Guild Wars 2

Due to the mounts, we’re getting (horizontally) larger maps in Path of Fire.
Do you think the maps in future will be generally larger as well?

If so, is it even possible to keep up the pace of the Living World maps in Season 4 when they will be larger overall? What do you think?

It’s most likely. We are going to large regions I think.

Is it for sure that there won’t be multifloor maps?
Plain maps after hot could make me sick

I don’t think there will be a problem. It’s the amount of content that is problematic to create, a huge barren wasteland with nothing in it to do doesn’t take much development time. Making the maps larger doesn’t necessarily mean they are harder to make, in fact it’s the opposite, a map with lots of vertical paths is much harder to design even if it’s only half the size.

It’s the amount of content that makes maps hard to develop, not their land mass, that’s why a comment like “It has the largest maps we’ve ever created” means little to nothing to me.

1st map- Crystal Oasis is as big as the whole Orr

maddoctor.2738:

It’s the amount of content that is problematic to create, a huge barren wasteland with nothing in it to do doesn’t take much development time. […]

It’s the amount of content that makes maps hard to develop, not their land mass, that’s why a comment like “It has the largest maps we’ve ever created” means little to nothing to me.

Exactly, that’s what came into my mind as well. So if you think about it, will there be a decision between either

• more barren landscapes with less event density
  or
• less maps overall, therefore adequately filled with events?

I don’t think large necessarily means barren, for Anet. The demo map certainly seems large and pretty dense. Also Crystal Oasis had a lot more verticality than I first thought. Second time I explored it, I noticed how many high cliffs and things looked like they could actually be traversed.

Let’s do a quick comparison.
Malchor’s Leap: 15 Hero Challenges, 37 Points of Interest and 5 Vistas
Verdant Brink: 11 Hero Challenges, 26 Points of Interest and 6 Vistas
Ember Bay: 5 Hearts, 23 Points of Interest and 7 Vistas
Crystal Oasis: 4 Hearts, 5 Hero Challenges, 30 Points of Interest and 10 Vistas

For a map that is MUCH larger than the above maps, it doesn’t look so dense judging by objective count.

Let’s take a look at events:
Malchor’s Leap has 71 dynamic events
Verdant Brink has 64 dynamic events (counting defense events only once)
Ember Bay has 20 dynamic events but also 5 hearts. How many Events are rough “equivalent” for a Heart is the question
Crystal Oasis demo had 22 dynamic events and 4 hearts, we’ll see how many the actual map will have, if it can reach the amounts of the other maps.

In any case with objective count and event count, although the map is more than DOUBLE the size, it’s obvious that it doesn’t have DOUBLE the content, at least the demo version.

And here we’re talking about an expansion map, which was created in the 2 year time frame by a dedicated team of 70 people (obviously not all of them worked on it but still).

Transfer that onto the much smaller Living World teams and their 6 month time frame for a new episode and map.

Arden.7480:

1st map- Crystal Oasis is as big as the whole Orr

I don’t think it’s even close. The demo area we were given was almost two thirds of the entire map, given that and assuming it’s to the same scale on the world map it looks about one and a half times the size of Queensdale or Mount Maelstrom.

And as others have pointed out, simply having twice as much space between things is meaningless if there isn’t more content, especially as we’re going to be travelling twice as fast.