World Maps: The Minimum Expectations of 21st Century RPGS

Things that will help make the world feel more alive and dangerous:

• A rich sound experience while travelling the map (different sounds of nature in different areas and fitting music of course)
• Random encounters (enemies, quests etc.)
• Fog of war
• Seeing nearby players and possibly having to engage them(or was this too hard because of technical issues?). I think the current plan is to show party members.
• Graphical additions to the map. If the map starts looking more alive with animated things and more GOT style stuff, it could be very nice.

Edit: Just saw Aegis159 fog of war post. It instantly makes the map look MUCH more fun to explore.

 

I admit that makes it better and I realize it will get improvements. But the style just does not appeal to me at all. Having the fog there versus not having it does not change much in regards to my desire to explore. I mean it helps a little the map above does look better then what we were shown. Now maybe once it is all done it will look nice enough that I will find it tolerable. Maybe the final version will manage to bring a little sense of exploration. But no matter what they do with this new map I just don't see how it could be even close to as good as what they had originally planned.

 

Even with fog of war the map doesn't encourage me to explore it. I know what is under the fog - more brown paper...
Also I cannot imagine them including animals etc. on this map. How would it look like if a crayon paper bear is roaming around? Or will the animals be flags, too?

Another thing: how will a day/night cycle look on this map? How will weather look? Paper lightning and rain? Or will there be no day/night cycle and weather on this map at all?

No, this is a paper map, nothing more. It doesn't make me want to explore it.

 

A few other things I thought of to make the map useful...

Scenario entrance should depend on what direction came from when you stepped into the world map hex. This would mean a possible six entrances per hex, though you could designate one as an entrance for two sides, or double up some on a side (or more than two) and have it pick one of those at random (to avoid camping). This would mean that if you want to get to the back of the town, then you have to come at it from the back. Combine this to the non-zero chance to have an encounter, and it becomes a give/take issue. Do I risk a couple more steps on the map to enter from the back and be closer to my lot or certain services, or do I just enter at the front and walk through town? This would also allow a hex to be placed in strategic locations, say between two mountains, and in order to get to the other side you have to traverse the scene and it's perils.

 

I do agree that the direction you enter a zone should matter. I tested this a bit in this last release, moving into the towns from different directions on the OM only to load in the same exact place every time when entering the zone. THAT, along with a compass would be a smart addition.

 

Actually, alot of those things can be done with a paper map. I imagine it like an animated pop-up book. You can still have flashes of weather, paper cut-out animals, trees that sway in the wind, etc. You can do a great deal with this art direction and it will probably look pretty cool, if you do.

HOWEVER. I still don't like that art direction and no matter how cool or 'alive' the paper cut-outs are, they do not evoke the same feel as a zoomed out version of the world.

Can they put enough work into a paper map to make it pretty and alive. Yes. Will that create the same gaming environment as the originally proposed map? Absolutely not.

 

@Lord Darkmoon:

Will there be crayon paper bears? Well, Darkstarr mentioned that they wanted to add things like paper fire animations to under siege areas. So, it's safe to assume everything on the map will be paper pop-up puppets.

Is a map that looks like a children's pop-up book original? I guess. Is it immersive? Nope.

 

Hmmm I'm starting to think that you all are really at an impasse with the devs then. They do not expect the map to be anything other than a travel mechanic and that we'd only be spending 10% of the time using it. By what you ByTor, DocDoom, Darkmoon and others have said you all expected to be using it a lot more than that, mayhaps in the 50% range? THAT is a large disparity. Perhaps that divide should be addressed first?

 

^^^^^ What he said

JAMorton said: ↑

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Yes, my thoughts exactly, they must have been really drunk when they okay'ed the new World Map, around 75% of pre-alpha testers I spoke to believe it to be a really basic placeholder map not the actual map.

Lord_Darkmoon said:

Yes, a young child's browser game.

 

Sometimes I really wish that there was a dislike button.... That's being pretty disingenuous to the artist that was asked to make the art, whoever it was. If you think it's that easy to do why not show us how much better you can do it, given the parameters that it's supposed to look a certain way, and you only have a very small amount of time to do it in, legitimately.

C'mon, be an adult about it at least.

 

I agree. When I saw the overland map during the Kickstarter campaign, I wanted to explore this world, wander through the forests and swamps... I would have spent much more time than 10% on the overland map, just wandering around, exploring.

 

Well, I'm sure the sarcastic tone you put in this will really get them to listen to you. I think I won't bother responding or reading anything else you write because I just don't like the sarcastic tone you put into your posts. Good luck to you.

 

Hmmm, are we certain this is not a case of the team feeling the pressure of the Oct release date? If it is then reducing programming and increasing staffing makes sense.
The team size is now 31.

Just wondering!

 

Everything from a few months ago on through past release is a result of the team feeling the pressure.

 

when I hear the amount of the ideas for the papermap which should be included to make it look cool, than they can also stay with the 3d map. Looks like the same workload.

 

Wow, you two really can't take a joke can you?
It was just a bit of fun that's all, to lighten up what seems to be an increasingly nasty atmosphere what with the finger pointing and all.

Look, the reality is that we've gone from an interactive, fully realized World Map to a piece of paper with a child's drawing of mountains, trees and towns and a flag representing the player and you wonder WHY people might be upset?

 

Actually, they're drawn in a well-established and time-honoured fantasy style of map drawing, that you will find in novels from Tolkien down. So, no, they don't look like, "a child's drawings" at all.

You don't seem to recognise that classic fantasy style leaping off the page, however, and instead just see, "a child's drawings", so it's no wonder you're struggling with what the map is trying to evoke, visually.

In short, the new style of map might remain something that's not to your taste, but it's definitely not, "a child's drawings". That's just insulting to its creator, who obviously has an excellent grasp on classic fantasy maps.

 

What I also not understand is:
The team doesn't want to have much of an interface in the game and no elements that distract from the immersion like exclamation marks above the heads of NPCs etc. Hasn't it been said that the game should be as immersive as possible? Then why this hard break from third person view when you explore an area to a paper map that has nothing in common with the rest of the style of the game?
You are totally immersed in the area and in the game, change to overland and suddenly you have this paper map -> immersion broken...

 

Well, exactly the same argument can be used for ANY kind of overhead map, if we're honest with ourselves. So that's not just a black mark against the paper version of the map, if we want to get serious on the topic of immersion. If I'm running around a 3D world, then I can pull out to ANY kind of overhead map, it's still different to the game environment I was in, and offers faster travel then the world I was in. How it actually looks doesn't make it more or less immersive.

Ultimately, every game on the market has immersion breaking features. Even the act of sitting infront of PC with a mouse in your hand is immersion-breaking, if we get really finicky about it.

 

I just played the new Age of Wonders 3 and they use a great solution for "our" problem. Maybe Portalarium can take a look at this.
The overland view is similar to the old version of SotA. It is an atmospheric 3D world view with lush forests, running streams, animals etc. that you can zoom. You can zoom down and the camera tilts and you can zoom up, through the clouds and even further up. Then the overworld view changes to a paper map!
I think that this would be a great idea for SotA! Those of us who like the 3D overworld view can play in this view and those who like the paper map can zoom out until the map is shown!

You can see what I mean in this video at around minute 1:30: