Urgency in free roaming games, and/or lack thereof

[Haruspex_Pariah]

As in the sole survivor is building settlements while trying to convince everyone they meet that they’re urgently looking for whatsisname. Meanwhile Geralt is chasing question marks and playing gwent while similarly turning the continent upside down looking for that girl he knows.

Am I to conclude that an open world game with tons to explore just should not have a main plot that implies urgency? Because I do enjoy chasing question marks and exploring all the cool stuff the devs put into the game. But then I progress the plot a bit and I’m supposed to snap out of that and feel like we’re desperately trying to do something or another.

[Eldan]

I don't think I've ever liked a game with a (hidden or visibile) main quest timer that I liked. So, yeah, probably. "I'm chasing my abducted baby, but first let me chat to this cool robot about helping them with repairs" always takes me out of a game.

[factotum]

Yes, main quest which is supposedly super urgent and then having all that side content doesn't really match up well. I think the Witcher 3 handled it reasonably well, though, because (a) you're a Witcher and it's kind of your job to deal with monster problems and (b) you didn't really have a clue where to find Ciri anyway. Fallout 4 is the one with the biggest disconnect between main quest urgency and sidequest messing around, IMHO.

It works best where you genuinely have no clue how to carry out the main quest and therefore speaking to everyone you meet and agreeing to help them in order to try and get more information is actually a strategy you can see someone using.

[veti]

Your game can be free, or it can be urgent. Pick one.

If you want to make an open world game, it's unhelpful to give it a "plot" that, explicitly or not, gives your character an urgent, overriding motivation. Fallout 4 is one of the worst examples. And this is sad because the previous two Fallout games (3 and NV) threaded this needle much more elegantly. Both give you reasonable levels of personal involvement and motivation, but without the urgency.

There are enough games that manage this balance well that, when a particularly bad example comes along, it does get called out.

If you want to tell a compelling linear story, make a linear game. It's not hard.

[GloatingSwine]

In the case of Witcher 3 it's also very on brand.

The last three books in the novel series basically amount to Geralt bumbling around the continent doing sidequests until Ciri literally teleports him to the final dungeon.

And yeah, if you're going to have a wide open sandbox world full of sidequests, have a narrative that encourages you to engage with it on those terms. (That said with Fallout 4 I use an alternative start mod and aggressively ignore the main quest because it's real bad.)

[Rynjin]

Your game can be free, or it can be urgent. Pick one.

If you want to make an open world game, it's unhelpful to give it a "plot" that, explicitly or not, gives your character an urgent, overriding motivation. Fallout 4 is one of the worst examples. And this is sad because the previous two Fallout games (3 and NV) threaded this needle much more elegantly. Both give you reasonable levels of personal involvement and motivation, but without the urgency.

There are enough games that manage this balance well that, when a particularly bad example comes along, it does get called out.

If you want to tell a compelling linear story, make a linear game. It's not hard.

Yeah. At many point in 3 you have absolutely no clue where you're going IC, so it make sense to wander around, searching for clues (or stumbling across the plot by accident; I ended up in Vault 112 completely by chance on my first playthrough), and in New Vegas the plot isn't urgent at all, at any point. Revenge is a dish best served cold, after all.

In 4 you get weirdly railroaded at some points and then let loose at others, and it gives the game a bizarre herky jerky pacing. The Witcher 3 doesn't stumble this bad, but there definitely is some disconnect between plot urgency and side stuff at a few points. I know I let some sidequests pass close to the end of the game when the pacing picks up in heading to the climax.

[Traab]

I will be honest, its never bothered me much. I grew up playing games like ff7 where there is a literal meteor heading for our world and yet I feel the need to spend lord knows how long breeding chocobos till I get my gold one. Ive learned how to compartmentalize the incongruity between incoming world destroying threat and running side quests. I dont like actual timers though. I dont like being rushed outside of short events like, again, ff7, when you have to flee the mako reactor before it explodes.

[Imbalance]

Certain racing games have successfully combined free and urgent, where the finish line is on the other side of town and you can go any way you like as long as you get there before the other drivers. Granted, the task is always the same, but it definitely rewards exploration if you spend time getting to know the turns and traffic patterns before a challenge comes up.

On the other hand, Crackdown was interesting in that if you linger after clearing an area of the city to gather power ups, collect cars, or whatever, civilians inevitably come to harm, negatively effecting your rep. It ultimately mattered very little, but it seemed like the design intent was to impose an urgency to move on based on societal pressure rather than to thwart impending doom before it's too late.

[Morty]

As poorly as Morrowind has aged otherwise, it more or less nails this. The first thing Caius Cosades tells you is to go join a guild or two, earn money, hone your skills and build up a reputation and a network of contacts. Which is what we're actually meant to do in this game. He also tells you to go do your own thing pretty regularly afterwards.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One that always bites me and annoys me is Star Control 2--there's a hidden timer that's just a hard loss condition. And you really have no way of knowing about it until you fail. I understand the idea, but it's still a bit contrived that now is the point where this centuries+ old stalemate hits the "ok, one side just wins over the course of a few months" point.

[Brother Oni]

Both Tyranny and Expeditions:Vikings gives you a time limit to both wander and complete the main plot.

Expeditions:Vikings gives you a time limit twice, the first in the First Act in order to get your expedition in ready in time to sail to England, and the Second Act gives you a couple of seasons either to make allies or to gain enough power and prosperity to properly present your claim to the king.

[Erloas]

I think Fallout 1 did a pretty good job at it, but the timer was pretty lenient for the size of the world. But yeah, a lot of games do a very poor job making things actually feel urgent. I think it doesn't help that the passing of time is really uneven and not well conveyed outside of a simple day timer that you probably don't actually notice. Like having many missions take 8 hours of real world time but those 8 hours take most of your actual play time and then 2 weeks of in-game time passes in a few seconds of travel.

[Anteros]

They don't have to be mutually exclusive. To use Fallout 4 as an example, sure I'm urgently looking for my missing son, but that doesn't mean I know how to find them. Give me a reason to explore instead of following a trail of breadcrumbs. It takes very little rewriting to make the exploration aspect make sense. A lot of games just have bad writing and don't bother.

[GloatingSwine]

Both Tyranny and Expeditions:Vikings gives you a time limit to both wander and complete the main plot.

Expeditions:Vikings gives you a time limit twice, the first in the First Act in order to get your expedition in ready in time to sail to England, and the Second Act gives you a couple of seasons either to make allies or to gain enough power and prosperity to properly present your claim to the king.

Tyranny only has a timer on the first act, and it also teaches you something about the edicts with it (to whit: they are extremely specific in ways that allow you to work around their wording).

The edict says that the valley must fall before Kairos' Day of Swords, which is one week away. If you wait a week then read the edict the timer is now a year.

[factotum]

They don't have to be mutually exclusive. To use Fallout 4 as an example, sure I'm urgently looking for my missing son, but that doesn't mean I know how to find them.

Yeah, that's a big issue in FO4...you're pretty much told to go to Diamond City and speak to Nick Valentine within the first hour or two of the game. If you had to really hunt around to find that info and, as I said above, had to get in the good books of the people you meet in order to do that, doing all the side content would make a lot more sense!

[veti]

They don't have to be mutually exclusive. To use Fallout 4 as an example, sure I'm urgently looking for my missing son, but that doesn't mean I know how to find them.

In that case there need to be a lot more dialogue options, whenever you meet a character - any character - who is even half-way sympathetic. If I were looking for my missing son, I'd be pumping absolutely everyone I met for clues, leads, rumours, theories...

[LibraryOgre]

I don't mind visible timers too much, if they're long enough. Fallout 1 was mentioned, and I'd throw in Kingmaker... you know you have to do X before the timer runs out, or you lose. But the timer is a long way away, X is not necessarily "The world is on fire" urgent, and so you can explore a bit. With Kingmaker, you have a series of timers, but, again, once you finish with X, you're free to explore until the timer resets again.

The timer is there, it provides some urgency, but it has enough leeway that you're not questioning why you're saving kittens from trees when you could be saving the world.

Invisible timers drive me nuts, as do urgent missions that you can forget for a year of game time and complete when you want.

[Resileaf]

I have even more of an issue with fake timers. Where the game tells you you have x amount of time to complete a mission, but then halfway through the timer take you by surprise and have an unexpected time skip. Not many games like that, but the one I can think of is Fable 2 (I think), where the timer to handle to big incoming bad will suddenly get cut short without warning.

[warty goblin]

In that case there need to be a lot more dialogue options, whenever you meet a character - any character - who is even half-way sympathetic. If I were looking for my missing son, I'd be pumping absolutely everyone I met for clues, leads, rumours, theories...

That would get dull very, very fast, since you'd just be hearing variants of "don't know" from tons of NPCs. Plus if the doesn't tell you go talk to Bob to advance the story, you have to talk to every schmuck you meet, most of whom can't help you, and you're effectively stonewalled. And if the game does tell you to go talk to Bob, we're right back where we started.


One thing I find curious is that I can't think of any non-strategy sorts of open world games that use something like XCOM 2's Avatar timer as a source of urgency. That gives you a timer, but also a lot of time to believably pursue other side objectives. The enemy may not be very close to completing their plot device, or you might want some particular weapon or upgrade for the next set back the enemy mission, or whatever.

I suspect the major issue is that very few non-strategy games really have loss as an endpoint. You might die and restart a boss fight or whatever, but losing the game isn't a meaningful concept in the way losing XCOM is. It also might be pretty difficult to integrate a timer (and the missions to lower it/events to raise it) into a more literal one-to-one game world like you see in most open world action games. XCOM can plunk a mission anywhere it wants because the game has no fixed tactical geography, and is abstract enough that giving you a menu of bad things to prevent offscreen is totally viable. But something on a fixed map would realistically have to procedurally generate missions, and be able to have the enemy do things like retake bits of the map. Thats really hard to do on a fixed geography, and even worse, risks disempowering the player.

And that's probably the ultimate problem with timers, they remove power from the player. And nothing passes players off .ore than that. Pretty much the entirety of open world game design is structured around constant player empowerment.

[Anteros]

That would get dull very, very fast, since you'd just be hearing variants of "don't know" from tons of NPCs. Plus if the doesn't tell you go talk to Bob to advance the story, you have to talk to every schmuck you meet, most of whom can't help you, and you're effectively stonewalled. And if the game does tell you to go talk to Bob, we're right back where we started.


One thing I find curious is that I can't think of any non-strategy sorts of open world games that use something like XCOM 2's Avatar timer as a source of urgency. That gives you a timer, but also a lot of time to believably pursue other side objectives. The enemy may not be very close to completing their plot device, or you might want some particular weapon or upgrade for the next set back the enemy mission, or whatever.

I suspect the major issue is that very few non-strategy games really have loss as an endpoint. You might die and restart a boss fight or whatever, but losing the game isn't a meaningful concept in the way losing XCOM is. It also might be pretty difficult to integrate a timer (and the missions to lower it/events to raise it) into a more literal one-to-one game world like you see in most open world action games. XCOM can plunk a mission anywhere it wants because the game has no fixed tactical geography, and is abstract enough that giving you a menu of bad things to prevent offscreen is totally viable. But something on a fixed map would realistically have to procedurally generate missions, and be able to have the enemy do things like retake bits of the map. Thats really hard to do on a fixed geography, and even worse, risks disempowering the player.

And that's probably the ultimate problem with timers, they remove power from the player. And nothing passes players off .ore than that. Pretty much the entirety of open world game design is structured around constant player empowerment.

You don't have to hear "I don't know" exactly. They can drop breadcrumbs to lead you to other interesting areas and quests. "No, I haven't met your son, but there's an orphanage up north. Maybe check with them?" It's not that difficult to write.

My personal problem with timers is that they make you miss content. Unless your game is extremely short, I'm not going to be replaying it just to do the side content I missed because some dev arbitrarily decided the main plot had to be done in 20 hours instead of 23 or whatever. I don't care if making me miss content makes narrative sense. That just means you wrote a poor narrative.

