There is a lot of blank space on the Exiled map. Was there ever any information on why it was never filled? Seems like that would be a reason to bring players back.
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Yes, the empty spots contain the dungeons and other things you teleport to when you enter them and get a load screen.
Theyāre not instanced locations.
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So From J10-P17 are dungeons that the player teleports to when entering a dungeon? Iām not a game designer but I always thought a dungeon was a separate area detached from the main area. So they canāt make an expansion? Why arenāt dungeons under the mesh if its all the same loaded area?
Some of them are. But they are pretty large areas, so some are in the empty space too to avoid overlaps.
i donāt think there has ever been a definitive answer coming directly from funcom as to the exact reasons.
some of the empty space is actually used for āoffmapā dungeons. volcano and wine cellar live in the top right of the map space. dregs and some others, along with the place where conan-cuts-you-off-the-cross-starting-scene happens, are in the bottom left of the map space. the dagon dungeon and jheb sag grove are in the far left of the map space. there is some room north and south of the swungle that isnāt used for anything, so there are some empty spots that actually are empty, but there could be console performance reasons why they dont want to expand in those areas.
the way it works in an open world game like this, is the seperate levels are streamed in based on a certain distance from the player character. the dungeons occupy the space, but are only rendered when you are 5000 unreal units from the levelbounds of the dungeon.
dungeons under the mesh cause all sort of potential headache when it comes to thrall behavior, npc spawns being able to āfind a floorā to snap to, and other stuff. if you look at the caves that we have already, there is almost nothing actually directly above it as far as spawns or gameplay stuff because it causes all sort of headaches in the undermesh areas.
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If a dungeon is a separate area/instance that your device must load separate from the main area, couldnāt they build tons more dungeons without damaging the performance in the main map?
i think he is saying some of them are under the mesh.
the only dungeon in the game that is itās own separate instance and not part of the main world composition system is the kurak dungeon.
from my memory of the devkit, these are the only places where the map is actually truly āemptyā with no dungeons
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Why arenāt they all in a separate instance? Seems like that would fix a lot of problems and open up more room for an expansion?
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itās just the way unrealās world composition system works, itās how the engine handles open worlds.
we donāt actually know where the kurak dungeon exists, because it is not in the devkit at all. there are some hanging strings pointing to how it might be instanced, but only funcom knows how that dungeon works. it might not be instanced at all, but actually does occupy some map space somewhere, and i am wrong. i donāt know because it is not in the devkit for me to study.
This is incorrect. The dungeon interior is classified as an event, so it is only visible in the world when events are active. This is why you canāt see it in the devkit. You can find its location in-game though, it is located underground north of the volcano at 5920 -370790 -1800.
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awesome, thanks for the info
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I found this map that supposedly shows the approximate locations (under or over mesh no clue), sorry donāt know who the original author of this map is or was.
I always found it intriguing, especially since there are mods that extend into these areas, Tir-na-nog for example does this pretty well. So maybe it is time for an offical map rebuild? Not sure how much time and effort this would take, but with their āexpertiseā and āexperienceā this should be easier for the official dev team to do compared to modders no?
(or at least that what I would have thought of a pro dev team that has their heart and soul invested in their game - and yes I am facetious here - kudos and a heartfelt āThank youā to all you wonderful modders out there who take the time and effort to add so much more to this game!)
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Itās not about the expertise or the experience. Itās about the constraints.
Modders donāt have the same constraints that the dev team has. Specifically, they donāt have to worry about performance on consoles or on official servers, since neither consoles nor official servers permit mods.
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Okay I can definitely see that with some mods, but in relation on map extension, on PC at least I have not noticed much of any performance impact on private servers with 10+ players on running for example Tir-na-nog extended map.
It would be interesting to know how much impact it would be to extend the map into the āundevelopedā parts of the EL map. I donāt remember that much of an impact when they added the northern lands or the eastern jungles.
I can definitely see more issues on consoles, which is a bummer of course.
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Thatās true in some games but not in others. The designers make their choices about how to add dungeons ( under the map, in an instance, in a separate detached area) based on what they believe will make the game run the most efficiently.
Games like Conan have to keep in mind multiple requirements and how those different requirements affect the server that the game is running on. Each of the different ways of playing the game (PvE, PvP, dedicated server, single-player) put different amounts of work on the computer running the game and they have to design solutions that are capable of running in all of those different circumstances while keeping in mind how much work those computers can do. Sometimes instanced dungeons make sense, sometimes they donāt, sometimes areas separate from the map make sense sometimes they donātā¦ you get the idea.
And finally, sometimes those decisions are heavily influenced by the budget and time given to the dev team. Just like with any job, sometimes you have to do the bet job you can with the time that youāre given.
Exactly. Iāve been using the Waystones mod for a long time and leaving teleportation stones in dungeons, which allows me to track the locations of these dungeons. All dungeons are located at the edges of the map, and none are in the Northeast quadrant.
Last official word was a couple of Devstreams back and the answer was maybe possibly, but it was non-committal and this one would not pinion any expectations to that.
If anything was added, it would probably need to be small, a bite of land here or there, probably not an entire biome, for reasons already mentioned above.
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The last word I recall was something like this from Dennis:
āI was told all the dungeons were kept in the north-east. That isnāt the case, so itās possibleā.
It was on a dev stream, but unfortunately Iāve been unable to re-find the source, it was a good while ago though. The map posted by @Grognard seems correct, at least from my experience, as Iāve no-clipped out of a few of the dungeons on that list and their positioning is correct. The only dungeon not marked there in Kurakās Lair, but thatās in roughly F/G17 behind the Volcano.
By that logic, a map expansion is very much possible. Thereās at least 24 squares of completely unmapped space to play with, potentially more depending on where the borders are placed. The main concern would be, as others have said, optimization, performance and stability. Thereās also the lore reason for being able to go that far north past the cursed wall, but thereās already pieces in play that could serve that end.
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Yupp. Something like that was in one of the dev streams.
It is possible. They donāt do it for other reasons. Personally, I doubt itās performance. If they cared about performanceā¦ well, they donāt. Also, several mods that extend the map work pretty fine - no performance issue at all for me, too, and I wasnāt running them on a top tier machine.
Lore issues could also easily be solved. Either just move the curse wall without comment, or craft a little story that e. g. Kurak broke one of the curse wall totems, but met a secondary curse wall farther out. Maybe thereās something there the Giant Kings fenced in, such as another ancient species or a large Lemurian settlement.
The effort and problems monetizing an expansion would be likelier candidates. Unlike Siptah, it would be difficult to put a price tag on this. Players already are on that map, and at least I donāt see a paywall you can put up there. So, to them, itās investment without direct return.
It might increase player retention. But thatās a gamble.
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Instead of expanding the existing outdoor area of Exiled Lands, it might make more sense to implement two new dungeons with a higher level of difficulty - and of course, this would require the use of vacant space on the map too.