Guild Wars 2

Basically, the map of Tyria is divided into many rectangles separated by the perfectly rectangle shaped walls. To me, it looks very unnatural and doesn’t give the feeling of being in a believable world. I know this may not be a big issue for some people and the rectangles simplify map design but each area should have different shapes not just rectangles everywhere.

Did you mean “rectangles?”

Thank for fixing, my English scks

Funny, I find the maps in Guild Wars 2 are far superior to the alternatives I have played. The map is much more beautiful and actually shows the features of the land with it. Zooming in and out is much more fluid as well. Other games, such as WoW, Wildstar and FFXIV have horrible maps by comparison.

One thing you should note is that, even though the borders are often square / rectangular, the landscape is not. For example, mountains often range across many zones and into the middle of others. This is the same with bodies of water. The rectangular shape, is more similar to artificial boundaries (such as states in America, many of which are rectangular/square).

I’m sorry that you find the maps immersion breaking, but I’m happy to say that it does the opposite for me.

Ever looked on maps in real life and noticed that everything is also seperated in squares ?

Of course Queensdale sounds simply better than square B5 or C7.

I’d too like to see non-rectangular shaped zones – it always struck with me as odd on release. However, I imagine there must be a technical reason for it and it’s a fairly small point for me these days that I can live with.

Yes real maps are divided into squares, but these are usually arbitrary lines which you’d have a hard time matching with physical features in the landscape. (Before anyone mentions boundaries that follow rivers and other geographic features I’m not talking about those ones, I mean the ones that are straight lines, like grid squares on maps or the straight part of the boundary between the USA and Canada.)

Whereas in GW2 there are also physical features that follow the same lines. For example look at the border between Queensdale and Kessex Hills. There’s a straight east-west mountain range between the two, and at the east edge of Queensdale it makes a 90 degree turn to run almost perfectly north between Queensdale and Gendarran Fields. At the top of that map it continues to run straight north, with a straight west branch forming the borders of Harathi Hinterlands.

It’s the same across most of Tyria where there isn’t water at the edges of maps. Ascalon is another good example, a mountain range makes a perfectly straight upside down T on the borders of Plains of Ashford, Iron Marches and Diessa Plateau.

In real life geographical features like that are extremely rare. Even mountain ranges the run north-south or east-west aren’t straight.

There is a technical reason for it. The actual shape of the maps has to be a cube or cuboid because computers don’t do curved lines. And to stop us seeing the real edge of the map (where it just ends and you can see the sky continuing below the ground like in the screenshot below) they have to put something before the edge to stop us getting close enough to see it.

But in most games it’s more subtle. The physical objects they put in place to stop us reaching the edge of the map aren’t parallel with the real edge and create the illusion of more naturally shaped geographical features and areas. This does mean there’s more ‘wasted’ space around the edge when you’re in the map and potentially bigger inaccessible areas between them but there are ways around that too.

It is a minor point but it’s something that often bothers me when I look at the map. Especially because GW1 (which also used cuboid maps) was a lot more subtle about it.

Omg… you are the only person that I’ve seen besides myself complaining about this. I hate it too! I wish it didn’t seem so rectangularly-divided

While the map edges are ugly I do like the map interiors better than the Guild Wars 1 maps. For whatever reason a fair amount of the Guild Wars 1 maps forced you into corridors with towering hills on both sides of the trail, almost always unclimbable. To me these corridors were far more immersion breaking than the gw2 map borders, which are usually not obvious till you get close.

Plant-men and little toad-faced people swing swords twice their size and shoot fire and lightning from their fingertips at trolls and fish-men… and you think the rectangular rock walls are unrealistic?

K then…

The uniform borders make it easier to work on the programming required and make it easier to transition from one map to another. It also gives the designers the largest possible area to create the world without worrying how the borders match up between maps. It’s just a technical thing, compared to all the invisible walls and unjumpable 2’ high fences and such in most games it’s not so bad.