[factotum]

See, I hate timers in video games generally, but it's absolutely not because it makes me miss content. I'm absolutely fine with content getting gated off for entirely logical reasons--e.g. my meathead barbarian with a two-handed weapon fetish and a hatred of all magic should *not* be able to become the arch-mage of the College of Winterhold, Skyrim! Long timers are actually somewhat worse, to my mind, because if you somehow don't manage to achieve the objective in time, that's so much more game to play through to try it again, and I just don't like repeating the same section of game over and over again. Missions in X-Com 2 that might take an hour to play through and then you fail them because one of your team is outside the rescue area at the end of the final turn--hell, just take off with the rest of them and let that guy die, he's clearly dead weight anyway, don't force me to replay the whole thing from the start!

I guess what I'm saying is that the consequence for running out a timer should not always be immediate game over or forced mission replay, unless you just screwed up *that* bad that you can't possibly continue at that point.

[veti]

That would get dull very, very fast, since you'd just be hearing variants of "don't know" from tons of NPCs. Plus if the doesn't tell you go talk to Bob to advance the story, you have to talk to every schmuck you meet, most of whom can't help you, and you're effectively stonewalled. And if the game does tell you to go talk to Bob, we're right back where we started.

All adds up to a good reason not to use that sort of quest hook, doesn't it? "A missing baby" is both several orders of magnitude more important and more urgent than every other quest the game can throw at you put together. It makes it really hard to justify spending time on anything that you don't think is going to aid you directly toward that objective, and no other.


One thing I find curious is that I can't think of any non-strategy sorts of open world games that use something like XCOM 2's Avatar timer as a source of urgency. That gives you a timer, but also a lot of time to believably pursue other side objectives. The enemy may not be very close to completing their plot device, or you might want some particular weapon or upgrade for the next set back the enemy mission, or whatever.

I'm thinking of strategy games now, where you can lose a battle - and that has consequences, sometimes dire - but that's not the end of the game. There's plenty of chances to recover.

The problem with this in (what's laughably called) an "RPG" is that it rapidly multiplies the number of states the world can be in. As well as "quest done" and "quest not done", there's also (one or quite possibly more) "quest failed" states. Which means more dialogue has to be written and voiced - and by design, large portions of that dialogue are mutually exclusive with other portions, meaning you can't hear them all on the same playthrough.

(Alternatively you can just have nobody ever mention the failed quest again. But that kinda detracts from the "consequences" idea.)


See, I hate timers in video games generally, but it's absolutely not because it makes me miss content. I'm absolutely fine with content getting gated off for entirely logical reasons--e.g. my meathead barbarian with a two-handed weapon fetish and a hatred of all magic should *not* be able to become the arch-mage of the College of Winterhold, Skyrim!

I wish there were timers in Skyrim. For instance, if you start the college quest and then spend too long retrieving the Staff of Magnus, Ancano could have triggered a big enough - whatever that thing is - to actually destroy Winterhold. Keep messing about, and it could spread gradually across the map, becoming more destructive and requiring more complicated missions to shut it down as it goes.

(Edit: better idea, let more 'rifts' open at random places across the map, emitting those 'magic anomaly' critters at intervals, and gradually turning sections of the map into wastelands that can only be repaired using the Staff. Kinda like Oblivion's gates. That would add a kind of personal urgency that would be increasingly hard to ignore.)

Or with Potema. Once you hear about goings-on in Wolfskull Cave, if you choose to spend the next, let's say, seven days doing nothing about it, Potema should actually have been raised and bound by then, and you'd be faced with a zombie apocalypse - starting in Haafingar, but gradually spreading across the map the longer you leave it.

But as both of these options show, it means adding a lot of conditional complication that many players are never going to see. That, more than anything else, is why studios won't do it. (A modder could, but it's a big job.)

[warty goblin]

All adds up to a good reason not to use that sort of quest hook, doesn't it? "A missing baby" is both several orders of magnitude more important and more urgent than every other quest the game can throw at you put together. It makes it really hard to justify spending time on anything that you don't think is going to aid you directly toward that objective, and no other.

I mean I can't say it really bothers me; weirdly ignorable main quests have been part of cRPGs since about forever, to the point where I'll just consider it a genre trope. Sort of like how you can predict, with 100% certainty that the heroine and the hero are gonna end up banging and/or married by the end of any given romance novel. If you don't like it, don't read 'em.


I'm thinking of strategy games now, where you can lose a battle - and that has consequences, sometimes dire - but that's not the end of the game. There's plenty of chances to recover.

The problem with this in (what's laughably called) an "RPG" is that it rapidly multiplies the number of states the world can be in. As well as "quest done" and "quest not done", there's also (one or quite possibly more) "quest failed" states. Which means more dialogue has to be written and voiced - and by design, large portions of that dialogue are mutually exclusive with other portions, meaning you can't hear them all on the same playthrough.

(Alternatively you can just have nobody ever mention the failed quest again. But that kinda detracts from the "consequences" idea.)


This is incidentally why I tend to prefer strategy games to straight RPGs. A good strategy game has the possibility for outcomes like tactical victory/strategic defeat that make the decision space very rich. RPGs just have win -> gain power -> repeat ad nauseum, which tends to reduce their decision space to straightforwards optimization. I just find optimization much less engaging that strategic consideration in the face of uncertain outcomes.

I was really thinking more along the lines of games like Far Cry or Assassin's Creed when I wrote that comment though. Sure those games have outposts to capture and convoys to raid, but it's all very pantomime; nothing happens if you don't do those things beyond not unlocking the silencer for a gun you never use or whatever. Adding that touch of strategy game could be delicious... but then you could actually lose, or at least be substantially hurt, and at this point I think games have gone so far down the RPG track of engagement through constant power increases it'll be a long time before we're likely to see something like that anywhere outside of indie oddities like Mount and Blade.

[Rynjin]

That would get dull very, very fast, since you'd just be hearing variants of "don't know" from tons of NPCs. Plus if the doesn't tell you go talk to Bob to advance the story, you have to talk to every schmuck you meet, most of whom can't help you, and you're effectively stonewalled. And if the game does tell you to go talk to Bob, we're right back where we started.

Not really. Let's look at the main beats of FO4's story.

1.) Exit the vault.
2.) Return home (Codworth directs you to Concord)
3.) Go to Concord (Mama Murphy has a dumbass psychic vision and directs you to Diamond City)
4.) Go to Diamond City (Piper tells you to talk to Nick)
5.) Go to Nick's agency (assistant directs you to where he was last seen)
6.) Rescue Nick (Nick interrogates you, gets a lead on Kellog)
7.) Find Kellog (railroaded into using Dogmeat, who you theoretically have not even met)
8.) Kill Kellog (Nick directs you to the Memory Den)
9.) Go to Goodneighbor and read Kellog's mind (memories direct you to Glowing Sea)
10.) Talk to professor whats-is-nuts (he directs you to MIT campus)
11.) Get signal, join any faction to get into Institute
12.) Choose whether to side with Institute or not
13.) Story branches from here (urgency lost; son has been found)

This is a decent story flow on paper. The problem is the direct "Go here, do this" NPCs give you.

Starting off this is fine. Codsworth saying he saw a group of people arrive in Concord recently is a good, natural starting point. Mama Murphy's psychic vision is dumb, but if all the settlers just told you "Well, Diamond CIty is the biggest settlement around here, surely someone could help you", it'd be fine.

Arriving in DC is where it gets egregious. NPC you cannot miss talking to tells you straight up to go to Nick. Best to move Piper inside the city, make talking to her optional. Asking around town a bit lets you know there's a detective in town, and he specializes in missing persons! Rad.

Go to agency. Assistant tells you Nick is missing and she doesn't know where. Enter another round of investigations. Irony. Find the detective who specializes in finding missing people. Have assistant tell you he last took job from old friend in Goodneighbor. Go there, ask around, get a lead, follow it up.

Etc., etc. This kind of story path would still ultimately get you to the same places, but would give you a REASON to interact with sidequests. Maybe have Bobbi No-Nose have a lead, but she wants your help with her heist first, etc.

Not really that hard.

[Erloas]

One of the main problems with timers in games, at least on a first playthrough, is that you have no idea how tight that timer actually is. Is it actually really restrictive or just a facade and you'll never actually reach it until you hit a certain point where it just jumps to the end of timer. You don't know much you actually have to hurry.
There is also almost nothing worse in a game than getting 10+ hours in and realize some mistakes you made 8 hours ago means you essentially can't finish the game, that you have essentially lost a long time ago but just don't know it yet.

Not related to urgency, but in playing the first Dragon Age I got to a point fairly late in the game where I had to do a lot essentially solo and I happened to pick a class/spec that simply couldn't beat the mission. After trying it a number of different times, and going back a save or two to see if I could change things, I just couldn't do it. I never played the game again or any of the later games.

The "you lost a long time ago, you just don't know it yet" is also what put me off of Phoenix Point. It is a bit more expected in that genre of game, but the lack of real feedback from the system as to where things went wrong and how were bad.

Which mostly just illustrates the difficulties of actually adding urgency to a game.

[Eldan]

I mean I can't say it really bothers me; weirdly ignorable main quests have been part of cRPGs since about forever, to the point where I'll just consider it a genre trope. Sort of like how you can predict, with 100% certainty that the heroine and the hero are gonna end up banging and/or married by the end of any given romance novel. If you don't like it, don't read 'em.


This is incidentally why I tend to prefer strategy games to straight RPGs. A good strategy game has the possibility for outcomes like tactical victory/strategic defeat that make the decision space very rich. RPGs just have win -> gain power -> repeat ad nauseum, which tends to reduce their decision space to straightforwards optimization. I just find optimization much less engaging that strategic consideration in the face of uncertain outcomes.

Eh, a good RPG can have different kinds of winning or losing. Win but spend too many resources. Win, but a favored companion dies. Win, but in a way that makes a certain faction hate you. Win, but in a way that makes your companions like you less. And so on.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

What are peoples’ thoughts on things like the cultist squads in Dragonborn or the Dark Brotherhood assassination attempts in Tribunal? They seem like a logical way to ramp up the urgency but they’re kind of distracting.

[Morty]

What are peoples’ thoughts on things like the cultist squads in Dragonborn or the Dark Brotherhood assassination attempts in Tribunal? They seem like a logical way to ramp up the urgency but they’re kind of distracting.

I feel like the common sentiment is "free loot" or "speedbumps".

[Imbalance]

What are peoples’ thoughts on things like the cultist squads in Dragonborn or the Dark Brotherhood assassination attempts in Tribunal? They seem like a logical way to ramp up the urgency but they’re kind of distracting.

The logic to compel the player is good and well, but in both of those cases the implementation is definitely more distracting and immersion breaking than it should be (tales of the DB assassin's impossible appearances are legendary). They're also both blatantly telegraphed by the simple fact that you must have either manually installed their existence into your game world or were well aware of them and the entirety of the additional content when you purchased a GOTY edition. When you can choose to postpone that kind of urgency at the title screen, it loses something.

I do appreciate the notion that as the character advances and gathers renown, or steps out as the chosen one, the BBEG devotes more resources to stopping them, which does tend to spur the hero toward the final cofrontation. But if those attacks cease, or are too easy and never increase or the BBEG seems like he's patiently waiting on the player thereafter with no real threat to the rest of the world/story, the urgency dies. Miraak swooping in to bogart your souls is little more than annoying when dragons are throwing themselves at you. I guess part of that is on the player, because by that point I had ground out more than enough souls to unlock any remaining shouts and was totally into sharing the wealth. "Go ahead, you take this one. You need it more than I do."

It makes it downright funny how Breath of the Wild makes the Yiga more aggressive after a certain point, thus prompting players to likely delay that part of the story on subsequent plays. It certainly doesn't feel like increased urgency afterwards, but more like gratitude for the frequent delivery of bananas, rupees, and slick weapons.

[Rodin]

I feel like the common sentiment is "free loot" or "speedbumps".

