How do we fix the open world game design?

>>716404247 (OP)
play with gamepad in left hand, doomscrolling on phone with right hand.

Kojimas genius fixed it

>>716404247 (OP)
Horizon fixed it by having a gorillian fast travel points all over the map.

>>716404439
Death Stranding is honestly a great example to follow because it makes navigation itself the point. >>716405334 has it backwards. Why have an open world if you only want to avoid it? Open world games need to be about the journey, not the destination. This is honestly why quest markers and fast travel ruin it.

>>716404247 (OP)
Fill the middle with more goblins and put actually meaningful loot in the box.

We stop using it.

>>716404247 (OP)
Put more shit in the blank spaces. Open world games are at their best when there are tons of little secrets to find everywhere. For all its faults, Skyrim does a pretty good job of this - wander around in any direction for a few minutes and you'll at least find something to fight or a random skeleton to loot.

>>716405468
>fast travel ruins open world
Anon... Nobody is forcing you to use the fast travel. But if there were no fast travel, you'd be forced to walk for hours.

>>716405494

>>716405468
I also don't think >>716405490 >>716405627 these are good ideas. Don't put dopamine hits around every corner. Don't make every square foot a "destination" in its own. Tripping over something every couple of metres remove agency and intentionality from exploration.
>>716405904
Yes, and in CoD you're forced to shoot for hours, but no one complains. Why? What I'm saying is, make it so people don't want to fast travel in the first place.

>>716404247 (OP)
I think we need to start with know what a good open world even is. What are the 3-5 best done open worlds? (Not open world games, which are the result of all aspects of the game, just the world's themselves)
I'm thinking maybe New Vegas? Elden Ring felt incredible on the first playthrough, and then the magic was lost on the second playthrough.

>>716404247 (OP)

>>716404439
doomscrolling isnt fun. idk why zoomers find it entertaining

>>716404247 (OP)
Add varied environments with fun traversal options, interactivity, or navigation and combat encounters.

you make the travelling a race. be it on foot, horse or whatever.

>>716404247 (OP)
Seems okay to me

>>716404247 (OP)
The open world doesn't need fixing. The players do. If you can't find appreciation in the minutes between point A and point B, then you have no appreciation of art and introspection. You want everything given to you back to back. No sense of discovery. No build up. No payoff. Just quick and frequent events to stimulate an ADHD riddled brain incapable of going 2 seconds without something happening. Learn to take in the moment. Appreciate the music, the scenery, the journey.
>but I value my time and I want the game to respect it!
If you truly valued your time, you wouldn't be playing video games to begin with. Fuck you. Never make a video game. If you do ever make a game, I'm going to look up a guide and speedrun through it just so I can see as little of it as possible and completely ignore all the hard work you put into the attention to detail and then I'll refund it before my two hours are up.

We live in a time where great games like Skyrim and Elden Ring can exist but your brain has been so unfathomably rotted by COD and other hyper fast paced games that you can't fathom any semblance of artistry or constructed experience. When you go hiking, do you complain that the trail is too long with nothing to do along it? Do you complain that the forest or mountain is too big? You move even slower in real life than you do in video games you fucking. Your entire experience with video games hinges on buying, starting, finishing, and moving onto other video games on repeat, over and over. You probably don't even have over 10 hours in any game in your library, you just rush through every single one. Is this a FOMO thing? You HAVE to play the next new thing to be able to talk about it with everyone? How fast do you scroll on social media?

OH THE TREES, THE TREES IN REAL LIFE, THERE SO MANY TREES IT'S REUSED ASSETS FUCK you don't know what you want from games. I'm fucking the sick and I'm tired, honestly

>>716406736
>yay, I now got 32 mundane Iron Swords and 12 Leather Armors
>time to sell them and add 97 gold to my over 10k gold!

even emptiness isn't necessarily a bad thing, if handled properly. The problem is that open world is overdone and more often than not badly executed

>>716404247 (OP)
>How do we fix the open world game design?
force people like you to go outside so you understand there needs to be a journey.

