Let's discuss Open World and how we want it done.

[Megakoresh]

Let's discuss Open World and how we want it done.

It occurred to me that many games tried to make an RPG with Open World but none fully succeed in merging all the elements. Really none. One or another aspect failed.

With Elder Scrolls it was pretty much everything except for the Graphics and Lore.
With games like Dragon Age or Mass Effect (1&2) it was the not-so-open world setting (I am not even sure it's right to call them "Open World", even though you can travel anywhere at any time)

Now there is one game that in my opinion stands out: Kingdoms of Amaleur: Reckoning. This game, in my opinion, was the most successful in terms of creating an Open World RPG. And it is the ONLY game where the elements of Story-based RPG are properly tied into the open world.

That game did a rather terrible job at main story and main characters, but oh my god, how great was it’s Open World. I never felt so involved with some forgotten village in the middle of nowhere and an old man there who lost his daughter and asks you to bring her back. It’s still beyond me how they managed to make all these locations and completely unimportant side-characters so interesting and engaging.

When I go around Amaleur and meet some characters I usually scroll down and press of the character's name. Because in that game, that completely unimportant NPC in the middle of nowhere, who isn't mentioned anywhere else in the game, has no impact on the world, other characters or anything at all, is interesting to me. That NPC has a story, problems that are believable and logical, personality. That NPC is a character.

Then when I arrive to some village in another place, I talk to characters in it and ask about that village. There's always a story. It is always interesting, believable and lifelike. And none are ever the same. And what's best? I can play a role in it. And that role won't be in my journal alone. People of the village will react to my actions. They will really care and they will react differently based on their personalities. When I play Reckoning, I feel like I live in that world, and that is something no other Open World game has managed to evoke in me yet.

That kind of fusion Reckoning managed to do really redefined my perception of open world games forever. Any time I play an Open World game I compare it to Reckoning.

The aspects of the game I think are responsible for this kind of impression are character's responsiveness to your actions, believable responsiveness. If I help a village in the forest in it's disease issues, the characters there will thank me, but a guard in Klurikon won't mention it. If I join a famous Order of Mercenaries, guards and soldiers everywhere will recognise it, but civilians never will. When I end the war, everyone close to the front will recognise it, but if I come further to the flank, people might not even notice it.

I wholeheartedly recommend the devs at CDPR to play Reckoning thoroughly and note it's breakthroughs in Open World presentation. As much as the combat was used for marketing of that game, for me it has always been merely an icing on the cake of Open World. And both of it's DLC were amazing in how they always fixed the issues with main storyline by delivering 2 great storylines with really nice characters, something the main story of Reckoning didn't have.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Big Huge and 38Studios and Koa: Reckoning, but I really want to also know:

What is your favourite Open World and why?

 

[Zanderat]

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Big Huge and 38Studios and Koa: Reckoning,

Curt Schilling should stick to baseball?

 

[GuyNwah]

Curt Schilling should stick to baseball?

Yes, there's that lesson.

Seriously, 38 Studios demonstrated why a game studio, like any creative or R&D business, must know its capacity, control its costs, and match revenue and expenses. They ran through all their own capital and $75 million of state money, to sell 330,000 and bounce checks.

The game was indeed extraordinarily well executed, and there's lessons in game content and execution to be learned from what they did well. But there is also the lesson of trying to make a game do everything for everybody and, as a result, failing to sell enough to anybody.

 

[Megakoresh]

Yes, there's that lesson.

Seriously, 38 Studios demonstrated why a game studio, like any creative or R&D business, must know its capacity, control its costs, and match revenue and expenses. They ran through all their own capital and $75 million of state money, to sell 330,000 and bounce checks.

The game was indeed extraordinarily well executed, and there's lessons in game content and execution to be learned from what they did well. But there is also the lesson of trying to make a game do everything for everybody and, as a result, failing to sell enough to anybody.

I am still in two minds at to whether it failed because of them having unreasonable costs or because EA didn't do proper marketing. What EA has been doing in the last few years is essentially selling junk via hype. Very seldom to they actually make anything good these days, and even if they do they always screw this up in one way or another (DS3, SimCity). Keeping this in mind Reckoning was not well-known when it released, despite it having a demo and a cross-ME3 marketing campaign. If they wanted they could have sold the game on hype alone, they sell the contents of their exchange buffer on a regular basis in form of BF, Madden, FIFA and Sims.

I am obviously aware of my subconscious desire to blame EA for everything bad that happens in the industry, but all things considered if I did that, I wouldn't exactly be far from truth.

