Was open world a mistake?

An openworld pokemon MMO with 60 gym leaders and 50player cap or so in a zone. Kinda like that TemTem game or Revolution but officially through nintendo would sweep the entire world. Blizzard would file for bankruptcy overnight.

Video games were a mistake

No, but not many games get it right. A game has to be built around the open world, it cant just be added loosely into a game and expect it to do anything but make the game worse and add padding. The moment you do a ubisoft and add towers to climb and enemy bases, you fucked up.
I fully blame ubisoft for ruining open world

a link to the past map was small as fuck

Pretty much yeah. Except for morrowind who did it right. Voice acting is the biggest mistake tho

100%
nearly every single game that's done open world has been complete and utter trash
but retards keep buying it so its going to stay here forever and ever

That's because theres no filler in order to artificially lengthen the world.

but ALTTP is open world

of course it's a mistake. open world "game" "design" is an excuse to sell less content for the same price. all the budget and development time goes to making the nice-looking empty sandbox, and almost nothing is left for the actual gameplay.
reddit retards who didn't play games until last generation are ruining single-player franchises by demanding that they turn into skyrim clones.

Is this a jab at botw? I feel like if it is its aimed at the wrong game. Botw was one of the few open world games I have played where I felt like there wasnt much downtime or empty areas.

>is the most fun and popular genre a mistake
brainlet

Reminds me of the map of something like DQ1 or Destiny of an Emperor, if Zelda had random encounters and a leveling system something like that might have been real

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Open world is fine
But devs don't know how to do it well
No matter what game they always ruin it with a single feature like
>Level scalling
>Map Markers
>Shitty story

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Morrowind is open world so it can't be a mistake.

Not many open world games are made with the kind of love and attention Nintendo gives the Zelda franchise.

The only genre worth playing a mistake?

They tend to be a little older so they get confused easily.

y-yeah.. haha...

Level scaling is a necessity in an open world game.
If not you end up with large sections of the map useless by design.

autism

So, Zelda 2?

That isn't true. It being necessary is saying that it is necessary to implement game design that fundamentally trivializes progression. And that's just fucking awful to say about a genre.

I understand it is subjective but I prefer open world to the Start zone struggle,get better ,unlock new zone ,struggle ,get better, unlock new zone,.... treadmill.

Too each his own.

>player cap
The only should be 1 person per tile, and the inability to pass through characters.

I would rather maintain a sense of danger than a sense of progression.
Look at Morrowind by level 20 nothing in the game can kill you unless you forget to pause mid combat while you take a leak.
The DLC fixed this to an extent by adding a more aggressive Oblivion style scaling.
Vanilla it quickly became a hiking sim. That is horrid design to me.

This is a terrible jab at BotW. Map isn't even accurate.

None of it is rewarding, it's just arduous. You're almost never properly rewarded for accomplishing something. Reward and difficulty have no correlation in leveled systems. That's just awful design. Doing something continuously tedious that might just give you 50, give you some lines of dialogue, progress the story, or give you the sick nasty loot you crave sucks out all the satisfaction of doing that difficult thing. That's basic psychology.

>tiny caves everywhere with push block puzzles to get a shitty chest that just gives you a heart piece or rupee
>not filler
At least BotW's shrines had some puzzle variety, ALttP is only fun when you're in a dungeon.

The one on the left is just as open world as the one of the right.

Depends, do humans really enjoy traveling through empty areas just to get to the next meaningful content? Rockstar has always been horrible with this, and many games have been copying it, especially Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed and Ghost Recon.

Without very limited scaling Morrowind became boring. That can't be good design. Yes Oblivion's scaling was horrid but it was a step in the right direction.
I will take not boring over your preference.

>Level scaling is a necessity in an open world game.
How?

Lack of dungeons aside, BotW actually shares much in common with the 2D Zeldas which were very combat-oriented in their overworlds. Rarely can you travel a single square yard without encountering at least one enemy.

The responses aren't that old.Read them.

This map actually illustrates the exact problem with open worlds. The robust, interesting and unique content was kept up with the increase in world size, so what you get is giant gaps of nothing in between your interesting content.

>was
meant wasn't kept up with the increasing world size.

What exactly qualifies as "robust, interesting and unique" content to you? Most of ALttP's squares were just enemies.

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There is a fine balance between the left and right images. We just haven't achieved it yet.

If the right image is referring to BotW then it's pretty inacurrate, there are quite a few landmarks where those empty fields would be as well as lots of focused topography and terrain.

I'm really not looking forward to Elden Ring. One of the things I like about Dark Souls was that it was "open" while having little padding or filler. Now FromSoft is making an "open world" game like everyone else and I just can't get excited about that. I don't want to ride horses over open fields, I just want to crawl through castles and dungeons.

