Massive game worlds

How would you make a game world that is both massive and interesting?

A typical scenario with large game worlds is they are criticized for being "mostly empty" out of realism

In some cases this can contribute to giving the game a "vast" feel, like World of Warcraft, where it worked quite well.

Some open worlds, like GTA Vs version of San Andreas, make it work very well by using the space it has very wisely, the desert, for example, is not "all empty space" like a typical open world desert, its full of hiking trails, small settlements, and stunt ramps, and the rest of the otherwise unused pieces of land are there to add to the scenery.

The problem seems to be striking a balance between having a realistic, large world and having enough content to fill that world

Procedural generated maps, like No Mans Lie and Minecraft, fail miserably at having content to fill their worlds, but as a trade off their worlds are among the largest.

Generate a massive map, generate locations fitting your setting on top of it, send an army of retards to handy craft everything on top of the computer generated location. NEVER EVER split it in grid, nothing makes a world more shitty than when everything is a set distance apart (NMS and it's fucking outpost every 10 minutes walk in cardinal directions comes to mind), don't hesitate to have extremely concentrated areas that basically act as a smaller map for a set duration : cities, mountain ranges that needs to be crossed, with a far greater concentration of shit than the rest, don't hesitate to have large swathe of empty stuff. Variety and non patterned placement is the key to make a world not feel like shit.

It can only really happen in an online persistent world where players can modify the environment. Not only in terms of building stuff, but in creating local visual themes. For instance you could have something like a world tendency based on how the players act that make it a water biome, volcano biome, so on. Of course it would immediately devolve into minmaxing and having the same shit everywhere because online communities can't be trusted with anything, and especially not with pretty stuff.

I do a bit of level design as a hobby, and some of the most fun you can have is making a level you crafted to have a deliberate pace, bring out interesting game play ideas and tell little stories. A good thing to do is give it place, presence in a greater world but the biggest thing I see developers doing wrong is going all the way and forcing that sectioned off part of the world, that may as well exist in its own universe, a pivotal, intersectional presence in the world.

You don't need that. It's a lot of work and has little benefit. Either do it right, like dark souls or bloodborne, or don't bother. Do it like thief the dark project, the metal age, where locations are given a sense of presence, but not actual presence. Stimulating the senses of the player and drawing their imagination is far more effective than making an ugly open plot of world and sprinkling disaffected shacks throughout it.

just make a bunch of small maps
x 100

The entire map is a humongous alien spaceship, as big as the sun, and it has plenty of variety in its various districts and pseudo-ghettos. Built as a trading vessel, the ship has turned into an astronomically large bazaar, where some traders and even a few consumers have set up homes. The size is augmented by the fact that the ship's commanders have, thanks to massive profits, added several additions in the form of tiny ships that have been welded on to the base-ship, such as war vessels being welded on as cannons, or speedier vessels being added to augment the engines.

Unpopular opinion, but if you ignore the shitty design for quests, factions, and most dungeons, TES: Skyrim actually has a very lovingly created outside world. If you stray of the beaten path and don't make use of the fast travel option, you actually can see lots of details.

Games need to give the player the ability to create their own experiences the less content they have and that content needs to be supportive of the mode of play. To make a good and large map, you need to spread the content out throughout the entire map, none at all and let the player take control of the world, or a balance between the two. A lot of games tend to centralize content into specific areas and make the world seem less of a hinderance by giving the player the ability to travel through it quickly.


If anything, the game worlds of these games are the least of the problems. Procedural generation in games isn't flawed in use, but flawed in misuse. This might seem obvious to some, but there are people generally think procedural generation is wrong as a whole. In fact, I would say that Minecraft is a great example of interesting large gameworlds.

Minecraft requires the player to make effective use of the world they were given. You have to scout for resources and use them in such a way to accomplish a myriad of tasks. This interaction is constant in the game and you can actually see the results. A bad use of the world is No Man's Sky because there is absolutely no interaction with the world whatsoever. If you enjoyed the game, the only way you probably enjoy it is because it's like a museum; you walk through and observe, but don't touch. Other than sightseeing, the only thing you can do is gather resources for the sake of gathering more resources. If they just allowed you to build some structure on a planet to make it your own or at least do something, it would then be more appealing.