>>716404247 (OP)
We don't, open world is exactly how the retards want them to be.
As stupid as it is, people enjoy walking around big open, empty fields with nothing to do or driving around with no objective.

>>716406887
>We live in a time where great games like Skyrim and Elden Ring can exist
You had me till here

>>716407183
Based. We need more carefully curated games with invisible walls and scripted setpieces like us consolechads grew up on.

>>716406887
Holy bssed.

>>716404247 (OP)
Unironically, generative AI. As soon as AI can produce assets of good quality and at a reasonable rate open world games are going to be packed with engaging content. Skyrims "something every 30 seconds" is going to become the norm instead of the exception.

>>716406736
Behind two of those small doors is a goblin, and behind another is a treasure chest. You must pick which door to open, behind which you will be rewarded with whatever is on the other side. Each treasure chest has at 10% chance of being a mimic, and each goblin has a 50% chance of being female and in search of a husband. You select a door, let us say #2, and then are informed of the following: behind door #1 is a goblin, and also that you are permitted to change which door you have selected. Do you change which door you wish to open, /v/, and if so, to which door?

>>716405468
>Death Stranding is honestly a great example to follow because it makes navigation itself the point
Except the game constantly undermines its biggest strength by giving you a bunch of vehicles and tools for you to avoid doing the most interesting thing which is walking.

Death Stranding deserves like a remix or something, a complete rebalance and rework of the game where vehicles only work on roads and shut down immediately if you go off them, walking should be prioritized and mandatory. It's so crazy how the game is like 500 times better the times where you are forced into these situations where you go on long treks, the absolute best feeling is when you arrive, all your packages are rusty, your shoes are fucked, you're barely scraping by and then you deliver it and you go take a shower in the private room. That feels so good but the game is constantly shoving shit at you to streamline the whole experience and the game is just worse off because of it. And from what it seems DS2 takes this even further, DS1 already undermined itself enough as it was, what even is there left if you take it further?

Kojima should have had the balls to truly commit to the walking simulator thing.

>>716404247 (OP)
Problem: Open World adds empty distance between points of interest.
Solution: Add high speed movement, include obstacles to navigate around and ramp off of.
That's it. That's why GTA is such a big fucking hit. It has just the right scale with just the right speed in cars, with a lot of stuff to crash into. Players almost universally enjoy moving between locations, no need for fast travel.

Don't use too great a scale, or else you'll end up with crap like Just Cause where even with jets, you're waiting for many minutes flying in a straight line through empty space.

>>716405904
Believe it or not, the existence of fast-travel is actually the problem.
>Why?
If it exists, people are naturally inclined to using it and once they start, they won't stop, cause it's a nice convenience, but it massively cheapens the world as a whole. Even someone who chooses not to use it at first might start using it after a long day of work or looking and thinking "fuck, I gotta go back now" and then just say "fuck it, fast travel, I did the path once." You value the distance and the things on that road far less when you literally teleport past them.
It's a bit of a buzzword in some circles, but the friction of having to manually walk/drive somewhere makes it more memorable.

Some people will bounce off a game without fast travel, but that's because they didn't actually want to play an open-world EXPLORATION game in the first place.

>>716404247 (OP)
But look at how much longer bottom is, think of all the more game you get.

If your game has fast travel then why bother with the bits in between? Just make selectable missions within clearly delineated boundaries.

>>716408024
Fast travel is for when you've already been through an area 10 times slowly and just want to get across a patch of land to turn in a quest or something. People that get mad at the idea of fast travel are idiots who have nothing worthwhile to say about game design.

>>716406960
Normies love doing mundane and repetitive tasks, it's what they do at work which is most of their live already anyway.
This is why the whole open world thing is so hugely profitable.

