(Episodes) Re-using Maps for openworld/Raids Suggestions and design.

I agree we need fresh new enviroments but if this will limit/reduce the amount of instance based content etc and quality of Content then i would rather pick the large amount of content with quality then a good looking map.

My point is Quality and bigger Raids,alerts,duos,solos,openworld content should be prioritizied over a new openworld map.

The reason im picking on openworld map to be re-used is because i think based on this episode they put most of their time into it if they would have taken a re-cycled map i can see that this dlc would have been much better even with the bountys which people dont want ,because instead they could have more instance based content in this episode and also make them properly and not rushed and quick.

i think that they put most of their time in this episode by making the new openworld map thats how i see it and i would really like to know how many hours it took them to make this new openworld map,And i hope this will be last time they did such thing and that they learned from this.

Just think of a dlc now that has a re-used openworld map but good Instance based content and good openworld and ask yourself is such a episode better or the one we got currently with new openworld map but hardly any instance based content and the raid and alert we have are super short and rushed. I mean the elite raid has a 11 minute speedrun feat on it?

Very Rushed and this feat proofs it to me further.

It's not the first raid to have seemingly ludicrous speed feats.

Feats are stretch goals they're not intended to indicate to you time hasnt been spent on developing the instance and you shouldn't take it as that at all.

Difficult feats are also put in place to encourage going back to content later to keep it active past relevancy or during ongoing relevancy window with the subsequent DLC.

You need to understand that your views on quality of content are highly subjective, not everyone hates the quality of the current raid, in fact even I would have to say some reasonable effort has gone in to its design.

The same could be said of the wonderverse raid and many raids in the game.

The difficulty level of the raid is entirely irrelevant to the time it takes to design the environment itself and is another issue altogether.

I know you keep saying to me, let's cut back open world, it's not going to make me change my mind.

I enjoy good open world maps, they're a massive part of the MMO experience and you're simply not going to have me agree to just recycling them everytime under this pretense it'll translate into amazing content elsewhere.

My answer remains hell no, I also want new and refreshing open worlds just as much as I wants raids or any other content for that matter.

Like I said don't mind the odd recycling too but not every time.

I didnt say the raid design wasnt good i said before too it looks good but the second boss fight for example is really rushed and very simple and didnt get much effort from my viewpoint and the raid is just very short and considering that we had only raid and the other alert being super short too i was expecting more from the Raid and alert.

You enjoy good open world maps then you can enjoy this episode are you happy with the current episode? Im sure you are enjoying it dont you? This episode should have been your favorite then since open world maps are important to you and the current one is really big. If even a player likes you doesnt enjoy this episode that should be another reason for them to understand that my points here are valid.

You dont really seem to understand that they have not much ressources to deal with and putting that little ressources into a new openword map is probably one of the worst things to do i would say this episode is the perfect example of a big new openworld map with tiny amount of Instance based content that has been rushed for the most part ontop of it.

Ofcourse your opinion is subjective aswell and the devs should look at this episode which is made towards players like you (that enjoy new big openworld map)and then see how well this episode does if they know people do not like it all that should be enough proof for them to look at my suggestions and currently only you want new openworld map on this thread.

I never heard of anyone that buys a episode for the openworld map but i do know people buy episodes for the content inside (Raid,alert,duo,solo) and a new openworld map doesnt mean it will look good and the openworld map hasnt helped this episode to stay popular that should be enough proof to know that a new openworld map should be least priority.

And i dislike this openworld map and i read that multiple times that people dont like it either it looks very bright and i cant stand it. The re-used openworld map(slightly adjusted) of gotham of justice league dark episode was much better to look at for me and since they put effort into the both raids with completly new maps i know many people that loved that episode and it even got people back into the game that had quit for 5 years instead of focusing on a new openworld map which is something alot people dont even pay attention to its about the atmosphere and old maps can do this just as good as a new one.

I always liked the Gotham Wastelands map. Maybe reuse it for the future Death Metal Episode? It also would work well with the open world bosses

I'm not sure whether you're being a tad condescending on purpose or whether it's just innocently the way your post comes across when you say things like "you would" or "you clearly like this DLC for the open world" etc. like it's somehow a bad thing... I'll assume you're not doing it on purpose at this stage.