A massive open world game that's interesting is impossible. You'd never have the resources, time, or man power to make a well crafted massive open world game. You'd have to end up copying and reusing assets for the majority of it.

A smaller well crafted open world is the way to go.

just like make mmorpg

well you could start with having terrain that is not shit. i mean seriously this heightmap shit has to stop, you cant recreate cliffs ledges or even steep hills with out fucking your textures/stretching those fucking triangles to shit. i mean voxels seem promising (marching cube not minecraft shit) but all the people working on them are programmers so they have the programmer autism textures applied to them. but for fucks sake minecraft of all things has this huge ass world an people still claim to enjoy "exploring" it so they are doing something right.

Create tools that are highly effective for your intention.
Get on board with other people.
Work nonstop on game mechanics and functionality.
When you've achieved a versatile framework, begin work on the world, and never fucking stop.
Everything you add should find purpose and find it fast. Not everything needs to have purpose, but the world around you finds its own in real life, too. Think about why the gutter-trash hobo is trying to mug them when the player turns into the wrong alley, how that hobo would act, where they would be hiding, why they're hiding there and where they're staying, pissing, what they're eating, and when the hobo would approach. From this one shitty idea for a secret fight you can begin building and building and building
The hobo's there because the bakery throws out scraps, or the bakery is there because the hobo needed something to eat
The hobo waits until you're suitably in the alley or you notice the hobo when you're suitably deep in the alley
The alley needs to be deep enough, repugnant enough to tell you someone's been sleeping and shitting and pissing there, and they have to have had somewhere to hide, so now you know there's an abandoned building, garbage cans, a fire exit/staircase, a fade-away, something for them to hide behind
the hobo was a farmer who was displaced during a war and is not half 'broken' and starving, if you don't kill him for attacking you you can get his story, find the farm itself elsewhere etc
Anywhere there's a bakery or shop, there's a farm- maybe the baker let the hobo stay behind the building because he was an old provider and that was at least the minimum charity he could give. Similarly, there's going to be consumers, associated manufacturers, and so forth.
Anywhere there's a war, there's a conflict, and conflicts need multiple parties. The farm is on the outskirts, the border, and from this you know it's on a plains and has a water supply so it's fitting if there's a nearby river, the sort of natural border wars are fought around. There were probably neighboring small settlements around associated ranches and farms and as with many borders, you find rivalries, a blurring of national identity, and friends become enemies during conscription
Maybe the hobo went dull after seeing atrocities committed to his wife and kids or maybe they were abducted, you can encounter them in the other kingdom/country
You keep going on and on and make everything into a cohesive, worthwhile area
People know people, not all groups interact, but all cohabit a space and make it function- cities exist for a reason, as do farms or fisheries, as do blacksmiths and armies, etc.
Allow no wasted space because there is not a single grass left untrod in the real world, be it by animals or hunters.

I don't see how you could possibly do it.

a) there are points of interest, and uninteresting emptiness between the points

b) points of interest are side by side, but since the map is huge, you'll need 6 gorillion bucks to make all the stuff (RNG maps are eventually dull as shit)

You'd need to a procedural generator making actually interesting content.

I agree with this. Having a large open space with absolutely nothing in it is great, provided the game has the tools to use it well. Have a big area in a game where you have to command an army while controlling a city and the area is free space for the player to use as they see fit. Fill it with fortifications, buildings, farmland, or just have battles there.

The environment has to support the gameplay.

