Opinion - Open World Games Need More Content

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Techitout writes a short opinion piece about open world games needing more content.

But you see, that's the problem... Open-world games need to keep the player entertained and offer them an incentive to keep on pushing on. And to be honest, bland and empty worlds are not the answer. This is where developers need to take charge, and instead of seeing the player as a cash cow, rather see them as what they truly are... People who just want to be entertained and not robbed of their hard earned money.

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Thanks Farflame!

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I'm conflicted on my opinion on open world games. I like vast landscapes that make you feel like you're taking an actual journey when on quests. I want to feel as though I'm on the road less traveled, and mystery awaits around every corner.

When playing games like Skyrim or Dragon Age: I or Mass Effect:A, you couldn't travel more than a few seconds without running into some new dungeon, or point of interest or mob. It was just too crowded to be believable.

I don't need more content, I actually want less, but it needs to be engaging. And the bigger the world, the better. Those who don't agree can use fast-travel.
 
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I agree. I've mentioned before that if I had the resources, I'd like to make an open world game that has a very large natural landscape, but with no expectation of significant content around every corner. I'd make the finding of maps to dungeons, caves, etc a central mechanic, and fast travel would generally be used. The wilderness would largely be there for immersion, hunting, gathering, and the occasional hidden location.

I've never been totally satisfied with the very artificially compressed and content-dense open world design, with bits of repetitive content all over.
 
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But if they aren't content dense, you end up spending a lot of time roving and it just becomes a walking simulator. Personally I favor the overland map approach.
 
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I also agree.

Slightly off topic, I'm also quite sick of the term "content." People are always asking for more "content." It's so unspecific. You want anything? How about an easter-egg dungeon where you use your collected runes to reveal a mystic hand gives you the middle finger for acting like a spoiled child? It's like asking for more gruel, which is fine if you're starving, but I'm not. And just ask Oliver how careful you should be in what you ask for...
 
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ChaosTheory said:
When playing games like Skyrim or Dragon Age: I or Mass Effect:A, you couldn't travel more than a few seconds without running into some new dungeon, or point of interest or mob. It was just too crowded to be believable.
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Skyrim too crowded is an unusual complaint as players prefer to tell it empty.

Skyrim alternates low density places with high density places.
If remembered well, walking the longest line takes something like 2 hours. Which leads to the issue of fast travel. Pointless to offer long walks when players desire to skip them or can not bear any gameplay attached to it.

Points of interest are troublesome with current FoV. A panoramic view shows points of interest over the horizon, it can be smoke, the shape of a city, the outskirt of woods or the top of a mountain.
A landscape usually is filled with points of interest. What drives to people to ignore them is that they travel to reach a destination.


Open worlds are a mess as players do not like exploration. It grows old on them quite fast. They want loot.
 
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Exploration is way above loot on my list of RPG preferences. Of course, I'm frequently in the minority opinion about all sorts of things, too.
 
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rjshae said:
But if they aren't content dense, you end up spending a lot of time roving and it just becomes a walking simulator. Personally I favor the overland map approach.
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What I have in mind is a situation where you wouldn't necessarily spend much time randomly roving, unless you were looking for animals/monsters/herbs, etc. You would generally play it more as a game with an overland map, with main locations you can fast travel between. Essentially, you just fill the gaps in with bits of real landscape that you can wander if you really want to.

Then, make acquiring maps to locations in the wilderness a part of the gameplay, to make its existence more meaningful. I think the idea of procedural location has potential, too - where you handcraft encounters/camps/quests etc, and dynamically generate their location so the player occasionally encounters one while roaming.
 
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ChienAboyeur said:
A landscape usually is filled with points of interest. What drives to people to ignore them is that they travel to reach a destination.

Open worlds are a mess as players do not like exploration. It grows old on them quite fast. They want loot.
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The Witcher 3 was, to me, the perfect mix of large landscape and points of interest. Not too crowded, not too empty. Many of the POIs were harder to find unless you were intentionally looking for them or stumbled upon by exploring overland. They weren't thrown in your face every few steps along roads and paths like Skyrim, DA:I, ME:A.

Not only is it annoying, but you unintentionally start a dozen new quests when that happens, next thing you know, you don't even remember what you were doing out there in the first place.

I like loot, too, but I don't want to drag bag after bag of rusty swords back to town just to have enough coin to buy a +1 Helm of Deficiency. And I'm tired of every goblin or smark running around with gold in his pocket. But I digress...
 
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Exploration is on the top of my list, I don't necessarily need fifty different dungeons to dive into, I'd prefer a huge, robust environment where I can roam about, with plenty of nooks and crannies to explore. Through in about five good-size indoor areas and some side quests along the way, and you've got a formula that will likely sate my appetite.
 
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The title of the article is kinda… Silly.

Most of openworlds currently already have too much of content - repetitive and respawning. Boring and annoying.

IMO open world games need more diversity in content these contain. Grind over same stuff for days just because it's expected in an openworld game? Expected by whom? By Ubisoft? By mmo players? Or?
Leave grind and repetitiveness for tetris and candy crush saga, please. Openworld and grind should not be synonyms.
 
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Open world games already have to much content it literately takes 40+ hours to just finish side quests. Makes me wonder if developers always have the same check list?

It's simply a way of padding an open world game to make it longer.
 
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I'm all in-favour of deeper, more engaging content in a game - and not just more stuff. As I get older, I'm getting tired of slogging through tons of shallow, derivative side quests and prefer games that can deliver a more engaging experience over a shorter playtime.

That said, I still love to explore and find unexpected things and that works best when you have space to breath and take in the environment more and not have crap popping up at you every 30 seconds.

I'm finally playing Elex (and loving it!) and it reminds me of one of the reasons I loved Gothic (and now Elex)... they give you room in the landscape to explore a bit and discover interesting things. I find their worlds really well built... everything is hand-crafted and well-balanced when it comes to exploration and discovery. And being able to run into something that's going to eat you for dinner adds such great tension... unlike games like DA:I where there was never a sense of danger of the unknown.
 
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Morrowind got the content density exactly right in my opinion.
 
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joxer said:
The title of the article is kinda… Silly.

Most of openworlds currently already have too much of content - repetitive and respawning. Boring and annoying.

IMO open world games need more diversity in content these contain. Grind over same stuff for days just because it's expected in an openworld game? Expected by whom? By Ubisoft? By mmo players? Or?
Leave grind and repetitiveness for tetris and candy crush saga, please. Openworld and grind should not be synonyms.
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Grinding is associated to repetition with low risk/low reward. Stakes are the main parameter when it comes to repetition and therefore gameplay.

Call for new content is a counter to grinding. New stuff is needed to keep things fresh.
 
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ChienAboyeur said:
Grinding is associated to repetition with low risk/low reward.
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No. Grinding is associated to banging your head against the wall. If you won't try how that feels, watch the factory scene in Modern Times movie to learn what effect grinding has on a person.
 
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Repetition can be fun. In the bed.
Grinding is not fun, it's a job and you should be paid for doing it instead of accepting to grind for free.
 
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Gameplay is based on repetition. So yes, repetition can be fun in games, at least from gamers' perspective.
 
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