Overworld map travel, too easy?

[BobTheJanitor]

At the moment, the game basically allows you to travel to any tile (sans ocean, which I'll get to momentarily) as long as its level is less than or equal to your civ level plus 10. Is this, perhaps, too forgiving? From a 'realism' perspective, how can I float magically over these monster infested lands? I know previously the game had windstorms that would automatically drop you into platformer view after you took a certain number of steps, unless you ended on a wind shelter. That was removed, I think rightly so, because it doesn't sound like it adds much to the game. But I think the game is too far in the other direction now, allowing you to go anywhere you want within your level limits.

The only variety (that I know of so far) is the ocean tiles, which will always pull you in as soon as you stand on them. That makes them dangerous, and something to be avoided at all costs currently. I'm thinking there might be something to this danger that could be added to normal travel. One idea would be to use an RPG-esque random encounter system, where you might have a small percentage chance to be dropped into an area when traveling over it, if it is above your level. As the level variations go higher, the chance could increase to the point where you couldn't move forward any further. Before I just toss that up on mantis, I wanted to see if that was even an interesting idea to anyone else, or if people like completely free movement on the world map as it stands right now, or if there were any other ideas to make world map travel more interesting.

Right now the overworld part of the game doesn't have much gameplay, it's just a way of getting from point A to point B. Easy and simple, but without some risk or challenge there's not much room for fun either. The Zelda II overworld, for example, had the random wandering monsters that could appear in your path, and that simple addition made that map more than just an exercise in walking.

There might be more planned for this part of the game and simply not yet implemented, so maybe I'm jumping the gun here by even suggesting changes. If so, oh well, at least it's something to chat about!

[tigersfan]

I think this has a lot of merit. I know the reason I cannot stand Baldur's Gate is because of all the walking with NOTHING to do in it. Now, AVWW doesn't have nearly the same amount of walking and doing nothing else that BG has, but, I don't that that invalidates your point.

Now, while I agree with you on principle, I see a few problems, the first being - what would you be randomly encountering? Yet ANOTHER microboss? Do we really want more microbosses just randomly thrown at us? A plain-jane enemy? Then we'd be pulled out of the map for something that doesn't even grant us XP.

The other is more of a potential issue than an actual one, but too many random encounters can be really annoying. Even Zelda 2 had me screaming at the tv once or twice "JUST LET ME GET TO THE TOWN ALREADY!!!"

[Terraziel]

Random encounters from the overworld map is something I had thought about suggesting as well, despite generally disliking random encounters, because the sense of impunity from walking round the world sort of ruins mood for me

Unfortunately the question about what you would be encountering stumped me somewhat, microbosses, aside from being repetitive would sort of encourage grinding, the best I could come up with was instead of random encounters make it random events, so maybe you get caught in a rhino stampede, or an attack on some scattered survivors, or simply a blizzard so a temporary windstorm with you spawning in a building,

To the comment about many random encounters being annoying I think the obvious suggestion is to make roads stop them so that travelling across the road network is essentially the safe method of travel.

[Lancefighter]

I once thought id be cool and travel deeper into the water tiles my first time around, thinking I could just immediately leave the ocean like I did the last time..

Yeah. Not gonna try that again.


(also, why is there not like a 'beach' chunk or something on the edge of the water, in sidescrolly mode? The far right area can have some land, to warn you 'Youre about to try to walk on water bro', and making initially exploring the ocean a tad less.. scary)

[BobTheJanitor]

I would say you could use a sliding scale of chance to encounter, based on level variance. So if I'm level 5 on a level 6 tile, maybe there's only a 5% chance. That could go up by 5% with each difference between me and the tile I'm standing on, so that when I get up to a level 15 tile, at 10 levels above me, there's a 50% chance of attack if I step on it. Windstorms could go so far as to double the difficulty, so a +10 level tile with a windstorm is always going to pull you in. This also means that on equal or lower level tiles you can always travel over them with no danger, so once you get closer to your settlement you shouldn't be running into random encounters pointlessly.

