I played all 3 maps. I think Blissbay felt the most empty due to the size 2x bigger than Dowon, and how far each enterable buildings are. So many decorative buildings and repeated assets. Cahaya is the best map, many enterable places are just next to each other, not too far to go and it made surrounding looks more lively. Is it possible to rework and scale down Blissbay’s map?
3 Likes
I think this would upset all the players wo have their Zois living in the areas that would get deleted or love the neighborhoods.
The developers are already working on bringing more life in the worlds and you can raise the amount of zois in the settings, so I don’t think this will be necessary.
12 Likes
Cut this part of area and move some of the lots in it could work and not broke the map functionalities.
They already did various reworks on map design and replaced decoratives with functional building, I think its possible.
Too many decorative homes. Merging these 2 residental areas seems like good idea.
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You said it yourself, decorative buildings already got replaced and the developers might even already have plans for these neighborhoods. So people who like these places can keep on playing there and people who hate them just leave them alone and the developers keep on doing their thing 
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Even so that will still be unbalanced. If they add 20 more enterable places in Blissbay, so will Dowon. It could make Blissbay better, but then Dowon will be too dense. They also say it was a mistake making the map size too big.
Yeah, I don’t think many people would agree with you or want this. Instead, help Bliss Bay feel more lively and metrolopian by making more of the buildings active buildings where zois can go and do things. I would love to see that, but would hate to see Bliss Bay downsized. I’d rather have it stay decorative than downsize it, if making more of the buildings active isn’t an option.
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Why does every city need the same amount of active buildings? That makes no sense. In real life, not every town and city has the same amount of places to go do things. It would make it feel more dynamic and alive by having a different number of active buildings in different cities, corresponding to the culture and the vibe and the size.
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also the decorative homes make it feel more like California…it doesn’t make sense to have one small tiny neighborhood for a big city, many players want it to feel like a living city even if it’’s just decorative…and Dowon has as many non-active apartment buildings. The back area you are wanting to eliminate helps it feel like the city continues and is larger than the actual map but and becomes more urban the further from the beach you get. You are proposing to get rid of features that specifically make the game enjoyable for me, and would ruin it to change it the way you’re saying. In real life not every place is easy to get to… It’s fun to experience that in a game also… I’m sure I’m not the only one
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Yes exactly
The residental areas at bottom map has only 2 lot out of 30 decorative buildings. If your Zois lived there, the neighborhood feels very empty. My suggestion was to only move 2 home lot at highlighted part there so the neighborhood area feels more lively. But not to remove the map design, just keep that highlighted part as backdrop. There was just 2 lots in there, and the rest were just decoratives.
1 Like
Thank you for your response and for clarifying. I think I should tell you some things though because that city happens to be someplace I actually live.
Okay. I live in California. Let me tell you the real neighborhoods in California don’t feel any less empty. In California, no one goes outside (especially in Middle-Class neighborhoods, which those neighborhoods appear to be) and if they do, they are headed to their car to drive someplace or going to go for a jog, but even going for a jog in the neighborhood is rare, most people choose to drive someplace like a hiking trail or by the beach to jog instead. People go outside only in their backyard and neighbors don’t talk to each other. It is normal to not even know how many people live in the house next door or even what they all might look like. Even kids don’t go outside much and don’t even know the kids who live next door; I have known kids who didn’t even know their friend from school lived on the same street for over a year,and were so excited to find out. That’s how much no one is going outside or hanging out front of their house in neighborhoods, and except in poor areas, you don’t see anyone walking around in the neighborhood. Some people have things like a basketball hoop in their driveway, and so sometimes you might see someone out playing in the basketball hoop, but even that is usually not every day or even every week…and homes with teenager (especially boys) you might see them set up a homemade skate ramp to practice skateboarding on with their friends, but the families that have teenage boys who are into that and who permit that teenage boy to do tricks in the street in front of their house (most parents tell their sons they cannot do that), and then that the teenage boy has other friends who will come over to do it with him ‘cause few want to do that all alone… even that is all uncommon to all coincide, so most people don’t see that.
So the emptiness is actually exactly how it is.
In urban streets, you do see people walking around, but also lots of cars. Neighborhoods rarely have cars as it’s culturally considered rude to drive through a neighborhood to get where you’re going, so people only enter neighborhoods to visit someone or make a delivery or go home. However I have seen Bliss Bay have lots of pedestrians outside of the neighborhoods, which is very accurate and seems like a realistic amount. What isn’t realistic is how few people are on the beaches in the daytime. And there should still be some people on the beaches and docks at night. And it would be nice to see NPCS fishing off the docks, as that happens in California. Bliss Bay seems to be based on LA and I read somewhere that it was. So, no, how it is is actually very accurate for a California city.
As for the rest being decoratives in the back area of the map, I guess I see what youre saying, and wouldn’t be as upset if they included it as a backdrop still…but I’d rather them leave it as an area to wander so my zois can get lost sometimes and realize they need to turn around because it’s just a bunch of corporate buildings. In big cities in California, most of the towers are corporate buildings, so no one can just enter them and there is nothing to do in them unless you work there.
