I dont really understand your point. Devs still curate where you meet the enemies. Its not like its procedurally generated map where everything is random.
I haven’t played it, so maybe they’ve done something to control it. I doubt it though. If you can come from any direction, that makes encounters much harder to design. Think about older Borderlands games when entering a compound. You’d come through one main gate and enemies would be set up with cover and you’d have to fight your way through. With open world you could do something like fly into the middle of the compound, and that’s has to be accounted for.
Check out Roboquest, for example. It has some really impressive movement options, but it’s choice of rooms let’s them restrict how much you can abuse them. You’ll always be fighting through the enemies from an expected direction.
I cant remember single time in my 20 hours of gameplay where i have tought that i hate fighting here, or that these enemies dont fit here.
This isn’t what I meant. There’s nuance between liking something and it being the best possible thing. It can be good and still be possible to be better. My biggest issue with open worlds is, like you mentioned at the beginning, fast travel. It takes so much time and resources to make an open world, just for players to fast travel past most of it. Is it really worth the that? Did it add that much to the experience? We could have more cheaper games with tighter designed experiences instead of games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. (BL3 cost $140m, and for cost “more than twice” that, so minimum $280m.)
I don’t think people understand that everything is an opportunity cost. If you make an open world game, that’s at the expensive of so much more. At minimum, it’s going to be less game to play (or longer between games and more expensive). Is getting a lot of space that you hardly interact with worth it?
The thing about open world is, you can make those smaller contained spaces you keep mentioning with Roboquest inside of some structure with a single entrance and boom, we have your preferred formula.
Sure. You can make those, but you have to spend a lot of money and time making the open world just to make places for the rooms to live. Is that worth it? Everything is opportunity cost. Did doubling the cost improve the game that much?
It depends on the game. Could a Sonic game be fun in open world? Yes, and it was. Would The Hunt? Or Supermeat Boy? Probably not. I’m just pointing out you can still design for your movement abilities in an open world.
For sure, you can. However, every modern game is trying to be an open world game. It’s stupid. We get ballooning budgets and dev cycles for games that don’t really get anything from being open world. I’d rather get three great less open games than one open world game that is sacrificing things to make the open world work.
I will agree theres a lot more. Theres just a lot more games in general. Pick up the Solium Infernum remake, or Windblown, or Wizard of Legend, or even Helldivers 2 isnt open world. Plenty to choose from. But I do emplore you to play Sonic Frontiers. Shit was dope. Also Sword of the Sea just came out, another fine addition to the atmospheric collection. Theres just a lot more now. So you’re gonna see a lot more and you’re gonna see a lot more terrible games.
It’s not even just about the games being terrible. The ballooning costs is just unsustainable. It’s the reason we’ve seen so many layoffs, and it sucks. It’s just mismanagement. The executives are the ones telling the developers to make open world games, for the most part. They don’t understand how that effects the rest of the design, or how much it ends up costing. They just see a trend and tell the studios they need to follow it.
If it was just that we got some shitty games I wouldn’t care. However, it’s effecting people’s lives. We need a more sustainable industry of smaller budget games that know what they are and plays to its strengths. We’ve got too many games trying to be everything games. It’s the reason studios ramped up the price to $70, and then, quickly after, $80. Soon they’ll be Charing $90-$100 because they let costs get too high to maintain.
I haven’t played it, so maybe they’ve done something to control it. I doubt it though. If you can come from any direction, that makes encounters much harder to design. Think about older Borderlands games when entering a compound. You’d come through one main gate and enemies would be set up with cover and you’d have to fight your way through. With open world you could do something like fly into the middle of the compound, and that’s has to be accounted for.
Check out Roboquest, for example. It has some really impressive movement options, but it’s choice of rooms let’s them restrict how much you can abuse them. You’ll always be fighting through the enemies from an expected direction.
This isn’t what I meant. There’s nuance between liking something and it being the best possible thing. It can be good and still be possible to be better. My biggest issue with open worlds is, like you mentioned at the beginning, fast travel. It takes so much time and resources to make an open world, just for players to fast travel past most of it. Is it really worth the that? Did it add that much to the experience? We could have more cheaper games with tighter designed experiences instead of games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. (BL3 cost $140m, and for cost “more than twice” that, so minimum $280m.)
I don’t think people understand that everything is an opportunity cost. If you make an open world game, that’s at the expensive of so much more. At minimum, it’s going to be less game to play (or longer between games and more expensive). Is getting a lot of space that you hardly interact with worth it?
The thing about open world is, you can make those smaller contained spaces you keep mentioning with Roboquest inside of some structure with a single entrance and boom, we have your preferred formula.
Sure. You can make those, but you have to spend a lot of money and time making the open world just to make places for the rooms to live. Is that worth it? Everything is opportunity cost. Did doubling the cost improve the game that much?
It depends on the game. Could a Sonic game be fun in open world? Yes, and it was. Would The Hunt? Or Supermeat Boy? Probably not. I’m just pointing out you can still design for your movement abilities in an open world.
For sure, you can. However, every modern game is trying to be an open world game. It’s stupid. We get ballooning budgets and dev cycles for games that don’t really get anything from being open world. I’d rather get three great less open games than one open world game that is sacrificing things to make the open world work.
I will agree theres a lot more. Theres just a lot more games in general. Pick up the Solium Infernum remake, or Windblown, or Wizard of Legend, or even Helldivers 2 isnt open world. Plenty to choose from. But I do emplore you to play Sonic Frontiers. Shit was dope. Also Sword of the Sea just came out, another fine addition to the atmospheric collection. Theres just a lot more now. So you’re gonna see a lot more and you’re gonna see a lot more terrible games.
It’s not even just about the games being terrible. The ballooning costs is just unsustainable. It’s the reason we’ve seen so many layoffs, and it sucks. It’s just mismanagement. The executives are the ones telling the developers to make open world games, for the most part. They don’t understand how that effects the rest of the design, or how much it ends up costing. They just see a trend and tell the studios they need to follow it.
If it was just that we got some shitty games I wouldn’t care. However, it’s effecting people’s lives. We need a more sustainable industry of smaller budget games that know what they are and plays to its strengths. We’ve got too many games trying to be everything games. It’s the reason studios ramped up the price to $70, and then, quickly after, $80. Soon they’ll be Charing $90-$100 because they let costs get too high to maintain.