As far as what you get pulled in to, I was just assuming you would get pulled in to the side view world of that tile and randomly placed somewhere within the first few sections of that area. (I'm forgetting the lingo here... area, region, chunk, etc. so this may be a little vague) Although the idea of being rarely pulled in to a small area with a micro-boss in it is kind of interesting as well.

[x4000]

I don't know, I think that something visual like what Zelda 2 did with its visibly wandering monsters might be okay, but that requires a lot of game engine jiggering to get that multiplayer-safe.  Anything that's just invisible random chance I'm really against; unlike most other people here, I played on the old system where you'd get sucked in a lot more commonly, and I can't stress enough how dramatically un-fun that was.  Overall I'm thinking of this world map as basically being just an interface that you use to move around between the actual challenging parts of the game.

Think about all that would be affected by this: you'd wind up wandering in the wilderness a lot because of getting sucked in, etc.  I think that if you feel like you're exploring and want to go somewhere new, wandering in the wilderness, that's great.  But when you just are trying to get back to town, and the game makes you walk in the wilderness just because you had the audacity to walk on the world map, that doesn't really feel very good to me.  If I had to pick one thing that I really dislike about my favorite game ever, FF6, it would be the random encounters -- the way that Chrono Trigger handled it, where you could see them and even avoid a lot of them, was much better.  And I should note that also Chrono Trigger had no random encounters on its world map, either.

I think more could potentially be done with the world map, but I'm not keen on the idea of random encounters or sucking the player into region tiles any more than we already are (the deep and the lava flats also do it, by the way, not just oceans).

[stblr]

I'm against random encounters, but I do like the idea of wandering mobs on the world map. I'm imagining a system much like the Hammer Bros you'd run across in Super Mario Bros 3. Running into them (sometimes avoidable, sometimes not) ported you to a level that was no more than a single screen, but the combination of the level design and the enemy abilities meant it was a challenge without being too time-consuming or punishing if you lost. I think something like that would fit quite nicely into AVWW.

[x4000]

I'm against random encounters, but I don like the idea of wandering mobs on the world map. I'm imagining a system much like the Hammer Bros you'd run across in Super Mario Bros 3. Running into them (sometimes avoidable, sometimes not) ported you to a level that was no more than a single screen, but the combination of the level design and the enemy abilities meant it was a challenge without being too time-consuming or punishing if you lost. I think something like that would fit quite nicely into AVWW.

I think something like that would work well, too.  And it could move them around every strategic turn, too.  That would make it something that's also multiplayer-safe even in the current framework, and not something that you have to watch where you walk as closely.  Something along those lines is definitely the sort of direction I'd be inclined to go.

[Dizzard]

I don't like the idea of random battles. I much rather it when you can see the enemies and decide whether to engage.

I think random battles would be more of an irritant than difficult. I'd much rather choose my battles instead of the game choosing them for me. If done right there would be a natural necessity to engage enemies anyway so it wouldn't be too much of a problem. (and they could choose to engage those enemies on their own terms rather than the games)

Anyone who has ever explored a cave in the pokemon series will agree. Being bombarded by Zubats isn't difficult, just repulsively annoying.

Random battles is something I'd want a mod to disable if it was included.

[BobTheJanitor]

I'm not really fond or random battles either, to be honest. Although I still do feel there should be some way that the game encourages you not to poke around on tiles that are much higher level than you are. It seems like expanding the map should require some effort or have some sort of risk/reward mechanic. Randomly being drawn into the middle of an area may not be a good way to go about it, but that's kind of why I posted this, to see if there were any other ideas that could accomplish the same goal of making you think twice before wandering around on tiles that are too high level for you to be toying with.

