Is Summerset main Isle too small?

Chaos2088

Hey people.

Looking at the map and kinda comparing it to one of the zones in base game, seems roughly the same size.

What do you guys think?

Vanya

Shanjijri

Until when Summerset is available on PTS?

red_emu

2 huge mountains and a couple of roads. I've traversed Summerset in every direction hoping that my worries about it being small before the PTS dropped were unfounded. Well...

...it is smaller and with less content that I feared.

Vanya

I've spent almost four hours exploring and I must admit the size is appropriate. I am happy and pleased. The ruins,cities,points of interest and vibrant,dense and packed with Npcs, and foes. Do not be fooled with the numbers of locations and overall size. Certainly some of the island inaccessible , but there is huge amount of content and attempt to walk and explore everything ,rather than speeding with a mount. I haven't played through Public dungeons yet nor storyline content. My fist long video was an exploration mostly.

People have unreal expectations.

Marabornwingrion

It feels smaller than Vvardenfell.

In Vvardenfell we have one volcano in the middle of the map which we can't access, but in Summerset there are a lot of more mountains on the whole map, so I feel like accessible space is even smaller than in Vvardenfell.

NoTimeToWait

It has more vertically oriented landscape layout, so I would say it feels more compact, but actually the area to cover is around the same

Chaos2088

Just looking at the land mass size on the world map. The main Isle of Summerset looks like it should be equal to Greenshade +Malabal-Tor put together.

But has nearly has the same content as one of these zones......Just confusing that two zones put together has twice as much overland content as the new chapter does.

Just disappointed that's all

anitajoneb17_ESO

Chaos2088 wrote: »

Looking at the map and kinda comparing it to one of the zones in base game, seems roughly the same size.

"Looking at the map..."

You haven't played, haven't explored, just looked at the map, and already speaking negatively ???

red_emu wrote: »

2 huge mountains and a couple of roads. I've traversed Summerset in every direction hoping that my worries about it being small before the PTS dropped were unfounded. Well......it is smaller and with less content that I feared.

I bet you haven't even attempted to play the quests and to discover the "hidden" zones.

MLGProPlayer

It feels similar in size to Vvardenfell. My bigger complaint is the lack of environmental assets. Most of the island is empty fields. I would have liked to see more trees, rocks, etc. Vvardenfell felt much denser.

Asardes

So more bagels from ZoS bakery?

asuitandtyb14_ESO

Yes. I said it in the feedback thread, and I'll repeat it here.

I am absolutely dissapointed in the size of the island. It is no way reflective of the actual size it is supposed to be on the map; Even by the ESO map, in which it should be as big as Vvardenfell, or two Bosmer zones combined, and it most certainly is not.

This was an issue with Vvardenfell as well, in which a lot of the complaints were that it was too small. I'm not sure how well ZoS listened to this feedback. ZoS is showing a consistent pattern of releasing smaller, and smaller zones. They are supposed to be much larger in comparison to other zones.

This issue could certainly become an issue with other competitors, like LOTRO which just released a large expansion, and WoW which is also releasing a large landmass expansion.

The price stays the same, but the size of the content decreases with each expansion. I think this is going to be my last ESO purchase.

Narvuntien

Its not the size that counts... but how you use it.

Dasovaruilos

Yeah, I feel it is both SMALL and EMPTY...

Vvardenfell also felt a little small on ESO when I played, but Summerset looked so much bigger that I honestly thought that they would divide it in two when they came to that area.

But so far on the PTS it not only looks and feels way smaller than Vvardenfel but it also feels so, so empty...

Those inaccessible mountains must occupy close to 50% of the space.

It is beautiful, though.

AEAltadoonPadhome

I must add, that the overland zones from the base game might feel larger in size, but that they felt far more copy+paste than the DLC/chapter zones.
In order to have such a big map filled for example in valenwood, there are many ayleid ruins that are just more of the same.
For me the new trend looks like quality > quantity while at the launch of ESO it was more like quantity > quality.
I mean just look at Cyrodiil.

red_emu

AEAltadoonPadhome wrote: »

I must add, that the overland zones from the base game might feel larger in size, but that they felt far more copy+paste than the DLC/chapter zones.
In order to have such a big map filled for example in valenwood, there are many ayleid ruins that are just more of the same.
For me the new trend looks like quality > quantity while at the launch of ESO it was more like quantity > quality.
I mean just look at Cyrodiil.

