Hello folks! It's been a long time since I last came to these boards Just wanna share some insights I have regarding map design

When I played Skyrim, I keep feeling that the map is "all over the place", and somewhat meaningless. By that I mean, I never really cared about how the map looks like, the only time I use it is to do fast travel. If I'm going to a location that I haven't been to, I just fast travel to the nearest location that I have been to, mark the destination on the map, and walk towards it. Call me lazy but I did the same amount of fast travel in Oblivion as well.

The point is, Skyrim's map is lack of flow. The map has obstacles and mountains, sure, but they are not placed in a way that promotes flow of gameplay, and gameplay itself doesn't implement a flow either.

Let's consider Oblivion's map. In the center of the map, there's the imperial city, and it radiates several roads out to the rest of the map towards the other major cities. In addition, there's also a circular beltline road surrounding the lake where imperial city is in. Player begins in imperial city, and the main mission takes player to different cities and every once in a while takes player back to imperial city. The imperial city serves as a "hub" where the player frequently visits to conduct business (buy/sell), and the game ending also happens here. Though other cities are very well fleshed out, imperial city remains the center of the game, and it results in an interesting flow: hub and spoke. When traveling, player naturally navigates based on this flow. For example, if you want to go from Chorrol to Bruma, you follow the road from Chorrol to imperial city, and then take the northbound road to Bruma. It makes navigation easy and doesn't encourage fast travel.

Now let's consider Morrowind's map. As opposed to Oblivion's hub-and-spoke flow, Morrowind has a circular flow. The center of the map is the dangerous area where all the monsters show up, and the shores around Vvardenfell are peaceful and easy to navigate. So players naturally progresses around the map in a circular motion, with occasional visits to the central region for missions and ruins.

You can see there's a similarity between Oblivion and Morrowind's map design: they both "direct" player's navigation in a non-linear but easy-to-do manner. Instead of going a boring straight line from point A to point B, in Oblivion player visit the hub (imperial city) first and then go to the other city, and in Morrowind player travels in a big circle. This actually makes the map feel bigger than it really is.

But with Skyrim, which has the biggest map among all three games, there's no such flow that naturally directs the player. "Better" yet, there's no indication of roads on the map, which makes it virtually useless for navigation, so player has to rely on compass marker, which results in a straight line navigation (player keeps the marker in the center of the compass, and keep walking towards it), boring and unmemorable. If player doesn't want to abuse fast travel, there's really no fun in navigation. There's no main roads to follow and I don't remember seeing any road signs (maybe I'm wrong). The whole game is pretty much all about going from point A straight to point B straight to point C and D and so on.

TLDR: morrowind and oblivion have good flow and skyrim doesn't have any.

I agree, although I readily admit to being driven by nostalgia for Vvardenfell.

I suppose the point of Skyrim as a territory is that it's several different holds joined together, rather than a region like Cyrodill that's centred around the capital hub, or Vvardenfell where the population is based on how people have colonised the island.

So the lack of flow may well be due to the nature of the territory itself. What would help to accentuate that is perhaps more of a sense of how the Civil War is affecting trade routes, local law and order etc., and why it's important for holds to be aligned with one side or another. I'm not sure that comes out as clearly as it could do.

Oblivion's map - world space and navigation one thats all brown and discoloured and low detail felt perfect. It was immersive and felt like an ancient primitive map. And as you say, the Imperial City as a central hub was a great thing. Seeing it pop up into view before you were even near it and then pass by to somewhere else was a very nice little thing indeed.

The world space felt like it had some form of structural order, and purpose. Very Roman.

Skyrim by comparison certainly feels more... wild. Maybe it is suppose to. However its big impressive 3D navigation map is bloody horrible. Have never liked it. It doesn't suit the game world.

I disliked the layout of Cyrodiil. Positioning a starting city in the center and arranging most of the other towns in a ring around that city around it was a boring arrangement, in my opinion. And the fact that the province is shaped like a big bowl with few distinguishing geographical landmarks (such as a large mountain) helps make it even more boring. Don't get me wrong: I love Cyrodiil. But I love it in spite of these things, not because of them.

I thought it was great that we start Morrowind in a corner of the game world. All of Vvardenfell was in front of us inthe beginning of the game. I think this helped make Vvardenfell feel larger than it really was. It took a long time to get all the way up to Dagon Fel.

By contrast, beginning the game in the center of Cyrodiil and arranging most of the towns in a ring around that point made Cyrodiil feel smaller than it really was. I think Skyrim was closer to Morrowind's arrangement. We start the game near the bottom of the map and proceed to the center, much as we started Morrowind in Seyda Neen and proceeded to Balmora.

Of the three games I prefer Morrowind's map arrangement. After that Skyrim. After that Cyrodiil.

