Tamriel is like magic when crossing borders! ;) (Map issues)

Dhaylen

Ive always been a bit - not sure the word - befuddled, perhaps, by ZOS' map of Tamriel.
Two factors:

1: Im in North Elsweyr, going to the gate.
Im assuming its a hoax/fake gate you cant go through. (Like the one to Cyrodil)
BUT - low and behold, I can enter this, tall, strong, mighty iron/steel gate!

Where does it take me? Well, on the other side is the same gate... wait, no - its a small, wood-post gate that does not remotely make sense.
(Guess my character takes too much Skooma from those little fuzz balls in Elsweyr - as this one is so confused! lol!)

* Seriously - I get it... linked into #2
2: Whats with all the patches in the world.
- We have a full Summerset, I believe.
- But we have an incomplete Morrowind, even though they came out with the full Morrowind expansion.
(Are those areas just going to stay 'greyed' out?)
- Elsweyr… the expansion gave us (the smallest place yet? One area - or is this considered finishing out what was already north of the border? But then you pay for the southern part as a DLC?)
On top of that, say you can figure out how to get all the pieces of Elsweyr, there is still a strip between it and the mighty wood-elf kingdom! (Sorry guys, love your place - forgot the name)

Back to #1:
I get that the world is not stitched together - Honestly, never knew that.
As obvious as it seemed, I somehow thought it was seamless with loading screens - or could be stitched together.
Had no idea that it was so out of sync that one side would look completely different than the other. (There goes my dream of a united Tamriel and flying!)

Would have loved ESO to be more 'open' like WoW. (Love unhindered exploring)

MerguezMan

1) You crossed a walkway where nothing happens during a loading screen.
At least there is a door to tell you it's the end of the zone.
Compare to Eastmarch south limit, where you don't know when you step in/out...

2) There are unreachable mountains in the current depiction of Tamriel.
Would you prefer those 2 patches of map sticked together with a mountain you can't go to in between ?
Would it make a big difference ?

3) Maybe, in a future version, we get to see the empty part filled, and get rid of the loading screen ?
Who knows ?

Dhaylen

MerguezMan wrote: »

1) You crossed a walkway where nothing happens during a loading screen.
At least there is a door to tell you it's the end of the zone.
Compare to Eastmarch south limit, where you don't know when you step in/out...

Don't get me wrong - I just really enjoy immersive rpg worlds.
And found it, literally funny, that I went through a big iron gate and on the other side saw that the same gate was a small wooden one.

Perhaps I misunderstood and it was just a long passage of road my character was traversing.
Thanks for the insight - helps with the rp aspect.

Darkstorne

Whew, this post got long... sorry

1) World Size / Loading Screens - This game was originally trying to be like WoW in that it targets PC only, and designed for low end PCs at that. The thought that console gamers would be interested in MMOs didn't cross the minds of the lead devs (who mostly just wanted to create a sequel to Dark Age of Camelot rather than a TES game anyway). As a result we got an engine designed for low end PCs, that didn't bother to push visuals much (what's an LOD system?), and segmented the world into zones for performance reasons rather than creating one huge connected Tamriel.

Since then the leadership has changed significantly, and the game has embraced being a TES game. That evolved from early shock that players didn't want a cartoon art direction and expected a first person option, into devs like Rich Lambert pushing for the One Tamriel system, where players could quest and explore anywhere at any level. Pretty much every aspect of the game that could be changed has been changed, and very few would argue that the original design direction of a cartoon third person only low-end PC-only game was when ESO was at its best. But sadly some design decisions are too ingrained to ever replace (separated zones, no LOD system, impassable mountains etc).

2) Missing Sections on the Map - They can't create everything all at once, and those missing areas fill in with future Chapters/DLC. As for why there are sections of Elsweyr missing when we got all of Summerset, that approach has pros and cons. Not all the zones are to scale, meaning that the size of locations on the world map don't often relate to their in-game size . Summerset's zone filled in the entirety of the main island, while Elsweyr's Chapter only took place in the northern half of Elsweyr. If you go by the map, that makes it look like Summerset was a much bigger zone. But in-game they're about the same size. You might think you get more with Summerset, but instead you have a small island where you can run from one shoreline to the other insanely quickly, and as a result of dev time constraints every city on the entire island uses the same architecture and the landscape has mostly identical environment design no matter which part of the map you're on.

By keeping the scale more focused like Elsweyr, ZOS can create a Chapter that focuses more on one or two cities from a province, and create a big zone around those locations. Future DLC/Chapters can then explore the other sections of the provinces and ensure they get the unique architecture and environments they deserve. You can't expect a team to create an entire province in a single year and fully create the diversity it deserves. I was sad to see that Dragonhold still re-used the architecture from northern Elsweyr though. That was a bummer But the environment design certainly stands out in southern Elsweyr as unique, and central Elsweyr has a chance for more uniqueness down the line. When the province is completely done, it will then feel truly diverse, albeit at the expense of some loading screens as you travel across it.

That's one of the elements of Skyrim's upcoming Chapter I'm most impressed by - that by committing to pretty much Solitude alone they can create proper architecture for that city. Windhelm has been in the game since day one but got completely shafted. They didn't have the time to create the unique architecture it deserved (see TESV's appearance) so it just looks like a generic Nordic city, and lacks the ancient stone walls and Palace of the Kings founded by Ysgramor himself. Markarth is likely to be added in Q4 this year, and should (fingers crossed!) feature its own unique architecture and environment design. Future Chapters and DLC could then fill out the central area of Skyrim, say with Whiterun as a Chapter and Winterhold as its Q4 DLC.

If people can wrap their heads around the difference between map size and game scale, hopefully we can encourage ZOS to continue this focus on one or two cities per Chapter, since the playable area and content amount we receive is the same, it just means we get a lot more variety and detail in the cities and environments over time