Travel Map/World Map and Encounters

[Crosmando]

Should Project Eternity have a free-roaming travel map complete with random encounters?

 

So when your character/party travels outside a major city/town/area, it scales out to much higher overhead camera view, where the PC/party are represented as a single character, and towns represented as a "house", and moving your little guy to the house enters the city and then the view returns to the isoemetric view showing all your party.

 

I think you people will be familiar with the concept from Fallout and other games. A cool feature of world maps are random encounters, so not only might your party run into bands of orcs or bandits travelling between towns, but more interesting encounters such as running into say a group of refugee NPC's who could take you back to their camp (if they trust you).

 

What I find dynamic about this type of system is the randomness, instead of just talking to an NPC and getting a quest like normal, these events are surprising and draw you in.

 

Imagine, if you will, travelling through the wilderness with your companions when all of a sudden you get an encounter, it goes to normal viewpoint and your party is standing in-front of a terrible looking crypt overgrown by vegetation. It's in the middle of the wilderness so if you leave now you may never find it again (also due to randomness), but who knows what loot could be inside.

 

Anyway, sorry for the rant, discuss! Or not.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Crosmando

[Darkpriest]

I've made a thread about this before, but seemed to not get any attention...

 

I would love to see Fallout / NWN2: SoZ type of traveling. Especially when we have such a nice map on the board :D

[Raedwulf]

Well, I do not know Fallout. But I do know Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir, which I'm replaying at the moment. The overland map is fun, but I don't want to get a cut in dungeon or world size, so, sorry for that, no.

[Starwars]

I would certainly welcome a sorta SoZ type of overland map. But I wouldn't mind if the project doesn't go that route and use the IE "click on where you want to travel" way instead.

 

What I do hope for is that the traveling system will be interesting. I hope they can pull together a large amount of random encounters (many of which are not just combat related), and hopefully other surprises.

[Infinitron]

I don't have a strong preference, but one thing that nobody mentions is a Baldur's Gate 1-style hybrid system - with both a large open world to explore map-by-map, combined with a clickable fast travel world map.

[BaronVonChateau]

Either one is good, as long as there is the possibility of stumbling on an undiscovered place, either because you just happened to pass by or because you deducted from some fragment of information that something *might* be there. Star Control 2 style. It allows for intelligent exploring.

 

So I'd prefer something open-ended, like Fallout or Arcanum's World Map - with the added possibility of getting lost into content-packed wilderness. BG 1 did it in a restrictive manner, thought. It pushed the player into a systematical "let's click this location and sweep this map" mindframe, where discoveries and exploration are not decided by deduction or adventurous/dangerous wanderings, but systematical combing.

Edited September 18, 2012 by BaronVonChateau

[qloher]

I don't have a strong preference, but one thing that nobody mentions is a Baldur's Gate 1-style hybrid system - with both a large open world to explore map-by-map, combined with a clickable fast travel world map.

I support this. Also we have the same concept evolved in Arcanum.

Also I prefer Fallout/Arcanum 2D stylized map over SoZ 3D map.

Edited September 18, 2012 by qloher

[Raedwulf]

What I do hope for is that the traveling system will be interesting. I hope they can pull together a large amount of random encounters (many of which are not just combat related), and hopefully other surprises.

 

Even Baldur's Gate II had it's form of "random" encounters. While travelling Athkatla you could get chased by slavers, or while leaving Athkatla you met Renfeld. This can be achieved whithout any overland map.

[tajerio]

I'd like a system not dissimilar to that in SoZ--fast travel decreases the world's verisimilitude for me.

[Darkpriest]

Well, I do not know Fallout. But I do know Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir, which I'm replaying at the moment. The overland map is fun, but I don't want to get a cut in dungeon or world size, so, sorry for that, no.

 

The problem with SoZ was that it was a second expansion to already dated game and it was a completely new feature to that game...

 

Fallout was built around map with random encounters since the part of the world was rather large.

