General News - Open Worlds Are Rubbish

Strat-Edgy Productions talk about what works and what does not with open world games.

Open worlds are rubbish, and they need to evolve to survive. What is the natural evolution of open words? What is the nature of the open world experience? Is it a playground? Is it a content delivery system? How do you use the open world in an RPG?

Let's take a look at Oblivion, Gothic 2, and Final Fantasy 15 and try to figure out why a game Like Mafia 3 fails to deliver an entertaining experience, and GTA 5 manages to deliver on more than it needed to.

Let's answer all these questions shall we?

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More information.

I can't take a site called Strat-Edgy serious enough to read their opinion

Cmon, the other day I saw on TV someone named Tess Tickle so…

I'll check the vid later, don't have time for watching youtube now. Only for reading. And there is no written article. Peh.

I agree with most of what he said. Most open world RPGs could do with a bit of "Gothic 2 style hand made content". Like the guy in the video, I also feel it's a shame it's something that so few even attempt, as it seems to be all about land mass.

Open-world can be done right, and it can be done wrong. Don't generalize.

ELEX should be an interesting one to explore. Apparently every single thing is hand-placed, including loot in chests, enemy encounters and what not.

Fluent said:

ELEX should be an interesting one to explore. Apparently every single thing is hand-placed, including loot in chests, enemy encounters and what not.

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Yeah hopefully ELEX will be open world done right. Fingers crossed....

Open worlds can be made enjoyable, but in the end they are are hopelessly unrealistic. I prefer overland maps with areas of interest -- preferable large and explorable areas.

crpgnut said:

I can't take a site called Strat-Edgy serious enough to read their opinion

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Looks like it is a video.

rjshae said:

Open worlds can be made enjoyable, but in the end they are are hopelessly unrealistic. I prefer overland maps with areas of interest -- preferable large and explorable areas.

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If I understand you correctly, I agree.

Most open-world games are designed in a very contrived and unnaturally compressed way. I don't actually enjoy that very much. I would personally prefer a vast realistic landscape, where the content mainly occurs in hubs and areas of interest. Getting new locations marked on your map in various ways, and fast travel, become an essential part of the gameplay.

I actually enjoy large scale simulation of a natural world for its own sake, and I don't require it to reveal significant content every 50 paces. The bulk of the landscape can be there for the sake of immersion, and also as an arena for hunting, foraging for ingredients, etc, with just enough random content scattered around that you might occasionally wander into a ruined temple or suchlike.

With good hunting and foraging mechanics, you can make the wilderness interesting in its own right - perhaps an alchemy foraging skill helps you seek out ingredients, with powerful ingredients in places inhabited by dangerous creatures, and so on.

^ So Gothic 3, then.

Best hunting/crafting mechanics in an RPG yet, IMO.

I never really played Gothic 3 - it was spectacularly bugtastic for me, and I gave up on it quite quickly. If it's like what I'm going on about, I'll have to check it out again.

Ripper said:

I never really played Gothic 3 - it was spectacularly bugtastic for me, and I gave up on it quite quickly. If it's like what I'm going on about, I'll have to check it out again.

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Well, I'd recommend the community patches and balance tweaks. Alternative Balancing/Alternative AI. But keep in mind, it will still be fiddly. The game was not designed for those things, and while it is playable, you'll still see some weird/non-intended stuff.

But in terms of developing your character, it's great. With AB turned on, the skill points are very useful and very noticeable in their effect. For hunting/foraging especially, you have to earn your way up the ranks. And there are even hunting "perks" aka skills you can learn, such as better efficiency hunting game animals, and then big game hunter perks, etc., along with the usual skinning/trophy collecting and noticeable weapon upgrading. It really creates a very unique experience, IMO, because the world is also dangerous. Money is tight, too, so hunting is well worth it as it's almost necessary to get some sort of money-making skills, whether hunting or crafting. And then there's the foraging of rare/unique plants that are usually in hard to reach areas and/or around tougher monsters.

The game is far from perfect, but they were/are really onto something with that design.

Gothic 3 had flashes of brillance here and there, but overall it's not a great game, and it remains one of the most disappointing sequels to me.

Don't get me wrong, it's still worth playing. It's just not nearly what it could/should have been.

Yeah, I agree. Some aspects are half-done and it shows. But I still like it a lot and also agree it's still worth playing. The experience on Hard/AB/AAI is worth checking out if you're into great character progression, non-level scaled world, hunting/foraging/crafting and exploring a huge world.

Gothic 3's plethora of bugs may have been addressed since the last time you played. I hadn't touched the game until the 1.74 community patch was released, and even then I still encountered an oddity every so often. Hunting was really, really fun in my eyes, but I also recall getting frustrated with the combat system a lot.

On the topic of open worlds, I enjoy them as long as there are points of interest that serve a purpose or are unique to the game world in some way. There were a few instances in Fallout 3 that really caught my eye, one of them being a druid (I think) that's sitting atop a partially destroyed church with a sniper rifle. I remember properly getting murdered by that one upon encroachment. I swelled with feelings of confusion and laughter at the same time - it was beautiful. Or perhaps even the hilltop cave with Deathclaws. That was a nice surprise.

