How to do open world RPG the right way ?

[CryptRat]

A big party is a good ingredient so that one equipement part you find in a corner has more chance both to be useful and not instantly raise the overall power of your party too much.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

most of you people make lots of unreasonable demands, totally out of this world. what you ask is something which would take 30 years to cd projekt to develop.

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

no love for two worlds?

 

[Elemental_wanamingo]

A lot of the world building choices are tied to game mechanics. If you don't have some kind of smart savegame system then it is pretty difficult to add powerful and dangerous random encounters that can instakill you early in the game without making it frustrating to play as a weak combat character. Same thing with travelling. If the world is big you want to avoid forcing the player to go back and forth long distances. But then again you can add horses, cars, trains, boats, teleporting, portals. But if you add those then you probably want a big world anyways because what's the point otherwise?

Another important factor is the world map. I'd really like an idea where the terrain itself was "smart" so that different routes would naturally have different danger levels. Going through long canyons for example are perfect places for robbers to ambush you. So you could take a risk and take shorter route and go through the canyon or play it safe and go the long way around. But the thing with these is that I don't want text placed on the map which says danger. Instead it should be obvious certain style of places are dangerous because that is where it makes to be if you are a robber. One good example is the bridge gang in arcanum. It is a perfect spot. There is no way around and you can easily make a killing. And this would be nice if you are the robber and need an ambush spot with steady stream of customers.

And similarly the random forest encounters with gangs are pretty stupid. It is super unlikely that you meet anyone on your travels unless you are using the roads. But this pretty much requires that even the uninteresting parts of the map are hand made because it can be difficult to have auto generated canyons that show up on the map. And actually work. So different places should give out different kind of encounters. If you meet robbers in the thick forest chances are you found their camp. If you meet robbers in the road then you are likely in their ambush. And so on.

Roads and rivers is another interesting idea. Roads should be faster but also dangerous option. I'm not sure if it is good idea in a game to have the choice between slow and safe and fast and dangerous but in principle it could be a game mechanic that makes travelling more exciting.

Personally I like it more when different areas of the game have different difficulty levels. So in one area you get tougher opponents whereas the early areas of the game have rats and easier opponents. But that being said I think there should be some encounters that are always difficult. And the better you get the more likely you are to get these. Or to put it the other way around. The more new you are to the game the less likely it is you meet a pack of wanamingos when you make your first city to city trip. Naturally danger should be more than just about your combat skills. Your reputation should matter and if you are the enemy of the state then even the normal folk should be dangerous towards you if you go to place where people hate you.

Other thing I'd want to see is different countries. So you can not just randomly go from one place to other place but you need to get proper documentation, bribe someone or use some routes that avoid border patrols. Of course different countries should be and feel different as well. But even different cities in the same country should have different feel.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Witcher 3 but with SPECIAL, skills, perks and traits would have been nice.

 

[Azarkon]

The concept of open world CRPG is too general for there to be one right way.

Take Dwarf Fortress as an example. It's a procedural game. Very little of the content is hand crafted. The game has no campaign, is entirely self motivated, and is the equivalent of a sand box. Its similarities to Gothic 2, which has a traditional structure defined by main quests and side quests, are limited. Dwarf Fortress has more similarities to games like Terraria and Minecraft than Morrowind.

Thus, at the very minimum there should be a division between games that want to imitate Morrowind and Gothic, and games that want to imitate Dwarf Fortress. Otherwise, the discussion operates at cross purposes.

 

[Dorateen]

No quest compasses or fast travel

What is your opinion on how Might & Magic handled fast travel? They had portals in towns from the earliest games, and later added in coaches in VI. In addition to beacon spells, and the ability to fly. I always thought the Might & Magic systems enhanced the exploration experience.

 

[V_K]

Witcher 3 but with SPECIAL, skills, perks and traits would have been nice.

It's called Fallout 3.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Huge open world that is cohesive. The cohesive part is very important. The different parts of the world have to be connected on some level in terms of storylines, atmosphere, setting, characters, and so on. This is always the case in good open world RPGs. In Gothic 1/2, the entire game-world is connected. In G1, it's all part of the prison colony, in G2, it's all dealing with the monster invasion and other common stuff. In NV, everything is connected to the conflict between the NCR and the Legion. In Witcher 3, everything on the Velen/Novigrad map is tied to the war between Nilfgaard and Redania. The Skellige Isles map is not tied in to that, and because of that, feels more out of place.

Living feel to the world. NPC schedules and scripting, crowds of people in cities (e.g. Novigrad), voiced over dialogue, some sort of random interactions in the wild as in Red Dead Redemption. The world needs to feel like there is stuff going on, and it's not just you in an empty sandbox.

Hand-placed content and loot. Copy-pasted dungeons ala Bethesda or leveled-list loot ala Witcher 3 don't work well. Design unique hand-placed content and items, and your game will feel unique and amazing.

Some kind of massive conflict in the world as the background. This generally works very well to produce an interesting background to the world. NCR vs Legion, Nilfgaard vs Redania.

