In an "Open World" PvE environment, and it's Mount Counterparts.

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and creativity go together, that the advance of player liberty can only strengthen the cause of Tyrian peace. There is one sign the ANet Devs can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and creativity. Mod Gaile Gray, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2, if you seek liberalization, come here to this Asura gate. Mr. ANet, open this Asura gate. Mr. ANet, tear down this wall!

Disclaimer If anyone was offended by the nature of the above post because they lived through the particular moment in history I referenced, or for any other reason: It was not my intention to create controversy or make light of such a historic moment. I am passionate about creativity, and inelegant in speech. If you would still like to vote or read more below I invite you to. Disclaimer

The Return of the Zephyrites and their form of travel. They put the sun in a bottle-- and dropped it all over the Earth! With the return of The Bazaar of the Four Winds we now learned that the Zephyrites will make a return-- possible every year, possibly not. But what we have learned is that just because of Lore, the direction they went in, crashed in, won't affect them from making a reappearance in the future. Their crystals are like most good things in Guild Wars 2-- a form of travel. Should they be scattered throughout the world in Core zones, being that Drytop, The Silverwastes is still in the realm of possibility? Can Core players traverse a cliff? No, not without some thought (or a Springer). Maybe a gift from the heavens, dropped as they were being chased and close to wreckage will fall towards a lonely vista. It is after all, a Living World. Pact Airships fit for a rising star. I know your face from my dream. The Commander, a force to be reckoned with. However, a broke Commander is a stuck Commander. You won't be able to waypoint unless you have the funds. The pact has airships, maybe they can help us out? Defeating dragons... if you're good at something, never do it for free. * A Griffin that flies free, flies high. *The good thing about flying solo is it's never boring. One of my guild mates who is rank 1 in one of the griffin adventures would often sit in Lion's Arch, diving and ascending trying to see how high he could get. Eventually he got to the top of the stingray, higher even, to the point where it teleported him into the mistlock sanctuary. It was a good move not allowing true flight, but extended flight-- could it be on the horizon? They see me rollin' -- But are they hatin'?I can outrun a centaur! The beetle requires a special path in more Core Tyria maps in order to get to your destination in a set amount of time. There are guilds dedicated to finding new and exciting racing routes through Tyria, but should this be a marathon, not a sprint? * A graphical/server/engine update -- the inevitable. **Uh, okay, Rytlock is signaling me to wrap it up, so... Thank you for taking the time to read through this post, if you have anything to add to the discussion, even questions, opinions, please be respectful in adding them. TLDR for clarification is below.

TLDR: Should Guild Wars 2 work on open (no invisible walls) world? Should they add new movements in for Core players AND movement abilities from expansions to Core zones. Should there be an airship/sea travel system for those without the funds to travel or QOL? Should the inevitable engine rework include rebuilt maps, not from the ground up, but from where they are now added with amenities?

“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.”

Credits and Acknowledgements:Fallout 3, Guild Wars 2, Steve Fossett, Chamillionaire, Margaret Mitchell, Ronald Reagan

I don’t think you designed your poll very well. You have 3 options for no and one option for yes. I think a better poll would have 1 yes option and 1 no option, with a suggestion to explain your choice either way.

This is a very confusing post. You've got four or five questions, and then the answers on the poll don't relate to any of them. Plus, wouldn't "hardware reasons" be included in "technical reasons"? What if someone prefers small instanced maps for another reason? Personally I prefer the fully instanced world from GW1.

@Neeman Oria.7504 said:TLDR: Should Guild Wars 2 work on open (no invisible walls) world?It's annoying when you hit an invisible wall with the Springer - it would be nice if that happened less often - but I expect they already try to minimise the amount of invisible walls they put in.

Should they add new movements in for Core playersIt doesn't seem necessary since the core maps weren't designed for it, except Dry Top, which already has them.

AND movement abilities from expansions to Core zones.You can already use them (gliders and mounts).

Should there be an airship/sea travel system for those without the funds to travel or QOL?How would this be different from waypoints, other than being free? And how often can you not afford a waypoint?

Should the inevitable engine rework include rebuilt maps, not from the ground up, but from where they are now added with amenities?I don't really know what you're getting at with this question...

Didn't vote. I don't want unlimited Griffin flight, it is already too much. I would like them to unlock invisible walls of possible, just because I like getting high and having views. However, holes in the world are a real thing and I'm not sure how much work that would be.

Should Guild Wars 2 work on open (no invisible walls) world?

What happens with world events on timers, and especially those without timers? What happens on PVE zones that get loads of players anyway? In other games they solve this using "servers", split the playerbase in 200 servers and you get 200 instances of a map. Guild Wars 2 doesn't have servers so how would this work?

Should they add new movements in for Core players AND movement abilities from expansions to Core zones.

