Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

The Fun (?) of geographical challenges

    • 768 posts
    April 29, 2020 10:50 PM PDT

    In many games characters are 'guided' through the world by means of mountains you can't run over, trees that get you cornered or a formation of boulders that conveniently permit you from running in a straight line.

    With or without the proposed  climbingsystem in mind, how do you experience these obstacles or indirect guidance within the game?

    I get frustrated when I can't run up a seemingly easy slope or when there are clear triangle looking pitholes where you need to jump for your life to get unstock again.

    That the geography of the world presents the player with obstacles is something different. A cliffside where you can't get over and you need to figure out which route to take to get up, down or across. Ones you are familiar with this obstacle however, you tend to move in a straightline and the obstacle gets bypassed as best and quick as possible. So how much value do these designed obstacles have, when it comes to elongating the road between x and y? 

    I don't mind the wide curves of rivers and mountains as long as it makes sense. But placing trees near a mountainside just to block off a faster travelroute is not what I want to see. Another example are treeroots, the massive kind. The appear massive and conveniently block you from going over them or going under them. As not all games allow you to crouch. Or if you can it doesn't make any difference because you still appear to be blocked although visually there is plenty of space above your characters head. 

    Do you even notice such designed detours or are you oblivious of such things and just enjoy/race through the scenery?

    Would you like to see massive walls stopping you dead in your tracks. Caves that tunnel you through or under a lake/mountain. Would you enjoy the idea of having to climb and then jump off a tree to get from point A to B over and over again, with no alternative route?

    Or does it feel like handholding when it's the geography that tells you where you can or can't go, like a bottleneck system? Or are you just fed up with the flat or slightly curvy groundsurface, where you can spot a bat so far in the distance it takes you another 2 minutes to get in range of the thing, and hunger for more complex landscapes?


    This post was edited by Barin999 at April 29, 2020 10:55 PM PDT
    • 1315 posts
    April 30, 2020 4:51 AM PDT

    From my very short stint as a game modeler in college I remember that assigning and controlling boundary boxes on digital assets can be a real pain.  What may look like a curved surface is defined by planes that block movement in grey box space.  The end result can often be transparent walls which are certainly frustrating.

    I have not worked with the physics or movement portion of the Unity game engine yet and I imagine that the climbing portion of the game actually represents a significant amount of inventive programming.  That programming appears to bes able to translate lateral movement requests into a horizontal and vertical movement vector to slide along a bounding box plane outside of the effect of standard game physics while also changing to a different animation.  It likely requires some form of data feedback from the plane you are attempting to climb.  If its not native to Unity it’s a pretty impressive module.

    Over all though I think you are sorta stuck with awkward restrictive geography in a game with zone walls.  They are hand crafting the entire zone and need some way to enclose it and define it.  SWG had planetoid zones that would load based on render distances.  Many objects just did not have bounding boxes so there was a lot of passing through objects.

    SWGs randomized spawns and lack of points of interest made everything seem less important individually but was way more open ended than say WoW or EQ where every object was hand placed and defined.  There are trade offs to each choice.  I have a few ideas of my own to combine the two to make the best of both worlds but Pantheon at least is going down the Hand-crafted path.

    • 888 posts
    May 4, 2020 9:34 PM PDT

    I think much of what you're talking about (unpassable geometry that looks like we should be able to pass it), is really just an effort by the game designers to hide zone borders.  What I really don't want to see is a cellular-type of game world, where each zone is like a cell with a border all the way around it and only a couple of entrances/exits.  Sure, this cuts down on having a big zone border, but it makes the world seem small and exploration becomes more like being a rat in a maze than being a true explorer.  A real open world that encourages exploration will not use unpassable geography, since true exploration is more about picking a compass heading and working around obsticles, rather than being penned in to a small zone, where it's obvious you're in a game and in a zone with very specific level content.  A large zone border is far better and less immersion-breaking overall then putting us in the gaming equivalent of cubicles.

     

    Guild Wars 2 is an example of having a whole bunch of smallish zones, creating a claustrophobic feel.  It also feels too safe, because I know I'm in a zone for level X specifically, so I never really fear the environment or 'wandering off too far'.  Give us a real, open world and don't rely on unpassible geometry to "hide" borders.  Allow us to feel like we can go anywhere and are in a large, open world.

    • 238 posts
    May 5, 2020 1:44 AM PDT

    I'll be honest this is something that I have noticed but it doesn't really concern me because most games in which I generally take notice of it usually don't have meaningful exploration. I think that this becomes a bigger issue when a game actually wants you to get out and explore, but then implements such systems which prevent a full exploration experience. 

