Originally posted by Mr.Kujo Really depends on how character relates to the world. If character is faster than in Skyrim, and you get on a even faster mount map may feel 10x smaller than in older games...
Indeed. Also the way the zones themselves are constructed and whether or not you have loading screens a lot matters in your perception of their size.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
First, I assume EQ1 wasn't larger, the main reason it took you MUCH longer was because it was MUCH more dangerous with a lot more mobs.
Second, the largest world I knew was Star Wars Galaxies, but a lot of their landmass was empty space, and with Speederbike you still crossed one planet in about 20 min.
I too like worlds big, but one has to be realistic on his expectations.
For designers to talk about how big TESO is meaningless.
EQ1 plus expansion packs was (technically is) huge. SOE released some numbers years back and they were talking miles. some zones took 20 minutes to run across and there were (are) hundreds. Yes EQ1 had lots of mobs but it was also renowned for its grind.
As Elikal, Udon and others say it comes down to dead space. Sure TESO has caverns etc. but 10 caverns is 10 caverns whether it is in a small area or some uber large land mass. Size does not equal content.
And it is a key design issue.
How long it takes to get between encounters is basically grind. And in simple terms how long comes down to how big a world is and how fast you can travel. 10 caverns worth of content is 10 caverns worth of content whether the world is small or huge. The time to travel between them is grind.
Now you need some grind to create an immersive world - but there are only so many times you want to look at the pretty flowers/bridges/mountains etc. At the end of the day grind is grind. And, sadly, developers of a subscription game want to add grind. Anything that slows players down will skow down the consumption of PvE content. It is even a factor in PvP areas - slowing down how long it takes before you can engage.
Bottomline: meaningless comment from the devs especially as TESO will probably have large, mostly empty, PvP areas. I hopeit is not a defensive comment either.
I have tried out some (quickly defunct) "mmos" in the past - which were indeed large but did have some content (for no one disputes that TESO will have some content). Lets see - anyone remember DnL? Huge world; enough said.
lol. Way to try and hype your game but shoot yourself in the foot.
Since we already know that each faction has its own lands that others cant enter, and there is three of them, the total area accessible per character is about the same area as Skyrim. Which is utterly inadequate for hosting thousands of players. The amount of instancing that will result will be horrid.
Originally posted by ste2000 I can confirm what the dev said, the world is huge indeed
No it's not, it's an instanced zoning word, even within each faction area you are zoning between areas. You cannot go where you want within the world and to top it all it's made of many instances.
Not entirely true, you can skip all of the main storyline in Skyrim and still have thousands of hours worth of content.
You're missing my point. You can choose to not engage in parts of the story, but you can't choose to actively contradict the story. You can be the Dragonborn and not bother dealing with the dragons, but you can't not be the Dragonborn. Elder Scrolls games have defined narratives. You can choose to have less than the full experience by not doing some of the content, but you can't choose to have a fundamentally different narrative experience. It's not a series that is built that way.
Originally posted by Xiaoki
The past 3 Elder Scrolls games have been quite small compared to your standard MMO.
By comparison if you were to combine Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim the total land mass would still be smaller than 1 of WoWs continents.
Yeah, I don't care how the size compares to the last three games, even combined. I want to know how the size compares to Daggerfall. *That* was a big map.
Originally posted by karmath
lol. Way to try and hype your game but shoot yourself in the foot.
Since we already know that each faction has its own lands that others cant enter, and there is three of them, the total area accessible per character is about the same area as Skyrim. Which is utterly inadequate for hosting thousands of players. The amount of instancing that will result will be horrid.
This isn't accurate. They have announced that you can enter all the lands with a single character. You just can't enter the opposing faction lands until after you have hit max level and finished your faction's story.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Actually the DEV did not say that, the guy who was doing the podcast suggested it to Nick the dev. I think Nick is aaying its far MORE MASSIVE then that.
Nick says he has been working on the game for SIX years and himself has not seen everything there is to explore in the game.
Originally posted by ste2000 I can confirm what the dev said, the world is huge indeed
No it's not, it's an instanced zoning word, even within each faction area you are zoning between areas. You cannot go where you want within the world and to top it all it's made of many instances.
Vanguards world of Telon is huge not ESO lol.
Except Vanguard is also cut up into zones or in its case " chunks " and each time you cross one there is a pause for it to load. It is pretty quick being only a second or 2 though but it is still the same.
The world in TESO is huge.. It doesnt matter if there is a loading screen between each area. You can quickly lose hours of playtime by just roaming around in ES fashion in one of the early areas. In fact that is what happened to me.
lol. Way to try and hype your game but shoot yourself in the foot.
Since we already know that each faction has its own lands that others cant enter, and there is three of them, the total area accessible per character is about the same area as Skyrim. Which is utterly inadequate for hosting thousands of players. The amount of instancing that will result will be horrid.
