Can the game possibly transition to open world someday?

[Obtena.7952]

> @"Aodlop.1907" said:

> Greater immersion? Polishing the game?

> An open world is not just a childish whim, it's a genuine MMO feature that is praised whenever it's included in a new game.

 

I think we have to be fair ... pretending like we don't have OW because you think the maps are too small is rather sensational. There are pro's and cons to small vs. big maps and to be frank ... how big does a map actually have to be to not break your immersion? If we had MMO's that didn't have 'map loading boarders' I could see your point ... but I have YET to play an MMO that doesn't 'break' immersion with map loads. I've seen some badly implemented 'within viewing range' loading ... but THAT is immersion breaking; stuff loading every 10 seconds.

 

Also, I don't think 'game polish' lends itself to larger maps either. it will be the same maps, graphics, etc ... just less loading. I wouldn't call that polish. Really, we have a good balance of map size and 'immersion' without getting into significant issues like lag, etc ...

[Yggranya.5201]

> @"Super Hayes.6890" said:

> I do wish Queensdale and Divinity's Reach were one map. I like how Crystal Oasis has Amnoon combined with the combat areas. In fact, this would be a welcome change for all racial cities with thier starter zones. New "defend the gates" type missions could be added as well. This would be a lot of work but could be justified as an upgrade to the new player experience. Open world accross the board is a project that... well let's just make a new game at that point.

 

And if you fail that event, what would happen? Pretty pointless if there is no consequence. Of course, who would want some enemies attacking you when you are crafting, visiting black lion trader or just looking around? Unlikely to be enticing for new players. I assume you have some suggestions for this?

[Danikat.8537]

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> > @"Aodlop.1907" said:

> > Greater immersion? Polishing the game?

> > An open world is not just a childish whim, it's a genuine MMO feature that is praised whenever it's included in a new game.

>

> I think we have to be fair ... pretending like we don't have OW because you think the maps are too small is rather sensational. There are pro's and cons to small vs. big maps and to be frank ... how big does a map actually have to be to not break your immersion? If we had MMO's that didn't have 'map loading boarders' I could see your point ... but I have YET to play an MMO that doesn't 'break' immersion with map loads. I've seen some badly implemented 'within viewing range' loading ... but THAT is immersion breaking; stuff loading every 10 seconds.

>

> Also, I don't think 'game polish' lends itself to larger maps either. it will be the same maps, graphics, etc ... just less loading. I wouldn't call that polish. Really, we have a good balance of map size and 'immersion' without getting into significant issues like lag, etc ...

 

I know I'm not the person these questions are directed to, but I wanted to answer anyway. I don't think computers are capable of running games with maps big enough to not break your immersion sooner or later.

 

I've played various games with absolutely massive open maps where there's no internal boundaries, but sooner or later one of two things happens:

1. You reach the edge and the game will stop you going beyond it. (The specifics vary but ulimately they're all variations on an invisible wall.)

2. The map wraps around so one side joins the other as if you've gone all the way around the world, but the space available is obviously far too small for a realistic planet with gravity and atmosphere. This is probably a more subtle immersion break, but is much harder to do technically and adds the problem that you can't ever add to that world, if you want to introduce new areas they have to be seperate - underground, in the sky, in another dimension etc. (You can't even have places mentioned in lore which aren't in the world, because there's no where for them to go.)

 

Of course there is that new Microsoft flight simulator which includes the entire Earth, but that's not really comparable to an MMO. It's only designed to be seen from the air so buildings (except maybe airports) are hollow blocks with nothing inside, any people and animals are non-interactable and very little moves or changes. It's not yet possible for a computer to do a map that big and fill it with stuff.

 

Even on a smaller scale there's often a trade-off between map size and 'content density' with games that offer larger maps often having large areas which are relatively empty in between chunks of content. Sometimes that's not a bad thing, I've had great fun in Breath of the Wild galloping a horse across open areas, although mainly because of the novelty factor after trying to do that in Ocarina of Time and being accutely aware even as a kid that it couldn't last long because the map - impressively huge for it's time - still wasn't that big (also the grass was just a flat green floor). But most of the time it just feels like wasted space - there's no point having a huge open world map if I can glance at a large chunk of it and almost immediately know there's nothing there for me to find or do. In a lot of cases it would be better to cut that space out and use the memory for something that actually contributes to gameplay.