Did you have a look around Summerset? All towns are copy paste buildings, assets and colours. Areas outside of towns, as beautiful and hand crafted as they are are also all the same (with the exception of a coral beach that has low-res coral boulders. That's it. It seems more copy pasted than any other zone I have been to.

Chaos2088

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Chaos2088 wrote: »

Looking at the map and kinda comparing it to one of the zones in base game, seems roughly the same size.

"Looking at the map..."

You haven't played, haven't explored, just looked at the map, and already speaking negatively ???

red_emu wrote: »

2 huge mountains and a couple of roads. I've traversed Summerset in every direction hoping that my worries about it being small before the PTS dropped were unfounded. Well......it is smaller and with less content that I feared.

I bet you haven't even attempted to play the quests and to discover the "hidden" zones.

This thread was about the size of the zone, not quests...

Gralor

It’s obvious that Zenimax is not capable of delivering a landmass bigger than a classic base game zone filled with content every year.

Yet they keep claiming the size of new zones is bigger than anything seen before. First Morrowind, now Summerset. Is this the American way of handling marketing?

“Just tell them it’s BIGGER! Doesn’t matter if half the map is inaccesible and 20 quests are spread over a dozen miles like in Cyrodiil. People don’t notice. We can blind them with our claims.”

Is honesty not being valued at Zenimax?

Faulgor

Depends what you mean with "too small". It is the size that it is. I'm more concerned that the areas we do get are as high quality as possible.

Of course I wish we could get all of the island accessible, but apparently that's not possible.

From 3 days of exploration so far, I'm pretty confident that these are the inaccessible areas (red), and areas placed in delves, public dungeons and trials or part of a quest (orange).



Or, if you prefer it the other way around, these are the areas we can freely explore (green).

Mystrius_Archaion

Astrid_V wrote: »

It feels smaller than Vvardenfell.

In Vvardenfell we have one volcano in the middle of the map which we can't access, but in Summerset there are a lot of more mountains on the whole map, so I feel like accessible space is even smaller than in Vvardenfell.

It is definitely smaller. I felt it was way too quick mounting up from Shimmerene to Alinor. It's pretty much the entire width of the zone. If I tried to do that in Vvardenfell it would take a lot longer, even if you do it all along the north or south coast.

If I analyze it by taking the time it takes to go around the circumference of the zone then it is also much smaller than Vvardenfell.
It is definitely less area despite the world map showing both of these zones to be very comparable in size with the edge going to Summerset being larger.


I am disappointed in the size of Summerset, with incorrect scale on the world map apparently(retconned world map needed), and the possibilities that were missed by the zone being smaller with less room for more, but I am otherwise happy with the content.
We just apparently have poor cartographers in Tamriel and no developers actually took measurements to try to get the scale right either. Form over function.

Nestor

Chaos2088 wrote: »

This thread was about the size of the zone, not quests...

The Quests take you into the areas you think are not explorable.

Faulgor wrote: »

From 3 days of exploration so far, I'm pretty confident that these are the inaccessible areas (red), and areas placed in delves, public dungeons and trials or part of a quest (orange).

Not sure what you are exploring, but there is content under those areas you say are blocked off.

Faulgor

Nestor wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

From 3 days of exploration so far, I'm pretty confident that these are the inaccessible areas (red), and areas placed in delves, public dungeons and trials or part of a quest (orange).

Not sure what you are exploring, but there is content under those areas you say are blocked off.

You are welcome to correct it. All I found were unscalable cliffs and slaughterfish, outside the other 4 delves on the main isle which I didn't bother to add.

Mystrius_Archaion

Vanya wrote: »

I've spent almost four hours exploring and I must admit the size is appropriate. I am happy and pleased. The ruins,cities,points of interest and vibrant,dense and packed with Npcs, and foes. Do not be fooled with the numbers of locations and overall size. Certainly some of the island inaccessible , but there is huge amount of content and attempt to walk and explore everything ,rather than speeding with a mount. I haven't played through Public dungeons yet nor storyline content. My fist long video was an exploration mostly.

People have unreal expectations.

No, we have logical expectations that are realistic given that "they can take as much time as they need to do it right" and they provided a world map including Summerset since launch with a measurable scale to determine relative size of zones.

