what makes a good open world?

>>388918796
Good graphics.

all open world is trash

linearity or death

closed

>>388918796
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

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>>388918843
>Fallout is trash
>Bully is trash
>San Andreas is trash

>>388918843
Gothic II disagrees.

>>388918843
This

>>388918796
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

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>>388918796
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.

>>388921587
I just started it after beating Gothic 1 and I'm not feeling it much

>>388923184
>Why isn't The Witcher actually Minecraft?

>>388923184
Yup, Witcher 3 has great graphics and a great story. And that's it. Neither the world nor the gameplay are exceptionally good...

>>388923390
Or you know, BotW.

>>388923568
Sorry, I wouldn't know about BoTW. I don't play childrens games.

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>>388923612

>>388918796
Stuff to do, meaning not a million fetch quests.

>>388918796
Gothic 2. Just copy it, witcher 3 tried, slightly messed up but in general good effort.

>>388918796
Geralt, of Rivia.

>>388923258
they are identical, what's changed for you?

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>>388923663

>>388918796
Density of objects, logic in their placement, creating it the way that makes travelling fun instead of tedious chore and obviously graphics.

>>388918796
>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

>>388923852
PUBG is counter strike on steroid, lone wolf simulator and has none of the things you mentioned, which are part of good open world

>>388923184
>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

>>388918796

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

>>388923937
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.

>>388923390
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 /v/ was impresssed by the game when Notch used to post here.

>>388923934
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.

>>388924010
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

>>388923184
botw baby detected, good to know that according to the drones, open world was never good until nintendo did it xD

>>388924308
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.

>>388924187
play stalker.

>>388918796
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

>>388918796
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.

>>388918796
there isn't any, it's always detrimental to the game, unless the game is primarily vehicle based

>>388924497
>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

>>388924531
I need to. Just built my first pc a week ago. Loving it a ton coming from old laptop.

>>388918796
Things to do in every corner.
I wish Witcher 3 was a good open world game.

>>388924010
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.

>>388918796
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.

>>388918796
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.

>>388924791
we've been over leveled loot problem several times already
let's not go there.

>>388924362
Not even the dialogue changes in skyrim when you do something important?

>>388918796
Witcher 3 is the good example of a good open world game.

>>388918796
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.

>>388924497
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.

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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.

>>388923258
Gothic 2 chapter 1 > all others. Enjoy it my man

>>388925589
without NOTR maybe

>>388925621
nah..with. Too easy without, there's no challenge

>>388925262

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.

>>388923184
>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.

>>388925998
>What's your idea of "rewarding" the player for exploration?
What this poster said:>>388924468

>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.

>>388925998
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.

>>388923184
This. W3s story and general design suffered due to their retarded insistence on the le open world me.

>>388926405
Honestly, it would be a much better game if it werent open world.

Not Shitcher 3.

>>388918796
Definitely witcher 3.
Game of the decade contender right there

>>388927167
kek

>>388927316
not even b8 buddy

>>388927343
To each his own i guess. I dropped it 10 hours in after i did that dungeon with that sexy witch.

>>388927167
this.

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>>388927167

>>388926286
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.

>>388927898
patched.
plenty of good games have/had janky hitboxes

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>>388927925
>that entire post

>>388928345
>I have no argument, you win.
Thanks, I'll take it.

>>388928413
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.

>>388918796
>what makes a good open world?- 76 posts and 7 image replies shown.
Actual things happening, instead of huge empty spaces with retarded npcs.

>>388928413
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?

>>388928770
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.

>>388928701
>>388928820
Anon 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 anon 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.

>>388929565
>medial tasks like cutting down trees, digging tunnels and moving boulders would make a better open world
Who ever claimed those are tasks?

>>388918796
Good lore and characters. Create a world I want to find out more about and this will encourage exploration.

>>388923184
Witcher 3 accomplishes this. But who needs that when you can dig holes and cut down trees, right? So interesting.

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>>388928025
Yeah go see those 170+ times when he posted the same webm and see if he never saw that argument before.

>>388930198
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.

>>388930198
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?

>>388930504
Play the game and find out.

>>388930504
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

>>388929993
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.