Or just plain annoying. If I am tooling around doing sidequests, I don't want the game the snap a leash on my character and say "Go beat the game, NOW". I only want games to enforce a timer on me if the rest of the game is built with that expectation in mind. If the game is relatively contained, I don't have an issue with it forcing a timer once the story hits a certain point. Mass Effect 2 did this, instituting a timer once you had done a certain number of missions. Since the game wasn't Open World I didn't have a problem with this. Suddenly dropping a timer on you in Mass Effect Andromeda would be much more irritating.

Generally speaking, I prefer that games have an obvious "advance the world state" quest. You do the main quest, you side with Faction A, now Faction B's quests are unavailable. That's perfectly all right, as long as it's obvious something like that may occur. It means I can do all of Faction B's quests before doing the main quest, then advance the story. If I'm sidequesting for Faction C, and then Faction A wipes out Faction B off-screen based on a hidden timer? That makes me upset.

[The Glyphstone]

Baldur's Gate 2 would fit this pattern as well - you need to raise a huge pile of gold to buy the help of the Thieves' Guild or Assassins in finding Imoen, but you have infinite free time in which you can wander around doing whatever side-quests suit your fancy or just farming endless random encounters. The bad guy's evil experiments on her and the other inmates will politely continue endlessly until you do.

[Vinyadan]

Oblivion was deliberately more urgent than Morrowind. The lack of urgency in Morrowind was seen as a weakness. I can understand that, because you got some really vague instructions and you could forget all about it and pretty much forego the main quest (however, I believe that it overall made the game better on a narrative level). By comparison, Oblivion starts out with a major crisis (the Emperor is killed), followed by an urgent quest to find his heir that sees assassins pressing on your heels at Weynon Priory, and finally an even larger crisis as you reach Kvatch and the Oblivion invasion begins.

Skyrim doesn't strictly feel urgent to me, but it very deliberately puts the main quest right in your face, and there's even one quest-unrelated character that tells you "dragons are the main thing now, do that", so you don't miss it.

[Resileaf]

Personally I don't find that Oblivion seems too urgent once Martin is at Cloud Ruler Temple. Sure, the Oblivion crisis is going on, but it's a slow burn, things are still under control at the time. You just don't have all that much reason to start faffing about seeking adventures since no one is telling you you've got the opportunity to do so.

[Imbalance]

Oblivion is cursed with the unintended invisible timer known as A-bomb. Nobody told me I needed to save the world before the flames stopped flickering.

[Gecks]

It isn't open world, but the Mass Effect 2 conceit of needing to get a team together and whip them into fighting trim before launching an important end-game mission would seem to be a way to make the main quest narratively urgent, but still keep the side-content relevant to the the main quest, if only as a way to "train" the team. Narratively explains the side missions as a strategic choice about how to approach the main story problem, rather than the side content creating narrative dissonance.

[Rynjin]

Oblivion is cursed with the unintended invisible timer known as A-bomb. Nobody told me I needed to save the world before the flames stopped flickering.

What do you mean?

[Thomas Cardew]

So I don't think it's mutually exclusive there's just a lot of common pitfalls games trip into usually because they're taking shortcuts. The obvious one is making the main quest too urgent. Fallout 4 is the common example here and it's really hard to dispute. You just watched your child get stolen in front of you. That overrides anything else. I'm going to find my child. Period. I might do side-quests in the vein of 'yes, I'll go kill that person who needs killing in exchange for information on my son'. I'm not going to spend a month playing house and fixing every tiny detail in your city. The goal should be something that's still compelling but less than 'this is the only thing that matters in the world'. So I think that’s step 0. Additionally, you should try to make the player actually care. Manipulating the player by introducing a fake a wife/child, someone they have no real connection to, just to instantly fridge them is not a great start.

Next, you need to pace the urgency. This means you should both have times when it feels really urgent and when you’re free to explore because that’s what you SHOULD be doing. Fallout 3 does a decent job of this. You get chased out of the vault, everything is urgent, and you’re looking for your dad to explain what the heck is going on. The game does a decent job directing you to Megaton just based on map/geography design. Once there you get a whole bunch of options on how to look for your dad and a couple of obvious/natural side quests. You get sent chasing him across the world, but you feel free to explore along the way. Because you’re still progressing towards your goal of finding him. Then you have times when the main quest feels much more urgent; this is where FO3 stumbles. Once you’re ready to help your dad fix the purifier, the Enclave show up and murder him, the frantic escorting of the scientists to the brotherhood makes it feel urgent again. The natural thing is to push through to go get the GECK, get captured, and then wipe out the Enclave. The pacing fails here because the game pushes you so hard and then just ends in a very arbitrary way. You’re punished for following the interesting main quest, for following the natural pace, by having the game end.

The Witcher 3 does a slightly better job here, most quests are still available. You’re not punished for beating the main story, there are a few missable quests, but for the most part everything is still available. The problem in W3 was with the leveling system and the fact that you outrank anything you might have left to do. But that situation was caused by poorly pacing content, encouraging quests to be done in a relatively specific order to minimize xp loss rather than just playing the game; bouncing between locations to keep up with all the quests instead of truly diving into one area.
Here’s some ideas I think would help when planning quests out, I'm going to call the Inigo principles inspired by the Princess Bride. First, the main quest should have an impact on what you do. You should begin conversations with 'do you have 6 fingers on your right hand?' Probably not every conversation, because yes that would get tedious. But it should be an option when you get to new areas, sometimes the answer can be global. ‘No, we haven’t had anyone pass through town.’ Sometimes, it should be radiant directions to the next clue, ‘maybe ask the sheriff, he arrested some drunk who…’ Your all-consuming quest for vengeance is important, you should be able to work towards it all the time, not just while following the big quest markers. Too many games have the main quest cordoned off from the rest of the game, take the time to integrate it more fully.

Second, you need to develop and prepare. Challenge the boss too early and get two stylish scars; you need to learn the sword or get nursed back to full health first. The main quest should move you to new areas and push you to explore them to level up. It helps if you build in natural opportunities to explore and level. Going back to FO3, it does a good job of this with Megaton and an ok one with GNR. You get introduced to a couple of main areas, shown the main enemies, exposed to some natural side quests. Putting in several obvious sections where the correct move is to just run and explore and do side quests while looking for leads/gathering mcguffins is important. It lets you build in natural peaks and troughs into the story. Search for Mcguffin (low tension), find Mcguffin (rising tension), struggle over Mcguffin (rising to peak tension), escape/win/lose(falling tension), figure out what you just won (steady state-rising tension). You just had an urgent compressed section of main story line, here’s a natural breakpoint while we ease off the tension. A steady state where you get a chance to explore, ideally the world has changed in some way given your progress on the main story opening up new options/areas. Then when it is time to hop back into the main story, the tension raises naturally with the search/location of the next mcguffin.

Because when you make progress on the main quest, you should want to pursue it! This is what really develops a true sense of urgency. Find out where the 6 fingered man is and you want to go hunt him down! If you realize you need the man in black, go get the man in black. If you find out the man in black is dead, hunt down the miracle maker! Once you actually make progress, you should want to keep making progress! There’s a balancing act between this and the last one, but it is something you can balance. Finally, have a plan for what comes next for the player. They’ve avenged their dead father, what now? It depends on the particulars of you game, but generally you want some sort of epilogue/post game section where the core gameplay can be repeated, the player can go finish quests or exploring areas they didn’t get to before, or see the changes they made in the game world. Showing is infinitely better than telling here. End game slides are ok, but it's a lot better if you can actually put in the effort to let people experience the changes firsthand.


EDIT:

Oblivion is cursed with the unintended invisible timer known as A-bomb. Nobody told me I needed to save the world before the flames stopped flickering.


What do you mean?

If you take too long there's a game breaking bug that can occur, typically after several hundred hours, where the animations slow down to nothing and the game is unplayable. Similarly, Fallout 3 autosaves frequently corrupt as they keep overwriting each other leading to memory bleeds which make the game constantly crash. #JustBethsedaThings

[Eldan]

So, I'm not sure how hard it would be to really make this work, but what would people think of a game where the main quest is delayed?

Say, you are released into the sandbox, you faff around a bit, level up, and once you reach a certain point of level or fame, you are contacted by someone who is important for the main quest, who has heard about this big new hero in town. Or the big catastrophe that needs to be stopped only happens later. Say, in the case of Oblivion, there's some kind of "is level 15 and in the Imperial Palace District" trigger, at which point the Emperor is spawned, say for some kind of ceremony, and then killed. At which point you can start the main quest, which can then be a bit more urgent.

That would give you time to see the game world a bit and perhaps the narrative would make more sense.

[GloatingSwine]

Or just have a preamble narrative that takes you around a bit of the world already and lets you get used to it before the main quest arrives.

Y'know, like chasing Benny in New Vegas. That gives you a tour of the world, introduces the major factions, then when you track him down and recover the Platinum Chip then you find out what the real stakes are and begin the real main plot.

Though I think the best preamble narrative is in Chrono Trigger where you don't know what the main plot is until the first 2300AD section, and by that point you've been introduced to the core tools of time travel and changing history, seen three of the available times, and then you find out the full stakes and Marle resolves to do something about it. Of course that's a linear narrative game so it's easier.

[factotum]

So, I'm not sure how hard it would be to really make this work, but what would people think of a game where the main quest is delayed?

I'm not a fan of the idea, myself. I don't really like just wandering around with no clear objective in an RPG, I find it annoying. I wouldn't mind if you started off with something that appeared to be a main quest but turned out to be tangential to the real one, mind you. Effectively, that's what the original Fallout did--the original super urgent quest is to find a water chip for the Vault, but once you come back with that the Overseer decides you need to investigate the weird stuff you've heard about while finding that, and arguably that part of the main plot is the more important one, because it affects the entire post-apocalypse world and not just the few thousand people in Vault 13.

[LibraryOgre]

So I don't think it's mutually exclusive there's just a lot of common pitfalls games trip into usually because they're taking shortcuts. The obvious one is making the main quest too urgent. Fallout 4 is the common example here and it's really hard to dispute. You just watched your child get stolen in front of you. That overrides anything else. I'm going to find my child. Period. I might do side-quests in the vein of 'yes, I'll go kill that person who needs killing in exchange for information on my son'. I'm not going to spend a month playing house and fixing every tiny detail in your city. The goal should be something that's still compelling but less than 'this is the only thing that matters in the world'. So I think that’s step 0. Additionally, you should try to make the player actually care. Manipulating the player by introducing a fake a wife/child, someone they have no real connection to, just to instantly fridge them is not a great start.

I agree with most of this whole-heartedly, but I will say that, for me, they did a great job of making me care about my husband and kid. That opening, character-generating, section? I'm taking care of my son. I'm chatting with my husband. Codsworth is helping out. We're a family... and then the sirens go off. And we're running, and I'm making sure my husband and son keep up, and while I don't know these neighbors well I can tell they're my neighbors and then we get up to the lift and we see the bomb and JUST get below the lip before the wave hits us.

I'm invested in those boys. I will do anything for those boys. Maybe it's just that, when I first played it, I had my newborn son on my lap, but, damn... every playthrough I carry those wedding rings with me throughout.

The game that failed to make me care was New Vegas. Like, yes, I've been shot but... I'm gonna get shot a lot in this game. Hundreds of people are going to collectively put tons of lead into my hide. This one guy who did it in a cinematic? I'm not too concerned about him. I'm far more worried about the slavers or the ****ing cazadores.



If you take too long there's a game breaking bug that can occur, typically after several hundred hours, where the animations slow down to nothing and the game is unplayable. Similarly, Fallout 3 autosaves frequently corrupt as they keep overwriting each other leading to memory bleeds which make the game constantly crash. #JustBethsedaThings

That's less an "Oblivion" problem and more a "Bethesda" problem. The Oblivion Crisis doesn't suddenly get out of hand... just the save files.

[Rodin]

I liked how Battle Brothers handled it. Your objective at the start of the game is to make a successful mercanary company. That keeps you occupied for most of the game. Around 100 days in, a crisis of some kind starts occurring. Maybe there's a war brewing, or the undead are stirring, or the orcs are attacking. It starts out slowly and then slowly consumes the game world until you're forced to get involved with it. You take part in the crisis along with everyone else in the world (in other words, you are not The Chosen One Hero Who Saves The Day) until eventually you overcome the threat and everything settles down again.

