Greetings!
I am currently making a game, and I’ve stumbled across how big my terrain should be. I know that most people prefer small-medium sized terrain, but I really want to make my terrain the biggest it can without having players so annoyed having to travel long distances.
The game I’m creating is a wasteland type game where you can conquer land and explore. (You basically set up camps/settlements, and you need to collect resources to help grow your settlement.)
Example: There is a desert, and a building. The player is at one end of the desert, and the building at the other end. The player wants to get to the building, but doesn’t want to spend more than 2 minutes getting there. (In other words, the player wants to go from one end of the desert to the other, but doesn’t want to spend more than 2 minutes.)
If you were told to stand from one end of my map and go to the other end, how long would you be willing to travel to the other end? (What is your preferred or maximum time you would spend to travel to the other end?) Don’t worry about optimization.
I feel like it really depends on the style of game. If it’s an open-world, fantasy game, I would want the map to be humongous and hard to travel on, but if it was a game in which I’d have to backtrack a lot, like Pokemon, I’d want an easy way to travel to the other end of the map. This can be achieved either through walking or teleporting.
If it’s a plain map with little detail, it’ll feel grindy whereas a game with many stops, attractions, and beautiful terrain will be more bearable to traverse.
I’d wake up to 20 as long as there are things I can do along the way and people to interact with. I just don’t want to have to commonly make this journey across the map. Maybe only for extreme boss battles.
If it’s an MMORPG then I’d be willing to walk quite far. Just don’t make it boring.
Thanks a lot for the feedback!
The game I’m creating is a wasteland type game where you can conquer land and explore. (You basically set up camps/settlements, and you need to collect resources.)
Is your game more PVP, PVE, or exploration based? PVP games should be small, so you spend more time fighting and less time walking. PVE games should be moderately sized so it would be easy to get back to where you died, but not too easy to the point where you spawn right next to the enemies. Exploration based games should be large to encourage exactly what’s it’s meant for, exploration.
If it was a exploration-based game I would 100% prefer a large map. Having a cramped area to set up camp won’t be fun. Enemies would be at your doorstep immediately.