>>388918796
>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?

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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

>>388930504
see >>388930331
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

>>388930641
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.

>>388930545
>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.

>>388918796
density and variety
size doesn't matter
collectibles don't matter

>>388930721
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.

>>388930504
Witcher 3's loot isn't randomly generated. In fact it more or less fits the criteria that >>388926397 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.

>>388930813
It tries to encourage exploration the same way any open world game you've ever played tries to encourage exploration.

>>388925556
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

>>388930998
>is something relegated to quests and not to exploration, so this is a dumb thing to bring up.
Outside of the quests what is there to do in the game? What is there to find?

>It tries to encourage exploration the same way any open world game you've ever played tries to encourage exploration.
That's pretty vague, give some examples outside of quests since quests are outside of the question according to you.

>>388919096
>>Fallout is trash
yep

>>388918796
-Unique and interest setting
-World that feels "lived in" and feels like it could carry on well enough without you
-plenty of non-quest content (hidden things, Easter eggs, special bosses)
-Game design that encourages exploration.

Morrowind is a pretty good example here.

>itt: bunch of people who have not played Morrowind

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>>388918796
>Interactivity
>Natural and/or logical level design
>Visual exposition to guide player without a map
>Statically placed items and/or enemies
>Some semblance of leveled areas; otherwise the entire map is the same on a gameplay front
>Settlements need to be believable with NPCs with good character
>Great music

>>388918796
even in real life you cand do anything you want

dunno why people expect why a game can be better than what real life can do

>>388931542
>Visually guide the player without a map

I disagree sort of. I hate quest markers and all, but having an inventory compass and a map makes it feel like you're actually exploring in a realistic way. In the real world without the aid of google maps or well designed roadways you'd get lost really fucking quick.

Nothing was more fun for me then having a physical map of Morrowind at my side while playing the game and then just deciding where I wanted to visit and explore.

>>388931224
>Outside of the quests what is there to do in the game? What is there to find?
Outside of quests, what is there to do in any game exploration-wise, honestly? Not much. More quests, collectibles, weapons and armor. Witcher doesn't have collectibles, but there are places of power. There's also lore to supplement the dungeons that all contain underleveled equipment, but there's as much to do as any other game.

>That's pretty vague, give some examples outside of quests since quests are outside of the question according to you.
Here's a thing, it looks cool, I bet you wonder what's in it, go check it out. Name one single game that does anything more to encourage exploration. If it's weapons, armor, money, lore, more quests, hidden NPCs, or new areas, it's all in The Witcher 3.

>>388925775
One guard going "Wow R U the archmage" can barely be considered to count when the rest of them mocks you asking if someone stole your sweetroll the instant you walk too close to them. Or half of the country knowing you're part of the Dark Brotherhood, which is supposed to be super duper secret. From that quest where you're supposed to steal sap from a sacred tree, one of the worshippers in the grove is permanently stuck with her only dialogue being "Please don't hurt the tree, leave, you're not welcome here" even though I chose the quest option in which you leave the tree alone and ages of in-game time has passed.

It's super immersion breaking and just proves a flat out lazy design.

The most critical part of open world design is content spread and BotW and MGS5 didn't get the memo. Games like Skyrim actually did a great job, in this particular case, because the whole map has well-distributed locations and quests and there isn't too much empty space and traveling down-time between quests.

>>388931873
Yeah I do like games with a "compass" like Oblivion does. I just mean the landscape needs to be readable for you to traverse. And yeah a map makes Morrowind easier to travel in but there's road signs on the road; you could eventually, without a map, learn the entire island from playing the game

Few open worlds that do this are
>Morrowind
>Oblivion
>Skyrim
>Gothic 1 & 2
>BotW
And that's mostly it from the major games I've played but I'm sure I'm having a huge brainfart

>>388931874
You are completely delusional

Witcher 3 does more to discourage exploration than any other game, the design is nonsensical. There's a level 24 Griffin just outside Velen the first starting town.

If you go right instead of left where you're supposed to after you're done with White Orchard you run into unbeatable lvl 15 enemies. It's garbo.

