Sandboxes: How big is TOO big?

[omicron1]

Depends on how the chewy center of the game - the story, the main missions - is structured within the sandbox.

If it's spread out over the entire world, as games are wont to do, traveling becomes an exercise in tedium. Even traveling through terrain pockmarked with "activities" becomes arduous if you have to pass through twenty or so "activities" on the way from Mission 1 to Mission 2.

But!

Imagine you have a wide open sandbox - 500 square miles, give or take; or even 5000, a la Fuel. Imagine that within these open regions (themselves home to a variety of "wilderness-y" gameplay experiences such as RDR's hunting/cougar-chasing/etc.) is a small, well-defined group of "hub locations" - cities, towns, what have you - that offer main gameplay missions. Suddenly, the game becomes two things in one: A semilinear adventure involving very little by way of tedious wilderness walks, and a wide-open sandbox outback where you can go hunt wallaby if you so desire. Think Oblivion if the wilderness was ten times as wide and twice as wild, and the cities were linked by in-universe instant travel methods. (silt striders?)

Best of both worlds? I think so...

 

[Alphonse_Lamperouge]

Answer - a sandbox can never be big enough! you just need adequate transport and content. the flip side of this is Batman - Arkham City, which Rocksteady had the gall to call ''open world''. you can cross the entire map in under 2 minutes. who cares if it is filled with riddler trophy's if after 15 minutes Ive seen the entire map?

 

[joshperry94]

As long as there is a way to 'Fast-travel', there shouldn't really be a limit... So as big as possible with a variety of different environments.

 

[Vykrel]

a map is only too big when it has too much useless space, or you cant traverse it quickly enough.

 

[triggrhappy94]

I'm pretty sure I've done a post on this before.

So the way I figure it is that a sandbox game must have one of too things...
1) Movement speed correlate to the size of the map. Take Sabotuer for example, the map was pretty big which was a bad thing, when you were getting into big gun fights every other block with nazis. Most of the time I'd die at least once trying to get to the mission. A better example would be Assassins Creed or Prototype, where you could easily sprint roof top to roof top without much problem and in Prototype you could even glide for long distances. This made getting across the big map pretty easy.
2) In a game that wants a big map and a slow movement system, then it better have centralized missions. Like in Red Dead Redemption, the map was huge and the horses weren't that fast, but the missions always stayed pretty close to each other; you'd do missions in Armadillo then Mexico and so on. Hardly ever having to make long treks. Saboteur is a good bad example. THe game would often have you treking across the map just to get information on a contact located a block from where you started.

 

[captaincabbage]

I don't think there can be a sandbox that's too big, just one that's too devoid of activities.

 

[Whoatemysupper]

Daggerfall.

Never played a game with a map so bloody big.

Two times the size of Great Britain, specifically. It holds a nigh-unbeatable world record.

I loved the map size of JC2, actually. Then again, I have an epic computer that lets me play it with maximum settings, so the act of flying a helicopter for twenty minutes is an exercise in containing my graphics whore drool.

Minecraft can load up to 8 times the earth.

It wasn't predesigned. Procedurally generated maps aren't eligible for the world record.

Daggerfall was generated at the start of each game and is therefore not designed consistently, your own definition excludes your own contender.

 

[brainslurper]

I had a lot of fun with JC2. Getting around the map was one of my favorite parts, and I barely ever used the extraction thing.

 

[lacktheknack]

Daggerfall.

Never played a game with a map so bloody big.

Two times the size of Great Britain, specifically. It holds a nigh-unbeatable world record.

I loved the map size of JC2, actually. Then again, I have an epic computer that lets me play it with maximum settings, so the act of flying a helicopter for twenty minutes is an exercise in containing my graphics whore drool.

Minecraft can load up to 8 times the earth.

It wasn't predesigned. Procedurally generated maps aren't eligible for the world record.

Daggerfall was generated at the start of each game and is therefore not designed consistently, your own definition excludes your own contender.

Incorrect. I claimed that procedural generation was unqualified. "Generated at the start" is not "procedurally generated".

Besides, it wasn't generated at the start of each game, they generated their own map and used it. They did the same thing for Oblivion.

 

[Whoatemysupper]

Daggerfall.

Never played a game with a map so bloody big.

Two times the size of Great Britain, specifically. It holds a nigh-unbeatable world record.

