WORLD MAPS

What I actually dislike more than the world map itself is the idea of walking across the entire continent. A traditional FF/DW world map doesn't work at all in most games these days, because modern games typically have more sensible settings, like a nation or a group of small contiguous nations (FF12, Dragon Age Origins, Suikoden series), a small region (FF10, Chrono Cross, Pokemon series, Mario & Luigi series), a single city (Fallout 3, SMT: Devil Survivor, Dragon Age 2), or even just a single building or city block (Arkham Asylum, The World Ends With You, Castlevania). Though, note that of these example, Chrono Cross and the Suikoden series do actually have world maps.

Somehow a worldwide adventure in a world with three cities on each continent just seems really stupid to me these days. Especially on foot. At least when you're given a choice of places to instantly go, I can imagine the justification "Oh, it's only listing the places that you have any reason to go. You could theoretically go anywhere in the world, but the other hundred thousand cities are just not listed." But when everywhere other than the cities you can visit is full of wild monsters, and you really need to stop at an item shop or an inn but the closest one is 1600 miles away, sometimes my suspension of disbelief snaps and I'm just like WTF.

I actually feel like a battle-filled world map would make perfect in a game like Pokemon or Fallout. The locations are geographically close enough that travel by foot makes sense, and also close enough that there's not anything in between except open world, but far enough away that there is at least *some* open world, and the world is so full of monsters that getting in 6 battles on the way from a town to a nearby cave is totally believable.

Logical reasoning aside, an overworld does add a new element of gameplay and gives the player more monsters to fight; though some games, like Chrono Trigger, don't have enemies on the world map. If you're just including a world map to have more low-stress battles where the player isn't locked into catacombs, they serve their purpose, though a short dungeon that connects two towns (like a road or a river bank or something) serves the same purpose. I am curious what other reasons people have for choosing to include a world map, besides nostalgia.

Kentona, we all know that your every design decision is controlled solely by nostalgia factor. You can sit in the corner. ;)

In my personal experience with games, I am accustomed to world maps. It never occurred to me that games could be made without a world map. In my first game I created a huge world map, probably too big. I am still trying to figure it out. I totally agree about the faster movement. However even in some of the more modern games out there, there is a need for the world map. When a person goes from being in the woods and goes flying in the sky or boating in the ocean, there is usually a world map to show the greater expanse of the world. If there is no flying in the sky, how would you get around quickly. I guess a teleporter or warp point.

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of games like Sonic, or Mario, where the 3D games were at it's best, but you put that, in a RPG, say with RPG maker, isn't those games suppose to be sidescrollers? Not, WALK HERE TO HERE? WHAT THE HELL! I love it better when in the platforming games, for some reason, I've never played DX, but found the hub worlds to be cool! And Super Mario 64 and Banjo Zazooie did great with the ideas of a hub world, the only problem I can find with a RPG styled world map in a platforming game, is that some games don't work well with it, if you play Super Mario 1,2,3,world,EVEN NEW SUPER MARIO, there's going to be challenges on the world map, but if it was just a walk here to there, I wouldn't like it. I know this isn't the point of this thread...but I was just making a point, that is based on this thread, anyways, I love world maps as long as their not too big, I've never played a game where you have a world map screen where you slect where to go to next, but I think that's a better idea ^_^ long explanations for no apparent reason FOR THE WIN!

Ah, after reading Avee's post, I do agree that a world map offers a simple and interesting way for the player to be able to find new areas with a small amount of effort. You can of course do the same thing in a small-scale game where everything is connected via normal area maps, like the Legend of Zelda series, but it's more difficult to create a hidden area in an instant travel style world map like Final Fantasy Tactics, Dragon Age, the DS remake of Lufia 2, etc.

Verincia, I don't really see the problem. FF10 and FF12 both have airships that add instant menu-style world travel to the games. Until you get the airships, travel in those two games consists of a series of connected normal area maps.

A different method is used in the DS remake of Lufia 2 (Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals). Whenever you leave town or exit a dungeon, the game gives you a menu of places to go, and different locations just get added to the menu as they become available in the game. Some are added once you get a reason to go to them, while others are added once you obtain methods of transportation that let you reach them.

A third method is Secret of Mana's world map, which looks kind of like a traditional map, but is only used when flying. On foot, SoM is just a series of connected normal maps, but in the air, you can see the whole world map and how it all connects. You can land anywhere, and will be dropped off at what the game thinks is the closest equivalent spot in the normal maps. Some areas can only be reached by flying. To keep the player from skipping large sections of dungeons once he can fly, almost all areas are indoors later in the game.

A fourth method is to just teleport. Typically most teleport spells can only go to specific locations (designated warp points, or sometimes any town you've visited). Sometimes they also have specific casting conditions - Pokemon's Fly spell can only be cast while outside, while Earthbound's Teleport Alpha spell requires a large open area to speed up to 88 mph.