I would make it several small game worlds
Seriously though, if your game is going to be open world every time you expand it during development think "what can be fun here?" If you don't come up with anything leave the map as is and don't add useless padding

By spending a few decades handcrafting it, of course

Also why shit like Minecraft and later Elderscroll games failed for many people is an important aspect people overlook: The player.
Why are you here? What are you doing? Are you a cohesive part of the world?
You are there for a reason, even if you are not there in reality.
Xenoblade gives you Shulk, someone who's lived to adulthood without you watching, but you're still thrust in his shoes, and he is a character who has existed and has reason to exist. He fits, and you can see it at work in every interaction.
Dragonborn? Fuck no, people just put you on a pedestal and proclaim you their god-king or you accidentally slaughter bandits plaguing the relevant kingdom for ages despite their guards being able to two-shot you. Whoops!
Starcraft makes you a commander who has a reason to exist despite introducing you as the character is introduced. The plot follows you, not them, and you ARE them. You come to realize that the Cerebrate, Magistrate, and the Executor are all real characters that you have forced to achieve greatness, and can even see them just up and fucking die in the Cerebrate's case. Starcraft II abandons that entirely and boom, it feels like a movie you're just watching. That's how the Dragonborn interacts, a cartoonish hero in a world that shouldn't include him, and a big part of why the game feels so plastic.
When you take over for the son in Suikoden, when you take over a character who has a clearly established place in the world in GTA, or even something stupidly simple like watching your uncle die in LTTP, it provides a sense of cohesion that "Steve" will never provide.
While not everything needs to be narrative driven, this is the one part that should be prioritized if you want the game environment to work, regardless of size.


This is where people fuck up. The environment should be the gameplay.
A large part of why shit like Red Dead Redemption or even Dark Souls work is because they create the game around the environment. Setting is integral to gameplay, and every character, enemy or otherwise, makes sense in these games. You can comprehend why Anor Londo is what it is, how it got there, and why each enemy and boss you encounter do what they do. The environment supports the gameplay, but more importantly, the environment is the gameplay. You're exploring a cool ass environment, and that is the part that entails combat. The combat isn't the ends, but the means to achieve the ends. You're on a quest, not in a Colosseum, and that's how an open world, exploration-centric game should function, and why something as large as Dark Souls feels feature-complete. Compare with shit like Lords of the Fallen, in which the environment is the way it is just because it feels kinda 'right' and it funnels gameplay in the correct direction.

I thought the GTA V map was uninteresting, there was nothing in it. GTA SA map on the other hand, not very large nowadays but still feels huge just because it has so many diverse environments packed into it.

i like when they model an actual ciy. like how the getaway had a real london. the city was interesting, had character, and it being a real place made it have an interesting element in itself.

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This might sound controversial but hear me out
>The thing is, the "empty" space must have a lot of actual fucking detail and be really really pretty. No procedural generated shit or very good procedural generation if such exists beyond Dorf Fort
>It also should be an actual and fun game.

So E.Y.E.?

It all comes down to manpower. If I'm Rockstar I can just throw people and money at it until you fill every square meter of the map with something.

If I'm FROM I can use good level design and art direction to make the game seem larger than it really is.

While not in such a big scale or with all the features you mention, the Just Cause games get most of that right in my opinion, especially JC2.

Game?

It's only an idea unfortunately, the closest you might get is probably Dwarf Fortress without fast travel and what previous anons mentioned.

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Sounds like a less shitty minecraft.

Minmaxing in MMO is usually pretty fucking bad. It's not "hey, I just made this overtly specialized character who is shit at everything BUT this absurdly specific aspect, in which it is a fucking destroyer", but more or less like "hey, I saw this OP as shit build online and I am going to fucking copy it". Minmaxing isn't about breaking the system anymore, but about letting one of your thousand players discover some strategy and let the other players copy it. It's not about situational configurations, it's outright getting the best possible gear and keeping it forever because if the game was designed otherwise, developers would have to reduce the amount of grinding required per armor, and that's a big no no.

God damn it.

FTFY

so many fucking qtes and shit gameplay
they didn't even try to make a good game

what do you mean? how else would they make it?

Problem with Skyrim map is that it's yet another of those cases where you find cave/ruins/village/house/whatever every 10meters for the most part.

Also just my opinion BUT the even bigger problem is that they tried to put down different kinds of areas on an relatively small map. Whiterun and it's "countryside/farm"-surroundings arent too bad but most other areas are too small and cramped making it just feel… stupid.

