Empty Big World / Small Full of Content
 

Here is something I have been thinking a lot about and I want your guys opinion about it. Personally I prefer a game which only has small cities with a lot of meaning to them… compared to oblivion/morrowind/Baldurs Gate which has some enormous cities… these cities are acctually full of people but especially in Oblivion these people are just puppies…. making it a boring task to explore the city and try find someone which has something meaningful to say. My favorite is Ultima 7 what a fantastic cities it have! But this question doesn't go only for cities but for other areas too.

So should we aim for smallish but meaningful? slightly bigger but less meaningful? what is your opinion? The drawback of too small and too meaningful is it will create a very small world…. so too small is also not good IMHO.

Big and empty like Oblivion is not an option.. no matter how much someone want it I won't do it :D

It depends I would love to see a game spanning a whole continent with more cities towns and villages.A story where you rise to power from a peasant or slave to become king,emperor,or queen.Include battles/betrayals /and how the world reacts to you.That would be my dream RPG.Many games only have two or three cities with some small towns.Mount and Blade Warband has come close but still feels lacking.I realize it would cost alot of money to make a game like this but its is a dream just imagine playing Eberon or Faerunwith with every city/town/village and landmarks.You and ai characters make the history of the continent.

I know too little about your game to give a valid answer. Something I don't like so much is when games try to pass a collection of 5 houses and a castle as the grand capital of the empire. I prefer if the only thing you can afford to do in your game is a village, then make it a village. Or make only a few locations of a large city available, but convey the sense of a much larger city (Bioware-style). Depending on the game, I would even be fine with a complete abstraction of city activities into a menu (Krondor).

Two Worlds I is a bit like this : really small villages, with lots of interesting people & content - and between them a vastness of wilderness.

It looks to me as if they were trying a bit … the balance between the Gothic model (small villages, interesting stuff) and … let's say Daggerfall (from what I've heard) : many towns and huge, empty land between them, or like in Oblivion ?

Gothic 1 has taught me that you can have something very interesting if you have small vilages with lots of meaningful content crammed in. Since then, I personally prefer that style.

I don't quite like the approach of Two Worlds I, because the villages there are in my opinion *too* small, and not interesting enough anyway. This is just a borderland, wilderness, and almost nothing but wilderness.

I don't have any "ideal model" of a small, but meaningful village. I always come back into thinking of Drakensang 1 & 2, but they also had bigger towns and too small towns. Moorbridge and Tallon as examples of something rather interesting, perhaps, with Moorbdridge being a tiny bit too small for my personal taste.

What we often see are towers. Huge towers. But what one rarely sees are mid-size towers. Either they are just too big (mage's circle tower in Dragon Age) or too small (the one of the magician in Nadoret … it's almost built like a lighthouse, so small it is).

The only mid-size example I can currently think of is the tower of Hommlet (I think it was the name).

What I always like, by the way, is, to stumble upon a small cottage deep within the wilderness. With lots of helpfullness included. ;)
No, no irony, I'm serious on that. I always find it funny to find something entirely unexpected. And of course the inhabitant should have means to survive there.
Yesterday or the day before I found two such houses alond a road in Two Worlds I. One was simply closed (not accessible), the other one was overrun by an ogre which had slaughtered the two inhabitants. I don't like it. I always want to find something or someone living there.
And two additional ideas regarding this "cottage in the wilderness" : a) there could live a creature so "alien" it would have been outcast everywhere else. It finds his or her living only there, because no-one is looking after him or her in an unfriendly way. It could even be a couple of … let's say lizards. Happily married, but still being outcasts from human, elven, dwarven societies. The only other ones of their race would be thousands of kilometres south. The other idea is b) read about Procrustes of the ancient Greek mythology … ;)

I prefer small cities. I hate big cities in games, I always get lost, take hours to find the NPCs I need, and in games where the automap doesn't have markers for the important buildings, I hate it every minute I'm running around trying to find the blacksmith. I prefer the U7 style as well, compact (and I still managed to get lost in Britannia, but it was manageable)

Gothic II was perfect, imo. Not a ton of places to visit, but it felt like a real town where people lived.

I think you should go with your gut on this. I think you're leaning towards a happy medium. Not too big and not too small.

With the way the question is set up, I'm guessing you're more looking for validation of a decision you've already made. That's perfectly fine with me, BTW.

I'd agree with your choice with one caveat--as a dedicated map-mower, you can't give me a reward for being an explorer if there's no "middle of nowhere" to explore. With a tight, focused map, you're limited because the player knows, "if there's a path, there's a good reason to take it" because it *is*, as we defined it, a focused map.