I loved the map size of JC2, actually. Then again, I have an epic computer that lets me play it with maximum settings, so the act of flying a helicopter for twenty minutes is an exercise in containing my graphics whore drool.

Minecraft can load up to 8 times the earth.

It wasn't predesigned. Procedurally generated maps aren't eligible for the world record.

Daggerfall was generated at the start of each game and is therefore not designed consistently, your own definition excludes your own contender.

Incorrect. I claimed that procedural generation was unqualified. "Generated at the start" is not "procedurally generated".

Besides, it wasn't generated at the start of each game, they generated their own map and used it. They did the same thing for Oblivion.

According to wikipedia it was randomly generated.

 

[Pat8u]

Hmm daggerfall has the biggest ingame map eh? what about minecraft 4 times the size of the world (I know it doesen't count)

 

[bluepanda 492]

I personally think a map is to big when you spend most of the time either wondering through uninteresting areas, or use the fast travel systems constantly.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The size of the sandbox doesn't matter. It's how you get around it.

THIS.

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?

Not in the early part of the game, where it's a massive pain in the ass to get around.

 

[Horuta]

I am not the brightest crayon in the box. When I read this title HOURS ago I thought that it it was meaning "just how big is to big for those people to be build those stupid sand castles that we see on TV all the time."

Sheesh. I had to go have dinner, drinks with a friend, come back, re-read it (twice) until it clicked in. I call myself a gamer for rainbows sake. I shame myself. I'm going to bed.

 

[lacktheknack]

Daggerfall.

Never played a game with a map so bloody big.

Two times the size of Great Britain, specifically. It holds a nigh-unbeatable world record.

I loved the map size of JC2, actually. Then again, I have an epic computer that lets me play it with maximum settings, so the act of flying a helicopter for twenty minutes is an exercise in containing my graphics whore drool.

Minecraft can load up to 8 times the earth.

It wasn't predesigned. Procedurally generated maps aren't eligible for the world record.

Daggerfall was generated at the start of each game and is therefore not designed consistently, your own definition excludes your own contender.

Incorrect. I claimed that procedural generation was unqualified. "Generated at the start" is not "procedurally generated".

Besides, it wasn't generated at the start of each game, they generated their own map and used it. They did the same thing for Oblivion.

According to wikipedia it was randomly generated.

Yes, as were ALL the Elder Scrolls games.

The difference: Minecraft has no canonical map. Daggerfall does. The end.

Daggerfall has the largest map file, it was generated in-house and used in every single instance of the game. Hence, biggest map.

Try arguing with Guinness World Records, they're the ones that laid out the ground rules and declared Daggerfall the largest.

 

[crudus]

It really depends on how they do it. Grand Theft Auto has done really well in making a big world seem small until the time is right. It's all about how close the missions and mission objectives are to each other and how quickly you can get to them. In San Andreas all of your missions and mission objectives were very close to each other and you could get to them quite easily. At some point you get access to planes which makes traveling from island to island very quick and easy(and fun!).

As long as it's not like Red Dead Redemption's Wastleland, or Fallout 3's Fallout.... You see what I mean?

For some reason I hated Red Dead Redemption's Wasteland, but Fallout 3's was awesome. Maybe it was becausein Fallout you could actually find something interesting on your travels. Goddess, that game got weird.

 

[Gaiseric]

Whenever it becomes a chore to navigate the map then it is too big.

 

[DustyDrB]

I like them smallish, like Bully's. Red Dead Redemption's was great too though, but only because it was so gorgeous.

Actually, it's hard to tell for me. A lot of these games revolve around driving a car around a modern city. I'm hopelessly sick of that gameplay mechanic, so will quickly tire of any game that has much of it. But if the mode of transportation is something different and the environment has a much different flavor, I can be fine with the place being big. Just offer a fast travel mechanic of some sort, though. If I'm gonna get in some game time before work, I really don't want for it to consist of 80% traveling.

 

[Terminate421]

Far Cry 2 was the largest game I've played.

That wasn't a good thing. It was so big I felt like I was doing absolutely nothing to the world.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

The size of the sandbox doesn't matter. It's how you get around it.

THIS.

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?

Not in the early part of the game, where it's a massive pain in the ass to get around.

I had the jet before I knew it personally, and I certainly never felt like it was a chore to get around, was having too much fun finding creative uses for my grappling hook and/or my parachute. And in the few instances where I found the distance to be too great I just called in a Black Market airlift so... I guess we just experienced the game differently.