I prefer smaller open worlds, like in the Yakuza series

Having played Minecraft and No Man's Sky, I can say that no world is necessarily too big, because infinite is not too big.

WoW is objectively huge, but they made it feel tiny by putting fast travel options everywhere. I would guess that any two points in the world are no more than 5m from each other if routed perfectly.

I want there to exist one MMO where you "live" in a city, and traveling to another city is actually so inconvenient that you only do it if you have to. Not because I want to make the trek, but because I want there to be a world just large enough that any one person has usually seen only ~1%, but the playerbase in entirety has seen >50%. I don't know if any such game exists.

ARMA 3's Altis map is too big.

Unless you're flying a jet. Then it's still too small!

The Witcher 3 and Elden ring were massive, and I enjoyed them because the world's were beautiful, non repetitive, and dense with unique material.

To summarize this thread: It's not the size of the map, it's how you use it

It can never be too big, but it’s a problem if it’s a big city with nothing to do (Cyberpunk).

It's too big when the developers are unable to fill it with enough interesting things to do and discover to keep my attention. But there's no absolute size I'd automatically consider too big, as it also depends on things like traversal. If you ride through the map on a mech going 400km/h, it can be much larger and more spread out than if I have to traverse the entire map on foot.

I say density, though Elite Dangerous puts a spin on how large the map should be.

In Elite Dangerous, most of the galaxy is unexplored. The Bubble (human inhabited area) is fully explored, which steadily dwindles as you go to about 1k ly outside the Bubble. Out there, you're basically on your own.

When you explore and map unexplored areas, you actually get some money depending on the quality of your finds. If you find some Earth-like planets, for instance, you can get a lot of money from exploring. There is also an inexhaustible supply of systems to explore, so there's no need to worry about running out.

It’s not about the size, but more about density of meaningful content. I like Elden Ring because every nook and cranny feels worth exploring. It’s the game that dares to hide optional areas behind optional areas, all with their own unique enemies and bosses.

On the other hand, taking Elden Ring as an example again, the mini dungeons were too repetitive. The first time visiting a catacomb is exciting, but it turns into quite a chore after the third time and onwards. You’ve already seen it all. Same thing with the dragon battles.

I think Elden Ring overall strikes a good balance with amount of surprises per square meter.

My go-to "too big" is True Crime: Streets of LA. If memory serves it's a decent chunk of LA at 1:1 scale.

It's far too big and there's not much to do. It doesn't help that the game is dross.

It's not a question of the world being too big or too small, it's the density of interesting things. A giant world with very little worth doing doesn't accomplish much, but similarly a small world where you're absolutely tripping over things that feel like you shouldn't skip them will also feel claustrophobic.

Additionally, the traversal system can help a LOT here. Even a world that has a lot of wide open dead space can feel good if the process of crossing that space is itself fun. Dune: Awakening comes to mind here, where there are large spans of open desert that you need to cross, but ripping across the dunes on my sandbike was so much fun I didn't mind the dead ground.

More than bigger, I want more accessible interior spaces. Like cyberpunk, but you can go into other people's living spaces

Nothing much new to say, just reiteration. A big or huge or gigantic map is fine, so long as it's populated by meaningful content.

Really wish Forspoken had been more populated. It's a huge world, and combat/abilty wise it's a great pure-mage action game, which I really really loved about it, that's not a very common thing. But my god, the world is so empty despite being so big, and most side objectives are just collectothons. There's some more difficult endgame content, but no real reason to grind up for it.

Morrowind

Was that 30GB RAM Harry Potter game real or were my friends messing with me? 'Cause my answer would be that.

There is no open world that is too big. They can only be too small.

However, the quality of an open world is not predicated on the size of the open world, but rather what is actually in it.

And this doesn't mean that open worlds must be drowning in content, as the quality of the content itself also matters, and certain worlds that are large and empty can still be interesting due to its traversal being good, or the sandbox nature of a large empty world.

