We've all heard about invisible walls, haven't we? They are those annoying things you bump right into when trying to carry on forward... when there's nothing in front of you.

So, the best solution we have for this problem is natural borders. By natural borders I mean mountains, rivers, etc.

But in the category of natural borders, why haven't they thought of cliffs? Giving the player an option to move forward, jump from a cliff. Of course, if you do that you will also die. And it makes sense in Skyrim! especially in Skyrim! Why? Because Skyrim is a very high place, with lots of mountains around, and it doesn't have to be surrounded with mountains, the entire continent can just be on a very high level, which means that when you reach an end, you'll find yourself facing either a mountain, a river, or a CLIFF.

What say you?

NOTE: and by the way... let's keep this discussion as civil as possible, mmkay?

Pete said there's a mixture of both invisible walls and natural borders.

Yep. I think your wish has come true. It wouldn't work having everything natural borders as that is just unrealistic but I think this is a good balance.

I know :S I'm referring to the fact that they should add cliffs, with no invisible walls. Which means that player CAN jump, but if he/she does, he/she dies.

A magical forest that always turns the player around would be kinda cool.

I'd rather have invisible walls so that we can mod off border content later on.

I don't mind borders but I got somewhat sad when I couldn't pass the one in the mountains that led to Skyrim. It was sort of funny though cause i was like imagining in my head that a huge Dragon was blocking my way and if I could just get past him, then i could be where I want to be. :spotted owl:

cliffs can work but i think beth are doing it right with mixed. Last i checked skyrim wasn't a bowl like in the sense that it is surrounded by unpastable mountains and trade routes are must be around therefore paths

Typically invisible walls are used as a quick fix for something that they found and didn't have the time to patch graphically. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing some bottomless pits/ instant death plunge as natural boundaries. If you're allowing players to jump off of it at their own will, you'll have to make it bottomless or instant death or the cheater players could potentially survive and be a realm outside of the game's boundaries. I guess you could make a save routine that teleports them back to the cliff edge, ect.
However that is still more work as well.

A fun solution to these is to bypass it and create a really strong up draft for the cliff that will throw players back if they jump off. That actually sounds kind of fun.

Or, a bunch of http://praetorianprefect.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/600px-Do_Not_Enter_sign.svg_.png around the map. :lmao:

What if they scripted it in a way that when you hit the bottom your health points become 0 and the load screen opens automatically? Or instantly.

In the Barenziah books they also had Imperial or local checkpoints at the main roads points of crossing into other lands where the gaurds would kill anyone without a permit or enough money to cross. They should have some bridges with super high lvl unkillable guards at them with large closed locked/sealed gates.

For instance, the gates between Skyrim and Morrowind could be closed due to the Argonian invasion or to stop any more Dunmer refuges spilling thru.

Final, eternal staircase Super Mario 64 style.
Guess what? You were moved back like 20 steps everythime you got to a certain point. It was not possible to see the jump if you didn't knew about it.

You could get into Skyrim briefly, during that one quest in Oblivion where you have to retrieve that item (forget what it was) for the Countess of Bruma. It was quite a teaser, I just wanted to keep going into Skyrim, but the questline only let us go so far.

How about a progressively worsening blizzard that eventually becomes a complete 'whiteout'? The program eventually reverses the facing/walking direction of the player, it would appear to the player that they simply got lost in the blizzard and walked around in a circle.

Eh...cliffs wouldn't necessarily work because of slowfall. People would try jumping off them all the time. A barrier is just that- something that STOPS you. The mountains will be fine, until people start crying about "but Pete said I could climb every mountain". *shrugs*

That is the definition of instant death. Well, not necessarily. Sometimes it is done in the 1000000000 damage done to player instead of set health = 0. Problem is that sometimes people accidentally survive the former.

The main thing to note is that there is no solution for invisible walls because all boundaries are invisible walls with skins laid over them. Morrowind had a great system of "swim all you want, you'll never escape"

Skyrim doesn't have cliffs on all sides which is the problem. For example what do you do if there coast?

Morrowind had the greatest solution. Since it's on the isle of Vvardenfell you can swim all around it and you can swim straight off the map and keep going for as long as you like! You'll never reach the mainland though!

It's a mix of cliffs and invisible walls

I remember those signs from the WoW alpha.

My solution is http://www.emoticonswallpapers.com/avatar/games/Ski-Free.gif

They were road signs first, lol :thumbsup:

There should be no invisible walls on the inside of the map. And i'm even against the idea of natural boundaries on the inside as well. I like to think of TES games as being true open world games... where you can literally go almost anywhere without obstruction.

As for the outside of the map - invisible walls are fine. They can easily be turned off by the player / modders, so if someone wants to add another province to the game, like Cyrodiil, it's just a case of turning the invisible wall off and walking across the border. Having a natural border around the map not only feels just as artificial as an invisible wall - it also causes a ton of problems for modders.