World Maps

[Joronjo]

While I've been planning out my game I got myself into a small but hard decision: what kind of world map/hub should i go for my game. And the more i thought about I just started analyzing the pros and cons of most types of maps that you can find in an RPG game. I made a short list showing the overall points of each common map type. The list I made is not exhaustive but it would be interesting to see what other people also think about this and add their own ideas. (This will be Teal Deer by the way)


World Map: The classic JRPG map, the maps are divided between "Town/Dungeon" and "World".

• Games that have this kind of map:
  
  
  Final Fantasy (up to FFX)
  
• Chrono Trigger
  
• Phantasy Star I-IV
  
• Tales series
  
• Golden Sun
  

[*]Pros

• 
  You can make expansive maps and worlds so much easier
  
• They take up less memory space
  
• They can make the world feel more realistic with towns out of the way
  
• Players can have more freedom to where they would go
  

[*]Cons

• 
  The big amount of nothing can make going from from A and B annoying (even more so with random encounters)
  
• Easier to get lost and waste time trying to find where to go next
  

Continuous Map: It's all one big map, except for some areas such as buildings, dungeons, terrains that are as big as the whole map, etc.

• Games that have this kind of map:
  
  
  2D Zelda(except Zelda II)
  
• Pokemon
  
• Mana Series
  
• Mother Series
  

[*]Pros

• 
  Can invite a sense of exploration, specially when the game is non-linear or has abilities that encourage you to return to an old place
  
• Can be very immersive as everything for the most part flows more naturally 
  
• Makes the world feel more like a cohesive whole
  
• Towns can be used to add to the pacing of the story
  

[*]Cons

• 
  Can be very slow paced and tiring to get from point A to B
  
• Broken bridges can be obnoxiously obvious (A broken bridge is when you can't progress throught the story
  
• Without a teleportation ability moving long distances can be a chore
  
• Unless it's a very small map you can't make it wraparound 
  
• Towns with no direct story importance can feel like padding
  

Checkpoint Map: You progress by ending a section which opens up the next in the map. These can also include chapter by chapter games like Fire Emblem where once a section of the story is done you progress to the next on a map.

• Games that have this kind of map:
  
  
  2D Mario games
  
• Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
  
• Fire Emblem
  

[*]Pros

• 
  Fast travelling from point to point
  
• Simple to understand
  
• With the addition of alternative routes adds some level of replay value, specially if its a "one time per level" style ("one-way games")
  

[*]Cons

• 
  The simplicity can remove the challenge or feel tedious
  
• In "one way games", being unable to revisit earlier areas can really be frustrating specially with limited or once-per-file items
  

Hub Map: The player often returns to one area from where they can access to the next as the story progresses.

• Games that have this kind of map:
  
  
  Mario and Sonic 3D games
  
• Paper Mario (somewhat...the first town of the first two games, which you return to after almost every chapter)
  
• Many of the post-Megaman X games (Legends, Battle Network, Zero, ZX, that space one)
  

[*]Pros

• 
  Seeing the world slowly expand as we play can feel rewarding
  
• Seeing areas that are blocked encourages you to want to open them even if just out of curiosity
  

[*]Cons

• 
  The world can feel very small and limited
  
• Returning to the same place, over and over can run its charm real fast
  
•  
  

Open Sandbox: Very similar to a continuous map except that these tend to have little roadblocks and avoid being strictly linear. In other words, instead of going from point A to point B, you can very well go from Point A to D to Z and then get to point B.

• Games that have this kind of map:
  
  
  Yo-kai Watch Series
  
• Grand Theft Auto Series
  
• Dark Souls
  
• Fallout Series
  

[*]Pros

• 
  A lot freedom on where to go and what to do.
  