>>716406114
Elden Ring gets away with it by the sheer size of the world. By second playthrough though you realize how much better the intentionally designed areas are.
The DLC somehow fucks that all up by making huge empty pointless areas

>>716406887
Video games aren't real life. Games where you point the stick forward are mocked as walking simulators because they don't offer anything of value as a GAME, sections where you walk and talk are widely disliked because they take the player away from the GAME.
If the journey doesn't add to the game, if it's just empty meandering, if the traversal isn't fun, if no challenge is offered, then the designers lost the point of making it a game.

>>716407372
Dad of Onions is, in fact, better than Starfield
Imagine being less of a game than a fucking movie

>>716404247 (OP)
Make the world design more like the original Stalker trilogy where areas are disjointed but compact and filled with shit to find instead of going for wide open maps of nothingness.

>>716404247 (OP)
Either fill it with interesting shit or get rid of it entirely. My thought is to make a hybrid open-wold game where only sections are open world.

>>716408258
You're not seeing the bigger picture. Why is the game making you cross the same area ten times just turn in a quest or something? Is that worthwhile game design?

>>716406887
Didn't read but have sniffed my farts lately? Therrrrrrrrp!

>>716404247 (OP)
Hexen and Turok

>>716408694
Don't pretend to be me, dipshit.

>>716406887
>The open world doesn't need fixing. The players do. If you can't find appreciation in the minutes between point A and point B, then you have no appreciation of art and introspection. You want everything given to you back to back. No sense of discovery. No build up. No payoff. Just quick and frequent events to stimulate an ADHD riddled brain incapable of going 2 seconds without something happening.
Modern game design incentivises this behaviour, though. And they can be designed not to do that.

>>716408258
I want to use magic like in ultima online.
I want to grow reagents for spellcasting in a garden outside my house. I want runes to cast mark on so I can then cast recall with it and return there.
Fast travel should involve more game elements.

>>716408757
I'm... replying to a post...

>>716405904
its existence irreversibly and destructively affects level and quest design.

>>716407104
There is no journey if there is no goal. The goal is why the journey begins and continues in the first place. In fact, whether you realize it or not, 'feeling good' is the hidden goal motivating nearly all of your actions.

>>716408871
You butted into a conversation and replied in earnest to a shitpost.
And I intentionally didn't respond to him because he was obviously shitposting.
I explicitly listed that people will use having gone through an area before as an excuse to use fast travel.. and he just straight up repeated it as a "justification" for why people use fast travel and then made an arbitrary passive-aggressive attack on me by insinuating I am "mad" about fast travel and that my opinions are thus worthless.
Dipshit.

>>716406887
Make the journey between point A and B actually meaningful, or just don't include the long winding path. Fast Travel nowadays is a given, there needs to be a reason to not just click 'teleport to this location' when given the option to do so.

>>716409050
>You butted into a conversation
Well, I posted >>716405468 so actually it was you who was butting into the conversation and pretending to be me, and I was merely re-asserting my rightful place. I don't care if he triggered you by insinuating that you're mad, I just thought it worthwhile to point out that fast travel vs. endless repetition is a false dichotomy predicated upon bad open world design, entirely aside from any personal beef you now have with this poster, or me. I think you should work on not taking things personally.

>>716408387
>>716406114
>>716405468
I'm doing a full 2nd playthrough right now, and a problem is the game has is that the open world itself was made with fast travel in mind. Right off the bat with many dungeons and areas, the only option out is to teleport. Or the roundtable hold, where teleporting is the only way to get there. This immediately sets pace.

On top of that, the world is very vertical, so if you want to back track from late game to early game, its a straight line through everything else. And the overworld gets incredibly boring because Torrent isn't very engaging, the ambient music gets annoying, and the exploration is generally repetitive. There isn't much fun to be had within that open world.

>>716406736
>all those minuscule rewards and copypasted dungeons with little challenge
grim

>>716404247 (OP)
top: dark souls 1
bottom: elden ring

>>716409275
>you who was butting
I was not the first reply to that post. I am not going to read any more of your post, double dipshit.

