Design Notes: Continents

[FallingStar]

To me driving the boat is only fun if there's someplace to go to other than the port that I want to arrive at eventually.  Some hidden beach or the like that I can access to do really interesting missions.  Otherwise its just a lot of WASD to get there over blue tiles, which isn't really fun to me.  Perhaps a middle ground would be exploring it once through a fog of war sort of thing, finding a new port with some hazards thrown in the way, then once you found it, you just auto travel if you want to go back.  I'd still probably lean to the side of just auto travel with some animation, but a thought.

I would agree that keeping some ocean accessible for player exploration would be nice, perhaps a continental shelf sort of thing where the coasts can be checked out for a few regions out until it drops into the deep ocean.  Or some big interior lakes inside continents and the like.

[tigersfan]

To me driving the boat is only fun if there's someplace to go to other than the port that I want to arrive at eventually.  Some hidden beach or the like that I can access to do really interesting missions.  Otherwise its just a lot of WASD to get there over blue tiles, which isn't really fun to me.  Perhaps a middle ground would be exploring it once through a fog of war sort of thing, finding a new port with some hazards thrown in the way, then once you found it, you just auto travel if you want to go back.  I'd still probably lean to the side of just auto travel with some animation, but a thought.

Seconded. This for me, is similar to my fear about changing the warp potions, I don't like the idea of manually travelling between all these places on multiple occasions.

[Martyn van Buren]

Just thinking --- if there's going to be sailing, surely thematically there has to be some connection to the wind?  It would be bizarre to spend hours struggling to push out against these fierce supernatural windstorms on land, and then you get in a boat and suddenly it's smooth sailing.  I shouldn't make suggestions --- if I understand rightly Keith has some ideas about what the wind is in story terms and an answer to this would have to come from that.  But I can't help it: I'd be very down for some kind of minigame about sailing through the wind the first time you travel to a new continent.  Or for a journey mission where you have to stop on a few extra-challenging islands to set up maritime wind shelters for your first trip to a new continent.

[nat_401]

I agree with FallingStar on this, unless there is some challange or benefit to sailing, leave it as auto travel. Maybe a mission involving sailing between costal pylons then the slaying of some sort of aquatic boss to represent forging a beachhead at a possible harbour the first time a continant is traveled to? Or a boat chunk where the level is the boat and you are defending it from waves of mobs and bosses for a set amount of time, but that would probebly get old real fast without some way of making each trip seem dynamic and fun.

[goodgimp]

I'd vastly prefer continents be something that's visible on the world map and that I can personally sail to.  It'd also open up the possibility down the road for sea adventures and exploration. I'd like to be able to sail around and find a continent that's much too hard for me at the time, or find a continent that is rich in a resource I'm short on, etc. For a game heavily about exploration, it'd be a shame to not actually be able to explore the world at large, within limits of course.

For the Macro game down the road (as in 3.0, 4.0, whatever) I think it'd be cool to have continents you "control" form an economy or ecosystem. I'm thinking along the lines of a stripped down Anno game. Continent 1 is rich is resource A and B, but lacks fertility for other crops and is poor in metals. But as you explore around, you find another continent that fills in a lot of those gaps, but alas.. it's controlled by an Overlord that is too powerful. Do you enlist some friends in multiplayer to try to take him down now, or do you set sail away to find another continent to build your power, giving a MacArthur-esque "I will return!" speech to the oppressed populace.

Of course, even once the continents were liberated, you'd still need to establish the traderoutes, which would mean ships. And ships are vulnerable to pirates, sea monsters, natural disasters, and all kinds of nasty stuff to keep giving you reasons to return to your old stomping grounds.

[Dizzard]

I agree with goodgimp on this.

I think it would be a shame for a game like AVWW that is all about exploration to sidestep what is probably one of the best known mediums of exploring: seafaring.

I'd like the option to fast travel to continents of course, but also it would be nice to have the option to go sailing in a boat. I actually had a suggestion about seafaring on the first or second day after I bought AVWW but I never suggested it on mantis. (not sure why...probably because it was something that would be so far in the future)

unless there is some challange or benefit to sailing

This statement is odd, I can think of about 1001 reasons why sailing would be a good thing. This is an exploration game after all. Exploring and sailing go together like fish & chips.

[Bluddy]

I'm going to vote for no sailing. I have a really hard time seeing how sailing will add anything to the game. The whole point of the map is that the tiles represent regions that can be entered and interacted with. I can't think of a sailing mechanic that won't get boring fast, unless you're going to flesh out all the ocean tiles, make a diving suit and put a ton of underwater content in the game. The other idea I can think of is to make sailing a treasure hunt. You'd find some clues about underwater cities and try to locate them. But as a transportation mechanic it sounds really boring (much as sailing was in Civ).

[goodgimp]

I'm going to vote for no sailing. I have a really hard time seeing how sailing will add anything to the game. The whole point of the map is that the tiles represent regions that can be entered and interacted with. I can't think of a sailing mechanic that won't get boring fast, unless you're going to flesh out all the ocean tiles, make a diving suit and put a ton of underwater content in the game. The other idea I can think of is to make sailing a treasure hunt. You'd find some clues about underwater cities and try to locate them. But as a transportation mechanic it sounds really boring (much as sailing was in Civ).

