Dinosaur Survival Games SUCK At Map Design...

The Isle, Path of Titans, Beasts of Bermuda... they all have bad maps that players generally disagree with. Why?

[SmurphyMurph]

My several ton dinosaur falling off Mount Everest because the cliff edge was covered by some cute foliage 🥰🥰🥰

[BartZeal]

When I studied Landscape Architecture they taught us: Designs are experienced from eye-level. Stop designing things that look pretty from the top. The design is made for humans, not birds!
When I look at most of these maps, they're breath-taking to fly around in... See what's happening? The devs should take this architecture rule into account.

[Bans]

Functioning frontal cortex you say? Well that puts you above 50% of the player base and 90% of the devs tbf

[GLeviathan]

devs (and fans) in this genre often ask the question "Does this look pretty for screenshots?" Instead of "Does this seem functional?"

These are video games first, and experiences second.

[Boots]

i don't mind the cliffs in gondwa, at least it's not like gateway where a bunch of bushes are blocking you from seeing the edges of them. Sometimes they even make it so you can safely go down with parts of the cliff sticking out as platforms. Tho i really hate how tiny ass logs completely stop your movement, and it's so unpredictable too cuz you can go through some of them

[jalea]

Bob has one thing right and it’s their somewhat good map layout. All 3 of their maps, especially rival shores allows aquatics to have actual gameplay and interactions with land creatures, which I find PoT has a hard time figuring out

[Softlydemonic]

*falls and breaks all my bones in my prehistoric body cutely*

[tr.o.ubadour]

Not sure if the size of your map is meant seriously, but it looks not like a survival map but a deathmatch map. Which is fine if you like that. But survival means the necessity to move around in search for food, be that plants or other dinos. I think Gateway is pretty good already, but indeed too big for 100 player servers. 150-200 works better (custom servers). There are enough rivers for the semi-aquatics to move through, enough cliffs for flying or climbing dinos to be safe, dense forests (Why wouldn't there be? It's not modern civilized land.) and open fields. I agree with some wonky placements, though like the central domes just kinda being built into a cliff at one side and some roads and lake placements also making little sense. Also I don't think focusing on adding new dinos playables is the way to go at this state. Improve the map (size it down, fix weird shit), improve the atmosphere (why are there no birds, no insect noises), fix the food and AI animal spawns, then go for more dinos.

[Kronnos-rkdo]

Me when i am forced to go around 18km of land bc my bipedal predator cant clear a knee-high ledge:

[purpledragon]

The map for Gondwa is large and does have a large variety of cliffs. However, they do have teleportation with waystones to specific spots and a pull up map which the Isle doesn't have either of.

[KalugaOfficial]

As a level designer and map developer by trade and an actual job. You make some valid points but one thing to remember with players and the survival genre as a whole is that you need to design a level based around your style of game. Of course, dinosaur survival games have dense map designs with lots of terrain variation. Most of them are walking simulators for the most part. You need interesting things to see and things to go do. Some maps in ARK, the game that I made Appalachia for, are way too crazy yes but it makes a simple map like Appalachia seem like a breath of fresh air.
I added stuff like ghost towns, settlements, old forts, and a lot of environmental story-telling to the map because it's based on North America if the Precursor Overseers met humanity and wanted to control it during the 1800s. It's a lot of flat-ish land but that was for builders and because it makes sense when humans were there. Nature did take over again but the effects on the landscape are far from gone.
That said, a massive map needs things to do and things to see. For the case of dinosaur survival games, you need to take a look at it from different perspectives. Vast open areas are great for hadrosaurs, sauropods, ceratopsians, and stegosaurs while dense areas are better for dromaeosaurs, smaller carnivores, small herbivores, and more. Take a look at it this way. You wouldn't put a bluegill in a saltwater tank or in a fish bowl. With map design, it's the same concept. You build your map around the gameplay and vision you want for your game. If you want a more realistic look, you need more detail. If you want a cartoonish stylized look, you need less detail and more exaggerated things.
Personally, I like how the maps are. Do I want to make one for Path of Titan's one day? Maybe. I do have my gripes with the games in general but the maps are something that we as players spend a lot of time in. We see that world and if it were not cohesive, I wouldn't spend an hour exploring it. The maps of Path of Titans at least do that well. It's cohesive and it goes for a style.

[Ghostsise]

for the map to be viable it would have to hold 1000+ people

[ToxicMonkey]

Sorta hot take, dino survival games have terrible maps bc there isn't much to do in the games. Part of the experience of playing is built on struggling to get around and survive. This is especially the case in the Isle and the devs design philosophy is inherently flawed. They want an extremely immersive game that doesn't lead to an overall pleasant experience. They need their players to die a few times to cliffs so that they have to grow all over again.

[saij-]

The beginning is too realateble, especially during night💀

[Rainygirl]

I love the environments of Panjura and Gondwa, but my biggest issue with Path's maps are the cliffs on Panjura and the sheer size of the maps meaning that you never come across anyone unless you got to a hotspot. I really hope alderon makes a much smaller and generally flatter map, or gives dinosaurs the ability to walk over small inclines.

[lumiauroras]

I want to love The Isle, but the water distribution on Gateway makes NO sense, rivers start in lakes, which isn't wrong necessarily, but then gets weird when it happens multiple times, there's no springs, some rivers just kinda end, oh and the huge dam? The river flows FROM it, not into it. Good luck following the "water goes down rule" Because it worked exactly 0 times out of 10 for me. Ponds are usually on a random meadow somewhere high on the island. But I really like the tiny pond in the volcano, that is really cool, shame that there isn't a little rivulet that eventually grows into a river that starts there tho...

[Jaimyoutubing]

The map you made would need to be almost doubled in size to fit 100 players without being a clusterfuck. It would still be smaller than an Isle or PoT map overall, and make running into other players a more common occurance, but running into a player or group every 5-ish minutes would be much preferable to running into them every other minute, which is what would happen with your proposed map size. As a carni it would make hunting an absolute chore, with how easily your prey could get stolen, recieve back up, or how easily you could become the orey yourself. And it would incentivise herbis to mix together and megapack even more for increased protection. I'd say perfect map size for 100 players would be 2/3 the size of Gateway.

[tsc]

Even with the interactive map for The Isle, I still barely know where I am. Traveling to the hotspots is a pain on Cerato (my favorite) because THEY GAVE THEM 2 SPAWN CHOICES. It's either on the hotspot where you are likely to insta die because someone spider sensed you, or starve to death because no one is around/no ai spawn.

[guilhermefalido]

One thing that I like in the Bermuda map, is the underwater caves, where you can pass for the arrived in a lake or river, this making it difficult to drink water fresh water and also leave the experience more interesting, different from path of Titans, where the experience with aquatic animals is boring and uninteresting.

[dinosaursontop]

i have been playing the isle for a while and i still have no idea how to navigate the map at all