I do not mind the rectangles, BUT having streaming loading instead of a loading screen in this day and age would be good, heck if Wow can do it and even many console games like Gears of War nowadays, I am sure a decent PC game like GW2 should be able to preload / stream load the next zone instead of a loading screen when going from adjacent zone to zone.

tolunart.2095:

Plant-men and little toad-faced people swing swords twice their size and shoot fire and lightning from their fingertips at trolls and fish-men… and you think the rectangular rock walls are unrealistic?

My favourite is Plant People ( Sylvari) Elementalists that have fire from fingers and do not set themselves on fire and die !!

Kohlteth.3715:

tolunart.2095:

Plant-men and little toad-faced people swing swords twice their size and shoot fire and lightning from their fingertips at trolls and fish-men… and you think the rectangular rock walls are unrealistic?

My favourite is Plant People ( Sylvari) Elementalists that have fire from fingers and do not set themselves on fire and die !!

Animals tend to burn when set on fire, too.

Astral Projections.7320:

While the map edges are ugly I do like the map interiors better than the Guild Wars 1 maps. For whatever reason a fair amount of the Guild Wars 1 maps forced you into corridors with towering hills on both sides of the trail, almost always unclimbable. To me these corridors were far more immersion breaking than the gw2 map borders, which are usually not obvious till you get close.

I’m going to use this post as an example. Even in Guild Wars 1, the maps were still rectangular, but since the space available in these maps wasn’t carved out to make use of most of this space, the player never noticed. See, that’s the thing, pretty much every game uses a rectangular map, it just doesn’t use ALL of that rectangle in an attempt to hide the fact it is a rectangle.

What you see on the map is a very literal and honest representation of the tech. A-net wanted to make the most of the space they had, instead of wasting 40% of it on mountains just to sell the idea that their maps weren’t rectangle cages. Most MMO worlds however do waste a ton of space on impassable mountains and oceans.

It is a limitation of the engine, which is based on the original Guild Wars 1 engine from 2005 which also had square maps.

Having maps that are other shapes would technically waste space and make navigation a little confusing.

So yes, square mountains bordering every single zone can be a little immersion breaking, but it’s not a massive deal and you aren’t going to see them going away. It’s how the game is designed, it isn’t going to change (plus it would be really weird if they started making new maps that didn’t follow along with all of the old maps – and completely redesigning all of the old maps is pointless and a waste of time and money).

Whats more immersion breaking than the rectangles is the loading screens on a newer engine than WoW…… More sandbox would be better.

I agree with this post, but I try not to zoom out too far so I don’t get reminded

Kohlteth.3715:

Whats more immersion breaking than the rectangles is the loading screens on a newer engine than WoW…… More sandbox would be better.

There is a massive number of modern MMO’s that still use zones rather than an open world. WoW is not the most intensive game, it is easier for the engine to render that much at a time. GW2 as it is is not incredibly well optimised, so if they were to remove he boundaries between zones you would see a massive hit in performance.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Kohlteth.3715:

Whats more immersion breaking than the rectangles is the loading screens on a newer engine than WoW…… More sandbox would be better.

There is a massive number of modern MMO’s that still use zones rather than an open world. WoW is not the most intensive game, it is easier for the engine to render that much at a time. GW2 as it is is not incredibly well optimised, so if they were to remove he boundaries between zones you would see a massive hit in performance.

Or if they were to actually use the Graphics Card instead of the CPU it would work better too………….and not throttle those with higher end PC’s from using the full potential of even the CPU / Ram.

Seamless world technology is not new, SWG had it in 2003, all planets had no boundaries other than the required “edge of the world”.

Boundaries and Zones are as much a function of the level based system more than anything else. It allows design of linear, progressive leveling without putting a level 4 at odds with end level mobs. Zones and walls allow ranges of progressive leveled content.

Pre NGE SWG was fun, there were no “safe” zones. You had to keep your wits about you, as very nasty things could appear almost anywhere.