Now that I'm at a keyboard rather than my phone however, I'll be a little more detailed with you as to why I, at least, believe your position is errant.

People don't play the game for any one singular aspect, they play and enjoy the game as a whole. This includes the experience they receive from open world, solos, duos, alerts, raids and even seasonals when and as they occur. There's a swathe of people that also enjoy cosmetic dressing up and decorating their base.

I have to question your logic about "attempting to scale down open worlds and recycle open worlds" because where do you go next. .. "Oh raids are still not too my liking, can we stop making so many styles each DLC, can we just have 1 instead of 3, or can the regular purple gear not have enhanced..."can we stop making base items, who really builds bases anyway...."

You're basically asserting your personal preference as "the be all and end all" and translating one singular response you got from Mepps as validation of all your feedback and that therefore all your feedback should just become "adopted" and nobody else matters, you're guilty of letting it get to your ego a little, no offense.

Not trying to bust your chops but when Mepps posted in your thread he was more generically saying that all the feedback in the thread was valid, not just yours and there were posts in disagreement of yours as well.

When you made your other thread, which I might say really doesn't stray far from this one either in terms of its topic/intent you were tapping in to a community resentment surrounding bounties. There are a few people, not all either, but a good number, who are tired of bounty spamming, bounty spamming is seen as an "open world activity" they want the bounties removed because the task of doing them has become too cumbersome and time consuming, it's taking over their play and game time for a detrimental extent.

Now this shouldn't be translated into "We hate open world environments, just start hacking them out, recycling them"...

Throughout the entire existence of this game there has been open world environments that have included daily missions, bounties and tasks. it's an important part of your immersion into the story telling of that particular DLC and given you're going there every day to do dailies, the quality of that particular environment has to also be given extensive consideration.

By comparison you're in a raid once a week, sure people "can reset them" but equally people don't so actually if anything there's justification to argue raids should be ultimately given the "least attention" when it comes to appealing aesthetics, however, they are an important experience as well because they're usually the pinnacle of challenge so they get the attention nonetheless.

To illustrate my point, let's use some examples of what I believe to be some of the better open worlds and why.

Metropolis/Gotham - These are the largest open worlds, they contain the story lines, they have the most going on and they are the biggest. This allows people to congregate, sandbox and just generally explore. Seemingly the worst part, is that if too many people congregate it can get a bit laggy.

Given however, they've now been tweaking these bounties in albeit slightly smaller open world environments, I would suggest moving some dailies in to these open worlds could now be more feasible. They used to have this when they ran Blackest Dawn and Vengence out in the open worlds and they were great, but the lag resulted in them eventually moving them in to closed instances.

I would like to see more "operation" style instances pushed out in to Metropolis and Gotham as well as more bounties like the Lightning Strikes bounties, where they can have multiple spawn points and groups go and hunt them out, the feats can be lower, less tedious and the cost of rewards can be dropped to better reflect the side quest nature of them and the increased time taken to find/defeat them.

the bounties should be seen as a "filler" to pass time when you've done dailies and you're after a side quest to continue engagement in playing while possibly doing other things like farming low level instances for various reasons.

Central City - This was a good open world environment, sure it lacked some detail, it wasn't exceptionally large, but every time they've used it, it's small enough to feel like there's always something going on. You don't got vast distances without seemingly anything going on, you can cram it all in to one spot. Having a few more enviornments like this wouldn't be a bad thing, I don't think it's time to re-use this environment again though, because it's been used a bit.

Doomsday Metropolis -This was another one I liked and the reason for it, was because it was a "new fresh spin" on Metropolis, we even had the unbottled daily planet we could go on top of for the first time. Reiterating my point really that "fresh new spins" in open worlds are important to players. This was another map where the size was reasonable, it felt populated and there were some fun bounty experiences. The big doomsday and the smaller ones were a good balance.

Justice League - Area 51/War Torn Village - Not to beat a dead horse here, but my favourite here, is easily the war torn village, again because it was NEW, it was a fun new environment, again with a bounty tucked in, where we all piled in to a room for some fun carnage and the instance was not too big there wasn't something going on, but was pleasantly detailed in its castle design and outdoors areas. Area 51 on the other hand, not only being old, just feels like a lifeless desert" it was nothing in comparison, it's not rich in detail and frankly I'd be happy if its never used again.

