Hello.

First of all I want to say that I started this topic here in Lore rather than ES General, because It's more related to cartography than game mechanics. Or maybe not... but serious members hang out here rather than there :read: so here goes...

We all now that in comparision to TES3's Vvardenfell, TES4's Cyrodiil is a little "reduced". One of the things that makes it seem tiny is the fast travel. But that's not the point of this post. I'm curious how bigger do you think Cyrodiil should have been to fit at Vvardenfell's scale (I consider TES3's scale as reference).

I know that in terms of gamplay, MW and OB's game maps are relatively equal as size.
But here's what I'm wodering: How big is MW's scale compared to OB's scale (TES3's scale compared to TES4's scale). About 3:2? Or?

(please don't flame Oblivion the game or the devs). :nono: There are other topics for that.



And, do you think TES3's scale offers a good representation of the TES world? I think it does, even if some people (DF fans) say that TES2's scale owns, and take it as a reference scale. (imho, it's way too big to picture a detailed world).

I don't really understand what you are asking. Are you looking for the actual difference in size between the fictional countries, or do you want to know our opinion on the size of the map in either game?

Just take any full map of Tamriel, take out Vvard. and Cyrodiil and then shrink down Cyrodiil so that it is roughly the same size as Vvard.

Work out the scale factor of the the increase from new to old Cyrodiil.

That scale factor : 1 is the ratio.

(So if to make Cyrodiil roughly the same size as Vvard. you had to perform a decrease so the new Cyrodiil, in order to become the size of the old one, had to be changed by a scale factor of 2, then there is a 2:1 ratio between Oblivion's Cyrodiil and Morrowind's Vvardenfell)


EDIT: Just done it, using approx. surface areas and the 3rd Edition PGE, and it comes out as a roughly 3:1 scale, if my rusty maths skills are holding up.

After I saw the intro to the game for the first time, I expected so much more in TES4 than what I got.

For me, I'd have liked to see throngs, /hundreds/ or /thousands/ of people shuffling through. I would've liked to see somewhat tightly cramped homes befitting dwellings for the general public in the capital of the Empire.

More like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc-ClutaN_I

http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/EmpireOfTamriel.gif

Cyrodiil should have been about two times longer than Vv and about three or four times wider.

1. I was asking about the difference between the game representations of the landmasses. (e.g. TES2 had a huuge scale, TES3 had a fair one, and TES4 a tiny one). I wanted to know mathematically how big is one relative to another.

2. I want to know if you consider TES4 or TES3's scale as a fair representation of this fictional world. (For example one says that you can wiew all of OB's map from anywhere => scale is too small => not an accurate reprezentation=> scale should be bigger. Notice how Silgrad Tower Team doubled the scale to represent Eastern Morrowind, because thy felt 2xTES4 scale is a fairer representaton of the Elderscrolls worls rather than 1xTES4. I want to know if you feel that TES3 scale is a good representation, or TES4, or 10xTES4 or whatever...


Interesting, so regarding the game area, TES4 is 3x3=9 time as cramped as TES3.

Nooo. In the PGE (paper version, not TIL's, though of course the formula works the same, but with different numbers), Cyrodiil is a 5x3 area (15cm²), while Vvardenfell is a 1.8x2.8 area (5.04cm²).

In order to get Cyrodiil to be roughly the same size as Vvard. (which they are in game terms - if you put both heightmaps next to eachother, with Cyrodiil slightly bigger) you have to divide it by 3 (ish, though more in the high-mid 2s, so perhaps 5:2 would be a more apt ratio).

So Cyrodiil is taking up 3 times less space than it 'should' were it using TES 3's scale, and is thus 3 times more cramped than Vvardenfell.

One factor in the reason why Cyrodiil seems so small compared to Vvardenfell is that the foot speed is not agonizingly slow like in TES3. I think they overcorrected the difficulty in moving about in TES3 by making universal fast-traveling AND increasing the foot speed. Either/or would have been enough.

I feel cheated looking at that.

If you use Daggerfall as a reference, both game world were way too small.

how big is Cyrodiil in terms of square miles?

Compared to Arena, Daggerfall was way too small. The size is really meaningless. Daggerfall was procedurally generated, which meant Yahtzee's http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/75-Oblivion that, say, Cyrodiil is the same freaking meadow with a few wolves multiplied 500 times is probably even more applicable to the Iliac Bay.

Personally I'm fond of the smaller, self contained games, like Redguard and Morrowind. Why? Because any exploration component is going to be boring if it completely neglects the joy of discovery. Smaller games allow more handcrafted variety, and when combined with an appropriate sense of space and scale, can make things seem bigger than they actually are. Morrowind did this well, but also defined sense of scale by using an initially aggravating pedestrian pace and restricted fast travel, combined with huge expanses of empty waste. And I can see why Bethesda didn't go the same route, even though they arguably facilitated the sense of scale. But I still think it's far better than stumbling on the same Ayleid ruin if you walk five steps in any cardinal direction.

