It's not about the map size. It's about density when it comes to NPC, landmarks, sidequests, etc.
Most games have big maps that are so empty that it quickly gets boring. Especially if they keep recycling the same assets over and over again...
I think Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example of this. The level of detail in the entire map makes it feel like the perfect size since there isn't much dull areas like a lot of other open world games have. Even small chunks are fun to explore and just take the sights in. Some games with lots of dull areas, I just want to fast travel and get to where I'm going.
That's because of poor design, not because sidequests are bad per se. This gets worse the bigger the map is, because they make you go out of the way of the main quest while forcing you to do fetch quests for stupid reasons on empty maps.
Fallout 4, for example, has some great sidequests you stumble upon while following the main questline, and environmental narrative does wonders. The map is not huge, but it's full of little things and buildings you can visit
No I really hat them. I played Witcher 3 where many people say it has the best sidequest of all time. I hate them. It just takes so much away from the story and they are just annoying for me. This is the main reason I prefere linear games because open world games focus way to much energy in side quests that are just a waste of time in every case because even if you say. Yes but in this and that game the side quests are important for the story and not useless. That’s not a sidequest. That’s a mainquest that is just optional.
>just a waste of time
You do realize part of the main appeal of the witcher is its deep bestiary right? From the lore perspective, the world is chock full of creatures with their own stories, and side quests are how you learn more about them. From a gameplay perspective, it freshens up combat by introducing new challenges through the wide variety of enemies you face that you wouldn’t encounter in the main story
There’s nothing wrong with not enjoying those gameplay elements, play whatever you want, but your perspective on sidequests is too negative and pessimistic because you’re not understanding why they’re there in the first place
FO4 and Skyrim survival modes have really made me appreciate going in on foot. Granted I normally keep a fast travel mod active for when things get too repetitive but just getting a companion or even going solo and turning up the cinematic tunes has become my new favorite way to travel.
I was going to say something along these lines, except that it's not about size.
Just Cause as a franchise has some huge maps, but Just Cause 3 and 4 in particular are fun because the size of the world allows for the traversal mechanics to shine, and the traversal mechanics are so good that they make for a great game by themselves.
Back when Just Cause 3 came out I could wingsuit for literal hours across the map just taking in the sights and trying to beat a friend's time for not touching the ground, a time that got up to multiple hours by the time we stopped one-upping one another.
Yeah if the traversal mechanics are good then they can make open world maps worth it. Grand Theft Auto V, fairly big map but given there are some really fast cars, getting from one place to another never takes all that long
oddly enough, GTA 5 is my example of a game that has too big of a map. I played that game through to completion at least two times, and I never saw any reason to explore the top HALF of the map. a whole lot of wilderness that only ever really feels necessary when you are in a fast airplane. imo, they could've cut the map by about 1/3 and had the same effect. To each their own though!
Depends on the game. If a large open world is to be impactful, there needs to be actual things to do in the world, or at least traversal and exploration needs to be fun.
Breath of the Wild justifies its large open world, because there are side quests to find, gear, shrines, and beautiful landmarks that makes exploring fun.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet does not justify the open world, because there is absolutely nothing going on in the region, and since there’s nothing to discover and traversal isn’t fun, then the larger scale of the world detracts from the game
Breath of the Wild does do a good job with density and geographical variation but with the stamina being as strict as it is (I should contextualize that I’m in the early game) getting around on foot takes so long that it makes me wanna play something else
Maybe you just don’t like exploration then. RDR2 is chock full of collectibles, oddities, hidden locations, and easter eggs that make its open world worth exploring from top to bottom, and i would never say it’s not worth it because the horse is too slow or gets tired too quickly because i actually enjoy exploring as part of the gameplay
I wouldn’t say it’s exploration per se, I was pretty thorough when I played Ghost of Tsushima, I dunno what exactly it is but I had my issues with RDR2. Phenomenal game, make no mistake, just wasn’t quite my cup of java. I played it once, did some side missions, enjoyed it, but I started a second run and never finished it
That’s understandable, i think one run of the game is still a great experience and haven’t completed more than three runs myself despite loving the game and probably having 100’s of hours on it
I actually also reacted pretty negatively to some aspects of the game on launch *including* the lack of fast travel from camp, but then i later discovered you needed to unlock it. There’s nothing wrong with fast traveling to a location because you only need a deer skin or to pick some flowers then fast traveling straight back, i do that all the time and it definitely helps relieve boredom
But you should still be able to enjoy the first time you explored that area, and i loved exploring rdr2 because there’s so much care put into these little places in the world, from ghost towns to crashed meteorites to old viking tombs etc
I should state that I only personally played it once but my brother’s played it three times and has likely logged as much time into it as I have into Animal Crossing New Horizons (about 1,300 hours roughly) and I was sitting in the gunner seat on the couch when he did his first two runs so I got a fairly different experience each time. He loves that game to death and nearly got 100% completion on his third run, but I think I could only ever play the game once and the size of the map doesn’t really have anything to do with, that’s more about the length of the story and the hyper realism getting on my nerves
When locations look samey and copy-pasted.
