I'm making a large interior and have thoughtlessly copied an old design, which involves numerous small cells. I've noticed that the newer games (Fallout 3, Skyrim) have tended towards fewer, larger cells (e.g. one large cell for a house rather than a separate cell for each room). Why is this?

How important is it that there should be fewer, larger cells rather than more, smaller cells?

I just want to know if I have to merge (i.e. through cut-and-paste) some of my cells to make them fewer/bigger and reduce the number of cells in my interior. I'd rather not have to do that unless it's really necessary.

Cell Loading pauses is the only thing I can think of. Less of those makes for a better experience.

This is basically 100% a balance between game performance, and play interruption. Small cells: More load screens and interrupted play, but better performance. Big cells: Fewer interruptions and load screens, but potentially worse performance.

Ideally you want to make each cell as big as possible without having terrible performance. If you cell is spread out, with the help of roombounds you can make it pretty darn big. Don't pointlessly break your dungeons into multiple cells if you don't have too or you're just adding load screens for no reason.

Oh, right. Thanks, that helps a lot. I'll leave it as it is so far but combine some of the other cells from the existing design I still have to build (so in practice downstairs will be lots of small cells and upstairs will be one big cell).