Low content density vs. greater density of content

[Sensuki]

Most of the areas should have objectives/quest/choices hidded in them, because that way there is more to find in next play through. Baldur's Gate's biggest problem in my mind is that there was so much areas that didn't offer anything new on following playthroughs.

 

On the contrary I think even after 50 playthroughs I found a few quests/hidden items etc that I had never experienced before.

 

It's different if you play it once then go look up GameFAQs to find out what you missed out on

[RaccoonTOF]

From reactions I've read here, it seems to me that most of you would actually really enjoy something very very close to BG1.

 

With basically one modification: being given reasons to go back to some of these open areas later on; which would be a great improvement indeed .

 

 

As for Arcanum, it's way too extreme, there, of course. Plenty of open areas, sure, but there's no point walking from city to city, as it literally takes hours to encounter a single opponent on the way. Using fast travel therefore becomes a must, and then it's exactly as if you had NO open areas to begin with. I would be strongly against something like that too (but I love that game, for the rest).

 

For me, it's specific areas of the BG1 layout. Some of the wilderness areas really did seem to be mostly pointless, not just due to lack of ability to return, but that they were pretty dull to begin with. I'd like there to be something "at the end of the path" like the gnoll stronghold still, with just enough content to keep the bits in between interesting and worth actually exploring rather than making a beeline from map edge to map edge, but I also don't want every area to be a forest maze filled with encounters/caves/secrets every time you turn a corner either. Ideally, things like the small cluster of fishermen in BG1, south of the city, giving some sort of feeling of purpose for that particular area to actually be on the world map - but with the addition of things changing after other events/time passes as well. Perhaps after having done the side quest to help those fishermen, you go on your way..then later thanks to the help of the PC, the small cluster of huts has prospered, and now features a new merchant who has moved into the area to support the increased traffic. Alternately, if the PC didn't help them in time, the vile plans of the evil witch could actually come to fruition...come back later in the game and find all the huts abandoned, with some clue as to their fates, spawning an alternate side quest...

 

Each explorable area should have SOME reason for being a fleshed out area, and not just an empty stretch of wilderness with wandering monster encounters, but they don't need to be as dense as the forest encounters in BG2 to still be interesting and worth exploring.

[stkaye]

Like a few other people here, I think that the original BG pretty much nailed this balance perfectly.

 

I remember the excitement I felt when I first deviated from the routes I needed to take for the main quest in order to engage in a singificant sidequest (perhaps it was the cursed guard commander in Nashkel, or rescuing Dynaheir or something). I realised that there would be tiles all over the world map, filled with birds singing or the whispering of the coast, and more opportunities to listen to BG's distinctive music. And then I realised I could leave the main north-south road and find dangerous creatures or interesting, humorous mini-quests, with rewards and experience bumps driving me on. It didn't matter much to me that these encounters might not be very in-depth or complex - it gave enough colour and character to keep me immersed, and left the rest to my imagination.

 

The most important thing is that it made the Sword Coast feel like a real place - a place with content and atmosphere that I might never discover, with fights and adventures that could go on forever.

 

I'd love to have that feeling again.

 

Instead, we usually get worlds that feel like they only exist for the convenience of my actions and the story I am being told, like practically every location in BG2. This trend got to the point where plot points from various different quests would play out in the same spot of Athkatla, 10 meters from each other. It was the beginning of the trend that ended us up with DA2's remixed dungeons.

 

I'd be perfectly happy with a plethora of wilderness areas with relatively low content - perhaps one or two scripted adventures on each map, with varying complexity, plus some wilderness creatures and places to poke my nose into. The story behind these places could be told visually - the remains of a ransacked caravan, the shell of a long-abandoned village. That's not just good for exploration and immersion - it's good for roleplaying as well.

[rjshae]

Crowded wilderness areas just feel highly unrealistic. A more time-based approach rather than a spacial approach would give it a better feel. I.e. each time you wander the map, you'll bump into different things.

[Amentep]

Quoting myself from the Update post (because I'm that lazy at 830am):

I remember when I went from BG1 to BG2, how I felt some of the exploration feeling had been lost. But it's also true that BG1 had maps that felt very "low density." Something inbetween (or whatever) would be great, and I'm glad to know y'all are trying to think up ways to address it.

