There are already some huge maps out there, Just Cause 2 and 3 both have maps at around 1000km2, and those games are beloved by their players. But if the next Cyberpunk game was announced with Night City now being the size of an actual large metropolis, say like New York, would you say that’s too big? What determines what “too big” is?
It’s too big when the developers are unable to fill it with enough interesting things to do and discover to keep my attention. But there’s no absolute size I’d automatically consider too big, as it also depends on things like traversal. If you ride through the map on a mech going 400km/h, it can be much larger and more spread out than if I have to traverse the entire map on foot.
That’s definitely a key point. Absolutely loved the first Forest game, the map was just the right size for what content it had, then the sequel has a map 4x the size that is just completely empty for 90% of it. They did make some improvements over early access but it was still mostly a waste
To summarize this thread: It’s not the size of the map, it’s how you use it
Hey it’s a totally average sized map! Some would even say it’s too much!
It has pools in it!
It’s not about the size, but more about density of meaningful content. I like Elden Ring because every nook and cranny feels worth exploring. It’s the game that dares to hide optional areas behind optional areas, all with their own unique enemies and bosses.
On the other hand, taking Elden Ring as an example again, the mini dungeons were too repetitive. The first time visiting a catacomb is exciting, but it turns into quite a chore after the third time and onwards. You’ve already seen it all. Same thing with the dragon battles.
I think Elden Ring overall strikes a good balance with amount of surprises per square meter.
There was one maze type catacomb with teleporting chests that was like a breathe of fresh air.
I think it’s really interesting to compare a game like elden ring to something else like BOTW
My first time playing through elden ring I had an amazing time, and thoroughly enjoyed the open world experience. I made sure to explore every crack in every wall, not necessarily for the rewards, but rather for the exploration itself because that exploration felt magnificent
However, I’ve now played through elden ring four times over the years, and I quickly realised I was only playing for the bosses, with the open world merely being a hindrance to my journey. This problem quickly compounds, as the first few hours of a save is usually you running around buck naked looking for your weapons, smithing stones, flasks, etc.
This is opposed to something like dark souls 3, where your journey to get the build you want usually means you can a 30 second detour from your main path.
Compare this with BOTW, which I’ve also played through a fair few times, and it’s easy to understand why these games are different. Unlike ER, I honestly thought of the bosses as more like hindrances to getting the powers, which would help me traverse the open world. To me, that traversal was the most enjoyable thing about the game
This might just be a tinfoil hat theory, but I think this is because of the difference in rewards between the two. Unlike ER, which most rewards being clearly defined and memorable, in BOTW the vast majority of rewards are either
a) spirit orbs from shrines
or
b) korok seeds
While the shrines themselves can be memorised, I’d say it’s practically impossible to remember the location of all these things, mainly because there’s no point - there are so many, you’ll run into your fair share anyway. There are exceptions of course, with weapons and shields and the like, but for the most part it holds true
Anyway, this went on way too long lol
It can never be too big, but it’s a problem if it’s a big city with nothing to do (Cyberpunk).
It’s not a question of the world being too big or too small, it’s the density of interesting things. A giant world with very little worth doing doesn’t accomplish much, but similarly a small world where you’re absolutely tripping over things that feel like you shouldn’t skip them will also feel claustrophobic.
Additionally, the traversal system can help a LOT here. Even a world that has a lot of wide open dead space can feel good if the process of crossing that space is itself fun. Dune: Awakening comes to mind here, where there are large spans of open desert that you need to cross, but ripping across the dunes on my sandbike was so much fun I didn’t mind the dead ground.
Do you remember LoZ Wind Waker? Maybe it’s the nostalgia goggles, but ripping through the open water just felt good. I don’t even think it was particularly mechanically fun. Maybe it was just the music.
The music and the bright colors in that cel shading style were great. They also did a really good job with the seagulls and the barrels and the silhouettes in the distance as you were sailing. Maybe it was just the contrast with all of the ‘dark’ games at the time. It was a gigantic mood swing from majora’s mask. The music really helped sell it.
I think wind waker is good example of how to handle ‘open world’ without letting on that you’re controlling the experience. I don’t think any of the official ‘next steps’ ever had you sailing more than three squares away. The teleport was right when the world ‘opened up’ to you doing whatever you felt like, and the easily grasped concept of one square=one island with some interaction made sure there was no loss of focus on the developers or players. Obviously the main islands had more to do than the ones with just a platform/reef, but it worked.
I say density, though Elite Dangerous puts a spin on how large the map should be.
In Elite Dangerous, most of the galaxy is unexplored. The Bubble (human inhabited area) is fully explored, which steadily dwindles as you go to about 1k ly outside the Bubble. Out there, you’re basically on your own.
When you explore and map unexplored areas, you actually get some money depending on the quality of your finds. If you find some Earth-like planets, for instance, you can get a lot of money from exploring. There is also an inexhaustible supply of systems to explore, so there’s no need to worry about running out.
I spent 3 months in the void, didn’t see another player for the entire run.
More than bigger, I want more accessible interior spaces. Like cyberpunk, but you can go into other people’s living spaces
Yes, this. Even if some of it is procedurally generated, how fun would it be to go in ANY door in cp77??
