Tendo City

I guess one of the most charitable things I could say is that it's a testament to how far they have come (and the ambitions of the TES project) that I notice so many things that keep it from feeling like a real world...

Yeah, Morrowind is cool.

This Zelda is supposed to be 70 hours---by comparison, how many hours are OoT and WW supposed to be?

Ten one hundredths of the percentage (rounded infinity) and Britney Spears bald vagina plus natural salt.

Many scientists theorize on the exact numerical value of OoT's and WW's game-legth but most tend to agree that it's around the 20 to 30 (hours) mark.

This is taking a new player in to account mind you. If you know exactly what you're doing and where to go, etc you can probably finish both games in one day. Game length really means nothing. The first time I beat RE4 it took me around 70 hours. The second time it took me 6. The third, I did it in 4. The fith time i played... it took me about 90+ hours... treasure hunting, weapon experimenting and finding fun glitches like the float glitch. :D

1969 was the summer of the skins...which was cool. but it was also a huge time for flower power and the death of the mods. so...i think '77 was better. punk rock baby.

oh and morrowind is good.

So that's like putting various computer terms we only use today in some old year eh? Why yes I do remember applying a system mod to my transistor radio.

I put NOS in my horseless carriage!

My carriage has a horse, MADE OF METAL!

That's just plain impractical!

Morrowind issues... well first, obviously, is the most common problem with computer or console RPGs: scale. As per usual this place just isn't realistically scaled... of course it has to be that way, because you've got to walk almost everywhere so if it were on a real scale the game would be completely impossible to play, but still, it hurts a bit when they're trying for realism (along with stuff like the fact stores never close, etc)...

Scale?

Like, running from one town to the next can take 5 minuites... this is not exactly realistic when compared to a real place, especially not a real Medieval place. I've heard Morrowind is the digital equivilant of 16 square miles -- quite sizable, and probably too large for something without good warping (TES games really, really need fast travel...), but not as big as I'd expect that island to be if it were real. Especially given the scale suggested in Arena and Daggerfall for this continent (Tamriel).

Great Rumbler Wrote:That's just plain impractical!

No, it's also very expensive and consumes far too much fuel!

Quote:Like, running from one town to the next can take 5 minuites... this is not exactly realistic when compared to a real place, especially not a real Medieval place. I've heard Morrowind is the digital equivilant of 16 square miles -- quite sizable, and probably too large for something without good warping (TES games really, really need fast travel...), but not as big as I'd expect that island to be if it were real. Especially given the scale suggested in Arena and Daggerfall for this continent (Tamriel).

Would it be better if it took 30 minutes to an hour [if not more] of walking to get to different towns? It'd be terrible, especially if you have to get to some out-of-the-way ruin to accomplish some mission. They take long enough to walk to as it is!

Quote:Would it be better if it took 30 minutes to an hour [if not more] of walking to get to different towns? It'd be terrible, especially if you have to get to some out-of-the-way ruin to accomplish some mission. They take long enough to walk to as it is!

You should be able to warp between places. If they want to limit it or make you explore more then have you only able to warp to places you've been... or have some locations there always but have you have to find others (like how in Arena you can warp to any town anytime but to get to the special dungeons and stuff you have to complete quests that add their locations to the map)...

I know, it cannot be the same size as the real world. But... well, Arena coped by just letting you go to the cities, exploring around each city (though you can never get from one city to the next by walking), and the dungeons. Daggerfall? I've only played the demo, but from what I've read, it's got over 100,000 square miles of land... *checks* http://til.gamingsource.net/fsg/danibenearticle1.shtml 64,000 square miles (195x330 mi.), it seems.

look here.
http://www.uesp.net/tamriel/geography/im...amriel.jpg

Vvardenfell is in the northeast. Daggerfall is in parts of southern High Rock and northern Hammerfell. Oblivion is in Cyrodiil (the central Imperial province). Arena is ... everywhere -- that's the Arena map. :)

Daggerfall (note that it's twisted... north is not up, it's rightish ... oh, and the Daggerfall demo is the island of Betony.)
http://www.uesp.net/tamriel/image.shtml?...iacbay.jpg

So, at the proper scale Morrowind's location is indeed smaller than Daggerfall's, so it should be a smaller area on the map... but it's not so much smaller that "100,000 (or whatever it is, it's big) vs. 15" explains it. :)

Essentially, I think that they decided Daggerfall was far, far too large and scaled Morrowind down... for console gamers perhaps? Just because Daggerfall was too large (and from what I've heard it probably was)? Because they wanted to draw the whole map this time and not have it be random so they could not make it anywhere near as large (this is certainly true)? I don't know... but it hurts the realism some. Okay, so you may argue that a map you can use to get anywhere immediately isn't realistic, but then just do what Arena does, some "guy on horse riding" animation on the map window and a meter showing how many days it took to travel across the continent (it's a lot.)...

Ooh, this is interesting... TESIII Morrowind province concept map, of the whole province... shows it in its Arena form more or less, before they reshaped the island (and added Solstheim from out of nowhere just northwest of it)... actually, comparing that map to the map in Morrowind and the map from Arena (here - it's java with rollover names - http://til.gamingsource.net/maps/), it's interesting how much they changed it... the three towns Arena has on that island are gone without a trace in Morrowind. Only the central dungeon Dagoth Ur is still there...
http://til.gamingsource.net/maps/concept_morrowind.jpg

As for the next game, I've seen in interviews that they've said that they couldn't make a game much larger than Morrowind without having easy travel, and that's true... as for Oblivion it'll be a bit bigger than Morrowind (and will have some form of improved travel), but surely won't be anywhere near as big as Daggerfall... as for how realistic the scale will feel though, it's not out yet so we don't know. :)


As for Morrowind, one other thing I'll say is that the character art (models) are incredibly bad unless you download some mods for improving them (and adding clothing)...