1) The scale needs to be accurate or we get the same stretching effect that you see on a flat map of our round Earth.
Tamriel is just one continent among many on Nirn so it wouldn't even be explained by that distortion. True flat maps of Earth look more like they took a globe version and peeled it like an orange to keep everything proportioned correctly.

2) Do we like incomplete and sub-standard products? No.
If it wasn't enough time to complete it accurately and without errors when they could take the time then how can we expect them to fix errors when they have even less time available?

3) This is why lots of games do not make a "world map" or, if they do, they do not include unreleased areas that they are unsure of the size because it creates expectations that are perfectly valid but they can't meet.
Do you blame the car you buy for not being "the best car ever in the history of cars that will always be the best" or do you blame the advertiser/salesman for hyping it up to that level before showing you "a Ford Fiesta"?

They advertised Summerset as being huge. They have been advertising its size since the first map we could see in relation to other zones. Just in this game, they have been advertising its size easily compared to Vvardenfell for a year now.

It is their fault they couldn't live up to the expectation they intentionally set for us.



FYI, I'm ok with it. I'm not happy or angry. I'm just ok because at least I get Summerset and all the pretty shiny things there.

asuitandtyb14_ESO

Mystrius_Archaion wrote: »

Vanya wrote: »

I've spent almost four hours exploring and I must admit the size is appropriate. I am happy and pleased. The ruins,cities,points of interest and vibrant,dense and packed with Npcs, and foes. Do not be fooled with the numbers of locations and overall size. Certainly some of the island inaccessible , but there is huge amount of content and attempt to walk and explore everything ,rather than speeding with a mount. I haven't played through Public dungeons yet nor storyline content. My fist long video was an exploration mostly.

People have unreal expectations.

No, we have logical expectations that are realistic given that "they can take as much time as they need to do it right" and they provided a world map including Summerset since launch with a measurable scale to determine relative size of zones.

1) The scale needs to be accurate or we get the same stretching effect that you see on a flap map of our round Earth.
Tamriel is just one continent among many on Nirn so it wouldn't even be explained by that distortion. True flat maps of Earth look more like they took a globe version and peeled it like an orange to keep everything proportioned correctly.

2) Do we like incomplete and sub-standard products? No.
If it wasn't enough time to complete it accurately and without errors when they could take the time then how can we expect them to fix errors when they have even less time available?

3) This is why lots of games do not make a "world map" or, if they do, they do not include unreleased areas that they are unsure of the size because it creates expectations that are perfectly valid but they can't meet.
Do you blame the car you buy for not being "the best car ever in the history of cars that will always be the best" or do you blame the advertiser/salesman for hyping it up to that level before showing you "a Ford Fiesta"?

They advertised Summerset as being huge. They have been advertising its size since the first map we could see in relation to other zones. Just in this game, they have been advertising its size easily compared to Vvardenfell for a year now.

It is their fault they couldn't live up to the expectation they intentionally set for us.



FYI, I'm ok with it. I'm not happy or angry. I'm just ok because at least I get Summerset and all the pretty shiny things there.

Well said, sums it up perfectly.

Mystrius_Archaion

asuitandtyb14_ESO wrote: »

Yes. I said it in the feedback thread, and I'll repeat it here.

I am absolutely dissapointed in the size of the island. It is no way reflective of the actual size it is supposed to be on the map; Even by the ESO map, in which it should be as big as Vvardenfell, or two Bosmer zones combined, and it most certainly is not.

This was an issue with Vvardenfell as well, in which a lot of the complaints were that it was too small. I'm not sure how well ZoS listened to this feedback. ZoS is showing a consistent pattern of releasing smaller, and smaller zones. They are supposed to be much larger in comparison to other zones.

This issue could certainly become an issue with other competitors, like LOTRO which just released a large expansion, and WoW which is also releasing a large landmass expansion.

The price stays the same, but the size of the content decreases with each expansion. I think this is going to be my last ESO purchase.

I honestly do not have any other zones or areas on my mind for future content either.
I wanted to see "the birthplace of magic" because I love magic and all the possibilities that opens. I also like high fantasy more than believable "Dark Ages" sort of fantasy which has mostly been in the game so far.

I don't want to see the Argonians' homeland. Shadowfen was boring so more swamps will be boring even if they make it like the Florida Everglades. I don't want to see more of the khajiit savannah-type lands that they seem to live in because it is just not interesting enough. I don't want to see more of Alik'r Desert because that is also mostly boring.