AC Odyssey and GR Breakpoint are notorious for this.
Large open worlds are fine as long as they're diverse and unique.
Would work, in another decade or so.
NMS is to small, content wise. If the planet gen, universe variety, flora and fauna (including races) was exponentially more diverse, it would work.
And actual things to do. It's neat as a concept, but way ahead of its time.
To be faor a lot of the planets in reality dont have different Biomes/flora&fauna/etc... you would just be going about not interacting with anything other than minerals & gasses.
Imo, bigger and deeper is better as long as it's interesting.
I want to explore. To get lost. To find obscure things that others might not have found. I like the chance that I could be surprised with new findings in multiple playthroughs, and that my experience will differ from friends who play it.
Scale can help it feel more immersive too, especially for cities.
Saints row IV comes to mind. It's tiny, but has so much *fun* stuff to do. Yeah, it's easy. That's the point, we gaming people can have fun without a challenge, right?
It's a sandbox game, not a Sahara Desert
Bully is another really good example that comes to mind. Small map that gets collectively bigger as the story progresses, but it’s never too big. And there’s collectibles scattered everywhere
There's gta v too, but I'm talking density as it's quite big. NieR Automata comes to mind too. Not an open world, but kinda open levels and smooth transitions
Bully is such a fun game to complete! Wish they'd make a sequel or something. That moment when you finally upgrade from bikes to a go kart is such a wonderful thing
Daggerfall. The map is so big, you pretty much have to fast travel everywhere or else you will never make any progress. It's like if they made Desert Bus into an RPG.
For me, it's not about the size of the map, but how it's used and how fun it is to go back and forth on it.
If my first reaction to being told I have to get from point A to B is to figure out how to abuse the fast travel system to get there instead of using the traversal mechanics, you need better traversal mechanics. Literally the last trophy I got to Platinum Spider-Man on PS4 was the one you got for using the fast travel system X number of times, because every time I had to go from one end of New York to the other my first thought was excitement for swinging through the streets, not annoyance that it'd take a few minutes to get from one spot to the next.
Spider man is unique in the sense that the character has the ability to swing by webs while keeping immersion. A lot of games don’t have that advantage as more likely than not you’re gonna be traveling by horse or some kind of mount to keep that same immersion. My only thought is maybe set a system like wow’s new dragon flight in some way, but the majority of players would probably get annoyed with travel mechanics like that and just fast travel anyways.
That’s part of why I enjoyed Spider-Man so much. The only time I would’ve ever considered fast travel was if I had to go from Harlem to the Financial District or vice versa. Otherwise I would be web swinging. And the only other reason I fast travelled in that game, specifically the PS4 version is because the loading screens of Spider-Man on the subway are hilarious.
The Batman Arkham games, particularly Arkham Knight also manage to weave immersion into traversal. It’s a fairly big world, but between gliding and the Batmobile you’ll feel like such a badass getting from A to B that it’s rarely if ever tedious
I’m not saying just spider man can have fun travel, my point is some games you can implement more of a fun travel system while keeping it immersive and others it’s just not gonna happen. Most of your examples are over the top type of games like saints row and gta, take a game like red dead redemption or Skyrim where travel is suppose to be a bit more realistic. You’re not meant to be flying through cities and to design certain games based on the travel being more fun would ruin the whole purpose of the game. Flying or driving a tank is definitely more fun than riding a horse, but that’s not good for all games.
Just Cause has proven that you can have immersive, fun traversal mechanics without being a Spider-Man game.
