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Why Nothern Elsweyr Only is a Good Thing
Darkstorne
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One of the stranger criticisms I've seen for this summer's Chapter is the zone size. A lot of people seem to think restricting the playable area to Anequina (the northern half of Elsweyr) rather than including the entire province means they're only getting half the playable area of previous Chapters.
"Scale" and "Playable Area" is not the same thing
The first thing to understand is that most zones in this game are all at different scales. A good example of this is the Bal Foyen zone, in Morrowind. One of the tiniest looking zones on the world map, but still a sizeable play area when you visit. Summerset on the other hand looks huge on the world map, almost the same size as Cyrodiil, but due to scaling ends up being similar in playable area to most other zones that take up much smaller areas on the world map, and probably not even 10% of Cyrodiil's playable area.
Bal Foyen:
Comparing TES3 Morrowind to TESV Skyrim is another good example. While Skyrim has the bigger playable area, Morrowind has the bigger scale. If Skyrim had been created at TES3's scale, it would have been a much bigger playable area.
So when ZOS confirm that Elsweyr is roughly the same playable area as Summerset, but is only set in the northern half of Elsweyr, it means we get a much more realistic scale.
Why is this important?
Cities. Yes, there are other benefits, such as more wilderness to flesh out the zone itself, and not being able to run from coast to coast in 60 seconds like you can in Summerset, but the biggest issue with Summerset's expansion was the cities and their architecture. I'm not going to touch on the lack of crystal and glass (that discussion has been had a million times over
). I'm talking about the lack of dev time and resources available in a single year of a Chapter's development to design an entire province's worth of unique architecture with the love and care they deserve.
Imagine if TESV Skyrim had been designed in a single year, and so only one architectural style could be used for the entire province. No sense of history and unique culture for the various cities - just the same exact design used everywhere:
Whiterun:
Solitude:
Windhelm:
Riften:
Markarth:
That would be awful, right?
Now here are some screenshots from four different cities in ESO's Summerset Chapter:
Uh-oh. Unless you know the city layouts intimately from playtime, you wouldn't have a clue which city is which. You could tell a new player these are all screenshots of Alinor and they'd believe you.
And that's the problem with trying to create an entire province in a single year. Cuts have to be made. One architecture style for the entire province's cities has to be a crutch.
This is why when you hear that the Elsweyr Chapter is set entirely in Anequina, you shouldn't panic. I get that a lot of you will be sad that you can't visit Corinthe, Torval, and Senchal this summer, but when you explore the unique architecture of Rimmen you can be glad that this should allow the devs to keep Rimmen unique. And that when southern Elsweyr gets its time in the sun, those cities will have their own architectural history and culture. If we were getting all of Elsweyr this summer, then every city would look like this:
Instead, that will remain iconically Rimmen, forever, and you'll still have the same amount of playable land to explore as you did with Summerset
"Scale" and "Playable Area" is not the same thing
The first thing to understand is that most zones in this game are all at different scales. A good example of this is the Bal Foyen zone, in Morrowind. One of the tiniest looking zones on the world map, but still a sizeable play area when you visit. Summerset on the other hand looks huge on the world map, almost the same size as Cyrodiil, but due to scaling ends up being similar in playable area to most other zones that take up much smaller areas on the world map, and probably not even 10% of Cyrodiil's playable area.
Bal Foyen:
Comparing TES3 Morrowind to TESV Skyrim is another good example. While Skyrim has the bigger playable area, Morrowind has the bigger scale. If Skyrim had been created at TES3's scale, it would have been a much bigger playable area.
So when ZOS confirm that Elsweyr is roughly the same playable area as Summerset, but is only set in the northern half of Elsweyr, it means we get a much more realistic scale.
Why is this important?
Cities. Yes, there are other benefits, such as more wilderness to flesh out the zone itself, and not being able to run from coast to coast in 60 seconds like you can in Summerset, but the biggest issue with Summerset's expansion was the cities and their architecture. I'm not going to touch on the lack of crystal and glass (that discussion has been had a million times over
). I'm talking about the lack of dev time and resources available in a single year of a Chapter's development to design an entire province's worth of unique architecture with the love and care they deserve.Imagine if TESV Skyrim had been designed in a single year, and so only one architectural style could be used for the entire province. No sense of history and unique culture for the various cities - just the same exact design used everywhere:
Whiterun:
Solitude:
Windhelm:
Riften:
Markarth:
That would be awful, right?
Now here are some screenshots from four different cities in ESO's Summerset Chapter:
Uh-oh. Unless you know the city layouts intimately from playtime, you wouldn't have a clue which city is which. You could tell a new player these are all screenshots of Alinor and they'd believe you.
And that's the problem with trying to create an entire province in a single year. Cuts have to be made. One architecture style for the entire province's cities has to be a crutch.
This is why when you hear that the Elsweyr Chapter is set entirely in Anequina, you shouldn't panic. I get that a lot of you will be sad that you can't visit Corinthe, Torval, and Senchal this summer, but when you explore the unique architecture of Rimmen you can be glad that this should allow the devs to keep Rimmen unique. And that when southern Elsweyr gets its time in the sun, those cities will have their own architectural history and culture. If we were getting all of Elsweyr this summer, then every city would look like this:
Instead, that will remain iconically Rimmen, forever, and you'll still have the same amount of playable land to explore as you did with Summerset
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Iluvrien✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭If a large area is being designed with the same architectural style for any reason other than lore, then it is being designed wrong.
Let’s not make excuses. We are paying for this product. It needs to be of good quality.2 -
craybest✭✭✭✭✭100% agree with summerset cities. I loved the first one I saw, and then the rest was like "oh they all look the same"3 -
VaranisArano✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭My concern is "playable area."
The last zone that felt really full to me was Wrothgar in the Orsinium DLC.
Morrowind was huge...but had a giant volcano in it and tons of blocked off, window dressing ruins.
Summerset was better, but there were still good chunks of the island that were inaccessible, and the diversity of the ecosystem was lacking. We pretty much got coastal, mountains, and in-between.4 -
Darkstorne✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭VaranisArano wrote: »My concern is "playable area."
The last zone that felt really full to me was Wrothgar in the Orsinium DLC.
Morrowind was huge...but had a giant volcano in it and tons of blocked off, window dressing ruins.
Summerset was better, but there were still good chunks of the island that were inaccessible, and the diversity of the ecosystem was lacking. We pretty much got coastal, mountains, and in-between.
Yes, I agree. We'll have to see what they've learned and applied to Elsweyr here, but the Scar being fully explorable rather than impassable seems like a step in the right direction for environment design at least. I hope they do the same with mountains in future Chapters. The thought of Skyrim with impassable mountains is... not great 2
