>>58789861In short, spacing and pacing.
The areas in most games are the size that they are because things are better enjoyed in bite-sized chunks, broken up by stops and other pieces of content so as to not fatigue the player. Like, if you take a given area and just make it bigger and add more trainers/pokemon to it, that's bloat. If you add new areas in between existing one that are reasonably different and broken up by stops and changes in scenery, that's legitimate content expansion. Although even that has a limit. Unironically, think of it like a wave function. You don't wanna fuck with the 'frequency' or 'wavelength' too much because that disrupts the delicate balance of how the content feels to experience. Just like our eyes and ears are made to pick up only a small range of frequencies/wavelengths, so too are our brains wired to enjoy things that are delivered in a very particular form. Using another similar analogy, you wouldn't stuff an entire cake down someone's mouth, or shovel several bags of chips down their throat, because our stomachs can only hold so much and digest so fast, our jaws get tired and our throat gets sore. People have limits. Space out what you're 'feeding' people so that they have an opportunity to 'digest' it. This is the universal principle for maximizing the enjoyability of anything, whether its music, stories, food, or yes, even video games.
