I agree with your post…
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss!
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss!
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss!
Also the mandatory long cutscenes before fighting bosses in Diablo 3 were really frustrating. I know you could skip them, but they still stopped the gameplay.
ah, the jungle right?
don’t quite remember a lich QUEEN, but i remember undead king dudes. that was more of a side quest wasn’t it? I think the optimum path was relatively linear, but there weren’t any guidelines. you kinda had to know where everything was.
there was certainly backtracking if you missed it, I know i did the first time.
oh wait.
right.
lich queen.
the one in the middle of the ruins. still the jungle. needed to find the mcguffin to summon her with so you can beat her down.
hmm. point.
although that’s more quest design problem than map/world problem. you can probably design a similar backtrack on a side scroll if you feature a quest hub type design. (go get quest, get thing, come back to giver, loop) there was also, uh circe? there were like 3-4 quests in her little village that you had to go back to redeem. on the upside she had a portal thingy so it was pretty easy to get there.
question on backtracking. what annoys you most about it? the fact you’re retreading the ground (lack of novelty) or that there’s usually nothing to do in the ground being retrod(lack of action) or something else?
I personally think TQ had a good start… get lost? find the path. But I personally am an explore every corner person, and while pipeline are constricting the 1/2" tube some unnamed games have come up with are terrible.
Now, too big, and not being able to find the exit to the level is a game killer.
But mostly, OP, I’m just a little frustrated with the “lets dumb down the world so everyone can play” approach that other games took - its downright wrong.
I would say the issue is that if your creating a dungeon crawler you are creating a game for explorers. Casual explorers should catch on. You CAN simplify things so that someone who can’t find the back of their closet can play your game, but then you just ran off all the explorers that cared about your game.
I will admit that I was getting ready to pre-order Grim Dawn… but now, naw. You are starting to scare me with your Blizzard-Zynga talk.
To what are you referring here?
From what I can see in the available material the individual levels/areas are just about the size I like: Progress Map from March 2012 (from [post=50544]State of the Game Address[/post]).
If you do not mind a minor spoiler of the early beginning, then you can set this into relation with this map of Lower Crossing (from [post=56368]Level Paths and Dynamic Barriers[/post]).
Good question. Personally I’d like to go through things methodically. Not just the way of exploring and unearthen each inch of the map. But also in the way of cleaning up the quests. With an ARPG I do not enjoy keeping track of notes and what to do and where. In most cases I don’t even read the texts and skim it at most. That is why quests in World of Warcraft are so perfect. It just says you need to kill something for x amount. I really don’t read the conversation/context and just want quick action for the limited time I can play.
The quests in TQ were orderly. You’d complete them without really going out of your way while exploring and moving ahead into new terrain/content. With Immortal Throne you’d had to go back after gathering the 4 stones for Hades’s vault. You’d have to go back for other quests as well. I simply did not bother with that. Simply because I was not keeping track of it. I had no idea where to even find the npc’s and wasn’t willing to waste time trying to locate them.
It is a whole different matter when playing Morrowind. In such an RPG I intently listen to conversations and write down what seems important. But with an ARPG I am looking, and expecting, a fast paced game where you keep going foward with limited depth. An ARPG to me is basically a game you can pick up and put down easily. You can play it 15-20mins before work and/or in between other activities without getting lost by what kind of story or such it had. And over the years you will still invest a lot of time in such a way. All an ARPG needs in my opinion is atmosphere, interesting environments and interesting build possibilities. Unlike another RPG where I expect more depth for which I will sit down for long periods of time.
I sure hope I’m not talking zynga speak, that’s. disturbing.
That’s weird, in the Elder Scrolls games I routinely fast forward through the texty bits assuming that anything really important will get tossed into a log somewhere. or pinned on the map.
I do however skim the books and then read what interest me closely, some of them are really quite engaging. For instance the dude in light armor stealing apples from the orchard during a siege. although now that i think about it, why the besiegers didn’t chop down the orchard makes scarce sense, although i think they explained that.
I can see your point on the getting lost on the quest givers. it’s a major weakness for non-hub quest givers, you often have a hard time finding them again. and even if they are in the hub you can have trouble remembering which section or which hub.
Heck I’m playing Divine Divinity right now, and even with the quest log which is pretty detailed on where to go back to, sometimes I’ll be in the neighborhood and completely forget to visit a reward. OTOH the big flashing neon signs in the minimap noting completed quests seem, a little obnoxious. Of course I’m exactly the type that needs or uses the damned things.
hmm, mount and blade did it pretty well, they hotlink the locations/people in the quest log and the pedia entry the hotlink takes you to has an option to center the map on the target, which’ll get you in the right ballpark and then the search options from there are pretty limited, so easy to find at that point, although tracking down a lord on the move is always a pain.