The game uses phasing. If this isn't new to you by now I suggest reading more about it before posting. It shouldn't be a shock and people playing the game realize it's function (obviously a whole different set of issues materializes because of this).
And why all the comparisons to other games like Vanguard? Where in the original post does it compare TESO to ANY other game? TESO isn't Vanguard. Vanguard had to have a massive world in order to spread out players because there is not phasing. It is not story based and does not need phasing. Vanguard doesn't combine everyone into one server. Comparing these two games is fruitless when trying to understand and analyze TESO so try stay on topic.
I could also say the TESO world is nowhere as large as Asheron's Call but that is entirely pointless comparing to a game using phasing on a mega-server. There is a TON to talk about regarding TESO systems alone but evidently so many here know so little about this game they completely miss the major topics that SHOULD be talked about.
Phasing is a beautiful thing, when the developers are careful to make sure the seams don't show.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Originally posted by ste2000 I can confirm what the dev said, the world is huge indeed
No it's not, it's an instanced zoning word, even within each faction area you are zoning between areas. You cannot go where you want within the world and to top it all it's made of many instances.
Vanguards world of Telon is huge not ESO lol.
God here you go with Vanguard again. I'm sorry it has so few players left. We aren't going to go play that so get over it already. And generally yes, you can so generally go anywhere you want within the huge world of your faction and then at 50 the other factions., just dont expect to live very long if you go into leveled areas way above you. If the faction worlds are big, which they are, who gives a crap that it isn't quite a seamless and the technical mess Vanguard was with its horrible animations and boring quest structure filled with a world of static non moving NPCs. Nothing like roaming around a boring seamless world just for the sake of running anywhere.
In this interview the lead game dev Nick Konkle talks about a lot of things, and mentions that the game world is absolutely massive and bigger than the previous 3 Elder Scrolls games combined. He also says that the map for Cyrodil is the same size as in Oblivion, not smaller at all. When asked about freedom he also states the first few levels are more linear but it quickly opens up to freedom Elder Scrolls fans are familiar with.
It needs to be because its split into three just for the PvE, and then split again for PvP, and then again for the opening, and again for noob island, which is more than a few levels, then again for the level 50 adventure zones which closes you off from every other part of the world.
more freedom.....if you are going to compare the freedom of TES games to the freedom in this game, you are free, while bound to chains in a small box. These devs try so hard to make it sound like TES I really don't think its possible for them not to talk out their backsides.
Describe your game the way it IS and not the way you need it to SOUND to TES fans.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
lol. Way to try and hype your game but shoot yourself in the foot.
Since we already know that each faction has its own lands that others cant enter, and there is three of them, the total area accessible per character is about the same area as Skyrim. Which is utterly inadequate for hosting thousands of players. The amount of instancing that will result will be horrid.
The game uses phasing.
I could also say the TESO world is nowhere as large as Asheron's Call but that is entirely pointless comparing to a game using phasing on a mega-server. There is a TON to talk about regarding TESO systems alone but evidently so many here know so little about this game they completely miss the major topics that SHOULD be talked about.
The game also uses invisible walls to block off the rest of the world while attempting to use old phrases like "open world".
So yeah, actually you can compare it to Asheons Call, because it really was an open world, where you could go anywhere with your character. Which you cant in TESO.
TESO is trying to be everything to everyone and lying their backsides off while doing it.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
In this interview the lead game dev Nick Konkle talks about a lot of things, and mentions that the game world is absolutely massive and bigger than the previous 3 Elder Scrolls games combined. He also says that the map for Cyrodil is the same size as in Oblivion, not smaller at all. When asked about freedom he also states the first few levels are more linear but it quickly opens up to freedom Elder Scrolls fans are familiar with.
- Inaccessable barriers (surprised mountain ranges, forests that you can't pass through etc...)?
Normally it would be ridiculous to even have to ask these questions but after EA/Bioware insisted that SWTOR was the 'largest MMO' and it turned out that only about 15% of the visible landscape was playable, some of us are suspicious when an known weasel developer claims to offer something good.
- people might make the common mistake of thinking that the starter area is the same as the rest of the area. Starter areas are typically set up to be linear, with a learning progression like a tutorial. It is a common problem in all games that people play the starter area, claim it's too small, too linear, etc, and quit before ever seeing the rest of the game.
- I loved doing PvE in DAOC's PvP area. I'm excited to hear that TESO will have this too. Having a separate PvE area from PvP is a great idea, providing a good game experience to all kinds of players. In DAOC, after you played PvE in a factional area and leveled up, you went into PvP with a real background in a faction. But it was a blast to do PvE in the PvP zone!