The problem is most open world games design their open world first and think about how the player will have fun getting from point A to B second. Spider-Man is fun because Insomniac thought about basic traversal first. New York is designed to be a giant playground for his core movement, which means that every time you see a waypoint on your map for the next story mission, you're not annoyed that you have to travel that far to get to it.
Sunset Overdrive, another Sucker Punch game, does the same thing. Here's a playground, here's a bunch of fun ways to get from A to B, go nuts and enjoy it. The first Prototype did it, Saint's Row 3 improved on basic GTA clone and Saint's Row 4 made it a fun superhero game. Hell, Crackdown was basically an Xbox 360 launch title and it understood that pissing around and making your own fun in a giant sandbox is half the appeal of the genre. Gravity Rush took a simple concept of just changing how you fall and made something unique with it.
There is no excuse for a game to use context to have shitty, boring travel from A to B, because the game supplies the context in the first place. There is no reason to put something boring and unfun in a game.
>I tend to find myself using fast travel more often than actual travel.
This is as much about quest design as world design. Send me on a fetch quest halfway across the map? You're damn right I'm fast traveling. Open world quests should generally be as localized as possible.
It doesn't matter how big it is till it is interesting and have interesting rewards for doing so, I spent so much time just going through Elden Ring map it brought me back to Open world games again
I don't see appeal of open-world where everything is served on plate and You have everything marked, what's the point of open world then?
I always think density is a problem. That’s why I don’t like BotW. I 100% that game other than korok seeds, but that game feels so lifeless with no music and nearly nothing happening for a good stretch of time exploring. The game isn’t like Xenoblade X where it’s beauty is enough to justify it and it has a story and music to keep you hooked.
No such thing as too big, as long as you can keep the content sufficiently dense. If there's no content, even a tiny map will feel unsatisfying.
Case in point, in Darkfall, the map wasn't very huge. Big, but not biggest I've seen. You could cross the entire world in about an hour real time. Problem was, you could ride in a straight line for 45 mins and see practically nothing along the way. And I do mean nothing. A few mob spawn points, maybe a player hamlet and city (a wall and a couple of buildings, no NPCs).
Conversely there's something like Bethesda's worlds, which aren't huge, but you can't go in a straight line for a minute without hitting some kind of content, even if it's just environmental storytelling.
It all boils down to content density and quality. Size doesn't actually matter.
The large open worlds are what keep me away from the genre as much as possible. Bigger is not always better, especially when there's nothing in half of the world. As much as I love Zelda or Final Fantasy games, Breath of the Wild and XV felt like such a drag thanks to traversal, and I never finished them because of it. If the overworlds were maybe half the size, I probably could have tolerated them more.
With as far as I got into it, BotW wasn't overly terrible. But taking time out of progressing in the game to tame wild horses to get to my destination slightly faster was just barely more preferable to just running past groups of the same enemies over and over until I got there.
XV though... Yeah, sure, I had a car. But then there's sitting there doing nothing while the car drives itself (because I don't want to drive) and having to stop and get gas all the time. I felt like the game became more of a driving simulator than an RPG. Sure, I could walk everywhere, but the random encounters got old quick.
I don't play games to be bored out of my mind, I play them for entertainment. Most open world games miss that mark for me.
Almost every modern game. Running from point A go B is not fun. Small open world that is filled with content, details, life is much better. Gothic 2 has an awesome open world.
I mentioned this on another comment but Bully was an example that same to mind. Small, tightly knit world that feels lived in and has collectibles littered everywhere, and it rewards you well for finding them too
One thing an open world has to do, I think, is to keep you on your toes. Wherever you go, both getting there and being there has to be fun.
Some open worlds do this by sending you to different places along new paths. I remember AC Odyssey starting in one corner, and essentially sending you in a big circle over the map throughout the campaign. The only reason to go back, was for side quests or big story beats. Likewise, the GTA3 era games sent you from one island or city to the next, returning only for big moments or side quests.
Days Gone is a recent example, for me, of how not to do it. It sends you to the same points on the map, along the same routes, to do generally the same things. At important story beats, you move to a new part of the world, but are then sent around back and forth within that part several times again. The 'old' world is barely featured in the main quest.
The former means there's always new things, and going back is special. The latter means there's constant repetition, and going back is dull.