I didn't buy the game until a sale only because it was an EA game. There were no other reasons. If it was CDP game I would have pre-ordered it months before release. Hell, even if it was Ubisoft game I would still have pre-ordered it.

I don't think we should really worry about CDP not making back enough money from Witcher 3. I know I already reserved money for pre-ordering Witcher 3 as soon as it becomes available, just as I did for Witcher 2.

In addition to consumer loyalty and confidence, CDP also have a benefit of Witcher being an established franchise, which Reckoning didn't have.

 

[GuyNwah]

If they ran through $75 million of Other People's Money plus their own capital, they overspent grossly. New property, unknown studio, what, did they think they were going to sell 15 million copies on their first title -- that's what it would have taken to make a profit. Not even World of Warcraft ever sold 15 million. Moses couldn't have marketed it well enough to make a profit.

Still, a great game. But such a complete disconnect between what it takes to make a great game and what it takes to make a profit and stay in business that there will never be another.

 

[CostinRaz]

I personally don't want them to try and emulate Amalur, a game I got tired of after about 25 hours, mind you I completed a metric ton of quests by that point and cleared out about 40%-50% of the world so it did hold some appeal to me for a time, but after the gameplay lost the challenge as I crafted the best blacksmith gear and I was moving into fights slaughtering everything in my path with ease then yeah I grew bored VERY quickly.

 

[monotoy]

I personally don't want them to try and emulate Amalur

definitely not. I tried to play it 3 times, never made it more than 10 minutes or so, quite honestly I think it's a terrible game. Not saying it is since many people apparently like it, but I have no idea why.

 

[Megakoresh]

definitely not. I tried to play it 3 times, never made it more than 10 minutes or so, quite honestly I think it's a terrible game. Not saying it is since many people apparently like it, but I have no idea why.

Well you appear to be in minority. I honestly have no idea how can anyone think it's terrible, like all bias aside, I just don't know what elements can one dislike this much about it, but fair enough, there will be people who don't like the game.

I think that if you didn't like Reckoning you might not actually like Witcher 3. Reckoning didn't really have an engaging main story, but an Open World game is, regardless of it's main quest, still mainly about open world (assuming it's a properly made OW game). Reckoning did that pretty much flawlessly, like there is nothing it did word with Open World except for the desert area terrain (Melitele's tits, I hated that).

That is unless you didn't like the lore/graphics style. I personally found it quite spectacular, there is nothing quite like it, it's very unique, which is what made it interesting to explore and "research".

I have seen several opinion of Reckoning this far, but nobody actually saying what they want or don't want the Open World to be.

If they ran through $75 million of Other People's Money plus their own capital, they overspent grossly. New property, unknown studio, what, did they think they were going to sell 15 million copies on their first title -- that's what it would have taken to make a profit. Not even World of Warcraft ever sold 15 million. Moses couldn't have marketed it well enough to make a profit.

Still, a great game. But such a complete disconnect between what it takes to make a great game and what it takes to make a profit and stay in business that there will never be another.

I had no idea they spend that much money. I mean 75M is not something you can't make back. And you are exaggerating greatly with 15M copies required (at full price that is 750M in revenue, which is kinda 10 times larger than the budget you posted), but it's still quite a lot. That explains the amount of content that game has. I have to wonder, how on earth did they actually GET all that money. Nobody will invest into the project if they don't think it's not going to make the money back. And certainly not EA.

I personally don't want them to try and emulate Amalur, a game I got tired of after about 25 hours, mind you I completed a metric ton of quests by that point and cleared out about 40%-50% of the world so it did hold some appeal to me for a time, but after the gameplay lost the challenge as I crafted the best blacksmith gear and I was moving into fights slaughtering everything in my path with ease then yeah I grew bored VERY quickly.

I played the game for around 150 hours (give or take). Of those 80 hours is my 100% playthrough. And I played with the intend to beat everything. I skipped some dialogues, though not all, and played through DLC. I did not do repeatable quests. So that's 80 hours for 100% with medium pace and no wiki, as I might have missed some hidden stories.

There is no way to clear out 40% of the world in 25 hours. Just plain impossible. Even if you skip all dialogues, rush through all cutscenes, use OP Archmage spells like Meteor strike, in 25 hours you would be able to clear 30% at most. And keep in mind that by the time I did that playthrough I was very good at the game. I think in all of 80 hours I died like 2 times.

If combat is what was moving you, then I see why you got bored after 25 hours. Combat was, while good, not something that could keep me going. What kept me interested was the world, as I said. That everything, from large cities to smallest villages, from highest of nobles to lowest of rag-pickers had their own, unique and charming story.

