The Sad Tale of the "Ravenous"

[Elva.6372]

How did the Ravenous get to its final resting place in the water in the southwest portion of Gendarran Fields near Bad Omen Beach?

I don't see any means that an ocean going pirate ship could navigate to such a place - what am I overlooking?

[Ardid.7203]

Dirk Gently's season 2.Or 100 Años de Soledad.Or Fitzcarraldo.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Anet plays it very wonky and unrealistically with river borders. Basically, every river that reaches a border ends in a waterfall or spring, or blocked off passage.

In this case, I think it's a blocked off passage, and that river would be clear sailing from Sea of Sorrows to Lake Doric. Same with the western river.

IIRC, Sea of Sorrows made mention of sail trade from LA to DR through those rivers.

Also keep in mind that scaling is at least halfed in the game for proper size of landscape, so the rivers themselves would likely be large enough for a decently sized ship to get through with relative ease, given that we have pirates even up in Harathi Hinterlands' Lake Arca.

[Elva.6372]

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:Anet plays it very wonky and unrealistically with river borders. Basically, every river that reaches a border ends in a waterfall or spring, or blocked off passage.

In this case, I think it's a blocked off passage, and that river would be clear sailing from Sea of Sorrows to Lake Doric. Same with the western river.

IIRC, Sea of Sorrows made mention of sail trade from LA to DR through those rivers.

Yes, thank you - I was going to make a reply to that other post -appreciative but disagreeing.

I traced the bodies of water in game, it was not even close to feasible...there's simply no water route for the pirate vessel to use unless we subscribe to the idea that they hauled their vessel overland, lol.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@Elva.6372 said:I traced the bodies of water in game, it was not even close to feasible...there's simply no water route for the pirate vessel to use unless we subscribe to the idea that they hauled their vessel overland, lol.

Well, as I said, Anet closes off all rivers with either waterfalls, blocked passages, or springs.

Take, for example, the river at Fort Salma. Follow it to the source: Waterfall. Go to Queensdale and follow the water on that side of the border to its source: Waterfall. There is no in-between water source. So where's that water coming from?

Another example, the river that Malyck's pod floated down. Follow it north: waterfall. Follow it south: waterfall. Go to Metrica and find that end of the river: springs, go to the other end: springs. How did Malyck's pod flow from the western, unexplored lands into Brisban?

I've learned to take the borders of rivers in the game with a grain of disbelief, because they're just not physically possible, even ignoring the presence of boats.

[Elva.6372]

When I was a kid I used to draw maps of fantasy worlds with the intent of creating stories that could take place across the varied landscapes - I recall even then I was very careful that such maps made "sense" in a geographical and very real world way - I learned that lesson from Tolkien at a very young age.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

The main difference with drawing out a realistic map on paper and making multiple separated but conjoined zones in a game, is the barriers between zones that must exist. It's what has led to GW2's boxy appearance with square mountain ranges, just as it leads to rivers with unrealistic ends.

GW2 isn't the only game like this. Almost every game is, in fact, like this. There is some sort of barrier that prevents reaching past certain points, so that they don't result in invisible walls. It's a frequent game design conundrum one runs into. Too often the solution requires suspension of belief.

As such, I tend to ignore naturally formed oddities on map borders when it comes to lore and realism in any game, unless there's something involved with quests/events/map markers with them (like the mines in western Gendarran Fields).

[Elva.6372]

The main difference with drawing out a realistic map on paper and making multiple separated but conjoined zones in a game, is the barriers between zones that must exist.

Granted but ANet has implemented invisible walls, push-backs and kill zones in many other areas which I argue at least keeps the reality of the landscape intact.

It's just a detail thing sacrificed on the altar of expedience;, a decision made due to limitations - but also a failure of the creative imagination to one degree or another.

[Ardid.7203]

@Elva.6372 said:

The main difference with drawing out a realistic map on paper and making multiple separated but conjoined zones in a game, is the barriers between zones that must exist.

Granted but ANet has implemented invisible walls, push-backs and kill zones in many other areas which I argue at least keeps the reality of the landscape intact.

It's just a detail thing sacrificed on the altar of expedience;, a decision made due to limitations - but also a failure of the creative imagination to one degree or another.

Fully agree. There is a need to have artificial limits. There is no need to make those limits orthogonal. The maps could have much more natural and logical forms, and still be limited by mountain ranges, water bodies and impassable terrain.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@"Elva.6372" said:

The main difference with drawing out a realistic map on paper and making multiple separated but conjoined zones in a game, is the barriers between zones that must exist.

Granted but ANet has implemented invisible walls, push-backs and kill zones in many other areas which I argue at least keeps the reality of the landscape intact.

It's just a detail thing sacrificed on the altar of expedience;, a decision made due to limitations - but also a failure of the creative imagination to one degree or another.

Anet tries to keep invisible walls to a bare minimum, and most that exist are in places where they didn't expect players would be able to reach.

Push backs in the form of "strong currents" tend to be used for wide open seas and bays, not small rivers. It'd be worth having, but there still runs the issue of mapping out the appearance beyond that pushback; they don't need to worry about that with open seas because it's just that, no need for cliffs, islands, etc.

Kill zones only exist in Bloodstone Fen or among Mordremoth vines afaik and wouldn't really make sense for zone boundaries.

I'm not saying "they can't do better" but rather "this is a pretty typical and very hard to solve issue of map boundaries, especially with the wide range of movement that players get in GW2, which only expands the issues because unlike in games like GW1, you can't have a 1 foot rise/drop be the zone boundary".

[Danikat.8537]

IMO the key point here is that the maps are scaled down a lot compared to what they'd be in real life. Another common example is the severe lack of farm land in Tyria. Queensdale allegedly has enough farmland to support all of Divinity's Reach, but all we see in-game is a handful of small farms which could maybe support the population of Shaemoor if they were careful with their food.

Similarly there's those escort events where we have to protect people going 2 minutes down the road and they stop and fight off the last group of enemies instead of running 10 feet to safety. If you take it literally then it seems absurd (especially when you can see the destination from the starting point and they're talking about it as if it's a major undertaking). But it would be even more absurd if one escort event took at least a day of real time and the maps were big enough to accommodate that but also mostly empty space.

A realistically designed, realistically sized game world sounds amazing, but in practice if it took me as long to get from Shaemoor to Beetletun as it does to get from my town to the next one over (about 2 hours on foot) it would quickly become annoying to play...or I'd make a lot more use of waypoints. Plus the maps would take forever to load.

You can get away with it in a book because you can skip a lot of the walking. Even Lord of the Rings, which has sometimes been described as a book about walking interspaced with plot, does that. You can't reasonably do that in a game.

So if Tyria was real a lot of the rivers would be much bigger (and have fewer waterfalls and other blockages) and would be navigable by ship.

(And if not the other question is who does Lion's Arch trade with? Access to Cantha and even Elona was cut off for a long time because of the dragons, and we know nothing about lands to the east or west, so that would leave just Rata Sum and maybe the Grove.)