An introductory mount, or a way for a core player to get a Raptor for a limited time (like when doing festival races) would be nice.

Should there be an airship/sea travel system for those without the funds to travel or QOL?

What kind of player doesn't have enough funds to travel???

Should the inevitable engine rework include rebuilt maps, not from the ground up, but from where they are now added with amenities?

The engine has been reworked multiple times and new graphic options added, that were not possible in the past. From November 2012 when they created a brand new shader system to be used on the newest enemy (the karka) that show their armored plates being removed when their first health bar was depleted, the Fire effect of the Wyverns in Heart of Thorns, all the way to the more recent post processing effects introduced with Path of Fire. Although all these greatly improved visuals, the old maps remained the same so I seriously doubt, whatever new they add, will affect the old zones.

Your post is very difficult to follow. Trying to write everything as modified quotes and references makes it needlessly confusing, even if you know all the original versions it's difficult to separate what's part of the thing being referenced and what's actually relevant to the suggestion/s your trying to make. IMO it would be much better to post at least a summary with your idea in plain English.

Also your post appears to be mainly about adding more movement options to core maps, and then the poll is entirely different. I'm not sure if they're both the same suggestion and the strange wording is throwing me off, or if I've misunderstood something, but it seems like two topics in one.

However what you're asking for in the poll is impossible. It's a common misconception, but this game isn't one giant map with invisible walls blocking them off from each other. Each map is entirely separate, so joining them up would be a huge amount of work - they'd have to basically rebuild the entire game from scratch.

It's a hard idea to visualise, unless you've ever broken 'out' of a map to see what it looks like around the edges, or played games that showed it openly like Sim City but each map in this game is actually floating in the middle of a cube of space called a Skybox. Outside that is...nothing. Here's an example from the Silverwastes:

The "simplest" way to make it appear to be one continuous map would be to add points which send you to the next map all along the edges instead of just at a few points (where the portals are) but that would still be a huge amount of work because they need to set each point up. And it would still mean going through a loading screen when you go from one map to another. Games that use this method for an 'open' world usually solve that by splitting the map into lots and lots of tiny pieces so they can load much faster, but you'll still notice it sometimes on a slow machine, you'll be going down the road and your character would freeze for a few seconds while the computer loads the next section. And of course that would ruin meta-events, because only one part of the map would be loaded at a time they game wouldn't be able to show you what's going on future away.

Anything more than that would mean re-building the entire open world from scratch using an entirely different system, and probably also cause problems with meta-events and organising groups to do them.

I like true open-world games and I think it could be fun to use that in GW2, but it's not something which can be changed after a game has been created.

I will say this, the invisible walls they added with the addition of mounts to stop people from escaping the maps has resulted in several places that you could original get into using items and skills that where unfinished jumping puzzles, but still cool enough to explore, was a big mistake and i would like to see those removed, allowing people into those areas wouldnt cause any harm because there is nothing besides scenery(some of which is unique).

There is a middle ground to how it is now, and a completly open unified huge map. More connections could and should be made where connections could be. There would still be loading screens, but the world would feel less like divided into fixed size areas.

Tiny passageways that connect Verdant Brink to the Bloodstone Fen map could be discovered, which is directly adjacent to it. Of course only people who already have access to the map would be allowed to use them, which could be implemented in various ways. This is just one example, there are lots of maps which are shut off from each other without any apparent reason, and it started as early as southsun cove being just thrown into the world map with no connection at all, even though caledon forest was to the left and they could have just made an opening to the right at Morgan's Spiral - maybe with some sylvari NPC preventing lowlevel players to venture into this dangerous area. Then dry top/silverwastes were not being connected to each other when they were released long ago either, and they kind of kept doing this.

All core tyria maps were connected to each other at the sides they met the other maps, you could go from charr area maps into norn area maps, from asura area into sylvari area and so on. Take the wayfarer Foorhills for example, they were connected to every side at least once, because they had maps on every side.This all makes the world feel real, like the maps were actually where they are depicted on the world map. Many new maps do not have this. You get into them not by walking from adjacent maps, because in many cases there is just no adjacent map. But even in cases like Bloodstone Fen, when there is an adjacent map often no connection is being made to it.

Doric Lake was implemented into the existing world beautifully. This map has gotten a connection to Divinity's Reach on the one side, and to Harathi Hinterlands on the other side. It does not have that "this is a secluded instanced area that you can only reach by porting there with an asura gate" feeling. It is actually part of the world and can reached from the world, as it should be.

I would like new maps to be integrated into the gameworld better, like Lake Doric was. Make connections to existing maps, don't just put them somewhere onto the world map and say "this is where this map is located in tyria". It does not feel like it is there at all when there are no connections to other areas of the world. I would like the map to be expanded in a way that connects the existing areas with each other not in a way that is used lately by adding new areas that are far far out somewhere in a remote place that can only be reached by obscure means, as if the space between the new and the old maps was non-existing.