I would never want them to emulate anything, mind you, and I doubt they would be able to recreate all that amount of detail in the world without an insane budget (it's a LOT of voice-acting and character creation), this thread is more aimed at showing what makes a great open world actually great. I said my opinion. Still waiting on everybody else's

 

[GuyNwah]

I had no idea they spend that much money. I mean 75M is not something you can't make back. And you are exaggerating greatly with 15M copies required (at full price that is 750M in revenue, which is kinda 10 times larger than the budget you posted), but it's still quite a lot. That explains the amount of content that game has. I have to wonder, how on earth did they actually GET all that money. Nobody will invest into the project if they don't think it's not going to make the money back. And certainly not EA.

They got the money by promising jobs to the state of Rhode Island, which last time I looked was not known for being savvy about the computer game market.

And retail sales are far greater than developer revenue. Publisher, wholesaler, retailer, everybody gets a bigger piece of the pie than the developer. They would never see 50 million per million copies. More like 5.

 

[GoodGuyA]

Can we stop debating about the business of this game? Yeah, it sucked and I was following it closely when it happened. Not relevant to game design merits.

The game in itself was all right, but it didn't really feel as free as it proposed. Mainly it felt like an MMO, which was successful in the sense that you did get a world that felt like it needed to be explored. What I played of it though, the most annoying thing was the traversal of that world. There is little active choice in getting from place to place, and it becomes cumbersome before long to have your sense of wonder devastated by high walls. I will give it credit for filling that world with enough things, but I think other games are better in allowing you full range of their environment.

 

[goopit]

What I liked about W2 was that nook and cranny design where there was a bunch of hidden stuff you wouldn't normally notice similar to Dark Souls. I want them to take it further now that we're able to jump. We should have some jumping puzzles to get to rooftops,caves or secret entrances to a fortress stuff like that.

something like this but more realistic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAo5bbRSOKI

 

[CostinRaz]

There is no way to clear out 40% of the world in 25 hours. Just plain impossible. Even if you skip all dialogues, rush through all cutscenes, use OP Archmage spells like Meteor strike, in 25 hours you would be able to clear 30% at most. And keep in mind that by the time I did that playthrough I was very good at the game. I think in all of 80 hours I died like 2 times.

I did not count the DLCs, but 30-40% of the entire vanilla games with all it's quests? ( It's just an estimate of mine though, not pure fact, so it could be around 30% I dunno right now without the game installed ). Yes. I cleared out entire zones of their quests before I got bored like hell of it and just decided to head to the frontlines. And that is with talking with everyone properly. Granted this is from the hours youtube showed me so it could very well be more but I very much doubt I spent more then 30 hours on all of it.

And the NPCs? I found many of them dull and uninteresting.

 

[Megakoresh]

And the NPCs? I found many of them dull and uninteresting.

Yeah, you are strange.

Anyway, so what is it about open world that makes it good for everyone else? I still haven't seen anyone actually say it.

 

[CostinRaz]

Yeah, you are strange.

Or not everyone shares your tastes. How many NPCs ( especially Fae ) looked similar? How many used the same voice actors? I can think of several dozen just of the top of my head and I am talking here of NPCs you could actually engage in a conversation with. So no I don't think Amalur as an open world is what that they should try and copy.

For what it's worth I DID enjoy it a lot more then Skyrim and Fallout in terms of how the world felt alive. But it's certainly not the best as I see it.

Anyway, so what is it about open world that makes it good for everyone else? I still haven't seen anyone actually say it.

I personally don't like open worlds, but what I'd like CDPR to do is the following:

Cities/Towns and Villages: Look at Assassin's Creed and copy that in terms of crowds especially. AC series felt so alive to me. Perhaps CDPR could do with less NPCs but with the life cycles that we've seen in both TW1 and TW2 but improved upon. Add a sense of randomness to their daily routine as well and make it so that interactions with new NPCs can affect this routine ( like say someone steals their purse then they go looking for it and then go to the guards ).

Take this element and add it to the wild life as well. Don't have a pack of wolves just siting in a specific place for the entire waiting for you to kill them, have them move around the world from their starting place but interacting with it as well: Hunting for food, sleeping, being able to fall into a group of bandits/soldiers and be slaughtered or slaughter them in return. If one of the pack get's wounded or dead then it moves without him but in a different way. etc.