• While this is mostly a design wise reason, they tend to rarely be actually closed off
  
• Size and open end invite exploration and with a good designer they can be great for hiding secrets
  
• Because it's non linear, it can make the player insterested when they see the "building-that-very-obviously-may-matter-later-in-the-game" earlier in the game
  

[*]Cons

• 
  Too much freedom on where to go and what to do
  
• Easy to get sidetracked
  
• If there is no way to scale the gameplay and enemies to the player's level, there is no real reason or benefit to return to earlier parts of the game.
  

Metroidvania: A little similar to continuous map too, except exploration is THE main point. Very often the player returns to an early area once they have acquired a new skill to proceed to the next. 

• Games that have this kind of map:
  
  
  Metroid Series (Duh)
  
• Castlevania Series (Once again, Duh)
  
• Shantae Series
  

[*]Pros

• 
  Speedruning! 
  
• Finding alternative routes and applying new equipment in 
  
• As with the open sandbox and continuous map, it gives the player a feeling of adventure.
  

[*]Cons

• 
  Can be confusing and frustrating if you don't know where to go.
  
• Some of the alternative routes can seem like waste of time, specially when the end result doesn't feel worth it (i.e. A complicated puzzle that required 7 tries to get right for yet another missile expansion)
  

All of these are really subjective and if you can think of ideas for why or things to add it would be nice to see them.

 

[GoodSelf]

Such an awesome post - I prefer the continuous map and the hub map format the most =]


Would "Legend of Dragoon" have a checkpoint map? Or a world map?

 

[ALTERED STATE ?]

(Thank you for making this, I was just going to make one discussing map types *praiseandappluse*)


For me I am using the Contin. Map type because (I think) it goes well with a semi-linear/open exploration based game


On the World Map type; I'm not a fan of it because I like to see as much of the world (like geography, history, and such. Worldbuilding things) as possible not a less detailed (Of what I've seen) representation of it. But for more 'traditional' RPGs I think it works well because there is a lot of backtracking in many games and getting to past areas is not much of a hassle because normally a boat or airship is unlocked.


Sorry if this seems incomplete or confusing I am not very good at getting my thoughts down;(

 

[wintyrbarnes]

I like the way Pokemon specifically does it, where if you're using Fly you can tap on a city to go to. Skyrim has it, too, as fast travel. It's the best of both worlds, to me. World maps are kind of boring, I really prefer detail, even during travels, but especially if it's optional.

 

[Kes]

You might find this thread gives you further ideas.

 

[BigToastie]

I am doing continuous mapping for my game, I feel the games more rewarding to myself as you see your world come to life, a whole forest designed rather then a few trees on a world map ^.^


The one "Con" I don't agree with specifically for this type of game:


"Towns with no direct story importance can feel like padding"


This is A) true for every style of mapping, world maps have it as well where if you enter a town and it doesn't have a great deal it could feel like padding.


On my maps I have villages that may not have direct importance to the main story but provide quests among various other things when you enter them (later events can effect the earlier villages, it also breaks up the continuous flow of "enemy turf".


I mean its all personal opinions but I do like the OP

 

[Dr. Delibird]

I like check point mostly because I like the feeling of one thing leading to the next in a somewhat sequential feeling way. As long as their is fast travel though (maybe discluding flash back areas but I don't like when a game makes you play in a flash back because it feels cheap, flash back scenes are fine though) so as to remove the issue that "one way" games have. 

Also the borderlands series does this fairly well and most of my recent inspiration (for a game anyways) comes from Borderlands 2 X3

 

[Joronjo]

I like the way Pokemon specifically does it, where if you're using Fly you can tap on a city to go to. Skyrim has it, too, as fast travel. It's the best of both worlds, to me. World maps are kind of boring, I really prefer detail, even during travels, but especially if it's optional.

I really loved it in the older games, specially Gold, Ruby and Platinum because the world felt so big and full of secrets but wrapped around. One of my favorite things ever in Gold was when i got surf and fly, went back to Newbark and just went to Kanto even though i could not go further. I think those earlier games really show a good way to make a map that encourages exploration. In Platinum particularly, you crossed Mt. Coronet multiple times each time with a little bit more to do.