No fast travel, but logical system of transportation. Something like the system in Morrowind.

Lots of hidden, out of the way stuff that is not required to complete the game but can grant awesome bonuses or provide cool experiences to those who put the effort into exploration.

Creative exploration and environment interactivity. Ability to climb vertically, and obtain means to traverse challenging terrain, e.g. boats, scuba equipment, paragliding, flying, tunneling through ground, parkour, etc. Using tools, equipment and environmental objects to do all sorts of stuff, ala Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Ultima Underworld.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Voidspire Tactics:
- "flat" character progression (not getting more powerful, but more flexible/adaptable), as a consequence - no need for scaling;
- interactive environments, with new character abilities/items unlocking new paths/areas;
- lots of alternative paths through the world and optional/secret areas that rely on different approaches (combat vs. stealth vs. environmetal interactions);
- exploration-driven (no "go there and do that" quests).

This. This and maybe how Zeldas do it.

While I love Gothic 1 and 2 to death it's not a completely open world and the chapter structure also greatly affects the content available at any given time.
Morrowing falls flat on its face 1/3rd in (if you're not just mindlessly running around killing stuff but actually develop your character), because then all challenge is gone.

And the level scaling from Elder Scrolls titles coming after that is just shit, same as the level zones in Witcher 3 that felt very arbitrary (the itemization didn't help either). Witcher 3 was less offensive though, and it could have worked without the level restrictions for equipping stuff and recycling of the same enemy type for levels 10-20, 20-30 etc. But that would have required the above mentioned flat progression or maybe a lot of finetuning. The way they did it was obviously easier to implement because you can cover most of the stuff with a little world map spawn point editing and algorithms.
...
Using algorithms to pad out content is cancer.

 

[Shinji]

The concept of open world CRPG is too general for there to be one right way.

Take Dwarf Fortress as an example. It's a procedural game. Very little of the content is hand crafted. The game has no campaign, is entirely self motivated, and is the equivalent of a sand box. Its similarities to Gothic 2, which has a traditional structure defined by main quests and side quests, are limited. Dwarf Fortress has more similarities to games like Terraria and Minecraft than Morrowind.

Thus, at the very minimum there should be a division between games that want to imitate Morrowind and Gothic, and games that want to imitate Dwarf Fortress. Otherwise, the discussion operates at cross purposes.

Agreed.

There are games that focus on a specific story, and when you do that, you take away some of the player's freedom. This happens because when you write a story, you are basically defining a finite and pre-determined sequence of events, thus forcing the player to follow a specific path. Not only that, but the writer might want to add a "meaning" to the story, as a way to convey a message to the audience -- a "why" everything happened the way it did -- and this only works if it happens in a specific way, as envisioned by the writer.

This is good for story-driven games, but I don't know if it's the best choice for games that want to give the player some degree of freedom. If you take a look at Skyrim, you can clearly see that it's a game in which the developers wanted to make the player feel as if he could "go anywhere, do whatever he wants", but the game contradicts itself by forcing the player character to a specific role in the world (i.e. the Dragonborn), which could be unwanted by the player.
Now the player is forced to defeat dragons instead of joining forces with them, or even not giving a s*** if he doesn't want to (well, actually the game is so badly designed in this regard that it doesn't even punishes you for not giving a s***)

So maybe the best choice for games that want to give the player freedom to "be whatever, do whatever", is to not force his character to wear a specific hat, and consequently, not provide a "correct" path for him to follow.
But as you can see, the more freedom you give the player, the less story-focused the game has to be. And by freedom I don't mean "physical" freedom, I mean making choices and having the game world acknowledge those choices and react accordingly.

In other words, it would resemble a "simulation" in a way or another, which would bring some challenging design problems to solve, such as:

• How long will the simulation last?
• What will the player do during all that time? How to prevent that from becoming boring with time?
• Will there be towns, civilizations? Will these evolve or risk becoming extinct?

But this is just the "role playing" part of the discussion. How to design an open world game is another thing entirely.

 

[Vorark]

Gothic / Gothic II + Morrowind + New Vegas

Can't brofist, so take this instead

New Vegas managed to have a good storyline, factions, c&c and made the open world work with all these elements; it never felt like a detriment to the game or just another tick in a checklist of gimmicks as in, say, Dragon Age Inquistion. It was well realized and added depth to the setting.

 

[Quillon]

NPC schedules and scripting, crowds of people in cities

These two don't go hand in hand, doing one takes away from the other. So I'd take less but persistent NPCs with proper schedules that if you kill them it'd make a difference in the world instead of spawned crowds that's gonna re-spawn next time you are there even if you killed them previously(Game should let you kill everyone ofc). I'd take the scene in Skyrim where you enter a city you meet with an execution with people who are actually living/working around came to watch over the cutscene in Novigrad where they burn witches with spawned crowd watching.

 

[DemonKing]

I liked the way Might & Magic X did it - areas with tough foes that you had to come back to when you were more powerful, underground connections where you could delve under one location and come up in another, no busy (ie collect 10 herbs) quests. Teleportation was instigated by the players casting a spell not by magical crossroad signs.

