Big locations for the sake of big locations

[mina86]

Some RPGs have various large locations and a lot of empty spaces on maps which serves no purpose whatsoever. This includes long corridors, stairways, large squares, etc. The end result is that player has to walk for hours just to get from one meaningful place to another.

As the plan is to use excess money to create bigger world, please avoid creating a lot of meaningless space just for the sake of having bigger locations. It may be tempting to create a “realistic” town, where houses/merchants ration is high, but, even though it may look nice, would create a lot of space which player cannot do anything useful with.

[Gabriel77Dan]

I don't mind big locations for the sake of being big locations.
As long as there is an easier way to manage traveling through it.
Like how in Fallout 1 and 2 when you enter a node you get to choose from where you want to enter the town.
Or lik in Wasetland when you move into the town from the east then you show up at the eastern side.
As long as there are ways to cut the travel short then I don't mind it. (Does NOT mean the use of Bethesda-FastTravel)
Cause I'm really sick and tired of towns where everything is within a convenient earshot to the point where it's unnecessarily cramped up.

I want realims tied to town layout, and if there is 100 meters between X and Y then you will damn well walk that 100 meters too.
...
Or just exit the town map, move around to the other side and enter that direction instead.

[mina86]

As long as there are ways to cut the travel short then I don't mind it. (Does NOT mean the use of Bethesda-FastTravel)

I'm actually assuming travel between cities won't be an issue, as approach from Fallout or Arcanum will be used -- ie. pointing to destination on the world map, and the party goes there in timely fashion (with possible random encounters).

My issue is with towns where that may be unavailable. Of course, depending how the whole thing is implemented, my point may be non applicable at all.

Cause I'm really sick and tired of towns where everything is within a convenient earshot to the point where it's unnecessarily cramped up.

I want realims tied to town layout, and if there is 100 meters between X and Y then you will damn well walk that 100 meters too.

I think that “hyper” realism in games is rarely desired. After all, if I wanted realism, I would not play games. ;)

Also, some dose of realism can be achieved by dividing city into districts (some of which would be purely residential with nothing going one) and allowing fast travel between districts.

[Gabriel77Dan]

Also, some dose of realism can be achieved by dividing city into districts (some of which would be purely residential with nothing going one) and allowing fast travel between districts.

Like Fallout?
Would probably be for the best.

[mina86]

Also, some dose of realism can be achieved by dividing city into districts (some of which would be purely residential with nothing going one) and allowing fast travel between districts.

Like Fallout?
Would probably be for the best.

I was actually thinking along the lines of BG2, where Baldur's Gate was divided into district which you could travel to, and some inaccessible parts in between them (where you could get random encounters).

I'm not really a fan of that solution, but I see this could be implemented in an open world, where you can travel the way you travel in Fallout -- each district would be a “tile” on the map, which you could go either “manually” or using the map.

A related moderator proposal: http://goo.gl/mod/bhRi

[The_A_Drain]

Also, some dose of realism can be achieved by dividing city into districts (some of which would be purely residential with nothing going one) and allowing fast travel between districts.

Like Fallout?
Would probably be for the best.

I was actually thinking along the lines of BG2, where Baldur's Gate was divided into district which you could travel to, and some inaccessible parts in between them (where you could get random encounters).

I'm not really a fan of that solution, but I see this could be implemented in an open world, where you can travel the way you travel in Fallout -- each district would be a “tile” on the map, which you could go either “manually” or using the map.

A related moderator proposal: http://goo.gl/mod/bhRi

I'm all over this, the first time I played it BG2's city was so big it was overwhelming and felt like it was too much. But once I got that initial hesitation to explore out of my mind the game was so much better off for it.

Huge locations are great when they feel like huge bustling locations, not just a big cavernous space for the sake of making me walk for a few extra minutes. But alternately, this can have its place too, huge empty ruins for example should look like they could have been huge bustling cities.

For travel, breaking a huge city up into districts works really well in BG/BG2, somewhere between that and Fallout, when you have the overworld map to walk to locations and can then choose a district within those locations to visit provided you've been there on-foot first.

[cyrilverba]

i'd love to have big locations serving no purpose and being seemingly (or really) empty. i liked walking around in f3/nv and i loved how f1 had that aura of empty desert with long distances between locations and places like the glow/vault 15/necropolis or some ruins inside locations. f2 seemed overcrowded to me.

tl;dr: moar big empty locations, moar distances, moar ruins. just don't forget to throw us an artifact/note/cache/shack/cave every now and then..

[mina86]

Huge locations are great when they feel like huge bustling locations, not just a big cavernous space for the sake of making me walk for a few extra minutes. But alternately, this can have its place too, huge empty ruins for example should look like they could have been huge bustling cities.

I have nothing against big locations which I visit once or twice on a quest. What I'm aiming at, is huge distances that I have to manually walk a lot of times. For instance, in some RPGs (*cough* ME *cough*) you need to load several different maps to visit all your party members -- this is unacceptable. The same for long useless corridors in locations that you'll going to spend a lot of time in.

[quote=cyrilverba]i'd love to have big locations serving no purpose and being seemingly (or really) empty. i liked walking around in f3/nv and i loved how f1 had that aura of empty desert with long distances between locations and places like the glow/vault 15/necropolis or some ruins inside locations. f2 seemed overcrowded to me.[/quote]
F2 seemed overcrowded because you were travelling on the map -- realise that most of the time your character spent walking across the word map, was on a deserted desert. Should you do the same in F3 (ie. only use fast travel), you'd fell the same.

And I admit, I enjoyed running across the desert in F3 listening to some cheerful music on the radio, but I don't really think being forced to do that will work well with isometric/top-down RPGs. I'm actually not opposing having long distances between cities, so long as one can use world map to fast travel between location the way one could in Fallout 1/2.