[Echo35]

I'm against random encounters, but I don like the idea of wandering mobs on the world map. I'm imagining a system much like the Hammer Bros you'd run across in Super Mario Bros 3. Running into them (sometimes avoidable, sometimes not) ported you to a level that was no more than a single screen, but the combination of the level design and the enemy abilities meant it was a challenge without being too time-consuming or punishing if you lost. I think something like that would fit quite nicely into AVWW.

I think something like that would work well, too.  And it could move them around every strategic turn, too.  That would make it something that's also multiplayer-safe even in the current framework, and not something that you have to watch where you walk as closely.  Something along those lines is definitely the sort of direction I'd be inclined to go.

I was thinking about this myself. At the moment, I can just sort of go anywhere I want ant not worry about getting stomped by anything, or send my scouts all over the place. When you build wind shelters,  the game builds roads between them. How about utilizing that in some way? Make it so there are small, one screen random encounters like you guys said (And you could even make them thematic ones that don't have monsters in them at all, but side quests and stuff like Fallout 1/2 did) but when travelling on the roads, you are completely safe. This would make wilderness adventuring risky and interesting, while at the same time, giving wind shelters a much more significant purpose.

[x4000]

I think there's more pressing stuff in the short-term, honestly, but I could totally see it evolving in that direction with more time.  Mainly because we need more of the side-view part of the game built up before the absolute best path here is going to be clear (or even possible to implement).  But having something like this in mind for when the game's ready to have that added is certainly a good thing.  I very much share the goal of making the wilderness feel wild and the roads feel purposeful.

[c4sc4]

What about putting the windstorm dropping you into a region mechanic back in but in a different way. It could be something like if you move onto a tile with a windstorm, you have a X% chance of being sucked in like on the ocean/the deep/lava flats, aka the third chink in the region (perhaps if you've already been sucked in you can't be sucked in again for Y movements on the world map to prevent you from unluckily being constantly sucked into a region). This would add some danger to adventuring on the world map, make windstorms more relevant  and it would give windshelters and roads another use, providing safe regions/pathways of travel on the world map. This also seems to be inline with the original intent of windstorms and windshelters.

[x4000]

What about putting the windstorm dropping you into a region mechanic back in but in a different way. It could be something like if you move onto a tile with a windstorm, you have a X% chance of being sucked in like on the ocean/the deep/lava flats, aka the third chink in the region (perhaps if you've already been sucked in you can't be sucked in again for Y movements on the world map to prevent you from unluckily being constantly sucked into a region). This would add some danger to adventuring on the world map, make windstorms more relevant  and it would give windshelters and roads another use, providing safe regions/pathways of travel on the world map. This also seems to be inline with the original intent of windstorms and windshelters.

That would lead to even more self-conscious movement across the map.  Definitely no on anything that sucks you in automatically based on percentage chances or anything of that nature that includes a random or something that oscillates per movement step.  That just makes it to overwhelming to... walk.

[Spork]

Please, no random encounters. But I do agree that the exploration is to easy. Personally, I think the windstorms can be the key to make exploration harder.  The old implementation was just not so fun (Actually I don't know since I never played it)

Idea:
Tiles with windstorms force players to sidescrolling view. You could leave the level directly by walking back (Like in the oceans) but you will then be forced back to the tile you came from before entering the windstormed area. (This should also be the case with the oceans by the way, because at the moment you can just fall into an ocean, walk back, and then continue from that tile. Making you able to cross rivers for example)

Going thorough the whole windstormed area will make you exit at the current tile. After that you can choose to continue to any neighboring tile as usual. For this to work, it has to be an exit at the end of the world.

  Windstormed areas have much harder enemies.

  Every X move, the windstorm change place, warning you if your neighboring tiles is to be effected next round.

  Wait command: Advance one 'move' without moving your character.

  Wind shelters will remove all windstorms within a certain distance. The roads are always safe.

  For this to be fun, the sidescrolling exploration needs to be more fun and have more content, instead of the current: Hold space and 'd'.