What makes a good open world?

what makes a good open world?

Good graphics.

all open world is trash

linearity or death

closed

You should try BREATHE O´YE WILDE M87 is probably the best open world game, with the best graphics, core mechanics, gameplay, code, netcode, modding and company all around the world :---D

>Fallout is trash
>Bully is trash
>San Andreas is trash

Gothic II disagrees.

This

Content density and dynamic elements.

Having a huge open world means nothing if there's barely any content. It's better to have a small open world with a lot of detail and interactivity rather than vast plains of nothing.

Well I mean, you posted it, OP

Encouraging exploration.
Rewarding the player for exploring.
The ability to experiment with sandbox elements.
Interection with the world, and I don't just mean enemies or npc's I'm talking about having the ability to cut down trees, moving boulders, climbing, digging tunnels, etc.

Witcher 3 excels at none of these things.

I just started it after beating Gothic 1 and I'm not feeling it much

>Why isn't The Witcher actually Minecraft?

Yup, Witcher 3 has great graphics and a great story. And that's it. Neither the world nor the gameplay are exceptionally good...

Or you know, BotW.

Sorry, I wouldn't know about BoTW. I don't play childrens games.

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Stuff to do, meaning not a million fetch quests.

Gothic 2. Just copy it, witcher 3 tried, slightly messed up but in general good effort.

Geralt, of Rivia.

they are identical, what's changed for you?

...

Density of objects, logic in their placement, creating it the way that makes travelling fun instead of tedious chore and obviously graphics.

>subtle details
>plenty of places to actually explore, go inside of
>certain levels of mystique

It's all about atmosphere, subtlety, and some mystery. That's what gets people hooked imo. PUBG is a pretty good base for a good open world, I might get flamed for saying that but I really think so

PUBG is counter strike on steroid, lone wolf simulator and has none of the things you mentioned, which are part of good open world

>Rewarding the player for exploring.

No. This just makes it a grind, and doing it to get the next reward. It has to be explored because the player genuinely wants to. Fuck reward systems.

>interesting locations
>connected world; keep it flowing
>put npcs walking the world as well for greater immersion
>encourage exploration by giving missions that lead you to different places that can also provide with more quests
>make areas more or less difficult regardless of the player's level
>put in some spooky locations

a good balance of stuff to do along with giving the world some space to breathe

people shit on "empty space" but honestly a good world needs some places of purposeless grandeur to feel really immersive. Bonus points if you can still do fun stuff in them like hunt or whatever

you like those new bethesda fallouts right? all thsoe fucking pointless places with nothing in it

Currently it's not possible to create a very good open world in my opinion. Without a very advanced AI the illusion of a living world is broken very quickly and all that "freedom" usually amounts to a freedom to choose the order in which to do the quests. In the best case scenario the quests have some kind of visual novel or "Choose your adventure" like choices, be a bad guy or be a good guy, but nothing that let's the player be really creative or anything that comes anywhere near let's say, a pen & paper RPG experience.

So basically currently what makes a good open world game is for the most part the same things that make a good game in general.

OP asked what makes a good open world. You can shit on Minecraft all you like but you'd have to be pretty deluded to think Minecraft isn't a great open world game. Even Sup Forums was impresssed by the game when Notch used to post here.

It does have those things. There are towns and then power plants for those towns that have little underground areas, that's some cool detail, there are radio towers, old ruins, military base, school, prison, and everything is abandoned so there's your mystery element. It could use more but it's certaintly a good base.

These open worlds where everything is over explained and there is a strict narrative is what makes open worlds not as good to me. I mean they're still good games, TW3 is great but it just doesn't really keep me in for the world alone.

Breath of the Wild almost nailed it, but it failed at offering any kind of gameplay variety.

Okay yeah you mean just valuable equipment herr and there? Yeah for sure. I thought you meant something else along the lines of achievements, point system, etc. That seems to be what games do nowadays.

when you do stuff, it has to make other stuff change
example
>free prisoners from a jail
>you see these prisoners later around the world
>maybe some of them did naughty stuff
>maybe some of them need you for a quest
>maybe some give you an item
example of doing it wrong
>skyrim
>you become archmage of the mages guild
>nobody cares, you cant order people around, its like you did nothing

botw baby detected, good to know that according to the drones, open world was never good until nintendo did it xD

when people mean reward it usually means something either interesting happening or something useful to find
not the object #13355866 out of #753479853487

Sense of exploration and discovery.

I honetsly think BotW's world is terrible, it has no sense of mystery or history at all.

play stalker.