And the only things worth finding are the witcher schematics, Every other "dungeon" is just reskined monsters and vendor trash loot, I mean how many variations of the same one sword can you get.

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I never really got why people raved about the Witcher 3's open world and proceed to shit on Ubisoft open worlds when they are more or less the same thing, the biggest difference being instead of climbing towers to reveal points of interest on the map, you just look at notice boards. There's definitely more quests spread about, but you're still running around liberating outposts from bandits and running from question mark to question mark on the map.

The open world was always my least favorite aspect of that game besides the over reliance on witcher senses.

>>388918796
I liked the witcher 3 but is the open world honestly good? I think the writing and quests carried the game and the open world is what is usually is, big for no real reason and the only thing to do is copypasted bandit camps

>>388932156
>learn the entire island from playing the game
quite difficult if not impossible due to the meme tier draw distance

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>>388931874
>Here's a thing, it looks cool, I bet you wonder what's in it, go check it out.
That's still pretty vague, give an in game example.

>Name one single game that does anything more to encourage exploration.
Morrowind because the weapons and armor aren't craftable so you're more than encouraged to explore to find new weapons and armor. You can even break into the vaults of factions to steal their money.

>>388932417
This is true. I can't believe that TW3 has such a fucked leveling problem. It honestly broke my heart almost after hearing them sing the praises of gothic and new vegas. All Witcher 3 turned out to be was just a longer Witcher 2 with open world filler in-between quests. I still like it but the open world is one of the worst in gaming.

>>388932417
are you trying to say skyrim doesnt have fucking tiny loottables, besides the handful of uniqe items.
and that shit griffin outside valen is part of the story. Yea story, the thing Elder scrolls always fail at
>youre le invinclbe dude we been waiting for

>>388932417
The entire premise of Gothic's open world design revolves around locking off areas from the player by placing overleveled enemies there, and Gothic is generally considered to have one of the greatest open worlds in the genre. TW3's combat system, despite being shit, even allows the player to beat those enemies, whereas in Gothic you will be stomped 10 times out of 10, so you can't tell me that overleveled enemies in certain areas are the problem. I don't think TW3's open world is fantastic, but the leveling is the least of its problems.

>>388932613
>That's still pretty vague, give an in game example.
What do you mean? That's the extent of its encouragement, as is the extent of encouragement in every open world game. Here's a thing, it looks cool, bet you wonder what's in it, go check it out. You check it out. Maybe there's something worthwhile in it, maybe not. That's it.

>Morrowind because the weapons and armor aren't craftable so you're more than encouraged to explore to find new weapons and armor.
So Morrowind's encouragement is weapons and armor? And TW3's encouragement is weapons and armor? Yeah, you can craft better shit than you can find in TW3, but you literally proved my statement for me.

>>388932693
>>388932875
>>388932417
This is exactly why i love that the weaposn break in BotW and never understood why people are against it. You basically Want every single loot you can get, because you need them. Instead of being ''wow.... yet another sword that i wont be using, ever''

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>>388923184
neo v sure has shit taste you must not be very happy irl are you

>>388933041
>"wow... here's a really awesome sword that i wont be using, ever, because if i use it it will break and i might have needed it later"
Yeah, BotW's weapon breaking is fucking flawless and every game moving forward should implement it.

>>388918796
good gameplay

>>388918796
Shit to do > size of map

>>388933041
I agree it's fantastic, but I like it as a one time thing. This fucker is false flagging
>>388933172
But I do like the implementation in BotW

Also, there's a great Witcher mod called "The Enhancement System" which makes relic swords unbreakable and keep regular weapons breakable. To me this is great because it finally gives the loot system some fucking consistency

>>388932875
>muh gary stu anime hair protagonist who is really handsome, fucks every woman can solve every problem in the world, decides the fate of the entire world even though he's supposed to be just a outcast monster hunter
>muh mary sue daughterfu who evades skeletor saves the universe in the end

Don't tell me Witcher 3 wasn't garbage. Because it was.

>>388933023
Gothic 2 at least which I've played had some logic in restricting player movement. Witcher 3 was completely random. That's why it discouraged organic exploration, you needed to wait for the same level quest in an area to know it's safe to go there.

