I was thinking about hordes, and how they are dynamically spawned around the map. I was wondering, couldn’t we do sime kind of “effect” dynamic overmap tiles? But not just one tile as the horde, instead taking entire regions. Basically, making the map a bit more interesting and strategic to move around in, specially when planning how to travel from one place to another.
Basically just small modifiers in the map, some maybe visible and some maybe not, that would engulf entire cities and forests and whatever is under them and affect them.
Things like having all the place covered by mist, or maybe having the place have toxic smoke everywhere, making you need to use gasmasks.
Maybe buff the monsters, or make all animals aggressive or zombify them.
Another one could be make animals spawn more, in some kind of hunting zone.
Maybe have the place be “warm” and have it not be cold or snowy in winter.
And some more drastic ones, like an entore región filled with portals and demonic enemies, or places where lots of military events like helicopter crashes and roadblicks happen, and lots of soldier zombies appear, as if they tried to clean the zone.
Places where huge zombies spawn everywhere, specially if it’s a city, zones with severe radiation and better loot, etc.
I think it’s an idea that would bring some good into trying to vary the overmap a lot, and making traversing it, if unprepared, not an easy task. I always thought the map in the game never really gave you much to think about apart from the “go to X place because I need X thing”.
Of course, not all “regions” would be seen at first glance, but they should be recognizable with some time spent in them. Others like Mist and Toxic could be seen I guess. If it were me, I’d just show them all in the map, as it’s a way that makes you think and look at the map, but it’s arcadey as hell, so I guess no.
Maybe they could show up in your map only if you get into the overmap tile, and then and only then you could see it in the map.