You guys always complain about open world games being empty but I’m curious: how would you make a large open world...

You guys always complain about open world games being empty but I’m curious: how would you make a large open world sandbox feel alive, full of content and interesting? Be as specific as possible.

Any aspiring game developers here?

You can't just assume procedural gen will handle it.
Subnautica comes pretty close by combining pro gen with hand detailed content.

It's simple: I'd massively scale it down. It would be as big as the amount of fun content we have for it. There would be no more than 2 miles of walk before you get to another interesting location with some unique quest attached to it.
This is a problem to some faggots who claim that it makes the game feel too much like a theme park. Yeah, no shit. Theme parks are fun. Games are supposed to be fun, too. Fuck your realism.

Deus Ex with no load times
Shenmue with no load times
Dark Soul basically

Things that feel natural
What made GTASA good was that, as a gang banger, you could rob houses, initiate gang wars, defend your hood, hire hoes, and get fat in your free time
That was a good open world because the side quests made sense in the setting

Just add more enemies. There is nothing wrong with a huge open world like GTA5 has, but literally every 10 feet there should be a gang of thugs wanting to rob you. Crossing the map should take 14 hours because of all the enemies attacking you. And also, there should be random battles like in JRPGs that will bring you to a turn based game, and lots of flowers and stuff to harvest, like literally every two steps there should be something you can grab and put in your inventory.

I think all you really need is for it to be mysterious and complex. Do away with a map (or make it limited/approximate) and make it easy to get lost. It's not about packing it full of side quests and content, but the game will feel alive because you're unsure of what's around the next corner, or even how you're going to get back to the safety of your base or a familiar area.

The other poster mentioned Subnautica which definitely feels alive throughout most of the game mostly because it takes so long to get a strong mental map of the world. You're always running into new places or into old places you haven't seen in forever, so the world feels dynamic even though it's actually not even that complex or dense.

That sounds retarded as fuck.

Witcher 3 felt alive.
You can't please everyone.

maybe you want to drive through endless boring streets in GTA 5, but I'd rather have to fight swarms of enemies, engage in random JRPG battles, collect tokens, and collect food that I have to eat every 10 minutes or I die. My version of GTA would be so much more fun.

Congratulations, you have found the one way to make open world games even shittier than they already are.

It's called Ultima 7, homo.

Maybe the solution is actually bringing in more platforming elements. It occurs to me that open world games often have sluggish characters. An open world with a character as nimble and movable as Mario and an environment with lots of things to do would be more interesting than endless forests with an occasional wolf or bandit attack.

I'm sick of all the same old boring cities, villages and forests; developers should try experimenting with surrealist environments. They don't have to go too crazy, but at least try to be different.

Play LSD for PS1.

If this isn't bait, never ever get into game design. This sounds horrendous.

Death Stranding hints at this but I have a feeling its going to be a sandbox in a giant, glorified moonscape with linear scripted sequences in dreamland.

The only horrendous thing here is your lack of perception. I know game design because I know life. Everything is about sex. Everything. It's why people get jobs, buy nice clothes, why they wake up in the morning.
It's also the only reason players venture out into the map of an open world game -- the chance of catching a glimpse of a nude woman's titties. You put that possibility in there while the player is exploring, and it will be anything but boring.

...

Breath of the Wild solved this problem.

You've never actually stepped outside, have you?

No, it didn't. It's still way too empty and padded for the size of the map. Enjoy finding a billion Gokoblin camps (or however they're called). But hey, gotta look for those five billion seeds, amirite?

Most people don't agree but I still really like GTAV's world and just walking around it. There's just something about it I find really immersive and enjoyable, to just walk around the more woody areas or the smaller gas stations or beachside houses. I think they did an amazing job. I also like how the game has the chiliad mystery and some ever-so-slightly weird details that give the world some intrigue.

I'm one of those people who just likes walking around a world and going into any nook and cranny just to see how detailed they make it, and GTAV is really fun in that regard, they put a lot of attention into the peoples backyards, alleys, sidestreets and there's some cool landscaping in the desert and the mountains. The whole game just has this great vibe I keep coming back to.

