When the player is told to do something straight away and then thrown out into the open world to explore, why should he want to waste time looking around in other areas if he HAS to get a certain task done?
On the contrary, when he focuses on the task he misses out on the exploration which defeats the purpose of having an interactive world.

>>3791033 (OP)
It's easy.
If the mission is an urgent threat the player has to carry it out.
By completing certain side missions you can delay the timer.
The urgent mission is not the whole game. At certain junctures the player can stop and explore the whole world. Then pick up the main missions when they are ready. You can make this feel organic by, for instance, having the king dismiss the player until he "has need", then after several in game days the player receives a non-urgent summons such as an open invitation to dinner, by this point they're off side questing and when the player finally gets around to seeing his king again the meeting to discuss the non-urgent event is interrupted by the actual urgent story mission.

>>3791041
I heard that the Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker made travel between the islands inconvenient to encourage you get everything done in one island before you leave. In the early Fallout games, more time of the time limit is spent traveling from one town to another. There is plenty of time to do side quests.

>>3791033 (OP)
Don't make urgent missions.
If something urgent should happen, it should happen within an ongoing quest that is most likely restricted to a certain area or you're transported to another area.

It's a common problem where designers or directors try to make content like quests that is more suited towards linear games in games where open world and exploration is at the core.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is a perfect example, it has quests which are so linear and restrictive that you can fail them for leaving a small mission area or try to solve the mission not specifically scripted for the mission.

>>3791033 (OP)
Who gives a shit?
If the player wants to do other shit and fuck around, let them.
If the player wants to do just the urgent shit, let them.
They can always replay the game and do things a different way if they want to see how it could've been had they chosen other options.

>>3791033 (OP)
Morrowind fixed this by locking you out of the main quest until you’ve explored, leveled up a few and raked up in a guild.
>What’s that? You wanted to ignore this massive interesting open world and autistically follow a quest directive instead? Lol. Lmao.
But yeah, the way to fix sense of urgency is by making the urgency a later event.

>>3791033 (OP)
>we
>fix
>with words words words
lmao, you ain't fixin shit, bitch.

>>3791033 (OP)
You need to stop talking about shit that doesn't need fixing
same with those faggots that complain about "boring" but classic tropey RPG stories. It's a perfectly fine hook; it's the most important thing you need after all the niceties in this genre, a solid plot hook

>>3791104
>Morrowind fixed this by locking you out of the main quest until
It didn't lock you out, you can ignore the recommendation and continue the questline. There's level scaling, so gaining experience isn't really necessary.

>how do we fix
>picture unrelated

>>3791033 (OP)
Basic shit like Baldur's Gate 2 did with needing to amass money for the Shadow Thieves to have them track down Imoen and Irenicus was a pretty good (but not perfect) solution.

It drives players to just explore and play the game, while making the goal of the main quest clear.

make it an important quest with a large and unokown time limit. have everybody be worried about the thing and have constant predictions all over the place, few of which come true. keep the urgency to more railroady single missions. or just have the quest be "stop the process of x" where x means higher level enemies and higher skill checks as the pc/party levels up, letting players choose to do side content that looks interesting or in character while "punishing" them for wasting time without actually punishing them.

>>3791104
>>3791120
>Morrowind fixed this by...
>literally just 1 line of throwaway dialogue
Every fucking time. Morrowbronies are so delusional.

>>3791033 (OP)
Don't write urgent story lines in places where the player can back out and do other things.

This is a writing problem, not a game design problem.

Fallout 1 doesn't have any problem with this.

The biggest time investment is overworld travel (or waiting off drug addictions I guess) and once you're in an area you might as well explore it and get every lead you can. There are no truly extraneous areas that you either don't go to following a lead or don't naturally run across as you travel following a lead. The game not encouraging literally random wandering is a good thing not a bad thing.

However, if that still burns your ass you can do it like Darklands, where you are turned loose to do random wandering at the start of the game but once you get strong (by crossing an arbitrary numerical threshold) God gives you the main quest mission. I can't actually remember if there's a game over timer on that mission though but I kinda think there is.

>>3791033 (OP)
It's quite simple. Just make the big bad mechanically challenging to defeat and impress upon the player that they need to gather strength and allies before they oppose it directly. Doing a sidequest to delve into some forgotten dungeon isn't you getting distracted, it's acquiring valuable artifacts to help you slay the big bad's minions. Doing a sidequest to help the ruler of a local town isn't getting distracted, because now he's in your debt and will send a contingent of soldiers to distract the big bad's army. Doing a sidequest to steal a jewel for the thieves means their top locksmith will help you bypass the many traps and doors in the big bad's lair. Etc etc etc. Of course player agency is important and they shouldn't be forced to do all or any sidequest either. But to maintain the fantasy beelining through the main quest right to the end without touching any side content should be supremely difficult and require great skill and possibly metaknowledge (or just beating your head against the brick wall until it cracks).

