I wouldn’t really call it a “trap”. If you’re buying a console when it’s new at full price, sure, you’re being taken for a ride, but give it a couple of years for stuff to be cheaper and it can work out reasonably well.

I used to be a major PC gamer but eventually the cost/benefit calculation went completely off the rails.

That said, I’ve not upgraded to the current console generation because I’m still waiting on something to justify it.

What would I even play on it?

Who doesn’t love impossible to follow variable names?

I don’t think any of these nutters have experienced the things they rail against. I’m not in the US, but from where I’m standing you guys haven’t had any of that stuff since before Reagan.

I’m still waiting for enough titles to come out on either platform to make the jump from my Xbox One X.

: This Time it’s Poosonal.

There are many things I’d spend more on, but gaming is something that I can spend a lot of hours on without necessarily enjoying. As in, the experiences are often weirdly compulsive and before I know it I’ve tanked eighty hours without really enjoying it all that much.

I collected all the submarine collectibles in GTA V - do I think that was more fun than a party with friends? Absolutely not. Did it take more time? Most definitely.

The only full price game I recall ever buying was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 (back when £35 was the standard “full price” price point). Now that one was worth it, but no other AAA game that I can think of has justified the cost to me. Once we’re talking about that amount of money there’s a lot of other things I would get more enjoyment from.

I think I paid about £10 for GTA V. I’d maybe go to £15 or £20 these days, but beyond that I simply have other things I could play.

Little Big Adventure 2

That’s fair. It’s not actually awful, I just didn’t enjoy its mechanics (and it was wildly unstable too).

But Discworld Noir is dreadful!

Also it has Vines being corrupt!

When I’m trying to focus I tend to listen to System of a Down or Rammstein. The rest of the time it tends to be pop music from the radio (usually BBC Radio 1) or lofi.

Interesting choice of engine. I wonder if anyone will put together a guide for playing it on the Steam Deck.

Probably distracted by all the side fumbling.

It’s metaphorical because we’re talking about any time a game makes a decision like this with relation to how they scale their game world, not just that one time that you measured it out to be 50m.

That might be what you’re choosing to talk about, but it is categorically not what I was talking about.

But the size of the world is a part of the game design. What’s too big for The Outer Worlds might be just fine for Mad Max simply because one of those games lets you drive a car.

I know! I understand!

That’s why I picked a specific example of where I feel the balance in some popular games is poorly implemented for my tastes. Some games manage this well, some do not, and I feel that this often errs on the side of “50m outside the settlement”. Based on your comments, that doesn’t bother you.

Great, I wish I was as lucky.

For me, an open world game that gets the scaling wrong is not very fun to explore. Whether that’s too big or too small. It seems lots of gamers aren’t fussed about this. Arguing with me that my preferences are wrong doesn’t seem worthwhile. I understand the game design principles, that was never the issue.

I posted this because I think it’s interesting to compare notes on the parameters of this element of game design. What sort of scaling is too big? Why? How many people should be visible in a settlement to feel right? That sort of thing.

I do think it’s worth examining why this is harder for you to suspend disbelief than other things in video games. You suspend disbelief every time your character loses or gains hit points rather than suffering actual injuries that need time to heal. You suspend disbelief any time you play a game in a real world city that isn’t represented in 1:1 scale (that’s basically all of them) like The Division or Spider-Man. So to the same end, I’ll take those supplies that are 50m away and it’s somehow too far for the quest giver to go get them, because it’s best for the design of the game, just like the scale of the world that they built.

I’m not sure what your point here is? That my brain is broken? As I said, if I was able to overlook it, I would. I’m pretty sure I also said that I wasn’t looking for 1:1 as it actively hampers game design.

There’s more options than 1:1 or Wannado.

I’m glad to hear it’s not just me (I mean, statistically that seems unlikely, but still!). It’s a little like modern cinema compared to '70s film making - let the story breathe, folks. Given that the tooling to make the world larger (but with the same amount of content) isn’t all that complex, I wish it was done more. The amount of content is fine - often excessive. But give me a chance to feel like I’m actually travelling.

I felt the scaling of Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey worked quite well in that respect. There was actual travel!

The criticism was frequently that they made 1000 planets but that it would have been better if they’d focused on making 5 good ones

I take zero issue with this! I think you’re misunderstanding my point.

Putting the metaphorical supplies 50m away is what they found led to the best pacing

I’m not talking about a metaphorical 50m, I’m talking in the game world 50m. It’s not an analogy for game design, I mean in a very literal sense that the worlds are a bit too small for my tastes.

I’m not talking about density of content or the number of locations in a game. I am talking about the level of size scaling that has been applied. Too small and I cannot get immersed, too large and it makes for a tedious play experience (that’s why I cited True Crime: Streets of LA, that uses 1:1 scaling for LA and as a result has a lousy overworld).

For my tastes the balance currently leans too heavily towards ludicrously small in many games. I quite liked the scale of the Watch_Dogs games, as a counter example.

Hell, it’d be cool if there was an engine that used something like content-aware scaling to adjust the distances to player preferences. Some people want a slog (that seems to be Death Stranding’s deal) and others want Wannado City.

so suspend your disbelief a bit

If this was advice I was able to act on then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If this was an option, I’d do it! Do you think I enjoy being frustrated at this?! No! I wish it didn’t bother me! It’s a nuisance and gets in the way of fun!

How are we defining “better”? For me it makes the experience worse because I lose all immersion. I’m trying to be immersed and my brain can let a lot slip (realism is not required!) but for me the limit is when it strains even basic credulity. Yes, 50m makes the quest less hassle, but if I don’t care about the quest due to the scope of the world then there’s a more fundamental issue.

In games where immersion isn’t a factor (e.g. The Binding of Isaac) that stuff doesn’t matter. In an explorable open world I content that it’s rather crucial.

I’d love the option in a tutorial that for “I’ve played plenty of this kind of game - tell me what’s specifically different in this game”.

I recently rewatched Rango and the size of the main settlement in that is about the size of those in RDR. Reflecting on that, I suppose I want the map to reflect the kind of scale and focus seen in other media. A film or TV show doesn’t show us every street (usually) but it gives a sense of the scale of the place. If a game map couldn’t be used for an establishing shot without looking daft then it doesn’t really work for me, I reckon.

It’s something I like about the overhead perspective used by games like Fallout and Wasteland - I perceive what’s on screen as the area of the settlement that’s relevant to me but with the understanding that there’s more off screen. A character might mention going somewhere, much like in a play, and then reappear. Perhaps the player can go there, perhaps they can’t even see it, but it makes the world feel larger.

I suppose, much like in reality, we rarely visit every location of a place, but it needs to feel like it might enter our narrative in some way.