Funny thing about open world games

Open world games are often terrible for exploration, often they're just made for you to quick travel around, and don't really have interesting details for you to discover. Where's the exploration of a GTA game? Looking for some alleys around those cardboard buildings that can't be entered, mostly? Even in IV you had all those empty indoors that were incredibly bland to explore and many were just sterile places that were used for a mission or so.

Most Ubisoft games feel the same, they aren't interesting for any exploration element, in a funny contradiction of sorts, games with a smaller scope but good level design, something like Deus Ex, excels at creating interesting environment to explore thanks to level design, while open world games do feel quite formulaic in their maps, having some enemy camps spread around, or some common trends here and there, instead of being made with exploration in mind. Sometimes more is less.

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Sorry Op, I don't have the empty open world meme image you described in so many words.

GTA usually has Easter eggs to find.

Open world is fucked either way, you either get Ubi tier games with a gorillion of useless collectables or you get something like MGS5 that is literally fucking empty, at least with ubisoft they give someretarded reason to actually explore or just wander around while in MGSTPP you had nothing to do between outposts

Open World games are fine as long as they are not filled with pointless objectives and sidequests like in ubisoft games or Witcher 3.

>lel I hate open worlds

Stop being a fucking retard. If you hate Open Words I advice you stop playing video games.

Any studio or team that has the budget or finances will make one. If your game doesn't have open world, your game just didn't have the budget to make one. Doesn't make that game bad for not having it but like I said, team probably didn't have resource to make it.

I agree. Today I do not explore "open" world. Because it doesn't worth my time.

>Where's the exploration of a GTA game?

trying to find something in an entire city that you can actually interact with, or a building with an interior.

fucking millennial shits

I mean GTA isn't being made with exploration in mind. It's more of a sandbox where you have tools to have your own fun.

I agree OP. Open world is the worst type of level design, I go out of my way to avoid open world games now, it's just such a stale and boring design element. I would much rather have hand crafted actually interesting levels to explore, rather than some empty as fuck boring open world with nothing in it but useless collectables scattered around it.

>actually believing this

You are literally moronic.

I remember deciding to 'explore' the map in San Andreas and the only fun thing I was able to find was a boat school. I don't give a fuck these days, just wagon myself through the main quest.

I don't know if this will do it for you, but I find myself enjoying open world games more when I limit my fast-traveling: Enhances one's immersion when you have to actually walk places, imo.

>j-just gimp yourself and then the game will be fun!

pass

Sup Forums dislikes ooen world games because the bulk of posters here are directionless wierdos with poor navigation abilities.

It's why they like Visual Novels and never leaving the house.

Remember that kid in the supermarket whose mom held him on a leash? When he got older, he got a credit card and now we share the same video game forum.

Times I liked open world:

Gothic 2 and New Vegas - small map with high degree of content density
Space Rangers series - a world that lives and changes independantly from the players actions
Jagged Alliance 2 - a small map with constantly shifting balance of forces that keep you occupied
X2 The Threat - quintessential space trucker game for long, relaxing play sessions spent on autopilot

I do that too if there's a reason to. A lot of the time in say Ass Creed or GTA, it's just a slog to go through empty environment all the time.
They're not really open world games, they just have big hubs to make them seem longer.
Compare that to Breath of the Wild or Wild Hunt, and it was nice to go from A to B. They were still somewhat empty, but they felt like they had purpose.

This is why I love Skyrim and Fallout 4.

You can cry as much as you like, they have extremely dense maps with neat little details everywhere, and there's always a lock with good items hidden even behind toilets.

Thank you, Todd, you are a hero.

t. Rodd Boward

You sound like you think that that kid is still 5 years old.

but is traveling around fun? Are there things to discover to make that self imposed limitation matter? I know fun is subjective and yadda yadda but not all open world games make your navigation interesting on its own

It's weird that Breath of the Wild gave me the feeling of exploration a bit. By the time I was done, it certainly felt like any other open world game, but at first it gave me a lot of "what the fuck is over there, I wonder?" moments and actually being able to climb stuff made you know that it was possible. When I first played it, a lot of things happened perfectly. Like when I went to the top of a cliff one time, it was dark and rainy, you could only make out the light from a couple shrines in the distance. Like "man, I wonder what's between me and that shrine." later on in the game, I sort of laughed at myself since there really wasn't that much in that space. Nonetheless, at least the game started off with some feeling of exploration and not just me being thrown into any old open world, I guess. I never felt too explorey in Zelda since Link to the Past anyway, it seemed like you're supposed to run into every area in the 3D games naturally, until the new one.

>all games should be open world games
What boring faggot you are, I'm not even saying all open world are bad, it's just a trend that they lack in the exploration department compared to games smaller in scope but with good level design.

Thank you, whenever I read posts like these I feel vastly more intelligent.

>Gothic 2
>small map

nope, not for its time

It was quite tiny compared to muh Morrowind, user. I'm not complaining though

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The maps giving away all information also detracts from exploration. There's too much information being given.

>just don't use the maps
yeah but then the game gives you no clue where the place is, or how X task is near a landmark, or even any landmarks at all. Many of those games' environments aren't distinguishable from one another, they're just a reused concept of here's the tower, here's the armory, here are some side missions, move on to the next district where those things are repeated in different forms, but now there's a red building close by.

They don't feel like places interesting to explore. I played Obnlivion and soon it was obvious to me ALL dungeons looked identical. As in they reuse the same assets, textures, the same tribal bone things around, it was pretty lame going inside the "Bear Den" dungeon and finding the same exact visuals as the "Elven Mines" on the other side of the map. This destroys my will to explore.