Maybe making a couple of them be the location for some new jobs they added would be cool…but it makes sense to have them just be decorative since that’s how most of those buildings in California feel to anyone, even if you work there, when you’re not working there is nothing to do there, it becomes decorative again…
4 Likes
Eventhough they don’t go out, there’s still living people inside it right? My point of the change is that if there’s more functional homes in that neighbourhood area, then we’ll at least able to see a bit stuff happening around so it doesn’t feel like a ghost town 24/7. We can at least see some Zois going out from their homes, going to work, gardening outside their home, etc when our Zoi lives around there. No relate to any situations in real life. My suggestion was based on what I see now with the map. But if they gonna add more lots to empty part of the map then thats ok too.
1 Like
Okay, am I understanding right, that you are saying you want those houses to be made into playable homes that zois can move into? I would be all for that, I was just saying why it’s fine as it is and why it doesn’t need to be eliminated.
But yeah, here in California we literally don’t see people outside. No one gardens in their front yard, no one has barbeques in their front yard, the only time people go into the front yard to do something is the 4th of July (a holiday where people set off fireworks) to either watch neighbor’s fireworks or set off their own in the street where it’s safest due to the concrete and asphault not being flamable. Seeing people get home or take off depends on if you happen to be leaving/arriving at the same time or happen to be near an open window and see them do that at the exact time they do that. I mean if they added that it’s fine, but the fact it feels like a ghosttown in the neighborhoods I actually have thought repeatedly to myself “wow they got this so accurate, i didnt expect any company let alone a Korean company to get the culture and feel of LA so accurately.” So I’m just saying what you’re saying feels like a mess-up to me, as living in California, feels very accurate and like a plus side
I wouldn’t want all of their cities to feel this way, but that’s not the case as you mentioned, the other cities feel more active and allive than Bliss Bay, especially Cahaya. I haven’t been to South Korea so I wouldn’t know how accurate their city is, but I have heard many of the island cultures are much more community-oriented and people socialize more, so I’d guess that Cahaya being more alive-feeling is due to them mimicking that intentionally. To me, having each city have a different feel that way is super cool.
I was telling my roommate about this topic and she said the other day she found out one of our neighbors has an adult son who lives with them. We have been their neighbors for five years, and I still don’t know what anyone looks like or how many people are in each home, except a couple people I happened to notice on rare occasions, and one family (immigrants from somewhere in the Middle East, I’m not sure where), does go outside sometimes, but they are the only ones who do and I’ve assumed it’s a cultural difference since they aren’t from here, but even that family I have no idea how many people are there or how many kids, I know they have at least one kid other there, there might be more though. And I heard through the walls a baby crying once in our nextdoor neighbor’s house, but I am not sure if they have a baby or maybe a baby was visiting or something, not sure. So I really mean it when I say no one goes outside or sees or notices what any of the neigbors are doing. I’m not saying it’s ideal, but not saying it’s bad either, but it is what it is and a part of what it feels like to live in California especially if you are lucky enough to live in a nicer neighborhood (which I can only do by roommating and splitting the bill).
That all being said, absolutely turning some of those houses into places zois can move into would be amazing and fantastic, I never meant to be saying anything opposing that idea
Do you think the map view would be better if it was changed to, for example, allow you to zoom in or other features to make it easier to navigate and see?
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Please don’t. I’m pretty sure in the future with updates and DLCs, more buildings are going to be added to Blissbay and the other basegame cities. I understand it might feel empty to some, but personally it being this big and locations being further appart makes it feel very open worldish, and I love being able to drive long distances in my motorbike or scooter to get somewhere.
7 Likes
Didn’t Kjun already mention that he noticed Bliss Bay was too big and thinks Cahaya is the best sized world out of the 3?! So this means future worlds will most likely be around the same size as Cahaya or smaller (if it is landlocked). I don’t think the size of existing cities should be modified but perhaps they could do some tweaking to Bliss Bay to make it feel more alive.
3 Likes
I agree, if we can activate some more lots in Bliss Bay it would be nice.
I’d rather the devs take more lessons about what to do with future cities from Bliss Bay and Dowan (and Cahaya) over a complete overhaul of Bliss Bay.
4 Likes
We are in early access, I could see them rethinking the general size of Bliss Bay and Dowon without removing the feel, but re-ordering the locations to a final pass might be somewhat necessary.
They did say about that. After playing Cahaya, I realize what made it feels lively compared to other cities. It’s the perfect scale of the city. Packed with enterable areas close to each other. Cahaya is smaller than Dowon, but Blissbay is double the size of Dowon. I don’t mind no change, just alternative suggestion other than adding more venues.
Just keep developing these cities gradually unlocking building shells through updates and DLCs. Things like hospitals, concert halls, open-air performance venues, and so on. Add taxis, ambulances, fire trucks, and other urban services to make the city feel like a truly living environment. And yes, I’ll always prefer having a few deeply developed base cities with interwoven sociocultural layers, rather than 10–20 isolated ones. Even careers should be interconnected – like starting a performance in Dowon, going on tour at an open-air on the Bay Beach, and then heading by cruise ship to a paradise island in Cahaya (similar to URBZ GBA). That’s how I envisioned the game when I bought it.
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I don’t think smaller maps is the solution, it is already pretty small. I think a more fleshed out map with more customisable lots and areas to visit is the solution
1 Like