Can the game possibly transition to open world someday?

[Aodlop.1907]

I know what you'll say: the zones are big so it's okay, even more so nowadays, and so on.But it's still not open world, and you can really feel the difference, especially with the mounts we now have access to.

[Randulf.7614]

If you mean removing the zone transition portals to move between maps then no that won’t ever happen

[coso.9173]

everythinc can be done, if it's justifiable enough.that being said, I don't see a good enough reason to do it, to basically remap all the whole world for us for no reason other than what some people want.

[Aodlop.1907]

Greater immersion? Polishing the game?An open world is not just a childish whim, it's a genuine MMO feature that is praised whenever it's included in a new game.

[Randulf.7614]

This isnt a new game though and the entire game and infrastructure is built on the current world model, incl population caps.

The game would gain nothing except better immersion and whilst id love to see isolated maps joined up, the game would essentially need to be rebuilt for this, by and large, comparatively inconsequential addition in terms of what it brings to this game.

The game has done extremely well in its current format to not have to justify every single map, event, collection, achievement etc needing reworking for this

[Dawdler.8521]

@"Aodlop.1907" said:Greater immersion? Polishing the game?An open world is not just a childish whim, it's a genuine MMO feature that is praised whenever it's included in a new game.Its not an "MMO feature". It's a graphics engine design choice and entire GW2 is built on instanced maps. You cant just add an open world as an "extra feature". That's like asking whether Quake II can some day transition to the Ghosts of Tsushima. The base GW2 engine (ie the GW1 engine) is almost 20 years old.

[Jagblade.4627]

@Aodlop.1907 said:Greater immersion? Polishing the game?An open world is not just a childish whim, it's a genuine MMO feature that is praised whenever it's included in a new game.

While I would love for it to be completely open world, I think it would be more detrimental to immersion. Kryta, Orr, Cantha, Elona, etc. These are supposed to be continents. I've seen it said by others that the maps we explore are kind of like theme park representations of the world. We aren't actually traversing half the planet on foot in a matter of minutes. Making the world entirely open would make it seem that much smaller.

[Vision.7265]

I'm not quite sure what op is saying but I would like to increase the open-ness of the world for sure. Even story is instanced. I would like less closed instanced in PvE and more open-ness too.

[Donari.5237]

Given the player cap per map, and the multiple spin-off maps so clumps of players can all do the same meta at the same time albeit in different "shards," how do you accommodate that if an entire continent is all one map? Not snarky, genuinely wondering how you would handle the issue, as it could indeed be nice to traverse the world without load screens.

Not that I expect it's possible without a ground-up full rewrite taking at least five years and millions of dollars, seeing as how the instanced rectangle maps are structurally core to the game's programming, but I'm no expert and for all I know they have an amazing reveal coming up in Tuesday's live stream (I don't in any way think they do, but I do not have the knowledge needed to say it's flat out impossible).

[artharon.9276]

anything is possible but I don't think they would do it like lotro did. never really had much experience with old unreal engine so I'm just guessing, only thing they can do right now is (if possible) loading the next map nearby you underway so when you get closer to the exit point and pass through it you don't see a loading screen. maybe.

[Solanum.6983]

I feel like the game especially with how often new maps are added is just too big to be fully open world.I get what your saying, some of the older maps do feel flat and boxed in but given how long ago they were made it's fair. I think the newer maps do a great job of giving an open world feel as much as they can with the system the game has.

[Khisanth.2948]

No because that would require redesigning the game's server architecture which would require rewriting a huge amount of code.

[Astralporing.1957]

In addition to what has been mentioned before, it was my understanding that the "instanced" nature of every open world map, and their ability to dynamically create new instances/close old ones as needed, is something that greatly contributes to their ability to do maintenance/patching "on the fly", without the need to shut down the whole game, like most of other MMORPGs have to do.

GW2's ability to run without the regular "maintenance" downtimes other MMORPGs have is one of the greatest (even if usually unrecognized) features. I'd really not want to lose it.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Aodlop.1907" said:I know what you'll say: the zones are big so it's okay, even more so nowadays, and so on.But it's still not open world, and you can really feel the difference, especially with the mounts we now have access to.

Can you imagine how world bosses and map meta events would look with that? Would we go back to "pick your server" kind of thing?

[Ameepa.6793]

It would probably work with the vanilla maps because they do not have much going on and are quite low populated, but cannot really work with the new meta event chain based maps that have multiple maps running at the same time all the time and have very high population.