....eg, I love exploration, but there is such a thing as too much pointless, empty, "exploration potential." And on the other side, there's also such a thing as too much focus on density. I don't want to encounter stuff every 20 feet. When I want that, I'll play an action-rpg. imo.

 

Pretty much this sums up the situation for me; locations didn't seem to exist in BG2 unless something happened (or was going to happen) there. I'd like something in between, something with open areas to encounter but more general focus than BG1. I mean I enjoyed BG1 exploration, but really that was partially "fog of war removal OCD" than anything else.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Amentep

[Gromnir]

From the last update:

 

"The original Baldur's Gate had a number of wilderness areas, but low density of content in many of those areas. Baldur's Gate II had much greater content density, but fewer wilderness/pure exploration areas. We'd like to make sure we have pure exploration areas while still maintaining good content density."

 

The reaction to this was that people wanted a more like BG1 ratio of content per number of areas but a poll on this would be more revealing

 

 

extreme misleading. the reason why bg2 were created more dense by the biowarians is 'cause o' the overwhelming rejection by vocal fans o' the boring and tedious bg1 map-mowing.

 

NO: wilderness nonsense

 

YES: durlag's tower

 

is good for us to be here and give you perspective on how things actual evolved.

 

now, that being said, some folks did complain post bg2 that bio shoulds bring back map-mow, but such complaints is largely just proof that fanbases is perverse. even so, there were more than a few folks pining for ye goode olde days of mindless map exploration, which is why obsidian developers said in some previous update that there will be more wilderness explore in pe than there were in bg2, but with greater density and more... stuff.

 

seems pointless to us. has good density on a city map with taverns and corspe-carts as 'posed to one with trees and rocks? *shrug* nevertheless, some folks wanna feels like magellan, so give'em their rocks and foliage.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Nenad]

Somewhere in the middle I guess, but in the way that there are both high and low content zones at the same time (just not at the same place, duh). I think someone mentioned cities as high content zones, but I can imagine wilderness that are also high content. I would really like it if PE could recapture the feel of Morrowind where you could go on your way, expecting nothing except a wasteland and finding a curious looking tower that, upon closer inspection, can't be explored to the fullest without levitating to the higher levels and with a dungeon where the people of the world throw their fataly sick where you find the last dwarf whis has lost his legs so he uses steampunk spider legs, all with it's own story and relation to the rest of the world. It doesn't have to have a quest, or even a journal entry, or loot (although loot is nice when it's within context of the location), it's just interesting finding out something interesting that, at the same time, looks like it shouldn't be found but isn't out of context or looks like "HEY. HEY YOU. YES YOU. LOOK. LOOK WHAT YOU FOUND! IT'S NOT SUPPOSE TO BE HERE, AND IT'S MYSTERIOUS AND AWESOME". I'm guessing it's a hard balance to strike. And hard to explain what I want, hopefully exploration people (and whoever played Morrowind) here know what I mean.

 

Anyway, I can imagine a wilderness with lots of sites like that tower. I can also imagine wastelands like deserts. So, why not have both? I would just like to point out to having all zones be "middle-content" doesn't sound good to me. We should have low, high and evevrything in between zones. Go with the flow, and context. Deserts shouldn't have much (I think having literally empty zones doesn't make much sense in a game, unless it's some kinda desert walking trial or something XD) content, cities are obvious high content zones, or specific wilderness areas (druid forest nation?). But I even more like non-obvious and non-cliche things like low content city (post apocaliptic city?), or a high content desert (underground nation?).

 

It's also nice when in Torment you find details that you couldn't know otherwise about the main quest through side quests. It's those little non-obligaty non-forced things. I think things like that have a name but I forgot it. I kinda also remember an article talking about it... I think they called them player made stories, but that's not it. Like finding the story out because you're interested in it, and not because it's the MAIN QUEST and the journal says so or else the world is doomed.

