How to make a game without requiring copy-pasta'd terrain.

[kukurumei]

Mapping terrain isnt hard. Surely it's more difficult to make it so it all fits together nicely.

Technical limitations are obvious reasons for the cloning. So i think some degree of cloning is necessary (using algorithms to mask it or by repeating the structures themselves). It would have been forgiveable if SE had cloned wisely.

Nope. If we take it on theory, then yes, maybe, but in this case, big fat nope.

We can clearly see where the "loads" are, because the maps are "boxy". That's an old engineer's trick, and that should have been most of what they needed. The copy and pasting on top of that smells of rush jobs, and laziness.

And they didn't even work that hard to hide the "box" trick.

What is the box trick? Look At the maps. big open area, long corridor, big area, long corridor, aka choke point, for a seamless load. Characters moving through that corridor = loading in background.

It's easy to spot, because the moment you look on the map, people will look for "short cuts" of course they are quick to realize, there exist none, because each section is closed off followed by a "tube" that connected to the next region. That is where the technical trick is.

Copy and pasting is a whole separate issue it seems, and one likely attributed to money.