Sandboxes: How big is TOO big?
- Thread starter Gorilla Gunk
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There is no size too big, so long as the area is filled with content instead of just travel time.
A reasonably small area for story quests (Walking it would take 30 mins to 1 hour to get from side to side, but you have cars and such too so...), but with side quests in there too. Then, the further out you go from that central area, the more sidequests there are, and those sidequests should lead you in long arcs past other side quests and objectives for those sidequests.
There will be an eventual limit to size due to filesize, but so long as there is enough content to fill the world, there is no size too big.
A reasonably small area for story quests (Walking it would take 30 mins to 1 hour to get from side to side, but you have cars and such too so...), but with side quests in there too. Then, the further out you go from that central area, the more sidequests there are, and those sidequests should lead you in long arcs past other side quests and objectives for those sidequests.
There will be an eventual limit to size due to filesize, but so long as there is enough content to fill the world, there is no size too big.
It's not so much it's too large of a sandbox, I think it's the fact that it wasn't filled with stuff to do on the way. For instance, Prototype, there was something to do on the way. Whether it was taking out a military base, infected hive, or helicopters, there was always something to do on the way to important missions.
Big....but not overwhelming like Just Cause 2...
Also it should have cardboard buildings ALA Red Faction
If you want to control those buildings...keep em in tact...dont go crazy and drive a tank thru your whorehouse...
Also it should have cardboard buildings ALA Red Faction
If you want to control those buildings...keep em in tact...dont go crazy and drive a tank thru your whorehouse...
There is no such thing as 'too big'. There is 'too big for this game' though.
If you have a MASSIVE world that is full of content and fun to travel? Well it's fine. If it's big, sparse, repetitive, boring and moving through it is unfun? Yeah shrink it down.
If you have a MASSIVE world that is full of content and fun to travel? Well it's fine. If it's big, sparse, repetitive, boring and moving through it is unfun? Yeah shrink it down.
It wasn't predesigned. Procedurally generated maps aren't eligible for the world record.Whoatemysupper said:
I wish my friend told me that. I borrowed the game from him, trying to beat it and fucking hated it. Then one day I thought screw it, I'll do it my way. Went around blowing everything up, I even found the Island from Lost.TrilbyWill said:
OT:I have yet to play a game that is too big. Just Cause 2 just had shit missions. Red Dead is huge, but its missions are fun.
The sandbox should be as big as possible in my opinion but as soon as fine detail is sacrificed, like interesting locations, decent npc's, the ability to go into a lot of the building, etc. that is when the scale needs to be reduced, every area should be an important aspect of the world, as soon as you start throwing in long roads and forests just to increase size, you've got a problem and should shrink your world till every section just shines, it makes the world easier to familiarize with and makes it worthy of spending more time in.
anything that will get you lost is too big. nothing is worse than backtracking to find out what you were supposed to do.
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THIS.TimeLord said:
Just Cause 2 wouldn't be so bad if helicopters were faster. Otherwise you have to raid an airport and get a jet if you want to get anywhere in a sensible amount of time.
But you can get a jet from the black market at almost any point in the game?Dirty Hipsters said:
I have to admit, that while GTA SA was amazing, I did find the commuting thru the countryside in the middle rather tedious after a while, coulda done with that area being shrunk down some.
Really tho, just add a fast travel option to places you've discovered and you can give us a whole planet and it'll be fine
Really tho, just add a fast travel option to places you've discovered and you can give us a whole planet and it'll be fine
There is no qualification for acceptable size.
The question is one of whether you can keep the size entertaining.
How fast can one move through the world?
What is the scale of your interaction with the world?
Is gameplay dependent upon location or does it occur wherever the player is at?
How much content do you have in the world?
Are there things that make the empty world fun in and of itself?
Oblivion is a good example of failing on all counts. The only thing you really do in much of the world is walk or ride toward something interesting. Nothing makes most of the world inherently fun and it is, very often, completely pointless because you're just going to fast travel anyway. There isn't enough raw content to justify the size and the content is tied to particular locations. The main point of the size of the world is simply to give you a strong feeling of scale. This is not necessarily bad, but they could have made much smarter use of that scale (see Morrowind below).
Some games that do better:
Minecraft is a great example of a game that can get away with an infinite world because gameplay happens crucially wherever the player is. You don't need to travel to find something to do. The random terrain generation also means that exploration can yield new and interesting landscapes and, statistically, will do so at pretty regular intervals (compare to the bland filler space often used simply to make a setting feel big).