So right off the bat you're already mixing too many things in a public speaking format thats turned it into a confusing mess. For anyone coming in late, just throw out the entire body of the post and focus on the TL;DR potion. The top half wants to sound inspirational and motivating, but when you apply critical thinking to the whats being described, it presumes the logistics are given, and that the Dev's lack of desire is the only thing making it a reality, and no negative ramifications exist.

To address the biggest technical issues:

A. Seamless map transition requires a server infrastructure and map design process that is effectively going to require them to be reworked from the ground up. The irony here is that the asset handling on the client side already supports this.... but the server's role and Map geo itself are arranged on the assumption that the player are always within a given cubed volume, and that crossing that boundary is meant to hand them off to another server. All of this is done for Server resource efficiency and more easily structured server hierarchies; as the number of players increase linearly, the load requirements become compound multiplicative, or even exponential in some areas.

B. The server back end will have to recoded to operate as variable volume Cells that interact with each other. This majorly increases design complexity, to the point where only a hand full of in-dev MMOs are currently experimenting with it for infinite scaling; and only one I've seen thats managed to successfully pull a large cap of just under 1000 players, but at a crippling performance cost. (Planetside 2, not EVE)

The next closest thing thats currently on the market are much closer to Psudeo-instances where players can be handed off to different instances as they move around, but are fundamentally incapable of congregating in groups larger then the largest instance will allow. WoW does this, but its been difficult to ascertain what each instance is capable of holding, since they use it in conjunction with map queues and zone boundaries.

C. Going back to A, the map geometry works on the assumption of cubic volume to define the map shape..... which is why all the maps are rectangles, and terrain at its edges have unnatural characteristics. Some adjacent maps aren't even directly connected to each other, and many maps don't have any Geo at their edges. All of that will have to be filled in to allow seamless airship travel.

But all that aside, movement does break older maps..... and thats slowly becoming an issue with inconsistent power scaling in Core maps. But more then any thing else, thats a LOT of work to justify on old content without any direct benefit to new content. So unless they have a reason to do this to enable new content (not "potentially", but something they will be ACTIVELY developing as a future release), it would be insanely hard to justify the man hours required to rework the single largest wing in the game's history, just to let players blow through it faster then they already do. From both a business and design stand point, theres no benefit to the developers to do this unless its part of a new content block, and a new revenue stream.

@"Shikigami.4013" said:There is a middle ground to how it is now, and a completly open unified huge map. More connections could and should be made where connections could be. There would still be loading screens, but the world would feel less like divided into fixed size areas.

Tiny passageways that connect Verdant Brink to the Bloodstone Fen map could be discovered, which is directly adjacent to it. Of course only people who already have access to the map would be allowed to use them, which could be implemented in various ways. This is just one example, there are lots of maps which are shut off from each other without any apparent reason, and it started as early as southsun cove being just thrown into the world map with no connection at all, even though caledon forest was to the left and they could have just made an opening to the right at Morgan's Spiral - maybe with some sylvari NPC preventing lowlevel players to venture into this dangerous area. Then dry top/silverwastes were not being connected to each other when they were released long ago either, and they kind of kept doing this.

All core tyria maps were connected to each other at the sides they met the other maps, you could go from charr area maps into norn area maps, from asura area into sylvari area and so on. Take the wayfarer Foorhills for example, they were connected to every side at least once, because they had maps on every side.This all makes the world feel real, like the maps were actually where they are depicted on the world map. Many new maps do not have this. You get into them not by walking from adjacent maps, because in many cases there is just no adjacent map. But even in cases like Bloodstone Fen, when there is an adjacent map often no connection is being made to it.

Doric Lake was implemented into the existing world beautifully. This map has gotten a connection to Divinity's Reach on the one side, and to Harathi Hinterlands on the other side. It does not have that "this is a secluded instanced area that you can only reach by porting there with an asura gate" feeling. It is actually part of the world and can reached from the world, as it should be.

I would like new maps to be integrated into the gameworld better, like Lake Doric was. Make connections to existing maps, don't just put them somewhere onto the world map and say "this is where this map is located in tyria". It does not feel like it is there at all when there are no connections to other areas of the world. I would like the map to be expanded in a way that connects the existing areas with each other not in a way that is used lately by adding new areas that are far far out somewhere in a remote place that can only be reached by obscure means, as if the space between the new and the old maps was non-existing.

Ok this is one suggestion I'd love to see happen.

It's one thing Elder Scrolls Online does well. If you buy a DLC or expansion which adds a new map you automatically get one wayshrine unlocked so you can teleport there, but they also add 'in world' ways to get there too, either connecting it to an existing map if it's adjacent to one or adding a boat or caravan which will take you there. The teleport option is great for convenience but the slower option is really nice for immersion and exploration.

It bothers me that GW2 doesn't do that, especially when maps are right next to each other. Why can't I go from Straits of Devastation to Siren's Landing? Or from Sparkfly Fen to Southsun Cove - there's even a path leading that way at Karinn's Passage, it's just blocked off with rocks. (There's also a small section of map missing between the two, but I'd love to see that added even if there isn't much there, or to just skip it and appear on the beach on the east side of Southsun.) It's not even consistent - you can walk into Bitterfrost Frontier from Frostgorge Sound and from Vabbi across Jahai Bluffs into Kourna, so it's not like they have a rule that newer maps are kept separate from old ones.

@"starlinvf.1358" said:The top half wants to sound inspirational and motivating, but when you apply critical thinking to the whats being described, it presumes the logistics are given, and that the Dev's lack of desire is the only thing making it a reality, and no negative ramifications exist.

Thank you for your post, although I will admit that after reading the first part I skipped directly to the end only skimming the post to: "But all that aside," because while I understand my poll and post about possibly confusing structuring, I do not like to be accused of what you think I'm thinking. In case that's a confusing statement you may reread what you typed above, but perhaps in a way more mindful to others or perhaps in a more "constructive critical" way of thinking.

So right off the bat you're already mixing too many things in a public speaking format thats turned it into a confusing mess.

Unfortunately people were confused, but seeing the results thus far I am pleased that I got some meaty discussion and opinions. I do not believe forum rules disallow mixing and referencing multiple things as long as they're on topic. I don't normally respond to my posts in order to see where the discussion goes, but I thank you and reference the below in case you are unfamiliar. Regardless, I find the posts in my thread more valuable than one-liners, or a thread about how a Sigil can be so expensive.

The Eternal Septemberhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

i like the fully open world part but there is one problem, not the technical part but the work behind it.in order to get all of them seamlessly connected you need to take all the maps, stick them together and make sure all the entities, models, shaders, etc. keep on working on their own.the amount of bugs that would happen together with the work just to get them together as one world would be a work equal as to make a whole new game, every single map needs to be checked and all the walls that are now in place to prevent you from getting over the wall now needs to be removed.you might think it's an easy thing to do but the sheer amount of work that goes in to making a map is enormous, i have done my share of mapping and it's allot of work just to get one single event to work properly.

As far as Waypoints go (from the Wiki): If a character is defeated with no coin, they can be revived for free at the nearest waypoint.So, unless the character is stuck in a hole, or something, there is always a way to get to a Waypoint. (There's always walking, as well, of course.)

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:As far as Waypoints go (from the Wiki): If a character is defeated with no coin, they can be revived for free at the nearest waypoint.So, unless the character is stuck in a hole, or something, there is always a way to get to a Waypoint. (There's always walking, as well, of course.)

And if you have some money but not enough for the normal waypoint cost it will be reduced down to what you do have. That's how I've managed to get down to zero coins in my wallet before - spent almost all of it, went out to get more money, died and had to spend the tiny bit I had left on a waypoint.

Also if you were stuck in a hole you could go to WvW or the PvP lobby, or potentially log out and back in again to be shifted slightly to a normally accessible area. So it's only if you're stuck in a hole and in combat that you have no options. Which can happen but is extremely rare, even for people who end up stuck in holes a lot.

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:As far as Waypoints go (from the Wiki):

If a character is defeated with no coin, they can be revived for free at the nearest waypoint.

So, unless the character is stuck in a hole, or something, there is always a way to get to a Waypoint. (There's always walking, as well, of course.)

In addition, if you died and you really have zero coins there’s always the option of logging onto an alt who can walk over to nodes or a mobs, harvest or kill until you have something to sell, vendor it to get coins, then switch to your dead char and wp out.

@"Neeman Oria.7504" said:Disclaimer If anyone was offended by the nature of the above post because they lived through the particular moment in history I referenced, or for any other reason: It was not my intention to create controversy or make light of such a historic moment. I am passionate about creativity, and inelegant in speech. If you would still like to vote or read more below I invite you to. Disclaimer

If you're inelegant in speech, maybe just posting a couple sentences that explain what you're talking about might be helpful. I'm not sure what this topic is actually about.

"Should Guild Wars 2 work on open (no invisible walls) world?"

• What's that, no map boundaries or just no invisible boundaries within each map?

"Should they add new movements in for Core players AND movement abilities from expansions to Core zones."

• We've got waypoints and travel tomes. Do we need more?

"Should there be an airship/sea travel system for those without the funds to travel or QOL?"

• I thought there was?

"Should the inevitable engine rework include rebuilt maps, not from the ground up, but from where they are now added with amenities?"

• What inevitable engine rework?