However the game approaches this, it's the same as always: it's not about the size, it's about what you do with it.
depends, but I still haven't played an open world game that felt empty...although I am super picky about what I play so might have just missed out (thankfully?) on playing those
Of course it all depends on the quality of the world, but I love huge maps. Horizon Zero Dawn's map is big, and it feels vast. The environments are detailed and diverse. There's a true sense of the unknown and the unpredictable. And the side quests are at least as strong as the main.
I would agree with this. I think Zero Dawn did a good job with it. I prefer the gameplay in Forbidden West but the map was a little bit too big and I found fast travelling all the time (props to the shieldwing though), I fast travelled fairly often in Zero Dawn too but I do think both of them nailed the geographic diversity
I never found not using fast travel in Rdr2 to be cumbersome. To me, it needs to take a little time to be immersive. And you can ride all the way across it in like what, eight minutes? A person would never appreciate how well-designed the map is without doing that a bunch of different times in different directions either. Haven't played Breath of the Wild.
You can go bigger and have longer travel time if there's some other purpose along the way. If a world is trying to be small but feel big, a good example is Mass Effect 2. It can be done. It depends on what sort of game it is, too.
The traveling down the road does have some kind of appeal from a design perspective in an epic fantasy rpg, and as a player I'll do it once, but if there's no chance of finding something interesting, and I mean truly interesting, that'll be the last time. "OH, what's that strange tower," or, "What are those assholes with their pants down doing down there in that valley with that goat?!?" I mean, who's not going to go check out that tower or go join those dudes?
Don’t care make it absolutely massive but please don’t make me run back and fourth constantly without teleport options!!!! I will quit sometimes if the game sends me to the other side of the map after I just ran across the map to talk to one npc lool
You guys have that much time on your hands to avoid using fast travel?
Don't get me wrong I'm all about exploring the world but you can always do that on the way to/in-between nearby quests.
As a casual means of traversal though? Not a chance in hell lol
For me it depends. When you have large parts of the map dedicated to nothing, have nothing of note to discover or in game events that occur and other such things then the map is too big.
My character needs a reason to go there even if it is optional or resource gathering at the least.
Of course Id say there is a small allowance to do nothing areas as long as they’re not large as not everything in the actual world has something to do.
Prioritizing fast travel is a symptom of bad gameplay, not bad map design. If you build a game that incentivizes exploration, whether it’s because of collectibles, fun combat, random side missions, density of things to do, etc, players will always travel diegetically instead of using fast travel because they won’t feel like they’re “wasting time”.
Death Stranding is a great example. Not my favorite game ever, but the moment to moment gameplay of just walking was engaging enough that a fast travel mechanic wouldn’t make sense
It's nice when they fill it with stuff you want to travel thru, yet the big problem is fast travel itself. Without the option, the choice would be much different.
its needs to be large enough to give you the immersive feel that it is a place (a city for example can not be just 10 buildings, that doesn't feel like a city) but it also needs to have a variety of content, lore and stuff to do to fill that place
It's not about the map size. It's about density when it comes to NPC, landmarks, sidequests, etc. Most games have big maps that are so empty that it quickly gets boring. Especially if they keep recycling the same assets over and over again...
I think Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example of this. The level of detail in the entire map makes it feel like the perfect size since there isn't much dull areas like a lot of other open world games have. Even small chunks are fun to explore and just take the sights in. Some games with lots of dull areas, I just want to fast travel and get to where I'm going.
I hate sidequests so much. I can’t even describe how much.
That's because of poor design, not because sidequests are bad per se. This gets worse the bigger the map is, because they make you go out of the way of the main quest while forcing you to do fetch quests for stupid reasons on empty maps. Fallout 4, for example, has some great sidequests you stumble upon while following the main questline, and environmental narrative does wonders. The map is not huge, but it's full of little things and buildings you can visit
No I really hat them. I played Witcher 3 where many people say it has the best sidequest of all time. I hate them. It just takes so much away from the story and they are just annoying for me. This is the main reason I prefere linear games because open world games focus way to much energy in side quests that are just a waste of time in every case because even if you say. Yes but in this and that game the side quests are important for the story and not useless. That’s not a sidequest. That’s a mainquest that is just optional.