I'd say open world works great only if paired with sandbox elements. Most open world games are linear 'cinematic' experience and that's why these games suck ass. Players should be able to experience the world on their own and make their own adventure without hand holding bullshit.

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So don't play open world games. It isn't rocket science.

This. Sometimes I wish BotW had more downtime than it actually did, certain regions were almost suffocating with the amount of enemies, puzzles and chests I was tripping over.

I generally don't. That's why I'm expressing my disappointment that From Software are making an open world successor to a game I loved.

>I don't want to ride horses over open fields, I just want to crawl through castles and dungeons.
Then play games that focus on that. No idea why you people always act so surprised that a genre focused on immersion and adventure would appeal to a wide audience.

Yes. People have this dumb idea that bigger world = more content, but all it really means is content gets spread thinner, with a bunch of tedious filler bullshit padding the game.

Reminder that the best form of level design is hub-based, where you have different small sandboxes that are each open-ended and allow for multiple ways to tackle scenarios, but are still small enough that they can be designed in a content-dense manner. This is why a city level in Deus Ex is so much better than in, oh say, an Assassin's Creed game.

>BOTWfags immediately assume it's talking about their game
Crazy how defensive people get over their game when it's not even mentioned.

Technically I guess Dark Souls is open world, but not in the way that people mean when they use that term. It's really a metroidvania-style map where there are discreet paths and areas, with lots of inter-connectivity between them.

When people talk about "open world" they're talking about games like GTA or Asscreed or Elder Scrolls or MGSV.

Both of these pictures show an open world, though.

They have to rabidly defend it to the death because it's their one justification for buying that shit "console"

Should at least have used the actual map instead of the abstracted mini map

>Both of these pictures show an open world, though.
How so? An open world is characterized by the world being open from the start. That's certainly not the case in link to the past, where a bulk of the areas are locked behind story developments.

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>Immediately thinks his favorite game is under attack so he rushes in to defend it
Yikes

To be fair it does kinda look like it's trying to take a jab at BotW, especially with Hyrule Castle being in the center.

If that is your definition than both Red Dead Redemptions or GTA 4 or even something like Gothic 1 and 2 wouldn't be open world either. All of these have areas that are technically blocked until the story has you go there.

>An open world is characterized by the world being open from the start.
No it isn't, zoomer. Play literally any GTA game.

Well defined and hand-polished world with each encounter planned with proper pacing >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dog shit >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Open world" with random rocks, towers, and collectables to pad the game time

>B-but bro! It was so epic! There was a dude and I hit him with a rock I found on the ground! So much room for creativity!

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It's just a padded out version of ALTTP's map. You're making your own connections if you see BOTW. This can apply to any open-world sandbox game.

>If that is your definition than both Red Dead Redemptions or GTA 4
As a matter of fact, I don't really consider rockstar games to be open world, since the story missions basically take place in a separate dimension separate from the game world.

>Gothic 1 and 2 wouldn't be open world either
But those have almost all of the world accessible from the start though?

I guess I'm just so accustomed to people shitting on BotW here that I made that assumption, coupled with Hyrule Castle being in the middle. But you're right that a lot of open world games feel that way.

Keep all the mechanics in BotW and reskin it into a Ubisoft game. Bam, everyone hates it.

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You're missing the point and getting stuck over semantics. The problem is that modern open-world games go for quantity-over-quality and end up with bland boring empty worlds with a minuscule amount of content stretched very thinly.

Old "open world games" (before that was even a buzzword) didn't have this problem. So whether you define ALTTP as open-world or not is irrelevant. The point is it's a better game design.

Not him, but Rockstar considers their own games to be open world so you're already in a mislabeling dilemma here. What really characterizes an open world is the map structure and side elements, not necessarily how accessible it might be from the start. By this definition, ALTTP is indeed open world.

>As a matter of fact, I don't really consider rockstar games to be open world
Well it's too bad that you shit opinions aren't what matter in the world then.

The problem isn't open world, it's massive open worlds that are too big for their own good and mostly feature filler content (which nowadays, is pretty much all of them)

>Taking time at all

That's the joke isn't it?

>Old "open world games" (before that was even a buzzword) didn't have this problem
Literal zoomer tier opinion. Plenty of older games back in the day, including certain Zelda titles, had overworlds stretched way too thin with very little to do other than fight enemies on the map while traversing between the actual points of interest. Smaller doesn't always mean denser.