Quote:just do what Arena does, some "guy on horse riding" animation on the map window and a meter showing how many days it took to travel across the continent (it's a lot.)...

I'm really glad you don't make games, Brian. In this day and age throwing something like that into a game is just...dumb. Not to mention COMPLETELY unrealistic and it takes away almost all the immersion of having an entire island full of towns to explore.

Quote:But... well, Arena coped by just letting you go to the cities, exploring around each city

That's not realistic at all! Not even close! Not too mention sounding far less fun than what Morrowind allows. You see, there's a fine line, with regards to travelling in games, between annoying and fun. Morrowind is, for the most part, fun. Wind Waker is fun to a point, but then it becomes annoying because of how sparse the landscape is and how far apart the islands are. The director himself admitted as much. In making a game world that's bigger than Morrowind you can either put in a system where you can transport to any spot on the map, which is completely ridiculous, or set up a decent trasportation system [which Morrowind already had] and keep towns relatively close to each other.

I bet that Oblivion has horse-back riding, that would make it a lot easier to travel long distances.

First, I've edited my previous post several times... added more links to maps, etc. Go over it again.

Quote:I'm really glad you don't make games, Brian. In this day and age throwing something like that into a game is just...dumb. Not to mention COMPLETELY unrealistic and it takes away almost all the immersion of having an entire island full of towns to explore.

Um, quite the opposite. It's far more realistic to say "it took fifteen days of riding for you to get there" than to have you walk for ten minuites and say "it was a mile away and this "continent" is actually really, really tiny"... far, far more realistic.

Quote:That's not realistic at all! Not even close! Not too mention sounding far less fun than what Morrowind allows. You see, there's a fine line, with regards to travelling in games, between annoying and fun. Morrowind is, for the most part, fun. Wind Waker is fun to a point, but then it becomes annoying because of how sparse the landscape is and how far apart the islands are. The director himself admitted as much. In making a game world that's bigger than Morrowind you can either put in a system where you can transport to any spot on the map, which is completely ridiculous, or set up a decent trasportation system [which Morrowind already had] and keep towns relatively close to each other.

Oh, Arena isn't as good as Daggerfall or Morrowind, that's for sure... it is kind of odd that even if you DID for some stupid reason want to walk a couple hundred miles to the next city you can't get there. Daggerfall? It was overly large and had transportation. (which as I said, I quite definitely disagree with you about... it's by no means unrealistic or unwanted! It's great and realistic... my only possible complaint in Daggerfall/Arena is that you never get attacked while map-travelling. Maybe add a chance for encounters while travelling, but that's all I would want. Other than that, it's a great system that allows a game to be so much more playable... it's like MMORPGs -- most make you walk everywhere, which is a pain... more "realistic" but a pain. One thing Guild Wars has is maptravel so you can go to any mission/town/outpost/pvp enterance area that you have reached in the game (that is you have to get there first, but once you're there you can warp whenever)... less "realistic"? Perhaps, because it doesn't bother with something like Arena's "it's taken X amount of time" displays. But the gameplay enchancement of actually able to be where you want, without a major fuss, is great... Morrowind definitely could have used a maptravel option to warp to any town you've been to (coupled with a slightly larger scale).

Oh yeah, and things like horses would be very much appreciated, it's tedious to have to walk places when you know in a real world there would be faster options. :)

As for Oblivion, based on interviews and stuff, I'm pretty sure that they're going to have some form of warping.

Scale can be less of a problem with the introduction of meaningful horse-riding, by which I mean that you're actually using the horse to get somewhere, not just riding around the Hyrule middle area going HOLY CRAP I'M RIDING A HORSE... IN A GAME!! which, let's be honest, was the gist of OoT riding. Getting somewhere in 5 minutes by horse where it would take 20 minutes by foot (or whatever, I don't know horse-to-human speed ratios) is already more realistic than the smaller-scale alternative.

You can also play around with the actual composition of the gameplay. Instead of having a shitty "overworld" with generic enemies that acts solely as a mid-way point between dungeons/events/whathaveyou, just focus more of the gameplay on the traveling. Making it so Link has to journey for several "days" (hours) through Octorok Valley before reaching the sacred Temple of the Octorok Cult is, again, already more epic and realistic than having an owl show up and go "ya the dungeon is behind that rock over there". Even if it stretches the game so much you can't afford to have a million dungeons anymore, it'll work. So long as there's interesting shit in Octorok Valley, the player won't feel screwed over. Put towns with NPCs related to subplots, shady alleys where you get attacked by thieves with a weird recurring tattoo and where you can buy unreliable magical items, strongholds with petty warlords fighting each other, whatever. Just like in books or movies. 3D games can afford that kind of realism and attention to detail, so do it do it do it.

Quote:Um, quite the opposite. It's far more realistic to say "it took fifteen days of riding for you to get there" than to have you walk for ten minuites and say "it was a mile away and this "continent" is actually really, really tiny"... far, far more realistic.

What that does is set up isolated areas with little connection to one another that you walk around in for a few minute, get on your horse for a few "days", arrive at another town, walk around for a few minutes, repeat. Maybe it's more fun if you actually play it, rather than just talking about it, but I can't imagine it being more fun than having a large world that's free for you roam through at your leisure without breaking to watch you guy ride a horse. Part of the fun of Morrowind is finding all the little secret areas that are hidden between towns and out in the empty wastes. If you're looking at isolated towns and their immediate surroundings you lose all that.

I like Morrowind's one world, where you can travel to any point from any point. If they broke it apart into little segments it would simply ruin the exploration aspect of Morrowind. I've played Morrowind for many hours and I don't think I've been to HALF of the squares that make of the island.

