@fecalmatters: Okay, I'll bite. Let's take a look...
TRAVEL METHODS
Breath of the Wild: walking, sprinting, climbing, shield-surfing, horses, bears, deer, motorbike, paraglider, stasis "rock-jump," chicken gliding, warping (that's 12)
DQ8: walking, warping, sabercat, bird (that's 4)
DQ11: I'm sure there will be as much (or more than) BotW, but I don't really care. We were comparing BotW and DQ8 when making the point about the different travel methods.
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"ACCESSIBLE AREAS" (with unique incentives)
Lol... no. Just no. There are not more of these in DQ8. Not even close. I have no idea how many there will be in DQ11, but my guess is that it won't have as many as BotW either.
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"HUNDREDS (thousands) of items you can get that can dramatically alter your characters"
Be truthful. Apart from Tiny Medals, most of the items in DQ8 (including weapons and armor) are obtained by enemy drops (i.e. farming enemies) or from buying & selling, and then you can use those as ingredients in the Alchemy Pot to create different weapon upgrades. In short, the greater majority of these are given to you mostly at random from defeating certain types of enemies, or from buying in the market, or from alchemy. I do not at all consider that to be the same thing as discovering them in chests, nooks, up trees, in caves, etc, while exploring the world. Sorry, bud.
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"PURE, ORIGINAL, UNIQUE, QUALITY CONTENT"
None of this as anything to do with the point we were debating.
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"THEN LIST THEM!"
No thanks. That would take up more time than I care to give, and I've already wasted enough as it is with this silliness.
@fecalmatters: I have also played DQ8. Extensively; close to 200 hours. No, there is nowhere near the sheer amount of things to explore and discover on the world map in DQ8 as there is in Breath of the Wild. "Treasures" included.
This isn't about quantity of side quests. That's a separate discussion altogether. This is about exploration of the world map and the amount of things which are discoverable on said map. Incidentally, there are also more ways to traverse the world map while exploring in Breath.
@fecalmatters: BotW has more exploration and interesting things to discover on just The Great Plateau (approximately 1% of the total game map) than Dragon Quest XI has on probably 10% of its game map. DQXI's world map has already been shown to be a little smaller than DQVIII's, and to my knowledge it isn't much more populated in terms of density either.
The fact is, DQ11 is NOT an open world game that is primarily about exploration. It simply isn't. A quick reading of the some of the reviews, including this one, will tell you as much. That's not a knock against it, it's just how it is.
DQ is more about the combat, character progression, and narrative, which is how it should be. And no, bigger cities do not equate to more exploration and discovery, which should be obvious by now. You also can't go everywhere in those cities or climb every surface as you can in Breath.
Incidentally, there are plenty of towns and caves in BotW. Around 15 towns/settlements, and that isn't counting the dozen or more stables. But you'd know that if you actually played it.
@proceeder: Firstly, Breath of the Wild was a very different kind of game that was much more about exploration and discovery. Secondly, could you please define what you mean by "vague objectives"?
Sounds good to me. It worked very well for Four Swords Adventures and Tri Force Heroes, so I'd be interested to see what they come up with based on the learning points of BotW he was talking about.
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