    I will say that on the few occasions in which I have taken more notice of it, it usually involves a scenario where I am trying to climb a hill either within the zone its self or to advance to the next zone and the hill appears to be climbable but either isn't or allows you to progress to an area where you are met will a wall of an impassable mountain. I don't want to see this kind of thing in Pantheon unless it's to prevent an abusable situation.

    What I would like to see though is the presence of geographical challenges such as walls that require a warrior to break, areas that require the druid's vine woven bridge, maybe areas that require levitation to reach safely. I know that it has been stated that these areas will be in-game, but I want to see them be prevalent and actually have an impact on class desirability, group composition, and the exploration capabilities of a group. I would like to have a fulfilling world exploration experience and be rewarded when more obscured locations are reached.  


    This post was edited by Baldur at May 5, 2020 1:45 AM PDT
    • 2756 posts
    May 5, 2020 2:57 AM PDT

    I remember playing Outer Worlds recently (a fun but short Fallout-a-like) and you could go down to a shoreline where there was a crash space ship. It really looked like you could get into it, but you couldn't actually enter the water beyond ankle deep - no swimming implemented - no underwater walking implemented. It was the zone edge.

    I thought "Oh. Ok. They aren't doing swimming then. This must be zone edge" and carried on with that suspension of disbelief 'stored'. That was it.

    A moment's mild confusion. A moment's mild disappointment. Done.

    Not ideal, but barely a blip on the 'ruined immersion' scale.

    I think most gamers are utterly used to it, now. You know there are boundaries and you know some regular ones.

    Sure, it would have been cool and immersive to allow me to wade out and drown or to swim, even, but the extra coding was unnecessary for the small amount of real estate that it effected in the game (one part of one planet).

    I know in EQ and games like it there were straight line zone 'walls', sometimes invisible, in every zone, but once you knew that *shrug* was it so bad?

    There are limitations in every game. It's a game, not a simulation. There are limits in every simulation. It doesn't server their purpose to model everything.

    I expect in Pantheon there will still be unclimbable boundaries. I will not be upset when there are. I'm sure they can make them convincingly and believably (so immersively) unclimbable and for good reasons (sheer cliffs, impenetrable trees, etc). They will possibly make them more irregular and interesting than the mostly predictable square edges of EQ so you can enjoy 'exploring' the limitations of a zone.

    I don't doubt when they say "everything is climbable" they mean everything *in zone* not the zone borders.

    I am looking forward, actually, to trying to climb every zone border and finding the 'secret' tree or cliff that *is* climbable and leads to a special sub-zone... It's a good way to make secrets: get people to see them as mundane - just looking like any other unclimbable zone edge part...


    This post was edited by disposalist at May 5, 2020 2:58 AM PDT
    • 3852 posts
    May 5, 2020 7:32 AM PDT

    I find it both convenient and reasonably realistic. If the developers haven't done anything with an area yet I would just as soon have landscape features block the way to it so I do not spend  hours wandering around an empty area looking for things that aren't there.

    • 888 posts
    May 5, 2020 11:14 AM PDT

    disposalist said:

    I remember playing Outer Worlds recently (a fun but short Fallout-a-like) and you could go down to a shoreline where there was a crash space ship. It really looked like you could get into it, but you couldn't actually enter the water beyond ankle deep - no swimming implemented - no underwater walking implemented. It was the zone edge.

    I prefer this to the GW2 approach of cliffs everywhere since at least the world looks open.

    • 18 posts
    May 6, 2020 8:21 AM PDT

    I guess where I'm lost, is the expectation of anything different?  In the OP's example, I totally get not being able to duck under the enormous tree root that has enough head space to get through, and not being able to.  That's a little disappointing (even though when I encounter something like that, I just shrug and move on.  It doesn't ruin any experiences for me).

    But zone walls?  This is just a thing I expect.  Even in Breath of the Wild, a HIGHLY explorable game, there were still map edges with limits.  If you go out there, you "die" and respawn within the game world.  So even games built around exploration still have world edges and "zone walls."  What do you realistically expect from Pantheon?  It is a zone-based game.  Zones will have boundaries.  You will encounter zone walls.  I'm not sure why this would ruin anyone's experience.


    This post was edited by erekai at May 6, 2020 8:22 AM PDT
    • 643 posts
    May 6, 2020 9:05 AM PDT

    EQ3/EQN made a huge mistake by making the topography so exaggerated that everything was unpleasant and immersion-breaking.

     

    I want a variety though.   I love plains where you can see for "miles" and I like jungles and mountains where you can't.

     

    I do not want alternate paths.  That whoel discussion sounds like the one about fast travel that says "once you've found a path through a zone you should be able to skip it instead of repeating the same travel".  That is the flawed "quality of life" and convenience arguments that ruin the genre.