 

Edit: forgot to mentio, as if I didn't go on enough already, that if I had to choose, I'm leaning more to "content at everywhere" option. But then we need a game that's one huge exploration to balance things XD

Edited October 24, 2012 by Nenad

[SunBroSolaire]

I did not like how in Skyrim you can't walk 15 ft without falling into a Nord ruin. As beautiful as that game was, it frankly could have benefited from less content. I hope that in PE there are some "empty" areas that are just there for the sense of exploration and journeying. I want to hike through a wild mountain range in search of an ancient temple, or cross a vast desert to reach one of the big cities. There could be enemies and encounters along the way, but I don't think there needs to be quests and dungeons everywhere.

[Larkaloke]

Somewhere in the middle sounds good to me. Most areas in Baldur's Gate I think struck a good balance, but there were some that had almost nothing in them (well, nothing except some spiders or bandits). I like best the areas that are not completely packed, but have a few interesting things sprinkled about in them. It isn't very interesting if you look through the whole area and never find anything, but then, I also find it to be less interesting if you can't go ten feet without finding something -- then it feels crowded, and that makes the whole area seem smaller (and leaves me wondering what all these people and things are doing out here so close together).

[Rinu]

I prefer if an area has also a different purpose than looting and killing stuff for XP. Otherwise I'm feeling like playing a social game; many repetitive actions for sake of prolonging the "experience".

BG1 is a pain to play, too many empty (= no NPCs, no story progress) areas.

[Grotesque]

Now that I had a look at this link.

 

http://mikesrpgcente...bgate/maps.html

 

and saw different areas in Baldur's Gate and the points of interest, now I think that BG1 content per wilderness map was pretty high after all.

 

So I don't agree with Josh's opinion that those areas lacked content or that it was too low.

This content density is perfect!

Edited October 24, 2012 by Grotesque

[Pshaw]

If I had to pick one or the other (no middle ground) I'd say content rich is better than content light. I want the world to feel lived in and empty areas with nothing to do beyond killing random monsters and wildlife don't do that for me. I already interpret those areas when traveling from location to location as I watch the the progress my party makes across the map screen. Should I be accosted by wild life or monsters you do a little random encounter to show that even the wild and uninhabited bits of the world are populated and that's good enough for me without the need to devote entire areas to the wilderness like in BG1. So in my mind if there is nothing in a given area beyond scenery and monsters I could live without it.

 

Now that said I think a middle ground is best. Not everything needs to be a thriving quest mecha where you show up and complete 5-10 quests then move on to the next area. Having an point of interest or two is enough to include a more desolate or wild sort of area. A cave that has some treasure and an interesting monster at the bottom is enough to warrant a fully explorable location even without any associated quest or story elements.

 

I'd also like a chance for random points of interest or undiscovered points of interest in the vein of Fallout 2. I like hitting an odd event or location rather than just another pack of bandits from time to time. I also like traveling to a location only to have 'unknown location' pop up on my map as I reach that area of the map. Both lend a feeling of a world at large beyond your points of interest in terms of quests and the story. I for one would love to stumble across a farm, talk to a farmer who doesn't need or want anything from you and gives you a bit of small talk and sends you on your way.

[alanschu]

With basically one modification: being given reasons to go back to some of these open areas later on; which would be a great improvement indeed .

 

Although this would qualify the area as being "higher density" in that more content exists within a level too! Whether or not it's "high" density would depend on how much higher density it became.

 

One advantage of BG1 was the "fire and forget" nature of many of the levels makes it easier to create lots of levels.

[Sensuki]

seems pointless to us. has good density on a city map with taverns and corspe-carts as 'posed to one with trees and rocks? *shrug* nevertheless, some folks wanna feels like magellan, so give'em their rocks and foliage.

 

Lewis and Clark for me

[Azure79]

I prefer BG1 style. I never found the areas all that low density. I haven't played the game in years but I still remember a lot of the encounters that made the map for me. I think each map had some kind of encounter

 

 

Prism and Greywolf

 

The nymph that instant kills you with a kiss

 

The archaeological dig site with the cursed artifact

 

Ogre Mage outside the Firewine Bridge that possesses the female mage

 

Crazy mage and basilisks

 

Crazy mage and slimes

 

Red wizards that try and kill you

 

Transformed chicken

 

Evil Cleric and his skeletons thinking they're all family

 

The numerous other mercenary parties that were after you.

