There are some games, like Super Mario Bros. 3/World, Super Mario RPG, Baldur's Gate 1/2, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Romancing SaGa series (and SaGa 3 DS, but not original SaGa 3), Shovel Knight (ignoring Specter of Torment), TES: Arena, Dust: An Elysian Tail, and many others, in which the map, for the lack of a better term, could be called "segmented". (Anyone know of a better term? I could call them graph maps, to take a term from mathematics (graph theory) that fits the structure of these maps, but I think that would confuse other people.)

The way this works is that you are given a map screen, and either:
* You select a location on the map to explore.
* You move between nodes and then, once you're on the node you're looking for, can enter the area from there.

So, what do you think of this sort of map? Do you like it, or would you rather have something more continuous, or even a linear series of stages with no overall map to explore?

Edit: Why the low rating? Why are people downrating topics that are about discussing games on a game related forum?

I think it depends a lot on what kind of gameplay and story your game has.

A continuous maps is great for exploration games, but even huge maps may make the world feel relatively small.

Segmented maps can help the world feel bigger, by virtue of not showing it all, but also more focused, since wherever you are is always important to the game in some sense. Though too much segmentation will invariably make your world feel small, specially if areas are small themselves.

I love metroidvanias, so sprawling continuous areas are always a treat to me. On adventures, I like at least one big hub to explore and solve stuff, if possible, with smaller areas now and then.

I also love open world exploration games, RPG or not, though I certainly didn't miss an open world in Dragon Age or Pillars of Eternity.

So I think, in the end, it's on a case to case basis. :)

I like both in their own way. Continuous maps (like in Gothic) can be impressive, but a series of several smaller maps to explore also has its charm and advantages. I think "on a case to case basis" is the standard reply to most of your questions in this vein. Most players aren't that rigid when it comes to things like that, it just has to fit the game rather than adhere to a universal standard. ;)

I prefer what you see in games such as Oblivion. That is where you can explore the entire overland map but all locations are instanced such as cities and dungeons.

The funny thing is that in an older game like Morrowind the cities on the overland were all part of the same map and there was no loading screen.

Even an older game like Dungeon Siege had it that you could run the entire game without a single loading screen.

Another route I've seen but don't like as much is what you see with games such as final fantasy 8 and darkland were you move an indication of your party over an overland map and if there is an encounter you zoom in. Once you reach your destination then you go to different methods of handling it.

So I guess what I"m saying is that there is a whole range of methods of doing this.

For instance in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and in Might and Magic 6 when on the surface you just get to the edge and then warp to the new area, no overland map at all. Star Wars is interesting though in that it has another level of abstraction for the stapmap where you click on your destination.

I think I prefer what happens in games like Morrowind or Oblivion. I think those two hit probably the best balance.

That method is actually even older than the games you mention. The Final Fantasy series actually did it for the first 9 games, as did Dragon Quest for the first 7, and Ultima for the first 5. Such maps have become less common in recent years, though The Alliance Alive (which I am playing now) uses this approach. (TAA is rather interesting in that it's quite conventional in some ways, like with the story structure (aside from switching party members at a few early points), but breaks convention in other ways (the growth system; where's my level and experience points?).)

I actually like this approach because it allows one to get the general layout of the land without too much travel time, but still have explorable towns and dungeons. In particular, this avoids the problems of using the same scale for everything.

(I could also mention Zelda 2, StarTropics, and Gargoyle's Quest as games that use this approach.)

Standalone maps in cRPGs always felt more like they're coming off of the pages of a book. Kinda like the narrator says "...and then they arrived at Kuldahar, where the great tree blah blah..." and poof, after loading there you are in Kuldahar doing your thing until the narrator says again "...now let me tell you where they went next..." or maybe something like "...now let's go elsewhere and do more things like that.".

Between continuous & standalone maps, i prefer the latter since i feel more like i'm inside a fantasy book rather than a videogame (which is weird of course, since i'm *playing* a videogame after all). Then again, i absolutely won't say no to a good game because it does things a certain way and not my favourite way.

In my opinion Those "segmented" maps are a convenient technical solution for a problem. If old and not so old developers from different platforms had the resources and/or the technology to make the same game not segmented they would have chosen to make it continous for the immersion's sake. But it is not only developers technology. The point was: Is this game going to run smoothly in a domestic computer or in a SNES? It was the objective to achieve in old computers. A full world with limited software and hardware.

TES arena. It can be considered segmented. But if the developers could have done it continous in a more evident way like Daggerfall that would have been the objective.