I wish they had included very different architecture. We should have had pyramids with some culture, for example, but the Argonians that seem to have past architecture like the Aztec are not actually living there so the structures are ruins overrun with vegetation and fewer in number.
There are plenty of real world cultures that could have been influential to the races of Tamriel with it embellished and expanded upon, but they chose to make it more like going to a more modern European city like Amsterdam or the market in Mumbai or any island in the Philippines where they just have "shanty towns" because they get wiped out by tidal waves and typhoons so often that nobody even wants to build more permanent and interesting even if they could.

Finally, the high elves have interesting architecture, even if it is still the same rectangle rooms.

Mystrius_Archaion

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Chaos2088 wrote: »

Looking at the map and kinda comparing it to one of the zones in base game, seems roughly the same size.

"Looking at the map..."

You haven't played, haven't explored, just looked at the map, and already speaking negatively ???

The map is an advertisement they put out there.
What is it people say about unrealistic advertisements like those "look younger in 5 minutes" infomercials? False advertising?

It's not our expectations that are unrealistic, because this is a virtual world where nearly anything is possible, especially something as simple as making the polygons of landscape bigger. It's the advertisements they set in front of us to set our expectations that were unrealistic.

We're just doing what they wanted us to, get hyped. We got hyped by the info they gave us only to find the info they gave us was wrong.

Mystrius_Archaion

Couldn't they have made it bigger without being more content work by just putting realistically sized farmland around the cities and wide open areas where nobody lives that are just grasslands or forests?

Just look at satellite photos of the United States for inspiration. The cities are clusters of lights at night in small areas while the majority of the land is dark and empty of people.

I live near a "town" of population under 3000 people. I'm only 4 miles from it, but it looks like nobody lives here because there are open farmlands all around and pockets of trees. So much farmland to feed the nation and the world, but the area that I can see to the horizon is only enough to feed a couple surrounding communities.

It would be so much more believable and give us the land we expected if they had not tried to fill every inch of Summerset. That is what they did. All developers do it. All people do it in their everyday lives.
Empty space is uncomfortable. Not doing something or not talking or not having something in the middle of a big table, all are uncomfortable.
That is why we got a smaller zone than we should have, on top of the fact that people complain about long distance travel.

anitajoneb17_ESO

Chaos2088 wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Chaos2088 wrote: »

Looking at the map and kinda comparing it to one of the zones in base game, seems roughly the same size.

"Looking at the map..."

You haven't played, haven't explored, just looked at the map, and already speaking negatively ???

red_emu wrote: »

2 huge mountains and a couple of roads. I've traversed Summerset in every direction hoping that my worries about it being small before the PTS dropped were unfounded. Well......it is smaller and with less content that I feared.

I bet you haven't even attempted to play the quests and to discover the "hidden" zones.

This thread was about the size of the zone, not quests...

... quests leading to hidden zones not appearing on the map. And to Artaeum. So it's very relevant to this thread. Judging the size and quality of a "zone" without having visited it all - VIA QUESTING - makes no sense at all. It's complaining for the sake of it.

Seraphayel

red_emu wrote: »

2 huge mountains and a couple of roads. I've traversed Summerset in every direction hoping that my worries about it being small before the PTS dropped were unfounded. Well...

...it is smaller and with less content that I feared.

Great so it is smaller than Vvardenfell (it should have been at least the same size) and has even less content available there. Great job on ZOS side to create a lore friendly Summerset... not.

anitajoneb17_ESO

Mystrius_Archaion wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Chaos2088 wrote: »

Looking at the map and kinda comparing it to one of the zones in base game, seems roughly the same size.

"Looking at the map..."

You haven't played, haven't explored, just looked at the map, and already speaking negatively ???

The map is an advertisement they put out there.
What is it people say about unrealistic advertisements like those "look younger in 5 minutes" infomercials? False advertising?

It's not our expectations that are unrealistic, because this is a virtual world where nearly anything is possible, especially something as simple as making the polygons of landscape bigger. It's the advertisements they set in front of us to set our expectations that were unrealistic.

We're just doing what they wanted us to, get hyped. We got hyped by the info they gave us only to find the info they gave us was wrong.

You cannot say it's wrong unless you've actually seen and tried entirely.

Aebaradath

It is very small. Walked all over the zone and was like, "that's it?"

Quite underwhelming, to be honest.