Do PSO2 maps feel small/lame to anyone else?

[jooozek]

yeah, the maps are too large and the enemy spawns are drip feed, you spend more time running around than on killing enemies

[pikachief]

I'm missing the feeling of exploration and familiarity with these maps. There's no exploration because the RNG makes them all just a bunch of similar looking, differently shaped rooms, and I can't find myself familiar with them because although I recognize certain areas, there's just nothing special about that area.

I like it when certain areas are catered for you to fight certain things. Just feels better to me. I guess I'd rather just have a person create a level flow of thought out spawns and rooms, rather than a computer do it randomly.

[Jim]

I'm missing the feeling of exploration and familiarity with these maps. There's no exploration because the RNG makes them all just a bunch of similar looking, differently shaped rooms, and I can't find myself familiar with them because although I recognize certain areas, there's just nothing special about that area.

I like it when certain areas are catered for you to fight certain things. Just feels better to me. I guess I'd rather just have a person create a level flow of thought out spawns and rooms, rather than a computer do it randomly.

Yeah, there is nothing instantly recognizable in any of these maps. Even if they made just a few landmarks that had some kind of flavor and stuck them in the RNG maps, it would help. Doors' benefits would stack on top of this too, since they would sort of help cloak the map's RNG nature and make you less likely to think things like "I don't remember seeing this landmark in the background of that one."

EDIT: Oh and yes, a community map maker would be splendid.

[strikerhunter]

I dislike the random map generator most times. Sometimes they're too big, and sometimes they're too small. I prefer the styles from PSO and PSU where the path was mostly linear, but with extra places to explore along the way.

Basically what BIG OLAF said. Sometimes it's too big, sometimes it's too small. Examples would be like: Boss rushing and getting ridiculously huge maze sized maps -or- Farming AQs and getting very small strait-away or L maps.

The fact that TAs don't use a random map generator leads to me questioning Sega this: "Why not just make a new mission type that has a fixed map and spawns?" They already did it for TAs, hell why not just do it for every single area or something similar.

Although it is true that I like the random map generator to an extent to keep things from being repetitive, seeing the same features over and over again is a bland. Would like to see special features within random map generators to differentiate maps and areas (seriously all maps are just the same but reskinned with the exception of ruin's pillars and the new map) , like climbable tree for forest, large steep slope for tundra, an actual volcano for caves, etc. Also not to mention adding different scenery of the same area would help add more taste to random maps as well. An example would be like add more trees to forest to get that forest feeling (honestly it feels like we are just visiting the each of one rather than inside one).

EDIT: Oh and yes, a community map maker would be splendid.

This would be lovely but I doubt it would happen.

[yoshiblue]

Watch it become a premium My Room feature instead.

[Valimer]

Yes, the level design is lacking severely. You know, the randomly generated paths would be OK if more of the tiles were actually interesting and varied more.

The painful part is knowing it will never change. It will be this way forever. They will keep adding new areas for a change of scenery but the actual design of the maps will stay the same forever.

[Jim]

Yes, the level design is lacking severely. You know, the randomly generated paths would be OK if more of the tiles were actually interesting and varied more.

The painful part is knowing it will never change. It will be this way forever. They will keep adding new areas for a change of scenery but the actual design of the maps will stay the same forever.

There's still hope for better maps in the future. Sanctum is a step in the right direction. Lots of doors there you have to kill stuff to unlock. If they had just gone with something besides that ugly cube theme, it would have been a lot better though.

[SilkaN]

Anything is better than PSO1's dark rooms.
But despite those rooms, I like PSO1 areas more. It felt more like an accomplishment when you were slightly underleveled and completed areas with 3 zones like cave or ruins.

[Cyclon]

As it stands, of course PSO's maps will seem better to us, because there was this fantastic first time where you discovered the area, with a design thought for a player to complete(not to mention a boss that's likely to kick your ass but that's another issue); that just doesn't exist in PSO2.

Really though, after the 500th run through, it does even up quite a bit. There may be a reason most of us remember PSO 1 more fondly while we may actually have played PSO 2 more at this point.

Now I'm not saying I disliked PSO's map generation system that much, but it's nice to have the possibility to get into an area without instantly recognizing the layout after the first two rooms, leading you to know absolutely everything that's ahead of you.
Also I really like the beach and sanctum, so even design wise it's not so bad right now.

tl;dr:I'm okay with it.

[gigawuts]

No I liked the DnD style enormity of PSO1's maps. They were bigger and you were forced to engage enemies in lengthier combat more than this RNG stuff with droprates so low you're basically forced to rush or exit burst if you want to find anything ever.