N-Man, I see where you are going with this.

I agree, if done correctly an overworld that has just as much adventuring potential as any dungeon would rock! Think for example of the old 2D Zeldas where a lot of questing WAS done in the overworld, like finding all sorts of old structures and so on. Only, take that further.

Anyone actually read the Lord of the Rings BOOK? The movie did do a good job of portraying a big world, but it didn't do nearly as good a job as the book did. That's to be expected, they can't actually take literal weeks or months to get to variuos points in the movie, but what I'm saying is it wasn't dull. There was a lot of stuff they had to do while wandering epic distances over mountians, up rivers, and through woods to reach the next town to "buy upgraded equipment" or whatever :D. For example, wandering the fields wasn't some dull excersize. They constantly had to keep an eye out for birds controlled by the evil wizard to keep an eye on them. They had to duck behind cover, rush to hills, NOT start fires for cooking, and the occasional epic battle for their lives.

Done correctly, the endless treking could be awesome.

However, and of this I must make a clear point, if they go this route, not only should my path be open (like, I want to choose between point B C and D to get to), but later in the game, I should get some rapid transit so I don't need to go the whole distance every single time. I would enjoy, perhaps, some sort of flying mount, or perhaps just the Wind to teleport me to places I've already visited (a video game favorite).

Quote:What that does is set up isolated areas with little connection to one another that you walk around in for a few minute, get on your horse for a few "days", arrive at another town, walk around for a few minutes, repeat. Maybe it's more fun if you actually play it, rather than just talking about it, but I can't imagine it being more fun than having a large world that's free for you roam through at your leisure without breaking to watch you guy ride a horse. Part of the fun of Morrowind is finding all the little secret areas that are hidden between towns and out in the empty wastes. If you're looking at isolated towns and their immediate surroundings you lose all that.

I like Morrowind's one world, where you can travel to any point from any point. If they broke it apart into little segments it would simply ruin the exploration aspect of Morrowind. I've played Morrowind for many hours and I don't think I've been to HALF of the squares that make of the island.

GR, you'd have a point... if Daggerfall had that "segmented" design like Arena did. It doesn't. What it has is 64,000 randomly generated square miles. You CAN get anywhere by walking... or riding... or using a cart... or using a ship that you buy... or map-teleporting... Daggerfall made some substantial advances over Arena in things like that. Of course, it was also utterly overwhelming in content volume (while, as usual for a TES game, having that volume be limited in variety -- how many dozen randomly generated nearly-identical towns, or randomly-generated nearly-identical dungeons, or miles of walking or riding, are you going to do before you get bored of it all?), and they wanted to cut back on that for the next game... probably a good idea honestly because Daggerfall seems like it'd get dull after a while for sure, but still, it does leave me admiring Daggerfall for its ambition more than Morrowind because it actually tried to have the scale a real place would, something video/computergame RPGs virtually never do, while Morrowind took the much safer, and more familiar, route of scaling everything down...

Quote:Scale can be less of a problem with the introduction of meaningful horse-riding, by which I mean that you're actually using the horse to get somewhere, not just riding around the Hyrule middle area going HOLY CRAP I'M RIDING A HORSE... IN A GAME!! which, let's be honest, was the gist of OoT riding. Getting somewhere in 5 minutes by horse where it would take 20 minutes by foot (or whatever, I don't know horse-to-human speed ratios) is already more realistic than the smaller-scale alternative.

Horse-riding does help, but as I (and DJ) said, it's not enough when you reach a really big size. Even in Zelda games you have warping, after all... a game significantly larger than that should have significantly better warping, and that's one of Morrowind's failings -- it has it, but not nearly good enough.

Quote:You can also play around with the actual composition of the gameplay. Instead of having a shitty "overworld" with generic enemies that acts solely as a mid-way point between dungeons/events/whathaveyou, just focus more of the gameplay on the traveling. Making it so Link has to journey for several "days" (hours) through Octorok Valley before reaching the sacred Temple of the Octorok Cult is, again, already more epic and realistic than having an owl show up and go "ya the dungeon is behind that rock over there". Even if it stretches the game so much you can't afford to have a million dungeons anymore, it'll work. So long as there's interesting shit in Octorok Valley, the player won't feel screwed over. Put towns with NPCs related to subplots, shady alleys where you get attacked by thieves with a weird recurring tattoo and where you can buy unreliable magical items, strongholds with petty warlords fighting each other, whatever. Just like in books or movies. 3D games can afford that kind of realism and attention to detail, so do it do it do it.

As I said (and as comparing Daggerfall to Morrowind proves), the problem with larger scale is that you lose originality. Either you need some kind of template thing with minor variations or you need random design, because there is a limit to the number of areas that a team of people can personally design... but still, as MMORPGs show, you can still have a huge game that is made of all uniquely designed areas. It'll surely mean less originality in every single area, but it'll feel more realistic, and that counts for a lot... like Majora's Mask. The world in that game is fantastic... stunning. But it's just so small! Do something to the timing and make it like ten times bigger and that would be a truly amazing game... sure, it'd mean many more forest paths and stuff, but you know, in the real world, there isn't just one swamp... :)

Of course you need a good map and warping, but I take those as just about givens in any reasonable RPG. Unless it's either small in scale or they want to be cruel. :)

Quote:but still, it does leave me admiring Daggerfall for its ambition more than Morrowind because it actually tried to have the scale a real place would,

I never really liked games that with randomly-generated dungeons/worlds. In Morrowind you have a world that has been crafted to be a certain way, nearly every area and town has a unique feel to it and there are secret places hidden everywhere. Morrowind's world is big enough for what it needs to do. With increases in technology however, developers can make a world that's as well crafted as Morrowind's but even large, which is what Oblivion is doing.