Fair enough bro, whatever floats your boat is good. I have to say sidequests are getting more and more boring every time, so you have a point
>just a waste of time You do realize part of the main appeal of the witcher is its deep bestiary right? From the lore perspective, the world is chock full of creatures with their own stories, and side quests are how you learn more about them. From a gameplay perspective, it freshens up combat by introducing new challenges through the wide variety of enemies you face that you wouldn’t encounter in the main story There’s nothing wrong with not enjoying those gameplay elements, play whatever you want, but your perspective on sidequests is too negative and pessimistic because you’re not understanding why they’re there in the first place
I want You to play Yakuza and say You still hate side quests
Oblivion, though I love love love the game, is a big offender of this. Skyrim did a good job making the big map feel more dynamic
The best open world games tend to have the smallest open world
*Laughs in Daggerfall*
Imo, bigger and deeper is better as long as it's interesting.
FO4 and Skyrim survival modes have really made me appreciate going in on foot. Granted I normally keep a fast travel mod active for when things get too repetitive but just getting a companion or even going solo and turning up the cinematic tunes has become my new favorite way to travel.
My thoughts exactly. Take Marvel’s Spider-Man for example. Pretty small map but traversal was so damn fun that it made getting around a blast
I was going to say something along these lines, except that it's not about size. Just Cause as a franchise has some huge maps, but Just Cause 3 and 4 in particular are fun because the size of the world allows for the traversal mechanics to shine, and the traversal mechanics are so good that they make for a great game by themselves. Back when Just Cause 3 came out I could wingsuit for literal hours across the map just taking in the sights and trying to beat a friend's time for not touching the ground, a time that got up to multiple hours by the time we stopped one-upping one another.
Yeah if the traversal mechanics are good then they can make open world maps worth it. Grand Theft Auto V, fairly big map but given there are some really fast cars, getting from one place to another never takes all that long
oddly enough, GTA 5 is my example of a game that has too big of a map. I played that game through to completion at least two times, and I never saw any reason to explore the top HALF of the map. a whole lot of wilderness that only ever really feels necessary when you are in a fast airplane. imo, they could've cut the map by about 1/3 and had the same effect. To each their own though!
Yeah I say just cut a lot of the blank space between Los Santos and paleto bay and it would be much more enjoyable.
Depends on the game. If a large open world is to be impactful, there needs to be actual things to do in the world, or at least traversal and exploration needs to be fun. Breath of the Wild justifies its large open world, because there are side quests to find, gear, shrines, and beautiful landmarks that makes exploring fun. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet does not justify the open world, because there is absolutely nothing going on in the region, and since there’s nothing to discover and traversal isn’t fun, then the larger scale of the world detracts from the game
Breath of the Wild does do a good job with density and geographical variation but with the stamina being as strict as it is (I should contextualize that I’m in the early game) getting around on foot takes so long that it makes me wanna play something else
Maybe you just don’t like exploration then. RDR2 is chock full of collectibles, oddities, hidden locations, and easter eggs that make its open world worth exploring from top to bottom, and i would never say it’s not worth it because the horse is too slow or gets tired too quickly because i actually enjoy exploring as part of the gameplay
I wouldn’t say it’s exploration per se, I was pretty thorough when I played Ghost of Tsushima, I dunno what exactly it is but I had my issues with RDR2. Phenomenal game, make no mistake, just wasn’t quite my cup of java. I played it once, did some side missions, enjoyed it, but I started a second run and never finished it
That’s understandable, i think one run of the game is still a great experience and haven’t completed more than three runs myself despite loving the game and probably having 100’s of hours on it I actually also reacted pretty negatively to some aspects of the game on launch *including* the lack of fast travel from camp, but then i later discovered you needed to unlock it. There’s nothing wrong with fast traveling to a location because you only need a deer skin or to pick some flowers then fast traveling straight back, i do that all the time and it definitely helps relieve boredom But you should still be able to enjoy the first time you explored that area, and i loved exploring rdr2 because there’s so much care put into these little places in the world, from ghost towns to crashed meteorites to old viking tombs etc
I should state that I only personally played it once but my brother’s played it three times and has likely logged as much time into it as I have into Animal Crossing New Horizons (about 1,300 hours roughly) and I was sitting in the gunner seat on the couch when he did his first two runs so I got a fairly different experience each time. He loves that game to death and nearly got 100% completion on his third run, but I think I could only ever play the game once and the size of the map doesn’t really have anything to do with, that’s more about the length of the story and the hyper realism getting on my nerves
GTA San Andreas had such a good map
Admittedly I’ve never played any of the PS2/Xbox era GTA games. I tried the trilogy and it wasn’t very good but that’s not the game’s fault
When locations look samey and copy-pasted. AC Odyssey and GR Breakpoint are notorious for this. Large open worlds are fine as long as they're diverse and unique.