>>716409434
yeah, just let me spend half an hour drawing new doors and chests just to get green arrowed by retards

>>716409508
this is unironically what gamedevs say

shadow of the colossus is emptier than most modern open world games and everybody loves it.

>>716409762
yeah how astute of you, now fuck off

>>716409491
>I was not the first reply to that post
To my post? No. You were replying to the reply to my post, however. But none of that has any bearing whatsoever on who was "butting in" or not in a public discussion.
Honestly, what is your diagnosis, because I am fascinated.

>>716406887
Nah, you're wrong. Most open world games miss the mark because the navigation/exploration isn't enjoyable, and the world's these devs make don't pop.I agree with your point about taking the time to appreciate the overall artistic design of the world, but most games do not create their worlds well enough to do that and it becomes a slog. And its incredibly stupid to compare the magnificence of exploring real nature to exploring a game. Orders of magnitude.

One game that does it well for example is Sea of Thieves. It makes the open world itself a fundamental mechanic for the game which you have to properly navigate, half of the challenge is properly sailing different conditions. The environment 'pops' with life, it feels energized. Granted this is a very niche example because if you don't like the sailing mechanics then you won't enjoy the game, but it is an example of a game that makes the journey itself fun to play.

>>716409849
Riding the horse and using your sword to navigate in SotC is cool though

>>716408387
>>716409287
>>716406114
So it sounds like a good open world isn't necessarily size, but how dense with things to do there are. This makes sense. I don't think anyone would want Minecraft to not be open world. And Minecraft is, literally, made entirely of interactable stuff you can play with. So what open world is the most dense with things to do? Saint's Row 3?
Arkham City and Arkham Knight feel like great open worlds in this aspect. Traversing them feels like gameplay all on its own. And there is lots to do. But while the quantity is good, the quality can suffer. Riddler Trophies, especially in AK, feel like padding.

>>716408909
yes but nobody has fond memories of the goal, it's always the journey. the goal is just a trophy you keep on a stand.
I don't think open world is necessarily broken as much as nobody cares to explore modern open world games.
yeah, I sure am invested in the landscape fucking ubisoft crafted for their latest aaa gayslop fotm. and even though I love er, I know every nook and cranny has irrelevant rewards I don't care about.

>>716410326
If the base assumption is that travelling is just the boring thing you do between the things you actually want to be doing, then you end up with "dense" open worlds where there's something new to do around every corner. However, if traversing the world is itself a fun game, then the world is automatically dense with challenges even if other things are quite far apart. The latter seems a much better use of an open world.

>>716410278
sotc fits the horseshoe theory I guess
it's so empty it doesn't feel like padding, it's not placing random cellphone towers to keep the player engaged
instead the handcrafted landscape and finding out what's on the other side is the motivation

>>716406887
You're a retard, and your take is retarded. I literally go hiking. I used to go bicycling hours on end too. Driving a few hours to/from a destination is nothing to me.

I don't buy and play video games for a walking simulator with a lackluster imitation of real life scenery. I buy and play games for the action, the challenge, the characters and the story. I get enough "walking simulator" in my real life. It's retards like you that justify games without gameplay, who need more time in the real world.

>>716410935
Then play linear action games

>>716404247 (OP)
Do you want an unironically true solution or just want to ragebait.

If it's the former then the answer is randomness.
If you'll have everything fixed in place already then going the open world route is just waste of time and illusion of choice.

>>716410616
So in your opinion, a good open world is less about the things you can do in it, but rather the traversal of that world itself? (this is not sarcastic I'm just keeping the convo going. This is the first non culture war or coomer slop thread on the site in days)
To me, it feels reductive to say that density of gameplay variety can be boiled down to a "base assumption that travelling is just the boring thing you do between the things you actually want to be doing." Traveling should be fun yes, but to me, traveling is gaemplay that is rewarded with a "higher tier" gameplay experience where you can do even more engaging activities when you get there. Much the same that mountain climbing is enjoyable, but there should be a view at the top that makes the effort worth it. Otherwise it feels like we're making a sandwich and spending all our time on the bread if that makes sense.