Let me elaborate a bit on where I'm coming from, then we can go from there or just agree to disagree.

If the world is split up into Continents, and those Continents are discrete chunks of gameplay (they have one Overlord, they have a set level range), I see Sailing as a method of traversing (via the standard overhead map) the "barrier" that exists between the continent you are on and the continent you are headed to.  You need to construct a ship to get across the barrier, otherwise if you could walk it... well, what is the barrier?

Anyway, the view I'm coming from is that this is an exploration game. If I start on a continent and just "unlock" a new continent that I can teleport to when I'm done with the current one... well, that's not really exploration to me. That seems more like I'm being linearly fed level-appropriate content to consume, and thus not very interesting.

What I would want to be able to do is to be able to discover continents, and those continents would be generated as I approach them.  Continents could be below my level, or match my level, or be way too hard for my level. I then have a choice as a player of where I want to explore and what I want to break into. I can now also set the Difficulty Level on the fly just by choosing where I move my adventures to.

What I was saying in my previous post about a stripped down Anno style game is just to give different reasons and motivations to go to a particular continent and to make those continents still "matter" once you've liberated them. A high-level continent might have something on it that you really, really want which might make you as a player want to test your mettle and see if you can successfully liberate it.  A lower level area might also give you a reason to want to travel there for the same reasons. Since this is going to have some 4X strategy elements to it, I'd like there to be strategic decisions as to where I'm going, rather than just magically unlocking a new continent/port when I've completed the previous one.  Of course, Fast Travel options should be given as well once a port on another continent is secured.

It also doesn't have to be sailing. It can be airships that have a fuel range (which could be extended by building certain structures or limited based on a resource that you can acquire). It doesn't matter to me too much about the exact mechanic used, the big thing for me is that *I* want to be the one driving the exploration, I don't want content handed to me whenever I've finished the continent I'm currently on. It's too gamey for my tastes and really misses a big exploration opportunity in a title that bills itself as primarily an exploration-driven game.

Now, I'm certainly not trying to convince you of anything because this is just a matter of taste, but now that I'm posting on a real keyboard instead of my phone I thought I would at least elaborate a little bit on what it is specifically that I'm wanting, and why I want it.

[FallingStar]

I suppose part of it depends on how continents are being generated.  I'm assuming it will be rather like the current system where you might start on a small group of regions that are revealed, then have more level appropriate chunks slowly pop in/be generated on the fly as you level up/mission now.  Considering that you already pick the level of difficulty in that system by just choosing your civ level vs where you explore, I'm not sure especially high or low continents would work (especially if you're playing on each 20-40 hours).  Also "picking" a continent has little meaning in that system since other than the starter position, most of it would be filled in as you went along.

If, on the other hand, continents are being totally generated /revealed (anno style) when you first find them, I could see more player choice on which to pick next being a more important mechanism.  In that case its more like choosing a new map seed in AI War, finding one that looks interesting.  The issue I'd see with that is that you'd be tossing out the current macro exploration/ revealing mechanic (new tiles filling in) to have some sort of different revealing mechanic.  At that point sailing exploration would be the only way you're exploring the macro map . .but still WASD over ocean feels less exciting than the current revealing mechanic.

Anyways, just a few thoughts.  Could be that things are changing more than I realize, and it might change some things if its going towards full revealing off the bat or not.

[Bluddy]

I get what you're saying, goodgimp. You want there to be an element of discovery (as in discovering a new continent) as well as choice. The problem is how to integrate that with what's in the rest of the game plan.

If you've played civilization, you'll know that sailing is very prominent there. It gets tedious at times, but it has its place as a mechanic. Sailing is a technological discovery that you work towards. There's an opportunity cost since you're giving up on discovering other things and focusing on seafaring instead. Then there's an opportunity cost to creating ships. Then there's another opportunity cost since you have to cross great oceans, spending many turns looking for another continent. When you do find a continent, it's rewarding. You might not find anything at all, in which case you've just spent a whole bunch of resources, including game turns, exploring.

Without a similar mechanic, exploration via sailing is meaningless. It'll just be crossing large swathes of sea to get from continent to continent, but since the game allows you to traverse as much land (and I assume sea as well) as you want without ending a turn (and now there won't even be turns) it's just an empty mechanic. There's no real choice because you could just go off and explore the whole map with no cost.

I'm not saying that sailing shouldn't be integrated. I'm just saying that given the model that's being considered, it's not clear where sailing will fit in. Perhaps you can craft ships and then send your citizens off to look for other continents. Exploration will then cost turns, but that's still not enough because there must be a meaning to turns advancing in terms of sailing -- there has to be an opportunity cost. Frankly, I'm a little too unclear about the mechanics of the new vision of the macro-game to even know how to suggest integrating sailing in there. There have been so many suggestions and so much brainstorming, that I want to wait and see in which direction the game actually settles. For now, throwing sailing in there seems like taking a kitchen sink approach. It's yet another element to fit into the puzzle of the game mechanics.

For the time being, I'm ok with other ways of moving between continents. You could be given a choice of different continents to choose from, or perhaps you could search for secret passageways to other continents -- this could also serve as another thing to find in the side-scroller.

[x4000]

Moving this out of the brainstorming subforum, as this is now a reality rather than conjecture.  There's more that we need to do with continents long-term, but for now the basics seem really solid in practice.