Quite frankly, I'd rather has a well-crafted world that's "not as a big as a real place would be" than one that's actual size but incredibly boring to look at.

That last statement, I think we can all agree to that GR. The question is if the two options are exclusionary.

Advances in technology allow for much bigger worlds by the way, but so far I"ve yet to see an advancement in programming tech that would make it easier to actually design a fully realized world like that. Shortcuts like redundant things and randomly generated areas are the only things so far, and those aren't all that good. So far the only solution is to actually have human beings work through and actually work out how to get all the complicated puzzles and sequences working correctly without any exploits or just plain bad design that makes some impassable wall. Now, as always, the more complicated the game is in any real way the more work is required by human beings. It'll take developing something at least close to true computer intelligence (once it's real, it isn't artificial) to reduce that need.

They'll eventually be able to have both, but it's still some years away.

Still though, the goal of TES is trying to make a real digital place, and you can't do that with a reduced scale... (as for your 'warping isn't realistic either', I think it's fine since it's just removing the time it takes to walk to that place -- you still walked there, the game just skipped over the boring part. :))

Quote:I never really liked games that with randomly-generated dungeons/worlds. In Morrowind you have a world that has been crafted to be a certain way, nearly every area and town has a unique feel to it and there are secret places hidden everywhere. Morrowind's world is big enough for what it needs to do. With increases in technology however, developers can make a world that's as well crafted as Morrowind's but even large, which is what Oblivion is doing.

Quite frankly, I'd rather has a well-crafted world that's "not as a big as a real place would be" than one that's actual size but incredibly boring to look at.

Oblivion is larger than Morrowind, but I think they've said it's only larger by degrees, which means it'll be nowhere near Daggerfall... (is that a good thing? Well, reducing the scale by reducing the size of the part of the world you're covering sure might be, but reducing it by shrinking the game scale so a foot is a mile or something... that isn't as good really, if you're going for making it seem real. As I said, think of MM...)

Ah yes, Zelda. Now, the lands really weren't that large, not realistically so anyway, in the older 2D Zelda games, but for good reason. Imagine actually traversing a whole country, or actually managing to work out all the parts on a personal and well thought out level for something like that. However, they did, at least to me, seem to have a larger sense of scale than the 3D ones. This is also by design, but really in the case of Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask, those central fields really didn't seem all that vast. Ocarina of Time, yes I was impressed at what they did do, but after a certain point the mental picture you have sort of closes in on itself and seals itself up. It seems so grand at the start because there is so much you have yet to see. That's a good tactic to use and all, but it's still not that huge after you have been everywhere. Majora's Mask, they said it had a bigger central field, but I can't see that being accurate. If that's the case, then I suppose most of the field must be occupied by the main town of the game. I can see directly to the edge of the main area the second I step outside, and from the start it never felt really vast. Still, I did enjoy that game alot anyway.

Quote:Majora's Mask, they said it had a bigger central field, but I can't see that being accurate. If that's the case, then I suppose most of the field must be occupied by the main town of the game. I can see directly to the edge of the main area the second I step outside, and from the start it never felt really vast. Still, I did enjoy that game alot anyway.

I absolutely agree, and that was my point... MM doesn't feel vast. It feels very, very well put together, with a brilliantly designed world, but it feels pretty small... I think they could have made a larger and just as interesting world for sure if they had tried. They just didn't want to... or perhaps the N64 has hardware limitations? But either way, the result was a feeling of a small world that I wished was larger (when I wasn't hating the timing system).

OoT? OoT I thought was better there... the Hyrule Field isn't substantial gameplay-wise, but it feels big and that really helps the game. MM has that giant city right in the middle ruining that field. Still, though, OoT doesn't exactly have a massive overworld... oh well. Didn't really hurt the game much at all, given its brilliance.

Quote:Ah yes, Zelda. Now, the lands really weren't that large, not realistically so anyway, in the older 2D Zelda games, but for good reason. Imagine actually traversing a whole country, or actually managing to work out all the parts on a personal and well thought out level for something like that. However, they did, at least to me, seem to have a larger sense of scale than the 3D ones.

I agree to a degree that the 2d ones feel larger... but I'm not so sure that they actually are. Yes, there definitely was more to do in the overworld in the 2d games than in MM or OoT, especially for enemies and puzzles and stuff, but part of the culprit is 3d vs. 2d... I bet that in terms of footage (or squares or whatever) OoT and MM are larger than the 2d games. The problem is that because of how 3d games have to be designed, they don't make use of the space in the same way so despite their larger size they don't have the same feel to them... but if you really look at the 2d games, they definitely benefit a lot from the limitations of 2d (the limited viewpoint for instance, primarially...).

Quote:Still though, the goal of TES is trying to make a real digital place, and you can't do that with a reduced scale...

You also can't do that with a realistically-sized world where every place looks exactly the same.

*adds two cents*

giant expansive areas suck. Varied content with landmarks and specific key-areas make for an awesome 'world'. Metroid Prime is a great example of that. Even though it's Phendrana with ice everywhere you still have specific cave areas, groupings of ruins, the science lab, key-enemy areas (certain areas produce certain enemies) with land marks as props or in the distance to let you know what area you're in. And the best part is, when you start to get sick of it you're introduced in to a new part of the 'world' that has entirely different themes. It never feels too small, never feels too big and it wont take you long to figure out where you are and what you're doing. All the things you want to hear a woman say.