I am doing continuous mapping for my game, I feel the games more rewarding to myself as you see your world come to life, a whole forest designed rather then a few trees on a world map ^.^


The one "Con" I don't agree with specifically for this type of game:


"Towns with no direct story importance can feel like padding"


This is A) true for every style of mapping, world maps have it as well where if you enter a town and it doesn't have a great deal it could feel like padding.


On my maps I have villages that may not have direct importance to the main story but provide quests among various other things when you enter them (later events can effect the earlier villages, it also breaks up the continuous flow of "enemy turf".


I mean its all personal opinions but I do like the OP

The Cons are all subjectives and the padding that story irrelevant towns give is not bad in on itself. If anything, being railroaded from town to town will all of them being important sooner or later feels less realistic than coming across a small unimportant hamlet in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Frogboy]

I like World Map as long as it has more to offer than just a way to get from point A to B. If you have no secrets to explore on your world map, you might as well just use a Checkpoint Map or something similar.

 

[Tai_MT]

I'm a simple man with simple tastes.  I like any map that simply lets me explore and isn't linear.  We'll use FFXIII as the example of a "linear" RPG that I dislike.  We'll use Borderlands as an explorable game map (which is also strictly linear... but there's so much to actually explore, you don't notice it a whole lot).  I do tend to prefer completely open RPGs like Elder Scrolls, Ultima, and Fallout, however.  I like the freedom to do what I want, when I want.  I don't like feeling restricted or railroaded.  It's an RPG!


Then again, I do come from the old school ways of gaming where D&D and tabletops like it were as free as you could get.  I like that kind of freedom.


My own personal map design is "open world" where towns exist on the same maps as the rest of the map (no transition, you can be attacked randomly in town.  Yep, story reasons for this   Yep, story reasons the monsters leave the NPCs alone too!).  The only "transitions" I have are into dungeons... or caves... or houses... or areas like forests.  Yep!  Touch some parts of the landscape (like obvious entrances into forests) and you're whisked away into a forested map!  Oh, and I do have the game split into "zones".  Four zones to the end of the game, each its own theme with its own sets of quests and such.  Each its own world.


But, that's just how I'm doing map design.


Oh, I guess you can count any village you run across as the "hub" of an area too.  It's the natural location you'll operate out of, even though you don't have to at all.

 

[BigToastie]

I've always liked World Maps, because it was quicker to create an expansive world with less effort (you dont need to create 10 forest areas to link two key places together) you simply put 2 places on the world map and make them noticeable.


If people are going for World Maps, make them actually be more then a place you go on from place to place, have some unique interactions with players, reward people for exploring your map with hidden caves, optional bosses, side quests etc.


Also make exploring the world map uncover aspects of your world, you are designing a whole world and people will only know what's on the story's path!

 

[hian]

World maps by far.


In terms of abstractions, it's the least abstract map choice you can go with to convey scope/scale short of making a large seamless world.


It's also arguably better than the huge seamless worlds because it doesn't clutter the experience with redundant and empty scenery that serves no purpose but to slow down the progress between point A and B for the player.


Entirely abstract map solutions don't do it for me, because I feel too removed from the world.


On the other hand, having no world-map and just a bunch of maps ruins the sense of scale for me and takes me out of the experience (FFX, looking at you) -


on one hand everything is presented as being in scale, but on the other hand you're virtually walking from one side the world to the other in matter of hours.


The world-map then, seems like the perfect concession between all the systems.


Not only is it a visual and often viscerally satisfying representation of a world that conveys scope and scale which other alternatives apart from the large seamless worlds rarely achieve, but tt also doesn't bog down or detract from game-play in any meaningful sense either.


Now, if you're not making a game that supposed to cover a large ground - like a continent, country or world - then by all means, there's no need for a world-map.


If however, you're setting up a game to span the entire surface of a planet like the traditional FF games, then world maps are by far the best alternatives.

