What if all region maps were connected?

[Antycypator.9874]

What if all maps e.g. in Ascalon, were connected and "fused" into one? No portals between maps, just regular passage, zero loading screens. Messages on /map would be visible in whole Ascalon region. Mentor and commander tags too. Would it solve the emptiness on Central Tyria maps? Calling for help would be much easier, chat would be more alive.

[Westenev.5289]

We'd see a time paradox so big not even Dr Who could save us.

[yann.1946]

While it would be cool the problems i see are1: Wouldn't maps feel emptier as less people are spread over a larger place?2: Wouldn't this increase loadingtimes3: can the servers/game handle it?

[Danikat.8537]

In theory I like the idea, if only so we could get rid of those absurd straight line mountain ranges that go between maps and look totally unrealistic, especially in Ascalon and Kryta. But I'm not sure it would work in practice.

Anet would need to find a way for each map to hold 4 or 5 times as many people without causing significant lag or crashing. Increasing the size of the maps without increasing the population cap would actually lead to the opposite problem as the same 150 people (I think that's the limit) would now be spread across a much bigger area. And if they can do that they might as well keep the map layout the same and just run fewer copies of each map.

Also it can already be confusing when map chat is being used for two or more things. I ran into this yesterday - Craze's Folly in Blazeridge was the daily jumping puzzle and the Shatterer event was happening when I was there and we kept getting people thinking they needed to look for a mesmer portal to do the No-Fly Zone achievement, because messages were getting mixed up in chat. That could be good for commanders because it might encourage more people to join the squad for the activity they're actually doing, but it would be a pain for anyone using mentor tags, or trying to manage without tags.

As for feeling like you're alone, would it really help to know that there's a big group of players on the other side of what used to be several different maps, doing an activity totally unrelated to what you're doing now? It might make it harder to claim the entire game is dead because you completed a heart alone if you can see that there were other players doing something else in a different area at the same time, but it doesn't change the fact that you were the only one doing that specific activity at that time.

Then we've got the practical problems of combining maps, which is not nearly as simple as removing the visible barrier between them because at the moment the maps are totally separate entities. (If you've ever gotten to a place where you can see over the edge of a map you'll know what's beyond there isn't the next map, it's nothing - empty space - because each map is actually in it's own little 'box' of space and doesn't really join up at all.) They'd basically have to re-make all of them so it would be a huge piece of work. Which isn't to say it couldn't, or shouldn't be done. But if you just want map chat to be busier I think a better solution would be to either increase the population cap on each map or create 'region' chat channels which are visible to all maps in e.g. Ascalon, Maguuma, Kryta etc.

[Blur.3465]

I'd truly love that...less portals and loading screens for sure and it would make it more open and immersive and not just a 'box' where you play.I do agree that it could cause several problems, as stated above.Would the servers be up for it?How would the events works? Maps that might have less people in them etc?Still, it would definitely be cool to see!

[sorudo.9054]

@yann.1946 said:While it would be cool the problems i see are1: Wouldn't maps feel emptier as less people are spread over a larger place?if the shards are done the good way you will actually see more players.2: Wouldn't this increase loadingtimesnope, not in the slightest, better yet, because zones are connected you have less loading times, saving allot of time.3: can the servers/game handle it?the sever can easily handle it, the problem is more that every single map needs to be connected manually and entities needs to be reconfigured.

[yann.1946]

@sorudo.9054 said:

@yann.1946 said:While it would be cool the problems i see are1: Wouldn't maps feel emptier as less people are spread over a larger place?if the shards are done the good way you will actually see more players.

2: Wouldn't this increase loadingtimesnope, not in the slightest, better yet, because zones are connected you have less loading times, saving allot of time.

Why wouldn't it increase loadingtimes? the maps are bigger so should take more time to load?

3: can the servers/game handle it?the sever can easily handle it, the problem is more that every single map needs to be connected manually and entities needs to be reconfigured.

Wasn't their a statement that the desertmaps where already stretching what the game can do in mapsize?

