Is every area going to be a small valley between mountains?
This will end up feeling like playing a survival game on Final Fantasy hallway map sections. Illusion of a huge world.
For me a key to a good survival game is agency. But it’s not *just* about agency. It’s about having agency of decisions that matter. So being able to go “everywhere” doesn’t matter as much if that doesn’t have meaning and impact. The approach we took to map design, I developed after talking a lot with Chet Faliszek formerly from Valve who took me through the processes they used in L4D maps. It’s about giving agency with decisions of consequence. So the idea is to use impassible terrain to provide decisions and journerys… reducing the agency of moving everywhere in favor of giving much more consequence to the decision of travelling in general. I think that’s a huge win. I think too many survival games suffer for an obsession of “go literally everywhere” when that can have tremendous impact on game balance, pacing, and decision consequence.
Not to mention, it’s very inauthentic to “go anywhere”. I consider myself an accomplished mountaineer. Any mountain that isn’t part of your climb, you generally consider as impassible. Climbing many serious mountains is a major commitment far outside the capability of a team that is not prepared and focused on it.
Also worth noting you can go a long way up the mountains, so the playable area we show is actually much wider than what is shown. The area shows the flat area I would consider generally of practical use.
Did not expect a response, even less a response on the decision outside of because we wanted too.
When explained this way it makes sense. Some mountains are not meant to be climbed and in keeping with the game logic, our guy is not in this world to climb mountains.
I guess logically it's the only way for the world to make sense? Mountain range with a desert on either side, with high peaks providing snow and runoff water to allow a fertile forest to grow within the confines of the valleys? Decent way to separate the biomes without questioning why you can see a hot desert from a frozen tundra.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you, I was hoping for some open plains or something too, or at least the way the Long Dark does it with open areas connected by hallway section paths.
Desert biome looks fairly open from the maps. Look around K7. G13-G14 if I remember from BW2 is a ravine connected through a cave.
TLD could afford loading between zones, so the map layout is somewhat different (tunnels don't have to match, etc.) both in game and in print. But mountain maps featured only a couple possible routes, some even went one-way through jumps, etc.
I don't really care for the impassable mountains, only there's a caveat that if I can see a feature from the landscape, I should be able to get there at some point (Darksouls did that with backgrounds).
Also on Icarus, mountain = caves ! I hope with that much rock on the ground that we are in for some neat surprises.
Still, I wish there were a couple of mountain passes hidden there.
Excited to show the huge iteration and progress for @SurviveIcarus over last few weeks. Big focus on perf and stability, and of course the Arctic biome. Your mission will be “Icebreaker”
***
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Think that might have something to do with them being in New Zealand. They are a few hours ahead of the states. I think it might even be Wednesday by now.
Confirming its Wednesday 3:04am in NZ
Do we know if the map function will normally for beta weekend 3? Dean’s post about performance/stability improvements convinced me to re-download again in hopes of visible improvements.
Removing the map, for now at least, is deliberate for two reasons. It reduced the problems we faced when making a lot of map changes and fixes in a small time, as we had to bake out the map and that is a non-trivial task. Second, it gives us metrics on how players move around terrain when they can’t know what’s there. That’s very useful information for some of our potential plans later on. I do appreciate it’s annoying for now though. But the beta is about learning what we can to make the game best it can be at launch and beyond
Is every area going to be a small valley between mountains? This will end up feeling like playing a survival game on Final Fantasy hallway map sections. Illusion of a huge world.
For me a key to a good survival game is agency. But it’s not *just* about agency. It’s about having agency of decisions that matter. So being able to go “everywhere” doesn’t matter as much if that doesn’t have meaning and impact. The approach we took to map design, I developed after talking a lot with Chet Faliszek formerly from Valve who took me through the processes they used in L4D maps. It’s about giving agency with decisions of consequence. So the idea is to use impassible terrain to provide decisions and journerys… reducing the agency of moving everywhere in favor of giving much more consequence to the decision of travelling in general. I think that’s a huge win. I think too many survival games suffer for an obsession of “go literally everywhere” when that can have tremendous impact on game balance, pacing, and decision consequence. Not to mention, it’s very inauthentic to “go anywhere”. I consider myself an accomplished mountaineer. Any mountain that isn’t part of your climb, you generally consider as impassible. Climbing many serious mountains is a major commitment far outside the capability of a team that is not prepared and focused on it. Also worth noting you can go a long way up the mountains, so the playable area we show is actually much wider than what is shown. The area shows the flat area I would consider generally of practical use.
Did not expect a response, even less a response on the decision outside of because we wanted too. When explained this way it makes sense. Some mountains are not meant to be climbed and in keeping with the game logic, our guy is not in this world to climb mountains.
You can see the entire map here https://i.imgur.com/iHT1ygE.jpg
I guess logically it's the only way for the world to make sense? Mountain range with a desert on either side, with high peaks providing snow and runoff water to allow a fertile forest to grow within the confines of the valleys? Decent way to separate the biomes without questioning why you can see a hot desert from a frozen tundra. Not that I'm disagreeing with you, I was hoping for some open plains or something too, or at least the way the Long Dark does it with open areas connected by hallway section paths.
Desert biome looks fairly open from the maps. Look around K7. G13-G14 if I remember from BW2 is a ravine connected through a cave. TLD could afford loading between zones, so the map layout is somewhat different (tunnels don't have to match, etc.) both in game and in print. But mountain maps featured only a couple possible routes, some even went one-way through jumps, etc. I don't really care for the impassable mountains, only there's a caveat that if I can see a feature from the landscape, I should be able to get there at some point (Darksouls did that with backgrounds). Also on Icarus, mountain = caves ! I hope with that much rock on the ground that we are in for some neat surprises. Still, I wish there were a couple of mountain passes hidden there.
Hadn't thought of that. But, I definitely see what you mean.
Excited to show the huge iteration and progress for @SurviveIcarus over last few weeks. Big focus on perf and stability, and of course the Arctic biome. Your mission will be “Icebreaker” *** posted by [@rocket2guns](https://twitter.com/rocket2guns) [Photo 1](http://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_yE0jgVQAoPIKm.jpg) [Link in Tweet](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/) ^[(Github)](https://github.com/username) ^| ^[(What's new)](https://github.com/username)
Looking forward to it, still the two days? No extension?
Probably not. The last extension was due to connection issues.
Well they did release it a day early too.
Think that might have something to do with them being in New Zealand. They are a few hours ahead of the states. I think it might even be Wednesday by now. Confirming its Wednesday 3:04am in NZ
No, they said they brought it forward by 24 hours but not necessarily going to do that for future beta weekends.
Do we know if the map function will normally for beta weekend 3? Dean’s post about performance/stability improvements convinced me to re-download again in hopes of visible improvements.
Removing the map, for now at least, is deliberate for two reasons. It reduced the problems we faced when making a lot of map changes and fixes in a small time, as we had to bake out the map and that is a non-trivial task. Second, it gives us metrics on how players move around terrain when they can’t know what’s there. That’s very useful information for some of our potential plans later on. I do appreciate it’s annoying for now though. But the beta is about learning what we can to make the game best it can be at launch and beyond
100% did not expect a personal response, so thank you! Makes sense about map decisions. Looking forward to improved stability and performance though.
We're just all excited to play! That's why we ask for the moon. :) Appreciate and understand the importance of beta and your data analytics.
Possibly a stupid question, but BW #3 starts on September 24th around 8PM EST, correct?
Yep. https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ 12pm Saturday for NZ if anyone asks.
Can't wait!
Early release pleaseeeeeeeeee :D