You can also do it MMORPG style, where everything is connected by foot in either interconnected normal maps or in one giant massive world-sized map, and methods of transportation are available to travel quickly and automatically (but not instantly) across large distances. For example, the flight paths in World of Warcraft. This is slower, but gives a player the feeling that every part of the world is being represented in the game, it's not just skipping over anything. Which can be good if that's what you want to convey.

I like the world maps like the one you find in Fallout or even in Baldur's Gate. Alright they're two different kinds. The Fallout one is very similar to the "classic" world map with you being represented by a dot walking around in an area. And occasionally a location pops up that you can visit (If it was secret before) and the map also contains a bunch of locations that you know about.

Arcanum also did this and in a way I like even more because in that case the map actually looked like a map. (Whereas in Fallout, since you were playing on the west coast of north America, there wasn't a whole lot of terrain considerations)

Which brings me to another point. I like maps. I mean I really like proper maps. Sometimes when I go on Google Maps I can just spend an hour or two just looking at maps and the evolution of towns and areas from the satellite view. But I also like looking at paper maps and roads and terrain and whatnot. So I think a lot of games could benefit from having a "paper" world map. (or even a satellite view world map). Where, once you entered the world map screen you'd actually walk around on a proper map. So much fun can be had with that stuff.

(I guess maps are the reason I like games like Europa Universalis too eh :)

Then there's the Baldur's Gate map which kind of is a paper map with locations that you are aware of listed and new ones are acquired as you leave the game map from certain edges (or you are told through finding in game maps or similar). Essentially this kind of map is just a teleport map but with the nice "paper map" overlay, which I already said I love.

Another thing I just realized is that exploration games are a lot more fun if the map isn't predrawn too. And I'd like a game where you explore the map and it appears (as in Fallout, if I remember correctly) but it could also be combined with in-game paper maps where you find crude maps of unknown locations and as you explore them properly the crude maps are changed to reflect the reality.

Or something like that. I wouldn't mind a game that was all about map-making either (Wasn't there a game called Cartographer on this site, did that game feature a fill-in map or map-making?). For example a game about the colonization of a new continent is all about exploring and mapping it out for people to come. Some strategy games with a random map do this but it would be nice to see in a kind of roleplaying environment.

I'm a big fan of world maps that serve a purpose, that purpose being optional and hidden locations and quests. While that can be done without an overworld, I feel like having an overworld allows you to make a game seem really big. Final Fantasy 7 is a great example of why I like the world map. Final Fantasy 10 is a prime example of why I feel games without an overworld are too linear. That entire game it felt like you were just running in a straight line. If that game had an overworld, i probably would have enjoyed it more, since it did have the best summon and leveling systems of any final fantasy game. But the linear gameplay was just too boring, and the story was pretty stupid at times, ha.

author=LDanarkos
You might feel more comfortable with a "world map" that is actually just one very small continent, subcontinent, or island country (i.e. Australia, Madagascar, or England), and there's just no airship or boat to explore beyond its borders and see the rest of the world. That would satisfy your sense of scale better. Then if you were worried about the realism of speed of travel, meaning traveling that fast on foot is unrealistic but there's no airship access, then you can give your heroes horses to ride on. Or you could just assume that their planet is much smaller than ours.

I came up with an idea that each continent/island would have its own world map and you couldn't travel into some continents if you don't have a map for it. As well, it can be a solution for the 500x500 tile limit.

author=Ocean
However, if they are a bunch of walking with random encounters where the goal is "find the next area" in a huge open field, then I just get bored. Especially if they look like this:

With just grass, forest tile, mountains, water, and random encounters all over. Seeing the actual places is far preferable because there's actual variety and each place will more or less have its own look.

I feel similar to what you said, but posting a picture of the FF9 world map seems pretty wrong to me. That game did the world map a ton of justice. The Chocograph quest, the floating island, the way different continents looked and were laid out, I felt that game did an amazing job. The only part I'll agree with is that the random encounters seemed to be too much. But still, they even had events built in to the random encounters so even that's not all that bad.

Disc 1 of FF9 only had like 60 seconds of overworld, leading from the Ice Cavern to the first town of Dali O_O

The first time you really got to explore the overworld was after Lindblum in Disc 2, and it rewards you with a temporary hidden character. Granted, you are likely to intentionally get in a few random battles after getting the hidden character, since s/he is a blue mage. And the chocobo treasure hunting involved the world map, but was amazing++. But I don't remember FF9's world map ever making me just walk around getting in battles in order to get from point A to point B. I only ever got in, like, 2 battles, max, before reaching the next area, unless I was searching for chocographs.

If I had to name a game that does work like you described, it would be Suikoden 2, which has a massive world map and has no minimap at all, no way of telling where you are or where any landmarks are or anything. Wild Arms 2 and 3 are also seriously bad about this, as they make you stop to press the search button every 5 steps, and then later after you get further in the plot you have to comb back over the same sections hitting the search button every five steps again.

I agree that overworlds have vastly less character than individual area maps. But I tend to excuse really old games. The first five FF games had a ton of overworld exploration in them, but the normal area maps didn't look any more attractive than the overworld, so trekking endlessly across the map didn't feel any worse than the rest of the game.