 

Definitely quest areas and main hubs should not be limited to 1-3 areas like in NWN2: SoZ. The quest areas and main hubs in Fallouts were greater than that

 

The random encounter areas were mostly cut to 1-2 areas, which was ok for Fallout. It would be ok also for SoZ, if the game had mechanics of maintaining appropriate time limits on your spells and would let you up to set up for combat, if you had high path finding skills

Edited September 18, 2012 by Darkpriest

[Continuity]

An improved version of the the SoZ overland map (with all the party mechanics), as long as it doesn't means compromising with dungeon sizes and the like.

[Elfwyn]

Im really undecided about a travel map, because it can be implemented in many ways good or bad.

The one implemented in Storm of Zehir was not really my favourite because it felt like a minigame.

Baldurs Gate had a "map" too, but you wouldn't see the transition between places other than the added time.

I personally think a full fledged global map to walk around on would just distract from the core game and bring with it other

issues like "camping" when the group is tired and so on - which is gracefully hidden on a locations-only-map.

Better Keep it Simple on this game and don't make too many experiments.

[eimatshya]

My preference would be for Fallout/Arcanum style travel since that gives traveling a sense of weight, like you're really traversing a great distance, but I don't mind BG or BG2 style travel (which is probably good since I suspect they will be using this kind of system, what with it being an Infinity Engine game in spirit). If the game has random encounters while traveling, which I hope it will, it should definitely be possible to flee from them like in Fallout 1 and 2.

[Raedwulf]

If the game has random encounters while traveling, which I hope it will, it should definitely be possible to flee from them like in Fallout 1 and 2.

 

You want to flee... from battle? You're kidding? Fly into a screaming blood frenzy instead [1]. Stamp your foes into the ground.

 

Ok, sorry, but I could not resist.

 

But you're right. If we get, truly, random encounters, we should get some way to escape. It's no fun to meet a tough dragon without a way to escape.

 

 

 

[1] Ok, this wording was shamelessly taken from the D&D Barbarian description.

 

Edit: Fixed typos.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Raedwulf

[Luckmann]

I would very much prefer it if we got something like in Baldur's Gate.

 

Not Baldur's Gate 2.

 

Baldur's Gate.

[IEfan]

Baldur's Gate 1, yes yes yes. I want to roam, wonder and marvel at the suprises/the pretty things the nature offers, be astonished at the people or strange events in the way (anybody remember that bizarre woodsman who'se cow was attacked by 20 xvarts?? ahaha Those Were The Days). Get killed by wolves since we're so low-level and peasant-equipped for exploring (thus naturally limiting where you can explore) or running for your life or trying to get around the enemies without being spotted.

 

You could combine this with Fallout-styled randomed/specific or attribute-trigger random encounters in places, both BG's were pretty limited in this (using random encounters for story or for introducin quests or giving new information to a quest (optional, you can decide how commont the encounter will be) and voila, we have a Weiner. :^B

 

Whoops, sorry *wipes mouth* I started to foam a little. I really preferred this to eg. BG2 because you just KNEW that every area's function in the worldmap was just to hold a sign TRY TO OVERCOME ME!! HELL AWAITS!! and besides taking from immersion, it was kinda exhaustive and daunting, not to mention that the lot of supposedly lived areas just didn't have enough life in there besides the looming Big Quest.

Yet in BG1, you might be suprised at WHERE you'll discover dungeons or even Big Quests, not always pointed out to player. That was amazing, too.

Edited September 18, 2012 by IEfan

[Wintersong]

BG travel type was good. NwN2:SoZ was good too. I'd prefer any of those two systems.

[IEfan]

Also, Idea: you could vary quests or random encounters by

1. having a pool of triggers that are randomed at the beginning of each game. SaGa series have apparently used this to great success, allowing great reability and unpredictability (you can't figure out the mechanics behind the game, making it a more immersive experience)

2. you can also have triggers that happen when you do something specifcially/walk over some spot in the world and that they either happen by

 

A. Doing something specific, eg within time constraint - beating most of the bad guys really fast leads to assasins jumping out from shadows or the enemies retreating quickly to better positions with more advantages for them (= this wouldn't happen EVERY time).