Earth 3 Gotham - I actually really enjoyed Earth 3 Gotham, it was again Gotham with a new spin, it was pseudo day time, which hadn't been experienced before, this immersed the player in a slightly different experience from that previously had in Gotham and was fun. The open world dailies were engaging or at least as much as they can be in the context of dailies, but I never incredibly bored of going there each day.

Metal Part 2 Gotham - This is a great highly illustrative example of why you DON'T reycle content. This open world was a straight recycle of the Earth 3 Gotham with a night time hue returned, it was garbage and coming here by comparison to the above felt tedious and almost soul destroying. To give the content itself credit I loved the large Metal Manbat bounty, that was fun, but that could have been placed in a car park lot anywhere to be fair. This is also why you DON'T recycle content too quickly, as we'd recently had Earth 3 and this is why you'll have people say "devs are lazy didn't even bother making a new open world, just reshaded Earth 3"....

Thanagar - I actually really like Thanagar, it's new refreshing, again just the right size to keep things feeling alive and the bounties in the middle are a fun experience, don't run past and get hooked when you're by yourself lol... I liked the detailing in the sky with the ships, the big cannon in the distance and the stalls and what's not that made it seem like a bit of an alien village as well when you spawned in.

31st Century Metropolis - This open world actually isn't that great, there's been a lot of detail put in to it, but it feels a bit sterile actually, the adds are quite spread out and the buildings again despite having a bit of detail feel again, sterile. I'd have expected a future metropolis to have a bit more lighting, I don't know, perhaps if it was Metropolis at night it would've had a better feel, again possibly cause that would've been fresher. I like the bounty placements themselves and the area in the middle with Validus is probably a more favourite aspect, but this new open world actually isn't one of my overall favourites.

Birds of Prey Metropolis - It was another least favourite, this one really did feel like there wasn't a heap of anything going on. If anything this is possibly a good example of an open world environment that feels rushed, we've taken a small part of regular Metropolis, slapped up some walls, dropped in some lions and thugs and called it a day, probably by far one of my least favourites. To be fair I hated coming here every day it was worse than Metal Gotham.

Titan Island - This one I liked again, because it was new. The Titan Tower was cool, the bounties and the relatively small size with lots going on made it engaging. There's a reason this DLC is actually up there in terms of being an overall community favourite. There's also a few parts of the island were there's some fun little details like Raven's Sanctuary.

Gotham Wastelands - This was another good one, because it gave us a fresh spin on Gotham, it was largely destroyed and you could see the detail and care that had been put in to the creation of this map. There were areas of this map where it was guilty of being "void of activity" but it worked for this map because it was supposed to be a wasteland, it incorporated the storyline in to its overall feel and player immersion. There were areas where you also went where you weren't quite sure what was down there only to find a gaggle of imps. This map was really fun in it's time and sadly probably hasn't been revisited despite there probably being an opportunity to do so at times.

Anyway, I think you'll see the general theme here, is that the less you recycle content, the better, the open worlds I've highlighted above that are best are easily the new fresh twists on things and the more an environment captures the story being told and the feel the better.

Recycling open world content would be a horrible mistake that would simply disengage players from the story being told, disengage the players from their daily enjoyment and immersion and likely result in an overall exodus of players and a decrease in time players spend logged in.

The only time open worlds should be recycled is when it purposefully suits the storyline being told, it has to suit or else it's stupid.

Next to "raids" open worlds are probably the most important aspect of a DLC, if not actually MORE important than raid environments. Open world experiences and immersion are ultimately the bread and butter of an MMO experience.

Moon is a pretty good size. The Star Labs, Pit and Watchtower Containment maps are pretty small but might be good for an alert, or part of a multi-zone instance.

LOL, you mean like the current alert

During the test part? Now that I think if it they may have used half of the WTC map. IIRC, and it's been years since I PVP's on that map, there was a dividing wall wasn't there?

Oh sorry, did you mean the PVP Map, nah that's a different area. It's been too long since I played that also, cause no one ever queues it

For a alert i agree the star labs could be interesting.

I mean the arkham asylum alert map is still awesome to me.

Gorilla Island also very interesting and has a very big map.