>>3791033 (OP)
I'm a simple guy. The urgent mission should just be a single mission that temporarily locks you out of free roam.
>"HELP!!! The vault will die soon if we don't replace the potato chips!!!"
>"You, come with me! We're getting those potato chips at super duper mart!"
>you're forced to follow the guy
>you acquire the potato chips BUT!!
>Plot B gets revealed
>Plot B introduces an evil character doing evil things
>go back to the vault and end the mission

I've yet to deal with a timer in an RPG that was so inconvenient I had to radically change my playstyle or complete the urgent quest at breakneck speeds. I find a timer less intrusive than time linked quests. Meaning doing Quest A will trigger an automatic failure for Quest B because "You only have time to do one" I think you should have time to do both. If a town is getting besieged and you rescue a Caravan in one afternoon how is the town already fully taken over with everyone dead in the span of an afternoon. I find that much more immersion breaking than a timer.

>>3791092
Correct answer. This is one reason Baldur's Gate 1 is better than Baldur's Gate 2.

mass effect 2 tried it with mixed results. some main act progressing missions are set to trigger after a certain amount of missions of your own choosing

>>3792117
>Correct answer. This is one reason Baldur's Gate 1 is better than Baldur's Gate 2.
BG2 doesn't have urgent missions.
Gathering money is the exact opposite of urgent. Urgent is like "oh shit anon, your home village is under attack and we can see the smoke and fire from a distance" while you go and do side quests for 10 hours.
The money gathering for the thieves is an open mission designed to make you fuck around in the world while still having a goal. It actively prevents progress in the MSQ until you've fucked around enough.

>>3792591
BG2 does have sidequests that are limited in time.. IIRC, one of those are companion sidequests. I specifically remember failing Jaheira's sidequest because I took too much time. (i also don't recall it being time limited, compared to FO1's very obvious day limit).
I think all companions have time sensitive quests.. I remember the rich adventurer female leaving me because i was taking too much time exploring

>>3791818
I think the worst example of that was Wasteland 2, they just shoehorned in binary choices at every fucking opportunity, where somehow no amount of fucking around mattered right until you moved your ass, at which point the world suddenly sprang back to life just to fuck you.

>>3792613
That's different.
Poorly telegraphed time sensitive quests or missing out on stuff based on time is something several old and new RPGs do. Pathfinder WotR is a more recent example.
This kind of stuff is usually just shitty. Especially when the player usually doesn't even know how much time they have left, which means there aren't any interesting decisions or time management to make, just rush through stuff or not.

It's just as stupid as putting forced stealth sections in action games.

>>3791033 (OP)
Exile/Avernum 3 has a cool idea where the world becomes gradually more destroyed by monsters the longer you take, I've never seen any other game do this though.

>>3792685
Well there is the turbo version of that with Space Rangers 2 where you can park on some shithole planet and wait five years and the bad guys will have procedurally conquered the galaxy and started fighting among themselves

>>3791645
this, rpg's should strive to make every quest and all gameplay content tie in and make sense with the story and the character you're playing as (if it's a pre-determined character like shepard or geralt). nothing breaks immersion more than content that doesn't have anything to do with your character, especially if the main story has urgency written into it like all three mass effect and witcher 3 has

>>3791232
nta. you'd have to be a fucking full-blown lunatic to kid yourself into thinking Morrowind did not kill 99 birds with that one throwaway stone. Oblivion and Skyrim should've taken it's example there

>>3791104
>Morrowind fixed this by locking you out of the main quest until you’ve explored, leveled up a few and raked up in a guild.
It doesn't even do that, why are you making up things?

>>3792591
>BG2 doesn't have urgent missions.
Metagaming. The characters don't know that.

>>3794906
>Metagaming. The characters don't know that.
You need a large sum of money. The only way for the characters/players to get that money is by looking around for things to do to make them money (i.e. look for and do quests).

The Shadow Thief quest is actually really good even if simple because
>it gives players a clear goal, so they know what to do to progress the story
>it makes them go out and explore and just play the game, which is how the game is meant to be played
>even when you amass said sum, you can choose when to go and hand it in. meaning you can choose to amass more money to power up more, etc.
>it gives the player some time to level, gear up and find companions before they go to spellhold

Instead of a "talk to bob when you want to continue the story", this kind of structure makes players play the game as intended.

>>3792591
>BG2 doesn't have hurgent missions
It is still the worse game. It'd be the worst, if BG3 didn't exist.

>>3791041
That's literally open world.
>>3791033 (OP)
I'd say games should have some linearity in it. The less linearity, the less urgency there is.