>putting a fucking buff on high level enemies that makes you deal 10x less damage
Yeah, brilliant.
Why don't you play Dark Souls and see how it's really done

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>>388933023
If you genuinely think Witcher 3 does a great job at exploration you would have given me an example by now, come on man. I'm not even here to prove you right or wrong, I'm just asking for an in game example.

>literally proved my statement for me.
What was your statement exactly? Pretty sure it was this:
>Name one single game that does anything more to encourage exploration. If it's weapons, armor, money, lore, more quests, hidden NPCs, or new areas, it's all in The Witcher 3.

>>388933172
>and i might have needed it later"
cool, now it's more challenging, your point? Still no actual argument as of why it's a bad mechanic.

>>388933301
Truth

New Vegas' map is smaller than fo3 but it has more marked locations and about twice the number of quests

something something stalker
world believably and freeroam ai

>>388933492
I played stalker untill some water ball killed me after 20 mins, I dont like so open ended games.

>>388933380
The problem is that the map designers of Witcher 3 we're retards and knew that velen was going to be both a starter area and an end game area. The normal way to do this would be for the hard quests and hard enemies to spawn upon a certain point in the main quest; the retard way would be to have everything Mish mashed together from the start. They chose the retarded way

>>388933643
I disagree, it`s better when everything is there, like in Risen, especially if they don`t have shite like respawning enemies.

>>388918796
A world that exists without you being there. A lot of open-worlds rely on feeding the player as much as they can so they have a checklist to go through, and you can put it all on hold like time stops when you aren't around. Nothing happens unless you are there.
I'm not saying these things should expire, it's important the player picks their pace, but maybe have a system in place where you can't have too many active quests, a cut-off point for new quests appearing should exist. This gives you a reason to revisit places and talk to people at different points because you may get a new quest. Like something happened while you were away and now new shit needs to get done, but in reality you just couldn't access that quest at some point.
A heavily neglected idea is that somebody else in the world is just as capable as you are, and just as willing to do the dirty work. It's hard for me to believe nobody else is going out and attempting these jobs, so a rival of sorts could really add a sense of urgency to some things.

On top of that, some interactivity is nice. Being able to change some things about the setting, or make demands, etc. depending on your role would make the world feel far more alive and active. Instead of everything being a backdrop.

More hand-crafted sections. Fluffing out a world with pretty environments is all fine and dandy, throwing a chest of loot at the far end of a dungeon is good enough for some. But there's a clear quality difference between an area somebody has designed with a specific thing in mind, and an area that got created and was later used for something because it was there.

>>388933475
bump

>>388933472
I never once said Witcher 3 does a great job at exploration. I said it uses the exact same means to encourage exploration as any open world game.

You're right, that was my statement. Witcher 3 encourages exploration with weapons, armor and money. And my statement was proven when you said Morrowind's encouragement towards exploration was weapons, armor and money.

Look, I'm willing to have this discussion, but you've said literally nothing of worth. I'm telling you that all the games you think "encourage exploration" better than TW3 actually handle it the exact same way that TW3 does, and your only argument has been "Well, actually, Morrowind does what TW3 does."

>>388933904
No you don't understand. It's better when everything is there *if* there's a logical structure to it. For instance, the hard velen quests and enemies would make sense if they were only all near the end game area, but instead they're littered throughout the entire map seemingly randomly

>>388924408
>xD
get out underage

>>388933940
Also, scaling to some degree is good. But some areas should just be blatantly dangerous early on, because it creates natural boundaries that the player could potentially struggle through if they desired that. But at the same time, nothing should become ridiculously easy just because you leveled up 5 times. A stab to the chest is still a stab to the chest.

>>388933973
Chiming in here, what you're saying is nonsensical. Witcher 3 doesn't encourage you to explore for weapons and armor for two reasons
>The best weapons and armor are found in Witcher gear quests; not exploration
>The best gear is crafted, not found, so you should be crafting and not picking up swords in the Wild
>Money is best and by completing quests, so you should be questing and not exploring

Tw3 is only good if you just do the quests and treat the open world as a natural way to tie it all together, otherwise it's shit.