I can never get past the three hour mark in most Rockstar games. I don't understand the appeal. So much time is wasted just driving/riding to some area to complete a trivial task. The gameplay itself usually isn't that good. The furthest I've ever got in a Rockstar game was Red Dead Redemption, but I had to really force myself. I quit when I got to the protagonist switch and you had to do literal non-figurative and non ironic chores. I knew the ending, so I just dropped that shit.

okay

nice

>not necessarily how accessible it might be from the start.
By that logic, anything can qualify as open world. Zelda is more in the vein of metroidvania than anything else.

for example, take the far cry series
far cry 3 had a pretty big map, but it was mostly the right size - you could have maybe done without the second island but still it was fine
then far cry 4 comes out and it's far too big
you could have cut the map in half, especially because the whole northeastern part of the map is nothing but reused assets save for 2 or so areas
they even did exactly that in far cry primal but at the same time they also cut the content in half so it was still too big for what was on offer

the worst offender is the map for AC unity (pic related)
the whole portion south of the Seine is pretty much unused in the story
out of 12 or so chapters, maybe 2 take place there and the ghetto district in the south east isn't even visited once in the main story (which is absolutely retarded because it's the most fun to traverse and parkour around in)
so much effort for nothing while other parts of the game are extremely lacking, but at least they could print biggest city we ever made on their press release

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Now post the daggerfall map dumb fuck.

Having problems with a level scaled rat is boring and tedious as opposed to seeing your character actually become stronger and handling enemies that once gave you trouble. Get some taste.

Zelda is not in the vein of a Metroidvania. Metroidvanias have a more linear map structure with branching paths whereas something like ALTTP's map is structurally much more equivalent to an open world game with open squares and numerous entry points.

>popular = good
maybe reddit is more your speed

How is enjoying a boring endgame a sign of good taste?

What's the appeal of open world games? Why do people like to spend 10 minutes walking to their next destination. Most of the time it's just a straight path of nothingness.

Some games do it right but it's usually filler in between the rest of the gameplay, which tends to be a lot more interesting. Do something different with movement mechanics or just take me from gameplay area to gameplay area, I don't have the time to just go around an empty open world anymore.

I know how dare people like games you don't.
Don't they know who you are?

Exploration.
You may prefer everything put within arms reach for easy enjoyment but not all do.

While the main parts of GTA are the story now it still holds onto its roots of being a game about stealing cars, driving them, and causing mayhem. There is open space so you can do this.

Vice City and San Andreas were good.

Finally someone else who felt the same way. That was my main issue with BOTW. SO MUCH SHIT. I guess it could have been worse and been empty, but there needs to be a balance between the right amoutn of content and literally shit under every damn rock.

>Don't they know who you are?
There's the appeal to popularity again
You really miss your downboats don't you

The whole problem with open world games came from this dogma that you are not supposed to prevent the player from doing what they want, when they want. This meant first removing all hard barriers between content, but soon meant removing soft barriers as well. Bethesda gives the most typical example. When they moved from Morrowind (a game with few hard, but many soft barriers, due to the lack of level scaling), to Oblivion, they decided it was important that the player should be allowed to go anywhere from the start of the game and not hit a true barrier to progress. This resulted in a system of level scaling that almost ruined the game single-handedly. The lesson here is that you can never have a true open world without any substantial barriers to player progression, because such a world will become boring and static over the course of play.

So what are good examples of open world games? I liked SotC but not the horse riding and lizards.

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???

>5 hour game vs 50 hour game

Yea Forums would love the game on the right since they're all about getting more bang for your buck even if 90% of the gameplay was walking. See botw.

see

STALKER series.

Proper gear and enemy progression, narrative that is well paced for an open world, side missions and quests play well with the main story and overall progression and pacing. Slav shit technical issues aside.

Some people say it isn't "true" open world because there are transitions between areas, but if that's the case, then Witcher 3 and even Skyrim aren't "real" open worlds because just about all of them have some kind of loading screen somewhere to their own certain degrees.

>it's bad to want more effort to be put into games rather than artificially padding out game hours with bigger maps
You're just like the people that support Pokemon sword and shield.

It doesn't take time to copy + paste corridoors either, dumbass.

