In what ways could open world games be radically redesigned?

[StaceyPowers]

I feel the FPS games of today are radically evolved versus their early counterparts. But the open world game format is still “newer” by comparison. Do you think there are equally radical ways in which the format could be redesigned and improved?

[Withywarlock]

What follows is venemous and hardly constructive because I'm up past my bedtime. If you continue, please read at your own peril.

I think the best thing they can do right now is go back to basics. The open world now exists as a feature to put on the back of the box. It's not there for the player's enjoyment because all they do is follow a trail telling them where to go, and it's not there because developers like filling their game with repeating low-quality assets. Every open world is exceptionally beautiful, that's why nobody's exploring them once all the obligatory boxes are ticked off.

The basics I'm talking about are roadsigns, journals and rumours. Not every roadsign is relevent, not every journal entry is complete, not every rumour is true. The problem with that is it's time-consuming. It's time-consuming for developers who could be programming content people can play, and it's time-consuming for players who are just following something because the game says they can. It would be a massive undertaking for this idea to go mainstream in a post-Morrowind world, and the money isn't there to do so.

This only seems like a grognard problem until you see why Fable III got the schtick that it did, and that in itself is the problem: everyone was looking at the problem, but nobody saw it. It was a waypoint that didn't guide you to any side quests, any of the cool NPCs or features. It's why the story was so nonsensical, because as far as anyone was concerned the game consisted only of that map marker. Having to pay attention to the world by looking at it rather than the UI is crucial to an open world, otherwise why not just make a linear game, which is better in every single other way?

Another thing would be having places that, for all intents and purposes, don't matter. Not every landmark exists to net you experience points or a poster you have to tear down. It exists because it's relevent to the world, not the player. I mentioned this before but Fallout does this well: a school doesn't exist as a place to be looted, it exists because education was once a thing. A cave doesn't exist to be the home of a Sword of Bifercating, it exists because that's how this natural formation has come to be in this setting.

Anything I suggest about looking at an open world can't really happen in the mainstream market, it'd have to be made for the fringe players who like Gothic, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and whatever weirdos reside between those two.

[m76]

I think the biggest problem with open world games, is that they are cardboard cutouts. Nothing is functional, nothing is interactive. They all just go for size, instead of quality. I think anything larger than GTAIV is pointless. Instead of making the world bigger, it should be made interactive, where every building is explorable, and has a function, even if it is not relevant to your quest. I find it immersion breaking that in every open world game only 1 in a hundred buildings can be entered into, and even there the only accessible room is where you have a mission objective. Cities should have working mass transit systems, and every vendor and shop should be real where you can actually buy food or something. I think with ai technology you can easily generate random NPCs with proper spoken lines without having to involve writers or even voice actors.

Current open world games all feel like walking around a movie set instead of a real living breathing environment.

[killamch89]

Open-World games nowadays just feel really empty - they are colossal but hardly anything to interact with and the world doesn't try to make it more engaging. I do agree with @m76 and @Withywarlock that they need to focus on quality rather than the size and stop adding a bunch of unnecessary shit. I'd say that RDR2 is one of the few open-world games that has more quality and interaction with the environment. My other issue is that even though they tell you that it's immersive, you can only enter certain buildings - if you're going to do it, go all the way with it. Not some half-assed experience.

[Heatman]

19 hours ago, killamch89 said:

Open-World games nowadays just feel really empty - they are colossal but hardly anything to interact with and the world doesn't try to make it more engaging. I do agree with @m76 and @Withywarlock that they need to focus on quality rather than the size and stop adding a bunch of unnecessary shit. I'd say that RDR2 is one of the few open-world games that has more quality and interaction with the environment. My other issue is that even though they tell you that it's immersive, you can only enter certain buildings - if you're going to do it, go all the way with it. Not some half-assed experience.

Probably the developers think it's more about the size that makes it seem more realistic as an open world game which there is a point there but for not making it more engaging and interactive really needs to be worked out. 

[Reality vs Adventure]

On 9/14/2021 at 3:49 PM, m76 said:

I think the biggest problem with open world games, is that they are cardboard cutouts. Nothing is functional, nothing is interactive. They all just go for size, instead of quality. I think anything larger than GTAIV is pointless. Instead of making the world bigger, it should be made interactive, where every building is explorable, and has a function, even if it is not relevant to your quest. I find it immersion breaking that in every open world game only 1 in a hundred buildings can be entered into, and even there the only accessible room is where you have a mission objective. Cities should have working mass transit systems, and every vendor and shop should be real where you can actually buy food or something. I think with ai technology you can easily generate random NPCs with proper spoken lines without having to involve writers or even voice actors.