 

Xvart Village (I always felt bad for killing the entire town and bypassed it on later playthroughs)

 

Ankhegs and the Priest of Umberlee

 

 

And more. It made each map special and made me look forward to uncovering the next map. I was a little disappointed this was not in BG2. I would like to see a mix, sure, but definitely something slanted towards BG1.

[Failion]

I was late to play baldurs gate.. Despite the bad aging of the game I really enjoyed the exploration in the game. I felt like I was playing a fun classic adventure game instead of a old 1996 dnd rpg that hasn't aged well. The way the world map was designed was cool. Every map felt like a puzzle piece in a big fun puzzle. The exploration felt rewarding in that you do a fair amount of wilderness exploring and then you stumble upon a landmark town or dungeon. That charm was missing in baldurs gate 2.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Failion

[kettuz]

I began by playing Baldur's Gate 2 and then, some years later tried BG. And to be honest, the vast areas full of nothing were quite exhausting. I have played BG2 many times through, but BG1 only once. The reason is simple: the quiet areas are a burden, it's not really fun anymore. Of course that is even underlined by the lack of NPC interaction, but even then I really wouldn't want to see the same repeated.

 

On the other hand, I enjoyed a lot playing IWD and IWD2. While I'm not certain if it can be said to have "exploration" outside of the main quests, the wilderness in those two games touched me very deep. Because of that I vote for the middle option.

[Shardwinter]

I'm with the majority; in the middle gravitating more towards BG 1 than BG2. Though I have also suffered somewhat from the "wilderness exploration boredom syndrome" I do feel that one of the major underlying issues was the fog of war. If the viewing range had been larger and I would not have spent hours obsessively 'clearing' the entire map I would have gone through areas, and thus hit the quests and events, far quicker. IMO, low content areas are fine as long they all do contain some unique features (landmark, encounter, side-quest, or as a stop in a major quest).

[Hassat Hunter]

Many discussions here... not just about content density PER area... most people actually rather talk about the *amount* of areas (far more in BG1 than BG2). Which kinda skewers the poll somewhat since yes, BG had a lot of good stuff it was very spread apart, and generally of the "one thing per map" variety.

Not that I recall BG2 being much better in that regard. What was there in that forest near the ruins of the Black dragon besides those ruins? I don't recall much.

So this discussion is really just about the amount of non-city maps rather than "content density" per map.

 

Personally I would prefer maps to not be as empty, bland and lacked of story as BG1. Working off map per map could become pretty boring. I much rather have less, well-filled areas. It was such a relief to finally reach Baldur's Gate in BG1 and have everything resolved within the same few maps of the city rather than mapexploring over and over.

 

BG2 did well in that regard in that you didn't need to finish 60% of the game just to get access to a quest-rich area. So while, yes, exploration is good maps should still be thought out by "why would I want to explore here, what's there to do". Just adding more maps for the sake of more maps without content isn't good. All these areas are good to breach a link of exploration and requirements between the 2 cities and the dungeon. No having to spend most of the game before quest-center (BG1) but also no longer once the city's done, the game gets railroaded, questlight and also more boring (BG2). Of course, it's hard to find a proper balance. However if nothing's forced (like that crazy "do the dungeon in 1 run" stuff) it does allow people a great bunch of self-moderation. Tired of questing and heavy content? Explore. Tired of that, try some dungeoneering. Now you're fresh again for the city? Well, it's waiting for you...

One thing I dont want it to be too cluttered.

I am not going to disagree with everything you said in this post. Detailly explained why.

When I first played Baldurs Gate I explored every area before the City and eventually got to the city and saw how big it was and got fed up.

Sucks for you, since that's when the game raised a gear and improved considerably in quality. It's the ultimate reward for everything you have done before that. Exploring (all those houses!) and questing on an entirely new level, keeping it fresh after all those outdoor areas.

The sad thing is is when replaying BG1 it's a little hard to do exploring of all those areas again knowing something far better is out there, and you're delaying it like that. Oh well...

Tons of quest givers asking you to do this that and the other all over the place, thats not fun.

Heck yeah, that's fun. Morrowind anyone? Stocking up on fifty quests or so over the entire land, exploring and having fun. Good times.

Of course the questlog was a mess to keep up with that, however for that they made improvements in the expansion. I am sure PE also uses the newly gained knowledge of the modern age to not have one big journal where all quests are drowning each other out, but rather have proper ways to organise it.

