Is the travel system in this game and all the instancing temporary?

Part three is out in December.

 

Sorry Chris if that offended, it wasn't my intention, it is a valid concern I and many others have on the concept of crowdsourcing in general. Portalarium is at the vanguard along with several other small companies of redefining the game industry by going directly to its fans to fund projects. As I said before I support it, because I don't think a game like SotA, or say Pathfinder Online, would ever get the funding it needed for the big guys. On my first experiences of the game arent what I was expecting, and it may turn out I do not like the game one Iota(doubtful), but I would still fund it, because a game from your crew deserves to see the light of day.

Prime example, does Portalarium, offer to us, the funders of the project, a annual breakdown? As a private company Portalarium, or any other crowdsourced game is not required to provide it, because "technically" we are donating funds to you/buying a product.

And the question still has not been answered. If this game hypothetically was to all the sudden get a major influx of crowdsourcing, say in the next 3 months it got another 10 mil, even tho the primary funding and some of the stretch funding has been completed, what would happen with that 10 million?

Where would it go? What would it be used for? Would it cause I a rethinking of design? Would you shut off crowdsourcing, as you have enough funds to finance the goals set out?

Its all hypothetical, but that doesn't make the questions invalid ones to ask, especially when looking down the road at the future of crowdsourcing.

And don't feel bad Chris at all, I left the corporate techie world, and all my shiny new cars, to drive around a 15 year old SUV, but now I am doing something I love, and that's far better for the soul then any shiny new car or a corporate wage can give ya, I am sure you would agree


On another side tangent, me and some friends were talking/fantasizing about maybe Richard should start a kick starter to buy the Origin IP rights back from EA lol.

 

Also, will you have the ability to make the "instances" larger?

My guess is yes because the city/town instances are quite larger then the pvp/random roaming instances.

That will go a LONG way to alleviating my issues with the game.

 

Dont forget to pre-order the extended 2nd movie of the hobbit.

 

Sir, If I lived close I would definitely buy you a beer! *cheers*

 

The dual-scale hex-scene system works well for me. The single scale large world is a bit more "connected" compared to the SotA style, but with larger worlds comes much more wasted, empty space in between Points of Interest.

With the current system, they can make meaningful areas even for "generic" areas as well as continue to modify and replace areas that aren't up to par. They can also add in events to scenes after the game is released creating a more dynamic world. With a single-scale inclusive world, you have to patch the entire map to make these changes. With SotA's system, it's a much smaller patch.

So basically, it can give more dynamic, meaningful areas to the world without having huge patches to do it.

Hopefully in time, the world gets fleshed out enough scene-wise so that we don;t have the same "generic" scene in most hexes on the map.

 

Man, I wish I was home....I'm not back from this deployment for another month or so...Seattle is not far from Victoria BC....

If you ever get up to Victoria Chris let me know...I will buy you that beer.

PS: I note you used KM's to talk about your car...are you canadian?

 

Damned PaX........

Tickets to that damn thing always sell out within a day so I never get a chance to go heh.

 

This are very good news, thank you Chris

 

Still hoping for my zooming out with fog/clouds obscuring the view while loading idea to happen

 

TBH the last couple of years all the open world MMOs I played didn't have that either. Having a seamless open world doesn't mean either of the things you want to experience are going to happen.
I don't like the way the hexes are designed right now. The invisible wall forests are terrible from a immersion point of view... but I can imagine exploring all the hexes in New Britannia is great fun,
and even if not every hex is different in the first episode, I'd prefer well designed hexes over a dull open world which is empty most of the time. I have faith that they redesign those hex borders to feel less
artificial.

 

How is this a good thing?
To what extent do we take the diversity of players out of the game to replace it with "matching people with similar qualities"?

Why would I want to meet people who are exactly like me? Why wouldnt I want to meet ALL kinds of people?
Is there gonna be an option to be matched RANDOMLY?
Please, answer, Chris.
Thanks.

 

The map travel doesn't bug me as much as others I guess, what I would like to see is the random events that pop up when you are traveling to have some challenge to them or a chance at some crafting components or something along those lines.

Like a group of bandits with a leader try to take you out and if you stop them there is a chance of some chest loot or a big gold pile they were hording around. Or you find a strange Ore deposit that yields an larger than normal amount of resources.

 

Please pardon my persitence and possible ignorance, but I simply hope that you're going to read this and possibly explain a point or three in that posting to come (I really like your post release postings ).

I'm not sure if we're even talking about the same things here, because some of this sounds perfectly possible (considering ~SOME~ overhead!) with a 'hybrid' solution as offered through Unity itself (according to their API description). Through dynamically loading and unloading the scenes with LoadLevelAdditiveAsync you'd still have a similar scaling. Everything would still be divided into 'hexes' (scenes) for Unity together with the players, you'd still have player matching and the ability to add content on the fly, because the 'seamless' vision is simply a visual effect for the player. Nothing more, nothing less. You'd just have to handle the transition, but you are doing that right now with the dual scale map as well with a single expecption, you only have one scene at a time, where you might end up having four at most with a 'seamless' attempt. On the other hand, you could drastically decrease the scene size and thus end up with barely more than what you already have. All you are saving is the graphical dependency.
Could you help me understand where I am underestimating the required effort?