>Scale it down to a reasonable size
>Day/night cycle
>Have multiple regions have very different npc's, architecture, weather, enemies and landscape/rewards, even music. Make it very easy to realize you are in another region.
>Have npc's spread rumors if you chat with them like in Morrowind
>Have a couple really long quests that span through multiple regions, along with some shorter ones
>shop keepers react to the stuff you sell, sell certain things to the right people and it unlocks sidequests
>some double-crossing npcs
>correct or wrong choices in the story can lead to a different sequence of events
>Fill it with extra ways to make money
>Have the game call you out if you start exploiting stuff, maybe someone comes to kill you if they realize you're making a bit too much money
>Make combat very risk vs reward heavy
>Have guild quests and make it so you cannot join every single one
>Have different ways to travel and make it meaningful to travel differently, maybe have some npc's or shopkeepers lie to you about traveling on foot, or have some homeless npc tell you about some weird shit he saw in the woods

the best answer is to downsize the scale of the map and fleshing out a small scale metropolis or town to its fullest extent. Everyone is obsessed with going bigger and bigger, look at GTA 5 for example, people lost their minds over how big it was but over half of it is vast empty space you can at best hike through and get eaten by a mountain lion. Theres fuck all to do for about 80% of the entire map. Saints row, mafia 2 and 3 took the same approach and have the same problem.
Scale back the map, make it a small city or town with variety for environment (a wooded section with a river leading to a lake, a more populated down town that gets busy and then the quiet suburbs) take all the extra time and money and add ambiance to the map, making all buildings accessible and tons of side missions that let you explore
there was a rumor this would be how GTA 6 would play out and IMO its the best move

...

>Focus on verticality over long horizontal stretches
>Surreal levels so as to not repeat tired themes like forests, icy mountains, volcanoes, etc
>don't make areas gigantic, finding the right size is key
>secret caves/tunnels/areas all over the place to incentive exploration

fuck off

Breath of the Wild mostly solved the problem but fighting enemies was an unrewarding chore.

open worlds being "full of things to do" is kind of a meme, even real worlds aren't full of things to do, unless you create a really unique off-the-rails game most of the world is going to be filler terrain, that's how worlds work

from what I understand, we dont have the technology for it yet and if we do it would be very, very expensive for mainstream games. GTA 5 sold billions and didnt need it so the devs dont see a reason to bother

Quality over quanity is the best approach. I'd rather have a smaller map that's got some variety in its areas with LOADS of activities over a giant map with fuckall to do on 3/4ths of it.

skyrim with mods

>we dont have the technology for it yet
no it just takes alot of work to make

Do it like dying light, not only you have open world but theres something to find in every corner, there are hidden dangers, and theres multiple approaches to a situation.

Did breath of the wild really feel alive though? There were a lot of npcs moving around that helped but overall it was just a bit too spaced out and the enemies were a bit too boring and static to really make it feel alive.

that's why we need an algorithm that can create density, with lots of random fun and exciting things.

interesting content requires effort, weather that's effort into creating complex generation algorithms or placing it yourself. there is no shortcut for content creation

JUST PLAY ULTIMA 7 YOU STUPID FAGGOTS

>interesting content requires effort
This is a very nice summation of a lot of current problems with video games, nice job

You don't, unless you have $$$, which requires a watered down product for mass appeal to recoup investment. Make small detailed worlds instead.

This.

the ultima games are really bad by modern standards

Underworld holds up pretty well, I think

Not the early 90s ones. Those were fucking amazing.

When people say "just add more content" I can never tell if they're being ironically retarded or just regular retarded. The content in most open world games is already copypaste enough as-is, more copypaste content does... what, exactly? Make the game even more of a chore? Give you more pointless shit to clog up your inventory? Nah, the issue is the world itself is usually just a piece of shit to traverse between interest points. To fix this, make the player have to interact with the land. Whether that be for survival or to hide from roaming bands of enemies, the player should be interacting more with the world itself, and less focused on reaching cave x to kill x number of creatures to result in x loot being obtained. More of the stupid caves doesn't fix the problem, it makes it worse.

None of this content is in any way rewarding. Face it. The most important content, such as:
>unbreakable items
>More REAL dungeons
>Story
was either way to sparse or non-existent. Little shit dungeons that only serve to raise your hearts one time every 4 fucking, piss easy shrines is not content. And repetitive goblin camps, I mean it's like you forgot to put the fact that they repeat the same shit 50 goddamn times in every single space of the map.

Yes, because "add more content" equals "add more of the SAME content".

>secret caves/tunnels/areas all over the place to incentive exploration

The lack of this in BotW was so fucking disappointing and you're reminded of the world's shallowness at almost every turn.

