Well... In Morrowind if you try to exit the map, you just get endless sea provided that the game isnt set in all of morrowind and only in an island known as Vvardenfell.

Ive looked at the maps of Tamriel, and the lenth between Vvardenfell and Morrowind is around the same size of the distance between the imperial City, and the rest of the continent....

Kind of ridiculously that they just made it endless sea
But maybe thats just me :/

It is probably because they had an easier way to block borders in Vvardenfell than all of morrowind, sadly Cyrodiil didnt have that geographic advantage, and couldnt achieve it....

It's less unbelievable than if you character just smacked into a glass wall surrounding the island, isn't it?

I'm with Moonmover on this. It adds realism and immersion, if you ask me.

At least there aren't voices in you head telling you, "you can't go that way, turn back."

If you compare it to the landmass in OB, then maybe the map in OB is out of scale. At least, that is my opinion.

And the endless sea thing helps with immersion for me 2

It isn't so weird, when you consider you're playing a video game.

What on earth did you expect?

It's also great for adding in a modded world. I can add a landmass far to the east of Vvardenfell, if I so wish. Nothing is stopping me, I don't have to mess with my ini, and it's easier to handle than Oblivion's method, imo. (I just don't like that CS altogether, though)

Endless sea > invisble walls and a voice in your head, imo.

I agree with the original poster, having an endless sea where the map clearly notes the presence of other islands baffles me more than invisible walls. I would have liked a freak storm sending you to a random shore on Vvardenfell, or a blackout with Azura's voice admonishing you for trying to escape destiny... and dropping you back on Vvardenfell's shores or something.

On the other hand, I wouldn't have such an easy way to get to Vivec if I wound up in Dagon Fel or at an Ashlander camp. Decisions, decisions...

Did you expect the whole planet? (or is it a flat world?)

EDIT: Anyway, the endless sea makes it really convenient for modders to add new lands.

Bethesda makes everything out of scale. But I can not blame them, its impossible to make a Vvardenfell or Cyrodiil with Daggerfells scale, at least with current technology. Hopefully they do not decide to make the scale the same as Oblivions for Skyrim. <_<

Back in high school, when I was playing Morrowind every day. I remember wishing there was a giant shark that eats you or at least something more creative than just looping sea.

When comparing it to Oblivion's invisible walls, I must say equally lame. However, it isn't a real world, so it's gonna have it's limits. So you just have to stomach it.

Why not? The elder scrolls iv is massive so that would be a good thing.

Scale... as in it's not massive when compared to the real Cyrodil.

If they're going to make a landmass 'x' square feet, then they should choose a region of Tamriel which is also roughly 'x' square feet.

http://images.g4tv.com/ImageDb3/166166_S/The-Elder-Scrolls-II-Daggerfalls-Map-Is-62-Square-Miles----Hows-That-Compare-To-Oblivion.jpg. Lore Cyrodiil was supposed to 4x? the size of Vvardenfell. In-game Cyrodiil was roughly the same size as it.

What did you expect? Seems like something very menial to complain about if you ask me.

Endless Sea>Invisible Walls.

I have to agree with this. If Bethesda had tried to avoid this, they would have had to model the land of the mainland and had it blocked off by an invisible barrier, or have an invisible barrier around the island before you get far out enough to see any other land, either way, though, you have the dreaded invisible barrier, and the latter also limits the amount of underwater exploration possible. The endless sea simply seems like the best option available. It certainly isn't too much of a problem, since there isn't actually any reason to swim out to where the mainland should be, considering that there's nothing there, the only reason you'd want to go there is just to see how far you can swim, and due to the low view distance, you'd never be able to see where the mainland should be from Vvardenfell. In the end, when playing the game, I generally don't find myself thinking that there should be land where there is nothing in the game.

Considering some of the alternatives, I think an endless sea was the best choice. I could live with the invisible barrier in Oblivion since they had to put limits on the explorable area of the game somehow, and since Cyrodiil is mostly land-locked, they couldn't use the endless sea method. The best alternative would probably be to use natural barriers like mountains instead, but it would seem a little odd for Cyrodiil to be surrounded on all sides by mountains with no passes through them, especially when you consider that in the lore, Cyrodiil isn't like that. At least with invisible barriers, you don't notice them unless you try to walk through them. But in Morrowind, since the game took place on an island, they had a very easy means to use a somewhat more natural way to limit the size of the map.

I'm of the opinion that they're both terrible and immersion-breaking in different ways. I was more forgiving of the sea back when the view distance was tiny, but even then it was disappointing to swim out and discover that you eventually run out of islands to explore. Either way, they both exist to punish players who try to escape from the worldspace, so if you play the game the way it's meant to be played, you'll almost never run into either. :shrug:

I actually liked the endless sea much more than the invisible walls in Oblivion. In Morrowind, when the map told me there was nothing out there, I believed it, and never had the urge to go see whether or not some super secret thing was out there for someone willing to swim a few miles. But in Oblivion, whenever I was exploring near the edge of the map, I would constantly bump into the invisible wall because there was no defined barrier.

I get that there really isn't that much distance between Vvardenfell and the mainland, however I couldn't care less honestly. It's less immersion breaking then slamming into a wall when you go out too far.

Good thing getting rid of the walls is as simple as changing a variable in the Oblivion.ini.

Well, in my opinion. It is even more silly in morrowinds version. Id rather realize im playing a game and be told that the world ends here, than to have an endless sea of nothing when in reality, you could see across it just as you could a river.

I don't dislike either way more than the other. They're games and gameworlds have limits. :shrug:

Deagonx, I think you're trying too hard to find a flaw in Morrowind. Honestly, I won't play. Find something real to bash.

PS. That is actually my very first outburst here since I joined. If there is something to complain, complain about why chargen has invisible walls. I know they will set me free, but I still might want to escape. What is holding me from jumping to sea and escape?

PPS. Don't you think, being lost in ultimate immersion for a real world, is better? Why is that you "want to realize" you're "playing a game"? As Morrowinders will say, "Morrowind is no game, it is life."

That's pretty much what I was saying, there's obviously no way Bethesda can model in detail the entire world of Tamriel in one game, so they need to somehow limit how far you'll be exploring in the game. The key here is to find the most natural and least intrusive way to do it, in Morrowind's case, the island setting allowed the endless sea solution to be used, and while it might not have been ideal since land that really shouldn't be that far from Vvardenfell did not exist at all in the game, I can still suspend my disbelief on the lack of such land, and it feels more natural than just hitting an invisible wall and being told I can't keep going in a certain direction when I reach the map's edge. Unfortunately, since Bethesda needs to work with a landmass whose geography, at least in overall layout, has already been established in previous games, they can't take too many liberties in this area and just have to work with what they can, because if Bethesda decides to ignore the geography already established in the lore, we get jungle transforming into a Tolkien-esque generic fantasy land.



One does get this impression. I mean, I have my complaints with Morrowind myself, I like Morrowind a lot, but it's not perfect, nothing that has ever been created by human hands is, however, these complaints are not about the endless ocean.

We Oblivioners follow a similar philosophy. :foodndrink:(it's sparkling apple cider)

Just out of curiousity, how hard would it have been for Bethesda to surround Cyrodiil with endless forest/swamp/snow-covered land/water where it belongs?