Invisible walls

[Merkavar]

so what is the point of invisible walls or barriers?

so many games use them and i dont really get why. like i was just playing rift and there was a hole big enough to ride a mount through but for some reason there was an invisible wall there.

Why not just let people walk where they want and if you dont want them walking there put an actual wall eetc instead of invisible ones.

Can anyone think of a time an invisible wall was needed?

Do you think invisible walls should go the same way as health bars? a memory from the distant past?

 

[ZeZZZZevy]

generally invisible walls are there as an absolute boundary to the game world, or are placed so that you can't exploit the environment to do something the designers don't want you doing (aka going somewhere you shouldn't)

also if invisible walls were deleted outright then either every game world would have to be surrounded by real walls or would be so massively large that it would take a monster of a machine to try to run it.

 

[l3o2828]

While i find them annoying, they are useful to denote the road the player must travel and to where it should not.
and Health bars need to come back in my opinion.
also, use commas, PLEASE. It was almost impossible to read your post.

 

[Maiestas777]

I, too, find invisible walls rather jarring.

What I prefer is not physical walls creating a giant box canyon, but rather a creative soft-kill area. The example that comes to mind when I consider this would be the out-of-bounds areas in the Halo 3 map Sandtrap. I much prefer it when designers make boundaries that feel natural in the game world.

 

[Merkavar]

ok lets seperate invisible walls at the boundry of the map/world and invisible wall in the middle of the game that dont seem to have any real purpose.

i can see the reason to have a boundry but cant see why you would put an invisible wall to block up a whole 2 by 5 meters instead of just letting the player walk through the massive whole.

invisble walls just sort of draw me out of the game.

 

[Shirastro]

Invisible walls are a cheap solution for a big problem.

 

[darth.pixie]

Boundaries either due to limitation of the engine or because there's nothing there thus no reason to explore.