But what I really like though about well designed levels (even in games without powerups) is that when you obtain a new mechanic, ability or move the area opens up more. Not just because now you can open a certain door, but cetain enemies are easier to kill and new pathways open for you to travel in to. And suddenly an area that was difficult to traverse is now easy, giving the player confidence and giving them a reward for their hard work.

In these uber-sized PC games they give you an ability to do 'super jumps' to traverse huge areas which are usually just deserts... way too boring for me. Or they give you warps or what have you, but the question is begged "why did they put the giant expansive desert there in the first place!?" Since once you learn the technique or find the warp point, those 'vast lands' become totally useless.

I guess what we have to take into consideration is that in "traditional" tales of adventure and derring-do, travel plays an important part. Salam the honorable bandit, crossing the desert on camelback to save his girlfriend, seeing nothing but sand for forty days and forty nights, isn't going 'OH GOD THIS IS BORING' for the whole length of the trip. A player would. Furthermore I believe we can all agree that "warping" really blows as far as immersion and epicness go. Therefore how do we remedy to this problem?

A MMORPG I played recently proposes a solution. In Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, most of the game is spent on board a pirate ship, performing such menial activities as pumping bilge water, fixing cracks in the ship with lumbers, working the sails, etc. In most modern games this would be represented as: "PUMPING WATER: 56% WATER PUMPED" but Puzzle Pirates instead makes you play a little puzzle (as the name would suggest) vaguely representative of the task, repetitively for as long as the task needs to be performed. It's like playing Tetris only with a purpose. I don't know whether this could apply to an adventure game like Zelda, but maybe an answer lies in this direction?

Morrowind's warp system is pretty good: certain towns have boats of silt-striders [flying things] and they take you to 3 or 4 towns that are nearby, and each town has a different list of a towns for you to travel to. That way you can get close to where you need to go, but you still have to walk sometimes.

Quote:giant expansive areas suck. Varied content with landmarks and specific key-areas make for an awesome 'world'. Metroid Prime is a great example of that. Even though it's Phendrana with ice everywhere you still have specific cave areas, groupings of ruins, the science lab, key-enemy areas (certain areas produce certain enemies) with land marks as props or in the distance to let you know what area you're in. And the best part is, when you start to get sick of it you're introduced in to a new part of the 'world' that has entirely different themes.

I agree completely. One of the things I liked about MP was how unique everything looked and one of the things I hated about Halo was how textures and buildings were repeated way too many times.

Well yes we all agree there, but the idea is that the giant expansive area DOES have that uniqueness. I didn't say it would be easy, or even feasible, I'm just saying that it would be nice if it was done.

Think of any real world area. No, not Oklahoma. That place really is dull as hell. I'm talking about places that are huge, expansive, but are actually interesting and unique throughout.

Quote:but the idea is that the giant expansive area DOES have that uniqueness.

Of course it is, but it's still not very feasible and it likely won't be for some time.

Quote:You also can't do that with a realistically-sized world where every place looks exactly the same.

Actually, in the real world landscapes have this amazing tendency to look pretty similar within regions... :)

Quote:In these uber-sized PC games they give you an ability to do 'super jumps' to traverse huge areas which are usually just deserts... way too boring for me. Or they give you warps or what have you, but the question is begged "why did they put the giant expansive desert there in the first place!?" Since once you learn the technique or find the warp point, those 'vast lands' become totally useless.

Because generally the dungeons are out in the wilderness, and you just warp to the towns... or if you can warp to the dungeons too there is generally a process to it -- like you have to reach the warp point first to unlock it or something. It's a very sensible system.

Quote:giant expansive areas suck. Varied content with landmarks and specific key-areas make for an awesome 'world'. Metroid Prime is a great example of that. Even though it's Phendrana with ice everywhere you still have specific cave areas, groupings of ruins, the science lab, key-enemy areas (certain areas produce certain enemies) with land marks as props or in the distance to let you know what area you're in. And the best part is, when you start to get sick of it you're introduced in to a new part of the 'world' that has entirely different themes. It never feels too small, never feels too big and it wont take you long to figure out where you are and what you're doing. All the things you want to hear a woman say.

Metroid Prime is different, it's an FPS/Adventure... and yeah the scale in that game works pretty well. It's good sized and fairly nonlinearly designed (in level design) and feels nicely large while not being so big as to be unmanagable for that kind of game.

Quote:I guess what we have to take into consideration is that in "traditional" tales of adventure and derring-do, travel plays an important part. Salam the honorable bandit, crossing the desert on camelback to save his girlfriend, seeing nothing but sand for forty days and forty nights, isn't going 'OH GOD THIS IS BORING' for the whole length of the trip. A player would.

This is true. In games people expect constant action.

Quote:Furthermore I believe we can all agree that "warping" really blows as far as immersion and epicness go. Therefore how do we remedy to this problem?

I don't agree with that... :) As I said, when done right it doesn't hurt immersion much, I think. Like the warping in MM, or WW, or Zelda 1 or LA, or Baldur's Gate, or whatever else... it's just skipping over the part where Salam spends 40 days walking through the desert. How is this worse than redoing your world so that desert essentially doesn't exist and everything is within a five-minuite walk of the center point of the game? That's not exactly much more immersive when you think about it!

Quote:Morrowind's warp system is pretty good: certain towns have boats of silt-striders [flying things] and they take you to 3 or 4 towns that are nearby, and each town has a different list of a towns for you to travel to. That way you can get close to where you need to go, but you still have to walk sometimes.

What it needs is a nice simple warp system where you can just warp to any of those towns. Of course you shouldn't be able to warp anywhere... the general answer is either to zones or to towns, and since Morrowind doesn't really have zones (its just divided for loading purposes) towns are the clear choice... but you need to make it accessible, so you can warp from anywhere and not just from specific locations. And it really should be one system... having "warping" but making it such an annoyingly limited system is NOT good game design, and Bethesda has realized that and is improving it in their next title.