Despite having a lot less story attached to them these crises feel a lot more organic than the ones in most RPGs I've played. It isn't a sudden upending of the world and a plucky teenager saves the day - a threat that always existed has now become more pronounced and you are one band of mercanaries among many acting to stop it.

[Vinyadan]

About Fallout 4, I immediately assumed that decades, if not centuries, had passed between the child being kidnapped and my character thawing, so that kid could be older than me, or not need me at all, or have died in ancient history or moved to the other side of the world and all of his traces be long gone. So I really couldn't feel that there was any urgency into finding him, as the world had moved on.

[factotum]

The game that failed to make me care was New Vegas. Like, yes, I've been shot but... I'm gonna get shot a lot in this game. Hundreds of people are going to collectively put tons of lead into my hide. This one guy who did it in a cinematic? I'm not too concerned about him. I'm far more worried about the slavers or the ****ing cazadores.


In a way, given the subject of the thread, that's almost better--no urgency to complete the main quest if you don't care about it!

[Lord Raziere]

In a way, given the subject of the thread, that's almost better--no urgency to complete the main quest if you don't care about it!

Yeah more evidence to me that New Vegas is better: guy shooting you in the head like that? can make you care. but if you don't well....no one is in danger. your revenge can wait. the whole chip thing is nothing that has any indication of speeding up events in any way. FO4 is not so great because even if you don't care about the child and guess the obvious twist, you still obligated to do the quest out of "but its a child though, would you leave a child without checking them?" and which is an implicit guilt trip if you don't care for the family thing.

[Triaxx]

I think that NV nailed the lack of urgency. Yes, you shot me, yes, I get shot a lot. No one survives shooting me. But... I'll get to you eventually. You think I'm dead, so I have all the time in the world.

Oblivion nailed 'urgency' but deployed in such a way that... each piece felt urgent, but there was no over-arching 'OMG, I must rush the next piece'. Take dude the necklace, he's there, and it's in that direction. It's 'urgent, but no one else knows you've got it, so it's not really I must go now urgent. Same thing for his next task, which is 'rescue the dude'. From where? The burning city? He's probably dead, so no big rush. Even closing the gates wasn't too big of a rush because... yes, they're dangerous, but it turns out the empire has a functioning army, so when stuff pops out, it ends up with a fight on it's hands.

That said I usually play this sort of game twice, before deciding replayability. The first time is the Story Rush. I play through to the end of the main story and take note of what is and isn't unlocked by progressing it. Then the second is mostly entirely sidequests, unless something is required for unlocks. Skyrim was really good about not locking much away. Fallout 4 was bad about it. Oblivion was kind of in the middle.

I don't mind when a game doesn't impart a sense of urgency on me, nor do I mind when it does. Honestly, the twist in F4 came as a surprise to me. I figured the kid would be older, but not that much older, or to have simply been dead all along. My first character never KNEW who he was because well, he stepped into the room and got a face full of minigun.

[veti]

Oblivion was deliberately more urgent than Morrowind. The lack of urgency in Morrowind was seen as a weakness. I can understand that, because you got some really vague instructions and you could forget all about it and pretty much forego the main quest (however, I believe that it overall made the game better on a narrative level). By comparison, Oblivion starts out with a major crisis (the Emperor is killed), followed by an urgent quest to find his heir that sees assassins pressing on your heels at Weynon Priory, and finally an even larger crisis as you reach Kvatch and the Oblivion invasion begins.

That, in my estimation, was one of the biggest reasons why Morrowind is so much better a game than Oblivion. Morrowind does build up a sort of pressure, slowly, by introducing more and more blighted creatures, ash zombies and the like to the world. First time I played it, I didn't know that corprus couldn't actually spread like any other disease, and when I started to see more and more infected - things outside the Ghostfence, it really made me think "OK, gotta get on with that main quest".


Next, you need to pace the urgency. This means you should both have times when it feels really urgent and when you’re free to explore because that’s what you SHOULD be doing. Fallout 3 does a decent job of this. You get chased out of the vault, everything is urgent, and you’re looking for your dad to explain what the heck is going on. The game does a decent job directing you to Megaton just based on map/geography design. Once there you get a whole bunch of options on how to look for your dad and a couple of obvious/natural side quests. You get sent chasing him across the world, but you feel free to explore along the way.

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote about FO3 and 4. Haven't played Witcher 3. FO3 does a good job of pacing, but lets itself down with its much (and justly) maligned ending.

I also like FNV, which (as mentioned) gives you all the time you want to explore the world - but then the Legion loot delivery death squads start coming after you. What's good about them is, they're tough enough to be a challenge. They generally start to show up when I'm about level 5 - right after I kill the legion squad in Nipton, and before I've got a companion - and at that stage, without preparation/forewarning, I'd be dead. Even knowing what to expect, I've still got a significant fight on my hands. That creates (for me) a real sense of pressure, without anything so arbitrary as a timer.

Edit: I've just realised I used the word "pressure", rather than "urgency", in connection with my favourite games. I think that may be the key. You can take all the time you like to get on with stuff, but as you drag your feet, the world gets steadily more hostile for you.

[NeoVid]

A principle I learned back in the 16-bit era was "You'll always arrive just in time, no matter how much you did in between." It's actually jarring to be held to any sort of time restrictions, since it goes against decades of experience. Finding out I could be too late to save my captured crew in Mass Effect 2 thanks to trying to be a completionist was one of the biggest shocks I've had in my lifetime of gaming.

How many games actually do put the story under enforced time restraints? I can barely think of a handful... Fallout 1, Star Control 2, my example from ME2, and uh... Suikoden 2? It has an entire one character's storyline that only completes successfully if you finish the game fast enough for him to catch his target.

[Thomas Cardew]

I agree with most of this whole-heartedly, but I will say that, for me, they did a great job of making me care about my husband and kid. That opening, character-generating, section? I'm taking care of my son. I'm chatting with my husband. Codsworth is helping out. We're a family... and then the sirens go off. And we're running, and I'm making sure my husband and son keep up, and while I don't know these neighbors well I can tell they're my neighbors and then we get up to the lift and we see the bomb and JUST get below the lip before the wave hits us.

I'm invested in those boys. I will do anything for those boys. Maybe it's just that, when I first played it, I had my newborn son on my lap, but, damn... every playthrough I carry those wedding rings with me throughout.

The game that failed to make me care was New Vegas. Like, yes, I've been shot but... I'm gonna get shot a lot in this game. Hundreds of people are going to collectively put tons of lead into my hide. This one guy who did it in a cinematic? I'm not too concerned about him. I'm far more worried about the slavers or the ****ing cazadores.

I'm glad it worked for you. It did not for me. If FO4 had put the work in, I would have invested a lot more into my family. But they didn't put the work in, because the beginning's too rushed. If it had taken a little more time, actually involved me in my spouse's and neighbors' lives I would have cared a lot more. Your neighbors don't even have names in the subtitles. They get more characterization post-death than they did in life. You have the neighbor who sets up a sniper nest on top of their home. Instead of that being a nameless character, let's make them Eugene Shled, partially orphaned son of one of Nate's dead war buddies. The shooting tutorial is now you teaching the kid to shot, using his dead dad's gun. Then when you find Eugene dead, still holding his dad's rifle the way you taught him, on top of his house... it means something. That's a gun I'd keep in my collection, just like I hold onto my Vault 101 Jumpsuit.


That's less an "Oblivion" problem and more a "Bethesda" problem. The Oblivion Crisis doesn't suddenly get out of hand... just the save files.

Agreed, I was just answering the question.


Despite having a lot less story attached to them these crises feel a lot more organic than the ones in most RPGs I've played. It isn't a sudden upending of the world and a plucky teenager saves the day - a threat that always existed has now become more pronounced and you are one band of mercanaries among many acting to stop it.

Organic strategies like these can work really well for some games like strategy and procedurally generated ones. They work less well for bespoke crafted worlds or story driven ones, you can't make the Witcher 3 with this way. Pick the one that's right for the game your trying to make and the story you want to tell.

About Fallout 4, I immediately assumed that decades, if not centuries, had passed between the child being kidnapped and my character thawing, so that kid could be older than me, or not need me at all, or have died in ancient history or moved to the other side of the world and all of his traces be long gone. So I really couldn't feel that there was any urgency into finding him, as the world had moved on.
As a genre-savvy player, I agree. But the game tried to play it straight, it wants to pretend that my character and the world all believe this was recent and urgent. If it’s going to do that, it should do it should follow through, not fake a sense of urgency.

A principle I learned back in the 16-bit era was "You'll always arrive just in time, no matter how much you did in between." It's actually jarring to be held to any sort of time restrictions, since it goes against decades of experience. Finding out I could be too late to save my captured crew in Mass Effect 2 thanks to trying to be a completionist was one of the biggest shocks I've had in my lifetime of gaming.

How many games actually do put the story under enforced time restraints? I can barely think of a handful... Fallout 1, Star Control 2, my example from ME2, and uh... Suikoden 2? It has an entire one character's storyline that only completes successfully if you finish the game fast enough for him to catch his target.
This can be a really good thing, as long as it’s an actual design decision. Making your actions have clear consistent consequences can be a great decision. Doing it for arbitrary reasons, is well, stupid and arbitrary. Things like the Farcry easter egg and Bioshock twist are fantastic because they are intentional design decisions that understand the game they made.

Old puzzle games used to have timers. Things like Kings Quest 3, where you had a week to kill the magician or you would. Quest For Glory 2 had elementals destroy the city if you didn’t defeat them within a few in game days. Strategy games still semi-frequently have time limits on some missions. While I understand why some people hate them, I think they can be really useful and actually enhance a game/story if done correctly. But slapping an arbitrary time limit on something just to make it ‘harder’ is uninteresting.

[factotum]

I also like FNV, which (as mentioned) gives you all the time you want to explore the world - but then the Legion loot delivery death squads start coming after you. What's good about them is, they're tough enough to be a challenge. They generally start to show up when I'm about level 5 - right after I kill the legion squad in Nipton, and before I've got a companion

You realise that the Legion don't send the death squads after you if you don't kill the squad in Nipton, right? You have to be Vilified with a faction before they start doing that.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Allow me to chime in on the dichotomy between how F:NV and FO4 handled the urgency vs free roaming issue with a couple of additional points.

With Fallout: New Vegas, there's another explicit hint right out of the gate that exploration is going to be a good thing. "Truth is, the game was rigged from the start." Once you hit up the courier station, which is where you're pointed at out of Goodsprings, you begin to realize that there were several couriers, each with a different item, each with a different path. But this guy in the checkered suit? He knew which courier had the item he wanted, knew where that courier was at that given time to be able to generate an interception and ambush, and knew about it enough ahead of time that he was able to get everything set up.

Why is this relevant? Because it implies a degree of power and supporting organization that means you can't just solo this guy... yet. If you were to somehow rush straight to New Vegas and confront him, the logical expectation would be a repeat, if not worse. I mean, he just took you down with a couple of Khans for bodyguards way out in the boonies. How much of a chance would you have on HIS turf if you don't get something to even the odds? So yea, you've got a good ol' fashioned revenge plot simmering, but you also know that you can't take him yet, so it's not an immediate priority. It's a long-term goal, burning away in the background. This is subtly reinforced as you continue following the breadcrumb trail. In NOVAC, you find out more about the Khans from the two snipers that they're really scary badasses, and that this guy has a couple working for him as minions? Is another flex of power. Khans don't normally hire themselves out as bodyguards, so for this guy to have them working for him is a Big Deal(tm).