Hitting the balance between "empty big world" and "big enough to include some truly pointless exploration so that rewarded exploration stands out" is going to be a bit tricky, me thinks, but that's the point I think you should aim for.

I believe the same.

I'm one of those that just follows the paths. Fallout 3 I finished in a couple of days, because I just went to where I needed to go, helping people on the way, but never went anywhere just to explore. My impression of the game is that it sucked, for my playstyle. So if a game requires you to go out of the way for the simple reason of exploring, it's not going to work for me. Now, if there was at least a side quest that sent me to the end of the world, I would go. I'm a sucker for completing side quests as other people are suckers for exploring the map.

Thank you for a lot of good feedback so far!

Basically it is necessary to have some pointless exploration, to make it worthwhile to explore and get excitement of finding something?

But we should also remember to make some reasons for you to visit an area.. like for example find Dario the hunter in the western wilderness region.. so that there would be some reason to at least visit that region…

Yes, reasons are good, imho.

I think so. Now, you might be able to make things contextually pointless rather than empty pointless, but that's a little tougher. See below.
Your quest (the reason for being in the area at all) is to deliver a basket of goodies to Grandma Dario. Perhaps in Dario's back yard, there are 13 broken arrows scattered around. Grimpack the Mook (Whom the party hasn't met yet) just so happens to want 12 broken arrows for a bit of impressionist art he's working on. Thus, if the player takes the time to look around find 12 arrows, there will be a reward that they don't even know is coming. But what of lucky arrow #13? Well, it just so happens that Phoonzang's little brother Poontang (whom the party probably hasn't met yet, either) stole and scattered the Epic Archery Set of Awesomeness and that f'in-hard-to-find 13th arrow is a piece. So, even if your player meets Grimpack and backtracks to Grandma Dario's place to complete that quest, it will take a true map mower to collect everything. Similarly, if your player is a proper explorer, he'll find and keep all 13 pointless broken arrows until suddenly they become rewardingly non-pointless.

When I played Baldur's Gate I had major wtf moments in the title city. It was huge and I had no idea where to go. I'd probably like that now.

The "city" of Divinity 1 was so much scattered it appeared to me as several small "cities".

Pointless exploration is just fine as long as you discover some interesting things. I'm not just talking about loot.

I've been going on and on about Fallout:New Vegas almost every day and there is a good reason. It is INTERESTING. It captures my imagination to just go wandering around and discover these places off the beaten path. I've found more than a few areas where they did not have much loot or monsters, but there was a history to why it was there. Sometimes you find some notes and sometimes you don't find anything except for the equipment and furniture that was left. What was left tells a whole story unto itself. They left it up to us the player to fill in the gaps.

They tried doing that in Fallout 3, but for the most part failed miserably. In this one I go exploring everywhere. Not for epic loot, but to learn more about this world I'm playing in.

Also these places made some kind of sense. I really can't explain without getting into serious spoiler territory, but suffice it to say everywhere I went felt like it belonged there. That makes a huge difference as well. Makes the world feel more alive.

Alrighty then, I think you got a good handle on what is best. So keep to that vision :)

And that is all lost for many people unless there is a reason to go there. I wonder how much time and resources have been spent in games on those areas people like me will never see. It would be interesting if a game could collect this information, like, how many people visited a remote area that took them X developer-hours + artist-hours + tester-hours only to be seen by Y people :) I know they do this in MMOs all the time, and using this info, sometimes they revamp certain zones, add new quests, etc. basically, add *reasons* to go there.

I liked the world of Sacred 1 which was big and varied. Throw in some some proper role-playing elements at spread out locations, I wouldn't mind generated content in-between.

Thank god Obsidian didn't listen to people like you or this thing would not be the Fallout I've been waiting to play since F2. Seriously, just wander off the beaten path. Is that so difficult?

Those man hours might be wasted on you, but they sure as hell weren't wasted for me.

Maybe stick to linear titles then. Those are fun as well and it seems like you would get more enjoyment out of them.

Hush! Somebody might end up listening to you! >:(

I love the feeling of finding something… like a mysterious temple… and since it isn't part of a quest you are really wondering why it is there. You find the enemies are dangerous but just dangerous enough for your party to manage to get deeper and deeper inside… until finally you find the hidden treasure of the temple in a hidden room…… but woooops it is guarded by a really strong mage…. you'll have to escape and come back at a later time when you are stronger.


On the other hand I hate explorer auto-generated wilderness with nothing interesting to find…… it is really hard to find the right balance.