Same for games that straight copy paste buildings. Just Cause 2 is guilty of that, there's always that gas station, with the health kit on the same place on the wall. What's the point of seeing shit i've seen 1000 times before? There's no point in making your map huge if you're just copypasting everything tenfold.

Have you ever even been outside?
It's fucking boring.
Not everything can be filled with WONDER and EXCITEMENT around every corner.
You need blandness to make the good parts good.

>walk through a bustling open-world city
>can only enter two buildings
If they ever manage to create fully enterable buildings rather than just boxes with a HD wallpaper and populate them with randomly generated NPCs going around their random daily lives then I'm not sure I'll want to leave.

how far should a nuclear reactor should be from residential area Sup Forums?

have you heard of the notion that games are supposed to be about entertainment? I don't play games to be fucking bored, I already have mundane life for that

>Any studio or team that has the budget or finances will make one. If your game doesn't have open world, your game just didn't have the budget to make one. Doesn't make that game bad for not having it but like I said, team probably didn't have resource to make it.

Most asinine thing I've read on Sup Forums in like a month.

I'm aware of hardware limitations, it just goes to show that limiting the scope of a game, self contained maps and some good level design are superior to open world for exploration gameplay.

Leaving the rest of the world up to your imagination works better than presenting you with this huge, boring world where there's no thrill to exploring the map at all.

You know that saying about staying quiet being better than opening your mouth and making it clear you're retarded? It's the same for games and worlds, it's better to have a small scope, that allows more detailed environments than to give away a huge chunk of your world that is boring as fuck to explore.

In the center of the residential area.

It's the only place.

This. You lose much less electricity that way. And what could go wrong with that, really?

Here's how to get maximum immersion and have fun exploring

1. never fast travel
2. turn off waypoints
3. turn off minimap

Makes these games much more fun.

see

I think Watch Dogs 2 should have been like AC and not had the whole map viewable straight away

>ubishit and fardick open world examples

no thanks.

Skyrim and Fallout are how you do open world. ubishit and fardick make no attempt at all to make exploration worth while. There maps are only 'open' so that you can do the objectives in whatever order you want. That's all.

Skyrim has a shitty static world with scripted encounters here, like a bandit that attacks you at certain map coordinates here and there, rather than dynamic content in your world.

It's hardly impressive, also the dungeons are so linear they're just lines

eons better than what ubishit or fardicks provide.

in the same way some shit smells better than the other shit

what's with all the beth apologists lately?

It's not even comparable. You clearly haven't played a bethesda open world game if you think it's all one gradient of the same shit pile.

Depends on the genre, but you're almost right. Something like a first person shooter does not need an open-world

True, but Gothic 1/2 and Morrowind is kinda pic related. It just comes down to which you prefer.

I would never play a Bethesda game because they're all ugly as fuck. The people who play them must be blind or have no aesthetic sensitivity at all.

oh yeah I have, I played Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, how about all those copypasted dungeons that literally look the same no matter where the fuck you are? The same goes for all ruins and shit, they all look the same. What's the point of exploring what looks like to be the save cave with the corridors rearranged? Or how the world just has some enemies scattered around here and there, that's amazing right? Bethesda games ain't shit, they're fucking garbage.

>open world
>shit to find everywhere
>they mark it all on the map

What's the point? If you can't trust player's agency to go look for shit why even attempt to do it with training wheels?

maybe not the same pile, but still shit

Just Cause 3 is one of those games where i never ever fast traveled,the wingsuit felt fucking sick

Or maybe they are just not autistic like you

Mainly they do it because they're too lazy to make a point actually appealing to where you want to explore it. Much easier to just put an icon on the map.

Nintendo fixed this with Breath of the Wild. Hopefully Ubi can learn something.

modern game designers are terrified to let the player do anything themselves

And with good reason. most people are retarded.

>Witcher 3

I'll assume that's bait but W3 has some fantastic little sidequests around. One of them genuinely made me almost tear up.

The one where an old ghost pretends to be a woman whom needs an exorcism; she asks you to take a trinket to the grave of the ghost haunting her to banish it, but it turns out she really wanted to be reunited with her dead husband in the afterlife, and needed a human to set the ring to rest

Gta used to encourage exploration and have hidden content that was helpful. Get a submachine gun early, get a shotgun early, get body armor. That was part of the fun, no waiting for the game to give You permission or hold Your hand to get the weapons You want.

this is true, hidden weapons and shit were more prevalent in PS2 era GTAs

contrary to popular belief, open world games cost less artist production time to make than corridor games

Why does that map look like it's showing off a pair of grey soles?

actually, some of the most popular games are the most complex (like Dota 2) or don't treat the player like an idiot (Dark Souls)

Designers need to stop building games for imaginary idiots

In other words, you're saying open worlds are great for lazy developers and publishers, to just shit a quick low effort cash grab.

It's not that they specifically target idiots, they just lower the common denominator so low, they want even 5 year old lobotomized chimps to be able to complete the games. It doesn't matter if the game is 15+ or whatever, everyone knows kids play games meant to older audiences anyway, so they gotta please everyone. Don't challenge people ever, just make it all fine and safe for all audiences.

>ffxv_devs_take_picture_of_a_rock.jpg
And yet that kind of shit happens because normies are easily impressed by high production values. They take a pic of a fucking rock that's presumably not even in the same country as the studio. How many hours and dollars does that trip take? And yet this is the standard against which all AAA are measured now thanks to Rockstar.

the map for gothic needs to twice that size

are there any fixes or patches to get to play gothic 1 and 2? still gotta do it

What needs to die is target audience. Also, I remember older games pretty much forced you to get better. Nowadays only obstacle is time.

Open worlds can be great, as long as they're small. Replaying Red Faction Guerrilla for the third time and its nice being able to drive around, recognize landmarks, and plan my assaults on EDF.