[Swagger.1459]

> @"Aodlop.1907" said:

> I know what you'll say: the zones are big so it's okay, even more so nowadays, and so on.

> But it's still not open world, and you can really feel the difference, especially with the mounts we now have access to.

 

How many millions of dollars would it cost to do that? Would it be worth years of dev time to work on that? Think the refurbed GW1 engine can handle a seamless world? How many other projects and updates would the devs have to stop in order to accomplish a seamless world?

 

 

[Super Hayes.6890]

> @"Yggranya.5201" said:

> > @"Super Hayes.6890" said:

> > I do wish Queensdale and Divinity's Reach were one map. I like how Crystal Oasis has Amnoon combined with the combat areas. In fact, this would be a welcome change for all racial cities with thier starter zones. New "defend the gates" type missions could be added as well. This would be a lot of work but could be justified as an upgrade to the new player experience. Open world accross the board is a project that... well let's just make a new game at that point.

>

> And if you fail that event, what would happen? Pretty pointless if there is no consequence. Of course, who would want some enemies attacking you when you are crafting, visiting black lion trader or just looking around? Unlikely to be enticing for new players. I assume you have some suggestions for this?

 

Nothing too invasive lol. The crafting areas would need to be off limits for events and aggro. There is a lot of city between those stations and the gates though. Being a starter area the events wouldn't be hardcore crazy difficulty. Just some events that add flavor with minimal consequences. Maybe some tutorial for game mechanics built in.

[Yggranya.5201]

> @"Super Hayes.6890" said:

> > @"Yggranya.5201" said:

> > > @"Super Hayes.6890" said:

> > > I do wish Queensdale and Divinity's Reach were one map. I like how Crystal Oasis has Amnoon combined with the combat areas. In fact, this would be a welcome change for all racial cities with thier starter zones. New "defend the gates" type missions could be added as well. This would be a lot of work but could be justified as an upgrade to the new player experience. Open world accross the board is a project that... well let's just make a new game at that point.

> >

> > And if you fail that event, what would happen? Pretty pointless if there is no consequence. Of course, who would want some enemies attacking you when you are crafting, visiting black lion trader or just looking around? Unlikely to be enticing for new players. I assume you have some suggestions for this?

>

> Nothing too invasive lol. The crafting areas would need to be off limits for events and aggro. There is a lot of city between those stations and the gates though. Being a starter area the events wouldn't be hardcore crazy difficulty. Just some events that add flavor with minimal consequences. Maybe some tutorial for game mechanics built in.

 

If they successfully invade a city and the defences and defenders on the other side keep them occupied until someone helps them complete the event, or maybe the defenders can eventually do it themselves.

 

Of course if it's supposed to be a tutorial, it would require a little extra effort from anet. How to make people dodge would be the only thing that would be doable for everyone at that level. Example: just some pop up telling people the button to dodge when they get hit by some stronger slowish charge attack (preferably not a one-shot).

 

Maybe using utility skills too. Of course the racial skills are perhaps too different for that, except if they have different requirements depending on race. Example: Three different objectives that let you use one of the skills to do something to progress the event, like sylvari healing some turret plants with healing seed. As long as using the utilities wouldn't be a requirement to complete the event, it shouldn't be a problem.

 

But since all this stuff is already taught in the game more or less, is there any benefit to adding some reminder for it?

[Zephire.8049]

Along with what others have mentioned, the instanced maps seem to act as a way to contain bugs, too. Just recently we had a patch where people interacting with a certain object in LA crashed the game for everyone in LA in that instance. If maps weren't instanced, there's a chance that it would have instead crashed the entire game for everyone.

 

There's been a number of bugs that made it to live/appeared when introduced to live code like that, where a certain object or skin or whatever would result in everyone on the map DC'ing or fully crashing. Depending on how the code or the servers are set up, removing the ability for the game to partition areas via map instance could easily result in such DCs and crashes affecting everyone in the game.

 

With the engine being so old and code being as spaghetti as devs say it is, changing something as key as map instances (something GW1 also had so it's likely hard-baked into the code), it's a lose-lose situation for something most people are fine with (if they even notice) and which benefits devs. That's if it's even possible to do.