Daggerfall's own sense of discovery had more to do with achievement, such as climbing ranks in one of the guilds and getting awarded a house, or stumbling onto a vampire and contracting vampirism before you ever checked gamefaqs to know it was a possibility.

Compared to Arena, Daggerfall was too BIG. Daggerfall only took place in one (and a quarter) province compared to Arena's nine. If Arena is to be sued as the example, Oblivion and Morrowind were still both too small with Daggerfall being too large.



I find it odd you even mention Redguard. There was no discovery in Redguard. It had about as much immersion Jedi Academy. Games were you play a set char, with a set personality in a very story-book low deviance non-freeform plot really shouldn't have even carried the TES name. That "game" was just so...cookie cutter.



Though I found Morrowind to have better immersion, Oblivion was really just a bad imitation of Morrowind in my mind. It basically just copied all the flaws in Morrowind without any of the good.

For instance, in Morrowind there were a huge amount of empty expanses like you said. That meant there were a limited number of dungeons. What was there to do when you cleared allt hose dungeons? Nothing. Only mods. And what if you had no access to mods? Then there was literally nothing. When combine that with a deficient faction system (when compared to Daggerfall's) you get a much more limited game. Oblivion was the same thing, except it had less dungeons and an even crappier faction system.

Basically what I'm saying is the Daggerfall had loads more replay and RP value then Morrowind/Oblivion. I blame the popularity of Redguard for that. Redguard really ruined TES from that standpoint.

Linear is the word you're struggling to remember. It isn't a dirty word, and has a long tradition of being part of meaningful storytelling right back to the invention of writing. Dreamfall might be the equivalent of an interactive movie where you occasionally press a button to get to the next scene, but it's one of my favourite games, primarily because it's unique and meaningful. Discovery in this case is a matter of finding out what happens next, and is all the more rewarding because of the emotional investment in the character. Adventure games are better able to manipulate one's sense of scale and expectation primarily because they're linear. Redguard, despite its small size, was of a scale that was believable and convincing, and had enough variety for that size that it never really felt repetitive, as was the case for all the other TES games to varying extents.


Er. It was a hand-crafted world. I don't think you understand the meaning of cookie cutter.


Considering how many hours it would take you to clear every dungeon in Morrowind, I don't think that's a terribly convincing argument. If all the dungeons are going to be more or less the same, I really only need one re-generating dungeon. Or a copy of Diablo or a http://ivan.sourceforge.net/img/Holyscreen33.png game.

I wouldn't be opposed to a TES game taking place entirely in one city. A city provides one with the sort of opportunities necessary for sandbox RPGs and the sort of discovery necessary for fulfilling exploration. Cities are where tourists visit to satisfy their thirst for adventure, their longing for a cultural education, their desire to immerse themselves in the different and the strange. And cities are ideal for the act of role playing, which isn't only decided by what manner you kill things, but by your relation to other people.


And basically what I'm saying is that Daggerfall was loads more repetitive than Morrowind, and maybe even Oblivion. Once you realise they're really all alike, 20 different guilds and three billion dungeons doesn't really carry much truck, and you're better off playing something like Dwarf Fortress.

Well, as far as area size goes, Oblivion's in-game map was around 16 square miles. Morrowind's I calculated to being 7.39 square miles, though that counts water cells; about 4-5 of those square miles were land area.

By my estimations, Morrowind's game map was around 1:100 in terms of scale compared to the "real" size of Tamriel, while Oblivion was closer to 200-250:1; properly, Cyrodiil has around 10-12 times the land area of Vvardenfel.

A problem with Daggerfall was that it was seamless unlike Arena (where fast travel was the only way to reach locations) and had a 1:1 land scale, but a 12:1 time scale. So in other words, it took 12 times as long to get anywhere. And for Morrowind, it took 60% as long, as it had a 60:1 time scale. And Oblivion had a 30:1 time scale, meaning it took only around 10-15% as long to get anywhere as it should. I think that crucial difference between time and space compression is what also yielded the illusion of Oblivion being so small. The other crucial factor would be the draw distance; Morrowind defaulted to a cap of around 350 feet, (100 meters) as opposed to around 2 miles (3.2km) for Oblivion; that's about 32 times as far.

I personally think that ideally, a land and time compression scale of 12:1 should be used; for a place like Skyrim, that would result in a land are around 30 by 50 miles (48 by 80 km) in size, quite large but not unmanagable in terms of creating it or playing in it. A while day would take 2 hours, much shorter than normal but still long enough that time doesn't seem to fly by. And by walking from one end to the other of the game, it'd still only take a few hours. With a good horse, that could be cut to perhaps an hour; it's an RPG, so faster speeds than normal should be fine, such as 20 mph (32 kph) for a character with 100 speed and athletics, or 30-40 mph (48 to 64 kmph) for a fast horse.