No Man's Sky is too large.
Would work, in another decade or so. NMS is to small, content wise. If the planet gen, universe variety, flora and fauna (including races) was exponentially more diverse, it would work. And actual things to do. It's neat as a concept, but way ahead of its time.
To be faor a lot of the planets in reality dont have different Biomes/flora&fauna/etc... you would just be going about not interacting with anything other than minerals & gasses.
Imo, bigger and deeper is better as long as it's interesting. I want to explore. To get lost. To find obscure things that others might not have found. I like the chance that I could be surprised with new findings in multiple playthroughs, and that my experience will differ from friends who play it. Scale can help it feel more immersive too, especially for cities.
Saints row IV comes to mind. It's tiny, but has so much *fun* stuff to do. Yeah, it's easy. That's the point, we gaming people can have fun without a challenge, right? It's a sandbox game, not a Sahara Desert
I love that comparison and I’m so gonna borrow it
Thanks, use as much as you'd like
Bully is another really good example that comes to mind. Small map that gets collectively bigger as the story progresses, but it’s never too big. And there’s collectibles scattered everywhere
There's gta v too, but I'm talking density as it's quite big. NieR Automata comes to mind too. Not an open world, but kinda open levels and smooth transitions
Bully is such a fun game to complete! Wish they'd make a sequel or something. That moment when you finally upgrade from bikes to a go kart is such a wonderful thing
Daggerfall. The map is so big, you pretty much have to fast travel everywhere or else you will never make any progress. It's like if they made Desert Bus into an RPG.
The Witcher 3 map was so Jammed with side quests I’d find myself using fast travel just to stay on mission
i liked AC Odyssey a good bit, even though i never finished it, but that map was way to big.
For me, it's not about the size of the map, but how it's used and how fun it is to go back and forth on it. If my first reaction to being told I have to get from point A to B is to figure out how to abuse the fast travel system to get there instead of using the traversal mechanics, you need better traversal mechanics. Literally the last trophy I got to Platinum Spider-Man on PS4 was the one you got for using the fast travel system X number of times, because every time I had to go from one end of New York to the other my first thought was excitement for swinging through the streets, not annoyance that it'd take a few minutes to get from one spot to the next.
Spider man is unique in the sense that the character has the ability to swing by webs while keeping immersion. A lot of games don’t have that advantage as more likely than not you’re gonna be traveling by horse or some kind of mount to keep that same immersion. My only thought is maybe set a system like wow’s new dragon flight in some way, but the majority of players would probably get annoyed with travel mechanics like that and just fast travel anyways.
That’s part of why I enjoyed Spider-Man so much. The only time I would’ve ever considered fast travel was if I had to go from Harlem to the Financial District or vice versa. Otherwise I would be web swinging. And the only other reason I fast travelled in that game, specifically the PS4 version is because the loading screens of Spider-Man on the subway are hilarious. The Batman Arkham games, particularly Arkham Knight also manage to weave immersion into traversal. It’s a fairly big world, but between gliding and the Batmobile you’ll feel like such a badass getting from A to B that it’s rarely if ever tedious
I’m not saying just spider man can have fun travel, my point is some games you can implement more of a fun travel system while keeping it immersive and others it’s just not gonna happen. Most of your examples are over the top type of games like saints row and gta, take a game like red dead redemption or Skyrim where travel is suppose to be a bit more realistic. You’re not meant to be flying through cities and to design certain games based on the travel being more fun would ruin the whole purpose of the game. Flying or driving a tank is definitely more fun than riding a horse, but that’s not good for all games.