- the reason people keep bringing Vanguard up is that it is truly seamless, and had tons of random stuff to do all over the place. I loaded Vanguard up on a SSD drive, and when going from one chunk to another, there is a slight stutter of less than a second. And you can see into the next chunk. In every other game, you can't see past your boundary, and you'll have to go through a loading screen to get there.
Loading screens are a balancing act: too many and you lose concentration and focus, too few and you might want some to tell a story with. Vanguard has none, except what they wanted to use for story telling. This is the best of any game. Vanguard also has a lot of random content, besides having 3-4 times more content than you can do with any one character. One of my best memories in Vanguard was finding some fort out in the middle of nowhere, where I could compete and do quests to earn armor from that fort. No quest took me there, it wasn't part of any story.
And of course, the flip side was that there was a lot of primitive space in Vanguard, with little detail and no mobs. It's huge, but not very well detailed. A smaller world, with more detail would be better; however I felt FFXIV's landscapes to be very detailed and just a bit too small anyway. So if TESO has more of Skyrim-type detail, the world doesn't have to be huge, just so long as they make it large enough.
Originally posted by ste2000 I can confirm what the dev said, the world is huge indeed
No it's not, it's an instanced zoning word, even within each faction area you are zoning between areas. You cannot go where you want within the world and to top it all it's made of many instances.
Vanguards world of Telon is huge not ESO lol.
Yes it is, just because the world is divided into instanced zones, doesn't make the world any smaller
Vanguard was a huge non instanced world.
ESO is a huge instanced world.
They have both big worlds they are just executed in a different manner.
I won't be interested or buy any game based on size of world,example Eve is huge but full of empty meaningless space.I cam EASILY make a game world bigger than any you have played in about 1 hour,doesn't mean it will be full of content.
I liked Morrowind for it's time "a bit",Oblivion "a bit" and i quit Skyrim after 3 days,so they need to do a LOT better job of peaking my interest with their game than simply creating a large world.
Have you ever considered you might not like RPGs and so this game might not be for you lol... ? I mean, if you didn't really like any of the ES games... Why do you want to play ESO and demand the dev ''to do a LOT better to peak your interest'' ? I mean... you are clearing NOT the target audience, they could care less about peaking your interest LOL.
Personally, I can't wait to play the game and I am sure they have competent people working on the game, so the world will be full on content !
Originally posted by ste2000 I can confirm what the dev said, the world is huge indeed
No it's not, it's an instanced zoning word, even within each faction area you are zoning between areas. You cannot go where you want within the world and to top it all it's made of many instances.
Vanguards world of Telon is huge not ESO lol.
Yes it is, just because the world is divided into instanced zones, doesn't make the world any smaller
Vanguard was a huge non instanced world.
ESO is a huge instanced world.
They have both big worlds they are just executed in a different manner.
True, instanced does not mean smaller. Its size in total that matters, or at least would if it was actually open world.
The real issue is that the developers are once again attempting to make the game sound more like TES games which they are not. The TES games are completely open world where you can go anywhere at any time. You cannot do this in TESO though. The game may be as big as 3 TES games, but TESO is split off into so many pieces you cant go to that their doing this smacks of ever more desperation to get TES fans suckered into making the buy.
And no, opening up other factions lands at level 50 for your own instance of it does not make up for this bastardization process created to fit the limits of its base PvP design. Maybe if the game did not have a subscription there would be justification in creating ever more closed off parts of the game keeping you away from the gaming population. Walls walls and more walls, may as well have just made another normal TES game, with an online multiplayer PvP battleground option. At least then we would have gotten the typical great TES story, world, combat, modding and everything you get with a TES game.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
In this interview the lead game dev Nick Konkle talks about a lot of things, and mentions that the game world is absolutely massive and bigger than the previous 3 Elder Scrolls games combined. He also says that the map for Cyrodil is the same size as in Oblivion, not smaller at all. When asked about freedom he also states the first few levels are more linear but it quickly opens up to freedom Elder Scrolls fans are familiar with.
- Inaccessable barriers (surprised mountain ranges, forests that you can't pass through etc...)?
Normally it would be ridiculous to even have to ask these questions but after EA/Bioware insisted that SWTOR was the 'largest MMO' and it turned out that only about 15% of the visible landscape was playable, some of us are suspicious when an known weasel developer claims to offer something good.
What's a surprised mountain range? Did someone run up behind it and shout boo, causing it to shit a brick?
Originally posted by ste2000 I can confirm what the dev said, the world is huge indeed
No it's not, it's an instanced zoning word, even within each faction area you are zoning between areas. You cannot go where you want within the world and to top it all it's made of many instances.
Vanguards world of Telon is huge not ESO lol.