Zones and walls will remain as long as games fixate on traditional levels.

First don’t forget that GW2’s game engine is built on the one in GW. A system with continuously loading terrain to prevent a “loading” screen is something that the entire rendering system is built around, it’s not something that can be added on later, at least easily. Size of our zones are likely dictated by number of polygons that define the area. Dense in detail areas like cities and forests tend to be smaller zones while empty plains tend to be larger. It maybe tied to their use of the Umbra Occlusion engine to thin out the geometry that’s needed to be passed to the video card.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Seamless world technology is not new, SWG had it in 2003, all planets had no boundaries other than the required “edge of the world”.

Boundaries and Zones are as much a function of the level based system more than anything else. It allows design of linear, progressive leveling without putting a level 4 at odds with end level mobs. Zones and walls allow ranges of progressive leveled content.

Pre NGE SWG was fun, there were no “safe” zones. You had to keep your wits about you, as very nasty things could appear almost anywhere.

Zones and walls will remain as long as games fixate on traditional levels.

hahahah reminds me of when I first started playing WoW and I took a right turn inseatd of left as a lvl 30ish and walked into Uldum a lvl 75 zone, talk about being roflstomped by a mob!

( then again even walls dont help, I also fell off a mountain as a lvl 17 into Twilight Highlands and couldnt get out as the stupid game wouldnt let me rez any other place so was stuck there until a higher guildie could come cover me)

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Zones and walls will remain as long as games fixate on traditional levels.

Has nothing to do with levels. Lineage 2 also worked without zoning and also RIFT for example. Also Vanguard had no zones, but they had massive problems with the constant loading of chunks that is needed for that and it was lagging like hell often.

So in the end its a pure problem of the engine that has to constantly load new stuff in memory when you move instead of loading a complete zone just once when you port.

Timbersword.9014:

Astral Projections.7320:

While the map edges are ugly I do like the map interiors better than the Guild Wars 1 maps. For whatever reason a fair amount of the Guild Wars 1 maps forced you into corridors with towering hills on both sides of the trail, almost always unclimbable. To me these corridors were far more immersion breaking than the gw2 map borders, which are usually not obvious till you get close.

I’m going to use this post as an example. Even in Guild Wars 1, the maps were still rectangular, but since the space available in these maps wasn’t carved out to make use of most of this space, the player never noticed. See, that’s the thing, pretty much every game uses a rectangular map, it just doesn’t use ALL of that rectangle in an attempt to hide the fact it is a rectangle.

What you see on the map is a very literal and honest representation of the tech. A-net wanted to make the most of the space they had, instead of wasting 40% of it on mountains just to sell the idea that their maps weren’t rectangle cages. Most MMO worlds however do waste a ton of space on impassable mountains and oceans.

This is very informative post. I found the map layouts in Guild Wars 1 to be frequently annoying and constricting in how they forced you into small areas. I had no knowledge as to the why of it, that the numerous interior walls and bodies of water were used to hide the map shape.

The maps in Guild Wars 2 are so much better. It’s not just the ability to jump and climb over areas that were a hard halt in Guild Wars 1, such as hills, small ledges or the edges of water. The whole interior of maps are open and available to move in freely. If having visible map edges are the price to pay for having large open maps then to me it’s well worth it.

Countries with rectangular boudaries are usually former colonies like Africa or America, where frontiers have been drawn on a map by a few people. Countries with an older history like European or Asian countries tend to have more natural frontiers. Inhabitants have fought for years and in many cases, natural broders like mountain or rivers have stoped invasions.
Maybe it’s more acceptable for people living in America or Africa to have rectangular shapes on maps. As an european (my english is bad but that’s another point) i tend to be annoyed by this rectangular shape when i look at the full uncovered map, but when i play this feeling disapear. They have made a great job for immersion.
Maybe they could have made the maps less rectangular by adding more space beetween maps but we would have lost a lot of playable content. So i prefer the way they did it, i think it’s the best alternative we could have.