"A Big, EMPTY Map"

I'm just wondering, how much of a burden would it be on the creative team to create a big, but empty map?

By that I just mean a map that takes up a large chunk of Tyria's real estate, but that isn't as crammed full of little details as we've come to expect from a GW2 map. I get that making a map on the scale of the Desolation would take a lot of work, which is why they tend to make slightly smaller maps more often, but would it be possible to make a map that is mostly just "not much going on here?"

Maybe take a place like the empty gap between Ebonhawk and the Highlands. Have little communities and activities that happen right along the top and bottom edges of the map, enough to entertain people, but have most of the middle of the map just be "rocks and trees," placed perhaps not as painstakingly as some of the other maps, maybe scatter some generic mobs for flavor, but with no particular reason to fight them. All the "content" would cluster in the relatively small communities on the edges, but it would give the world more "depth" to still connect these routes physically, even if they can't justify building an entire story around that region. The "empty" area in the middle would at minim be a fun place to ride or fly through.

Again, if this would still take a ton of work, then fine, not worth pursuing, but if it's something that could be knocked together relatively easily using spare parts, it's better than leaving some of these areas off the map entirely.

(and also, just as an aside, I'm still hoping for a desert map that that is like 80-90% "nothing but sand dunes," with only a few islands of actual rock and life. I wanted that from the PoF expansion, but the closest we got was some tiny dune regions in Oasis and Riverlands.)

Isn't this just PoF?

@"Khisanth.2948" said:Isn't this just PoF?

I find the PoF maps pretty heavy on content. Pretty much anywhere you go there are things to do there. They are slightly stretched out, since you can move faster on mounts, but you're never more than a few hundred feet from an active heart or mini-dungeon or something else interesting to do. This would be more talking about a literal "content gap" in the middle of a map, hopefully to create less of a development burden.

I actually quite like the idea of a large, empty map that takes a while to traverse through before you see signs of civilisation again as it kind of takes me back to the days of playing dungeon siege... But frankly it doesn't work with gw2 and the inherent use of waypoints. People would travel through it once and then just forever skip it. It would simply become a space devoid of players and a waste of dev time.

I think the closes thing to it that you'll find is drytop as opposed to anything in PoF, although of course mounts trivialize it somewhat.

@"Korvous.6340" said:I actually quite like the idea of a large, empty map that takes a while to traverse through before you see signs of civilisation again as it kind of takes me back to the days of playing dungeon siege... But frankly it doesn't work with gw2 and the inherent use of waypoints. People would travel through it once and then just forever skip it. It would simply become a space devoid of players and a waste of dev time.

I think the closes thing to it that you'll find is drytop as opposed to anything in PoF, although of course mounts trivialize it somewhat.

Well, that's why I say, if it would take a lot of dev time to craft, then probably not worth it, but I don't like to assume. I was just thinking that they have all of these art assets around, it might not be that hard to bodge together a fairly generic landscape. They could even use it as a test map (which various datamined projects have indicated they tend to do anyway from time to time).

I don't think it would be a place frequently traveled (although small content areas near the entrances could attract people to stop by), but it would be nice to know it's there, just for geographical continuity. I just mean it as a method to close up certain gaps in the landscape that might otherwise be "too boring" to make a big deal of them.

Put a lot of synthesizer nodes everywhere and flag it a PvP zone!!!

@Loosmaster.8263 said:Put a lot of synthesizer nodes everywhere and flag it a PvP zone!!!

Open world guild vs. guild. Basically, an entire open world zone that is free-for-all PvP and only players who are representing the same guild are flagged as friendly! Objectives? Probably/Maybe? But no siege combat. Throw in synthesizer nodes and other ways to make it attractive to solo/small group play as well. And of course objectives for the guild level. Never to the point of WvW, but some reason for a guild to try and control the map.

I know this concept is fraught with issues all around, but I think that it would be a lot of fun if we could make it work!

Since they have this whole zones take place in their own timespan thing going on this really wouldnt do much. Also, why make a large empty map in locations that can be possibly used in the future.

I dont know how much time it would take, but even then, it seems like wasted effort.

under the silver wastes in the caverns its large and empty

@"Ohoni.6057" said:~snip~

I don't think it would be a place frequently traveled (although small content areas near the entrances could attract people to stop by), but it would be nice to know it's there, just for geographical continuity. I just mean it as a method to close up certain gaps in the landscape that might otherwise be "too boring" to make a big deal of them.

I think eventually, at some point in time you'll find those gaps will end up getting filled in one way or another, whether it's by maps like the one you describe or full fledged LW/Expac maps only time will tell(with perhaps the exception being the Dominion of Wind).

