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.
There are space games with procedural large scale galaxies to the point that the entire playerbase can only ever hope to see ~15% of the systems, but that’s why I put the >50% qualifier in there. That’s TOO big. Anyone can generate an effectively infinite procedural world, I want a large world.
When I had originally conceived of this, it was in the context of a pokemon MMO. You would have your home town, and as a trainer, or researcher, or rocket member, etc, you’d travel at a real-time pace akin to the show.
Alternative IP that it could work with are dragonball (imagine the playerbase on a months long search to find/fight over the dragonballs so they could awaken the dragon and make a wish to the devs), or Avatar (each player would have a chance to spawn in as a random bender. One player at any given time is the Avatar. Events happen to strengthen some benders and weaken others. Players make war and peace at will).
There would obviously be challenges in running these types of experiences, but currently it feels like the cost of standing up an MMO is so much that no one ever does anything interesting. Instead they just copy WoW.
I guess Light No Fire has a good chance of becoming such a game. It’s gonna be No Mans Sky, but on one earth sized fantasy planet. I don’t think it will have large cities though. 🤔
I don’t consider NMS to be an MMO. If everyone went to the same location, at best, you’d most likely only see a handful of players you’re instanced with (up to 32 from what a cursory search gives me). That’s kinda the sad state of what passes for an MMO these days, but I don’t accept it. That’s not even a full raid group in WoW.
But yeah, you could squint and say that that otherwise effectively produces the experience I’m asking for. I am looking forward to LNF for sure.
traveling to another city is actually so inconvenient that you only do it if you have to
They don’t work. Vanguard did it way back when, with their three continent world. Each one had enough content to get from lvl 1 to lvl 50, the max, and your starting race determined your starting location. It could take up to an hour to get to friends. Even on the same continent, with a mount (before they added flying mounts), it could take a half hour of running to cross the map… and players complained so vociferously that they were forced to add fast travel options.
I don’t think that means it didn’t work, I think that just means it’s not for everyone. I’m a firm believer that, “given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”. Small indie games take firm stances on their gameplay all the time, not every game is for everyone, and that’s ok, that’s how you get unique and interesting gameplay experiences. But that’s easy for and indie game to do because making an indie game is cheap.
MMOs have the unfortunate reality that they’re architecturally complex, and expensive to operate, and thus need to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible to justify their existence to investors. They don’t have the luxury of making the experience they want, which is why they all end up just copying WoW’s enshittified gameplay, but with less polish.
My hope is that this indie revolution we’re in expands to “large scale” multiplayer games. Not so massive that it’s prohibitively expensive to run, but not so small that it’s a ghost town. I think that’s when we’ll start to see interesting MMO experiences again.
I loved my 3DS. And yeah it’s actually pocket sized, unlike the Switch or Steam Deck. I’m still not sure about the choice of the 3D screen instead of just making it higher resolution lol. The 3D effect was cool but kind of a gimmick.
Like most, it never really interested me. I just liked the clamshell self-protecting design. The 3D slider was firmly set to the ‘off’ position for me!
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.
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.
On the other hand, the world of Fallout 4 feels very cramped; you can’t go 5 meters without encouraging something. Bethesda’s games are interesting in this aspect – the worlds of different games are built similarly, but they differ in some small parameters (as in the density of Fallout 4), so they’re ripe for comparison.
Personally, I feel there were two peaks in Bethesda’s worlds – Morrowind and Skyrim. Both for different reasons.
Yeah, looking at it in a strictly dungeon distribution lens it’s actually pretty solid, and I find it feels a little crowded when you mod in more locations. I guess world distribution is the one thing they actually got right.
I’d be broader and talk about points of interest instead of dungeons, but yeah. This, the art design of the world, and the music. Those are the strongest points of Skyrim.
It has been a little while since I last played it, but I found that scale-wise, it felt small (I’m guessing this is what you mean) with major locations too close together, but content-wise, it felt sparse, empty and ultimately pretty boring.
A wasteland that one can throw a stone across doesn’t feel like much of a wasteland to me. I don’t want realism, just big enough that I can suspend my disbelief. I want to get immersed but a “town” with six people isn’t a godsdamned town.