Quote:I agree completely. One of the things I liked about MP was how unique everything looked and one of the things I hated about Halo was how textures and buildings were repeated way too many times.

Halo... was that really large enough (in scale or length or whatever) that they had an excuse (to repeat things so much) or were they just being lazy?

Quote:Of course it is, but it's still not very feasible and it likely won't be for some time.

MMORPGs aren't on the scale of the real world either, but they're the best we've got and some of those are very expansive with thousands and thousands of digital miles... we can do better than Morrowind and your excuses won't change that fact.

I'm okay with textures being used over and over, as long as it 'feels' new, yeah it's ice textures everywhere but every 'room' has a totally new feel.

Morrowind is a first person RPG adventure with shooter/melee types of attacks, not that much diffent than MP's presentation.

Let's face it, the real world is not fun. In a forest or desert you're not familiar with you will get lost and eventually die. There's no first aid packs to find or Mace of Energy to heal your wounds and if you try to build a bow and arrow it might work a few times before it snaps in half, video games are how we want reality to be. Adventure isn't just about expansive areas either it's about drama and a sense of urgency. Either you're in harm's way or someone you care for is and you must complete a quest in order to fix everything. You dont need 45 minutes of in-game 'traveling' to get the idea that you're in a vast wasteland. A 5 second cut scene, a mini boss battle, a story cue and boom you get the idea that you're in a vast region.

Now if you're going to give a warp point to the player you do under the pretense of 'Now you can reach X area faster' avoiding traps, monsters, etc. But in Morrowind you get a warp so you can "skip" entire land masses and areas. So basically, once you learn the warp, you have no ensentive to travel back through the area. You have effectively disabled that area of the game. In Zelda, you get the option to skip over an area (the Lost Woods for example) but then the game tells you that you actually need to explore that area for mini games, mushrooms for potions, etc so that area is never disabled, it simply gives you the option of traveling through it or skipping over it.

Morrowind has a ton of great ideas but the traveling and its 'vast lands' are horrible and a flawed design. Vast lands should be like OoT or WW with THINGS to DO. :D

GR, I did in fact state from the start that it was infeasible.

Warping is fine but the idea is you have to at least traverse that large expansion once before you can use the warp. That's where the age old concept of "you can teleport to any place you've already been to" comes in, and generally it doesn't hurt immersion.

Now that said, the area has to at least be fun for that first trip through, no matter how large it may be. I recall the eternally hated Quest 64, wherein there was a tunnel that led straight from an early town across the world to the next town. The tunnel was long, massively long, long enough to resemble an ACTUAL tunnel. It took days to traverse the length of it and get to the otehr side. It didn't help that it was filled with random battles.

Now, a tunnel system of that scale isn't really a bad thing off the bat, but this was a straight shot, no real side paths, nothing hidden at all, and the only thing you had to do with your time was worry about the next battle killing you outright. Suffice it to say, it was boring and is one of the more memorable experiences that led me to conclude that Quest 64 was poorly designed.

Quote:Actually, in the real world landscapes have this amazing tendency to look pretty similar within regions...

Real world landscapes are also quite boring for the most part. Ever driven from Amarillo, Texas to Alberqurque, New Mexico? I have, there's NOTHING. For MILES.

Quote:This is true. In games people expect constant action.

Well, if we wanted constant boredom we could simply walk across a giant, empty field in real life, this is why games exist.

Quote:What it needs is a nice simple warp system where you can just warp to any of those towns.

It works fine. It forces you to plan how the fastest route to an area. Such as one town might closer to the ancient ruins I'm looking for but first I might have to travel to a different town to get a silt strider that will take me to the closer town, or I can go to a town that's not quite a close but I can get their directly. That's the way it is in real life, you can get from Dallas to London without stopping over in New York first.

Quote:Halo... was that really large enough (in scale or length or whatever) that they had an excuse (to repeat things so much) or were they just being lazy?

It was larger than MP AND they were lazy.

Quote:Warping is fine but the idea is you have to at least traverse that large expansion once before you can use the warp. That's where the age old concept of "you can teleport to any place you've already been to" comes in, and generally it doesn't hurt immersion

In Morrowind almost all of the ancient ruins and robber caves are in places that are far from towns, so more often than not you'll have to walk for a few minutes to get to it. There's no teleporting to dungeons and teleporting will only take you to the nearest town or fort. Which is the way it should be, there shouldn't be some spell that will automatically take you directly to the dungeon.

Quote:Well, if we wanted constant boredom we could simply walk across a giant, empty field in real life, this is why games exist.

I am a 'people', so I wasn't excepting myself you know... :)

Quote:Real world landscapes are also quite boring for the most part. Ever driven from Amarillo, Texas to Alberqurque, New Mexico? I have, there's NOTHING. For MILES.

True, and games should and do cut down on that, but RPGs are supposed to be digital worlds so the closer they can come to something seeming real (while keeping things still fun), the better...

Quote:It works fine. It forces you to plan how the fastest route to an area. Such as one town might closer to the ancient ruins I'm looking for but first I might have to travel to a different town to get a silt strider that will take me to the closer town, or I can go to a town that's not quite a close but I can get their directly. That's the way it is in real life, you can get from Dallas to London without stopping over in New York first.

It's interesting that you have no problem at all with Morrowind's lack of transport, because I know I've heard it mentioned, and not just a few times... it just isn't nice to your players to do that kind of thing! Sure Morrowind is far, far smaller than Daggerfall, but they sure try to make up for it by removing most of the fast travel (and that's more bad than good overall)... As for Oblivion...

