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Can a game world be too massive?
xZeRGz
Member Posts: 118
Scrounging around various places looking for more info about The Secret World got me to thinking about world size. More specifically how big is big enough. Or, how tiny is too tiny.
WoW came to mind in the too big category. The game world is huge, and since it is divided more or less into lvl specific territories, it is over-all empty with pockets of population. Seems like a vast waste of space.
Do others think that WoW is too massive, or other game worlds in general?
Comments
Yes.
An example is Runes of Magic: It has 2 divided continents (and will get a third with the next chapter). It gets every chapter 3 or 4 highend areas + new starter areas. And atm its loosing big parts of its playerbase.
When is a game world to massive in my opinion:
In general you can say, the world is too massive, if you dont meet many other players in the same area. This can have different reasons, one is, that the world is divided in different continents/plantes/etc. and the important areas are all on one continent (/etc.). Another reason is, that there are many divided areas. If you have one new big area (f.e. for level 50-60), youll meet players there, who are doing completely different quests fo different levels. If you have smaller divided areas (f.e. for level 50-52, 52-55, 55-57, 57-60) youll only meet the players, who are on the same level as you.
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Nah, honestly I think WoW's size is just about right.
I do, however, think a game world can be too big for its own good. I think in part that's what did Fallen Earth in. Granted, there was a lot that led to FE's downfall, but the sheer size of the world and the lack of any fast travel emphasized the 'single player' aspect of the game. If I was in S3 and a clanmate needed help in S1... Forget it. It'd take me thirty or forty minutes to get there even on a motorcycle, and as long to get back. Even now, with the fast travel options they added, it's an issue, both because it's limited and, especially if you factor in towing, expensive.
Population of players and mobs contributes to the density "feel".
I have a limit of about 6,000 total per zone in WAC. I've been experimenting with smaller zones to keep density up.
If the world is too large its probably because they don't run 30k+ players in one server like EvE does.
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I don't find WoW massive because each zone is pretty densely populated by things. It's more of a question of whether that extra space is useful or simply terrain for more spawns.
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Short answer: no.
Long answer: I haven't seen a mmorpg setup that was too large.
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Yes, games can absolutely be too large. I mean, you could make a game world that's much larger than Earth itself, but what about the content? You've gotta be able to flesh out all of those areas and create enough content so players don't feel like they're wandering around in a lifeless world.
Basically, there's really no rule on what's too large for a game, but you have to make sure it's within your capability, budget and time to properly flesh it out.
Player and content concentration combined with methods of travel dictate the world size far more than map size. If a game world has too few players or sparse content, it's too big no matter what size the map is.
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Im not sure I have seen one that is too large, but I could envision it.......I really dont like quests much as it is, and if they involve alot of running that really makes it worse....A huge world with alot of quests would most likely suck pretty bad.
I think a game world can only be too massive depending on a few factors. One being themepark vs sandbox, skill based system vs level system.
For instance:
-if you have a huge world and only 1000 users, it can feel pretty darn lonely. Especially if that world doesn't encourage exploring!
-if an area is level specific and everyone has reached the top tier the other zones are left barren
I think Ultima Online did it right. It wasn't level specific. I mean, you wouldn't go fight dragons right after joining in the game, but every area had at least something you could do. I found the skills based system of 700 points to distribute encouraged people to be all over the place for various reasons. However, when the population started dwindling after trammel (damn you trammies, damn you all to hell!), thats when you realised that any game can become TOO big. They effectively doubled the world size (and added more later on too).
So all in all, yes it can be too massive for various reasons. I still prefer the larger worlds regardless.
I agree on travel. Morrowind world is quite small by todays standards, but walking is soooo slow that it takes forever to travel and feels large.
Worlds do seem to be shrinking. And there is a reason for this. These new high end graphics come at a cost. The cost is what it takes to render. So the more figures that require rendering and the more randomness the more difficult it is. This is why higher populated areas have lower FPS in games lately.
Tthe easiest way to counter the problem is to separate toons off through zoning and instancing and smaller worlds like Rift. I think Rift could be larger to be honest.
WoW is not too big at all. In fact it's not even that big compared to earlier ones. Go take a look at Anarchy Online. Or if you rememebr SWG.
It is never big enough. If you are making a world for thousands of players instead of a theme park then areas need to be massive.
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It depends on the population of the game.
WoW's size, when considering a high population in a PvP context was just right. Too cramped in an open PvP server isnt always good.