Dynamic changes based on player choice
A sense of progress through consequences that can't be taken back
Most of the world being filled with useful, well designed, and unique NPCs and props
And lastly, a rich and diverse color scheme only dull if the setting calls for it

That depends on the type of open world game.In hulk ultimate destruction you want a big area with lots of different shit you can break to pieces.In GTA it's fun to drive around listening to music, kill people, ride bikes, dance, get a haircut, do jumps, fly planes, and whatever's in the main game which is really good, and has you going throughout most of the open world.
Then theres sly cooper, and assassins creed which has you doing stealth shit.I have no idea how a large open world RPG should work, because i think Skyrim is absolute dog shit, and it's the only one i've played.

there isn't any, it's always detrimental to the game, unless the game is primarily vehicle based

>sense of history

oh, that's a good point
thing is, modern games almost don't have problem with level design as is, meaning they looks pretty and aged, real
they have problem with content stuffed in it

no essential NPCs

I need to. Just built my first pc a week ago. Loving it a ton coming from old laptop.

Things to do in every corner.
I wish Witcher 3 was a good open world game.

Fallout 3 and 4 absolutely follow a reward-incentivized approach to exploration and not a curiosity-incentivized one. It's always "gee, I bet there's a bobblehead or some gear in there", and it always feels like a chore because of it. The loot is your carrot, the mind-numbing trudge through a generic and wholly un-compelling area is the stick.

honestly, the world must feel alive.
Gothic was awesome at this, because everyone had a day/night cycle, had jobs, interests (smoking weed, watchin the fights etc.) AND you could interact with them, meanin they would kick you out of your home, if you came into their house and ransacked it.

The withcer 3 does a good job with the day/night cycle/people having routines, and the cities do feel like cities, but it would be nice if you could interact with people even more.

That for me is the next step , taking the detailed experience that you got from a smaller game like gothic to a huge place like the world of the Witcher.

It not being The Witcher for one is a good start.

An assload of gameplay mechanics that affect the dynamics of the world. I think a story based open world game is a massive waste of time, at best a story should just frame the dynamic gameplay. I'm thinking old GTA, i.e. achieve this objective however you want, vs. new GTA, i.e. spend a long time watching cutscenes and then follow this linear and highly scripted path to unlock the next cutscene that goes on for way too fucking long. In the later the "open world" aspect feels more like padding than it does gameplay.

we've been over leveled loot problem several times already
let's not go there.

Not even the dialogue changes in skyrim when you do something important?

Witcher 3 is the good example of a good open world game.

comfy environment
content, density of things to do rather than a huge map of nothing
take yakuza for example, it's been 10 years of same ol town of kamurocho but I keep replaying it since there's always things to do.
In contrary, I uninstalled GTA V the first time I finished it and never feel like replaying at all.

It was pretty ''mysterious'' and magical for the first 20-30 hours if you ask me. But after that you realize that, at most, a shrine or korok seed awaits you. Maybe some filler mini-game like shield surfing or climbing up that rock near death mountai. But that's it. The only random surprise i can think of is the mountain king, which was very nice i must say. The lack of character/enemy variety really hurt the game, it really did.
Basically, the first 20-30 hours of BOTW are indeed a 10/10 and possibly the best game experience i have ever had. hours 30-60 are an 8/10 and everything after that wasn't much fun.
Hopefully the 5th area and Dungeon with the DLC will add some much needed content.

Open world is a pretty loose term, bethesda open world isnt the same as CDPR open world which is different from Ubisoft open world. The different kinds of open worlds appeal to different people.
I really like w3 and AC series but I can't make myself play the empy Bethesda open worlds that require extensive modding to enjoy fully.

People even complained about W3 not being enough like Skyrim when it launched, almost as if "open world" doesnt matter as much as the actual content in the game.

Gothic 2 chapter 1 > all others. Enjoy it my man

without NOTR maybe

nah..with. Too easy without, there's no challenge

Yes, it does. Guards comment on your status and skill, civilians comment on your personal relationship with them, faction members acknowledge your position within the faction. People also acknowledge quests you have completed, deaths of close NPCs, etc.

Honestly, Skyrim is not too bad with this in reality but people never pass up a chance to bitch about Bethesda whether it's warranted or not.

>Encouraging exploration.
Sure, yeah.

>Rewarding the player for exploring.
This is a very, very fine line. What's your idea of "rewarding" the player for exploration? A cool weapon? Some armor? A sum of money? That's all well and good, but consider this -- if a game has a hundred dungeons that are more or less the same, but each of those have a different piece of loot at the end of them, how many of those cookie cutter dungeons are you going to slog through before you stop caring about whatever reward you've been promised? Exploration has to be compelling on its own, without the promise of a reward, before the reward can be added to the equation.