Some of the worst examples of open worlds are the kind that are just filled with isolated little fetch quests; busywork that's all marked on the map with no element of organic exploration. Or the kinds of open worlds where nothing actually happens "organically" without the player starting it.

The best kinds of open worlds are the ones that emphasise exploration and/or have background systems governing the world in some way (i.e. factions that interact with each other without the explicit involvement of the player).

Basically, how much of the world is interesting/fun.

For example, Fallout 3 doesn't do a great job of this, as much of the world is baren with no story or gameplay. Half of the world feels like it could be cut out without much loss. The Yakuza games on the other hand, have smaller worlds but they feel massive and fun because there's always something to do moments away.

The work-around is to make travel fun, so the "empty-space" is just more gameplay. The Just Cause games are the perfect example of this. All the movement mechanics are quick and satisfying, from the grapple and parachute, to the driving, to the OP wingsuit.

It's never too big. That's why I'm pumped for The Wayward Realms (from the creators of Daggerfall, easily the largest world of its time).

Measuring size alone is meaningless, as gameplay affects perceived size, and density of meaningful content in relation affects the experience.

Size should match content.

Skyrim is canonically pretty close to the size and shape of Estonia, but in game it's very small. If the game's content was spread out to the "real" size, it would feel completely barren.

The map in Deus Ex MD was quite small, just a couple tiny districts, but it punched way above its size because it was so dense in detail.

What determines what "too big" is?

Ease of travel and speed of travel. Even a small map can feel cumbersome, repetitive, and boring. If the missions are designed poorly, and the game mechanics ignore an entertaining user experience, walking down the same hallway a thousand times can feel like a chore.

“Too big” is a relative feeling that involves many factors.

There is no limit, but I am also a big fan of Daggerfall and thus clearly insane.

It is too big when the density of reasons to go there and explore becomes to little.

Personally, I don't really care for games that have huge maps just to pass through while traveling around. There needs to be a reason in the story for every place to be there.

Every village, town or city needs to be filled with quests and stories, and the space between them as well to a lesser extend. They serve as immersive distractions. They need to be alive.

The map is too big if it cannot be filled with enough stuff to explore and experience. And I don't mean climbing yet another tower, or doing yet another variation of the same puzzle.

TBH, I am not much of a sandbox game player and the JC 2 and 3 maps looked nice, but didn't really invite me to stay and explore a single area for a while, because the areas didn't have much depth. I prefer a much higher density of things to do. Each village should have a couple of hours of content, exploring it and the neighboring area. And larger towns or cities even more.

I want to minimize the 'just cruising through' parts of maps.

Cyberpunk as well had too much dead space when it comes to stuff to do in many parts of the city. Some parts of course act as just the background for other parts, which is fine. But other parts where beautifully handcrafted and interesting, but there is not much to interact with or people to talk to there.

To me it is important to have enough content and depth that the player learns to get to know their way around a place, and gets to know characters and develop relationship with each place.

The bigger the better, as long as there's content, or the game lets you create content (as in crafting).

Depends on a lot of factors like what the actual game is.

A sandbox game, bigger is better. Like Minecraft. If the goal is exploration and resource gathering you can plop me into an infinitely generated map and I will be happy.

Outside of that, narrative games can be too big if there's nothing to do in between points of interests. I don't mean like side-quests, but more like random encounters or crafting/gathering stuff. There has to be something there I can either get distracted with or to "on the way" to the next location.

I think a lot of games want their cake and eat it too. It's not an open world game, but Final Fantasy XIV promoted the Heavensward expansion with the zones being like 5 times bigger than the base game...

...but there were only 6 of them and between already being able to teleport to each zone there wasn't any difficulty navigating the zones and they added flying which made them seem smaller than the base zones.

1.0 XIV had impressively sized zones that were unfortunately very copy pasted and between the rushed release and the engine limitations enemies were very spread out.

Again, depends on the game.