Open worlds are kino...

Open worlds are the best designed games we could ever make, See that mountain you can climb it! Doesn't that sound incredible? Now go buy Skyrim for the Nintendo Switch so you can climb that mountain while riding the Train to work

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The secret to making a fun open world game is giving the player a fun, skillful, and deep traversal mechanic. That's why the best open world of all time is Skate 2.

I miss [good] level design

Only one of those was ruined. FUCK EA.

"MOM! THERES NO EXPLOSIONS IN THIS GAME! WHAT THE FUCK I CANT KILL NPCs OR CARJACK ANYONE?! MOM TAKE ME BACK TO GAMESTOP!!!"

I loved the slow-paced gameplay of RDR 2 but hated the story and the ending something fierce.

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Open worlds would be great if they could have the density of details, interactions and variety of more linear games across the entirety of their map. It's still not the case.

>plenty of games do them right.
Name one, the only immersive worlds are semi open worlds like in the Immersive Sim genre.
Gothic 2 is maybe the only example of decent open world I can think of

>rather than being in an actual world where YOU decide where to go and how to get there.
Because the developers have to account for every single playstyle and skill level, which means an absolute retard going full stealth and being spotted all the time is just as likely to complete an objective as the guy who has min/maxed a perfect damage build.

There is no such thing as an open world game where you can go where you want and do what you want. MAYBE with the exception of TES.

mount & blade

you missed the point entirely

>Then why do you want to spend 15 minutes walking down a linear hallway rather than being in an actual world where YOU decide where to go and how to get there.

15 minutes walking down a linear hallway and 15 minutes walking in an empty field are equally as bad.

That is some ass-backwards taste you've got there, user.

Wrong, you don't want it too dense or it fucks up the pacing, the encounters bleed together and it's too distracting with so many things going on at once. A perfect open world knows how to balance detail, travel and downtime.

Open worlds are great because I never go outside it's too scary.

BotW and Xenoblade X are the only two open world I enjoyed. Incidentally, they're the only two open world games I've played with satisfying movement mechanics. Running at sanic speeds and jumping 50 feet in XBX never got old.
BotW was good because of the streamlined interactivity and XBX was good because its the only fucking open world that feels properly diverse and packed with things to see, AND you can move around fast enough that it never gets tedious.

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>botw
Confirmed not having played the game at all
Pic related, it's you

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Amazing Frog! is an open world game done right.

Open world games should be sandboxes with high levels of interactivity, and lots of different kinds of things to interact with. The things you can find should be fun for their own sake, or give you a new/more fun/better way to explore the world.

They should also have physics. Physics, objects, interactability, multiplayer, ways of exploring, and emergent gameplay will always add more to an open-world game than NPCs with fully-voiced dialog.

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It's not really about density. It doesn't matter much if you have to walk somewhere for 1 minute or 2 minutes.
It's more about uniqueness and originality of content.

Also you need to differentiate between various types of pacing.
The pacing that matters is the overall character and story progression. Most games get that completely wrong by making character progression either way too fast and then being op way too fast or by making character progression not relevant with stuff like level scaling or fake stats. Also many do frontload a huge chunk of story progression, with lots of nothing inbetween and another huge load right at the end.

mate botw would have been way better if they cut the world size in half and instead used more unique content and more story relevant content.
But they fell for the meme of open world having to be fuckhuge and 100% open.

FF12 has the best style of overworld. Prove me wrong.

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it's more like visiting different parts of a zoo, rather than a world

based and I agree completely, so many open world games get the movement/exploration wrong making it a chore to play. XCX is hugely underrated, it's a fucking shame it's stuck on the wii u where nobody will check it out.

This is pretty much what Xenoblade 1 does, albeit I think it was a little better there.
Having individual sectioned out "zones" that can be freely explored, but must be gone through in a linear sequence is the best way to balance storytelling and gameplay imo.

Yeah. X2 soon brother.
I love XB2, but damn was the movement disappointing. They backpedaled on all the progress made in X in that department for no real reason.

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Most open world games have allocated their development resources to make something that has the widest possible appeal. Highly polished realistic graphics, facial animations, thousands of lines of voice acting, cgi cutscenes, live orchestral scores... these things aren't bad, but they're expensive, and they don't actually make the game much more fun.

If developers were trying to maximize how fun their games were, and allocated more of their resources to THAT, we'd have some amazing games. But that's not what they're trying to do. At least, the AAA games made by publicly-traded companies. They're trying to maximize profit, and that means targeting normies. Most normies can't even recognize a fun game when they play it. What gets a normie to buy a game is how sparkly and shiny it seems on the surface.