 

[Warboss74]

I like the way Dragon Age did it's world map, and is what I'm trying to implement in my game. Part of the reason is the number of locations available, I dislike a massive kingdom/empire being two location surrounded by monster infested deadspace.

 

[BigToastie]

World Maps are good, but I have serious issues with them, people say that when roaming a continuous map design it takes you only a few ig hours to get to a specific space, but the same principal holds to World Maps.


If you have a World map and it takes you 10 seconds to get from Keep A to Dungeon B, its like they are literally on top of each other, despite showing on the world map being quite far apart.


Any style of map to me is good, as long as its created and implemented correctly.


I am trying a hybrid of continuous with essences of world map / checkpoint(ish)


Most of my world will be explored by exploring the areas like you would in a Zelda Game.


however when you get to main cities, you can take Trains/Airships (depending on the city) etc. to other large cities (as they are all linked in some way) taking this trip will put you in the transport (so inside of a train / airship) and when you 'depart' it plays a cutscene of you moving across the world map, and arriving at your destination (also multiple IG days will have passed). This shows people the scale of the world, as well as what areas surround where you are arriving too, you might see a volcano nearby that you want to explore (and you will be able too).


To stop the back and forth through dungeons, I am putting in a solution when once you've explored the entire dungeon, when you try go through it, it gives you the option to fast travel through the entire dungeon, so you don't need to run back through it all, again.


I don't know how its going to play out yet, as I am only 70 maps into my game. but we shall see!

 

[hian]

World Maps are good, but I have serious issues with them, people say that when roaming a continuous map design it takes you only a few ig hours to get to a specific space, but the same principal holds to World Maps.


If you have a World map and it takes you 10 seconds to get from Keep A to Dungeon B, its like they are literally on top of each other, despite showing on the world map being quite far apart.

The let me draw attention to the part where I qualified this opinion :


On the other hand, having no world-map and just a bunch of maps ruins the sense of scale for me and takes me out of the experience (FFX, looking at you) -


on one hand everything is presented as being in scale, but on the other hand you're virtually walking from one side the world to the other in matter of hours.


The thing about the world-map is that it is an abstraction. It explicitly tells you "this is not in scale", but rather "this is a symbol from which you can derive what the world looks like, and how far you're traveling".


When you go from A to B on a world-map, you're given a relatively exact idea of how much space is actually supposed to be between those two points, you're given a pretty good idea of how one environment geographically and ecologically fits into another.


Now, in a game like FFX, everything is supposed to be in scale. So, while you're still supposed to be exploring an entire world, you're denied the visual signifiers for that process. Instead of actually seeing the character moving across a vast landscape, or how the different maps tie together, you're simply, and abruptly jump-cut from one environment to the next - often ones that are quite distinct from one another as well.


Now, I'm fine with not having a world-map if your game has enough maps to flesh out the distance between each environment to provide a good sense of scope - or even better, you have a large seamless game, or a game that's just set in a small region of a larger world.


My problem occurs when on one hand the narrative tells me your game is set in a vast world, and tells me that the characters are supposed to be traveling all across it, yet I'm simply being abruptly transported from one small environment to the next, whilst also being asked to accept that the visuals are presenting me the world as it is, in scale.

 

[Dr. Delibird]

@hian, before I comment further on your point of view your main gripe is when the game goes "have fun within this vast world" and then delivers something akin to say a FFX where, despite the fact you are told how vast the world is and how much esploring you are going to be doing, it ends up just being a bunch of mostly unrelated areas strung together. If I am wrong then please correct me. If this is your main issue with those styles of mapping then is the main issue more with being told/implying that the world is vast and you (as a player) are there to experience this vast world, rather than the specific style of mapping? I say this because I feel that that sort of mapping choice can work really well when the game is very open about the fact that you are only exploring a finite amount of the world because only that portion is even needed, heck going a step further and not mentioning the "rest of the world" or areas/locations that aren't in the game so as to make sure the player does not get curious and ultimately dissapointed when they find out that they cannot "cross the Great Sea to reach Generic City of Fortunes". 