This post is still the best idea
Open worlds need to be as full of variety as a Mario game. In the first 10 minutes of walking there need to be tubes to climb through, things you can jump on that make you boing really high, crates to push and reveal something beneath, random slides you slide down, a hole you have to jump over, mushrooms you cut in half and stuff comes out, oh no a monster you have to fight, a tree you climb to get to a higher cliff, randomly a bicycle sitting right there that you ride, suddenly a winged monster attacks you, an NPC walks off and sells you an apple, you come upon a river and need to ride an inner tube to get across it

Are you for real, m8? I'm not sure where you got it in your head that modern open world games have the potential to be these vast areas with tons of unique content, but unfortunately, the reality is it's not going to happen except maybe as a 40 year passion project. It would be nice if adding more unique content was an option. It's not. So other solutions are necessary. Shrinking the world is one of them, but unfortunately "Look how fucking huge our open world is" is the main strategy for making and marketing open world games. Sheer size is how they get people to buy the game, so copypasted content is inevitable. The only way you'd see more content is if it was also copypasted, which I'm pretty sure no one wants.

That is atrociously awful and you should feel awful. The only way this could get worse is if you somehow worked in lootboxes as your only form of loot or some shit.

The only problem with implementing that is you can end up with something like Skyrim. 9/10 caves could just be mob-filled copypaste dungeons, but then that 10th one is like finding Blackreach by accident. There would have to be amazing shit in almost every single cave.

This. Do it like Dark Souls, that's open and damn near perfect for it.

just stop making them so fucking big
every new title prides itself on how much bigger their map is but it's hardly a positive attribute in the first place

Wow this was meant for Apologies

>When people say "just add more content" I can never tell if they're being ironically retarded or just regular retarded.
>Nah, the issue is
>explains ways to add more content

huh, weird how adding more content fixes things am i right?

If you're going to be a pedantic fag, sure, fixing the world between the loot caves technically is adding more content since there's fucking nothing there. We both know you're being anal for a (You), though.

Devs should abide by something like the Colin Chapman rule.

>Simplify, then add lightness

Strip your game down to the best gameplay you can create for what said game is intended to be, then build from there.

no dude that's literally what people mean when they say open world games are empty and need more content

The best way is to do the Warren Spector one-block-game idea in a setting with huge buildings. Do like three, four city blocks. Have it so you can go into every room, and all of them are unique. Have an NPC or family in every one of them, have them interact in the halls, make the quests relevant. Have a food/survival system on a realistic scale, not like every 10 minutes or whatever. The question is making it rich, not making it large.

Impossible, at least for Sup Forums standards.
Most faggots have used up all their dopamine playing past games and will never experience that satisfied feeling ever again. Put those nostalgia glasses on.

>hurr why aren't video games infinite do everything simulators
>I'm an ideas guy, it's not my job to figure out how to make that work

Sup Forums wouldn't. There aren't even ideas guys here any longer. The only thing this board full of idiots knows how to do is cry.

Lots of writing and lore. Environmental storytelling. Good aesthetics and music. Imagine fallout 1, 2, and NV then add nothing

the next step is to develop a virtual reality. basically what that old angry developer fuck wanted. if u dont know who that is then rofl fuck off. relatively inexpensive tech is available presently but shit is still in development, and not games specifically. shoot for the stars man, dont look back

I'm keeping my hopes up. And let's face it, that description you gave of a giant moonscape is still pretty unique and interesting.

I love that artstyle. Should be the aesthetic for the next 2D wahoo game

You pretty much don't. There is too much curation involved in trying to create a living world. The number of variables you have to introduce is actually astounding.

-NPC variable behavior and routes
--Supply/demand economics that are built for dynamic shifts through ingame phases
---Bad rolls on weather causes ships to wreck, import demand grows while supply diminishes as an example
---You can salvage certain non-perishable loot from these ships
--Purposeful interactions with ingame meaning
--Lengthy dialogue trees

-Non-scalar equipment accessible at any time in the game
--Environments built around the access to the loot
--No story or power gating, open access at all times to all gear with special shit being the aside
--Meaningful, non-grind crafting system
---Need a stick, go break one off a tree, need an axehead go pick up two rocks and bang them together
--If you see loot, you can use loot
--You can open every box

-Realistic traversable environment
--Literally the only good thing about BotW
--Interactive, chopping trees down to make bridges
--Realistic puzzles outside of that
--Cold weather merits cold weather gear, hot weather doesn't require hot weather gear
---Only extremes of hot/cold should cause player damage, otherwise debuffs are applied
--Seamless exploration of buildings

And so on and so forth. OW is just not feasible with the expectations that developers have to operate under, so we end up with empty worlds that seldom reflect what an open world could and should be.

this, small town games are underappreciated gems that need to be utilized more. Say what you want about Life is Strange and yes the game had issues but Arcadia Bay was super comfy and I just wanted to explore it more

fuck off faggot
not even relevant anyways, this thread is about open world games, or actual video games at the very least

this

You cant do it realistically, the style is flawed at the core. Thats why people always say they would prefer smaller but detailed worlds.

