How to do open world RPG the right way ?

[vortex]

Imagine large environments. How to do RPG properly ?

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

- Dad, I leveled up!
- That's very nice, son.
- Dad, are you RPGs?
- Yes, I'm all the RPGs.
- ...Knew it!

 

[Ivan]

Gothic 2

 

[felipepepe]

Gothic 2

 

[octavius]

Area scaled.
No quest compasses or fast travel, but actual exploration.

 

[SDeden]

A proper sense of scale that makes it feel big. Lots of things going on in the world that aren't dependent on you and what you are doing, so that you feel like you are just one part of something much bigger. Drop epic world-ending main quests already and just give us lost of intersecting and interesting quests and factions that cater to different character types and playstyles and let us find our own way. I want to start small and work my way up to being somebody relatively important, not be born as the Chosen One. Don't make me the head of a guild or faction either, that's stupid. It never will work unless the devs want to program SimCity or SimFigthersGuild into their games.

 

[laclongquan]

Each zone has local reputation that affect pricing and questlines.
Each zone has questline with two or three different branches.
Each zone has some NPC that can come and go depend on the quest they related to. This include merchant, smith, etc...
Each zone has economy of some sort, defined by the number of items in local market suppliers (the sell side of merchants and smiths and magic workers). This economy, of course, affect the temporary resident NPC above.

Each zone got a huge buffer area, so that if you want to travel from one to another, you take 10 minutes moving on foot. The central locations (that got NPC and stuffs) does not necessarily lie at the central of that buffer zone, but can be off-side. That mean A-B can be longer than A-C.

 

[Black Angel]

New Vegas but with actually good engine so the world is not scaled down, and alternative way of fast-traveling instead of that teleportation bullshit (like maybe caravan runs or do it like Fallout1&2).

 

[luj1]

How to do open world RPG the right way ?

• hand placed statics
• free-form exploration
• hand crafted enviroment
• fuck algorithms
• fuck accessibility
• no level scaling, no respawns
• unreliable narrator

In other words, Morrowind.

 

[buru5]

• hand placed statics
• free-form exploration
• hand crafted enviroment
• fuck algorithms
• fuck accessibility
• no level scaling, no respawns
• unreliable narrator

In other words, Morrowind.

This, Morrowind did it right. It could have improved in some ways. I like NPC schedules, for example. Makes it feel like shit is actually going on. Adding in real economies would be interesting too, especially if you could manipulate them by some of your actions in and out of the cities, of course this requires algorithms and shit but I'm not completely opposed to these methods if they're done right.

Also, no fucking load screens unless you're going into buildings etc, which is another thing Morrowind does right that later games failed at.

 

[T. Reich]

Gothic 2, later M&M games, Divine Divinity, Star control II (sans the RPG part), FO1-2 (sans the random trash combat encounters).

No artificial plot barriers (you can get anwhere or almost anywhere if your resources and personal skills allow).
No level scaling (makes any exploration thoroughly unrewarding).
Limited or no respawns (unlimited respawns may or may not fuck up the character progression depending on the RP system used).
No quest compasses or mini-map hints of any kind (fosters exploration).
"Optional" areas that reward exploration (again, gives reasons to explore).
All content is hand-placed (to reduce generic content).
As little generic filler stuff as possible - variety is the key (generic content reduces desire to explore).

 

[V_K]

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).

 

[adrix89]

Dwarf Fortress.

There is no such thing as zones with specific monster levels. The kingdom has patrols that clean the travel routes and protect cities and that's it.
In the wild there is all the chaos that wants to eat you.

 

[Carrion]

I agree that Gothic and Gothic II are pretty good blueprints on how to do it right: no level-scaling, a hand-crafted world where every location is unique, the world feeling "alive" thanks to NPC schedules, "natural" barriers preventing the player from entering certain areas too early, no map except for hand-drawn ones you can acquire in-game, fast travel options only being available where it makes sense in-game, well-handled character progression with a flat enough power curve to keep things interesting throughout the game, and the scope is just right for the world to be fairly compact and memorable without coming off as shallow or compressed, with a low enough number of characters that you can give each one some kind of a personality. Even if I don't think either game has a particularly interesting setting, mechanically they get it right. The only thing I'm not a huge fan of is the chapter structure, but it works well enough for handling respawns and some other stuff in the context of the two games.

I also like the more simulationist approach of Morrowind and New Vegas, although the former is very static and has the usual TES issue of sticking most of its content into underground dungeons, whereas the latter tries to fit way too much stuff into a few square kilometers. One thing they do better than Gothic is allowing the player to do stuff out of sequence and go through the game in a larger number of different ways, as well as allowing some more elaborate interactions with the game world (different factions, manipulation of objects etc.). I guess the first Fallout could be mentioned here for the same reason as well, especially because its free-form main quest is pretty much perfect for a game set in an open world.

 

[Severian Silk]

Gothic 2, later M&M games, Divine Divinity, Star control II (sans the RPG part), FO1-2 (sans the random trash combat encounters).

Since when is DD an open world game? It has some pretty large maps, but you just teleport between them. It's like calling AoD or BG open world games.

 

[Luckmann]

Don't.

Either that, or Arcanum.

 

[T. Reich]

Gothic 2, later M&M games, Divine Divinity, Star control II (sans the RPG part), FO1-2 (sans the random trash combat encounters).

Since when is DD an open world game? It has some pretty large maps, but you just teleport between them. It's like calling AoD or BG open world games.

All accessible from the very start of the game:

Spoiler

 

[DJOGamer PT]

You can go anywhere from the start of the game. But I don't mind having very few areas that a devs don't want the player to wander off to soon, but instead of being locked by a invisible wall it must have a more have a more natural barrier - like a tough oponent, or the player needs a certain resource to progess further (be it an item, spell, money, stat/skill or an NPC) or a quest must be completed.