As a bit of reverse psychology is our rootin' tootin' shootin' robo-buddy who dug us out of that shallow grave. Who does keep subtly pushing you at 'Mr. Fancy Pants", all the while demeaning Benny's likely skills. implying that he's more show than power in an attempt to encourage you to go after him more directly. But at the same time, his presence is... shall we say 'so exceedingly convenient as to stretch past the point of incredulity'? Now, it could come off as bad plot writing, which FO4 is definitely guilty of. However, I feel that it's done this way on purpose to generate that sense of 'this seems a bit TOO convenient'. He even goes out of his way to explain why he has a reason to be where he is when you run across him, without actually asking for the reason, which is also kinda suspicious. This is a hint that there are deeper games at play, and someone is trying to play you as well.

Compare and contrast with FO4, which has probably the single most urgent plotline ever written for a sandbox style game. That's *YOUR SON* they took. ANY parent is going to immediately respond with 'first priority, getting my kid back, second priority is literally anything else, up to and including survival if necessary'. That's why FO4 just seems so... badly written. In addition to railroading at several points which were crude and blunt and narratively jarring, rescuing your kid when there is *ANY* chance of doing so, no matter how slim, takes absolute priority. Screw your settlements, Garvey, I don't care about the survival of the human species as a whole, right now my kid takes priority to that.

Furthermore, you are *REQUIRED* to follow the trail of breadcrumbs in FO4. Key locations simply will not be accessible until you trigger certain plot points, hard coded to prevent you from skipping parts of the story. Meanwhile in F:NV, if you beeline straight to New Vegas, either getting through the Cazadores north of Goodsprings or the Deathclaws of the 15, you'll have your 'good ol' buddy' right there at the Lucky 38 to fill you in on what you might have missed along the way, and you can just pick up the plot right there. So not only is FO4's urgency off, you are actively prohibited from acting on that urgency that they deliberately built up by using such a powerful impetus because of arbitrary game mechanics, which feels extra frustrating when compared to F:NV's handling of the situation, which does let you skip much of the 'main plot' if you so choose even though it has a lower immediacy level. And it does make at least some sense when you think about it. Your goal was to deliver the chip to New Vegas. Dude had a really fancy suit, totally unsuited for the wilderness of Nevada. That means money and an office, and there aren't many places where that can exist in the Mojave. Then you take a step out and see the brilliancy of The Strip and can naturally come to the conclusion of "Yea, if someone rigged this from the start, they had to have been involved in it from the beginning of the deal, New Vegas is a good bet to start". I think someone very early on even explicitly mentions that Benny's fancy suit probably means he's from New Vegas, but hold up there because you're going to need to take the long way around or else the cazadores and deathclaws are going to pick your bones clean, so head south to Nipton and cut across instead. If you do manage to get through the meatwall, the game rewards you by letting you skip all that plot and pick you up when you hit the Strip.

So not only is the urgency in FO4 completely out of kilter with the open sandbox game mechanics presented, as compared to F:NV, the way it handles that urgency is even worse, because you MUST ride the plot train from point to point before reaching your destination.

Then let's talk about how the sidequests are generally introduced, because that's another factor that is relevant to this conversation. We've already established that in FO4, you have very little reason to deviate from your goal of rescuing your kid so long as there is ANY chance he's still alive. But let's look at how any side-quests are presented to you, which further disincentivizes you from following them. Preston Garvey is... well, he's Preston [REDACTED] Garvey. One of the most annoying NPC's since Navi or Vi. He *ALWAYS* has another settlement that needs your help, it's a radiant quest mechanic that is deliberately set up to give you an unlimited number of quests to grind on, and is constantly pestering you to do something about them every time you walk in his general proximity. Now let's be clear here. If you run into him (which is a good bet, since I don't think Diamond City will open until you listen to Mama Murphy and deal with the initial Deathclaw), the situation is presented as 'people in trouble need help', then it quickly devolves into 'we have our own baggage and our own cause, and we want you to divert yourself from rescuing your kid to help us with our problems'. Which is already a 'nope, sorry, too busy looking for my kid, once I find him I might come back and help. Maybe'.

Contrast with Fallout: New Vegas's plot hooks that have the promise of useful gear. Given you start off with some pretty crap gear, and you know the guy you are hunting down is well heeled and entrenched, it's a good idea to gear up a bit before taking him on. Furthermore, you've got a long and very dangerous trek through the Mojave ahead of you, which you need to survive if you want your payback. Which you can't do without some basic supplies. So the game subtly encourages you to wander off the beaten path with something that promotes your ultimate goal of getting your revenge by offering something that is relevant to that goal. Even the DLC encourages you to check it out for the same reason. A Brotherhood bunker is a great source of high-tech weapons and power armor which can be useful if you have to kick the door down on the Strip. And you do end up leaving Dead Money with a few useful things, notably the Holorifle if you're an energy weapon build. The Science Fiction Double Feature that sends you to the Big MT nets you a bunch of useful stuff, plus some extremely useful augments. Lonesome Road teases you more information about your past and the job you took. It doesn't deliver on it, but that's the hook that gets you curious about it. Everything you are doing in the Mojave is preparing for your confrontation with Benny, as opposed to FO4's tendency to distract you FROM your main plot.

[Thomas Cardew]

You realise that the Legion don't send the death squads after you if you don't kill the squad in Nipton, right? You have to be Vilified with a faction before they start doing that.

-Looks up from Vulpes Inculta's disintegrated ashes-

Wait... You can not kill Vulpes? Huh. Learn something new everyday.

[Rynjin]

"The Legion is a legitimate faction option some characters would reasonably pick! Honest!"

[Anteros]

I never killed Vulpes there simply because attacking him and his squad felt like suicide. Im usually level one or two with a varmint rifle or something at that point.

[Rynjin]

I never killed Vulpes there simply because attacking him and his squad felt like suicide. Im usually level one or two with a varmint rifle or something at that point.

Mercenary Pack really changes the early game.

[Cikomyr2]

Maybe a game mode organized more like Majora's Mask, where you can repeat the open world loop. Sure, you are on a timer, but you can reawaken in the vault at this date, every time.

No no matter what you do, the Brotherhood of steel invade the Commonwealth in 20 days. If you do nothing, the Institute will sabotage them 20 says later, and the Commonwealth will collapse in war, game over.

You can try to change the timeline. Extend it. Make the game a temporal sand box.

[Morty]

Oblivion was deliberately more urgent than Morrowind. The lack of urgency in Morrowind was seen as a weakness. I can understand that, because you got some really vague instructions and you could forget all about it and pretty much forego the main quest (however, I believe that it overall made the game better on a narrative level).

That sounds like it has to do with Morrowind's atrocious journal more than anything. If the game made it clear you're meant to do your own thing and report back to Caius, it might not feel this way. But things get lost easily in Morrowind's journal.

[veti]

You realise that the Legion don't send the death squads after you if you don't kill the squad in Nipton, right? You have to be Vilified with a faction before they start doing that.

I know, but what kind of wuss would I be if I didn't take out those thugs?

[Haruspex_Pariah]

In a way, given the subject of the thread, that's almost better--no urgency to complete the main quest if you don't care about it!

Well that was my point, though perhaps I could have explained it better.

The lack of urgency in New Vegas is a plus, in my view. Because it means I can wander about the wasteland that has been designed for wandering about in, discover random quests, meet interesting people, etc, without feeling any dissonance. Others have explained why rushing after Benny immediately after leaving Mitchell's house is a bad idea from an in-universe point of view, and New Vegas basically lets you decide how important that is.

Whereas chasing Shaun or Ciri feels like it should be as important to me as it is to the main character...but hey look a question mark/undiscovered location. Is that a vault? An abandoned school? A treasure chest in the middle of a field?

[factotum]

Maybe a game mode organized more like Majora's Mask, where you can repeat the open world loop. Sure, you are on a timer, but you can reawaken in the vault at this date, every time.

God, please, no. These "time loop" games seem to be mysteriously popular recently, and I just don't get the appeal at all--where's the fun in playing through the same stuff over and over again until you find the trick to finishing it?

[Lord Raziere]

God, please, no. These "time loop" games seem to be mysteriously popular recently, and I just don't get the appeal at all--where's the fun in playing through the same stuff over and over again until you find the trick to finishing it?

You might as well ask what fun speedrunners get out of speedrunning, because their hobby is doing NOTHING but perfecting a certain run over and over again they know it by heart and have perfected all the steps to complete the game as fast as possible. they don't just do it once by luck, they practice this kind of thing until the point when someone watches it? it looks like someone performing a dance flawlessly, like a ice-skating ballerina.

with time loop games, you at least have this explorative aspect where you can curiously try a possibility and because your actions there is a different outcome based on what path you took while the rest of the world remains the same. a speedrunner doesn't have that level of flexibility, because their only goal is make the run as efficient as possible.

[Anteros]

Mercenary Pack really changes the early game.

I hate stuff like that. Paying extra money, or pre-ordering, or whatever to get in game loot that just magically appears when you pay. Completely ruins the immersion, and feels like cheating. To me. It's a single player game, so I totally understand if other people want to do it.


You might as well ask what fun speedrunners get out of speedrunning, because their hobby is doing NOTHING but perfecting a certain run over and over again they know it by heart and have perfected all the steps to complete the game as fast as possible. they don't just do it once by luck, they practice this kind of thing until the point when someone watches it? it looks like someone performing a dance flawlessly, like a ice-skating ballerina.

with time loop games, you at least have this explorative aspect where you can curiously try a possibility and because your actions there is a different outcome based on what path you took while the rest of the world remains the same. a speedrunner doesn't have that level of flexibility, because their only goal is make the run as efficient as possible.

Sure, but speedrunners are an extremely tiny portion of the population. You wouldn't make a game out of it.

[Lord Raziere]

Sure, but speedrunners are an extremely tiny portion of the population. You wouldn't make a game out of it.

Okay, I fail to see why whether you'd make a game out of it would be relevant. or why you feel the need to point out the population thing. the point this is a thing that people find fun, what are you implying with this? I don't get it.

Racing games at a certain point are just all the same tracks if you don't play multiplayer.

at a certain point in roguelites/roguelikes no matter how randomized a level is you start to get the feel of it, start to master it, so that the different corridors and drops just feel like minor differences that don't matter.

and a lot of videogame design is basically making the same basic actions feel different rather than actually making them different.

and if you don't like repeating the same thing until you succeed, guess what, thats what you do every time you encounter something hard and die over and over again and restart from last save until you get it right in a videogame. the time loop games just take it up to the entire game being like that.

[Rynjin]

I hate stuff like that. Paying extra money, or pre-ordering, or whatever to get in game loot that just magically appears when you pay. Completely ruins the immersion, and feels like cheating. To me. It's a single player game, so I totally understand if other people want to do it.

They're hard baked into the total package editions or whatever these days with all the DLCs. You can turn them off, but I stopped worrying about "cheating" after my third playthrough.




Sure, but speedrunners are an extremely tiny portion of the population. You wouldn't make a game out of it.

So I take it you've never played a racing game? Or time trials in a platformer?

[huttj509]

God, please, no. These "time loop" games seem to be mysteriously popular recently, and I just don't get the appeal at all--where's the fun in playing through the same stuff over and over again until you find the trick to finishing it?

It turns it into a type of puzzle game, at least when done well.

Outer Wilds, for example, can be finished in a very short time, if you already know how it works. But when playing it new you don't. The fun is in exploration, learning how things work, when things happen, and what your goal even *is*.

[Vinyadan]

-Looks up from Vulpes Inculta's disintegrated ashes-

Wait... You can not kill Vulpes? Huh. Learn something new everyday.

Oh, come on -- even if you can, can you not kill Vulpes? :smallwink:


I never killed Vulpes there simply because attacking him and his squad felt like suicide. Im usually level one or two with a varmint rifle or something at that point.

Explosives from the Powder Gangers. Leave a road of breadcrumbs and run along it as the squad tries to reach you. Then kill a weakened Vulpes in single combat.


God, please, no. These "time loop" games seem to be mysteriously popular recently, and I just don't get the appeal at all--where's the fun in playing through the same stuff over and over again until you find the trick to finishing it?

Reminds me of Alan Wake's American Nightmare. It was probably the easiest shooter ever designed: lots of it played in the open, against enemies without a ranged option, and it was all the same scenery three times over, so you didn't even need to learn the levels. Plus, the artefacted difficulty of the original Alan Wake (laborious reloading and a slow character) was completely gone, so you were pretty much going all Max Payne over those poor souls.