B. Randomly make the thing happen but in a way that Re-Loading won't make the rolling happen again.

 

This way, some random encounters never happen, sometime you're suprised by new things (in different playthroughs)... actually, you can extend this to "bonus" material on actual quests: sometimes, that bandit camp that was easy for early levelers have this time around 2 Ogres to assits the bandits, making the battle really difficult. A BG1 styled expert mercenary quests at some locations could be randomed. Strange new people or events appear on different playthroughs.

 

With randomed or not so obvious triggers, the battles could have suprising changes without destroying balance or feeding the players too much.

 

3. time triggers for quest or quest parts. many people didn't like That Big Time Trigger in fallout 1 (but imo they're babies) but extending this on some quests might be a necessity BUT the level of consiquence (and the post-consiquences of the quest) can be varied a lot.

 

Perhaps bad endings can have minor consiquences, a slight guilt for player, maybe on some quests dire this-is-it ending... Perhaps the quests have time limits until after the "easy road" becomes inaccesible and you have (much?) harder time doing the quest then. Somebody in this forum suggested this.

And what if "bad ending" leads to good things down to road, thus encouraging to stay with some endings and not immediately just RELOAD until you got your happy ending (with Persuading to everyone give their grandmas copper teeth to you like in NWN1, ahaha) with every friggin creature on earth.

 

Example: Like you know, if you're told that **** MY DAUGHTER IS IN A DANGEROUS CAVE SHE MIGHT DIE SOON, you'd think that maybe you should hurry asap to that cave?? or kidnap or any other time-dependant scenario, that might hang on DAYS? and not go "yeah sure" and just finish that quest when you feel like 2 months later (BG2... im looking at you...).

 

There's a quest like this in ADOM and while it's sad to see the puppy die, you take her dead body to her owner and you can also cheer her up and get some lawful points so the ending isn't YOUR HORRBLE GNOME GAME OVER but just an alternative ending among others?

 

PROS OF TRIGGERS:

 

+ This would be all done that the most of good items and good dialogue is saved but you'll get new stuff in each playthrough.

+ Players will miss some of the "new game trigger"-content in their playthrough but are sure to meet them eventually. No-one is let out but you don't have to be a baby and scream at devs for not letting them see ALL the mysterious of the game RIGHT now.

 

! It can be coded to included tons anyways so that it NEVER randoms too little content. The core content and quests that are the most worthwhile

 

! if determined, triggers can persists despite reloading game. min-maxing every content is not possible & gamefaqs is needed if you just happen to bump into new varieties. Playing the game by living your decisions is encouraged. (it reminds me of the no-resting-in-dungeos - rule one person here mentioned in the "what mold do you want to break"). This won't ofc persist triggers that make the completing of the game IMPOSSIBLE - just extra flavour, suprises, content all around.

 

! Maybe if the player whilsts, there can be included a button for the lazies that will unlock more/all "new game trigger"-content? IDK i don't like the idea.

 

!Hell, maybe the game could determine that once you have finished the game with THIS hero - you can start a new game with the information in hand and the game will reroll as long as certain percentage of new triggers are CERTAINLY turned ON, thus ensuring that you WILL see new stuff. You can repeat this again at the next playthrough - again, the game checks the pool for untriggered events.

This way, a save that has completed gamethrough + that you can restart with completely new hero are sure to include new stuff and new people can just start their first playthrough and get randomed triggers.

 

! Allows DLC or sequels or add-ons to include new stuff that can't be possible included in this first game. I think we all agree that a finished game that sets out to do what the designers hope to do is all our goal right? No tons of compromises on essential things.

 

CONS:

Time taking and expensive to implement? Avellone et others know the truth on this.

 

idk i could list more cons but i think the bottom line of the post is that i think everyone benefits from having to live with your decisions once in a while and not min-maxing your black-and-white uberkillers that are loved by everyone and everyone wants to have sex with your FF7 Buster Sword from Dragon Age. where's the adventure in this... though Avellone is right that you have to be careful not to do this on everything (thus restricting possible RPG elements by players) or that the game turns into Oblivion where throwing a stone in any direction inevitably leads to the stone hitting on a yet another random-generated dungeon...

 

And i'm just brainstorming ideas, don't worry. Sorry for derail but i felt like this connects strongly on the ideas in eg Fallout on the wandering aspect, just taken a bit further for story too.

Edited September 18, 2012 by IEfan