Would you play a GTA game with a game map the size of planet Earth? At what point is a game world too big?

It's never too big if the details are there
I mean the end point of videogames is when we just make a life simulator and retreat into virtual reality

True. But one can argue that in real life, there is nothing more detailed than our planet Earth, and Earth itself is actually mostly just barren empty space. The entire Earths population can fit inside the state of Texas and leave room to spare. Earth really is mostly just empty space

A game world depends on the genre, gameplay limits, and lastly story/world/setting. It also incorporates just good game design, San Andreas was smaller than GTA IV and GTA IV was smaller than GTA V but as time went on the maps got smaller. San Andreas' world was so fucking packed with detail, things to do, story, and pacing that it felt much bigger than it actually was while V is huge as fuck but there isn't anything to do outside of the city let alone barely anything to do inside it.

The maps had less detail and activities to do.

IV was actually smaller than San Andreas I believe. San Andreas was about 15 sq mi and IV was a tad smaller. Its one of IVs biggest criticisms because it actually went backwards in that sense.

You talking about Outerra?

>outerra.com/demo.html
Looks interesting. I've never heard of this before. How detailed is it really though? Because it looks like its made from procedural generation. Procedural generation will never replace the detail of that of hand-crafted worlds in my opinion.

This. A game's size should only be as big or small as it needs to be.

I would

Well, your opinion is wrong. I won't go into details because we recently had a thread about that and I don't feel like repeating too much shit, but here we go:

Do you have any idea how fucking big the earth is? Do you want a boredom simulator?

You don't like driving / flying? Are you a homosexual?

Actually you proved him right since purely handcrafted works, purely generated doesnt and the tl;dr you pasted suggest mixing them so that means you still need to manually get involved to make generating usefull.
Handcrafted > generated.

You can do that in Outerra already, just ask some faggot to make the fuel thing. Enjoy the 3 hours of entertainment you will get out of it.

For a handful of games within a certain scope.

No, you're making assumptions. Some things are more efficiently done manually, you can get the same results through procedural generation, but it would take more time. Landmarks, certain buildings, some interiors and maybe something else is more efficiently done manually.
The correct answer is:
Handcraft>/=/

There is no point to a game that large if you couldn't go into at least 65% of the buildings, be able to truly interact in it, and of course good gameplay, music, and the usual that makes a good game good. Hell, open-world games are getting worse every year. Whats the point of an "open-world" if you can only go into less then 2% of all buildings, and are too busy pointing out all the things you cannot do?

Huge Games with Nothing
GTA5.
Saints Row 3, 4, Gat out of Hell.
Dead Island
Breath of the Wild
All of these games have this in common.

Medium sized games with a lot stuff to do.
True Crimes 1,2 & 3.

Mercenaries 2.

Huge game that fucks up it's free roam because hurr durr.
Just Cause 2 and Just Cause 3.
JC2
JC3

When you have a huge world, with fucking nothing in it, there's no point. I rather have a medium sized world like Stillwater from Saints Row 2 , that's filled with surprises and different kinds of people and all kinds of shit to find and do.
Being destructible is a bonus. The destruction regenerating is even more of a bonus.
A destructible world that you can't keep destroying is pointless, ala Red Faction. That said , I loved wrecking shit in those games. Real shame what happened to the series.
I'm just tired of empty sandboxes.

You should give Kenshi a try. I'm pretty sure there was a download link on either the share thread or the current kenshi thread. Great game, lot's of procedural content, lot's of things to do, true sandbox approach. A lot of flaws too, but still enjoyable.
It kind of runs like shit, don't go too high with the settings unless you have a really good rig.

...

There is no fucking way GW Nightfall is 15000 sq mi.
I am curious to see where Breath of the Wild falls into there. I hear its about 150 sq mi but I doubt its that big.

Everyone will spend in one point in the whole entire map effectively making 95% of the world useless if it has multplayer.

If it's single player chances are you'll also stay in a single part of the map without even touching the rest except those few autist that like roleplaying.

the GTA5 map already feels too big because there's fucking nothing outside of Los Santos.

As long as the world isn't like GTA5s, ie; Can't interact with anything, just look at the vast world and imagine what it would be like if you could..Do stuff inside the buildings . I'd try anything for a while.

>Everyone will spend in one point in the whole entire map effectively making 95% of the world useless if it has multplayer.
Red Dead Redemption had this problem and GTA5 has this problem, but I wouldn't call it a problem with GTA, more like a deliberate choice.
Now with MAG, every inch of the map was useful. Too useful. Since the newfags never learned how to actually defend more than one direction, they actually had to edit the maps and close off routes. Also, Proximity Chat was the best thing ever.

Of course. If there's nothing to fucking do. Why would I willing wonder around in the vast wastelands of nothing, knowing there is nothing out there? At least with Nu-Fallout , if you walk in a direction long enough you'll find -something-, even if that something completely breaks the game like I dunno, finding the garage that triggers Memory Lane.
At least that series attempts to reward you for "role playing" aka actually exploring. Other games just go "look at our awesome scenery!..too bad you can't do anything out here and you just wasted your time."

I hate to sound like I'm fellating Saints Row 2 but it had incentives to explore your surroundings sprinkled everywhere, and not the kind of "hurr durr collect everything you autistic nigger" that a lot of games enjoy this generation.
Different zones, different NPCs. Different ai behavior from the random npcs on the street.
Now, a bad incentive to explore would be Alan Wake.
Even Pokemon did this shit with Sun/Moon. Two entire zones you can't do shit in. THEN once you beat the game, you can "travel the dimensions" and end up in the opposite game and there you can do…Nothing but grab a cosmog. Whooptie do.

This is supposed to be the size of botw, not sure how accurate it is though.

That map has been fucking debunked a hundred times.
Even others are incorret as fuck. JC2's map is huge but it's way overexaggerated here.
It's so damn easy for bullshit to spread around the internet and be taken as fact.