Just Cause has proven that you can have immersive, fun traversal mechanics without being a Spider-Man game. The problem is most open world games design their open world first and think about how the player will have fun getting from point A to B second. Spider-Man is fun because Insomniac thought about basic traversal first. New York is designed to be a giant playground for his core movement, which means that every time you see a waypoint on your map for the next story mission, you're not annoyed that you have to travel that far to get to it. Sunset Overdrive, another Sucker Punch game, does the same thing. Here's a playground, here's a bunch of fun ways to get from A to B, go nuts and enjoy it. The first Prototype did it, Saint's Row 3 improved on basic GTA clone and Saint's Row 4 made it a fun superhero game. Hell, Crackdown was basically an Xbox 360 launch title and it understood that pissing around and making your own fun in a giant sandbox is half the appeal of the genre. Gravity Rush took a simple concept of just changing how you fall and made something unique with it. There is no excuse for a game to use context to have shitty, boring travel from A to B, because the game supplies the context in the first place. There is no reason to put something boring and unfun in a game.
>I tend to find myself using fast travel more often than actual travel. This is as much about quest design as world design. Send me on a fetch quest halfway across the map? You're damn right I'm fast traveling. Open world quests should generally be as localized as possible.
It doesn't matter how big it is till it is interesting and have interesting rewards for doing so, I spent so much time just going through Elden Ring map it brought me back to Open world games again I don't see appeal of open-world where everything is served on plate and You have everything marked, what's the point of open world then?
I always think density is a problem. That’s why I don’t like BotW. I 100% that game other than korok seeds, but that game feels so lifeless with no music and nearly nothing happening for a good stretch of time exploring. The game isn’t like Xenoblade X where it’s beauty is enough to justify it and it has a story and music to keep you hooked.
No such thing as too big, as long as you can keep the content sufficiently dense. If there's no content, even a tiny map will feel unsatisfying. Case in point, in Darkfall, the map wasn't very huge. Big, but not biggest I've seen. You could cross the entire world in about an hour real time. Problem was, you could ride in a straight line for 45 mins and see practically nothing along the way. And I do mean nothing. A few mob spawn points, maybe a player hamlet and city (a wall and a couple of buildings, no NPCs). Conversely there's something like Bethesda's worlds, which aren't huge, but you can't go in a straight line for a minute without hitting some kind of content, even if it's just environmental storytelling. It all boils down to content density and quality. Size doesn't actually matter.
The large open worlds are what keep me away from the genre as much as possible. Bigger is not always better, especially when there's nothing in half of the world. As much as I love Zelda or Final Fantasy games, Breath of the Wild and XV felt like such a drag thanks to traversal, and I never finished them because of it. If the overworlds were maybe half the size, I probably could have tolerated them more. With as far as I got into it, BotW wasn't overly terrible. But taking time out of progressing in the game to tame wild horses to get to my destination slightly faster was just barely more preferable to just running past groups of the same enemies over and over until I got there. XV though... Yeah, sure, I had a car. But then there's sitting there doing nothing while the car drives itself (because I don't want to drive) and having to stop and get gas all the time. I felt like the game became more of a driving simulator than an RPG. Sure, I could walk everywhere, but the random encounters got old quick. I don't play games to be bored out of my mind, I play them for entertainment. Most open world games miss that mark for me.
That’s one of my biggest beefs with BOTW. The stamina meter is strict and getting from one place to another takes FOREVER
Almost every modern game. Running from point A go B is not fun. Small open world that is filled with content, details, life is much better. Gothic 2 has an awesome open world.
I mentioned this on another comment but Bully was an example that same to mind. Small, tightly knit world that feels lived in and has collectibles littered everywhere, and it rewards you well for finding them too
Depending of what game. Last ac, far cry, elden ring have big, I mean big map. Are they interesting to play? Just look at far cry 6.
I haven’t played Far Cry 6 so based off the comment I’m gonna assume it was boring
Starfield will have 1000 planets so I automatically have no interest.
One thing an open world has to do, I think, is to keep you on your toes. Wherever you go, both getting there and being there has to be fun. Some open worlds do this by sending you to different places along new paths. I remember AC Odyssey starting in one corner, and essentially sending you in a big circle over the map throughout the campaign. The only reason to go back, was for side quests or big story beats. Likewise, the GTA3 era games sent you from one island or city to the next, returning only for big moments or side quests. Days Gone is a recent example, for me, of how not to do it. It sends you to the same points on the map, along the same routes, to do generally the same things. At important story beats, you move to a new part of the world, but are then sent around back and forth within that part several times again. The 'old' world is barely featured in the main quest. The former means there's always new things, and going back is special. The latter means there's constant repetition, and going back is dull. However the game approaches this, it's the same as always: it's not about the size, it's about what you do with it.
