What also makes things feel bigger is sectioning too. I think the gradients for switching from "Woodland" to "Swamp" in Cyrodiil were a bit too smoothed out. The land wasn't big enough to have 400 Cedar Trees, 300 Birch Trees, and 4 Cypress Trees in one area, and to go up 4 Cypress Trees and down 10 Cedar/Birch trees every cell. Sectioning can also easily be done by creating obstacles. There were no gorges with caves, no giant rivers to cross, no thick forests of vines and trees, and certainly nothing much at all in the oceans. If you download the "Unique Landscapes" mods, the game world feels a lot bigger because of the time that was put into it.

If Bethesda cut down on adding so many monsters, made the map a whole lot bigger, and added more landscape without adding a ruin/fort/cave/mine/settlement/village every 300 feet, I think it could work out pretty well..

Although, like I've said before, they've probably already decided how big their game world is by now, and already gotten to making it... heck they may even be fine-tuning it.

Another advantage of a large game world which i likely mentioned before but forgot about it already is that you can actually have large structures.
Imagine some of the dungeons actually being above ground, large castles with courtyards (i remember playing a Morrowind mod that had a huge castle with a large courtyard infested by a zombie army). Also fields that are actually realistically large, villages not just being some houses standing around but actually having fields and small farms. Or something like the arcane university actually feeling like a HUGE campus with several buildings, halls and fields for practicing magic on and such.
All possible with a large game world.

but again, imo, the other games of the series got it better. I loved being a stranger to the world.

:nod:

We think similarly, I find it funny.

Above-ground dungeons would be phenomenal!

I just remember the Reaver citadels in Soul Reaver 2, they where gigantic and mostly above ground, and it was AWESOME. Walking through a huge hall of pillars with it's roof collapsed in bright sunshine, just awesome.

:D

Also makes me think of fighting undead through a stone corridor with stained glass windows and rays of lighting slightly shining through.

Going back and playing Oblivion I now would like to see a larger map. If they included fast travel, teleporting, silt rides or horses, which makes the world feel smaller, then I would like to see the world 2-3x bigger then Oblivion/Morrowind.

I'm with you on that one. I thought the whole Idea of the game was an open ended sandbox? Who wants to play in a small sand box? not me. I want to play in the biggest most baddest sandbox. And It seems that everyone is under the impression that just because it is big means it can't be detailed.. I see no restrictions on The makers of the game , saying "You are not allowed to make something big and detailed" (I'm not trying to start an argument ) But I mean Isn't that there job Is to satisfy the enthusiasts of the series? I understand It takes work...but why sit around and complain? Get to work Bethesda!! I love oblivion :gun:

A while ago I found a simple way to determine the size of a "area" within a game.
A good size is about as big as the northern island in GTA: San Andreas, it takes a good while by foot to cross and yet it's not overly huge, you can still have some larger "structures" in it without them dominating the landscape.

Based on this you could determine what size a "regular" area (in Morrowind for example the bitter coast region) should be. Of course they won't fit so neatly into a rectangle but still this could give a good idea.

Oblivion was mostly randomly generated as it is. I don't see why they couldn't make it even bigger than Daggerfall.

Because the fact Oblivion was mostly randomly generated is not a good argument to do it again? Oblivion was a great game in many aspects but it's landscape and caves/dungeons where mostly boring.

Though I do agree that if it's being generated anyway there is no reason why they shouldn't make it bigger (as long as it doesn't get worse...)

Random generation doesn't have to be bad, though I personally prefer a more detailed world. If TES V is going to be Skyrim generating forrest probably wouldn't make it that bad (as long as they don't make it a generic 'Scandinavian/Russian/Canadian/'Viking' landscape and really keep a Elder Scroll fantasy feel to it.) If they make sure that the towns, villages, cities and many dungeons are handcrafted and very detailed I wouldn't really mind if some of the landscape was generated, if it means that the game world can be bigger, with more settlements and with more effort put into these places.

But we'll see, both smaller, fully detailed worlds and larger less detailed worlds all have there pro's and cons, and 'a bit of both' isn't necessarily a good thing. Every kind of game world can be great, if done well. So I just really hope that it will be done right, and as long as they do that I don't really mind which option they choose.

The way I see it is that randomly generating with the basic outline of the terrain to begin with lets you spend all your time perfecting the terrain instead of spending it all making the terrain. After you've got that base, you've got the rest of your development cycle to improve what was there.