[Cikomyr2]

God, please, no. These "time loop" games seem to be mysteriously popular recently, and I just don't get the appeal at all--where's the fun in playing through the same stuff over and over again until you find the trick to finishing it?

In this case, the point is that there are events that WILL spin out of control. The game should not have *a* means of resolving it, but rather a large series of means.

Also, the fun of Fallout 4 is that there are like a thousand plots happening at the same time. So you could theoretically have thousand mini influence on the meter. It's just that some thigns are bigger than others.

To be honest, the idea in my head seems really far-fetched. You'd need either a complete rethink of video game story structure/interaction that is more procedural even if the plot is hand-written, or just.. literally invest thousands upon thousands of hours of writing variants on sub-quest.

I don't like the later option tho, but I don't even know if the technology is there for the 1st option.

Basically, I just think there should be a middle point of endless procedural generation of repetitive dungeon and the need to hand-craft every single story beats and variants. The Procedural should play different, the game should throw different story beats and hooks if you act different. "Repeating" the time loop only if you deliberately want to make it repeat.

Just.. say, base it on # of **** explored by the PC, or the distance travelled. What if, going out of the vault, you either go to Sanctuary/Concord, the Agatha Radar station, or the nearby farm. The normal story beat have you go in Sanctuary. But if the story say that the Minutemen get exterminated if you don't intervene in the first 2 days, then the Raiders suddenly become the dominant faction of this region. Maybe you can have the guy at the auto shot try to send goons, etc.. etc..

just.. have local factions interact with each others. Have some timers to some things. Encourage the player to explore special zone at special time.

If you want to have a game where timing matters, somehow, you have to structure the entire story beats around "time matters", not just tag it on top of existing game mechanics.

[factotum]

Outer Wilds, for example, can be finished in a very short time, if you already know how it works. But when playing it new you don't. The fun is in exploration, learning how things work, when things happen, and what your goal even *is*.

Maybe that's why I don't like them--completely directionless exploration just isn't something I enjoy, it reminds me of running around in games 30 years ago trying to figure out what to do next and getting very frustrated.

[Triaxx]

Two points for Shneekey's comment: Navi was at least trying to be helpful. I feel bad for the poor soul who had to do Vi, since it was clearly executives meddling where they shouldn't.

And you don't even have to get through the intro to catch the importance of New Vegas. When you look at Benny, he's larger than life and framed by the lights of the strip. Because it's his center of power. (Not that it helps.)

On Vulpes: Eh merc nade rifle is nice, but you can also find one in one of the houses, and use that to make legion pate out of them.

Vulpes: bad guy walk
Courier: Okay, bored. *phtoo, BOOM*

[veti]

I hate stuff like that. Paying extra money, or pre-ordering, or whatever to get in game loot that just magically appears when you pay. Completely ruins the immersion, and feels like cheating.

I don't disagree. I got the merc pack with the - whatever edition it was of the game I installed. And I can't see any way to stop it from loading. The best I can do is find an otherwise pointless bin and stash the more excessive loot in there and never touch it again, but at this point I'm not even sure what I should be keeping...

I think the 9mm pistol is mine? What about the light leather armour? - I'd really miss that, although there are at least a couple of chances to pick up regular leather or even metal armour before you get to Nipton.

But even without all that stuff, Vulpes is eminently killable. There's practically unlimited amounts of dynamite from the 'Gangers. There's frag mines from Primm, shotguns and cowboy repeaters from the Jackals, and as a last resort there's the service rifle from the ranger at the outpost. It's enough. And he needs killing badly.

Edit:

It turns it into a type of puzzle game, at least when done well.
All Zelda games are essentially puzzle games, just dressed in a veneer of fantasy. But it's always about "try the same thing over and over until you hit on the exact combination or sequence you need to achieve the next goal".

And there's nothing wrong with that, they're great games.

[Anteros]

Explosives from the Powder Gangers. Leave a road of breadcrumbs and run along it as the squad tries to reach you. Then kill a weakened Vulpes in single combat.


Setting up like that would require my character to know the encounter is coming ahead of time. I like to play as if I'm in the character's shoes and not meta game too much.



So I take it you've never played a racing game? Or time trials in a platformer?

I would argue that there are significant design differences between those and speedrunning a game.


Okay, I fail to see why whether you'd make a game out of it would be relevant. or why you feel the need to point out the population thing. the point this is a thing that people find fun, what are you implying with this? I don't get it.

Racing games at a certain point are just all the same tracks if you don't play multiplayer.

at a certain point in roguelites/roguelikes no matter how randomized a level is you start to get the feel of it, start to master it, so that the different corridors and drops just feel like minor differences that don't matter.

and a lot of videogame design is basically making the same basic actions feel different rather than actually making them different.

and if you don't like repeating the same thing until you succeed, guess what, thats what you do every time you encounter something hard and die over and over again and restart from last save until you get it right in a videogame. the time loop games just take it up to the entire game being like that.

Because someone said "why are these types of games so popular?" And you responded by saying "well, a tiny portion of people enjoy something else that's similar" it doesn't answer the question.

[Lord Raziere]

Because someone said "why are these types of games so popular?" And you responded by saying "well, a tiny portion of people enjoy something else that's similar" it doesn't answer the question.

It does though.

Because its similar enough to work.

Some people just like perfecting the same thing over and over until they get it right. You may not agree with that kind of fun, but the principle is the same regardless of whatever minor differences you have decided to emphasize. figuring out how to do a speedrun and how to do the right series of actions during a time loop game is the same set of skills of timing and following a step by step plan, one is just slower and with more room to make a mistake and still succeed.

[Rynjin]

I would argue that there are significant design differences between those and speedrunning a game.

That seems like a hard argument to make, I'm interested to hear it.

[Anteros]

Things like racing games require mastering mechanics as intended. They also usually include things like upgrading your car, multiplayer, or circuits to add variety. Speed running is (generally) more focused on abusing mechanics or bugs to do the exact same content as fast as possible, no matter how much of the actual game is skipped. There are some similar aspects, but theyre also very different.

[Anteros]

It does though.

Because its similar enough to work.

Some people just like perfecting the same thing over and over until they get it right. You may not agree with that kind of fun, but the principle is the same regardless of whatever minor differences you have decided to emphasize. figuring out how to do a speedrun and how to do the right series of actions during a time loop game is the same set of skills of timing and following a step by step plan, one is just slower and with more room to make a mistake and still succeed.

It has nothing to do with if I "agree" with it. My point was that things like speed runs appeal to such a tiny percentage of the population that it can't be used to explain why people like games like Deathloop.

[Lord Raziere]

Things like racing games require mastering mechanics as intended. They also usually include things like upgrading your car, multiplayer, or circuits to add variety. Speed running is (generally) more focused on abusing mechanics or bugs to do the exact same content as fast as possible, no matter how much of the actual game is skipped. There are some similar aspects, but theyre also very different.

Yeah, but the original question never was about whether it was intended it was about specifically:

God, please, no. These "time loop" games seem to be mysteriously popular recently, and I just don't get the appeal at all--where's the fun in playing through the same stuff over and over again until you find the trick to finishing it?

That was what I was answering. whether or not the fun was intended was never apart of the conversation until you brought it up and started emphasizing its importance out of nowhere. the fact that for example: you lose units in Fire Emblem permanently as intended and in pokemon nuzlockes you have to hold yourself to rules to make sure they perma-die on a run is irrelevant, the perma-death rule is enforced either way, thus leading to a more cautious mindset. the experience is similar even if the design behind it is different.

while the primary comparison isn't racing games and speedrunning, its time loop games and speedrunning so your point about racing games is tangential, I only brought them up in a certain context and specified "if you don't play multiplayer" and such as other minor examples, they're not the main point I'm making. the fact that you bring it out of the context I was talking in and getting sidetracked by that is not really relevant to me.

the main point is: time loop games and speedrunning has similarities in that you plan out a route, you time it so that you do things at the right time efficiently and you have to time it so that you do it in a certain amount of time. now certainly there is a difference in a speedrun can be as long as you want in that its as long as your inefficient or fail something while a time loop has a set time for you to work within, but the commonality is a form of time restraint your trying to work within. and you do experience probably experience a lot of the same content over and over again in the process of doing both. and that people find both of things fun, they're not exactly the same, sure, but they both require a willingness to try and try again until you get a string of actions correct enough to succeed. again different design, similar experience.

[Forum Explorer]

Setting up like that would require my character to know the encounter is coming ahead of time. I like to play as if I'm in the character's shoes and not meta game too much.


It's still explosives from the Powder Gangers, but not it's dynamite instead and frantic back pedalling. He's actually a really tough boss, but he is beatable in a straight fight. But he often leaves me pretty dry on resources. Which is good. There aren't a lot of points in a Betheseda game where I actually have to use all the resources I have available to win or have the good choice have negative consequences.

[Rynjin]

Things like racing games require mastering mechanics as intended. They also usually include things like upgrading your car, multiplayer, or circuits to add variety. Speed running is (generally) more focused on abusing mechanics or bugs to do the exact same content as fast as possible, no matter how much of the actual game is skipped. There are some similar aspects, but theyre also very different.

Yep, just what I figured. You don't know what speedrunning is.

[Anteros]

Yep, just what I figured. You don't know what speedrunning is.

Maybe enlighten me as to what you think it is then instead of making snide remarks? Does it make you feel superior that you use a different definition of a niche internet hobby than me or something? If I'm wrong then fine, it happens frequently enough.

[Lord Raziere]

Anteros, there is such a thing as the glitchless speedrun category for stuff: you do it fast as possible without glitches or bugs. doing it with glitches is just one way to speedrun.

[Rynjin]

Maybe enlighten me as to what you think it is then instead of making snide remarks? Does it make you feel superior that you use a different definition of a niche internet hobby than me or something? If I'm wrong then fine, it happens frequently enough.

I'm just kind of tired of seeing people **** on speedrunning by claiming it is "lacking skill" or "relies on abusing mechanics/glitches".

There's a ton of different kinds of speedrun. Glitchless, no skips, 100% runs, any% runs, etc.

All variants require a deep understanding of the game and more mechanical proficiency than the average player.

[Anteros]

Indeed, there is such a thing as the glitchless speedrun category for stuff: you do it fast as possible without glitches or bugs. doing it with glitches is just one way to speedrun.

And now we're talking about a subcategory of an already tiny hobby that much less than 1% of gamers participate in to explain why something is popular. Obviously. How foolish of me for questioning. Clearly if .00005% of gamers have enjoyed something similar in the past, that must be why it's suddenly mainstream.


I'm just kind of tired of seeing people **** on speedrunning by claiming it is "lacking skill" or "relies on abusing mechanics/glitches".

There's a ton of different kinds of speedrun. Glitchless, no skips, 100% runs, any% runs, etc.

All variants require a deep understanding of the game and more mechanical proficiency than the average player.

I never made any sort of claim that those things don't take skill. They clear take hours and hours of practice. I said it's different from mainstream racing games and such. Which is true. Even the ones that use glitches still obviously take tons of practice. I certainly wouldn't consider any varient of them to be mainstream though. That isn't an insult. It's just a measure of popularity.

[Lord Raziere]

And now we're talking about a subcategory of an already tiny hobby that much less than 1% of gamers participate in to explain why something is popular. Obviously. How foolish of me for questioning. Clearly if .00005% of gamers have enjoyed something similar in the past, that must be why it's suddenly mainstream.

I've said it before: the time loop stuff is slower and has more room to make mistakes. that means its easier. speedrunning is harder. harder things are more niche than easy things which can be more easily get popular since its more accessible. time loop games are more accessible than learning how to speedrun but fulfills a similar skillset of planning routes and stringing together a bunch of actions in succession within a certain amount of time. its not exactly the same, but time loops are more accessible because the work of holding yourself to certain rules socially/mentally is done with mechanics instead.