I love to explore to an extent but if an area is to big it becomes a lot of work to fully explore it. I think the overworld should have lots and lots of smaller sized open areas vs less much larger areas. Smaller chunks that are intricate yet able to be completed in a reasonable time make the game feel more rewarding and it takes more time overall and less time in one sitting to complete the game once through.
That has been my experience so far with games. If the game becomes work to explore or tedious then it is far less fun.
It can’t be too open! I would like to see large areas to explore with a lot of places/quests to discover. Options games are falling to the wayside, and it is truly a sad thing to see go.
i think there was a rough map of regions in a prior state of the game post.
it had rough approximations of completeness and work needed doing. uh…
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3235
ha! took me forever to find that. and it was even on the first page.
I think that the size of the area won’t affect peoples feeling of being rewarded or make them feel like things are taking too long as long as there is sufficient nudges in the right direction… where thinking you should compress to save time for players all you are really doing is limiting the players that like to explore… and limiting the opportunities for easter eggs… which are extremely rewarding to players… sometimes more rewarding than loot or completion. The amount of time a player takes is relative to the players style and the ease of navigation through the game… not the size of the game itself…
Maps can never be too large so long as you put things in them to do, i.e. a reward for wandering from off of the beaten track, be it side quests, treasure chests, etc. With a decent in game map, NPCs, and other things you can EASILY give clues as to where the main route is relative to current position.
TQ was WAY too linear, it was like a railroad.
Edit:
What I mean to say about map size, is that the content that you have for it needs to fit so IMO at the end of the day it’s the content that should drive map “size”. A GINORMOUS EMPTY map is no fun at all…
Please don’t make the game more linear to suit casuak gamers. Much of the fun in games ironically comes from thibs which may be kn the verg of frustrating. Being lost can actually be fun and in all honesty with more time into the game even in different areas of the same size and possible “confusion level” the players will get used to it and be able to navigate them quicker. But there’s a lot of fun in it in hindsight.
And as the game becomes quicker to get through with multiple playthroughs having these large unlinear areas is still a good idea because they add much nore to replayability for runs and such than a more linear game.
I totally agree with you. Make it so we may at times want to “intentionally get lost” maybe going through a run to a boss as quick as possible may be better for getting loot but after that gets a little tiring and we want to take a break large areas could have certain hidden chests in way off the beaten path which may or may bot be guarded by stronger than usual mobs.
getting lost could be a very nice change up of the routine of doing runs and be fun. In certain areas where the atmosphere worked with it I thibk it’d be a neat idea if you got really far off the beaten path if there was a chance a thick fog could kick in as well. And like I said give us a little incentive to want to wander aimlessly and explore.
Unless you have something actually interesting to find, I think making maps more open does nothing to make things less linear, it just makes that line more squiggly.
Agree. Can never be too open or too large a world. Reviews on TQIT were saying that game was too long…What???
I have played every rpg/arpg out there (except D3). Played Skyrim for 1000 Hours, wish it was larger. Played TQIT for 40 hours, wish world was randomized when you replayed game and not so linear.
Looks like GD is going to answer my prayers.
how so?
my current impression of GD is it’ll use fixed maps with randomized furniture, an access point here blocked off, a set of trees there configured differently. upgradable town features.
there’s still a lot of potential in how those changes will interact, but it doesn’t seem to me to be that radically different so as to answer prayers.
“Wherever we want to go, we go. That’s what a ship is, you know. It’s not just a keel and a hull and sails; that’s what a ship needs. Not what a ship is. What the Black Pearl really is, is freedom.” - Jack Sparrow
I would love to see a further divergence from the Diablo model here and have something more in line with Super Metroid / Zelda / Dark Souls where a lot of areas ARE accessible, but perhaps you have not got a special relic that is needed to access them fully yet. This could be used to put certain barriers in place while still letting you “preview” an area essentially.
more open is always better than less open.
I know this is a two year old thread, and I’m sure you’ve made your choice already with which direction you’re going in, but I thought I’d give me two cents anyways.
The more open, the better! I say, don’t alienate your target player base, fans of “complex, traditional games.” As long as there is stuff to do, side quests, unique encounters, etc., the zones won’t feel too big, but rather, will make us be perfectly OK with getting a little lost, and, in fact, will probably enjoy it!
My biggest gripe with D2 was how little content there was. Sometimes, I did get a little lost in some of those zones, and it sucked because there was jack to do other than kill monsters. Got a little boring. There was so much more that could of been done, content wise, in that game, that it really befuddled me as to why it was so content strapped. 21 total quests in D2C, 17 if you eliminate “kill act boss” quests. Way too little.
More open, more content!
As long as it isn’t like Sacred 2. That was horrendous.