Content Recycling

Good afternoon everyone,

I've had a few conversations lately about recycling content in games. By content, I am primarily looking at map reuse.

For example, in most Pokemon ROM hacks, the player tends to need to revisit the same towns and routes time and time again with new events occurring every once in a while. One notable hack that has the player backtracking constantly like this is Ruby Destiny - Life of Guardians. I can see the appeal of this approach: it sort of forces the player to become more accustomed to the region that's been created and adds more gameplay time to the finished result. It's also a little more realistic in terms of plot--not everything important that happens in an area happens all at once.

The other side of the coin is to not recycle much content or to incorporate very little backtracking, maybe exclusive to postgame matters. One notable hack that has the player continuing forward pretty much the whole time (until postgame) is Vega. I can see the appeal of this as well: every time the player reaches a new area, they can be sure that interesting things are bound to happen. A drawback I see is, once the player wraps up an area's events, that area is essentially lifeless for the rest of the game.

I don't have a solid opinion on this and I'd like to know what you all think... I don't actually play video games very often anymore, so I can't really draw from any current trends going on.

What do you think?

I think occasional back tracking is good, but most of town replayability should be optional side stuff and secrets rather than main story imo.

I don't think you want to reuse maps even slightly kind of at All, if you built like a builder like excite bike map makers
it's easy all day long that's where you should start, it's crazy to want the old ones I think, i want to play and have ways to keep going, like they grow feint and get strong again for the next battle? just got winded? you know and then you're going and going and Whoa, oh! a pokémon center!
and it's a big deal you've gone MILES

but like recycle, or like what, do where? make it a mirror image of Kanto from gold and call it Sinnoh hidden realm?
like, how I saw "look here's this is Pangoro"
and I'm like, that's Snorlax, but you lied about Snorlax, and I know that's Meowth, purrloin huh? Didn't think Meowth wasn't half arked, do you think gamefreak recycles old pokémon concepts non stop? maps seem easy to make new ones on pokémon might be tough
zubat was noibat
diglet was a ground type PAras,.. yea
dweble krabby weedler paras diglett?
crustle kingler beedriller parasect dugtrio
rock water poison bug ground
tiny rock, kingstone, poison ailment so he forms a kakuna to heal, tiny mushroom, know dig,,
so change form?
kind of they could clean up their dex, what do you like about the maps you're on? I like Hoenn, I wish they did more, I think they broke it,
it should have been cooler, but looks cool you know?

I mean hi