Naturally a single player game would have more detail. Why would you expect different? Single player games generally do have better maps and graphics. Note that Im not claiming the map couldnt be better, but just pointing out that expecting an mmo to have superior maps than a single player is a faulty expectation.
I don't think this should necessarily be the case. A single player game often has a primary storyline, from which the protagonist may not stray too far (others pointed out that Tolkien's map was somewhat dependent on Bilbo's and Frodo's respective journeys). A MMORPG is a place where thousands of players roam across the world living out virtual existences, hence I would expect it to have more detail, not less.
In an mmo part of the processor/gpu time is spent displaying and interpreting the actions of hundreds of players. In a single player the only thing being interpreted are the actions/choices of 1 person, and everything else is for the most part pre-scripted. Thus more processing time is available for eye candy.
In an mmo part of the processor/gpu time is spent displaying and
interpreting the actions of hundreds of players. In a single player the
only thing being interpreted are the actions/choices of 1 person, and
everything else is for the most part pre-scripted. Thus more processing
time is available for eye candy.
Actually the main reason is simply that MMO worlds are typically much, much larger than singleplayer worlds, and thus one cannot spent as much time on the single graphical element.
If you could afford hundreds or probably thousands of artists and programmers, you could give a MMO highend graphics. There is no technical limitation stopping you.
And at least some MMOs in the past had pretty impressive graphics not so far off the best singleplayer games. They typically also suffered from small worlds, though.
Morrowind is literally my favorite game of all time, but comparing the map from an alpha MMO in production for barely two years to a fully released game that took 8+ years to make is rediculous.
So yeah no reason to get so easily offended, its fine to dislike something, its another thing to compare a team of 8 people's work to a AAA company or one of the greatest literary authors of our time though haha.
No offense taken
It just seems odd to invite opinions, citing "fantasy art in general", and then call a comparison to two well-known fantasy maps, which might be considered standards, "rediculous".
In the OP it seemed as if you were presenting the map as the final product; now it seems as though you meant for it to be judged as a work in progress, which is understandable.
For the record, I don't not like it (thanks for your permission), it just seems like it could use a little work-shopping. It's intriguing, but it doesn't look like it took very long to do. That's my opinion.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
A MMORPG is a place where thousands of players roam across the world living out virtual existences, hence I would expect it to have more detail, not less.
Why? The entire point of this game is for you to explore and find out the world on your own. I think it would be counter productive to create a detailed map outlining all the areas that you can go, etc... That would be essentially cheating people of the need to play the game to find these things out.
A general map, vague, but giving some basic direction is sufficient to give the impression of the world, but retain the mystery to which the player must explore.
This idea isn't a single player vs multiplayer game concept. Many single player games use nearly identical maps to the Pantheon one above. Might and magic games used the such maps, Ultima, and many other single player games as well as MMO's have used iconic maps which did not detail the world.
You could be right; I may have been reacting to the aesthetic more than anything else. It seems like a collection of a couple dozen or so "concepts" that have been arbitrarily placed next to one another, but as another poster mentioned, maybe that's the whole point.
I'm not sure why I feel the need to be so critical here; it may be that this is somewhat the spiritual successor to the vaunted Vanguard, or that there was some drama/shenanigans during the Kickstarter and continued crowdfunding. It may be the recent memory of reading Stephenson's Reamde, and hoping to see a developer do something like (the conveniently fictional) T'Rain.
It seems as though this is being touted as a game that "everyone" will be playing, therefore I thought some constructive criticism might be in order. I may be totally wrong.
The geologist in me rails at seeing a massive waterfall pouring from the highest peak in any nearby range, and the river east of The Burning Sanctum has a very odd shape given the surrounding topography: the southward delta makes it look as though that section has a south-flowing current, and yet the river forks just west of the lake (which is right next to the sea) at greater than 90 degrees. Rivers don't usually do that; is the river flowing north or south here? If south, where is the watershed? Those arid mesa just east? (OTOH I'm sure there's a perfectly rational in-lore explanation for all this?) Furthermore, the southern delta doesn't even flow to the sea: it just kind of... ends... right next to an iconic sketch of a swamp. Are we supposed to take this as literally and cartographically how the river flows, or is it more sort of "yeah, there's a river over here, and it kind of flows into a swamp"?
In some places this jpg wants to be a cartographic map, and in others it wants to be a fantasy sketch.
Look, I totally "get" what the developers were going for with this... it just seems like it could have used a few more rounds of peer review and criticism. The whole thing looks like it took about 12 man-hours in MS paint.