I did hear about Light No Fire from the No Man Sky devs. Looks impressive from what I’ve seen so far on it with it’s supposedly literal Earth sized world.
yeah, PC here, i didn’t really much games before digital distribution came along, but i was enjoying every demo i got on a cd that came with magazines, now - over 20 years later i have nothing to play
Marathon (1994) has several call outs to the player when the AI giving you mission briefing calls the PC out for not caring and just wanting to shoot things. There’s a lot of meta commentary in that series.
I’ve only gotten like 1.5 hours in so I can’t really say yet, but so far it feels similar to the first one with some improvements to stuff like gunplay.
Elden Ring has the deepest, most complex worldbuilding of any game ever made, and it’s not even close. For anyone interested in worldbuilding I strongly urge you to watch some Elden Ring lore videos from The Tarnished Archaeologist to learn about the techniques that the Elden Ring devs use to put incredibly deep and subtle worldbuilding into their games. It’s changed the way I think about worldbuilding in any context.
Someone talking about how a bunch of employees who weren’t invested, oh hey that’s me! Gamasutra has since gone belly up, but I found an archive of the interview with Frank O’Connor, halos franchise development director (at the time? Idk if that’s still the case). On this page specifically, we open with the quote “We hired people who hated halo” web.archive.org/…/making_halo_4_a_story_about_.ph…I didn’t reread the full article, couldn’t say in 2025 whether it’s worth a full read, but that sentiment did stay with me all these years later as a strange choice
I almost considered referencing you when I mentioned that, but I know some people aren’t cool with that.
Thanks for the source too. I was thinking to myself last night “I should look for a source for this” but decided to put it off for today lol.
Hiring people who hate the franchise seems like a horrible move. I suppose I can see what the idea was, but I still can’t believe nobody higher up thought “wow. This seems like a horrible idea. Why are we doing this?”
SpoilerThe trap bench in Hunters March. After the absolutely grueling effort it took getting there, the relief of finally coming upon a bench, only to see the trap come swinging down. All I could do was laugh.
Cyberpunk 2077, you have to save two of the most incompetent cops that exist. For such a dark and depressing universe, whenever there are hints of humor those always get me.
That “Big Grey Guy” is one of the major reason I haven’t tried the game. And well the fact that I don’t like horror, but I am going to blame the Big Grey Guy!
I feel that lol. He really is a terrifying threat. I’m not used to my horror games basically throwing a big invincible enemy at me, especially for such a long period of time
Always wanted to play it but i don’t really play multiplayer game is it a game playable solo? I know it possible but i’ve seen it mostly presented as a co-op game
It’s playable solo (and only solo in the current beta branch), but the devs have been nerfing that playstyle for years in the name of multiplayer balance. There are artificial limits on what one player can learn and do, with massive penalties to anything you didn’t start the game with. They include those nerfs in single player because they intend for NPCs to pick up the slack after they’re introduced.
(Note: NPCs have been a promised upcoming feature “after the next set of changes” for nearly fifteen years at this point.)
Fortunately they include settings to undo the learning speed nerfs, and hopefully will add more to make the upcoming crafting rework less of a pain for solo players. The litany of tweaks available at world creation is one of my favorite things about Project Zomboid, right after all the stellar business name puns.
Don’t forget the thousands of mods, too. And like the other reply said about server/game world settings before you start playing, there are mods that add even more settings to tweak, or they make gameplay smoother (or harder), or they add new things like weapons and vehicles. There are even entire new maps to add to play in.
It’s very doable solo, but it’s kind of a slog if you want to do anything significant in a playthrough, plus it can get very lonely and isolating.
I might give it a try next time i see itnon sale then thanks
I already play lot of survival game that feel lonely or isolated like valheim i do find it fit the genre and sometime add a little something lol my main problem was is the game was “balanced” for solo vs coop
It is playable solo. I have the most fun playing with friends, but there’s a great deal of fun to be had playing Single Player too. It has different vibes single player but id stills recommend it
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