Last open world game I played was FF15 and by god it was so empty and boring as fuck

yes

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TPBP

underrated and best post itt

Left: Too Small
Right: Too Sparse
The answer is in-between.
Other than sex-modding Skyrim, the only "open world" games I've really enjoyed are MMOs and even then because the presence of other real players in the world made it feel real. The huge open spaces and barriers between various parts of the world were important to keep player populations feeling organic.
>What's the appeal of open world games?
Well, in theory, it's the full sense of immersion of being in a real world with a real sense of space and place. You explore and learn about the place, its geography, dangers and treasures. You also gain more power to exert influence over the world, which is hopefully immersive and open-ended. So you can feel powerful, as if you were powerful in a real alternate reality.
>Why do people like to spend 10 minutes walking to their next destination. Most of the time it's just a straight path of nothingness.
In theory, the reason for this is so that you can eventually gain an ability like a teleport or an airship or other vehicle that allows you to travel to places more quickly. You wouldn't appreciate that kind of thing without having to suffer a little before. (Not saying that 10 minutes of running in 3D is good game design, just talking about the basic principles and fundamentals at play here).

No. See Minecraft or GTA
The best way to open world is to get to goal points faster and smaller sub points scale down how fast you need to be to get there
Truth be told, unlike in real life where survival and responsibilities could keep the average person's attention on the task at hand no matter the distance, it's more tolerable going by car then by foot. By proxy that this is a video game, which is escapism, the realism of walking to x destination for like 5-10 without much to do in between pisses off smoothbrains to much to appeal to them, thus calling it shit

tl;dr: No, it's not a bad concept, but it takes genuien autism and lots of it from talented devs to waste the time in building a completely living space to interact with meaningfully. Something most game industries don't have the time for or the money to waste on.

>MMOs (...) because the presence of other real players in the world made it feel real
Only in big city hubs and popular leveling spots, the rest of the world is empty and almost everything is instanced nowadays.

Unironically Breath of the Wild. I realize it's the most mainstream choice right now but it's literally the only open world that didn't make me want to smash my face into the wall after two hours of gameplay.

BotW looks more like an better designed theme park game than a true open world game.

The Guardian Legend was on the NES and was a fantastic open world game that combined open roaming through distinct regions of Naju and lairs that were shmups leading to bosses. You were a female cyborg that was humanoid while roaming and transformed into a star fighter in the lairs. Again, a fantastic open world concept ON THE NES.

>nowadays
Yeah I'm talking about classic Everquest and Warcraft in the first couple years of their respective lifespans. Those games were very well-populated and the population was spread out into most of the games' zones. There was nothing quite like running from Qeynos to Freeport in the original EQ. You leave the quiet safe newbie yards of a classic Medieval castle city, run across these huge ass Plains of Karana, up into the mountains where there's a keep held by humans but with persistent attacks from gnolls in the west and orcs in the east. Then you descend into dark Kithicor forest which was very dangerous and full of undead at night (and remember dying in Everquest is punishing). Finally you emerge into the Eastern commonlands which have a very different feel with different flora and fauna, as well as a variety of player character races that you rarely see west of the mountains (such as Dark Elves). Ultimately you make it to Freeport which feels like a very cosmopolitan desert town. And then you log off, feeling like you've completed a real journey, which took several hours and maybe even a couple of days of playing.

>See botw
Maybe if you're fucking blind and avoid combat/puzzles/sidequests all the time, sure.

>An open world is characterized by the world being open from the start
lmao retard

BotW's best aspect is it's overworked, as it's basically a huge playground to see how the physics, chemistry, and the player's abilities mix. It's the dungeons (or lack of them) where the game suffers. The real question is, is the game's free-form overworked even compatible with the item-based dungeons of Zelda's past?

>As a matter of fact, I don't really consider rockstar games to be open world
pffffff

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>That's certainly not the case in link to the past, where a bulk of the areas are locked behind story developments.
I get your point (and agree ALTTP isn't really an open-world game) but this isn't really true. The dungeon levels are blocked, yes, but probably over half of the overworld is available to explore right from the start. The only major off-limits areas are the Zora section, Death Mountain and Hyrule Castle.

but god damn it's still disappointing that ALTTP didn't have a bigger map. 20% or so bigger would have been perfect I think, to put a few more interesting transition areas between the major points of interest.

Just Cause

It is if you are very smart, yes.

If a link to the past isn’t open world since you have to progress to unlock areas then you can say that GTA games aren’t open world because you have to progress to unlock more islands.

I saw a video recently explaining why open world games didn't attract the guy who made the video, there is one point I liked, most "open world" games are small with very little or repetitive content, you can travel the whole world in less than a hour, technically not a problem for the first playthrough, but after the first one, the world is basically an illusion, and he argues that games like FF1-9/Fallout1/2 with their overworld, made the game feel larger, because it shows how big the world is, and don't try to create a false illusion.
He explained better, but I agree, "open world" games are fun for the first time, but after that, its a dead and barren world.

The right side is essentially what Earthbound 0 was.

Yeah I agree, I feel like botw2 has the potential to ACTUALLY be a 10/10 masterpiece like everyone said botw was