Anyway, I don't like being this critical, and I'm starting to feel bad... so that's enough out of this one.
edit: one last thing... that river next to Wander's Lost? Unless that's a man-made channel, I find it highly unlikely. I feel like I should personally explain to Brad that rivers don't flow from sea to sea. I mean, really?
Post edited by Phaserlight on
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
Trying to stay on topic, what you have to understand about Pantheon, is that they won't be doing the lobby game design. They want a virtual world where there is realism involved. Going across the map takes time and planning or the assistance of other players if you aren't capable of teleporting.
In EQ and Vanguard, players leveled up in entirely different places because there were points of interest for wide ranges of people spread all across the world. The experience of 1 player was often very unique from that of other players, and they were sort of defined by that early experience. You had players in EQ who started on the west side of the world and leveled entirely from that area. Others started on the opposite side. During that process you became acquainted with those who stuck to those areas, and met many brand new faces at higher levels who had a different experience on the other side of the world. This was even more pronounced in Vanguard where you could level to cap entirely on a single continent.
This added a lot of variety, gave everyone the feeling of a unique origins story, and it also helped the replayability of the game. That also made the world seem vast because you weren't able to hop back and forth on a whim.
While I totally agree I think FFXI had a pretty brilliant middle-ground here. You had white mage teleport spells to certain "crag" locations, you had outposts that you could fast-travel to once you did a supply run to them, you had black mage teleport or "return" spells, you had chocobos, you had airships (faster than running, faster that outposts/teleports depending on the location) and then ships (slow, with a neat little chance for pirate attacks.
I guess what I'm getting at is it's not all or nothing. You can have conveniences that don't totally kill the adventure, it's all in the execution. Variety is the key here, as in the ffxi example I used. There were myriad ways to get about, and none of them made that world feel small.
How you got to place A was totally different from place B. Crawlers nest you would either be in Jueno or take an airship there, or home point there, then you got on a chocobo and traveled about 5 minutes to the dungeon itself.
For sky, the first raid zone you would typically outpost warp to the adjacent zone then run and/or chocobo to the teleporter.
Alternatively to all of those, you could always get a teleport to the nearest crag and then chocobo from there. Point being....not excessively difficult to access, not diminishing of the world size.
I think the grouping dynamics aspect of it is another topic entirely....as there are ways to combat the whole "wait around for an hour for a healer to show up on lfg" thing outside of travel mechanics.
For the grouping dynamic debate....I think modern mmos have actually made a lot of progress that could be helpful in this regard. Look at ffxiv, where healers can solo quest just like any other class but have skills/abilities (stances) that do things like reduce dps and increase heals, or turn hurts to heals. You also have the wildstar approach, where each class can swap on the fly to another "mode" with totally different skills. This means you get totally different skills and not just a stance or mod on existing skills which I think is amazing and should be an industry standard personally. Then there's hybrid classes which most modern mmos have kind of gone away from.
Morrowind is literally my favorite game of all time, but comparing the map from an alpha MMO in production for barely two years to a fully released game that took 8+ years to make is rediculous.
So yeah no reason to get so easily offended, its fine to dislike something, its another thing to compare a team of 8 people's work to a AAA company or one of the greatest literary authors of our time though haha.
No offense taken
It just seems odd to invite opinions, citing "fantasy art in general", and then call a comparison to two well-known fantasy maps, which might be considered standards, "rediculous".
In the OP it seemed as if you were presenting the map as the final product; now it seems as though you meant for it to be judged as a work in progress, which is understandable.
For the record, I don't not like it (thanks for your permission), it just seems like it could use a little work-shopping. It's intriguing, but it doesn't look like it took very long to do. That's my opinion.
I think you have your own idea on what this thread is about. I was literally asking for opinions on this "New" map, which are the exact words I used. New in no way designates final. There can be a "New Release" of a game, but that doesnt mean its the final version. You can have a "New Update" to a system, that in no way means its the "Final Update".
So again theres no inclination in my OP that I meant it to be judged as a final product, YOU have said the words final, but there no cause for that interpretation and you are incorrect in assuming that.
Point is. The reason I shared this map was to show the progress of the team for those of us with an investment or interest in Pantheon, alot of us simply want to see new Pantheon stuff which is why this thread was made.
A MMORPG is a place where thousands of players roam across the world living out virtual existences, hence I would expect it to have more detail, not less.