>The ability to experiment with sandbox elements.
You'd have to elaborate more on this, because in its current state it sounds a bit like you're next point.

>Interection with the world, and I don't just mean enemies or npc's I'm talking about having the ability to cut down trees, moving boulders, climbing, digging tunnels, etc.
And it's this point where your demands start to get ridiculous. Think of every single open world video game that's ever been made. How many of those let you cut down trees? How many of those let you dig tunnels from anywhere to anywhere in the world? Sure, you can do it in Minecraft, but that's the focus of the game. Breath of the Wild probably has the most "interaction with the world" aside from Minecraft and other games in its circle, and even that game doesn't let you cut down every tree or a dig a tunnel wherever you want. What you're asking for is something so far from practical you may as well be saying any open world game that doesn't literally suck your dick shouldn't exist.

>What's your idea of "rewarding" the player for exploration?
What this poster said:>And it's this point where your demands start to get ridiculous.
You're acting as if games can't set new standards and other game developers can learn from it.
A lot of senior game developers have already said they were impressed by BotW's approach to open world design. I can only hope someone like you willl never be in charge of game design.

Rewarding someone for exploring is super easy if, and only if, you have non-randomized loot. If you personally set everything in the game for a set experience than you get to see cool stuff or get cool stuff for finding new paths. Despite not being open world, Dark Souls has probably the best exploration reward system in any game. Finding off beaten paths is rewarding in itself, and the rewards are usually some souls or one or two items, but finding this new path alone makes you feel like a genius and is a reward in itself.

This. W3s story and general design suffered due to their retarded insistence on the le open world me.

Honestly, it would be a much better game if it werent open world.

Not Shitcher 3.

Definitely witcher 3.
Game of the decade contender right there

kek

not even b8 buddy

To each his own i guess. I dropped it 10 hours in after i did that dungeon with that sexy witch.

this.

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Games can set new standards, absolutely, but I think you have a misguided idea of what led to BotW's open world design. In BotW's case, the open world was the focus, and ultimately was the hurdle that led to the redesigning of Zelda's traditional item system. Items had to be rethought out so that they would have utility throughout the entire world, not just in the dungeons they're found in and a few select other places in the overworld. In your example, giving the player the ability to dig a tunnel from point a to point b freely becomes the hurdle that the open world has to be designed around. What's the point of creating a fluffy world full of things to explore that the player may stumble across on the way from point a to point b when the player can just dig a tunnel to point b and ignore everything in between? Maybe you can have resources the player needs hidden underground, and they have to dig to get to them, but then the whole "underground" concept becomes another bland environment that the player feels forced to explore to find necessities rather than one they genuinely want to. So then digging tunnels becomes one of the following: a) a poor man's fast travel, which purists will say has no place in the game because it detracts from immersion, apologists will say doesn't have to be utilized if you don't want it to, and neutralists will say "well at least they took the time to put it in there amirite?", b) a way to gather necessary items to make use of some other game mechanic like crafting, which would be more practically inserted as resource deposits that don't require the player to explore a totally unnecessary "underworld", or c) a gimped function that restricts digging to specified areas for resources to be obtained, in which case I'd refer back to exhibit b. I'm not saying interactivity with the world is a bad thing, but the level of interactivity you're describing doesn't make any sense from a design standpoint.

patched.
plenty of good games have/had janky hitboxes

>that entire post

>I have no argument, you win.
Thanks, I'll take it.

Not him but you focused too much on the digging aspect although it was clearly just an example of minecrafts interraction with the world.
I didn't like the witcher 3 because you literally can't interact with anything in that world. Everything just looks pretty and that's it.

>what makes a good open world?- 76 posts and 7 image replies shown.
Actual things happening, instead of huge empty spaces with retarded npcs.

I don't really get the point you're trying to make. I just suggested a vague concept how digging tunnels can improve the world interaction and you write an entire paragraph about how digging tunnel mechanics can be executed in the worst way possible. What exactly are you trying to achieve here?

Nobody has mentioned ''Stop and stare''-moments. This is what made xenoblade being my favorite jrpg of the 7th gen.
BotW has a lot more stop and stare moments than other open world games, too. Despide both of said games running on bad hardware.

user was trying to say that NPC interaction was not interactive enough, and that allowing the player to do medial tasks like cutting down trees, digging tunnels and moving boulders would make a better open world. My point is that that level of interaction is pointless unless necessitated, at which point it becomes more of a chore and less of an interactive experience.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think TW3 is the end all be all of open world design and I think BotW's open world design is infinitely better, but even BotW doesn't let you do half of what user suggested. Not a single open world game that has ever been created does. It completely writes off even the open world games that are universally considered to do open worlds right.

