose not. Perhaps you could clarify the phrase "There is no doubt that open worlds are better"

 

Just curious, can you point me to where you get/got your numbers? AFAIK, Zenimaxx has still not released any numbers about anything.

If they have, I would love to start tracking them.

If they haven't, then its just wild speculation on your part.

Cheers.

 

There are published reports (being paywalls) on MMO subscription numbers. But they're not frequently released to the public. Last I saw however, UO had about 90k subscribers and ESO has 770k subscribers.

So UO does not have more subscribers than ESO and it isn't close.