I've just finished the first dungeon and town in my RPG, and I'm trying to decide whether or not I should use a world map to link the two together, or have towns and dungeons flow into each other. The only thing stopping me from having everything flow together (and it's the choice I'm leaning towards at the moment) is travelling from one side of the world to another, but even then I could execute some sort of teleportation system to do so.
I'm mainly after opinions - how do you feel about a world map in your RPGs?
I will answer with the word May?
I sometimes like world maps, they make the amount of maps need shrink by a lot, I however like the idea of scrapping a world map and making things merge together, only problem is, the amount of maps required will increase 3 fold?
tldr, basically its a personal choice based upon how lazy you are :V
I honestly think you should just connect them, I have never been a world map person.
One of the ideas I had for a game in the past (and I'm sharing it now because I'll probably never complete a game with it) was to make a world map, but not in a playable sense. More like a shopping mall directory, with a "You Are Here" on it. That way, if you were in-game, and you pressed a key, a "map" screen would open up with the world map you created, and teleport your player character to the spot relative to where you're actually located, then restrict movement. This way you'll get a coherent world without the loss of immersion. It's the best of both worlds (pun totally intended).
Just a thought :)
Like in Tales 2