Yeah honestly Dark Souls does it really well. The world is dense, vertical, and it wraps in on itself. It's hard to know where you are. This all makes it feel mysterious and alive.

And then there's this whole danger aspect. When you get lost, which happens frequently, there's this feeling that you're cut off from safety. For example, when you first get to Blighttown you're aware that you could, if you needed (like if your equipment broke), climb all the way back up, go through lower Undead Berg and back to Firelink Shrine. You COULD make this journey, but it would be a serious commitment to make it, and so you decide to press on instead. And the whole idea that this journey exists as a possibility reinforces the idea that the world is alive: it's a physical place that exists even though you're only in one part of it. For worlds to feel alive, they can't feel like places designed to fast travel through.

2 miles is extremely long. That's more than 1/2 the length of Skyrim.
Many open world games easily pull a density 10 times greater than that scale.

>"The game designer who limits his imagination to what the programming team can create, is the game designer who will fail" -- Shigeru "the idea man" Miyamoto

make it more vertical than horizontal
i'm not a fan of traveling emptiness on a horse
which brings another point, traveling by horse is boring. traveling in saints row 4 was fun as fuck. make traversing shit fun, like batman arkham city

Depth.

The land portions of it and SA, measured by character movement speed, are similar though.

This

Real life is interesting because earth could be one of a billion other planets in this galaxy alone which is entirely covered in different lifeforms, and possibly civilizations with their own unique histories, wars, struggles, triumphs, whatever. The universe is so big and complex it couldn't possibly be created by a single entity. When you realize the world you're playing in was created by a lone nu-male cuck who spends half his free time on twitter, then shit gets boring fast.

>The universe is so big and complex it couldn't possibly be created by a single entity.

Have the appropriate amount of diversity/content for the area? GTA SA is almost the perfect sandbox because of the amount of shit to do in each sub-area (though I'd prefer more side stuff like drug running or something out in the countryside/beyond/desert)

>Dark Soul basically
>feels alive
Are you stupid?

Shigeru also designs games and not "soap is under the sink cabinet where you would expect it to be" simulators. Also its cute that you quote that but you're still a retard for going
>why aren't games the size of a small country with every building being enterable and unique assets in every building. With ideas this good its a wonder no one pays me!

i wish bethesda would include more unique NPCs that actually SHOW a story rather than tell it

for example different varieties of armor and clothing that tell you what kind of character you're dealing with, and more unique quirks in general to set each commoner apart

I never even said that stuff. You're literally just being mean to me!

the world should be filled with interactable stuff even if its absolutely useless. Not braindead pedestrian AI aslo helps

opposite for me. I hate when the world is crammed too much, makes it look fake. Not like it exists on its own but like its there specifically just for the player. I like when there are wast planes and forests that seperate key areas.
If you dont have time to travel and explore you probably shouldnt be playing open world games in the first place

Make it a smaller area more densely packed with atmosphere, iconic locations, and activities. A player should be able to know a place in their head like "Oh yeah, they want me to go to the bowling alley, I remember that's near the theater area near a club sega arcade"

Have characters you can just stumble across going on their day, on their own schedules, perhaps with their own sidequests and goals. Make NPCs that are just going about their day in any other game instead feel like actual people.

This takes a lot of development time but this is exactly why you want a smaller open world as opposed to a fuckhuge one to save on dev time and budget.

Basically, I'm asking for the design philosophies of Majora's Mask and the Yakuza franchise to combine.

I am being bully yes.

enterable interiors and interactivity with the environment (ie climbing objects) goes a long way. If a game doesnt let me jump, thats major point off. Im looking at you Sleeping Dogs...
also if a game has a lot of empty areas like the right of this pic, I hate it. it looks bad imo. Fill up that empty space or dont have it at all

Postal 2 did a lot of things right. For its time. All doors were open and you could go inside and cause trouble. Many things could be climbed up on and the people would react. The A.I. was fantastic in many ways. The cops would check a house you just broke into and the NPCs would have a conversation like "he's in there" and the cop would say something. You could cause chain reactions of craziness , the whole game was just insane.
Many open world games are full of locked doors and the people don't react to much of anything.

So weird that they gave up after Postal 2 and let some other company make 3 and now they don't do anything.