>medial tasks like cutting down trees, digging tunnels and moving boulders would make a better open world
Who ever claimed those are tasks?

Good lore and characters. Create a world I want to find out more about and this will encourage exploration.

Witcher 3 accomplishes this. But who needs that when you can dig holes and cut down trees, right? So interesting.

Yeah go see those 170+ times when he posted the same webm and see if he never saw that argument before.

That's the thing. BotW and TW3 have a completely different approach on gameplay.
You want to continue playing TW3 to ´meet new interesting characters, to see what the Lore has to offer and to experience the story. BotW makes you keep playing to see what new mechanics the gameplay has to offer. it comes down to what you prefer.

How does Witcher 3's "right click to activate Witcher senses and follow a blood trail" design encourage exploration? What else is there to do in the game? Finding chests with randomly generated loot?

Play the game and find out.

This. W3 is designed as a linear as fuck game with an open world slapped on. Aka the worst type of "open world" game. It did not gain anything by being open world

Delivering on promises

That's my point exactly, fucking hell.

task
/task/
noun
a piece of work to be done or undertaken.

work
/wərk/
noun
activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.

So why are you cutting down trees, moving boulders, digging tunnels? To achieve a purpose or result? Then it's a task. If not, then it's pointless and there are zero reasons that a developer would waste time and money implementing such a mechanic.

>what makes a good open world?
a modest size. Since im sick and fucking tired of shit being way to spread apart simply to be able to boast about the faggy size of it all. Like god damn i know people are size queens in general but god damn why the fuck do they put up with such shallow shit now a days?

Good RPG mechanics for one.

The ability to not only explore that world, but reshape it in meaningful ways.

One of the biggest problem for the open world meme is that its still no excuse for shitty level design, which is why you get shit like skyrim where all the dungeons are just linear borefests with giant arrows pointing you everywhere you should go.

And again, good RPG mechanics, the whole point of a good open world is you still have a main quest to complete, but you have infinite directions to start to complete that questline.

Sadly, I think oblivion set a shitty standard for all open world games to this day, which is the world should level with you, and skyrim set the president that the game should also hold your hand the entire way

see Like i said, i dropped the game after my first dungeon with that Witch chick. I have to say it was probably the worst dungeon that i have ever played in a video game. I actually wanted to see what happened to ciri and who the wild hunt are. But the gameplay was simply too bad/not to my liking so i gave up after.
It's a game with great story, setting and amazing graphics. Not hard to see why it's praised by many but also hated by many. You clearly fall to the ''BotW''-like Open world gamer.

Witcher 3 did almost nothing right

Well, it nailed the aesthetics, I mean it's not like Fallout 4 where everything is huddled together and the world feels really small. Witcher 3 feels expansive and they completely nailed the scale, as well as the mood and the amount of detail.

But other than that, no it's a miss on almost every thing

Thats like saying you want to go back to same locations over and over since quest designers cant spread Quests around to more varied locations.

>Play the game and find out.
I already played and completed the game thrice. I agree that the characters are great but I fail to understand how they encourage exploration, I fail to understand how the game in general encourages exploration because even in my first playthrough I didn't feel the need to expore.

density and variety
size doesn't matter
collectibles don't matter

Yeah they did nail all of that. But the world is still boring. I mean, witcher 3 is being limited by it being barely fantasy concept vise. Yeah a mountan there with woods and more woods and a cave here and there. The landscape in my hometown here in germany for example is a lot prettier. When i play a video game, i want to see landscapes that wouldn't be possible in the real world, which TW3 didn't provide.
Again, the game clearly isn't for me, that doesn't make it bad.

Witcher 3's loot isn't randomly generated. In fact it more or less fits the criteria that describes. It's a little different, in that you'll find this if you're under a certain level or that if you're above a certain level, but it's not random. Also
>"right click to activate Witcher senses and follow a blood trail" design
is something relegated to quests and not to exploration, so this is a dumb thing to bring up.

It tries to encourage exploration the same way any open world game you've ever played tries to encourage exploration.

Ubisoft open world
>climb this shit to see
>all those unnecessary small boxes which
>contain barely any money so you have to keep
>grinding all of those for this OP weapon you get for doing it
ubisoft worldbuilding is really fucking bad