Yea, it could have been made more rugged-feeling rather than high tech satellite view, lol

Skyrim is supposed to be wild, yea. But there's supposed to be war/conflict going on and that's not being reflected in the map design. What could be done is having walls and guardposts from either side, separating the map into three regions: government, rebel, and a warzone in between where fights take place. The game is way too peaceful to feel like any war is going on, lol

Are we talking about the actual map in the menu, or how the Provinces are actually laid out? If the latter, yeah, Skyrim's map is virtually worthless.

If the latter...I'd much rather not have maps that "flow", as you say, if it means regulating each region for something arbitrary like gameplay because, why yes, the nations are in fact built and structured differently. I can't say I ever had a problem with how Skyrim presented itself in that fashion, and you'd be hard-pressed to achieve anything like what Vvardenfell or Cyrodiil went with, simply because no other landmass is situatated that way. Unless we actually "scale down" the region the next game takes place, I don't see Vvardenfel or Cyrodiil being replicated, and I have no problem with that at all.

Actually, Skyrim does have road signs. My characters rarely fast travel or look at the in game map, so I tend to rely on the road signs quite a bit. However, I have noticed a couple of the road signs point the wrong direction. These always frustrate my character and I wish there was the option for the character to tear a sign down, cause there are a couple that point the wrong direction that my characters would like to get rid of, so they don't get fooled again. Plus it would be fun to take some frustration out on those damned signs that sent me miles in the wrong direction.

Now I'm confused. I thought we were talking about the game world. Are we talking about the map in the menu?

Sorry, I'm talking about the layout of the game map not the "map map", lol

Okay, so we're talking about the landscape that our characters travel though, and not the menu map. I got the impression that some of the posters above were referring to the map in the menu. Maybe I misread their posts.

Anyway, great topic.

Is there a reason why the game map should have "flow"? I mean, other than player convenience...

What I'm reading in the original post, it seems to me, is the result of fast-traveling and not getting personally familiar with Skyrim's system of roads. There are roadsigns at every intersection, everywhere.

Skyrim is a mountainous province, so roads have to go around the obstacles. Travel is always roundabout in mountainous places, as anybody who has traveled in real-world mountains can attest. I happen to think that Skyrim's game layout is the best of the TES series.

Yeah... The Imperial City being ancient, influentially important and powerful as well as being in the Imperial Heartland; it makes sense that settlement would form around it over time. Other provinces would have their own natural settlement formation; taking into account the biggest, oldest, important city and the shape of the province land mass, mountains, coastline and rivers.

IMO a good flow gives player a solid understanding of the world, and the layout is easily memorized. It also encourages player to follow roads rather than fast travel because without a good flow you will have to use compass to navigate rather than natural landmarks

Yeah, starting in the centre and having the action radiate around the capital made the map feel much smaller, but it also made it easier on people who weren't fast travelling. I much prefered Morrowind's map and silt striders. Skyrim is the worst map of the 3 by far. Every time I play Far Cry 2, i am amazed that no one has copied the map interface from that.

All right, but what is it about Skyrim that doesn't work that way? The province is mountainous, so the settlements have to be in valleys, and roads have to follow riversides. That means that travel has to be roundabout.

Also, bear in mind that the general layout of the provinces was determined in 1994, when Arena was created, long before any of these three "province" games (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim) were imagined.

In general, I like Skyrim's layout, and the fact that mountains stand in the way of travel, so you have to find passes, unlike most of Cyrodiil where you can cross country just about everywhere. I also like that you can use the jump key to "climb" up some of the steep areas, but not all of them. Just wish you could scale fences and other small objects that your character should be able to get over.

Oops. My fault I think. I thought we were talking about both. :/ haha

I'm guessing you also enjoyed far cry 3's map interface, LOL

Well in comparison to MW's and OB's map design, Skyrim is unique. Skyrim's map design feels 'wild'. There almost never is a straightforward route. You have to walk around mountains so many times, and then find out which path to choose at a crossroad. (I play without HUD. Only toggle compass to improvise a pocket compass.)
I thought having Riverwood as starting a great idea! You start in a corner of the map, and can go in any direction to explore Skyrim. It took me a while until I reached Dawnstar in my first playthrough, and I didn't approach Falkreath until 60+ hours.

MW map was great too. It had the dangerous part in the centre, while the peaceful areas were the shores and borders. Had me walking around the shores for a long time. And climbing the mountain at higher levels made MW a whole new game again.

Cyrodiil on the other hand... It's not one of the reasons Oblivion is my favourite ES game. There are literally no obstacles for 90% of the map. The only things that blocked our path there were city walls, the plateau of Kvatch and the mountains in the west and northwest. Getting from one point to the other was wayyy too easy in Oblivion. It wasn't even fun. Well, at least we have the amazing landscape to enjoy At some point, I installed Unique Landscapes for Oblivion, can't play without it ever since.
And IC for starting point was a bad decision IMO. Anvil or Bruma or Leyawiin would've been much better. It would make the first time entering the IC feel a lot more epic. If we didn't have the Fast-travel to any city before reaching them first.

Skyrim>Morrowind>Cyrodiil for me