Planetary Map sizes

Or the option to FIDO content you're not interest in, to use a military acronym. (F*** it, drive on)

One of the things TW3 did better than DA:I with the open world side content, was not putting it in your path. You could keep Roach trotting towards a quest objective and ignore the bandits or monster's nests in between. DA:I tried to force you to do similar content, by having narrow paths and placing the rifts or mooks guarding a camp site, in the way of the main quest objective.
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Step one move around a map.
Step two feel that it does not have enough time content.
Step 3 put the shard in an idiotic location in which you have to spend 10 minutes just hoping to get or have to move around the entire map to the other side to get it.

Profit???

I think The Witcher 3 is actually a poor example of open world content density. Outside of villages, there's practically nothing to do, and what little there is could been better designed. Even the largest of ambient bandit encounters were usually just collections of dudes randomly sitting around some outpost. Nothing particularly compelling. In fact, I found that the sheer number of smuggler's caches and treasure activities discredited the realism of the world more than it enhanced gameplay. I think The Witcher 3 would be far better off as a collection of multi-village hubs rather than a continuous open world.

There's really no way to fill big maps with a lot of good content yet. It just can't happen. TW3 did as well as it did only because Polish man hours are cheaper, and even then, it's still basically a hub game with superfluous tracts of land connecting everything together. 

Assuming the Nomad is fun to drive, I would hope BioWare would focus on providing medium-sized sandboxes with points of interest spread equally around. Then, the gameplay can be trimmed to the good stuff: driving, mission content, and a few better-designed ambient encounters, and the less savory content, e.g. collectathons, (which we're bound to get regardless) could at least be more compact. The alternative is just larger areas padded with more "activities" and bar-filling.

Are you kidding? There is a lot of things happening outside the main settlements in Witcher 3.

If Bioware follow their example it would be really good.

What they shouldn't do is go back to how they made the maps in Mass Effect 1. A butt load of driving over random mountains with sometimes a point of interest to get to a generic base for a shootout.

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(¸.•´ (¸.•` ¤ Mass Effect Andromeda

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Well, I'm unsure what Mike G meant with the word "experiences"... as in frustrating, fun or boring"experiences". Either way, the studio needs to make the exploration optional but interesting.  As far as content and densities is concerned, I can't think of anything suitable for a sci-fi exploration game besides mission objectives. Unless, every planet we visit has Remnant tech somewhere. And, please, no Elf Root type resources. If the Nomad does find mining resources, send down a mining robot from the Tempest to do the job.

Also, the Dec video alludes to us finding large predators when exploring. Well, unless I put on my Hunting Hat, why bother? The Pathfinder's purpose is to find a new home for humanity and not go on a hunting jaunt.

I'd say there are chances the game won't be released in 3 months.

Beginning to look more and more like April at this point.

Always seems like a shame to cut content once it exists. Especially if you can see it just on the horizon but are blocked with invisible walls or some other artificial gating. I'm a bit of a fan of unused spaces.

One of my favorite things to do in Inquisition was just pause to look atound at the environment and just how God Dang gorgeous it was. 

I do agree that people seem to overlook the problems with The Witcher, but I think prior to EA people overlooked a lot of the negative things around BioWare games as well.