God here you go with Vanguard again. I'm sorry it has so few players left. We aren't going to go play that so get over it already. And generally yes, you can so generally go anywhere you want within the huge world of your faction and then at 50 the other factions., just dont expect to live very long if you go into leveled areas way above you. If the faction worlds are big, which they are, who gives a crap that it isn't quite a seamless and the technical mess Vanguard was with its horrible animations and boring quest structure filled with a world of static non moving NPCs. Nothing like roaming around a boring seamless world just for the sake of running anywhere.
THATS what ES was based on, running around and actually exploring. Doing a few quests here and there and picking and choosing HOW and WHAT you wanted to do to advance.
ESO should have taken what Vanguard/EQ did and go from there. Have a massively huge NONinstanced world. They have phasing there is no need for instancing every little encounter as well. Add in all the clickable and interactive stuff like chests, urns, books, boxes, jars, etc. Then add more stuff on top of that.
Its too bad SOE owns Vanguard, would love to see that game re-released and modernized with better graphics and a more stable server.
As far as size of the ESO itself. Most of it is Cryodiil. Which is as empty and barren a space as any MMO ever. Which makes your last sentance extremely ironic.
Originally posted by ste2000I can confirm what the dev said, the world is huge indeed
No it's not, it's an instanced zoning word, even within each faction area you are zoning between areas. You cannot go where you want within the world and to top it all it's made of many instances. Vanguards world of Telon is huge not ESO lol.
Yes it is, just because the world is divided into instanced zones, doesn't make the world any smaller Vanguard was a huge non instanced world.ESO is a huge instanced world.They have both big worlds they are just executed in a different manner.
True, instanced does not mean smaller. Its size in total that matters, or at least would if it was actually open world.The real issue is that the developers are once again attempting to make the game sound more like TES games which they are not. The TES games are completely open world where you can go anywhere at any time. You cannot do this in TESO though. The game may be as big as 3 TES games, but TESO is split off into so many pieces you cant go to that their doing this smacks of ever more desperation to get TES fans suckered into making the buy.And no, opening up other factions lands at level 50 for your own instance of it does not make up for this bastardization process created to fit the limits of its base PvP design. Maybe if the game did not have a subscription there would be justification in creating ever more closed off parts of the game keeping you away from the gaming population. Walls walls and more walls, may as well have just made another normal TES game, with an online multiplayer PvP battleground option. At least then we would have gotten the typical great TES story, world, combat, modding and everything you get with a TES game.
It depends here on the size of the zones I guess BUT my bet is that it will feel a bit smaller and here’s why.
Skyrim is 119 cells by 94 cells with each cell about 100 meters square in size (I believe it is 64 yards sq). The world is based on about 30 to 1 scale so rough size is about 223 x 176 miles for Skyrim. Real size is approximately 8 miles by 6 miles. Given Oblivion is approximately the same size and Morrowind is slightly smaller we can assume here that the total world size would be roughly 700 x 400 miles or 280,000 Sq Miles . Now that’s over land zones here. Let’s take into account the dungeons which are roughly 300 in each game which have as a minimum of one cell and in many cases two and three cells so we add in 66% more area for each game dungeons zones . Given that information we can assume that the under world zones in these games have approximately 750 square miles each.
Typically the maximum area size is about 2K sq map for a mmorpg so the world size in a nutshell is going to be bigger but fell MUCH smaller.
Dark and Light had a large land mass. Wont really matter if the game is no good it can have a land mass the size of Saturn and no one will play it. If the game is great it can get by with an area the size of an island.
lol. Way to try and hype your game but shoot yourself in the foot.
Since we already know that each faction has its own lands that others cant enter, and there is three of them, the total area accessible per character is about the same area as Skyrim. Which is utterly inadequate for hosting thousands of players. The amount of instancing that will result will be horrid.
The game uses phasing.
I could also say the TESO world is nowhere as large as Asheron's Call but that is entirely pointless comparing to a game using phasing on a mega-server. There is a TON to talk about regarding TESO systems alone but evidently so many here know so little about this game they completely miss the major topics that SHOULD be talked about.
The game also uses invisible walls to block off the rest of the world while attempting to use old phrases like "open world".
So yeah, actually you can compare it to Asheons Call, because it really was an open world, where you could go anywhere with your character. Which you cant in TESO.
TESO is trying to be everything to everyone and lying their backsides off while doing it.
I really have to ask: Did you even play TESO past level 15?
As I said before, you can't compare TESO to Asheron's Call. AC didn't have phasing to spread out the population. That isn't it's only benefit. The main reason why phasing exists is to support the story and quest mechanics by allowing the world to change around the player based upon their actions. AC had very little actual questing and story when it came out. It's 1 month (as best as Turbine could do to stick to the schedule anyway) content additions effectively added the story ... it wasn't build in. It actually worked because the world was so massive and it had individual servers with finite players on each server. It created a game dramatically different and effectively made the game an early attempt at a sandbox game (the developers long ago admitted their tech limited them to much to truly match their original vision).