 

[T. Reich]

Frankly, since we're discussing open world specifically, I don't see how NPCs having scripted schedules has anything to do with it.

Open world usually implies freedom of exploration first and foremost.

 

[Carrion]

There are games that focus on a specific story, and when you do that, you take away some of the player's freedom. This happens because when you write a story, you are basically defining a finite and pre-determined sequence of events, thus forcing the player to follow a specific path. Not only that, but the writer might want to add a "meaning" to the story, as a way to convey a message to the audience -- a "why" everything happened the way it did -- and this only works if it happens in a specific way, as envisioned by the writer.

Fallout is arguably a story-driven open-world game with clearly defined themes, yet it also gives the player more freedom than most cRPGs. It manages to do this because of its structure — rather than having some elaborate main quest full of twists and turns, its story is more about the world itself, and you'll find bits and pieces of it wherever you go. The point is not the waterchip itself but all the people you encounter who are rebuilding new civilization after a war. There are only a few mandatory hoops to jump through to finish the main quest, but what's between those hoops is largely up to the player.

Problems arise when you try to fit a tightly scripted linear narrative into an open-world game, which unfortunately is almost every open-world game ever. It can still work, but it always feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

Frankly, since we're discussing open world specifically, I don't see how NPCs having scripted schedules has anything to do with it.

Open world usually implies freedom of exploration first and foremost.

If you want to explore a tightly guarded manor in the middle of a city, preferably without being seen, NPC schedules may become pretty important.

 

[T. Reich]

Frankly, since we're discussing open world specifically, I don't see how NPCs having scripted schedules has anything to do with it.

Open world usually implies freedom of exploration first and foremost.

If you want to explore a tightly guarded manor in the middle of a city, preferably without being seen, NPC schedules may become pretty important.

Moving the goalposts here.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Frankly, since we're discussing open world specifically, I don't see how NPCs having scripted schedules has anything to do with it.

Open world usually implies freedom of exploration first and foremost.

For starters it helps with immersion.
Second, since this NPC is not some spawned bot, he actually can produce something in the world and you can interact with him.
Third, it can be use to create good level, like guards patroling a castle, etc.
Last and really the most important aspect is that, that schedule give the player windows of oputunity to schieve your goal.

 

[Luckmann]

most of you people make lots of unreasonable demands, totally out of this world. what you ask is something which would take 30 years to cd projekt to develop.

Most people are mentioning games that not only exists, but existed years ago, or even decades, and often had development cycles far shorter than a modern-day AAA+ industry release.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

oh yes, "huge map as big as texas, with every bush hand placed, fully voiced npcs at every street corner with their own agendas and scripts, whole quests archs changing according to previously done quests...".
nigga please.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Frankly, since we're discussing open world specifically, I don't see how NPCs having scripted schedules has anything to do with it.

Open world usually implies freedom of exploration first and foremost.

If you want to explore a tightly guarded manor in the middle of a city, preferably without being seen, NPC schedules may become pretty important.

Moving the goalposts here.

Not necessarily. An open world by itself is useless without a variety of problem-solving abilities, and npc schedules and the affectation of verisimilitude goes a long way in providing the potential of multiple approaches to a single problem.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

oh yes, "huge map as big as texas, with every bush hand placed, fully voiced npcs at every street corner with their own agendas and scripts, whole quests archs changing according to previously done quests...".

Exaggeration much?

 

[Terpsichore]

No random generated "content", that shit is banal shit boring.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

oh yes, "huge map as big as texas, with every bush hand placed, fully voiced npcs at every street corner with their own agendas and scripts, whole quests archs changing according to previously done quests...".

Exaggeration much?

it's just two pages. read again.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Morrowing falls flat on its face 1/3rd in (if you're not just mindlessly running around killing stuff but actually develop your character), because then all challenge is gone.

And the level scaling from Elder Scrolls titles coming after that is just shit, same as the level zones in Witcher 3 that felt very arbitrary (the itemization didn't help either). Witcher 3 was less offensive though, and it could have worked without the level restrictions for equipping stuff and recycling of the same enemy type for levels 10-20, 20-30 etc. But that would have required the above mentioned flat progression or maybe a lot of finetuning. The way they did it was obviously easier to implement because you can cover most of the stuff with a little world map spawn point editing and algorithms.
...
Using algorithms to pad out content is cancer.

Barely so, it's still succeeded at killing the organic feel of the world. Monster strength should always depend first and foremost on its type, not its level. Otherwise you get monstrosities like level 5 Gargoyle and level 50 wild dogs coexisting in the same world. It would be like eventually running into scavengers that are tougher than a Shadowbeast deep into the game in Gothic.

MMO approach to world design, itemization, character advancement, that overbloated crafting system (seemingly mandatory in every fucking game now) etc. just doesn't work for a single-player focused open world RPG (atleast for my taste). Shame it's so popular nowadays with modern designers and gamers, I hope it's a trend that will eventually die out but I'm not that optimistic about it (given the average attention span of people today).