 

[Tai_MT]

@hian, before I comment further on your point of view your main gripe is when the game goes "have fun within this vast world" and then delivers something akin to say a FFX where, despite the fact you are told how vast the world is and how much esploring you are going to be doing, it ends up just being a bunch of mostly unrelated areas strung together. If I am wrong then please correct me. If this is your main issue with those styles of mapping then is the main issue more with being told/implying that the world is vast and you (as a player) are there to experience this vast world, rather than the specific style of mapping? I say this because I feel that that sort of mapping choice can work really well when the game is very open about the fact that you are only exploring a finite amount of the world because only that portion is even needed, heck going a step further and not mentioning the "rest of the world" or areas/locations that aren't in the game so as to make sure the player does not get curious and ultimately dissapointed when they find out that they cannot "cross the Great Sea to reach Generic City of Fortunes". 

I'm pretty sure what Hian is saying is that it's immersion breaking when there's this discontinuity presented by a "string of maps" if those maps are meant to represent "the whole world".


He uses Final Fantasy X as the example because it's honestly the best example of that.  It isn't that he can't EXPLORE the whole world, it's that there's this massive incongruity where the world map tells you "oh, hey, you're exploring the whole world and you've got 20 miles" and in reality, you've traversed 4 screens that took all of 5 minutes to accomplish.  In that game, these individual screens (I call them screens, they're essentially small maps you traverse in a linear fashion on) are set up to be "in scale" to the rest of the world and every other area they physically connect with.  It becomes incongruous when they present you with the segments showing the ACTUAL world map and you realize that the whole world must be about 10 miles around and oceans about 2 miles wide.  But, if you use the "traditional" World Map layout to indicate the actual scale of the world (instead of a bunch of smaller maps for the whole thing), then a player automatically knows that it is an abstraction.  It isn't meant to cover any "real" distance.  You can't translate 1 tile into a mile or anything of the sort.  It is abstracted in the same way that actual real life maps are abstracted to an extent.  It is less immersion breaking to have a whole world be like that.


The Fable franchise has this same issue with their connected maps trying to represent vast swathes of actual real life distance (what with Albion actually being Europe and such... and traversable in about 10 minutes, from one end to the other, regardless of distance... and it's clear all the screens actually physically connect with no gap between them).


It is more about your intention of scale.  If your heroes will be traversing THE WHOLE WORLD, then you can't really do that with a ton of separate, but connected, maps.  Not without massively breaking immersion along the way or causing questions about the actual size of your world.  However, if your whole play area is merely a section of the world (think any of the countries of The Elder Scrolls and how Bethesda has done Open World Gaming in those), then a bunch of connecting maps really wouldn't be an issue (and would save on processing power for players).  This is also how the first Zelda game on NES worked.  Each map was connected to each other map, but it was understood that "this is the kingdom of Hyrule" and that there was world beyond your screen borders that you just couldn't get to, or didn't need to go to.  That world is pretty vast and does take a while to traverse from one end to the other, but in reality, it's kind of a small section of the map.  So, the scale is realistic and doesn't cause a player to ask too many questions.


What I took away from hian's post is simply that you need to keep the idea of "scale" in with your maps, and what you use for a world map should take that scale into account.  "The Whole World" should not equal roughly 10 miles of actual travel, like it seems to in FFX.  Scope of the world should've either been shrunk down quite a lot, or they should've added a lot more maps between every single section to make the world actually feel vast and as if you had actually traveled the whole world.

 

[Dr. Delibird]

Thankies for the clarification @Tai_MT. What would you say about the way Borderlands (1 & 2) (assuming you have played any of them x3) do their maps? I personally think it is well done in the sense that the games do not include the entire world and so the travel that you do do feels natural (possibly helped by a decent amount of map transfers "cutting" travel time from the gameplay that is sort of happening "behind the scenes" in the background). Idk maybe my affection for the series blinds me to an extent but I do not believe that is the case.