I find that a lot of open worlds today might display a treasure icon or location that leads you to rescuing someone or obtaining loot, but if it's repeated one hundred times I'm likely to ignore them. The Witcher 3 was plagued with this and I ended up passing over many of them. Oblivion had lots of caves with identical designs and textures that it soon felt procedural to trek through them. However, plenty of other titles suffer from having open worlds with no real content, at least that's how I view it. I see these points of interest more as busywork that doesn't really need to be there. Sure, it's something to do, but to me it doesn't enhance the experience unless they're distinctive in their own right. In fact, I'd say they detract from that experience.

I do find it odd to see linearity being turned down in favor of more open world games these days. I always felt that linearity allowed the developer to focus on what the player was experiencing. It allowed them to put themselves in the player's shoes and ask "if I was the player, what would really throw me for a loop right about now?", and introduce points of interest that are…well, interesting. I think open worlds can be done well, but I feel it's so incredibly difficult to do while simultaneously falling into the trappings of what gets a pass in open world games.

I can't think of a single open world game that turned out to be good. the typical translation for open is "our designers suck ass so lets throw a heap of crap on the map to fool the player with "scope and scale"

Ragnaris said:

Gothic 3's plethora of bugs may have been addressed since the last time you played. I hadn't touched the game until the 1.74 community patch was released, and even then I still encountered an oddity every so often. Hunting was really, really fun in my eyes, but I also recall getting a little frustrated with the combat system a lot.

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It's not so much the bugs I'm talking about. I didn't have much of an issue with those (played recently, a few weeks ago, roughly 50 hours so far, returning later to finish.) It was more of the game not really being made with AB/AAI in mind (in my estimation.) Those were fan-made as well.

For example, some of the NPCs do very little damage to other NPCs when getting in fights. I'm not 100% sure, but I felt that was an issue with the Hard/AB/AAI settings being turned on. The town liberations get a bit odd due to that, with enemies being sponges to an extent, and NPCs fighting for what seemed like forever with very little damage to show for it.

Still, it was fun overall. I think it has more plusses than minuses.

The combat system is actually cool to me. I know that's a minority opinion, but I loved melee. It is hard. You have to have really great timing, even when blocking as it's a timing based block. I liked the Quick Attack and then timing melee swings. It was hard but very satisfying. And the character progression tied into it is utterly satisfying. Every Strength/weapon increase makes a huge difference, i.e. typical PB design.

The archery is a lot of fun. You can get Legolas out there, running and jumping onto rocks, dodging and spinning around for a quick flurry, etc.. Probably the best archery in an open-world RPG I've personally played. But it's also a bit broken, as it can make things too easy, what with the weak pathfinding at times and something else that may actually be an exploit. I guess that was an issue in other open-world RPGs at the time, too, like Oblivion.

I didn't mention this in my last post but there are spawned hunting grounds, too. You'll stumble on herds of wild animals, bison, deer, a rhino here and there, and as you get stronger with better skills you can harvest their trophies, skins and what not, and it makes a big difference on Hard/AB/AAI. That was really great. Being able to kill a deer in one shot after a hefty investment in weapons, the Game Hunter perk and good arrows, rewards you with the much-needed and useful spoils.

The areas Gothic 3 lacks in are the quests. A lot of it is forgettable in terms of the story of them. It does excel in being a sort of, "gathering"/character progression RPG. The quests excel in giving you much-needed resources, and the game overall has a heavy gameplay focus. The story, what's there, is cool. You'll get neat lines a la Gothic 1 & 2 from certain NPCs, human and orcs alike. But the story, dialogue and characters are not the strength of the game, IMO.

If you like the typical Gothic character development that was in Gothic 1 & 2, spanned throughout a very huge open-world with no level-scaling, I'd say definitely give the game a shot. It also lacks a bit of hand-placed loot in the wilderness, i.e. chests have random goods, but I started to appreciate even that as again, it goes back to rewarding you with necessary resources. On Hard/AB/AAI, all of that stuff is very welcomed.

Play on Hard/AB/AAI and it will be very rough but get easier over time. Just be prepared for the weirdness I mentioned (i.e. damage sponges/weird NPC damage among themselves.)

Fluent said:

For example, some of the NPCs do very little damage to other NPCs when getting in fights. I'm not 100% sure, but I felt that was an issue with the Hard/AB/AAI settings being turned on. The town liberations get a bit odd due to that, with enemies being sponges to an extent, and NPCs fighting for what seemed like forever with very little damage to show for it.

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Just an FYI.. that has nothing to do with those settings. It was like that in the original release as well. For some reason, most entities other than the PC do very little damage against monsters and NPCs. I'm not sure why it's like that since it certainly wasn't that way in Gothic 1&2.

JDR13 said:

Just an FYI.. that has nothing to do with those settings. It was like that in the original release as well. For some reason, most entities other than the PC do very little damage against monsters and NPCs. I'm not sure why it's like that since it certainly wasn't that way in Gothic 1&2.

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Ah, good to know. Yeah, G1 and 2 didn't have that, and for the better.

So then I take back the comment about weird stuff happening. That was my biggest headscratcher when I played. Otherwise, didn't have many bugs when I played recently.