Non-RPG General News - Open Worlds don’t make Games better

XboxEnthusiast thinks that open worlds don't always make games better:

Open worlds don’t make games better . . .

It seems that every game coming out at the moment is either an open world game or trying to find ways to give you more freedom to play the way that you want. For the most part, this is a welcome move, giving choice to players is nearly always a good thing, however this market saturation is leading towards the point where even games that have no right in being open world or always online feel the pressure to shoehorn it in. So what do developers need to beware of when implementing an open world?

The first and most important question that developers need to ask themselves is what benefit is there to the player in having an open world? Interestingly Ubisoft is both a champion and a villain with this criterion. Two of Ubisoft’s new IPs last year went the open world route to great effect. Tom Clancy’s The Division had me hooked (and still does as I often revisit it) because of the world that it created. The open world continually reinforced the dire circumstances that you were in and allowed the online focus of the game to blend seamlessly. The same is true of Steep. It’s not the first winter sports game to have an open world (Amped had this years before Ubisoft ever dreamed of their game) but the way that it encouraged you to just mess around in the world made this open world choice a winner. On the other hand I have often thought that both the Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs series would be better as linear games without an open world. I don’t see what the open world really adds to these titles. Imagine if Watch Dogs was a linear game (obviously with choices about how you complete a level à la Deus Ex), the hacking could be more substantial and more impressive as it wouldn’t have to be the one size fits all style hacking that is currently used. With Assassin’s Creed the number of people who complete each game is quite low, this is especially concerning when the series has a continuing storyline. If they made these games more linear (again with options of how you complete each level) they could really focus on the story telling and give us a much more engaging and gripping tale.

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I enjoyed Watch Dogs 2 a whole lot, in part due to the open world gameplay. I also feel that Assassin's Creed games are better due to having open world gameplay. I would not enjoy more linear games.

In general I enjoy open world gameplay but as with any other aspect of a game it depends upon the details. I don't enjoy open world gameplay which does not have an interesting storyline, such as many MMO-style "quests" of obtaining X number of animal skins, so the quality of writing is a big factor.

Open world settings aren't good for party-based cRPGs. My preference is for the overland map style. Open worlds do okay for single-character games, but they are unrealistic in that they often seem to cram every nook and cranny with some sort of exploration focus, or level-scaling hazard. How can an economy even function in those sorts of conditions?

Seriously not a fan of open world. At all. Even the game that do it the best, IMO, would benefit more from a more structured limitation of options and directions.

I gain little personal enjoyment, and quite often consternating frustration, at games which employ the open world game design. They especially lead to me falling off and never finishing them, growing restless and bored at best, perturbed and irritated at worst.

I barely finished DA:I. I doubt I'll finish ME:A. And these are, despite what complaints other people may have about the game, games I enjoyed most aspects of SAVE the grinding time wasting and endless travelling back and forth. Elder Scrolls games I never ever finish. Fallout 3 and 4 are smaller in scope in many ways, and I had barely been successfully in finishing their main storylines.

Everyone has different tastes and what they like, so I dislike it when all games try to do the same thing - even if it were my 'preferred' game mechanics.

xbox enthusiast.
Shall I roll eyes even before reading it?

Shall I roll eyes even more after noticing no mention of Gothic and The Witcher 3? But mentioning Mass Effect games.

A junk article aimed at junk platform audience.
To redeem an author a bit, they admit what they are (and I'm not, I passionately hate ingame races):

As a huge fan of racing games, I tend to find the driving mechanics in these games quite poor.

Openworlds make games better. When games are not developed for a garbage platform in mind. IMO.
And we still need our own thread about openworlds here on the forum.

I wouldn't say open world make games worse. The Gothics, MM, Wizardry…awesome. HOW you manage the open world however, THAT makes a difference. "We wouldn't want to scare off players so let's scale everything to the players level". NO. "Let's make a HUGE world filled with…nothing." NO.

Open worlds are a single factor.
A good game is greater than the sum of its parts.

A combat system doesnt make games better either, but its a damn good factor.

It depends how much you like exploration. If exploration is more important than story for a player, than open worlds are great. The problem with open worlds though is that they often sacrifice depth of story or quest design for world breadth. And many badly designed open worlds are simply many mini games which you can repeatedly visit one after another.

By far the most flawed "genre", but when they pull you in…man, nothing comes close to it.
Even the ones that really did not make any use of it….Mafia 1/2, L.A Noire…story and gameplay did not directly benefit from it, but open world simulation gave a much stronger context to it's narrative and characters.
They need to evolve though, seems they all push one aspect and tend to neglect others…Open world with scale and detail of Rockstar, ambience and worldbuilding of CDPR with level design/highly interactive gameplay from Arkane: the king of the genre.
This article is bit odd though…open world and activities in Black Flag was the part of it, Watch Dogs as well.

Open worlds don't make games better? Duh….

Good game design and implementation makes games better.

Console gamer writing an article: A full paragraph on the pieces of Playboy magazines scattered in Mafia III and how long it is to gather them all in an Open World, because you know it is big. And there is no Achievement for that.
He probably cried a little.
Another paragraph to say than he loves driving games and you know it is not the same in an Open World: Forza is better to drive, and Need for Speed too.
Please. Give me a break.

The recent trend of trying to have enormous open-worlds makes games worse in my opinion.

There is no way the makers can afford to fill those huge worlds with meaningful content. Meaning that you explore a huge "empty" world. I blame Skyrim for this trend (of course).

That said, I think an open world game that is done right ( like Gothic or U7 for example) is the best there is. It has to be an open living "World", I think that is the key, not a bunch of autogenerated trees, houses, characters and dungeons.

Even though I liked Skyrim, I agree with you. The best parts of Skyrim were the guild quests, because they were not a bunch of autogenerated stuff. I think Might and Magic 6 & 7 and Wizardry8, and Gothic (the first one) are all excellent examples of open worlds, but they are small open worlds (in comparison with Skyrim, or Assassin's Creed) and don't have mindnumbing mingames that you can repeat again and again, like climbing towers, racing thieves, or beating people up for cash.

Originally Posted by Aerth
Another paragraph to say than he loves driving games and you know it is not the same in an Open World: Forza is better to drive, and Need for Speed too.
Please. Give me a break.

I immediately dismissed this guy's opinion when he named Forza and Need For Speed as his go-to driving games.