Quote:GS: We learned that the gameworld is approximately 16 square miles in size. How large is that in comparison to Morrowind's world, roughly? Will we see the same kind of variety in terrain and locales like we saw in Morrowind, which had deserts and mountains and lush forests? Tell us about how this world is being generated, and what the new terrain generation system adds to the game?

TH: The outside world, in terms of square miles, is a bit larger than Morrowind's, but it doesn't feel that way with the fast travel. So each of our games has had a different scale, and we mess with that early on and change it depending on how the game is flowing. So if you had to walk everywhere, I'd make it much, much smaller. In terms of terrain, there are several varieties, from beaches, to mountains, to open planes, to forests, snow, etc.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/thee...28767.html

Quote:Mounted steeds now make an exciting introduction within Oblivion; can you provide us with a little more information about this feature and how it’s implemented within the game?

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Click for screenshotsYou will be able to acquire a horse in Oblivion, and ride it around to your heart’s content. Horses grant you a nice speed boost, as well as really help capture that feel of being a knight riding around on horseback. There are several different varieties of horses to get, each with varying stats and look. While in town, you can store your horse in the stables, and pick it up when you’re ready to go. NPCs can use horses as well. If you’re not careful, they may even steal yours!

http://www.totalvideogames.com/articles/..._40_60.htm

Quote:In Morrowind almost all of the ancient ruins and robber caves are in places that are far from towns, so more often than not you'll have to walk for a few minutes to get to it. There's no teleporting to dungeons and teleporting will only take you to the nearest town or fort. Which is the way it should be, there shouldn't be some spell that will automatically take you directly to the dungeon.

I don't see how you can be defending such a mixed up, hard-to-use teleport system... it wouldn't exactly be hard to explain, either -- say there is a spell (or magic item) that teleports you to town. I know, it's been used many times before in games, but that's because it's a good idea... in this case of course it would let you teleport to one of various towns, like teleporting in some Zelda games (like WW or MM), but the principle is the same... even if your motivation here is not just to go back to town to sell your junk (ahem, Diablo II...), but to go to places without a huge amount of fuss and save yourself a lot of annoying running around places you have gone before and really don't want to have to go through the process to reach wherever it is that you are going again.

Quote:It was larger than MP AND they were lazy.

We agree on this, at least. :)

Yes, actually, Halo DOES have ridiculously large areas. The scale isn't nearly real world mind you. It was in fact boring to wander the areas, but not really due to scale. Namely, it's because the places repeated themselves like 5 times in a row, and in the next level you get to go through that BACKWARDS. Just having ONE massive field strewn with various rocks in interesting ways where you must carefully set up sniping locations or else drive around in a vehicle causing horrific visions of NIGHTMARE as you point out, despite however obvious such a conclusion may already be, that you are intoxicated to a degree that can't be properly expressed by current mathematical theorums. As a result, you can obtain massive air by flipping a hoverjet through the air and on top of a giant alien tank causing IT to explode.

At any rate, yes, some locations are incredibly redundant in the real world. But, take some of the massive locals that are not. Consider for example being in the midst of a massive jungle (the REAL real world, try placing your boss in a situation such as THAT next time they say "yeah well, this is the real world" in response to any time you point out obvious logical flaws safe in the knowledge that you are indespensible and can at least get away with criticism), but not just that, a jungle location next to a massive upshifted part of the land forming a continuous SHEER mountain range and at a certain point, a huge waterfall. There are enough variations in the land to keep you just staring at it for DAYS, so long as you do it in such a way as to avoid looking PARTICULARLY delicious.

I've seen enough amazing locals... um... via TV I'm sad to say, that I believe it's safe to say they need not be boring per say.

As far as a game, a lot of extra quests do need to be involved.

You know, considering the nature of this conversation and the opinions revealed thus far, I'm surprised we have yet to bring up what is basically endless similar region incarnate. Wind Waker's oceans.

It's endless waters with nothing for a LONG period of time. It's pretty close to actually being on the scale of a very small island chain. However, I actually don't mind sailing around there, THE FIRST TIME. I was very happy to get the warping ability at a certain point in the game, but I did enjoy those first moments of sailing.

However, they did certain things. I recall when I first saw the ghost ship in that game. That sameness with the epicness of the music, the swelling waters, and the gulls swooping in to follow me about (what, no dolphins?) were just fun, making me want to go sailing (but I AM landlocked as it stands), and then it was suddenly broken by night fall, rough storms, and then suddenly the image of this ship slowly drifting in and out of existance with St. Elmo's fire floating all about it and a sudden change from the silence of night to this haunting melody that was like ghosts singing some pirate shanty. The ship itself was rather disappointing, but that introduction, wow.

And that's basically how massive expansive areas need to be handled. Make the journey itself FUN, make the landscape vary to enough of a degree that it's interesting the whole way, and throw in a lot, and I mean a LOT, of both hidden areas that are developed in UNIQUE ways (the one thing WW didn't quite get right in that area), and many interesting and unique events that happen as you travel along.

Sure, they can give you events, but when it's all the same thing over and over, it's boring. If they go to the effort of designing many different and unique events for you to do, then it's exciting again. Plus, as was mentioned, the actual travel should involve some constant needs. For example, if you are wandering through the desert, you need to get some water every now and then. Maybe not on a realistic time frame, but every few nights, a need to get some water. More than that, either make getting water a fun enough experience that redundancy is okay (perhaps an involving minigame like that pirates game mentioned above), or have some variations in the quests to get it. Like, now it may just be an oasis, but later you may need to go into an old well you found to see if it really is dry, or maybe you end up getting captured trying to steal some water from a camp of desert bandits. You know, stuff like that. Newness has a fair amount of importance. A lot, and I mean a LOT of stuff in a game can be the same old same old without getting any complaints from the gamer. It's expected to have a good level of consistancy instead of throwing random stuff at you like an end boss battle that doesn't even try to use the game engine you've been playing with for the entire rest of the game (I'm looking at YOU Devil May Cry!). But, some variation is needed on a noticable level or as a player I just lose interest because I feel like I "did that already". No problem if the game involves fighting enemies the entire way through, but level 2 better involve stuff that level 1 didn't have. I want to see some weird conveyer belt with lightning bolts across it that I didn't even realize they could do on level 1 (I'm looking at YOU Double Dragon!), and of course, all sorts of new enemies that make you change the way you fight throughout, or new moves outright complimented with enemies that make you have to adapt them into your fighting style.