Current open world games all feel like walking around a movie set instead of a real living breathing environment.

Great points, but what about rural landscapes? That's a reason to keep maps big. I think open worlds don't really need to get smaller, but bigger. You are right about functioning transit. Now think about a massive open world with multiple cities to explore and transportation to get you there, or just fast travel if you don't want to sight see. I imagine something, let's say a game that takes place in Europe. You can get to many cities in a short amount of time. Imagine a game where you can go to England, Italy, Germany, Spain, and just lose yourself in all the possibilities. Or the USA and travel from California, through the midwest or south, and on to New York. Some games have multiple maps like Witcher 3 and AC Valhalla. They aren't nearly as big as what I'm talking, but if you want radical, that would be radical. I think sequels or DLC's can build on the map. This is an approach I hope AC Infinity takes, but obviously I prefer without the forced online crap. But what they are doing is radical. 

Besides that, I say they could have some really good city and nation building where you can actually interact with everything. A combination of Civilization/Tropico for building and GTA/Cyberpunk/RDR in interaction. Then be able to DESTROY entire cities and go through the rubble and loot the bodies. Then make a colony in space and on and on and on. 

Edited September 15, 2021 by Reality vs Adventure

[Heatman]

21 minutes ago, Reality vs Adventure said:

Great points, but what about rural landscapes? That's a reason to keep maps big. I think open worlds don't really need to get smaller, but bigger. 

Exactly - I actually mentioned it in my opinion that as much as the developers really need to work something up with how interactive open world games needs to get, they shouldn't do anything to to cutback on how big in map the games comes in. If they do, it kills the game automatically. 

[killamch89]

6 hours ago, Heatman said:

Probably the developers think it's more about the size that makes it seem more realistic as an open world game which there is a point there but for not making it more engaging and interactive really needs to be worked out. 

It makes no sense to only be able to enter one building when there are hundreds of others around but you can't interact with them.

[Heatman]

4 hours ago, killamch89 said:

It makes no sense to only be able to enter one building when there are hundreds of others around but you can't interact with them.

Yeah - it's actually why stressing that they get to work on making it a more interactive session with all the props visible in open world games and not let it just be big for nothing. 

[m76]

11 hours ago, Reality vs Adventure said:

Great points, but what about rural landscapes? That's a reason to keep maps big. I think open worlds don't really need to get smaller, but bigger. You are right about functioning transit. Now think about a massive open world with multiple cities to explore and transportation to get you there, or just fast travel if you don't want to sight see. I imagine something, let's say a game that takes place in Europe. You can get to many cities in a short amount of time. Imagine a game where you can go to England, Italy, Germany, Spain, and just lose yourself in all the possibilities. Or the USA and travel from California, through the midwest or south, and on to New York. Some games have multiple maps like Witcher 3 and AC Valhalla. They aren't nearly as big as what I'm talking, but if you want radical, that would be radical. I think sequels or DLC's can build on the map. This is an approach I hope AC Infinity takes, but obviously I prefer without the forced online crap. But what they are doing is radical. 

Besides that, I say they could have some really good city and nation building where you can actually interact with everything. A combination of Civilization/Tropico for building and GTA/Cyberpunk/RDR in interaction. Then be able to DESTROY entire cities and go through the rubble and loot the bodies. Then make a colony in space and on and on and on. 

Why would they need to get bigger? I've had 10 times more fun in GTA3 and Vice City than in GTAV, despite the map being only a fraction of the size. What you ask for is not feasible, and not even necessary. And the exact mentality while we get big but pointless open world games devoid of meaningful content.

As for being able to destroy cities, see Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. You can literally level everything in that game, and it's one of the most underrated open world games I've seen.

[Crazycrab]

52 minutes ago, m76 said:

Why would they need to get bigger? I've had 10 times more fun in GTA3 and Vice City than in GTAV, despite the map being only a fraction of the size. What you ask for is not feasible, and not even necessary. And the exact mentality while we get big but pointless open world games devoid of meaningful content.