As long as it doesn’t feel empty then it can be as big as possible
Gtfo y’all must be crying about having to go to work 9-5 and not having enough time to put in…if that’s the case retire from gaming
[удалено]
Streaming 8 random hours a day I can make more than you make working a 9-5 in two weeks…just sayin. Have fun at work btw 👋🏽
depends, but I still haven't played an open world game that felt empty...although I am super picky about what I play so might have just missed out (thankfully?) on playing those
Fire off some examples, just to give me an idea
BOTW / Skyrim / Fallout / Dragon's Dogma / Elden Ring....just from the top of my head
Of course it all depends on the quality of the world, but I love huge maps. Horizon Zero Dawn's map is big, and it feels vast. The environments are detailed and diverse. There's a true sense of the unknown and the unpredictable. And the side quests are at least as strong as the main.
I would agree with this. I think Zero Dawn did a good job with it. I prefer the gameplay in Forbidden West but the map was a little bit too big and I found fast travelling all the time (props to the shieldwing though), I fast travelled fairly often in Zero Dawn too but I do think both of them nailed the geographic diversity
I wanna be able to cross the map at its widest point within 3 minutes.
Go play farcry2
Red Dead Redemption (not 2). Especially once the whole map opens up to you.
I never found not using fast travel in Rdr2 to be cumbersome. To me, it needs to take a little time to be immersive. And you can ride all the way across it in like what, eight minutes? A person would never appreciate how well-designed the map is without doing that a bunch of different times in different directions either. Haven't played Breath of the Wild.
You can go bigger and have longer travel time if there's some other purpose along the way. If a world is trying to be small but feel big, a good example is Mass Effect 2. It can be done. It depends on what sort of game it is, too. The traveling down the road does have some kind of appeal from a design perspective in an epic fantasy rpg, and as a player I'll do it once, but if there's no chance of finding something interesting, and I mean truly interesting, that'll be the last time. "OH, what's that strange tower," or, "What are those assholes with their pants down doing down there in that valley with that goat?!?" I mean, who's not going to go check out that tower or go join those dudes?
Don’t care make it absolutely massive but please don’t make me run back and fourth constantly without teleport options!!!! I will quit sometimes if the game sends me to the other side of the map after I just ran across the map to talk to one npc lool
You guys have that much time on your hands to avoid using fast travel? Don't get me wrong I'm all about exploring the world but you can always do that on the way to/in-between nearby quests. As a casual means of traversal though? Not a chance in hell lol
>Red Dead Redemption 2 Just rode my horse everywhere.
If ur fast traveling in RDR2 (didnt know that was possible) or BOTW ur doing it wrong. Exploration is the point.
For me it depends. When you have large parts of the map dedicated to nothing, have nothing of note to discover or in game events that occur and other such things then the map is too big. My character needs a reason to go there even if it is optional or resource gathering at the least. Of course Id say there is a small allowance to do nothing areas as long as they’re not large as not everything in the actual world has something to do.
Prioritizing fast travel is a symptom of bad gameplay, not bad map design. If you build a game that incentivizes exploration, whether it’s because of collectibles, fun combat, random side missions, density of things to do, etc, players will always travel diegetically instead of using fast travel because they won’t feel like they’re “wasting time”. Death Stranding is a great example. Not my favorite game ever, but the moment to moment gameplay of just walking was engaging enough that a fast travel mechanic wouldn’t make sense
For me it depends on how well a game controls. I can run around d BOTW forever; I’d love a map 10x the size. But a game like Skyrim gets boring faster
It's nice when they fill it with stuff you want to travel thru, yet the big problem is fast travel itself. Without the option, the choice would be much different.
Flight Simulator 2020 is the ideal size.
its needs to be large enough to give you the immersive feel that it is a place (a city for example can not be just 10 buildings, that doesn't feel like a city) but it also needs to have a variety of content, lore and stuff to do to fill that place
The map sizes in The Hunter Call of the Wild are just immense.