So, variation is needed in video games. I'm not asking for every single moment to be effectively a whole new game, but enough that I feel like it's all new and stuff.

That all said, if the game is trying to give you some weird artsy message that can only truly be done by redundancy, go for it. Keep in mind I better really FEEL it. I'm not letting Bungie suddenly tell me that Halo is modern art for example :D.

Quote:but to go to places without a huge amount of fuss and save yourself a lot of annoying running around places you have gone before and really don't want to have to go through the process to reach wherever it is that you are going again.

It's cheap to make it to easy to get around. It shouldn't be simply, okay let's go here "press button" *is immediately where I needed to be*. There should be some challenge to get around.

Quote:But, take some of the massive locals that are not. Consider for example being in the midst of a massive jungle (the REAL real world, try placing your boss in a situation such as THAT next time they say "yeah well, this is the real world" in response to any time you point out obvious logical flaws safe in the knowledge that you are indespensible and can at least get away with criticism), but not just that, a jungle location next to a massive upshifted part of the land forming a continuous SHEER mountain range and at a certain point, a huge waterfall. There are enough variations in the land to keep you just staring at it for DAYS, so long as you do it in such a way as to avoid looking PARTICULARLY delicious.

And then are places that simply aren't that fun to look at, such as much of the semi-arid southwest. There's just not much to look at, of course there's the Grand Canyon for you to look at, but you have to drive 12+ hours through terrain that looks exactly the same the farther you drive to get there. Now with videogames they can make the semi-arid desert smaller and the Grand Canyon large. And sometimes that's the way it should be.

omg. morrowinds "teleport" system is fine because the game is fun and walking is never all that annoying because there's always some place to find along the way or some sense of peril. it may not take you exactly to the point you want to go...but the short hike the where your going is at least entertaining for the reasons listed.

i don't really understand the argument here. but morrowind is an awesome game and i had to defend it. not that it's perfect. but it's damn fucking good.

GR you seem to have missed the rest of what I said. It's all pretty much a complete package there.

Quote:That all said, if the game is trying to give you some weird artsy message that can only truly be done by redundancy, go for it. Keep in mind I better really FEEL it. I'm not letting Bungie suddenly tell me that Halo is modern art for example .

For instance, P.N.03, which does great with very redundant locales... :)

Quote:And that's basically how massive expansive areas need to be handled. Make the journey itself FUN, make the landscape vary to enough of a degree that it's interesting the whole way, and throw in a lot, and I mean a LOT, of both hidden areas that are developed in UNIQUE ways (the one thing WW didn't quite get right in that area), and many interesting and unique events that happen as you travel along.

Yes... but in addition, as I said, the greater the illusion that this is really a real place, the more immersive it has the potential to be...

Quote:You know, considering the nature of this conversation and the opinions revealed thus far, I'm surprised we have yet to bring up what is basically endless similar region incarnate. Wind Waker's oceans.

It's endless waters with nothing for a LONG period of time. It's pretty close to actually being on the scale of a very small island chain. However, I actually don't mind sailing around there, THE FIRST TIME. I was very happy to get the warping ability at a certain point in the game, but I did enjoy those first moments of sailing.

WW is both an example of good scale (the size of the world feels nice and substantial... it takes time to get places. It's not a "real world", given the extreme small size of the islands, but it's close enough to not matter much, especially for a Zelda game. As for the warping, it does great... except that there is no warp close to the northwest corner, which is pretty annoying. :)

Quote:At any rate, yes, some locations are incredibly redundant in the real world. But, take some of the massive locals that are not. Consider for example being in the midst of a massive jungle (the REAL real world, try placing your boss in a situation such as THAT next time they say "yeah well, this is the real world" in response to any time you point out obvious logical flaws safe in the knowledge that you are indespensible and can at least get away with criticism), but not just that, a jungle location next to a massive upshifted part of the land forming a continuous SHEER mountain range and at a certain point, a huge waterfall. There are enough variations in the land to keep you just staring at it for DAYS, so long as you do it in such a way as to avoid looking PARTICULARLY delicious.

Would you prefer invisible walls? :) At least massive instant-mountains are a (bad) excuse for why you can't go that way... and you can't let people go everywhere, of course.

Quote:So, variation is needed in video games. I'm not asking for every single moment to be effectively a whole new game, but enough that I feel like it's all new and stuff.

Definitely, but there is a way to make a large world that takes time to navigate that doesn't feel boring, I'm sure... (that is, not all large areas need to be like Quest 64... :)) so I don't think that it's an either/or, completely. Yes, the larger you make the world the more you cut into the originality of each area, but you can make a pretty large world and still have most every area feel unique in some way... just play any decent MMORPG for proof of that.

I like how you end every sentence with a smilie, ABF.

There's nothing wrong with smilies...

When you end every sentence with a smilie there's a problem!

Once per paragraph, not once per sentence. :)

In that post it was once per sentence.

Four smilies isn't one per sentence.

I was specifically referencing the post you just made and the one which I was replying to.