Yes you could run for an hour trying to cross the world (at running speeds comparable to epic flying mounts in some games) and this gave a great feeling of openness but in reality it wasn't much more than a mob grinding game as those open areas supported no story and no quests. It targeted players loving exploration. TESO isn't entirely that game. It is something different. Perhaps that is what upsets you.
I still do not understand the argument here. Obviously you think a large world is only measured by being larger than previous games effectively unconnected to TESO and it must absolutely be seamless. Where did Zenimax promise this? Perhaps you are simply arguing that you hoped the game was different than it is? This is a fruitless argument. You will forever be disappointed wishing something is different than it is in reality. To continue to do so places you among the crushed souls who continue to complain Swtor isn't a sandbox even though the game has been out for over 2 years and isn't going to be anything else other than what it is.
I've read over the majority of your arguments it mostly is centered around TESO not being entirely open and seemless yet every TES game prior was little more than one single large zone with no ability to go elsewhere (minus player made content). Each zone in TESO past starter zones still offer this exact same game play yet you actually CAN go beyond those boarders. So what exactly is your argument again? Did I miss the memo saying you could install Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim on your pc and suddenly you can walk seamlessly between those areas?
All I am reading is that you (and several others) are upset because TESO isn't the game you envisioned. Well, at the start of each season I envision my home team the Edmonton Oilers winning the Stanley cup as they did when I was a kid but they are in last %$@&;ing place right now so I choose to accept reality instead of smashing my head against the wall hoping for something that isn't reality.
lol. Way to try and hype your game but shoot yourself in the foot.
Since we already know that each faction has its own lands that others cant enter, and there is three of them, the total area accessible per character is about the same area as Skyrim. Which is utterly inadequate for hosting thousands of players. The amount of instancing that will result will be horrid.
The game uses phasing.
I could also say the TESO world is nowhere as large as Asheron's Call but that is entirely pointless comparing to a game using phasing on a mega-server. There is a TON to talk about regarding TESO systems alone but evidently so many here know so little about this game they completely miss the major topics that SHOULD be talked about.
The game also uses invisible walls to block off the rest of the world while attempting to use old phrases like "open world".
So yeah, actually you can compare it to Asheons Call, because it really was an open world, where you could go anywhere with your character. Which you cant in TESO.
TESO is trying to be everything to everyone and lying their backsides off while doing it.
I really have to ask: Did you even play TESO past level 15?
As I said before, you can't compare TESO to Asheron's Call. AC didn't have phasing to spread out the population. That isn't it's only benefit. The main reason why phasing exists is to support the story and quest mechanics by allowing the world to change around the player based upon their actions. AC had very little actual questing and story when it came out. It's 1 month (as best as Turbine could do to stick to the schedule anyway) content additions effectively added the story ... it wasn't build in. It actually worked because the world was so massive and it had individual servers with finite players on each server. It created a game dramatically different and effectively made the game an early attempt at a sandbox game (the developers long ago admitted their tech limited them to much to truly match their original vision).
And many who talk about Asheron's Call's open world also have no clue what they're talking about. When too many players (too many being 100+) were in the same area, Turbine's solution was to invent something they called "portal storms."
They would take about half of the players and teleport them randomly a few thousand yards away... great open world immersion and design that
The lag of that game whenever any medium sized group of people got together was horrendous.
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The game also uses invisible walls to block off the rest of the world while attempting to use old phrases like "open world".
So yeah, actually you can compare it to Asheons Call, because it really was an open world, where you could go anywhere with your character. Which you cant in TESO.
TESO is trying to be everything to everyone and lying their backsides off while doing it.
I really have to ask: Did you even play TESO past level 15?
I have to ask, what does that have to do with ANYTHING.
The phrase OPEN WORLD means one thing. The WORLD is open. Not part of the world is open, not its open after this point, or that point and up until another point.
If there are invisible walls blocking you, the world isn't open.
You are not phased from the other alliances lands. You are blocked. You cant go there until you "unlock" them, and until that time they are blocked off. That is not open world. PvP is behind a wall, you cant get there, it isn't phased because its not part of the rest of the world.
So, until they stop using meanings that don't apply, I WILL compare them to the games that are ACTUALLY fitting those phrases.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Originally posted by ste2000 I can confirm what the dev said, the world is huge indeed
No it's not, it's an instanced zoning word, even within each faction area you are zoning between areas. You cannot go where you want within the world and to top it all it's made of many instances.
Vanguards world of Telon is huge not ESO lol.
Except Vanguard is also cut up into zones or in its case " chunks " and each time you cross one there is a pause for it to load. It is pretty quick being only a second or 2 though but it is still the same.
