Saturday, 10 November 2012 16:08 Update, "Plans"

[Maeltorn]

We can see the guy's titties but not the girl's.

I'm upset.

[Duck]

It is a dark day for `menkind` indeed.

[Blxz]

The hell you talking about?

[Marrow]

Character models. Chris' "Plans".

[Maeltorn]

The hell you talking about?

Look at ze front page.

[Santaissick]

About the plans. I'm sorry to hear about world size ending up smaller. One of the greatest things in almost any game I have played has been the wandering and adventuring to new places. As long as there are places I haven't been before the game is still interesting. Even if games had a main story and the game was "beatable," I still continued to explore random places after completing the game.

Chris rationalized his decision by the long walks being too long, but I think it won't change a thing. Everything is relative. There is no game I have played, that didn't make me "wait too long." At some point impatient player will always get sick of waiting something. Get sick of long trailers or long walk or loading that comes every once in a while and takes almost 5 seconds. Resizing the world doesn't help a thing on that IMHO. If walks take 20 minutes, sooner or later someone complains about it. After changing it into 10 minutes after the one who complained earlier gets used to new length, he will complain again about the same thing.

The affect might even be opposite. When the distances are big, you are less likely to go the same way as earlier and player won't frustrate on journeying since there is more to see. When world is small, player will see everything much faster and after that, every trip is just waiting...



By this, I'm asking reconsideration about the 4x map (whitch I would really love to see) and of course more discussion and opinions on the subject

[Kanaro]

About the plans. I'm sorry to hear about world size ending up smaller. One of the greatest things in almost any game I have played has been the wandering and adventuring to new places. As long as there are places I haven't been before the game is still interesting. Even if games had a main story and the game was "beatable," I still continued to explore random places after completing the game.

I'll agree with this. Despite capabilities for games growing all the time, current games are either getting smaller with every iteration, or just staying the same. Good example - the Elder Scrolls series. Oblivion was slightly larger than Morrowind, but to keep the simplistic console crowd happy, they kept Skyrim's world size the same.

Exploration in open world games with endless possibilities is key. Downsizing your open world is akin to downsizing the game. It becomes a "packaged experience", and is quite a bit less thrilling. This compounds itself when you add in multiple biomes. If a group are compacted into a smaller world, they don't reflect actual real-world biome sizes, and detract from the experience.

I respect Chris' plans for the game, but think that making the world smaller is a big mistake.

[Hellhound1]

I think, for a single developer, he's got a metric shit tonne (official measurements) of work to do.
If making the map smaller means he can get more done, quicker, and actually fill the space with useful stuff, then im all up for it.

After all, he can always expand it when he wants, when he's got more to fill it with.

Kenshi: Snow Mountains DLC out soon..

[Pain]

[...] Good example - the Elder Scrolls series. Oblivion was slightly larger than Morrowind, but to keep the simplistic console crowd happy, they kept Skyrim's world size the same.[...]

TES is maybe not the best example for your point, since Daggerfall (TES 2) was the largest TES world of all the iterations. Everything after that was tiny by comparison.

[ownpk611]

I thought the plan was to fill up the world with more things that are closer and then start expanding. Also modders will be able to make their own maps like on mount and blade

[Kanaro]

[...] Good example - the Elder Scrolls series. Oblivion was slightly larger than Morrowind, but to keep the simplistic console crowd happy, they kept Skyrim's world size the same.[...]

TES is maybe not the best example for your point, since Daggerfall (TES 2) was the largest TES world of all the iterations. Everything after that was tiny by comparison.

Actually, had I opted to include Daggerfall, my point would have been easier to make. The older the games get, the larger their world space. They've been shrinking so that devs can spend more time "packaging" the content and less on building the world. Morrowind was different due to being the first game on a new engine, that took advantage of 3d heavily and needed distance fog to cover up unrendered views.

Anyhow, going to stick to my preference of a more procedurally generated and random large world, as opposed to a pre-defined smaller one with more static features.

[Shoelip]

Also something to consider, Morrowind took place on the large northern Island of Vvardenfell off the coast of the Morrowind province. Obilvion supposedly too place in the Imperial Province of Cyrodiil, which is significantly larger than Vvardenfell, so it was scaled down significantly more than it even though the map was technically slightly larger.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Maps

Of course, all that really is one of Oblivion's smaller flaws. Especially compared to completely changing the geography and culture of the province to make it into discount western middle earth.