Poll: Big isn't better.

[PurpleRain]

We're not exchanging penis sizes, I'll win hands down anyway, but more about the scale in games. It seems to be the new hot thing to make freeroaming games huge. Huge spaces to explore. San Andrea's boasted itself to be the biggest game to date but there was little to do in that space. Same with Just Cause. Wow, it's so big. Now it takes me 4 hours to get to my next objective. Luckily, the makers of Oblivion gave you this neat teleporting system. It killed all the fun out of adventuring and exploring but at least you didn't have to trek a kilometer just to reach your destination only to find you have to go another 3.

I'm sick of games that give you huge sandboxes to play with but nothing to do within. If they made a game that was only the size of a single city block but gave you a thosand and one things to do with it I would lap it up in a snap. If exploring gave you something fun in each step I would love it. Cut down branches with a machete, scale the ancient ruins, steal the treasure and mind the traps. If they (or somehting along those lines) popped up ever half a km or so it would be huge fun. If finding a hidden map and exploring the dense jungles ment you had to travel forever in bland samey environments it would lose all the fun in finding that map in the first place.

What do you kings of the Escapist believe. Am I right or did I miss something?

 

[Facey McFace]

Scale.
Expansive environments are always fun ^ _^, As long as there is something to do as i travel like fighting monsters along the way or side quests.

 

[Cameoflage]

I'd prefer both, but I'd rather have things to do if I have to pick between the two.

 

[Choukou]

I agree. I like scale, but so long as there's something to do within that scale. Having it looking pretty is nice, sure. But that doesn't last forever. I think, for the most part, Oblivion succeeded in having something to do within the scale. I'm not much for exploring, myself. I ususally just want to get on with it (god knows why I play RPGs, eh?), but Oblivion actually had me exploring the landscape, because little 'ruin' markers kept showing up on the map and little castle icons and so on, and I just needed to see them and find out what they were. Also, they had the whole alchemy system. With the land covered in the flowers and herbs and such, there was always something to search for, especially with the Nirnroot quest.

 

[Singing Gremlin]

I think oblivion had it pretty good, yeah, since you'd nearly always have something flicking up on your radar to go explore if you so desired. I really liked the morrowind style, actually. It had just the right balance (for me) Between scale and things to do, so that when something invariably happened (finding some poor sap in the road needing help, etc), it was a change. It broke up the journeys nicely, but kept the idea of it actually being a journey, rather than a dot-to-dot of dungeons. Or, if you were determined to venture off the beaten track, you could find things to do every few hundred metres.

So I think it's a balance between the two. I like the sense of travel and exploration, with stuff to do to break up the walking scattered about, but not too often.

 

[John Galt]

I enjoy scale and this is why I cry myself to sleep when I realize my PC won't be able to handle Far Cry 2. However, Eve Online takes scale to a ridiculous extreme. When it takes 20 minutes just to finish one courier mission because your ship doesn't possess the X-Treme +9 Hyperdrive, you know something's wrong. But it does actually fit in with the whole, spacey atmosphere.

When given the choice, I'd go for things to do. What's the point of having massive highly detailed game worlds if all you can do in them is run through them and admire the scenery?

 

[Knight Templar]

We're not exchanging penis sizes, I'll win hands down anyway

Why has nobody said anything? The jokes are endless, "hands down".

This has given me a idear for a game.(The topic, not what I just posted you sickos)

 

[DeadMG]

hands down, lol.
I like big, big games, but theres really no point if there is nothing to do it.

 

[ingsoc]

I really like the way Crysis handles scale. The outdoor levels are expansive, yet not quite full of enough things to do, but are better than most. You can explore, search for new areas that you can use to either bypass enemies or ambush them rather than take them on head first. There are a lot of secondary objectives that can be accomplished in any number of ways or not at all. If you don't want to explore a massive landscape, there are almost always vehicles available to speed up the process whether they be boats or trucks (and no, they do not blow up just by coughing at them).

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Usually, I prefer content over scale. There are exceptions though. Mass Effect being one of them.

 

[Anarchemitis]

In Battlefront, I adore small levels because of simplicity and all the things that you can fool around on are close together, such as glitches. Large levels are a pain because of the required traversing. Even to get faster to somewhere else via conveinient speeder or spaceship, you still need to walk-aways to get to the spawn point.
In short, I like very condensed small levels.
Weeeeee!

 

[Mr. Bubbles]

I think oblivion had it pretty good, yeah, since you'd nearly always have something flicking up on your radar to go explore if you so desired. I really liked the morrowind style, actually. It had just the right balance (for me) Between scale and things to do, so that when something invariably happened (finding some poor sap in the road needing help, etc), it was a change. It broke up the journeys nicely, but kept the idea of it actually being a journey, rather than a dot-to-dot of dungeons. Or, if you were determined to venture off the beaten track, you could find things to do every few hundred metres.

So I think it's a balance between the two. I like the sense of travel and exploration, with stuff to do to break up the walking scattered about, but not too often.

I agree about Oblivion, and if it had dungeons more like Morrowinds with unique things in them, I would have enjoyed it so much more.

 

[josh797]

i like the idea purple rain. if they made a tomb raider like this, with the same engine as the current one, only more free roam that would be amazing! anyone agree? you have to have played anniversary or legend to understand what im talking about tho, so dont go saying tomb raider suxxorrz teh big or something, cause the new ones are the shit.

 

[Nickolai]

I'm all for content personally. The first time I see a game's "main area" ie Hyrule Field, I'm in awe. Bravo to the game designers for making some very nice things to look at while I trek to point B. However, that gets real old, real fast for me, as if all you have is just scenery and random enemies, then I'm bored already.

Maybe I just have a really short attention span, but I prefer to be doing things constantly, rather then travelling great distances to do things sporadically. While I fully admit I'm easily distracted by shiny things, I'd rather see all the shiny things in 20 minutes, followed by 20 hours of crap to do to amuse me.

But when scale and content merge beautifully, like the previously mentioned Mass Effect, and Assassin's Creed in my humble opinion, then I'm very, very happy.