Map Size - Do we REALLY care?

Generic Dreadhead

Hey All,

I know I've been seriously narking on GTA-5 here in the last 2 weeks.
Mainly for a handful of reasons:

• Earning Money is crap.... 2 Stock Market gambles bring in more then 90% of the rest of the game combined and 80% of jobs don't pay anything
• The Radio stations.... But I guess this comes down to personal taste.
• I can't get online... As many others cannot either
• Strangers and Freaks missions that leave you feeling empty....
• Why do I have a phone to call people.... only 10% of people answer....
• Properties that call you with stupid drive-to tasks EVERY week (Hen House)....
• 4 heists... yet you want me to "level up" a hacker and some other dude we'll only possibly use twice??? WTF????
• And a couple of other smaller gripes....

BUT, that being said, there is a lot of parts I'm happy with.

But one thing that REALLY grinds my gears is the map size.... this problem is 2 fold... 1 it's too big (in my opinion) and 2 Why is it the thing that 90% of people talk about pre and post release?

It's almost like having a Horde mode in a game that has 999,999 waves, but it gets either impossible or boring after wave 30... what does it matter about the rest of the waves....

I've put like 50+ hours into single player....
And I swear I am looking at soooo much of the map and going "Why the hell are you there, why do you exist, I will never go there?"....

I've felt like this for a while, But I guess I felt as I was zipping from city to city along the roads it didn't make any odds....
But last night I somehow ended up in the South-Eastern Most point of the map, and trekking across the (Tacoma? Palomina?) Highlands.... This is one of maybe 5-10 parts of the map that are just dead, empty, worthless space....

You know what, Vice City might date badly, but I liked the way that after maybe 30+ hours you actually felt like you knew the city and after 50+ hours you didn't need a GPS (like in 5)... Vice City was your second home and you knew how where V-Rocks headquaters were. I genuinely liked knowing my way around. Now I just hit the GPS every time. It's soulless.

The reason that Map Size = a Good thing all comes back to San Andreas (original) as this had 3 seperate citys and maybe 4 other points of interest (airfield, army base, mountain, prison or whatever).... And there was only a certain distance of "dead-space" between each area (enough to lose the cops maybe).....

Anyway I know I'm guilty of ranting here but aside from Los Santos, everything else is just a smattering of buildings that you never look at twice (Harmony? it's like 4 buildings, that is not a "Town" WTF?)

I just wanted to see if anyone else is actually as annoyed about this as me. And when I read stuff like "With next gen-consoles" it's possible the map size will be 50 times larger (i just made that figure up), I actually feel like flying into a Rage. Whats the point if you never had a need to go to any of the place, it's posturing. If you look at Vice City you had cause to visit 80% of that map, with San Andreas this was more like 50% but still, there was some point to it all...

THE MASSIVE MAP IS POINTLESS IT'S JUST GENERIC GRASS/DIRT TEXTURING

mad turnip

What your missing is they could be setting up for some really big expansions and DLC. And on the PC this will go down very well.

krudler

THE MASSIVE MAP IS POINTLESS IT'S JUST GENERIC GRASS/DIRT TEXTURING

Whut? Blaine County is brilliant to roam around, I prefer being out there to in the city most of the time. I used to get cabs everywhere in GTA4, I drive almost everywhere unless its across the entire map for some side mission in V. If the map was way smaller then flying would lose all it's appeal as you'd get around the entire thing in no time.

And I do hope they incorporate DLC into the unused areas, like the prison or the oil field/wind farm areas.

pah

I guess it's trying to be a realistic interpretation of... reality maybe?

it might be annoying to some but the scope and the rural/urban balance feels pretty accurate imo

Renegade Mechanic

I dunno if the map is too big.. Ten minutes will see you circumnavigating the whole thing in a Cuban 800. But by god is it a view..

Beekay

Whenever I set the gps I always seems to think back to GTA3 and Vice City where I knew the map like the back of my hand.

Liam90

Your problem is you had unrealistic expectations. The game is a masterpiece.

krudler

Renegade Mechanic wrote: »

I dunno if the map is too big.. Ten minutes will see you circumnavigating the whole thing in a Cuban 800. But by god is it a view..

If you're flooring it yeah, I like taking a long drive along that coast road, coming back into Los Santos seeing it loom out of the distance as the sun goes down is brilliant, they nailed the weather and lighting effects in this.

Generic Dreadhead

Liam90 wrote: »

Your problem is you had unrealistic expectations. The game is a masterpiece.

I agree in all ways but my few key problems listed above. I do throughly enjoy it. I have just been more vocals about my problems then the actual good parts. I feel from reading all the other threads and websites and reviews that a lot of the good aspects have been touted time and time again.
But yes I did have unrealistic expectations. But thats being said, all my problems are more to do with common sense things (phone contacts, radio, stock market) as opposed to the scope of the game and the hardware available (aside from the server loading issues with online).
I think maybe many people did have unrealistic expectations. Someone mentioned on another thread here about being "Caught in the hype bubble" and I feel like maybe I (and others) were.

But, from looking at the poll results (thus far) it looks like I will have to humbly conceed defeat here at some stage and admit this is more of a personal problem I have as opposed to actual issue.

For what it's worth, the game was definitely an A for me... like 85%... would have been maybe higher if online was working for me by now (on X-Box).... Might go as low as 80% if I can't get on by the end of the weekend

Generic Dreadhead

pah wrote: »

I guess it's trying to be a realistic interpretation of... reality maybe?

it might be annoying to some but the scope and the rural/urban balance feels pretty accurate imo

well personally I was quite happy having Los Angeles, San Fransisco and Las Vegas all within a 5 minute drive of each other :pac:

Stone Deaf 4evr

I think this GTA is going to be the first one where you'll truly get to see all of the map, this is down to the fact that the creator tools that are going to be unlocked in a few weeks to let people create their own races, deathmatches etc. The possibilities are endless.

gunfights in the quarry of blaine county, a foot chase throught the backyards of the grove street ghetto, stunt plane races through the skyscrapers of vinewood and into the drainage channels like in terminator 2..

The best is yet to come from this game.........

Nuri Sahin

To keep it short...

The V map is fine size wise, I do feel it's bit too barren and wasted in areas however.. As well as that, I feel with flyable planes and the like, there should be another main city airport (not asking for another Los Santos sized city by any means).

youreadthat

That's like saying Ireland's too big because I'll never visit all the farms.