Of curse if it is random generated maybe they could make it adjustable like in the Civilization games. Have basic terrain outline but that could be stretched from a 2 X 2 game mile map to a xx X yy. Have quest line places and cities in relative locations then fill in random etc. So if you like the smaller world of Oblivion fine if you want something more akin to Dagger fall set the world size to 100X100.

the world is procedurally generated during development, not randomly generated anew for each game. hence stretching out the landscape becomes impossible.

the main reason between daggerfall's generation and oblivion's is the number and detail of objects. while daggerfall uses relatively few sprites to make up its landscapes, oblivion uses hundreds of fully modeled objects per cell. it takes up a whole lot more processing power to render the later, and hence huge areas become very hard to do.

Morrowind/Oblivion size with Morrowind style seeping from it.

I think Oblivion's map was too small. It just a bit seemed unrealistic. The scale sort of worked with Morrowind, but I felt like I knew Cyrodiil too well. I felt like I knew every inch of Cyrodiil. Which isn't true but still... it was too small. Also, the cities in Oblivion were way too big in comparison with the terrain.

I'd like TESV to be on a larger scale than Oblivion and Morrowind, but not as large as Daggerfall. Daggerfall's size was ridiculous, which was cool because it was realistic, but you couldn't travel by foot because it took forever.

Who wants to live in a boring, randomly generated world? Not me. No, there are no rules saying that they can't make it detailed - that's not the point. It's not feasibly possible to make a game as big as Daggerfall, that is as detailed as games like Oblivion. On your last point, their job is to make games, not to slave at a single game for years.
Bigger does not always equal better.

if its gona be skyrim i personly hope on a map a little bigger then oblivion "like a quater of the oblivion map extra in space" also i hope with a little more obsticals like moutains in between so you can't see tru the other way of the map so giving the ilusion of a big map without using the fog system
also to solve the border problem is the steap unclimable mountains with at the so called only major trade roads to cyrodill morrowind and hammerfall guarded by unkillble special guards or road blocks that you dont have to get the "turn around you cant get any futher"notic

Exactly. EXACTLY. Anyone who voted for it to be the size of Daggerfall, or bigger, is kidding themselves. It can't be done while still having an exciting and interesting world. It'd just be big, and boring. Personally, I lose my incentive to explore if I know that the world is just so big that I'll probably never find anything good. I love the size of Oblivion, and I don't really think a game needs to be much bigger. Once you've got something as big as Cyrodill in Oblivion, the focus shifts to adding detail. It's big enough.
And we definitely don't want them slaving over the next game for years. What's what PD are doing with GT5, and it's not working.

Wouldn't you still be rendering only several ten's of thousands of polys every cell ? And couldn't you just create an archive with the various randomly generated cells to be placed next to each other (sorta like Daggerfall's cities and dungeons).

Why? I regularly do just that in DwarfFortress. And it is 100% procedurally generated, and huge (if you chose the generated world to be).



Yes, the details of a randomly generated "cells" would be as many or as little as with hand-placed content, but no, you don't need to waste all this hard drive space to save it. Just save the pseudo random number generator "seed", constraints and changes, which is way less information and even allows you to have deformable terrain in play for no extra cost. The content there wouldn't be "reused" any more than Oblivion reused rocks and trees, that is: only on the smallest scale.

Because DwarfFortress graphics can't even be compared with whatever graphics ES V will have. DwarfFortress graphics are not even close to those of Daggerfall, and Bethesda won't release an Elder Scrolls game that looks worse than the game they released 14 years ago. I know you probably mean that randomization can be very advanced, but DwarfFortress is not a good example because where talking about the option to randomize a 3D world, which is a completely different thing.

DwarfFortress is an example of people enjoying exploring randomly generated, huge worlds, though. Which was something Nauraushaun claimed nobody actually does.

I really want to be able to explore all of Tamriel, first cuz I hate invisible walls second cuz it would provide some varied terrain. scale would be the same onra is using for the heightmaps right now, i.e. a little bigger than Oblivion's. so all in all it would be about 5 times bigger than oblivion, which I think is reasonable and definitely huge enough for anyone. and of course, interesting terrain like the one the unique landscapes provide, cuz vanilla oblivion landscape is soooo lame. Morrowind's was class indeed.

She's beautiful, she's rich, she's got huge... tracts of land.