Once the playerbase begins decreasing, WoWs world will be bigger than needed.
If you dont have any type of fast travel I think you need to be alot more careful how vast the world is. I remember the original EQ and the following few expansions. Everything was a run. Decisions to do anything involving large geographical changes were time consuming. As much as it immersed me into the world then, I just would not have the time for that now.
When I am playing these days, I do not want to be forced to spend it just "getting" somewhere. At the same time, sometimes in some games, just looking around is enticing all in its own.
Embers Of Caerus is going to have a big world...they talk about one continent below, there will be 4 altogether:
EoC - To carry on with the feature list: Massive, seamless persistent world. I think Rob may have spoken about that but I can't remember if he gave you any numbers. It's a big world. It's massively big. Our world builders have got their work cut out just filling it with stuff. A good comparison size-wise is games like Just Cause, Just Cause Two and Three. They're pretty big. They are big game worlds but there you're looking somewhere in the region of 256 sq miles which is pretty big. But then our first continent, we're look at a size of (not including the oceans) 3,800 sq kms.
ST - The first thing that comes to mind is fast travel. I'm not talking about mounts, I'm talking about portals, zipping around.
EoC - Yeah, so, not going to happen.
ST - Thank you!
EoC - There's a lot of reasons for having a game world as big as we are aiming for. Most of those are due to the problems that have happened in other games because the world just isn't big enough. Supply lines don't make sense if the world isn't big enough. An economy that's changing based on where you are and what resources are available in your local vicinity don't make sense if the world isn't big enough. Games like EVE Online, they've nailed it fantastically because from one sector to another it's a long way so you can have localized economies in a game that big and that's something we're aiming to have, localized economies. Where finding out where you can get things cheaper and setting up supply routes, it just makes sense. It's a way you can play the game. Having a large world promotes that. You've also got sense of community. MO is great but you don't have, well there is a small amount of locale based communities so you have guilds that set up in Medule (sp?) for example so they live out of Medule and they know all the locals so you do have that but there isn't that sense of inter-dependence there, if you don't like it you just move to the next town because it's only 10 minutes away. Whereas if you have a game world literally to move to another town you're looking at a couple of hours of travel time...
ST - Dangerous travel time too, huh?
EoC - Exactly. So you feel more of a community spirit so if you have a bit of in-fighting, if you have an external threat you'll be banding together more to combat that external threat.
http://www.embersofcaerus.com/forum/showthread.php/477-Transcript-of-the-EoC-Podcast-from-The-Sandbox
I agree with you in just total size. AO has a massive world, but most areas seem pretty empty. You end up running a long way, before you get to do fast travel, doing nothing but fighting a few random mobs along the way. It's not packed with content, it's just empty, open space. Compare that to, say, Skyrim, which has a much smaller "world", but is positively packed solid with content. You can hardly walk 50 yards without tripping over something different to do.
It's not really about gross size, but about density of content that makes a world good or bad.
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no.
even if 80% of the world is unused or rarely travelled the simple knowledge that it's there adds to the feeling of openness and freedom.
I don't think WoW is too large at all, the problem I had with it is the zones are just throwaway- once you've completed the quest chains in the area there's no reason to go back unless you're farming mats.
The only MMORPG I thought was too large was WAR- I don't think they funneled players effectively. Populations of similar levels were so spread out between the seperate level paths it was very cumbersome to group. I'd find myself spending more time looking through the appropriate greenskin, then chaos, then the elf area just to find people to group with than actually grouping. Despite the feel of the world being one of my favorites in all MMORPGs (if only for how dark it felt) the PvE leveling experience left a bad taste in my mouth and I wound up just playing scenarios instead.
Ofcourse.
Whenever travel becomes a chore, feels endless/pointless and more players complain about it then the world is too big. Or atleast the distances are. Then again if you don't run across players too often the world might be too large. Vanguard could've been better off with just one continent. I ran across Mortal Online and saw other players only in towns and even then just 2-3 at a time.
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Yes games can be TOO BIG. One prime example can be Light and Dark in which the game world was the size of 25,000 square miles. This is litterally several hundred times bigger than WoW. The game failed and shut after a few months.
This because it is easier to add things to a world already generated than it is to generate more world.
Just not worth my time anymore.
Wow, that is huge but I don't think it was the reason L&D failed.
Just not worth my time anymore.
Real size matters LESS than whether there are interesting things to see and do.
You make a dessert zone as big as the world in WOW with nothing but sand dunes, it will be a huge failure as a game.