For how many, exactly ?

We don't have any serious data at all regarding the sum of players preferring a certain playing style.

Exactly. This was part of the Gothic 1 fun for me.

And everywhere else.

In the Larian forums, I even developed my own ideas of certain "forgotten times" in which creatures mist have existed looking like these giant statues which look like a mixture between a lion and a giant rat.

And these catacombs and temples … At least [i]someone[/i9 must have built them.

This is the "mystery factor".

For some, it is just fun musing about this.

Others just go through it, like in Blizzard's action games, where hacking & slashing was everything, and I believe that only very, very few people ever wondered on how these catacombs evolved …

to me it just breaks the immersion, believe it or not. Here you are, with the mega-evil Magaladon about to kill the king, or the mega-lich Colgatest on his way to necrotize the whole kingdom, and I'm the only one that can do something about it! oh, but maybe I'll take a 7 day detour to the southwest to see what color of flowers there are. That's what I mean by having a reason to go places. If the Sword of Justice, which is rumored to penetrate Colgatest's black aura, is hidden in a cave to the southwest, then it makes sense for me to go exploring the area. Now, if it's a game in which nothing is happening, in which I'm not 'the chosen one', then ok, whatever, let's catalog the colors of the flowers in the whole region.

I don't think that will be a problem, because if and I say IF there is something urgent going on, you'll be in trouble if you don't deal with it. However while the world is relatively calm you can spend some time exploring.

That's the key right there and a lot of times developers don't understand this. It has to be interesting. Either with a story, some bauble that you can't find everywhere else or even just a challenge.

Two Worlds missed this by a mile. They had all this wonderfully huge area to explore and there wasn't anything in it. There was a cave thrown in every now and then or a monster village, but that's it. Nothing that enhanced the story. No awesome loot or even a good challenge.

Fallout 1, 2, and NV (a little bit with 3, but ever since I played NV, it just looks sad in comparison)…..had an interesting world to explore. Sometimes cool loot was to be had, sometimes a sidequest and sometimes it was just a little detail that added a little background to the setting.

There is no good way to autogenerate an interesting area to explore. Maybe with Rogues, but that's a whole other type of game.

You're missing out then. If you play the main storyline quest by quest two things will happen. You'll finish the game very quickly and you'll miss out on a lot of things.

I wasn't joking about linear games. They are fun and I have no idea why people knock them so much. I prefer certain styles of games and can have fun with any of these like RPGs (obviously), action, FPS, Adventure, strategy RT or TB and throw in a horror game every now and then.

I don't really have a preference over which of those styles I play at any given time, but once I start a certain type of game I do expect certain things. I expect a sandbox to be exactly that, a sandbox to play in. I expect my action games to be choc full of adrenaline pumping action and I expect my puzzle games to be annoying as hell sometimes ;) Oh and I expect to DIE A LOT when playing rogues.

You can't expect a style of game to be anything than what it is supposed to be. Like I do not want in any way shape or form a MMO style quest system in which they tell you where to go and what to do all the time. Keep that crap in the MMOs and leave my SP games alone.

I think this has also something to do with the urgency, the "urgency factor" of a quest.

If the urgency isn't too high, okay, then it would be reasonable to make a detour.

Maybe then someone even finds something better, then ? (Let's say a quest requires a special item to heal a person. It's not very urgend, because it is a non-lethal, but nasty illness, like … let's say a simple flu. On the way, however, fetching this herb, IF you do a detour, you might find deeply hidden deep within the wilderness an even better herb … One the herbalists had nearly forgotten about … And one that is only noticeable to you if you have a high botany skill … Or is only mentioned by the town's herbalists if you ask deep enough … )

There's urgency and urgency with REAL time limits before something catastrophic happens. I don't like the latter… Not fun.

I personally do not like the huge, empty expanses of the Elder Scrolls games.You don't have to include the entire world into your first game, an entire series of events can take place in a small valley, a single large city and it's surrounding environs, or even in a single labyrinth .

At the same time, if you can't take two steps without running over another NPC, then it's a bit crowded.

This reminds me of the principles of short stories vs. novels :

short story = limited time & space
novel = rather un-limited time & space

Small & full of content by miles. I can readily suspend my disbelief that a thriving metropolis in game lore actually only takes a few minutes to walk around, an easy trade off for the benefits of not having to wander through emptiness or randomly generated content.

I prefer big and NOT empty myself but if you feel constrained to only those two or three options then perhaps the middle of the road option. Small worlds, even when they are masterfully designed and everyone you meet is important, = smaller game and is less interesting to me.