[Solvar.7953]

It strikes me this could also work new players - at least right now, there is a physical exit you need to transit when going from the level 1-15 maps to the 10-20 maps. If everything was one big map, one could pretty easily see newer players wandering into a higher level area (especially if it seems like some exciting boss battle is going on), and promptly get killed, which probably would not leave them with a good impression.But in any case, this would involve some amount of work, which I can't really see Anet every prioritizing - it doesn't really buy much.

[Melech.4308]

I don't think the solution to solving the emptiness on Central Tyria maps and calling for help in chat is connecting the region maps together. Here are my reasons:

1) There's already the LFG for that.

2) The game would need a very large revamp to merge together Core Tyria maps along with Living World maps (e.g. Lake Doric with Kryta, Bitterfrost Frontier with Shiverpeaks, etc), since they are within the regions.

3) Conflict of meta event schedules (e.g. Karka Queen and Taidha metas sometimes conflict in schedules, yet both events occur in Kryta) are going to lead to more players splitting up and making it harder to call for help.

[joneirikb.7506]

My guess would be on technical limitations of the engine, and interaction with a few other things. Essentially maps can hold roughly around 150 players at the same time, and the size has generally been consistent through most of the game, and increasing slightly with the expansions etc, but not by much.

So if they made larger maps, they would likely not be able to fit more people in those maps, and the engine probably wouldn't be able to run that giant map well at all. Expect all kinds of lag and crashes, errors and events not starting or ending, scripts failing all over the place etc. And yes, longer time to load the entire map in the first place. Honestly I don't think the engine can handle it, or they likely would have experimented with it already.

But similarly, I don't think it would actually help, I'd probably bet on the opposite. Ascalon for example has 6 maps (not counting city), say ANet somehow managed to fuse those 6 maps together into 1 and somehow made the engine run it with no lag or errors. That means a single "Ascalon Instance" can hold 150 people. Split up all over 6x the area. As opposed to 150 per map with the current system, where they will always be withing 1-2 minute walking distance of each others. This doesn't even take into consideration all the natural problems of logistics of someone asking for help in ebon hawke, and people responding are from every other area, and might not have waypoints unlocked and have to walk 5-10 minutes to get there, or not the slightest idea where that is etc (which will take even longer to explain than on a normal map).

I think a better solution would actually be to do what WoW did, maps are separated like in gw2 with different chats etc as we're used to. But they didn't have portals with loading screens between maps, you just walked into them seamlessly and got a notification "you entered barrens chat" or whatever zone you walked into. But the engine probably would have to be built for that from the start to get it to work. But it does make the world feel much more coherent, than the obvious portal system we got in gw2.

[coso.9173]

I'd love for all maps to be connected myself. But u don't think the engine can afford it.

[Zaklex.6308]

Impossible because each zone is set in a specific period of time, no two zones mirror the same time frame so you would be connecting maps that are not in the same world space time wise.

[Antycypator.9874]

@Melech.4308 said:I don't think the solution to solving the emptiness on Central Tyria maps and calling for help in chat is connecting the region maps together. Here are my reasons:

1) There's already the LFG for that.2) The game would need a very large revamp to merge together Core Tyria maps along with Living World maps (e.g. Lake Doric with Kryta, Bitterfrost Frontier with Shiverpeaks, etc), since they are within the regions.3) Conflict of meta event schedules (e.g. Karka Queen and Taidha metas sometimes conflict in schedules, yet both events occur in Kryta) are going to lead to more players splitting up and making it harder to call for help.

But how many players check the LFG for Central Tyria? Probably only when they need help or looking for someone they could join.My idea was about connecting only Ascalon maps together, but still separate them from Kryta, Shiverpeaks etc.

[Rauderi.8706]

The reason why we have limited zones is for loading times/etc. Also a bit too late to change, what with spaghetti code 'n all.

I'd honestly just like to have ingress/egress points marked on each map once they're revealed. And have more connection points between maps.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

What kind of barrier would you want for those players that do not have access to Living World or Expansion maps?

[The Greyhawk.9107]

This is quite frankly not possible, the game simply wasn't designed to do this. Nor do I believe it would make core maps seems "less empty" even if the server cap could be raised.