>>388933475
The argument is that you find strong weapons that you don't ever use because you want to keep them in your inventory because you don't know when or if you're going to find a weapon like that again. It's more challenging to use the weaker weapons because you're afraid of breaking the stronger ones, sure, but then what's the point of having the stronger ones in the game at all? Even the fucking master sword, the series-iconic weapon for 30 years, the sword that has carried the player through the game, every game, for 30 years, is now locked behind an egg timer.

If every weapon broke, but the master sword was a mainstay, I'd cut the system some slack. But that's not how it works. You don't have a single mainstay weapon in your inventory. You're forced to pick up every weapon you find, which means the game has to be filled with enemies who can carry weapons for you to pick up, which means a plethora of classic series enemies are cut from the game in favor of recolored enemies to ensure that the player will have enough weapons to collect. It's a system that in the end requires more to be removed from the game than to be added.

>>388918796

"open" just needs to mean that you have many paths/places to explore; doesn't have to be literally "open". a good open world will be full of secrets/rewards for exploration, with minimal reliance on minimap faggotry.

>>388931143
The best part is after fisnishing all that shti the op weapons is worthless as you've done all the content already

>>388934310
>The best weapons and armor are found in Witcher gear quests; not exploration
This is true.

>The best gear is crafted, not found, so you should be crafting and not picking up swords in the Wild
You can pick up swords in the wild and sell them to merchants for a decent sum. It's what you'd do in any RPG once you out-level your current gear, the only difference being the gear you find in TW3 you've already out-leveled.

>Money is best and by completing quests, so you should be questing and not exploring
Quests give you comparatively very little money and money is best earned by selling items. The most money is earned by selling the equipment that you find in the dungeons.

>>388928025
no its fucking not, currently doing the dlc now and this shti still happenes all the time

>>388934391
Interesting, so you say that the lack of enemy variety is due to said mechanic and not the deadline they had to meet? The master swords durability gets 5 times longer when it's actually needed. i do agree with you. At first i never wanted to use my guardian weapons or anything above an attack of 20 because i thought they were super rare or something, but the you realise that nothing really is. Hell if you buy an ancient bow, it lasts for at least 10 in game hours. That being said I really, really want to use the Giant boomerang all the time but i am afraid of it breaking. I give you that. And yet there is a simple solution, i just farm them for 10 minutes and have 4-5, then i won't care.

>>388931143
Ubisoft games are indefensible. They do nothing well at all

>>388934391
I wouldn't say it's filled with enemies, it kinda is but if you kill an Lynel, you're set for the next 3-4 hours.
The main dungeons not having more than 2-3 enemies shows that the system just works.

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>>388933973
>and your only argument has been "Well, actually, Morrowind does what TW3 does."
No mister strawman, my argument as to why Morrowind encourages exploration better than Witcher 3 is because:

The loot is static
Armor and weapons aren't craftable, so the player is forced to go out in the world and explore.
The quests are designed around clues and not some batman vision gimmick.

Let's visualize a quest and see how both games would handle them.
You enter a tavern and some old man asks you for a drink, you buy him a drink and he thanks you with a story about an family tomb located in a flooded cave full of treasure but he can't go there because he's too old so he give you the key to the treasure chest and tells you the location of the cave.

In Morrowind the location of the cave isn't pinpointed on your map so the player has to explore that area based on the clues the old man gave him.
In Witcher 3 the exact location of the cave is added to your minimap so there's literally no encouragement for exploration.

Witcher 3's open world only serves as a hub where the quests play out, aside form quests there is nothing else to do in the game so why exactly does it need to be an open world game? Witcher 1 was perfect in world design because the world consisted of interconnected hub areas, the world was only as large as it needed to be.

>>388918796
Ive yet to play an open world game I though was above average. the only thing I can praise witcher 3 for are its models, animations, and voice acting. the subtleties in the facial animations are great, but theres just so much dialogue that you notice all the animations are just taken from a pool early on.
open world games suffer from a lack of structure linear games have, which impacts the storytelling/pacing, and the open world itself is most often either filled with nothing to do (botw) or so much inane bullshit that you set up a grid search just to check those boxes and fill the map (TW3)

Open world's are fine as long as the developers bother to provide a rich and fleshed out narrative to go along with it. Otherwise open world is just code word for: "Lazy, sloppily written, plot"

How you feel about the multiple small islands/planets way of doing it?