 

Couldn't agree more with you more.  I think that is by far the biggest problem with open world games right now, their getting to big. They put areas of interest between miles and miles of mostly empty space.

They need to do what games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Skyrim did, which is make the best use of the space that it's got.  When you make your map dense and effective it doesn't need to be massive.  At no point when playing these games did I ever feel it was "to small", despite the maps being a fraction of the size of Zelda BOTW or some of the more recent Assassin's Creed games.  These titles (BOTW especially) frustrated the hell out of me at times because of their oversized maps.

It's like most of these devs have this obsession with making their game world's as big as possible as if it's a competition on who's got the biggest dick.  It needs to stop and they need to back the fundamentals of what makes exploring an open be world fun... because it's NOT size.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Crazycrab

[m76]

1 minute ago, Crazycrab said:

 

Couldn't agree more with you more.  I think that is by far the biggest problem with open world games right now, their getting to big. They put areas of interest between miles and miles of mostly empty space.

They need to do what games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Skyrim did, which is make the best use of the space that it's got.  When you make your map dense and effective it doesn't need to be massive.  At no point when playing these games did I ever feel it was "to small", despite the maps being a fraction of the size of Zelda BOTW or some of the more recent Assassin's Creed games.  These titles (BOTW especially) frustrated the hell out of me at times because of their oversized maps.

It's like most of these devs have this obsession with making their game world's as big as possible as if it's a competition on who's got the biggest dick.  It needs to stop and they need to back the fundamentals of what makes exploring an open fun... because it's NOT size.

For example in GTAV 90% of the map you drive through once and that's it. Yet how many thousands of hours go into designing those parts? Only for the player to pass through it once on their way to a poi. What makes exploring fun is interesting POIs with intriguing lore and artifacts, or actually unique loot items. But since loot now comes from lootboxes and paid transactions, exploration has lost one of its biggest draws.

[Heatman]

30 minutes ago, m76 said:

For example in GTAV 90% of the map you drive through once and that's it. Yet how many thousands of hours go into designing those parts? Only for the player to pass through it once on their way to a poi. What makes exploring fun is interesting POIs with intriguing lore and artifacts, or actually unique loot items. But since loot now comes from lootboxes and paid transactions, exploration has lost one of its biggest draws.

And it's not something they are going to be giving up at all when it comes to the usage of paid transactions which is something we have to live with whether we like it or not. 

[Reality vs Adventure]

There is a paradigm in the gaming world to make things look realistic and that includes open vast terrain even if we may pass through only once. Exploring is a part of my gaming even if there isn't much to see, I still want to get a view of everything as if I'm a land surveyor. I always try to visit areas more than once. And if there is something on the map in the middle of nowhere, I tend to savior it to make sure I go back to the area another time. But that is the fault of the devs not having quests to push you out places more than once. Some games have new daily quests that you have a choice to do, and it makes you explore different places in a certain region. I usually don't move on till I get an overall feel of the area. And that is what I enjoy spending many hours doing. And some time later on, weeks or months or even a year, to go back to an area I may catch things I didn't see before; also I can just play around as a goof since I've already seen the lay of the land. And those moments for me is what really stays in my memory. Most of these open world games aren't meant to just play the storyline, do some quests, and be done with it. They are meant to immerse for years to come. I mean, if done right you only need that one game; maybe not, but point stands. But back to the paradigm...bigger is realism. I have no problem utilizing a smaller map, but my point is that this paradigm can't be stopped. Everything in the gaming world is becoming more and more realistic. Soon, we will drive down Route 66 and have a journey through the entire USA. We will be able to explore real, yet modeled, cities, towns, and landmarks along the way. Games will be 1000gb and consoles will be 1000tb. You can't stop this radical paradigm. Unless of course resources become scarce that prevents the making of those drives. An example of that is the 12 inch Gi Joe doll size in the 80's. Because of the Cold War and oil prices, which impacted plastics, GI Joe had to decrease the size of figures from 12 inch to the 3 3/4 inch size. So world events can change this paradigm in the gaming world. But for now, bigger is real. And that shouldn't mean that smaller and more utilized maps have to disappear. Those should get better too. 

[Heatman]

The main point of concern should be on trying to make a perfect game world irrespective of the size being considered. If it's bigger, it calls for ensuring that not a spot be treated as trivial and the same thing should be applied to smaller worlds.