[Khisanth.2948]

The only thing I see happening with such a change is the block list growing. Similar to what happens while playing WvW due to team chat. That sounds negative but it is really a neutral thing.

@"The Greyhawk.9107" said:This is quite frankly not possible, the game simply wasn't designed to do this. Nor do I believe it would make core maps seems "less empty" even if the server cap could be raised.

Heh if capacity is not increased then most places will be quite dead

[thepenmonster.3621]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:What kind of barrier would you want for those players that do not have access to Living World or Expansion maps?

If it were up to me I'd allow free access to every map connected by land. If someone on a lvl 11 character can ninja their way to the HPs in Vabbi then they deserve them IMO.

[Solvar.7953]

The LS maps not being accessed is not about levels, but about money - if you were not around when they came out, you have to pay gems to get access. I don't know how much they really make off of that (presumably something), so making them free to everyone costs Anet some money.With mega maps, I think map completion may have to be adjusted - otherwise, only getting rewards when completing such a massive map would not feel very meaningful (or the rewards would have to be a lot better).Now in a theoretical case where Anet could design things such that these mega maps could support 1000 players and the large size, you might still have issues - imagine 500 players showing up to some of the meta events - at that point, they probably become pretty trivial - it would not surprise me if some design decisions/scaling are based on the max number of players taking part being some reasonable number (100)

[Ben K.6238]

@"joneirikb.7506" said:I think a better solution would actually be to do what WoW did, maps are separated like in gw2 with different chats etc as we're used to. But they didn't have portals with loading screens between maps, you just walked into them seamlessly and got a notification "you entered barrens chat" or whatever zone you walked into. But the engine probably would have to be built for that from the start to get it to work. But it does make the world feel much more coherent, than the obvious portal system we got in gw2.

That would require implementing on-the-fly asset loading and unloading, which, as you guessed, is not exactly a weekend project. The engine was originally built to work with contained instances for everything, so it wouldn't surprise me too much if this requires some very low-level stuff to be rebuilt, in addition to all the affected maps.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

@thepenmonster.3621 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:What kind of barrier would you want for those players that do not have access to Living World or Expansion maps?

If it were up to me I'd allow free access to every map connected by land. If someone on a lvl 11 character can ninja their way to the HPs in Vabbi then they deserve them IMO.

So...no one need buy an expansion? No one need log on to acquire Living World Episodes? Not sure that would be best for ArenaNet.

[thepenmonster.3621]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:So...no one need buy an expansion? No one need log on to acquire Living World Episodes? Not sure that would be best for ArenaNet.

Considering the story is all instanced, and you can't start the masteries or get the elites without the expacs, this isn't a concern IMO. If someone does have access to the Maguuma or Elonian maps their ability to get around pretty limited without the things that come with it, like mounts and gliders.

On the other hand: The bosses, events, and bounties are already failing on the regular due to not having enough players to fill out the zerg mechanics. This will only get worse as the population decreases. Since Anet seems like they'd rather set themselves on fire instead of updating old content to reflect their current situation, allowing the F2P and core players in to help with the Death Shatterer or Lake Doric is probably the best option.

They might even get sick of falling to their deaths in Bloodstone Fen and buy HoT.

[sorudo.9054]

@yann.1946 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:

@yann.1946 said:While it would be cool the problems i see are1: Wouldn't maps feel emptier as less people are spread over a larger place?if the shards are done the good way you will actually see more players.

2: Wouldn't this increase loadingtimesnope, not in the slightest, better yet, because zones are connected you have less loading times, saving allot of time.

Why wouldn't it increase loadingtimes? the maps are bigger so should take more time to load?

it only loads everything in your location and close to it, the game then loads everything in the background while you're exploring. (i have seen it working because i ones traveled with my mount faster than the game could handle)

3: can the servers/game handle it?the sever can easily handle it, the problem is more that every single map needs to be connected manually and entities needs to be reconfigured.

Wasn't their a statement that the desertmaps where already stretching what the game can do in mapsize?

that is an engine issue, they kinda screwed the engine up making it quite inflexible.