Why? The entire point of this game is for you to explore and find out the world on your own. I think it would be counter productive to create a detailed map outlining all the areas that you can go, etc... That would be essentially cheating people of the need to play the game to find these things out.
A general map, vague, but giving some basic direction is sufficient to give the impression of the world, but retain the mystery to which the player must explore.
This idea isn't a single player vs multiplayer game concept. Many single player games use nearly identical maps to the Pantheon one above. Might and magic games used the such maps, Ultima, and many other single player games as well as MMO's have used iconic maps which did not detail the world.
You could be right; I may have been reacting to the aesthetic more than anything else. It seems like a collection of a couple dozen or so "concepts" that have been arbitrarily placed next to one another, but as another poster mentioned, maybe that's the whole point.
I'm not sure why I feel the need to be so critical here; it may be that this is somewhat the spiritual successor to the vaunted Vanguard, or that there was some drama/shenanigans during the Kickstarter and continued crowdfunding. It may be the recent memory of reading Stephenson's Reamde, and hoping to see a developer do something like (the conveniently fictional) T'Rain.
It seems as though this is being touted as a game that "everyone" will be playing, therefore I thought some constructive criticism might be in order. I may be totally wrong.
The geologist in me rails at seeing a massive waterfall pouring from the highest peak in any nearby range, and the river east of The Burning Sanctum has a very odd shape given the surrounding topography: the southward delta makes it look as though that section has a south-flowing current, and yet the river forks just west of the lake (which is right next to the sea) at greater than 90 degrees. Rivers don't usually do that; is the river flowing north or south here? If south, where is the watershed? Those arid mesa just east? (OTOH I'm sure there's a perfectly rational in-lore explanation for all this?) Furthermore, the southern delta doesn't even flow to the sea: it just kind of... ends... right next to an iconic sketch of a swamp. Are we supposed to take this as literally and cartographically how the river flows, or is it more sort of "yeah, there's a river over here, and it kind of flows into a swamp"?
In some places this jpg wants to be a cartographic map, and in others it wants to be a fantasy sketch.
Look, I totally "get" what the developers were going for with this... it just seems like it could have used a few more rounds of peer review and criticism. The whole thing looks like it took about 12 man-hours in MS paint.
Anyway, I don't like being this critical, and I'm starting to feel bad... so that's enough out of this one.
edit: one last thing... that river next to Wander's Lost? Unless that's a man-made channel, I find it highly unlikely. I feel like I should personally explain to Brad that rivers don't flow from sea to sea. I mean, really?
The idea of different pieces of planets colliding with Terminus, bringing new races, their architecture, their gods, etc. gives us a ton of creative freedom and a really fun sandbox to play in. Part of that freedom means that one region of the world doesn't have to make sense geographically when compared to an adjacent region. The topography can totally change and in a surprising, unexpected, and yes, 'unrealistic' ways. Yes, this includes the directions rivers may seem to be running or any other 'anomaly' you may perceive in the atlas. Pantheon's world is truly fantasy, with an emphasis on the fantastic.
I realize this is different than, say, Middle Earth. I'm a huge Tolkien fan, I assure you, but so many 'fantasy' worlds (in novels, games, etc.) have also been crafted to be 'realistic fantasy' that we decided to take a different approach with Pantheon, similar to our different (non-traditional) approaches to some of the playable races, etc. Too much 'sameness' is something MMOs have been struggling with, IMHO.
Post edited by Aradune on
--
-------------------------------------------------------------- Brad McQuaid CCO, Visionary Realms, Inc. www.pantheonmmo.com --------------------------------------------------------------
Comments
If you could afford hundreds or probably thousands of artists and programmers, you could give a MMO highend graphics. There is no technical limitation stopping you.
And at least some MMOs in the past had pretty impressive graphics not so far off the best singleplayer games. They typically also suffered from small worlds, though.
It just seems odd to invite opinions, citing "fantasy art in general", and then call a comparison to two well-known fantasy maps, which might be considered standards, "rediculous".
In the OP it seemed as if you were presenting the map as the final product; now it seems as though you meant for it to be judged as a work in progress, which is understandable.
For the record, I don't not like it (thanks for your permission), it just seems like it could use a little work-shopping. It's intriguing, but it doesn't look like it took very long to do. That's my opinion.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
I'm not sure why I feel the need to be so critical here; it may be that this is somewhat the spiritual successor to the vaunted Vanguard, or that there was some drama/shenanigans during the Kickstarter and continued crowdfunding. It may be the recent memory of reading Stephenson's Reamde, and hoping to see a developer do something like (the conveniently fictional) T'Rain.