The world in TESO is huge.. It doesnt matter if there is a loading screen between each area. You can quickly lose hours of playtime by just roaming around in ES fashion in one of the early areas. In fact that is what happened to me.
And everything is made of pixels, lol. There is a difference between loading screens and seemless world where engine loads more data every so often. TES world is small in comparison to Vanguard's no matter how you will try to spin it, lol
Vanguard isnt seamless because it has the loading chunks. Seamless would be 100% no loading ever. In Vanguard the chunks are zone lines. Not seamless.
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Indeed. Also the way the zones themselves are constructed and whether or not you have loading screens a lot matters in your perception of their size.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
For designers to talk about how big TESO is meaningless.
EQ1 plus expansion packs was (technically is) huge. SOE released some numbers years back and they were talking miles. some zones took 20 minutes to run across and there were (are) hundreds. Yes EQ1 had lots of mobs but it was also renowned for its grind.
As Elikal, Udon and others say it comes down to dead space. Sure TESO has caverns etc. but 10 caverns is 10 caverns whether it is in a small area or some uber large land mass. Size does not equal content.
And it is a key design issue.
How long it takes to get between encounters is basically grind. And in simple terms how long comes down to how big a world is and how fast you can travel. 10 caverns worth of content is 10 caverns worth of content whether the world is small or huge. The time to travel between them is grind.
Now you need some grind to create an immersive world - but there are only so many times you want to look at the pretty flowers/bridges/mountains etc. At the end of the day grind is grind. And, sadly, developers of a subscription game want to add grind. Anything that slows players down will skow down the consumption of PvE content. It is even a factor in PvP areas - slowing down how long it takes before you can engage.
Bottomline: meaningless comment from the devs especially as TESO will probably have large, mostly empty, PvP areas. I hopeit is not a defensive comment either.
I have tried out some (quickly defunct) "mmos" in the past - which were indeed large but did have some content (for no one disputes that TESO will have some content). Lets see - anyone remember DnL? Huge world; enough said.
lol. Way to try and hype your game but shoot yourself in the foot.
Since we already know that each faction has its own lands that others cant enter, and there is three of them, the total area accessible per character is about the same area as Skyrim. Which is utterly inadequate for hosting thousands of players. The amount of instancing that will result will be horrid.
No it's not, it's an instanced zoning word, even within each faction area you are zoning between areas. You cannot go where you want within the world and to top it all it's made of many instances.
Vanguards world of Telon is huge not ESO lol.
You're missing my point. You can choose to not engage in parts of the story, but you can't choose to actively contradict the story. You can be the Dragonborn and not bother dealing with the dragons, but you can't not be the Dragonborn. Elder Scrolls games have defined narratives. You can choose to have less than the full experience by not doing some of the content, but you can't choose to have a fundamentally different narrative experience. It's not a series that is built that way.
Yeah, I don't care how the size compares to the last three games, even combined. I want to know how the size compares to Daggerfall. *That* was a big map.This isn't accurate. They have announced that you can enter all the lands with a single character. You just can't enter the opposing faction lands until after you have hit max level and finished your faction's story.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Actually the DEV did not say that, the guy who was doing the podcast suggested it to Nick the dev. I think Nick is aaying its far MORE MASSIVE then that.
Nick says he has been working on the game for SIX years and himself has not seen everything there is to explore in the game.
Except Vanguard is also cut up into zones or in its case " chunks " and each time you cross one there is a pause for it to load. It is pretty quick being only a second or 2 though but it is still the same.
The world in TESO is huge.. It doesnt matter if there is a loading screen between each area. You can quickly lose hours of playtime by just roaming around in ES fashion in one of the early areas. In fact that is what happened to me.
The game uses phasing. If this isn't new to you by now I suggest reading more about it before posting. It shouldn't be a shock and people playing the game realize it's function (obviously a whole different set of issues materializes because of this).
And why all the comparisons to other games like Vanguard? Where in the original post does it compare TESO to ANY other game? TESO isn't Vanguard. Vanguard had to have a massive world in order to spread out players because there is not phasing. It is not story based and does not need phasing. Vanguard doesn't combine everyone into one server. Comparing these two games is fruitless when trying to understand and analyze TESO so try stay on topic.
I could also say the TESO world is nowhere as large as Asheron's Call but that is entirely pointless comparing to a game using phasing on a mega-server. There is a TON to talk about regarding TESO systems alone but evidently so many here know so little about this game they completely miss the major topics that SHOULD be talked about.
You stay sassy!
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
God here you go with Vanguard again. I'm sorry it has so few players left. We aren't going to go play that so get over it already. And generally yes, you can so generally go anywhere you want within the huge world of your faction and then at 50 the other factions., just dont expect to live very long if you go into leveled areas way above you. If the faction worlds are big, which they are, who gives a crap that it isn't quite a seamless and the technical mess Vanguard was with its horrible animations and boring quest structure filled with a world of static non moving NPCs. Nothing like roaming around a boring seamless world just for the sake of running anywhere.