Risen 2 and Mass Effect Andomeda...

>>388935629
thats not open world that's just levels then, like literally almost all games before the open world meme started

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If you listened to early Witcher 3 interviews it sounded like a really good open world. They were going to have every item you can find have a purpose, even herbs needed for alchemy would be a key item. Every enemy placement would be thought out and make sense, and they wouldn't respawn indefinately.

Also you would know where the quests are because points of interest would be visible from very far away, so if you wanted to break away from the main story just ride to the interest point which you can actually see, no minimap bs
>>388935487
Give me a break I haven't seen a story fall apart faster than Witcher 3 after Kaer Morhen

>>388935128
The player can also choose to ignore the weapons and armor hidden away in the world and buy from merchants. As is the case in Morrowind, TW3's strongest weapons still have to be found in the world. Sure, they're tied to quests, but the diagrams remain in the same locations and can be discovered regardless of weather or not you've bought the treasure maps that open up the quests or not. The best loot is static, as it is in Morrowind. The filler loot isn't entirely static, but instead offers the player a randomized selection of two pieces of loot if they're under a given level or two separate randomized pieces of loot if they're over a given level. Keep in mind this doesn't mean that the loot is entirely randomized -- there are two possibilities drawn from a pool.
The quests were never the purpose of the discussion, but if you wanna get into it, sure.
The quests aren't designed around "clues" in Morrowind -- you're given near exact directions to every location you're required to go to. Take this road, cross this bridge, head this direction past this thing, it's somewhere around there. Sometimes NPCs will either mark the destination on your map, or mark a point of interest near the destination on your map. Do I think that's better immersion, better quest design? Absolutely, but I implore you to read back through this thread and find anywhere in which I explicitly praised TW3's quest design.

Either way, in your argument, the quests are exactly the same aside from how the player finds their way to their destination.

I think Witcher 1 and 2's hub system is better, but this thread is about open worlds.

Fast travel where I can skip it all once I've seen it once.

>>388935972
>weather or not
whether*
I've been making a lot of typos, but this one is too egregious not to correct.

>>388935972
the strongest weapons have to be crafted, you are out right lying now the witcher swords could be ten entire levels below a sword and still be better

>>388935894
not him but I actually never finished the game first time around, dropped it right after I got to kaer morhen. marathoned through 1 and 2 and Im halfway through 3 now, and while it has its moments and some interesting characters Its totally the weaker in terms of writing. Heart o Stone was great though, wanna see how blood and wine is, with as few spoilers as possible how bad does it shit the bed after kaer morhen?

How to make a good open meme world-

>combat
God if the combat is horseshit it's going to be hard. I don't mind it not having lots of options how to fight like ranged/magic/melee/stealth (or even to not fight and go pacifist), but it's should have a satisfying combat in one aspect of the very least.

>not to small, not to big
You should always have something to do, be it quest or some loot. But make it too big and people start to not care and just use fast travel if you include the option. Which i think ia bad. You want the player to be immersed, you should make them want to go and see. If you ignore the faults of Far Cry 2 (and download a nice mod), i felt very immersed by having a road trip in Africa with a map and niggers trying to kill me every time they see me, because the fast travel was only to some locations.

>make it feel actually alive
If you fucked up some quest, it should have affect the world. If you ignored someone, make something out of it like making him want to kill you.

>graphics
Graphics should be very good or look stylish enough to look good. This part is really important to immerse the player

>physical world that you can actually interact with
BotW nailed it.

I honestly think that a game with combat like dark souls/dragon dogma, quests and story like witcher 3, interaction like BOTW and immersion like from Far Cry 2 would make a fine open world meme

>>388936257
all that shit that seemed real interesting? forget it we fight big bad guy now bye

>>388936257
Can't explain it without going into spoilers but it's bad.

There seems to be a rush to conclude everything and they do it in the most hack way possible.