They really should just stop making their games take base on the WHOLE province, like why not just take the northernmost part of Skyrim instead with Windhelm+whatever there were on the right etc and make Windhelm something like 5-10times bigger city than it is right now to make it feel like an actual fucking CITY you can immerse yourself in.
then again GameBr… I mean 'Creation Engine' would shit itself on that scale unless separate parts of city outdoor areas were behind loading screens, it's even shitting itself now no matter how good computer you have because Beth-a shit

That's not bad. It's actually good, but the main problem is that those structures are always the same, over and over. Had they been original and unique, it would have been a great map.

I know some people here will be butthurt about this, but I think Bethesda is actually one of the only companies who get open world map design the rightest, even though they are still immensely flawed. "See that mountain? You can climb it" may not apply to actual mountains due to the shitty physics engine, but it more or less works like an allegory of pretty much everything else in the world. Everything is reachable, and every little fucking house is fully modeled on the inside, which is something not many games do. For example, (and for obvious reasons), GTA doesn't have many modelled interiors, which for some reason makes me notice the world is pretty fucking synthetic, despite how detailed the overworld is. Kinda like you suddenly realized it was just a fine quality cardboard background, I dunno. But it makes sense considering GTA is supposed to be first and foremost a nice driving experience with some gangsta shit thrown in. You DO need big maps to drive well.

I'd rather have smaller, but more detailed worlds than "look at how BIG my map is" games. They feel livelier, and more often than not they take as much time to fully explore as bigger maps. That said, no company actually bothers to actually apply this principle since they rely on people not deciding to explore the entirety of their semi-randomly generated maps, which take much less effort to produce than detailed environments.

But that would not mesh at all with the main appeal of the game, exploring new worlds. Anchoring the player to one planet with basebuilding would have been a terrible decision. I'm honestly not sure how you could improve it much mechanically.

I really liked the world in Witcher 3.
You had shitty villages spread out in the country side and a single capital town properly scaled full of shit to do.
Then there are quests and treasure hunts which make you go all over the map and places of power provide an incentive to explore.

Yeah, The Witcher 3 was the ideal open world modern RPG. Way better than any ubishit.

Make a MMO where characters are allowed to create shit - have a mincraft-like system with blocks that are 10x as small. Allow players to claim land on a procedually generated map, and have them be able to create guilds for that land. Have things be persistent, but not outside claimed land - so randos can't destroy the environment.
Eventually you'll have guilds pop up with execllent builders.

Seeing a lot of good ideas, posted here, I'm kind of tired so I didn't read them all, pardon me if I say something someone else already said.

One thing that I think that gives the feel of emptiness to big worlds is the lack of tension, you are given a bunch of objectives, quests and plot or whatever, but that's just artificial, there is not any mechanical reason to explore the world around you. For example, a simple survival feature like hunger would give you reason to hunt in the forest (giving you a reason to go there that doesn't involve an order) or don't know get a job in order to pay for food, if there is a progression each hunger crisis would be unique because it would involve different and varied problem solvings.

Other idea is dividing the world into chunks, but in an "diablo" way, instead of having a massive world to explore when you want you can have lots of small worlds that'll be visited according to progression, so the player will not get bored because when he's starting to familiarize too much with the environment he'll be throw in other world to explore without the option to go back

I fucking hated the witcher 3's map. You couldn't even sail across a damn lake without finding some lost letter about lost sunken treasure.

Making actual ledges and cliffs. Or at lest custom textures that don't stretch.

bad sleeping dogs ripoff

how big was the map on Gohtic 2?

Pretty big if you take all three separate areas into account. Granted, one of the areas is an alternate version of the valley that was the central location in the first game. But everything was handcrafted and it shows through massive attention to detail.

And of course I forgot the image.

is dark souls world big enough? I have been playing it for the first time recently and it reaches from the top of a crazy mountain forest all the way down to the literal bottom of the world.

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It's not big at all. High draw distance allows you to see both Khorinis and Onar's farm from the tavern in the middle of the main map.
It only feels big because of the meticulous area design and the high amount of content.
There are many bigger games that feel smaller because they're absolutely barren.

Hire 800 people to design it, or have a 20 year development time.

Its actually smaller than Morrowind.

Bump because this thread deserves it.