It seems as though this is being touted as a game that "everyone" will be playing, therefore I thought some constructive criticism might be in order. I may be totally wrong.
The geologist in me rails at seeing a massive waterfall pouring from the highest peak in any nearby range, and the river east of The Burning Sanctum has a very odd shape given the surrounding topography: the southward delta makes it look as though that section has a south-flowing current, and yet the river forks just west of the lake (which is right next to the sea) at greater than 90 degrees. Rivers don't usually do that; is the river flowing north or south here? If south, where is the watershed? Those arid mesa just east? (OTOH I'm sure there's a perfectly rational in-lore explanation for all this?) Furthermore, the southern delta doesn't even flow to the sea: it just kind of... ends... right next to an iconic sketch of a swamp. Are we supposed to take this as literally and cartographically how the river flows, or is it more sort of "yeah, there's a river over here, and it kind of flows into a swamp"?
In some places this jpg wants to be a cartographic map, and in others it wants to be a fantasy sketch.
Look, I totally "get" what the developers were going for with this... it just seems like it could have used a few more rounds of peer review and criticism. The whole thing looks like it took about 12 man-hours in MS paint.
Anyway, I don't like being this critical, and I'm starting to feel bad... so that's enough out of this one.
edit: one last thing... that river next to Wander's Lost? Unless that's a man-made channel, I find it highly unlikely. I feel like I should personally explain to Brad that rivers don't flow from sea to sea. I mean, really?
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
While I totally agree I think FFXI had a pretty brilliant middle-ground here. You had white mage teleport spells to certain "crag" locations, you had outposts that you could fast-travel to once you did a supply run to them, you had black mage teleport or "return" spells, you had chocobos, you had airships (faster than running, faster that outposts/teleports depending on the location) and then ships (slow, with a neat little chance for pirate attacks.
I guess what I'm getting at is it's not all or nothing. You can have conveniences that don't totally kill the adventure, it's all in the execution. Variety is the key here, as in the ffxi example I used. There were myriad ways to get about, and none of them made that world feel small.
How you got to place A was totally different from place B. Crawlers nest you would either be in Jueno or take an airship there, or home point there, then you got on a chocobo and traveled about 5 minutes to the dungeon itself.
For sky, the first raid zone you would typically outpost warp to the adjacent zone then run and/or chocobo to the teleporter.
Alternatively to all of those, you could always get a teleport to the nearest crag and then chocobo from there. Point being....not excessively difficult to access, not diminishing of the world size.
I think the grouping dynamics aspect of it is another topic entirely....as there are ways to combat the whole "wait around for an hour for a healer to show up on lfg" thing outside of travel mechanics.
For the grouping dynamic debate....I think modern mmos have actually made a lot of progress that could be helpful in this regard. Look at ffxiv, where healers can solo quest just like any other class but have skills/abilities (stances) that do things like reduce dps and increase heals, or turn hurts to heals. You also have the wildstar approach, where each class can swap on the fly to another "mode" with totally different skills. This means you get totally different skills and not just a stance or mod on existing skills which I think is amazing and should be an industry standard personally. Then there's hybrid classes which most modern mmos have kind of gone away from.
So again theres no inclination in my OP that I meant it to be judged as a final product, YOU have said the words final, but there no cause for that interpretation and you are incorrect in assuming that.
Point is. The reason I shared this map was to show the progress of the team for those of us with an investment or interest in Pantheon, alot of us simply want to see new Pantheon stuff which is why this thread was made.
The idea of different pieces of planets colliding with Terminus, bringing new races, their architecture, their gods, etc. gives us a ton of creative freedom and a really fun sandbox to play in. Part of that freedom means that one region of the world doesn't have to make sense geographically when compared to an adjacent region. The topography can totally change and in a surprising, unexpected, and yes, 'unrealistic' ways. Yes, this includes the directions rivers may seem to be running or any other 'anomaly' you may perceive in the atlas. Pantheon's world is truly fantasy, with an emphasis on the fantastic.
I realize this is different than, say, Middle Earth. I'm a huge Tolkien fan, I assure you, but so many 'fantasy' worlds (in novels, games, etc.) have also been crafted to be 'realistic fantasy' that we decided to take a different approach with Pantheon, similar to our different (non-traditional) approaches to some of the playable races, etc. Too much 'sameness' is something MMOs have been struggling with, IMHO.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Brad McQuaid
CCO, Visionary Realms, Inc.
www.pantheonmmo.com
--------------------------------------------------------------