>>388934163
not him, but you're the fucking underage here if you can't understand the not even subtle sarcasm

>>388936194
You have to find the diagrams of the witcher swords before you can craft them, fuckwit. Then you have to find the upgrade diagrams for the witcher swords. And they can all be found without opening up the quests by finding/buying the treasure maps for them. Did you play the game?

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>>388936479
>>388936649
well shit, nothing like a rushed ending where nothing matters to kill my motivation. At least theres BaW to look forward to

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>>388935972
Can daedric and special weapons be bought from merchants in Morrowind?

>the quests are exactly the same aside from how the player finds their way to their destination.
But that is the entire point of my argument, the difference between those two games is in how you reach your destination.

Witcher 3's world is designed to justify the quests, not exploration.
A --> B
Here's how a good open world game handles open world design:
exploration --> A
exploration --> B

>but I implore you to read back through this thread and find anywhere in which I explicitly praised TW3's quest design.
You praise Witcher 3's batman vision quest design? That doesn't surprise me one bit.

>>388937038
>You have to find the diagrams of the witcher swords before you can craft them
fucking so? it's not like they don't literally give you maps for them, and multiple crafting levels too all of which are better than the base items you act as if the witcher donst face fuck you with all its content which is the entire point of why its sucks as ab open world, no need to explore at all just follow the dotted line.

>>388918796
>freedom
>emergent gameplay
>player agency
>light plot

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>>388918843
>linearity
Move games are great.

>>388937202
It's not that nothing matters, you still get different epilogues based on your choices

But it's just concluded so badly.Things are resolved in very nonsensical ways. Characters tat are supposed to be intelligent act like complete retards.It doesn't feel like continuation of the the previous games, the great confrontation with the Wild Hunt never comes. He just says one line before you kill him, what the previous gamesset up doesn't matter.The ending also invalidates the book saga

>>388937258
>Can daedric and special weapons be bought from merchants in Morrowind?
Can witcher gear be bought from merchants in TW3?

>But that is the entire point of my argument, the difference between those two games is in how you reach your destination.
And my entire argument coming into this wasn't at all about quest design, it was about what encourages a player to explore an open world. You interjected with quest design because you either lack any reading comprehension or because you had no argument regarding what differs between TW3's and Morrowind's encouragement of exploration.

>but I implore you to read back through this thread and find anywhere in which I explicitly praised TW3's quest design.
>You praise Witcher 3's batman vision quest design? That doesn't surprise me one bit.
I guess I was dead on about the lack of reading comprehension.


>>388937379
They don't "literally give you maps for them", you have to purchase the maps if you want the dotted line to take you there. If you don't purchase the maps, you can find the shit anyway. You don't need the maps. If you feel the maps are such a huge detractor from the experience, you have the freedom to choose not to buy the maps and find the shit on your own.

I'm not saying TW3's open world is fantastic or the best open world of all time. I'm saying you're an idiot. I'm making the claim that TW3's open world and how it presents it to the player is practically the same as almost every single other open world game ever made. Big whoop, you can spend money on a shortcut to the thing. Don't buy the fucking shortcut if it's going to give you an aneurysm.

>>388935894
Games always sound good in early stages. Then you face the reality that open worlds can't be done right.

>>388930998
But it is random. The loot is different if you load the save and haven't interacted with the container before.
Even the stats on the 'static' loots are different each time.

>>388937861
there are actual quests related to some of the armors my dude, those quests even tell you about the maps, which every shoppe has, what else am I gonna spend my gold on? that crafting item I already have 5000 of?? I was struggling to sell all the garbage i was picking up even in the early game so it's not like you don't have the extra gold, even after the starter quests to get the starter version of the armor it's obvious the items are the best versions in the game. you need to face facts that the game's design is lackluster at best, arguably bad. and that witcher gear is obviously superior in a way only a retard would ignore it in favor of just "discovering it" as if the rest of the game didn't treat you like a moron already.

>>388918796
Secrets. Hard to finds secrets. Like shit that takes critical thinking with a combination of exploration to find.