You can cap Windswept Haven with a new guild and have a decently-sized open map without any content.But why would any studio spend a single minute of time considering producing a map that has such a low density of fun things to do?

a danger zone , lootable pvp only trees, meadows and loooooot

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:Since they have this whole zones take place in their own timespan thing going on this really wouldnt do much. Also, why make a large empty map in locations that can be possibly used in the future.

I dont know how much time it would take, but even then, it seems like wasted effort.

Well, there's plenty of empty map to work with, like 10-20 times the size of the existing world, and that's only the known territory, so it's not like they would run out of room to do new stuff. It's up to them to decide how much effort it would be worth, I'm just putting it out there that it's something that would interest me.

It is prob not just the work but the pointlessness of doing it. Maps should be well stocked with content. There is already too much wasted map space in some parts of pof as it is, I'm not sure what reason they would have to create a near content less map instead of one with, given it would be ignored by most people

Yea I’d like something like this, take some part of the crystal desert that’s just sand and environment on and on, they could do a mission where your character gets lost in endless sand dunes. At the end they reflect on something or make a discovery or something hidden far away from the world

The issue is if maps are not rewarding, even with contents, people will eventually stop doing it. However, if you make it rewarding, you might end up obsoleting the previous map that provide the same reward.

Now, for the first case, a non-rewarding map with large content will later on become nothing but a burden to new players because there just isn't enough new players to do them.

For the second case, the old map would then become less populated thus even lesser chance of completing the contents.

The main thing is as maps expand, the population spread out further and this thin out every map's population and reduce every single map's capability to complete contents. So. I guess it is only logical choice for anet not to put too much contents.

@Loosmaster.8263 said:Put a lot of synthesizer nodes everywhere and flag it a PvP zone!!!

Oh god yes.I do enjoy me an open world pvp system!

that's 90% of GW2, allot of stuff but nothing in it....

What benefit does this provide to the game? By your own request, the map would have almost zero content in it, and the map itself could even be proceduraly generated (ie, its boring, everything is pretty much the same with just some random noise thrown in), so there isn't even anything to do there. What benefit does that provide, to anyone?

@OriOri.8724 said:What benefit does this provide to the game? By your own request, the map would have almost zero content in it, and the map itself could even be proceduraly generated (ie, its boring, everything is pretty much the same with just some random noise thrown in), so there isn't even anything to do there. What benefit does that provide, to anyone?

Mapping the world faster I guess?

I don't see the purpose of this.

Sounds like a stupendous waste of time

@"SkyShroud.2865" said:The issue is if maps are not rewarding, even with contents, people will eventually stop doing it.

Well, my point I guess is that this is a map where people would "stop doing it," pretty quickly, but that's ok. I mean they put out a lot of maps that are intended to be replayed constantly, and they should continue to do that, definitely. But this would be one that's just intended to add a little depth to the world at a lowered development cost.

It would basically have a lot less work to it, definitely not "no work," but like if the average new map has maybe 3-5 heart quests, 1-2 meta events and a couple dozen smaller ones, all sorts of hidden caves, small communities, NPCs with dialog, etc., this map would have very little of that, Maybe 1 heart quest, or none at all. No meta events, maybe no events at all. no unique mobs or artwork, just repurposed assets from the area around it. No overly complex terrain, just pull mountains and trees out of the draw and slap them around. It may have 1-2 small communities near the edges, but nothing overly complicated there either. They could add NPCs and situations for Current Events or something, but don't have to.

I really love the care and attention that ANet puts into most of their maps, and look forward to the next of those, but that wouldn't be the point of something like this, this would just be to give better geographical continuity to the world by connecting the dots, without breaking the bank by requiring the same level of detail that a "core" map has to cover.

Again, if it'd be way too much work, I agree it wouldn't be worth it, and this shouldn't take the place of a full LW map release, I just have a feeling this is something they could knock together on a budget relative to their other priorities as more of a "Current Events" scale project.

Now, for the first case, a non-rewarding map with large content will later on become nothing but a burden to new players because there just isn't enough new players to do them.

And definitely, anything that would "need to be done" on that map, if anything at all, it should be soloable and also focused to specific areas, because yeah, finding other players there would be inconsistent.

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"SkyShroud.2865" said:The issue is if maps are not rewarding, even with contents, people will eventually stop doing it.

Now, for the first case, a non-rewarding map with large content will later on become nothing but a burden to new players because there just isn't enough new players to do them.

I ask you again, what is the point of such a map? No content, no new mobs, no new artwork, no hearts. No reason to visit it. So what is the point of it? There is none.

I wonder if a modified version of what Ohoni suggests might be used to introduce more sandbox elements to GW2.