HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR WORLD MAP?

I'm big on geography, fictional and otherwise.

I have noticed that I become enraptured with games that never really show you the full world. Breath of Fire 3, Legend of Dragoon, Final Fantasy 12, Suikoden series, Saga Frontier 2, FFX (to a degree) etc. There is a charm in the player have to find out 'what's out there', as opposed to there 'HERE YOU GO HERE'S EVERYTHING' world map treatment that the FF's from 1-9 gives you. It makes the world feel really small and it's probably the reason why many people think RPGs have 7-8 towns in their entire worlds.

Even in those games in which you get to eventually TRAVEL the full world (Saga Frontier 2, for instance, while you see the full world map at the first 5 minutes of the game, by the end of the game you have hardly explored 'most' of it), there is a certain charm in not letting you see everything there is to see right off the bat. If I may Lennon, I would like to use your screen that you showed us before as an example of 'Region by Region' (hey its free publicity)

http://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users/3235/locker/worldmap.png

That's why I like the region by region thing, every region gets its own special attention and treatment, and a lot of attention can be paid to those individual areas. That's how my game is doing it, and yeah, a little into the game you get a world map item that calls up a picture of the games world(because the shape of the world isn't a mystery to the inhabitants in it), but the actual world map traveling will be region by region.

Haha, you all ain't going to like what I think of doing in a world map:

http://rpgmaker.net/media/content/games/1371/screenshots/wbscreen3.png

I thought SMB3 had it right.

I'm with Solitayre on the expansive territory with hidden side areas. I really liked the way Elder Scrolls just gives you a world with basically no instructions on how to interact with it. When a world's that big, there's not really a "HERE YOU GO HERE'S EVERYTHING" factor because there's just SO MUCH. If you actually explored everything, you'd probably feel like you'd been around the entire world.

Of course, this doesn't work for any RM game I've ever seen, just because of the sheer content required.

There's something to be said for RPGs that don't have overworld maps (Earthbound) or games where the action takes place on a number of different worlds (SaGa Frontier). It's a nice break from the ordinary, and forces the game to give more detail to individual regions and towns.

this is an old version though. it's sort of like the SMB3 one.

I also like the Earthbound no world map style, and regions is alright.

I like big, explorable worldmaps (w. scrolling allowing for player exploration by air for example), however it would entirely depend on what kind of game we're talking here. In one of the two games I'm trying to make, I''m having a non-scrollable map of... well, the region which is basically a a handful of kingdoms and their border areas simply because the game is set in this specific region and there's really no point in having an extended world for it (see Lord of the Rings heh). There's still a few "optionals" or secrets to be explored but travelling is limited within the specific region

it all depends on the type of game you want to have

my current project does not have a worldmap at all: it has a large map that serves as a sort of centrel hub, where all the game's areas can be directly accessed from (its pretty similar in style to Peach's Castle in Mario 64)

the new one I'm planning will use a worldmap that's just be one large country on its own continent

the type of worldmap you use will have a large impact on a game's sense of scale and style, so its worth thinking about what method will suit your game best

I like my world maps spherical and spinable.