 

> @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> > @"Ashen.2907" said:

> > > @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > > In addition to what has been mentioned before, it was my understanding that the "instanced" nature of every open world map, and their ability to dynamically create new instances/close old ones as needed, is something that greatly contributes to their ability to do maintenance/patching "on the fly", without the need to shut down the whole game, like most of other MMORPGs have to do.

> > >

> > > GW2's ability to run without the regular "maintenance" downtimes other MMORPGs have is one of the greatest (even if usually unrecognized) features. I'd really not want to lose it.

> >

> > This.

> >

> > Down time is not, "immersive."

> Heh, I remember when I played Black Desert. Gorgeous open world sure but then... all NPcs just stopped. Stood there in the fields. Permanently died until the world was empty. Time for downtime! ... For like 6 hours. And then when its up its broken within a couple of hours again and time for another downtime lasting a day.

>

 

And then there's WoW where there would be a regular "minor" patch that was scheduled to be an hour or two... only for something to break and the entire game being down for 12-24 hours with little to no communication from the devs. That happened multiple times when I played. EU going down earlier this year was bad, but that was a semi-regular occurrence with WoW and you never knew if it was going to be a regular patch day or one of _those_ patch days.

 

I'd rather deal with a loading screen that takes 1-10 seconds (SSD) and have the game always be available than have a completely open world but the game being down multiple hours a month.

[LucianDK.8615]

Look at WoW when it went to cataclysm, where they tidyied up the whole gameworld to make it flyable. It took so many resources that it hurt the rest of the expack.

The same would happen for Gw2, youd have to connect each and every zone and smoothing out geometry to fit against each other. Absolute waste of time and dev resources for anet.

[Super Hayes.6890]

> @"Yggranya.5201" said:

> > @"Super Hayes.6890" said:

> > > @"Yggranya.5201" said:

> > > > @"Super Hayes.6890" said:

> > > > I do wish Queensdale and Divinity's Reach were one map. I like how Crystal Oasis has Amnoon combined with the combat areas. In fact, this would be a welcome change for all racial cities with thier starter zones. New "defend the gates" type missions could be added as well. This would be a lot of work but could be justified as an upgrade to the new player experience. Open world accross the board is a project that... well let's just make a new game at that point.

> > >

> > > And if you fail that event, what would happen? Pretty pointless if there is no consequence. Of course, who would want some enemies attacking you when you are crafting, visiting black lion trader or just looking around? Unlikely to be enticing for new players. I assume you have some suggestions for this?

> >

> > Nothing too invasive lol. The crafting areas would need to be off limits for events and aggro. There is a lot of city between those stations and the gates though. Being a starter area the events wouldn't be hardcore crazy difficulty. Just some events that add flavor with minimal consequences. Maybe some tutorial for game mechanics built in.

>

> If they successfully invade a city and the defences and defenders on the other side keep them occupied until someone helps them complete the event, or maybe the defenders can eventually do it themselves.

>

> Of course if it's supposed to be a tutorial, it would require a little extra effort from anet. How to make people dodge would be the only thing that would be doable for everyone at that level. Example: just some pop up telling people the button to dodge when they get hit by some stronger slowish charge attack (preferably not a one-shot).

>

> Maybe using utility skills too. Of course the racial skills are perhaps too different for that, except if they have different requirements depending on race. Example: Three different objectives that let you use one of the skills to do something to progress the event, like sylvari healing some turret plants with healing seed. As long as using the utilities wouldn't be a requirement to complete the event, it shouldn't be a problem.

>

> But since all this stuff is already taught in the game more or less, is there any benefit to adding some reminder for it?

 

I do like your idea about the racial skills. Might be the only way they gain relevance. The event could get the Tarir treatment. If the players fail the city guards or the like swoop in and save the day.

[kharmin.7683]

> @"Super Hayes.6890" said:

> The event could get the Tarir treatment. If the players fail the city guards or the like swoop in and save the day.

Not sure how that would encourage active game-play. We have a lot of AFKers as it is now.

 

[Super Hayes.6890]

> @"kharmin.7683" said:

> > @"Super Hayes.6890" said:

> > The event could get the Tarir treatment. If the players fail the city guards or the like swoop in and save the day.

> Not sure how that would encourage active game-play. We have a lot of AFKers as it is now.

>

 

True, but I really have no idea how to prevent that.