There Is Always Hope!
It needs to be because its split into three just for the PvE, and then split again for PvP, and then again for the opening, and again for noob island, which is more than a few levels, then again for the level 50 adventure zones which closes you off from every other part of the world.
more freedom.....if you are going to compare the freedom of TES games to the freedom in this game, you are free, while bound to chains in a small box. These devs try so hard to make it sound like TES I really don't think its possible for them not to talk out their backsides.
Describe your game the way it IS and not the way you need it to SOUND to TES fans.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
The game also uses invisible walls to block off the rest of the world while attempting to use old phrases like "open world".
So yeah, actually you can compare it to Asheons Call, because it really was an open world, where you could go anywhere with your character. Which you cant in TESO.
TESO is trying to be everything to everyone and lying their backsides off while doing it.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Is he including:
- Instanced dungeons?
- Unenterable areas as well as playable areas?
- Inaccessable barriers (surprised mountain ranges, forests that you can't pass through etc...)?
Normally it would be ridiculous to even have to ask these questions but after EA/Bioware insisted that SWTOR was the 'largest MMO' and it turned out that only about 15% of the visible landscape was playable, some of us are suspicious when an known weasel developer claims to offer something good.
Without breaking the NDA, I can say a few things:
- people might make the common mistake of thinking that the starter area is the same as the rest of the area. Starter areas are typically set up to be linear, with a learning progression like a tutorial. It is a common problem in all games that people play the starter area, claim it's too small, too linear, etc, and quit before ever seeing the rest of the game.
- I loved doing PvE in DAOC's PvP area. I'm excited to hear that TESO will have this too. Having a separate PvE area from PvP is a great idea, providing a good game experience to all kinds of players. In DAOC, after you played PvE in a factional area and leveled up, you went into PvP with a real background in a faction. But it was a blast to do PvE in the PvP zone!
- the reason people keep bringing Vanguard up is that it is truly seamless, and had tons of random stuff to do all over the place. I loaded Vanguard up on a SSD drive, and when going from one chunk to another, there is a slight stutter of less than a second. And you can see into the next chunk. In every other game, you can't see past your boundary, and you'll have to go through a loading screen to get there.
Loading screens are a balancing act: too many and you lose concentration and focus, too few and you might want some to tell a story with. Vanguard has none, except what they wanted to use for story telling. This is the best of any game. Vanguard also has a lot of random content, besides having 3-4 times more content than you can do with any one character. One of my best memories in Vanguard was finding some fort out in the middle of nowhere, where I could compete and do quests to earn armor from that fort. No quest took me there, it wasn't part of any story.
And of course, the flip side was that there was a lot of primitive space in Vanguard, with little detail and no mobs. It's huge, but not very well detailed. A smaller world, with more detail would be better; however I felt FFXIV's landscapes to be very detailed and just a bit too small anyway. So if TESO has more of Skyrim-type detail, the world doesn't have to be huge, just so long as they make it large enough.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
Yes it is, just because the world is divided into instanced zones, doesn't make the world any smaller
Vanguard was a huge non instanced world.
ESO is a huge instanced world.
They have both big worlds they are just executed in a different manner.
Have you ever considered you might not like RPGs and so this game might not be for you lol... ? I mean, if you didn't really like any of the ES games... Why do you want to play ESO and demand the dev ''to do a LOT better to peak your interest'' ? I mean... you are clearing NOT the target audience, they could care less about peaking your interest LOL.
Personally, I can't wait to play the game and I am sure they have competent people working on the game, so the world will be full on content !
True, instanced does not mean smaller. Its size in total that matters, or at least would if it was actually open world.
The real issue is that the developers are once again attempting to make the game sound more like TES games which they are not. The TES games are completely open world where you can go anywhere at any time. You cannot do this in TESO though. The game may be as big as 3 TES games, but TESO is split off into so many pieces you cant go to that their doing this smacks of ever more desperation to get TES fans suckered into making the buy.
And no, opening up other factions lands at level 50 for your own instance of it does not make up for this bastardization process created to fit the limits of its base PvP design. Maybe if the game did not have a subscription there would be justification in creating ever more closed off parts of the game keeping you away from the gaming population. Walls walls and more walls, may as well have just made another normal TES game, with an online multiplayer PvP battleground option. At least then we would have gotten the typical great TES story, world, combat, modding and everything you get with a TES game.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
What's a surprised mountain range? Did someone run up behind it and shout boo, causing it to shit a brick?