You can ask NPC for all kinds of shit, but it must be consistent (peasents shouln't know much of topics like politics, world history, philoshopy, or about the other regions geography, etc).

Horses are a must for large areas.

There can be fast travel in the form of services (carriges, boats, etc) or spells/artifacts.

Hand crafted and highly interactive world, consistent with the lore behind it.

The different regions have different architectures, history/culture, guilds, craftsman (as in a region as better blacksmiths, other better taylors, etc), NPC schedules (and they must actually do and produce shit, rather then just walking about), laws, econamies, resources (that refil based on the NPC that work), bounties, borders and relations with the different factions, wich the player can take advantage of.

Merchants wares are on their premises.

NO Level scaling of any kind.

A character progression system that is interesting and deep while being easy to understand how every stat and skill influences you. A progresion that makes the player feel like he did get stronger but even with a high level character, late game bosses and high level enemies are still not to be fucked with as they are deadly and challenging and mid level enemy groups should be aproached with caution. Also that character progression system must be as less broken as possible and when the player reachs a high level he can't be excellent at very skill - meaning that if you focus on every skill/stat, when you reach the maximum level you'll only be mediocre or barely good in every skill/stat but never excellent. This makes the system more belivable, with less broken, more fun and increases the game's replayability value by a ton.

You can complete any quest trough different aproaches (combat - shealth - speech - environmental interactions). Of cource some paths will be more difficult to use depending on the situation, but this means your playstyle and character skills/stats do make a difference and again increases the replay value.

Turn based combat for multiple controlable characters. Action combat for 1 controlable character (migh have a follower system if it's as good as Dragon's Dogma).

Enemies have different strengths, weakness, AI and attacks. And reside in different environments, ex.: griffins in mountais, zombies near necromancer's hideouts, demons in other dimensions or when they are summoned, etc...

No quest markers and no mini-map. A descritive journal and a compass to help orientation. Plus an in-game map that clears as you explore (or a item like in Gothic) and allows you to mark and make annotations.

Good, fun, engaging quests. No fetch quest bullshit.

Good AI.

Good UI.

C&C should be dynamic, like if kill the region lord a whole set of quests dies and whole new content opens up, and that region changes profundly (form guilds, to the NPC schedules, law, econamy, resources, bounties and relations).

In fantasy settings, dungeons must be more varied than caves and tombs, have good level design and not to be just combat.

NO hand-holding whatsoever.

Ultimatly Mod Support (but this is a must for any good PC game).

 

[Machocruz]

Campaign structure:

Main quest goals can be tackled in any order, like Ultima 4. Plus this is in keeping with pen and paper campaigns I've played. Main quests provide clues/aid to other main quests.

Simulation:

Character competencies and tools matter for everything, like in real life. e.g. characters need swim skill to swim but can find other means (boats, spells, alternate route).

Climate impacts health and difficulty of movement, need equipment to deal with this. Day/night cycle. NPC schedules. NPCs with jobs that produce actual goods in the world (Ultima 7). People/structures/wildlife inhabit regions that make sense to their culture, design.

World designed so that mini-map is not needed. In game map that NPCs can mark locations if they know them. Navigation tools (i.e. compass, sextant, sundial). Journal that can collect hints and clues. All these items would be missable btw if you didn't buy them or weren't diligent in searching/looting.

Immersive fast travel solutions . Basically Morrowind. Can't just click on map and appear in areas. Everything exists in game whether vehicle, spells, teleporters, mounts, etc.

Things I like to see in any open world RPG:

Hand placed loot that isn't shit or leveled. which leads me to:

Shops have all inventory somewhere on premises. As a thief player, this was one of the biggest declines in ES after Morrowind. No good shit to steal because many higher quality items didn't exist until the right level and others were only in shopkeeper's inventory list, not physically in the game world.

Some random drop loot with good uniques/mods. Diablo 2 but not as OTT.

Being able to get your ass handed to you by going into the wrong neighborhood.

Misc.

Alternate starts, like the Skyrim mod.

tl;dr - basically Morrowind + Ultima 7, with better simulation, combat, and maybe a party.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Key factors are freeform exploring and a lack of handholding. Something like MM3 is a good example. While there's obviously a general path of easy > difficult areas, you can go basically wherever you want. Some dungeons are locked and you need certain spells, skills, items, passwords or money to access certain areas, but those things aren't in some obnoxious quest chain.

Have a lot of control over your party/character is important as well, and that control should make a big difference in what kind of things you want to do in the open world. If a party of barbarians are doing the same shit in the same order as a party of spellcasters or a balanced party, things are obviously very fucked up.

 

[Quillon]

New Vegas+: NV type quests, progression, reactivity etc all that rpg goodness, persistent NPCs/schedules, shandified shit, no spawning or respawning & alternate start locations that is not a half-ass mod. Bethesda's crappy engine is the most capable of doing this shit but they are too busy making shitty linear stories and adding Far Cry type "throw meat>bear appears out of thin air" spawns&respawns for player convenience despite the crappy engine can schedule&track persistent NPCs. Listen to what Bobby says

 

[Jenkem]

Xenoblade Chronicles X

 

[Sigourn]

Gothic / Gothic II + Morrowind + New Vegas

Literally all these games did aspects of open world RPGs right. But most importantly, what one did bad, at least one other did great. I started writing a long list of what each one of them did right, but anyone who has played all three knows exactly what I mean: if you combine all their strengths, you effectively eliminate all their weaknesses. All that is left is to add an interesting setting (all of them have one) and you are set.

Pretty sure that one above is the holy trinity of open world RPGs.

 

[Lilura]

Gothic 2 Fallout

Fixed.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Realms of Arkania HD