[Leablo.2651]

Sure, just file it behind engine modernization. More people need to understand how much that is blocking other improvements that they want and stop trying to downplay the importance of software quality.

[Teratus.2859]

I'm glad they went the way they did.. I can only imagine how annoying it would be if the entire game slowed down every time there was a world boss or big meta event >.<

[kharmin.7683]

There is a difference between "possible" and "probable". For those saying that anything is possible, yeah, sure. But in this request, I believe that it wouldn't be very probable due to the way that the game is currently designed.

[mtpelion.4562]

The way the game was designed, it is not currently possible.Because of the amount of work involved in changing that design and the lack of monetary benefit to the company for doing the work, it is not plausible that they would undertake to change the design at this time.

[Danikat.8537]

I don't think it's possible in any practical sense of the word.

Have you ever played a game like Sim City where you can zoom out and see the entire map, and the empty space around it? That's what GW2 maps are like. You can see it in the game if you're able to get over the boundaries. If you're able to climb up the outer wall of Divinity's Reach and look over the wall to the south you don't see Queensdale, you see nothing - empty space with a sky effect on it that wraps around under the ground. That's how all the maps are made - each one is in it's own separate cube and they don't even really line up like the game shows, they're entirely separate.

So joining them together into one big map wouldn't be a matter of removing the invisible walls. You're asking for the video game equivalent of telling an artist to take lots of separate paintings and move them all onto one big canvas. It can be done of course, but the way to do it is to basically re-make the entire thing from scratch on that bigger canvas - rebuilding every single map in the game in a different format, and then adding extra ones to fill in the gaps between maps where we can't currently go.

It might also require a different game engine, and would introduce all the problems raised earlier in this thread like how to manage meta events and population caps or create additional copies of maps as needed so you're not stuck in a queue or a map so crammed full of people it's impossible to do anything, and how to keep updating the game without having to take the entire thing offline for hours.

I really enjoy open world games and I think it could be fun to explore Tyria that way. But it would require an almost entirely different game and all the time, effort and expense that usually takes - meaning we'd be waiting years with Anet largely unable to do anything else while this was built. If they ever make a sequel, or a new franchise they might decide to do it that way (or they might not, as this thread shows there's pros and cons to both designs so it depends on the type of game you want to make) but I can't see it ever happening for GW2.

[Ashen.2907]

@"Astralporing.1957" said:In addition to what has been mentioned before, it was my understanding that the "instanced" nature of every open world map, and their ability to dynamically create new instances/close old ones as needed, is something that greatly contributes to their ability to do maintenance/patching "on the fly", without the need to shut down the whole game, like most of other MMORPGs have to do.

GW2's ability to run without the regular "maintenance" downtimes other MMORPGs have is one of the greatest (even if usually unrecognized) features. I'd really not want to lose it.

This.

Down time is not, "immersive."

[hugo.4705]

I prefer separated maps. Why? I like to think that my characters are chilling during map loading screens. (After burning their feet and having headache after running around and tping away)Considering the units distance converted into meters.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Ashen.2907 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:In addition to what has been mentioned before, it was my understanding that the "instanced" nature of every open world map, and their ability to dynamically create new instances/close old ones as needed, is something that greatly contributes to their ability to do maintenance/patching "on the fly", without the need to shut down the whole game, like most of other MMORPGs have to do.

GW2's ability to run without the regular "maintenance" downtimes other MMORPGs have is one of the greatest (even if usually unrecognized) features. I'd really not want to lose it.

This.

Down time is not, "immersive."Heh, I remember when I played Black Desert. Gorgeous open world sure but then... all NPcs just stopped. Stood there in the fields. Permanently died until the world was empty. Time for downtime! ... For like 6 hours. And then when its up its broken within a couple of hours again and time for another downtime lasting a day.

[Super Hayes.6890]

I do wish Queensdale and Divinity's Reach were one map. I like how Crystal Oasis has Amnoon combined with the combat areas. In fact, this would be a welcome change for all racial cities with thier starter zones. New "defend the gates" type missions could be added as well. This would be a lot of work but could be justified as an upgrade to the new player experience. Open world accross the board is a project that... well let's just make a new game at that point.

[Thornwolf.9721]

@Randulf.7614 said:If you mean removing the zone transition portals to move between maps then no that won’t ever happen

Im not sure its a matter of won't its a matter of Can't as the engine can barely keep up now. This is the issue of pulling a bethesda and not upgrading engines when moving to the next title.