 

[Rogues]

I'm new to rpg maker but I want to chime in and say world maps add something to the game in the way of world-building and player immersion into your game world. Yes, it's not really an accurate scale but you can put all kinds of relevant goodies on your maps. Caves, quests, treasure troves, monster hideouts, really, all kinds of stuff. The map should be big enough that it takes some time to move around and it should be filled with player interaction goodies. You can reward players by hiding stuff for them to find. A world map gives players a sense of the world, albeit in a compact size. I like continents and find them a good way to make players wait until certain criteria are met before traveling to new lands. Providing a world map can give players a glimpse into the future, for example, if you have a desert or a snow covered north, players will expect nomads or desert people and Eskimos, or the abominable snowman (just saying). Just my opinion..don't mind me. 

 

[hian]

Tai has perfectly understood what I meant by my post, so if there is any more confusion on the topic, please refer to that.


I'd also like to say that this has a lot to do with style, and of course, personal preference.


I personally prefer games to be stylistically consistent. Before I explain what I mean by that, I'd like people to consider what they mean when they say that a game is


"immersion breaking".


When I say that, I don't mean that a game is immersion breaking simply for being unrealistic, or very "gamey". After all, chess as a game, is entirely abstract but can still be very


immersive in its own way, as it pull players into the mechanics and creates excitement through the system itself.


What breaks immersion for me, is one a piece of art or media is stylistically speaking inconsistent - especially when the inconsistency does not seem to have been


purposefully placed there by the creators for some sort of dramatic effect or entertainment.


Now, when you present me a game where an entire world is served though areas on a single map (or screen, as is the case in FFX) that are always realistically scaled with the characters, and with a relatively serious story and tone - I expect most of the other game elements to be consistent with this, like in terms of traversal/exploration of the world.


FFX, as Tai has explained, breaks consistency because it on one hand visually shows us a world that appears always to be in scale relative to the characters, and a story about traveling across that world to which they are proportioned -


yet, whilst being told by the narrative that the travels are taking us from one side of the planet to the other,


we're only actually spending a few hours running across the scenery and engaged in a process which is consistent with traveling over only a very short stretch of land.


This becomes even more apparent once you get access to the air-ship, and with it the map showing you the size of the actual world.


On one hand you can actually run from Zanarkand to Besaid in around (or less than) an hour at that point in the game, yet here you are being shown that Besaid is literally on the other side of the planet, and that it makes sense to use an air-ship to get there.


In earlier FF games using world-maps, this was never an issue for me because we're constantly given a visual representation of the vast stretches of land the players are actually traversing between each location, and those world maps, while being abstractions, are entirely consistent with the style of the games (as it would have been been with FFX too) given that most of the game-play in these games (like the transitional command-based combat systems and mini-games) also are largely abstract representations of something else entirely.


Some people might argue that there is very little real or substantial difference going on between the FF games with a world-map and those without - but that's a pretty short-sighted view in my opinion. After all, consider that the screen to screen exploration in FFX vis a vis FFVII for example, is pretty much the same, yet the removal of the world-map still had large enough of an impact that there was a lot of criticism of FFX's approach to exploration.


This shows how much of an impact the world-map actually has on players - in terms of how it helps players, viscerally, realize and invest in a game world


It might not be much of a tool for game-play per say - but it certainly is a great tool for getting a point across, and that too is a part of good game-design.


Again though - I am not against ditching the world-map. That's completely fine to do. My concern is about how consistent the various elements of a game are, and how well they fit into a cohesive total image for the game.


If you're making a world-spanning, epic RPG with command-based combat - then the world-map is likely your best friend.


If you're making a Zelda clone centered around one medium-sized woodland area and a town or two, then no - you don't need a world-map.