[Rynjin]

And now we're talking about a subcategory of an already tiny hobby that much less than 1% of gamers participate in to explain why something is popular. Obviously. How foolish of me for questioning. Clearly if .00005% of gamers have enjoyed something similar in the past, that must be why it's suddenly mainstream.

You entire argument was that speedrunning is different from time trials in racing games, platformers, etc. because they "abuse mechanics and bugs".

Your argument was wrong: entirely based on false information. Don't try to turn this into an argument about what's "mainstream" all of a sudden.

Hell, it would be wrong even if there was no such thing as a glitchless speedrun. Normal players figure out how to "abuse mechanics" to trim down times or gain an advantage all the time.

Did you ever play QUake or Unreal Tournament? Or any game inspired by them. Did you know rocket jumping (a core mechanic in quite a few games, even in the modern day) is based on a glitch? People still jump around everywhere in FPS games because bunnyhopping was such a common (and purposefully reproduced) engine glitch in shooters for so long.

"Abused mechanics" often become just "mechanics".

[Forum Explorer]

From how you are talking; either other time loops games are much more intense, or I wouldn't call Majora's Mask a time loop game at all. I mean, yeah it has a time loop. But you can control when you are in the game pretty easily, and there are very few things that require you to do stuff on multiple days. Do a thing on a certain day, or before a certain amount of time passes sure. But that often led to hammering it down by going to the spot you need to be and changing the time until you could do whatever you needed to do. There is very little route planning required.


Now that being said, speed running isn't that niche. You can find a lot of speed runs with very minimal effort. And the appeal is pretty easy to understand. It's to be the best at the game, or to see someone challenge the best. It is impressive to see people hit these microsecond reactions to pull off stunts that are completely unnecessary for anything other than a speed run.

And yeah, it takes immense amounts of skill, practice and research to be a champion speed runner. It isn't easy at all.

[Anteros]

You entire argument was that speedrunning is different from time trials in racing games, platformers, etc. because they "abuse mechanics and bugs".

Your argument was wrong: entirely based on false information. Don't try to turn this into an argument about what's "mainstream" all of a sudden.

Hell, it would be wrong even if there was no such thing as a glitchless speedrun. Normal players figure out how to "abuse mechanics" to trim down times or gain an advantage all the time.

Did you ever play QUake or Unreal Tournament? Or any game inspired by them. Did you know rocket jumping (a core mechanic in quite a few games, even in the modern day) is based on a glitch? People still jump around everywhere in FPS games because bunnyhopping was such a common (and purposefully reproduced) engine glitch in shooters for so long.

"Abused mechanics" often become just "mechanics".

The argument was literally always about popularity. Im sorry you felt your hobby was insulted. I do not consider speed runs under any definition a mainstream hobby. I would venture that more people agree with that then not. Maybe I'm wrong. Ultimately it's just my opinion and nothing to get hostile over.

[Eldan]

God, please, no. These "time loop" games seem to be mysteriously popular recently, and I just don't get the appeal at all--where's the fun in playing through the same stuff over and over again until you find the trick to finishing it?

I don't know, I'm quite enjoying The Forgotten City, where you go through a short mystery with the same couple of characters, just going to different places each time and asking different questions until you find out who of them did it.

[Cikomyr2]

Time loop games are still very early.

What I'd like is a time loop game that tracks narrative time rather than actual gameplay time. So you don't have to feel pressure to speedrun everything.

[Brother Oni]

Time loop games are still very early.

What I'd like is a time loop game that tracks narrative time rather than actual gameplay time. So you don't have to feel pressure to speedrun everything.

There's Ephemeral Fantasia which is a very old PS2 RPG where the character is stuck in a timeloop. As you figure out clues and solves puzzles in the loop, you can can bring people with you during the reset so that now also also retain memories from the previous loops and help you figure out the way to break the timeloop.

I believe The Sexy Brutale is also similar, but I've not played it.

[Psyren]

"Time loop games" are just an attempt to explain in-universe what you'd do in many difficult games, save scum essentially. They bake the act of reloading/reviving into the universe's fiction to keep the illusion/immersion going. We've been doing it since System Shock if not before.


Things like racing games require mastering mechanics as intended. They also usually include things like upgrading your car, multiplayer, or circuits to add variety. Speed running is (generally) more focused on abusing mechanics or bugs to do the exact same content as fast as possible, no matter how much of the actual game is skipped. There are some similar aspects, but theyre also very different.

There are speedrun variants that do involve "mastering mechanics as intended." 100% glitchless usually entail this, and those are probably the ones you would find enjoyable if that is the form of mechanical mastery you want to see displayed.


As in the sole survivor is building settlements while trying to convince everyone they meet that they’re urgently looking for whatsisname. Meanwhile Geralt is chasing question marks and playing gwent while similarly turning the continent upside down looking for that girl he knows.

Am I to conclude that an open world game with tons to explore just should not have a main plot that implies urgency? Because I do enjoy chasing question marks and exploring all the cool stuff the devs put into the game. But then I progress the plot a bit and I’m supposed to snap out of that and feel like we’re desperately trying to do something or another.

It's a tough balance to strike because you want the player to feel like they can explore without the world being damned as a result. One good way to do it is to have the villain(s) be off exploring or trying to gather information too, rather than pursuing their main plot. In Dragon Age Inquisition, the big bad Corypheus is basically in the background chasing down one rumor or tidbit after the next, and whenever you start a big plot mission you just happen to arrive at the same time he does no matter what you were doing in the interim. They made a point of letting you know you had freedom to explore after both Mass Effect 2 and 3 had timed missions that could sneak up on you out of nowhere, and they consciously wanted to avoid that.

[Cikomyr2]

There's Ephemeral Fantasia which is a very old PS2 RPG where the character is stuck in a timeloop. As you figure out clues and solves puzzles in the loop, you can can bring people with you during the reset so that now also also retain memories from the previous loops and help you figure out the way to break the timeloop.

I believe The Sexy Brutale is also similar, but I've not played it.

I mean the concept hasn't really been *that* developed as of yet. We are barely starting to scratch the surface of what this sort of gameplay can bring, and are currently married to the idea of a "golden run" where you can 100% all problems of the worlds.

I mean.. let's think about Dragon Age Origins.

What if you had a ticking clock for:

- the Redcliff Undead Situation
(when resolved, a new ticking clock starts about Eamon's survival)
- The Circle of Magi's purging
- The Dalish Elves's war against the Werewolves
- Orzrammar's crisis of succession

Also add other minor timers.

To "win" the game (i.e. end the story) you have to do them all. There's no fail situation where you don't secure an army to go in the endgame; only HOW you resolve the various quest.

Well, what if the narrative clock tracker determines the status of each location based on how early in-game you reach. Leave out any aspect of speedrunning, and just about narrative resolution of the various locations.

So... instead of always arriving at a location RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CRISIS (Ex: the circle of magi), you can maybe arrive a bit early and see the opening flares of violence. Maybe you can even properly avoid the conflict if you play your cards right?

And if you reach the circle of Magi late, all mages are already dead, but there's an army of templars just about to storm the gates. The right of annulment has been resolved.


Just start with this, and from there you can even start playing with location resolution interacting with other locations, like Elves or Mages showing up at Redcliff, etc..


this way, you have a living world and you avoid what is effectively the OP's point: there is a lack of urgency because you will ALWAYS show up in a location at the exact narrative time the designers want you to.

[Lord Raziere]

this way, you have a living world and you avoid what is effectively the OP's point: there is a lack of urgency because you will ALWAYS show up in a location at the exact narrative time the designers want you to.

You mean the feature that is what open world games are about? :smallconfused:

I wouldn't want the timers you describe. that sounds like torment. why do you want to stress me out, I play games to have fun.

now there are people who would love that and see it as a challenge to see the right route get the right timing for what they want, but the moment someone posts up that run, the entire online community will call it the best run and strive to emulate it then improve upon it, if you don't allow it to be 100% then people will probably just decide on the next best thing and do that, or they will just mod it so that the timers don't work and you can play it normally. a lack of urgency is not a broken thing, it doesn't need fixing.

[Psyren]

*snip*

DAO has what I'll call "soft clocks." You can walk in at any time and the situation is still underway/salvageable. But if you leave Redcliff, the Circle etc once they've told you how dire things are, time advances and the fail state is triggered. I don't mind this approach as it does create pockets of urgency, plus the opportunity to create a "Jerk run" where you can purposefully walk away from situations to let them deteriorate, but it's very hard to do so accidentally.

[warty goblin]

I think the problem with just about any timer system in a game is that it's a constraint, and players hate constraints . That's more or less the entire appeal of open world games, you get to go anywhere with the constraints of levels, and you can do more or less anything you want without the main plot intervening when you don't want it to. One of the things some players like is a high stakes main story, so there's one of those in a lot of open world games, but if you just want to go grind crafting mats for 25 hours, you can do that. It might not make narrative sense, but it makes structural, mechanical sense, and for most games, structure wins over narrative 95% of the the time.

Besides, at the end if the day, a timer mechanic is just content for keeping players from seeing other content they may actually want to do. It is, in some sense, literally negative game. Why pour money and effort into something that most players will hate and draw attention away from all the other stuff you're slaving away at?

[Cikomyr2]

You mean the feature that is what open world games are about? :smallconfused:

I wouldn't want the timers you describe. that sounds like torment. why do you want to stress me out, I play games to have fun.

now there are people who would love that and see it as a challenge to see the right route get the right timing for what they want, but the moment someone posts up that run, the entire online community will call it the best run and strive to emulate it then improve upon it, if you don't allow it to be 100% then people will probably just decide on the next best thing and do that, or they will just mod it so that the timers don't work and you can play it normally. a lack of urgency is not a broken thing, it doesn't need fixing.

Well, here's the problem. The point is not to have "the right route". The point is to have a different route if you walk it differently.

And the point of an open world is to discover it from all angles. a "Temporal Angle" is not a bad one to explore. The point of the sandbox with at-will reboot of the timeline is to remove the stress of missing out of stuff, while still having a myriad of details to discover, and knowing that you can start your journey in a completely random direction and you know you will discover something new than if you got there 2 weeks later in narrative time.

[Lord Raziere]

Well, here's the problem. The point is not to have "the right route". The point is to have a different route if you walk it differently.

And the point of an open world is to discover it from all angles. a "Temporal Angle" is not a bad one to explore. The point of the sandbox with at-will reboot of the timeline is to remove the stress of missing out of stuff, while still having a myriad of details to discover, and knowing that you can start your journey in a completely random direction and you know you will discover something new than if you got there 2 weeks later in narrative time.

Yeah, but it doesn't matter if you try to design it so there is no right route. players will collectively decide what is the right route regardless of your intentions. BotW was designed to not be 100%'d, but people still want to do that.

and as warty says, you putting in a constraint here. your basically proposing to the player that if say, they want to meet four certain people, they can only three certain people within a certain amount of time. that isn't going to result in anything but coming up with exploits, abuses or some other trick to meet four people despite the intention being to only meet three. they aren't going to say "oh well the designer intended me to not meet three people, I'll just follow along" they're going to say "yeah no screw that, lets figure out how to break this game" and next thing you know someone will have found a way to talk to five within a three people amount of meet time and feel triumphant for it while at best only being annoyed at you for putting this limitation into the game.

[Forum Explorer]

this way, you have a living world and you avoid what is effectively the OP's point: there is a lack of urgency because you will ALWAYS show up in a location at the exact narrative time the designers want you to.

That creates a massive burden on the programmers and for what?

A feature that a lot of people will end up hating. It'd be cool and a neat gimmick sure. But not something I would see actually improving the game.


Mind you it could work with something short and snappy, even to the degree of Majora's Mask. It's a time loop of three days. Resetting the loop is more a minor annoyance than an actual problem.

Something like Dragon Age where you have to put in hours to even get to the next plot point it would be unbearable.

[Psyren]

I think the problem with just about any timer system in a game is that it's a constraint, and players hate constraints . That's more or less the entire appeal of open world games, you get to go anywhere with the constraints of levels, and you can do more or less anything you want without the main plot intervening when you don't want it to. One of the things some players like is a high stakes main story, so there's one of those in a lot of open world games, but if you just want to go grind crafting mats for 25 hours, you can do that. It might not make narrative sense, but it makes structural, mechanical sense, and for most games, structure wins over narrative 95% of the the time.