THATS what ES was based on, running around and actually exploring. Doing a few quests here and there and picking and choosing HOW and WHAT you wanted to do to advance.
ESO should have taken what Vanguard/EQ did and go from there. Have a massively huge NONinstanced world. They have phasing there is no need for instancing every little encounter as well. Add in all the clickable and interactive stuff like chests, urns, books, boxes, jars, etc. Then add more stuff on top of that.
Its too bad SOE owns Vanguard, would love to see that game re-released and modernized with better graphics and a more stable server.
As far as size of the ESO itself. Most of it is Cryodiil. Which is as empty and barren a space as any MMO ever. Which makes your last sentance extremely ironic.
It depends here on the size of the zones I guess BUT my bet is that it will feel a bit smaller and here’s why.
Skyrim is 119 cells by 94 cells with each cell about 100 meters square in size (I believe it is 64 yards sq). The world is based on about 30 to 1 scale so rough size is about 223 x 176 miles for Skyrim. Real size is approximately 8 miles by 6 miles. Given Oblivion is approximately the same size and Morrowind is slightly smaller we can assume here that the total world size would be roughly 700 x 400 miles or 280,000 Sq Miles . Now that’s over land zones here. Let’s take into account the dungeons which are roughly 300 in each game which have as a minimum of one cell and in many cases two and three cells so we add in 66% more area for each game dungeons zones . Given that information we can assume that the under world zones in these games have approximately 750 square miles each.
Typically the maximum area size is about 2K sq map for a mmorpg so the world size in a nutshell is going to be bigger but fell MUCH smaller.
If you are interested in making a MMO maybe visit my page to get a free open source engine.
I really have to ask: Did you even play TESO past level 15?
As I said before, you can't compare TESO to Asheron's Call. AC didn't have phasing to spread out the population. That isn't it's only benefit. The main reason why phasing exists is to support the story and quest mechanics by allowing the world to change around the player based upon their actions. AC had very little actual questing and story when it came out. It's 1 month (as best as Turbine could do to stick to the schedule anyway) content additions effectively added the story ... it wasn't build in. It actually worked because the world was so massive and it had individual servers with finite players on each server. It created a game dramatically different and effectively made the game an early attempt at a sandbox game (the developers long ago admitted their tech limited them to much to truly match their original vision).
Yes you could run for an hour trying to cross the world (at running speeds comparable to epic flying mounts in some games) and this gave a great feeling of openness but in reality it wasn't much more than a mob grinding game as those open areas supported no story and no quests. It targeted players loving exploration. TESO isn't entirely that game. It is something different. Perhaps that is what upsets you.
I still do not understand the argument here. Obviously you think a large world is only measured by being larger than previous games effectively unconnected to TESO and it must absolutely be seamless. Where did Zenimax promise this? Perhaps you are simply arguing that you hoped the game was different than it is? This is a fruitless argument. You will forever be disappointed wishing something is different than it is in reality. To continue to do so places you among the crushed souls who continue to complain Swtor isn't a sandbox even though the game has been out for over 2 years and isn't going to be anything else other than what it is.
I've read over the majority of your arguments it mostly is centered around TESO not being entirely open and seemless yet every TES game prior was little more than one single large zone with no ability to go elsewhere (minus player made content). Each zone in TESO past starter zones still offer this exact same game play yet you actually CAN go beyond those boarders. So what exactly is your argument again? Did I miss the memo saying you could install Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim on your pc and suddenly you can walk seamlessly between those areas?
All I am reading is that you (and several others) are upset because TESO isn't the game you envisioned. Well, at the start of each season I envision my home team the Edmonton Oilers winning the Stanley cup as they did when I was a kid but they are in last %$@&;ing place right now so I choose to accept reality instead of smashing my head against the wall hoping for something that isn't reality.
You stay sassy!
And many who talk about Asheron's Call's open world also have no clue what they're talking about. When too many players (too many being 100+) were in the same area, Turbine's solution was to invent something they called "portal storms."
They would take about half of the players and teleport them randomly a few thousand yards away... great open world immersion and design that
The lag of that game whenever any medium sized group of people got together was horrendous.
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I have to ask, what does that have to do with ANYTHING.
The phrase OPEN WORLD means one thing. The WORLD is open. Not part of the world is open, not its open after this point, or that point and up until another point.
If there are invisible walls blocking you, the world isn't open.
You are not phased from the other alliances lands. You are blocked. You cant go there until you "unlock" them, and until that time they are blocked off. That is not open world. PvP is behind a wall, you cant get there, it isn't phased because its not part of the rest of the world.
So, until they stop using meanings that don't apply, I WILL compare them to the games that are ACTUALLY fitting those phrases.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Vanguard isnt seamless because it has the loading chunks. Seamless would be 100% no loading ever. In Vanguard the chunks are zone lines. Not seamless.