Infinity engine. The map to map concept is strongly tied to the gameplay and even in that way it was a technical miracle to make it real with its tricks and workarounds. But the idea of the game is an open continent. Obviously not so evident as in Arena. The question is: If the technology could have let them to make it countinous, would have they done in that way?. Or Even bigger maps maybe?.

As someone who played Morrowind back in the day, few years after the release, I can tell you that it would interrupt your gameplay to load very frequently, since it needed to load the next world cell or, if you were entering a building, the interiors. Granted, it would just freeze the screen and show a little loading window in the middle of it, but still...

Nowadays, PCs are so fast that you can cross the whole island without feeling any loading at all.

Oblivion and Skyrim had cities function as interiors worked in Morrowind because consoles, if I'm not wrong. That, subsequently, cost us the levitation spells as well.

That is in fact what happened with the Ultima games. Namely, Ultima IV, V, and VI all took place in the same land. But while Ultima IV and V had an overland map and separate town maps, Ultima VI had a new engine that had one continuous map with everything using the same scale. I was not a fan of the change, since that had the side effect of making the environment seem like a small island instead of a much larger island or perhaps a continent, depending on how big you imagined the area to be in the earlier games. It was technically more realistic, but reduced the input of the player's imagination and diminished the impact of exploring the land. After all, with separate overland/town maps, you can think of your characters traversing miles and miles of wilderness without it taking much gameplay time, whereas trying to do the same thing in a continuous map would be mostly walking through thousands of screens of scenery between towns which obviously isn't going to work in a game.

So I'm not sure continuous is always more immersive or preferable.

SaGa Frontier 2 does this, to great effect. There are various events on the world map, you choose one, and you then play out that event. After clearing an event, more events can open up.

Also worth noting that events take place at different years (the events span 86 years, with the first combat happening on the 15th year of it), which results in different characters being available, and even the same character will have different ages and different stat modifiers.

(Incidentally, if I were designing SaGa Frontier 3, I would probably use this structure, but have the setting be science fiction, putting it something like how I understand Isaac Asimov's foundation series (and it would provide an excuse to implement SaGa Frontier 1 style race differences).) The NES version of Ultima 5 also did this, and the result was a mess. U5NES is bad enough that I put it in the same category of games like ET and Action 52. (The game has numerous other issues that thankfully Ultima 6 does not have, even in the SNES port.)

I did get to play Ultima 3 and onwards on the Color Computer 2. I must admit that I stopped after 5 and did not try 6 until many years later. I was actually very put off by the change in the loading screens. Even though 7 is stated to be the best in the series I vastly preferred the separate combat screen for 5. I found the combat to be atrocious for both 6 and 7.

For instance I've been playing Avernum and it uses the Ultima 5 kind of separate combat screen for overworld. The towns and dungeons do not of course, just like Avernum.

Another much newer game is the PIllars of eternity. They have an overland map and when you reach a new spot that lets you transport then you can move to a new map or any previous revealed map, just like in Baldur's gate. Of course it is the same people who made Baldur's gate.

I actually find Ultima 6's combat to be the best in the series, as long as you turn off AI control of allies. (Having AI-controlled allies waste ammo is one combination of mechanics that I dislike.) Ultima 7, on the other hand, does have atrocious real-time combat that the player basically has no input in, and to me that ruins the game. (Not to mention the way food is handled, with you having to manually feed characters in a game with an atrocious inventory system.)

That reminds me, I don't like it when games track ammo for ranged weapons (in games where melee attacks are free); that puts me off from using such weapons. A weapon needs to be strong and useful enough to warrant the cost of a resource when there are alternatives that do not. (In Ultima 5, I use the Magic Axe, which is powerful and doesn't have limited ammo; in Ultima 6 I tend to use boomerangs a lot, especially since you can easily (and developer-intended) duplicate them with the Replicate spell.)

Similarly, I dislike Ultima 4's requirement to mix reagents for even the most basic of spells, particularly since that mechanic makes spells like Missile and Open, which were useful in Ultima 3, useless.

As I said, I've been playing The Alliance Alive, and it does the separate combat screen (albeit combat is non-tactical so you don't have in-combat movement), but interestingly enough in most areas the battle music doesn't play for common fights; rather, the area music continues on through the battle. (I've seen that music approach taken in some other JRPGs, but generally only for small portions of the game, like when escaping a building that's about to explode or collapse, of when the area is being invaded and you have to defend it.)

Another game is ActRaiser. Great game too, BTW

Firmly in the segmented maps category, though; there's even an EXP barrier to overcome before you can do the action stages.

As for how I like it? I tend to prefer the "travel to place, place loads into bigger explorable area". Even though right now I'm playing Soul Blazer which is entirely segmented; where once you're in an area, consider that your base for the time being cause you can't advance without beating the local boss.