Poll: Big isn't better.

[Yan-Yan]

I'm all down with HUGE maps and explorable areas and all, but I think the key word is 'moderation'. I'm going through Pokemon Pearl again (this with Chimchar!) and one of the things that really griped me the last time I played, is there's a point where you have to hunt down some rare and (very friggin) elusive pokemon. It spawns randomly in a spot and shows up on your map, but instead of waiting there for you to come get it, every time you enter a town or travel through a different named area, it'll move. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. And if you try and take a short cut by using 'Fly' to insta-travel to the town next to it's current spawn, it randomly spawns on some other spot way the hell away from you.

So you have to go across the map, dealing with random encounters of enemies 1/5th your level (sometimes 1/20th) just to track this thing down. And once you get to it, you only get one chance to attack it, or it zips off to some other place across the map. So you better be faster then it, and even then, you have to face it multiple times. So pack a lunch, this could take a while.

What does that have to do with scale of explorable areas? Being forced to travel large distances, eating up time where I could be making progress in the game, is not 'fun' to me. Oh sure, it was interesting. The first time. But after that it gets boring.

So sure, make it big and expansive. Just don't make me spend more time picking my way to fun, then having the fun.

 

[Yan-Yan]

oh how i hate traveling in video games its never fun petcularly in rts games picture this:your haveing a merry time with your buddys on a sunday stroll (in the game) when all of a sudden 3 random monsters jump out of nowhere. So a fight is needed after a loading screen then after the monsters are dispached another loaing screen and your ready to continue. Then after around ten steps another fight. Now i find this happening to me alot with rts games it may just be my bad luck or it may be all rts games in geral but it drive me insane

I think you're talking RPG games there, not RTS. RTS are games like Command and Conquer or Starcraft.

 

[Baba booey]

I just beat Tales of Legendia(first 7 chapters, no character quests) and it had a world map but it really wasn't much to it.

 

[Sentient Muffin]

90% of the time I say give me the 10ftx10ft rooms linked by load screens. Open world makes it sound 30 times better than the game can actually be.

Some exceptions I make are:
Crackdown-Lots of enemies littered around and climbing buildings is just awesome
Mass Effect-multiple open worlds with a handful of fun objectives and a great linear storyline, sweet.

Never gave two shakes about GTA.

 

[Cooper42]

Like many of these questions - surely it depends?

I love GTA SA - because it's bloody huge, and there's a fair amount to do if you keep your eyes open. But the other GTAs didn't really cut it in that respect.

Morrowind was huge, but there was precious little to do. Shott your arrows, swing your sword or spear. Whoop-ity do...

Stalker disappointed. They've got a carefully detailed, beautifully rendered world of considerable size. Yet there's no reward for exploration. If you're gonna spend so much effort making a detailed game world. You might as well get the player to spend some time in more than just a few sections of it?

 

[Whisperkill47]

I think a good game that has both, is Oblivion