It would be interesting to have a more focused game. Like for instance you can have only five quests at a time(seeing as thats roughly as much we can remember).

As much as we can remember? Ouch. Again, I STRONGLY disagree.

Nothing better than stocking up on quests in a city, then working away your log one by one. And in the meanwhile you might get more! But as you continue on and on, it slinks and slinks, and in the end when you finished your final quest (or still have some due to bugs and such :/) and you've done everything the city has to offer you and move on? Best feeling of progress.

If you can only keep a limited quest amount so much gets lost. No feeling of progression. No feeling of advancement. No impression of how much to do. Areas you finish which had plenty of quests, but you couldn't solve a single one since all your quests direct to other areas, adding tedious backtracking of deserted areas. Not to mention *having to remember all the questgivers that haven't given you quests yet*. That's quickly becoming more memory or writing work than ingame quests can ever offer you. Unless the quests are so boring you couldn't bother. But then, the developers REALLY screwed up. And I think OE got some pretty nice sidequests in story for us.

It would make managing large areas more manageable.

Who says large areas need to be managable. What use is having a giant city if it's giving you the feel of being in the local town? Sure, there is overwhelness at first, a sense of so much to do, what to do. But that's part of a big city. Either in real life and games. If one want managable chuncks one could only include taverns and small towns and settlements. Not a good way to make an RPG. And as in real life with large cities, it only takes time before something that looks overcome-able is memorised and you can find the way without issues.

Even if the maps cut in 2 parts in BG due to the wall was annoying, forcing you to enter from certain other maps. Please, that not anymore, okay?

Because in some games you want to explore a new area, but every few meters you end up dumped with a new quest, and so end up with about fifty quests.

Wonderful, not? Unless of course they are all fedex quests, or kill x of y. But we're not talking about a MMORPG here, so I doubt we have to fear that. Also sounds like a big case of exeggarating.

If you want 50 areas with 1 quest there are plenty of storyless action RPGs or dungeon crawlers. But I like my story to be ripe with conflict, with people who I can help, or doom. Quests to solve. Missions to accomplish. Legendary items to recover. Not spend 5 hours moving on without having any kind of idea what the hell I am doing it all for anyway.

Or maybe just get rid of the whole quest npc's dotted about all over the place? You need money so have to go to certain persons to get jobs similar to the Witcher. You wouldnt really wander around aimlessly, just hoping to stumble upon someone that wants you to do something.

No, no, no, no.

The less we can avoid a single NPC giving all quests (or, god forbid, a quest-board) the better. Not objecting to a single character having a large (side)story plot, but as the Witcher already showed, too often if a single person is multi-quest giver of town quest end up with X of Y, then again with other stuff being X and Y, and again, cause how many times can their daughter be kidnapped or dragon stolen or dog catnapped or grandmother poisoned or whatever...

The more individual stories (and thus questgivers), the more individual dillema's, the better.

That also allows you to majorly piss off said quest-givers without locking off 50% of an areas quest. If you design a branch you probably prevent that in the first quest you can majorly mess up. Or if you do get a rematch anyway on the next, which would be majorly immersion breaking if they just shrug off that you brought them their missing girlfriend dead.

It appears this game is going to have some purpose, your character is after something arent they? They wouldnt be too distracted from that, going off in the middle of their quest to find the grail to do a million random strangers a million random favours(there would at least have to be good reasons).

If they made Fallout that way, there wouldn't have been much of a game... xD

A RPG without side-quests... it's a crime against the genre. I was going to point out that you wouldn't do that with other genres, but apparently thinking about that other genres did majorly suffer from self-mutilation, so that wouldn't really help my point.

I rather not RPG's do that too. We got enough **** like DA2 to last for quite a while...

I think JRPGs do this well. They know that a big journey has to feel like a long journey.

Yeah, by offering the well known 100 hours of grinding MMO's got too. No thanks.

the side quests flow into or slightly off of the main story.

While a few exceptions are good, I'd rather not too many do. They are side-quests after all. Keep it well-spread, so one gamer can enjoy the entire plot without being too forced to do all kinds of other quests to make sense of it. Nor the side-quest player just having his own little stories, but all the time is only pointed towards the main plot and "hey, you should be doing that", which isn't nice either.