Rockstar gets open world games. GTA gives you a way to get around quickly in a way that can be inherently fun and a sandbox that gives you fun things to do outside of the location-dependent missions. RDR removes some of the ability to create chaos for entertainment, but gives you side-goals involving the space, gives you a way to traverse it quickly, and gives you random things to do along the way from seeing a horse you want to collect to rescuing a man chased by a pack of coyotes. Again, missions are tied to locations, but many of the missions also make use of the large landscape too (the mechanics allowing for a lot of gameplay to take place while traveling are pretty brilliant). RDR has quick travel, but I didn't end up using it a single time before finishing the main storyline (only once I had started trying to finish a few leftover gathering tasks). This was not a matter of pride - this was a matter of wanting to ride around to each mission and objective.
I would say Morrowind also does a very good job too. The roads on the island are twisted enough that the world seems quite large and travel times can be relatively long and there are huge stretches with very little to do but walk and there's very little fun inherent in traveling. The solution, however, is the fast travel system. By creating an in-world fast travel system built on a web of subsystems, they require that you learn to navigate the system and gain access to some of its parts through certain achievements in the game (finding the indices, buying and becoming capable of casting travel spells). You earn the ability to travel more quickly and avoid the pitfalls of the usual meta fast travel systems. The ability to traverse the world quickly becomes a reward both for your achievements in the game and your ability as a player to navigate. And the game also makes great use of this fact later on in the main story as it forces you to move farther and farther from these networks, creating a greater sense of isolation and remoteness. In short, it takes the problems it has and turns them into strengths.
Prototype and Assassin's Creed also deserve mention as games that do a great job with a large, mostly uninteresting city by making the method of moving through it itself quite satisfying.
The question is one of whether you can keep the size entertaining.
How fast can one move through the world?
What is the scale of your interaction with the world?
Is gameplay dependent upon location or does it occur wherever the player is at?
How much content do you have in the world?
Are there things that make the empty world fun in and of itself?
Oblivion is a good example of failing on all counts. The only thing you really do in much of the world is walk or ride toward something interesting. Nothing makes most of the world inherently fun and it is, very often, completely pointless because you're just going to fast travel anyway. There isn't enough raw content to justify the size and the content is tied to particular locations. The main point of the size of the world is simply to give you a strong feeling of scale. This is not necessarily bad, but they could have made much smarter use of that scale (see Morrowind below).
Some games that do better:
Minecraft is a great example of a game that can get away with an infinite world because gameplay happens crucially wherever the player is. You don't need to travel to find something to do. The random terrain generation also means that exploration can yield new and interesting landscapes and, statistically, will do so at pretty regular intervals (compare to the bland filler space often used simply to make a setting feel big).
Rockstar gets open world games. GTA gives you a way to get around quickly in a way that can be inherently fun and a sandbox that gives you fun things to do outside of the location-dependent missions. RDR removes some of the ability to create chaos for entertainment, but gives you side-goals involving the space, gives you a way to traverse it quickly, and gives you random things to do along the way from seeing a horse you want to collect to rescuing a man chased by a pack of coyotes. Again, missions are tied to locations, but many of the missions also make use of the large landscape too (the mechanics allowing for a lot of gameplay to take place while traveling are pretty brilliant). RDR has quick travel, but I didn't end up using it a single time before finishing the main storyline (only once I had started trying to finish a few leftover gathering tasks). This was not a matter of pride - this was a matter of wanting to ride around to each mission and objective.
I would say Morrowind also does a very good job too. The roads on the island are twisted enough that the world seems quite large and travel times can be relatively long and there are huge stretches with very little to do but walk and there's very little fun inherent in traveling. The solution, however, is the fast travel system. By creating an in-world fast travel system built on a web of subsystems, they require that you learn to navigate the system and gain access to some of its parts through certain achievements in the game (finding the indices, buying and becoming capable of casting travel spells). You earn the ability to travel more quickly and avoid the pitfalls of the usual meta fast travel systems. The ability to traverse the world quickly becomes a reward both for your achievements in the game and your ability as a player to navigate. And the game also makes great use of this fact later on in the main story as it forces you to move farther and farther from these networks, creating a greater sense of isolation and remoteness. In short, it takes the problems it has and turns them into strengths.
Prototype and Assassin's Creed also deserve mention as games that do a great job with a large, mostly uninteresting city by making the method of moving through it itself quite satisfying.