Most open world games aren't very fun, because they're not supposed to be. They're not trying to be. They're only supposed to be sparkly enough to lure normies into buying them, and "epic" enough to make the normies feel good about their purchase.

tl:dr;
Don't blame open-world level design for ruining games. Blame the investment system that forces the producers of high-budget games to endlessly maximize profit, to the detriment of everything else.

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not really convincing, considering how shit Elex and Kingdom Come were

the resources needed for making great world / level design and game design are many times less than what it takes for marketing, graphics and sound

the issue is more along the line of companies knowing that people will buy their shit regardless of actual quality, as long as the make some fancy trailers and promises and the devs not really being actual hardcore gamers

I agree with you. I wanted more of the fun stuff like hunting and camping. The main missions are boring.

I honestly like just walking/riding in the world to my destination. Like in Skyrim or Witcher I’ll go along the roads. I just think there’s something hypnotic about it.

Jak and Daxter. Hoverboards are infinitly cooler.

Mount and Blade

I feel like a lot of people who hate on open worlds don’t understand that some people want a slower and more immersive experience. The haters always talk like every 5 feet there needs to be something wildly interesting. Sometimes people just like a world to have space to breathe. There are plenty of games where the main focus is on tightly designed gameplay sections, but that’s not what people go to open world for.

>remove level design
>not a problem

>Metal Gear Solid V
Nope, the freedom to approach any situation how you wanted was the best thing about it. The lack of story and incomplete second half is what ruined it.

>Mirrors Edge
Didn't play so I can't comment.

>Witcher 3
I'm pretty sure you can turn off the scaling. Also that has nothing to with an open world. I actually think the world was pointless but it didn't harm the game in any way.

>Breath of the Wild
Breath of the wild is amazing and imo the only good Zelda game. We finally got a zelda game with good exploration and combat that wasn't formulaic: enter dungeon, get the item, solve boring puzzle, fight boring boss.The game didn't hold your hand with shitty tutorials.

>Skyrim
You can have an open world without scaling. Skyrim is shit for many other reasons.

meh
if the world isn't oversized and empty, then nobody will ever ask for or need for anything but walking

huh
what you can't enjoy a game unless it has a storyline?
Viking Conquest and With Fire & Sword both have storylines

Riding d-horse in MGSV is so fun I feel like I could do it for hours.

If I want an open world I'll just go for a walk outside

I would still consider Elex and Kingdom Come as examples of misallocated resources.

They may not be AAA games made by publicly-traded companies, but they are mimicing the conventions of the industry:
>realistic graphics
>shit tons of fully voice-acted dialogue
>bloated item management systems

I don't think massive open worlds really lend themselves to the kind of immersive, atmospheric game that they're usually used in. I hold up Amazing Frog as a proof-of-concept of how open worlds would be better used. And that game was made on a very limited budget by only two people, so it's definitely doable.

Except there is not single good modern open world game.

I really like the feeling of weight that RDR2 has

>I'm pretty sure you can turn off the scaling
and that's why I wrote, "or you will outlevel everything super fast and it gets boring as fuck"

>wasn't formulaic
I am sure you mean, too much, because every game is formulaic, otherwise it would be a huge mess
ultimately in botw it only takes a few hours after the plateau to realize, that everything in the game is the same and there is nothing to discover anymore, i.e. there is too much of the same stuff
on the other hand, most people don't see having 12 different dungeons in a traditional zelda game as too much / inflationary, especially if those 12 are widely different from each other, as compared to yet another meaningless mini puzzle

>examples of misallocated resources
more like examples of being out of touch with the players

the rpg system in elex was a fat fucking insult to all the player and the one in kingdom come was super unbalanced and caused huge ludonarrative dissonances

Semi Open Worlds are fine too. Like Stalker.
I actually think Fallout 4 achieves an amazing density and level of detail but the game is a let down in other ways. Some other games like Ark, Outward, Caves of Qud also take advantage of their worlds in great ways. There's also nothing wrong with having SOME open space. Games like Spiderman 2 where you want room to traverse. And you do want to give players room to breathe before they get to the next objective. Open space can create atmosphere and slow down pacing in a good way.

Thats a silly point to make since it's impossible to make a game where you can do ANYTHING

Maybe. But I certainly enjoy the sense of freedom and exploration more than I do another boring zelda dungeon.

Mount and Blade
>open world

Clicking on a map is not an open world.