[Hassat Hunter]

I do feel that one of the major underlying issues was the fog of war. If the viewing range had been larger and I would not have spent hours obsessively 'clearing' the entire map I would have gone through areas, and thus hit the quests and events, far quicker.

That's... a very odd assumption.

 

You think BG1's content level was good. But your improvement to that suggest getting to content faster and quicker. Which could easily (and is, atleast by me) be seen as wanting more content in the first place...

 

*is so confused*

[Gryzor]

I did not like how in Skyrim you can't walk 15 ft without falling into a Nord ruin. As beautiful as that game was, it frankly could have benefited from less content.

 

This is basically because the Elder Scrolls game design is fundamentally flawed (as much as I enjoy playing them). There is only one spatial scale, which means that an entire region of the world (e.g. Skyrim) must be contained to fit within the equivalent area of a city suburb in the real world. Because of this, the time scale must be exaggerated to compensate which is why an entire day flies by in the space of a half hour or so.

 

Games like Fallout and BG have the benefit of having both a world scale where time is scaled accordingly and a tactical scale where time flows in real-time. World-scale content can be sparse while the tactical scale is where the content can be denser. The game designers have the luxury of deciding which are the more interesting areas in the world and creating content to fit the areas. Less interesting areas in the world are typically unreachable and beyond the scope of the game design. This design was more than likely a result of its D&D roots.

 

The feeling of exploration in Skyrim and other TES games can be maintained on the world scale by showing features (mountains, towers, etc) on the map as the party travels across it, acting as a sort of magnet for the player in the same way.

[ComMcNeil]

Because I saw someone saying in BG2 you only had areas where "something happened": One could argue that this was by design. In BG1, you basically have no direct overarching quest other than "find out who killed gorion" so exploration was also more tied in with the story. However in BG2, the whole "rescue imoen, chase irenicus" stuff put a lot more pacing in the whole game, making expansive exploration a little "silly" for plot purposes. Granted - you could still take all time in the world to rescue imoen, but the game did not really feel like time would pass.

 

So for P:E a more BG1 style approach may make more sense, I still voted for BG2 style as I did not enjoy the scouring for interesting things on each map in BG1. Also, if maps are really bigger in PE than in BG1, we need a little more density of content there I feel.

[Sensuki]

The excellent wilderness music, the birds chirping and the autumn trees makes all the difference

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd5RjdfJJxo

Edited October 25, 2012 by Sensuki

[TimmyShire]

I guess it does come down to how each player tackles exploration. For example, I will always explore everywhere I don't need to go first - within reason, I don't go off trundling to areas way above my capacity - and I will explore every inch of ground. For me, the reward is the world.

 

What I think Bethesda does well is include little backstories to the areas you explore, so while you may get a new weapon as a reward you'll also discover - through the environment - that somewhere was a vampires abode or bandits were smuggling drugs or something.

 

And maybe many will disagree with me, but I thought Baldur's Gate did a good job of this too - and this was something severely lacking in BG2.

 

There were the odd wilderness screens that had little in them (I'm thinking the roads to Nashkell) but the majority did have unique features. A lake with a fisherman's lodge perhaps, an old ceremonial circle (with a crazy Cleric) or random encounters from adventurers. They were the punctuation for exploration.

 

And while we're on the subject of exploration, I don't want to be limited. Obviously some limits do need to be in place to stop you visiting story-based areas. Again, BG1 did this well. You save when you visit a new screen and, if it turns out you are underequipped or not a high enough level, you return when you can.

 

If that means failing, so be it. Games these days don't seem keen to let you fail - and I can understand the reasons why - but I want to overcome adversary, not deal with it.

[Pope]

I liked that feeling of actually traveling in BG1. The perilous journey from Candlekeep > Friendly Arm Inn > Beregost > Nashkel with my freshmen adventurers sticks out as particularly memorable.

 

I can do without BG1's filler areas, but I do want to feel like it actually took my party some time and effort to discover a new location, rather than insta-traveling there as in BG2.

 

Reaching Big City #2 should not only feel like an accomplishment, it should also feel like it's really on the other side of the map (assuming and hoping that's where it is).

Edited October 25, 2012 by Pope