>>716410935
Nta the anon you're responding to, just curious since your take sort of conflicts with the other anon. How would you feel about a game where the travel is "the point." (Death Stranding comes to mind.) For an open world to be "good" does it need to focus on the traversal of that world, or the rewards for traversing? (obviously a mixture of both is important, but what is the composition of that mixture?)

>>716409275
>>716409491 here,
Sorry, I took some time to think and you're right, I should stop taking things so personally all the time. What people say to each other on a public board has nothing to do with me, and losing my cool prevents me from rationally considering what people say. Thank you.

>>716410716
Yes exactly

>>716411327
>So in your opinion, a good open world is less about the things you can do in it, but rather the traversal of that world itself?
I don't think it's a hard rule - obviously if you're going to have other things in the world besides just traversal, you have to make those things fun as well, and that would make a journey more worthwhile. But if traversal is itself also not a slog then devs wouldn't have to interrupt your journey with shiny things all the time to prevent you from missing fast travel. You need a balance.

>>716404247 (OP)
Here, all fixed up

>>716411724
Now we're talking

>>716411327
nta (neither) but personally I think open world as a mechanic is inherently broken and won't ever please everyone
on one hand you have broad appeal with games like gta and er that do nothing with their open world other than marketing and a vague sense of awe
and on the other you have games that actually make use of it but end up appealing to a smaller, niche, audience, like shadow of the colossus
sotc is one of the few good open world games too so you should be using it as a baseline
ultimately you can do tons of things with the mechanic, handcraft the map/rng it with blocks, meaningless rewards everywhere/meaningful rewards in specific points of interest, barren (sotc)/adhd (death stranding) traversal, verticality. and everything in between. but a open world game will always end up feeling like an experimental game when you consider mario for the nes or arcade games are what games should be.

>>716408313
>doing mundane and repetitive tasks
That's all video games.

>>716406335
It's not fun, but it's mentally stimulating enough to stave off boredom. Kind of the same reason you've been posting here for the past 20 years.

I was going to shitpost about something, but got lost in photoshop, so I just kinda spent the past hour and a half happily photo shopping.

>>716404247 (OP)
Sims3>Sims4

>>716404247 (OP)
You can't, the theoretical open world game that uses the space to communicate a living breathing world will NEVER happen

Literally all you need to do is make moving around the world fun. All open world games should have dirtbikes.

>>716404247 (OP)
Like this.

>>716411327
>For an open world to be "good" does it need to focus on the traversal of that world, or the rewards for traversing?
I've never played Death Stranding. When you say "game where the travel is "the point."" Need For Speed came to my mind (kinda mid game, but driving is the point).
I don't know what you mean by "good." Personally if you want me to explore most of the world in your game, either make your story so engaging to the point I'm digging around for more lore, or make transversing itself so interesting/enjoyable I'm going everywhere just because I can. So imo there is no one-size-fits-all. Imo it isn't automatically a shit game if it sucks to explore the world, so long as exploring is completely optional. It may be shit at being an open world game though.

>>716408425
Only retards started calling any games with big areas walking simulators. Walking simulator means something like Gone Home, it's not a shitpost word for underage third worlders to cry about Ubisoft open worlds or whatever other inane complaints you make.

>>716408694
>Why is the game making you cross the same area ten times just turn in a quest
Because it's an open world game and not a linear one. By nature of being open, you're going to explore environments multiple times throughout the game, making lots of trips between areas. It's not a one and done type thing, and if it is, then it shouldn't be open world to begin with.

>>716409050
You being a fucking retard doesn't make my post a shitpost. You ignoring that I'm talking about fast travel as a convenience after having gone through an area multiple times as opposed to your worthless strawman about having "explored it" once doesn't change anything either. You're the kind of idiot who gets mad that PC games have traditionally been built around having quicksaves.

>>716408557
Never played Starfield because Bethesda games suck, but nuGoW is about as bad as games get.