Don't have spawning enemies, or if you do have an explanation for that. For instance in some games you go to a village and get a quest for some bandits that will then spawn for you to kill even if you've already visited the area it was empty then. Instead have the bandits already there and you can kill them or not and if you do you arrive at the village and if you did soon after killing the bandits then there will be complaints about how they've been menacing the village but you can tell them you've dealt with them and get paid. If you wait before entering the village there will be remarks that bandits have disappeared and it would be harder to convince them you did it.

Have timed quests that expire that will not even show up if you ignored to even pick them up and add consequences for ignoring quests.

 

[Megakoresh]

Or not everyone shares your tastes. How many NPCs ( especially Fae ) looked similar? How many used the same voice actors? I can think of several dozen just of the top of my head and I am talking here of NPCs you could actually engage in a conversation with. So no I don't think Amalur as an open world is what that they should try and copy.

For what it's worth I DID enjoy it a lot more then Skyrim and Fallout in terms of how the world felt alive. But it's certainly not the best as I see it.

I try to ignore the fact that they look alike or use the same voice actor, since I understand you can't possibly have enough money for everyone to have their own actor or model. I certainly would never expect CDPR to make everyone look unique and have different voices, and you shouldn't either.

What I enjoyed is content. In other Open World games you treat NPCs as NPCs. They are nothing more than quest items. In Amaleur they are actual characters, and each has a story, personality and logical believable problems. Same with locations. That is what I liked, and I hope CDPR will attempt to create that in Witcher 3.

I like your suggestions though, it's essentially saying that the world should be dynamic. Open World games really miss that. It's quite annoying sometimes that the quests are what controls the world instead of it being persistent. Dead Rising had the right idea to a certain extend. Not sure I like to be put on a timer for the main plot, but it's time-persistent quests have really helped with the pacing.

 

[CostinRaz]

I try to ignore the fact that they look alike or use the same voice actor, since I understand you can't possibly have enough money for everyone to have their own actor or model. I certainly would never expect CDPR to make everyone look unique and have different voices, and you shouldn't either.

They should take a long hard look at Bioware and how they handle such things. As in they design differently looking NPCs that you can talk to and while they do reuse voice actors quite a bit you generally don't notice it as much as in Amalur or Withcer 1 or Witcher 2 because they are spaced out so much. This is what I believe CDPR should do. Especially with models.

 

[Daywalker30]

Add a sense of randomness to their daily routine as well and make it so that interactions with new NPCs can affect this routine ( like say someone steals their purse then they go looking for it and then go to the guards ).

I second that.
A daily routine is good, but there should be randomness like you said, like for example a shopkeeper closes his shop for a few minutes or a hour because he needs to go to a doctor, go to a barber or is awaiting resupply, something like that.

 

[Megakoresh]

They should take a long hard look at Bioware and how they handle such things. As in they design differently looking NPCs that you can talk to and while they do reuse voice actors quite a bit you generally don't notice it as much as in Amalur or Withcer 1 or Witcher 2 because they are spaced out so much. This is what I believe CDPR should do. Especially with models.

Please do not compare BioWare to 38 or CDPR. BioWare is one of the largest studios on Earth, EA's biggest studio. The only one which beats BioWare is probably Valve or Blizzard. And I honestly don't know of any non-publishing studio that has access to the kind of money BioWare has access to or even a fraction of it. They can afford to have hundreds of modellers designing secondary characters alone. 75M dollars of a budget that Reckoning had, which killed 38 outright, would probably be something BioWare made on ME3 pre-orders alone.

What you are asking is extremely costly. The only way I see that happening is via some sort of facial features generator which can generate non-important characters. And even then this only accounts for the looks.

 

[CostinRaz]

What you are asking is extremely costly. The only way I see that happening is via some sort of facial features generator which can generate non-important characters. And even then this only accounts for the looks.

Extremely costly? Bioware pulled it off much better in DA and Mass Effect then CDPR did in their games with regards to character models and voice acting and while the entire company has around 800 employees you need to remember that Bioware had 3 game franchises they were developing at one point: Star Wars, DA and ME. TOR especially had a load of developers but DA? Well DA2 cost 20 million to make while TW2 cost 8 million, keeping in mind the difference of salaries between Poland and Canada ( because the vast majority of cash get's spent on paying salaries for developers ) it does mean that they had about the same number of employees.

Yes TW2 looked much better and had much richer locations a great story and so on, but the point here is about reused character models and voice actors and in that Bioware has done a better job then CDPR, that is a fact and it wasn't extremely costly.

 

[Username.]

" Let's discuss Open World and how we want it done"

I want it done like this:

And not like this: