Can you make Dragonfall map a bit less squarish on the World map?

The map is great ! One of the best the team have ever made, BUT it really bugs me how it looks on the World map. I don't ask for changing the invisible walls around it, just put some roundness to it somehow. You can even making it diamond-like and not a square on the map. It will be less buggy for the eye.

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The previous living world maps were a breath of fresh air as they moved away from the traditional blocky maps that gw2 has always had. They were looking more natural and blended nicely with their surroundings. Now with the Dragonfall map Anet has started taking steps backwards. The map looks out of place, and unnatural on the world map. The fact that this map is in the middle of the ocean, there is absolutely no reason for it to be as square as it is.

I don't care what shape a map is, I just care what the content of it is like.

@Vavume.8065 said:I don't care what shape a map is, I just care what the content of it is like.

Well said

It really bugs me when maps have no apparent shape, I mean like REALLY bugs me. I'm perfectly content with this map being a square, although a triangle would've been cool, because I don't think we've had one of those yet.

This could easily be fixed visually on the map, however the physical map zone itself, the shape hardly matters at all.

It would literally just require painting an island on the map and fitting it around the current zone. Not too big of a deal imo.

The previous maps are very clearly rectangles too, but some have a bit of unavailable landmass "removing" areas from that rectangle. My guess is that it's an engine limitation.

The Devs talked about why maps are the shape they are, but....I don't remember if it was in an AMA, Forum Chat, Guild Chat, or post on the forum. Could try Google.

Maps in 3D video games are always built inside a cube (or sphere) of space, with the ground as a flat square across the middle (or nearer the top/bottom if the designer wants more space above or below the surface). This is more noticeable in games like Sim City which let you zoom way out and don't care about letting you see the edges but other games are the same, they just use a series of 'tricks' to hide the edges - mainly inaccessible terrain like steep slopes coupled with invisible walls.

Of course you can hide that by making the playable area an uneven shape. It's more immersive (IMO) because square areas with steep slopes around them, or square islands, are very rare in real life. But that wastes a lot of space - the cube still has to be a cube and bigger than the playable area so you end up with large chunks (usually corners) which have to be loaded in but are unused. Admittedly they're mostly empty space so there's not a lot to load, but it's still more demanding than a smaller map.

That also limits what you can do within that space - all the events, hidden objects, story NPCs etc. etc. have to fit in the playable area in the middle, with enough space between them to create a sense of exploration and - especially in a map like this - some idea of going through 'wilderness' areas between hubs. The more areas you block off the less the designers have to work with, so it's a trade-off.

I've not gone all the way around the edges yet but Dragonfall seems to be one of those maps which is exactly as big as it needs to be. You can't even walk all the way down Kralk's tail without hitting the 'you've hit a current and will be pushed back' message. It looks to me like they were trying to cram as much stuff as possible into the smallest map they could (or possibly prioritising vertical space for the skyscale to climb). Or maybe it's just that the people doing the map for this event - like some of the people commenting - don't care about square edges and wanted to fill all the available space with things to do instead.

Incidentally this is one reason Silverwastes remains one of my favourite maps. On the world map it doesn't look square (or rectangular) and when you do the meta-event or the story it creates the illusion of an unevenly shaped map with lots of inaccessible areas, not just around the edges but in the middle. But then almost all of those are used for the jumping puzzle. Once you've been through everything the map has to offer there's very little unused space, but you won't see all of it at once. (There is a large, unused area above the Sealed Cavern in the north west corner, which is accessible with gliding/mounts and has some very weird unfinished scenery, but that's just on the surface - the area below that is used.)

Not gonna quote the whole thing but this was a really nice and informative post by Danikat.

This just feels like an odd complaint considering the map is supposed to be completely unnatural. It's a map that was formed suddenly when an elder dragon and chunks of proto-realities are shoved out of a portal and fall into the ocean. There's no time for any natural process to erode the rigid form of it. The only thing that really bugs me is getting "pushed back by currents" while flying around that detached wing.

@Danikat.8537 said:I've not gone all the way around the edges yet but Dragonfall seems to be one of those maps which is exactly as big as it needs to be. You can't even walk all the way down Kralk's tail without hitting the 'you've hit a current and will be pushed back' message. It looks to me like they were trying to cram as much stuff as possible into the smallest map they could (or possibly prioritising vertical space for the skyscale to climb). Or maybe it's just that the people doing the map for this event - like some of the people commenting - don't care about square edges and wanted to fill all the available space with things to do instead.

If you scroll down a bit on the map from the wing you actually see a very clear edge.

On the other hand they don't actually need to do anything with the 3D space to make it not square. It is just a world map thing. They did make that edge hug a bit too closely to the 3D space to the point where a bit of Kralk's tail is sticking out of the map.

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:The previous living world maps were a breath of fresh air as they moved away from the traditional blocky maps that gw2 has always had. They were looking more natural and blended nicely with their surroundings. Now with the Dragonfall map Anet has started taking steps backwards. The map looks out of place, and unnatural on the world map. The fact that this map is in the middle of the ocean, there is absolutely no reason for it to be as square as it is.

Expect the map is literally out of place and was just kinda spawned into tryia from the mists sooooo.

No one bugged about this ?

I think there's another thread about it. You could try the 'Search' feature.

Good luck.

Edit: Here it is, just further down the page: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/77101/back-to-square-maps#latest

This map is almost TOO square with how I am unable to drift away from the cliffs in the West for even a second before being forced back.

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:This map is almost TOO square with how I am unable to drift away from the cliffs in the West for even a second before being forced back.Maybe its because Kralkatorrik is a square.

Just a bit of info. Your character is also a cube, just soms parts are invisible.

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Haha that post above me had me rolling. :D Nice trick

Rotating the map is probably not the best solution - in the worst case it may require the entire area to be rebuilt.

It's easier to paint extra splashed debris around it on the world map so it doesn't look quite so improbable. At the moment, I agree that it makes about as much sense as a square crater on the moon.

Have you not noticed that everything that you drop that splatters, shatters or breaks will always fall in a rectangle?

But yeah, its one of those little things that are silly, because of it being a virtual world

There is the square nature of the map but also the map boundaries are so tight that it brushes up against the land in some areas. Like near the highest point in the jungle area. Go to the sea side and you get the make edge warning.

It is not just the square shape that makes it stand out on the world map, it is also the color of the sea around the islands that is different to the color of the surrounding ocean. If they blended them together that the transition would be seamless it would look much better.

Could we just get some buffering terrain? How does land falling out of the mists come down in a perfect rectangle?