>>388923937
look at the point right before that one, retard
>encouraging exploration
aka not making it a grind, making it enjoyable

>>388925998
>demands start to get ridiculous
anon was making extremely simple and basic examples of "world interaction", not things that he specifically wants in every game ever

stop taking things so literally you fucking sperg

>>388918843
holy shit what an farm animal

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>>388937861
>because you had no argument regarding what differs between TW3's and Morrowind's encouragement of exploration.
You're clearly willingly ignoring my points, I listed them and I'll list them again.

-The loot is static.
-Armor and weapons aren't craftable, so the player is forced to go out in the world and explore.
-The final boss is actually there in the game for you to kill whenever you want, so if you explore enough you might actually stumble upon him.
-the overworld is alienating making the player more curious

Witcher 3 offers absolutely zero exporation outside of quests, the overworld is only there to justify the quests, nothing more.

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>>388918796
To me, the best part about Fallout 3 was all the little things to go and find
I remember first getting the game and looking at the full map of the game with all the locations and random encounter markers and hidden places and i was so excited to go out and find those things
That's the thing Fallout 3 got right, and i feel NV didn't. But thats a different topic

The point is, Fallout 3's open world was great to explore over and over again because you kept finding new things
I think that's kinda the whole goal of open world isn't it?
>see that mountain? you can climb it
That's the point of open world, you're free to go explore and go get to that mountain, leave everything else behind and just go for it
An open world tells its own story, separate from the main one
Pic related is from F3. It's a small thing, but it tells a story, and you only know about it if you go out there and find it for yourself, not because the game tells you to

Personally, if you're going to make an open world, make the world first, then the story, but don't do what fallout 4 did and make the open world and then confine your character to a set character and their own story. It completely ruins the point of OPEN world when you can't actually decide who you're going to be.
I guess the open world and open character have to be intertwined as one for the game to work at all.
So, open world/open character, then story to compliment the world (including characters)

/ramble

>open world game
>developers are too scared to actually take a risk and design a good campaign
>just make it a generic "SANDBOX DESTRUCTION" and copy+paste objectives all over the map, put no effort into campaign missions and then put all the pressure of how to have fun on the player instead of just giving them a fun time. A good sandbox game introduces mechanics in the missions that are useless for the rest of the game, a lot of open world games don't do this. Another problem is the generic "story mode/side quest" layout that makes the story missions feel isolated and apart from the world, and the side missions seem like an afterthought. (I'M LOOKING AT YOU JUST CAUSE 3, YOU'LL GOT AMAZING MECHANICS BUT YOU PUT NO FUCKING EFFORT INTO THIS GAME'S STORY AND THERE'S NOT ENOUGH TO DO WHEN YOU'RE DONE BLOWING EVERYTHING UP)

Quest design is the one thing the Witcher 3 actually does well, every quest even secondary ones feel like their own contained story, shame they all play out in a similar way.

Someone should redesign how open world games function, this whole MMO "main quest/side quest" dichotomy has taken so much creativity away from how an open world story could play out.

Furthermore, pointless collectables need to stop. In Ocarina of Time, collectables actually benefitted you. In recent games, developers just like having a randomly-generated loot percentage and giving you piles of junk that have no individual value and making you do the whole inventory dance, what ever happened to hidden collectables that actually do something? I'm sick of collecting 75 of something just to get a stupid achievement, there's nothing actually gained there the game didn't give me anything for collecting this garbage it was purely to waste player time.

I enjoyed the Witcher and Just Cause 3 for different reasons, because they both do one aspect of open world well whilst fucking other others. Witcher 3 does well to mold sidemissions into the world so and JC3 has tethers/wingsuit

>>388933940
>A world that exists without you being there
i totally agree
someone else said "stop and stare moments" as well
the problem with most beth games is that you assume a god character who is 10x stronger than everyone else and you can just do whatever because if they say no you just kill them

it's a careful balance between giving the player enough power to actually do shit, but not too much power so that he can just do anything

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>>388923937
>It has to be explored because the player genuinely wants to
Would you say that for the player, it has to be...rewarding?

>>388940529
>Quest design
yes i too love being handheld from map marker to map marker and spoonfed step-by-step instructions on how to solve every single quest.