Everything except the story bits would be procedurally generated. And it would probably get pretty boring having like three interior types repeated over and over.
Nothing much new to say, just reiteration. A big or huge or gigantic map is fine, so long as it’s populated by meaningful content.
Really wish Forspoken had been more populated. It’s a huge world, and combat/abilty wise it’s a great pure-mage action game, which I really really loved about it, that’s not a very common thing. But my god, the world is so empty despite being so big, and most side objectives are just collectothons. There’s some more difficult endgame content, but no real reason to grind up for it.
I am looking forward to Light No Fire and have played countless hours of Minecraft and Star Citizen.
“Too big” doesn’t exist as long as I am enjoying myself.
Having played Minecraft and No Man’s Sky, I can say that no world is necessarily too big, because infinite is not too big.
This is it.
GTA 5 was boring when it came to exploring, much of it was pretty empty unless there was a mission. Elder Scrolls Arena was just random generated repeated stuff - miles of it. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was a lot of copy and paste.
It’s never too big. That’s why I’m pumped for The Wayward Realms (from the creators of Daggerfall, easily the largest world of its time).
How have I not heard of this one?
I did hear about Light No Fire from the No Man Sky devs. Looks impressive from what I’ve seen so far on it with it’s supposedly literal Earth sized world.
Damn it looks good. Still going to take ages until it’s finished, if ever
Yeah, I’m hopeful for an alpha release next year some time. Might be longer, but should be worth the wait.
Might be longer, but should be worth the wait.
it’s our only option, soooo we gotta wait either way.
The Witcher 3 and Elden ring were massive, and I enjoyed them because the world’s were beautiful, non repetitive, and dense with unique material.
Measuring size alone is meaningless, as gameplay affects perceived size, and density of meaningful content in relation affects the experience.
Size should match content.
Skyrim is canonically pretty close to the size and shape of Estonia, but in game it’s very small. If the game’s content was spread out to the “real” size, it would feel completely barren.
The map in Deus Ex MD was quite small, just a couple tiny districts, but it punched way above its size because it was so dense in detail.
Agree. If you could go into every single store, house, nook and cranny of Cyberpunk 2077, and talk to all the NPCs, it would feel absolutely humongous. Gameplay significantly affects perceived size.
Echoing what others have said: size doesn’t really matter until it’s notably empty with nothing of interest to justify it.
But also, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
WoW is objectively huge, but they made it feel tiny by putting fast travel options everywhere. I would guess that any two points in the world are no more than 5m from each other if routed perfectly.
I want there to exist one MMO where you “live” in a city, and traveling to another city is actually so inconvenient that you only do it if you have to. Not because I want to make the trek, but because I want there to be a world just large enough that any one person has usually seen only ~1%, but the playerbase in entirety has seen >50%. I don’t know if any such game exists.
traveling to another city is actually so inconvenient that you only do it if you have to
They don’t work. Vanguard did it way back when, with their three continent world. Each one had enough content to get from lvl 1 to lvl 50, the max, and your starting race determined your starting location. It could take up to an hour to get to friends. Even on the same continent, with a mount (before they added flying mounts), it could take a half hour of running to cross the map… and players complained so vociferously that they were forced to add fast travel options.
I don’t think that means it didn’t work, I think that just means it’s not for everyone. I’m a firm believer that, “given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”. Small indie games take firm stances on their gameplay all the time, not every game is for everyone, and that’s ok, that’s how you get unique and interesting gameplay experiences. But that’s easy for and indie game to do because making an indie game is cheap.
MMOs have the unfortunate reality that they’re architecturally complex, and expensive to operate, and thus need to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible to justify their existence to investors. They don’t have the luxury of making the experience they want, which is why they all end up just copying WoW’s enshittified gameplay, but with less polish.
My hope is that this indie revolution we’re in expands to “large scale” multiplayer games. Not so massive that it’s prohibitively expensive to run, but not so small that it’s a ghost town. I think that’s when we’ll start to see interesting MMO experiences again.
Yeah, you’ve identified the problem. You might be able to do it with a non-massive multiplayer game, with significantly lower resource needs.
I’d love for just any game with a scale that large. I think it’d be awesome
There are space games with procedural large scale galaxies to the point that the entire playerbase can only ever hope to see ~15% of the systems, but that’s why I put the >50% qualifier in there. That’s TOO big. Anyone can generate an effectively infinite procedural world, I want a large world.
When I had originally conceived of this, it was in the context of a pokemon MMO. You would have your home town, and as a trainer, or researcher, or rocket member, etc, you’d travel at a real-time pace akin to the show.
Alternative IP that it could work with are dragonball (imagine the playerbase on a months long search to find/fight over the dragonballs so they could awaken the dragon and make a wish to the devs), or Avatar (each player would have a chance to spawn in as a random bender. One player at any given time is the Avatar. Events happen to strengthen some benders and weaken others. Players make war and peace at will).
There would obviously be challenges in running these types of experiences, but currently it feels like the cost of standing up an MMO is so much that no one ever does anything interesting. Instead they just copy WoW.