Besides, at the end if the day, a timer mechanic is just content for keeping players from seeing other content they may actually want to do. It is, in some sense, literally negative game. Why pour money and effort into something that most players will hate and draw attention away from all the other stuff you're slaving away at?

I agree with this. Moreover, I think it's possible to deliver tension/stakes without punishing people who want to immerse themselves in the world at their own pace.

Dragon Age Inquisition: "We know the next phase of the Big Bad's plan, he's going to assassinate Empress Celene at the Winter Palace Ball and pin the blame on her chief rival, throwing the region into chaos that will make everyone unable to resist his demon hordes later. We need to attend the party and stop that sequence of events."

Player: "Great, clear goal and stakes. How long do I have until the party?"

DAI: "Well, it happens on the **mumbles** day of the month of Verimensis, or maybe it's Pluitanis? Somewhere in there. We handed Schrodinger's Invitation to Josephine, she won't let you miss it. And there's a lot to prepare, outfits, schmoozing for the best seats, champagne for all the major houses, background checks... you know what, why don't you go close a few more rifts and keep recruiting, we'll call you!"

[Vinyadan]

By the way, Oblivion did have a timer, although just for one quest: when you are in the Great Gate during the defense of Bruma, you have to close it within 15 minutes, or you lose the game.

Oblivion also had some odd things like the creation of black soul gems, which required being at a certain altar with certain items and a certain spell during an event that was triggered every eight days and lasted a whole day.

[Rodin]

That creates a massive burden on the programmers and for what?

A feature that a lot of people will end up hating. It'd be cool and a neat gimmick sure. But not something I would see actually improving the game.


Mind you it could work with something short and snappy, even to the degree of Majora's Mask. It's a time loop of three days. Resetting the loop is more a minor annoyance than an actual problem.

Something like Dragon Age where you have to put in hours to even get to the next plot point it would be unbearable.

I think plenty of people would enjoy it. The problem is more that most players wouldn't see most of the content, because most players only play a game once or maybe twice. So most of the work the developers put in goes to waste.

There have been games with an active timer that progresses without the player. The Laura Bow games had a clock that advanced based on events, and at any point in the game there were 2-3 events available for the player to stumble into. The key thing that a novice player would miss is that each event happened at a set time, and if you went to the event at 11:30 first you would miss the events that happened at 11:00 and 11:15. This made it very easy to miss key events that show you the motives of the various characters. The replayability of the games came from taking notes from your first (clueless) playthrough, and then going back through armed with knowledge to witness the key events and deduce who the murderer(s) are.

[Spacewolf]

I think if you want a time based component to a free roaming game you need it to be smaller game so you can try out the different variations. Unfortuantly free roaming games have gotten into a map size arms race where they make big empty maps then take a random shotgun and blast encounters and icons all over the map so that's not likely to happen.

[Erloas]

That seems a bit backwards to me. It seems like most open world games are pretty small compared to what they used to be.* But there is very little space where something isn't going on.
I understand both parts of it though, having a large map where a lot of it is empty makes it feel like a real world, but it's not actually fun to travel empty spaces, especially not multiple times.
Like New Vegas made the "it's such a long and dangerous journey between cities" that the NPCs said fall flat when you could see the next town in the distance.
And as soon as you add fast travel into a game even the largest maps can feel small.

*this does change based on what you consider old. An old game for me is probably older than a decent number of the members of the forums. (Well maybe not, if someone is using forums they're probably not too young). Of course most of the old open world games I'm thinking about used different mechanics for open world travel compared to regular gameplay.

[veti]

I think plenty of people would enjoy it. The problem is more that most players wouldn't see most of the content, because most players only play a game once or maybe twice. So most of the work the developers put in goes to waste.

This. The economics of game development are not such that anyone wants to develop 200 hours' worth of gameplay, knowing that on any given run through you could only experience about 40 of those hours. That's why we get nonsense like Skyrim where, with a tiny handful of exceptions, it's virtually impossible to shut yourself out of any quest even if you try.


*this does change based on what you consider old. An old game for me is probably older than a decent number of the members of the forums. (Well maybe not, if someone is using forums they're probably not too young). Of course most of the old open world games I'm thinking about used different mechanics for open world travel compared to regular gameplay.

Out of interest, what old games are you thinking of exactly? F:NV was released in 2010, it's not exactly ancient but it's a pretty far cry from modern too.

My personal mental model of an "open world" game kinda excludes the type with different mechanics for open world travel - that means you're only travelling between a (necessarily finite) set of designated encounter spaces, and your only choice is about what order you want to go through those encounters in. Games like Baldur's Gate, I would never call "open world".

[Cikomyr2]

This. The economics of game development are not such that anyone wants to develop 200 hours' worth of gameplay, knowing that on any given run through you could only experience about 40 of those hours. That's why we get nonsense like Skyrim where, with a tiny handful of exceptions, it's virtually impossible to shut yourself out of any quest even if you try.



I agree with you there. this is why a procedural/emergent events would be best.

The problem right now is that Procedural generation gives too often generic samey dungeons/events. You see the same thing happening all the time.

One of the fun part of Fallout 4 was seeing how the map accidentally interacted with itself at parts. Brotherhood attacking Mutants, drawing Institute Synths in the fight accidentally, etc.. If there was a modicum of AI and proper behavior in these randomly (and genuinely accidental) events, Fallout 4 would have such a great immersion for randomly generated crap.

[Lord Raziere]

yeah, we need better procedural generation for this kind of stuff in general. No Man's Sky demonstrates this quite nicely by being a mile wide but inch deep in terms of gameplay. I personally think the next great innovation in gaming won't be how big the map is, or how great the graphics are, but how intricately and deeply you can interact with the videogame worlds.

[Cikomyr2]

yeah, we need better procedural generation for this kind of stuff in general. No Man's Sky demonstrates this quite nicely by being a mile wide but inch deep in terms of gameplay. I personally think the next great innovation in gaming won't be how big the map is, or how great the graphics are, but how intricately and deeply you can interact with the videogame worlds.

I think this is where we are in full agreement :smallredface:

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Yeah, but it doesn't matter if you try to design it so there is no right route. players will collectively decide what is the right route regardless of your intentions. BotW was designed to not be 100%'d, but people still want to do that.

and as warty says, you putting in a constraint here. your basically proposing to the player that if say, they want to meet four certain people, they can only three certain people within a certain amount of time. that isn't going to result in anything but coming up with exploits, abuses or some other trick to meet four people despite the intention being to only meet three. they aren't going to say "oh well the designer intended me to not meet three people, I'll just follow along" they're going to say "yeah no screw that, lets figure out how to break this game" and next thing you know someone will have found a way to talk to five within a three people amount of meet time and feel triumphant for it while at best only being annoyed at you for putting this limitation into the game.

Gonna disagree here; Morrowind did exactly that with the Great Houses, Thieves/Fighters Guild etc. and I keep hearing how more games should be like that. And I don’t disagree; replayability is a wonderful thing.

[Psyren]

Gonna disagree here; Morrowind did exactly that with the Great Houses, Thieves/Fighters Guild etc. and I keep hearing how more games should be like that. And I don’t disagree; replayability is a wonderful thing.

Counterpoint - Skyrim let you join almost every faction simultaneously, and it was far and away the more popular title. I think you'd be hard-pressed to get Bethesda to go back to Morrowind-style exclusivity in TES6.

[Cikomyr2]

Counterpoint - Skyrim let you join almost every faction simultaneously, and it was far and away the more popular title. I think you'd be hard-pressed to get Bethesda to go back to Morrowind-style exclusivity in TES6.

I would argue that what made Skyrim great was not "The Guilds" or "The Story".

It was the world and the constant adventure. The Guilds/Plots were just excuse to send you across the land. But nobody ever commented that the storyline of the Mage's Guild was of any quality, for example. And the Thieves' guild tries a mystery plot that completely goes off the rail 2/3 through.

The Dark Brotherhood was marginally better.

The Companion's.. I just don't remember much of the plot there. Seemed there was a huge plot hole where everyone blamed you for the Elder's death when he explicitly sent you on a mission, while the rest of the Companions stayed in the hall and should have been the ones tasked with defending him. Bunch of hippocrites.

[Lord Raziere]

Counterpoint - Skyrim let you join almost every faction simultaneously, and it was far and away the more popular title. I think you'd be hard-pressed to get Bethesda to go back to Morrowind-style exclusivity in TES6.

Yeah, Probably. though, speaking as someone who really got into Elder Scrolls lore at Skyrim despite seeing my brother play the previous two games, whats really keeping me from playing Morrowind is mainly two things: it looks visually horrendous. I know it was probably good for its time. But it needs a remaster. and the mechanics being uh......clunky? not good? kind of ugh? I wish I could play Morrowind if only to experience its lore and such, but there is a reason I'm waiting for a certain fan project to finish making Morrowind with Skyrim mechanics.

[Psyren]

I would argue that what made Skyrim great was not "The Guilds" or "The Story".

It was the world and the constant adventure. The Guilds/Plots were just excuse to send you across the land. But nobody ever commented that the storyline of the Mage's Guild was of any quality, for example. And the Thieves' guild tries a mystery plot that completely goes off the rail 2/3 through.

The Dark Brotherhood was marginally better.

The Companion's.. I just don't remember much of the plot there. Seemed there was a huge plot hole where everyone blamed you for the Elder's death when he explicitly sent you on a mission, while the rest of the Companions stayed in the hall and should have been the ones tasked with defending him. Bunch of hippocrites.

But that just proves the point further. If the faction storylines/content were truly much weaker in Skyrim and it still ended up being the blockbuster it was, spending a whole bunch of time working out the internecine guild politics and the exclusivity between them is not the best use of development resources. Furthermore, I doubt anyone can realistically say Skyrim of all games has no replay value as a result, they've been reselling the game to largely the same core audience for literally a decade. It didn't get as successful as it was with everyone only buying it once, it just didn't.

In other words, TES6 should continue on with the factions mostly being a free-for-all, and focus on refining other systems instead. I would love it if custom spells and items made a bigger comeback for example.


Yeah, Probably. though, speaking as someone who really got into Elder Scrolls lore at Skyrim despite seeing my brother play the previous two games, whats really keeping me from playing Morrowind is mainly two things: it looks visually horrendous. I know it was probably good for its time. But it needs a remaster. and the mechanics being uh......clunky? not good? kind of ugh? I wish I could play Morrowind if only to experience its lore and such, but there is a reason I'm waiting for a certain fan project to finish making Morrowind with Skyrim mechanics.

Having played Morrowind myself back in the day, I'm pretty excited for Skywind too.

[Forum Explorer]

But that just proves the point further. If the faction storylines/content were truly much weaker in Skyrim and it still ended up being the blockbuster it was, spending a whole bunch of time working out the internecine guild politics and the exclusivity between them is not the best use of development resources. Furthermore, I doubt anyone can realistically say Skyrim of all games has no replay value as a result, they've been reselling the game to largely the same core audience for literally a decade. It didn't get as successful as it was with everyone only buying it once, it just didn't.

In other words, TES6 should continue on with the factions mostly being a free-for-all, and focus on refining other systems instead. I would love it if custom spells and items made a bigger comeback for example.


Not necessarily. I've heard people complain about the faction content a lot. And of course the constant mockery of being able to become an Archmage without knowing much if any magic.

But Skyrim had a massive upgrade in graphics and mechanics in comparison to Morrowind from what I hear. That doesn't mean that people wouldn't have preferred a better faction system, but that everything else Skyrim did more than made up for their relatively lackluster faction system.

[Psyren]

Not necessarily. I've heard people complain about the faction content a lot. And of course the constant mockery of being able to become an Archmage without knowing much if any magic.

Did any of those complaints have an impact on the game's success though?

I'm not debating Skyrim's quality (up or down), rather I'm giving my opinion on where I think dev time is best spent. If a feature does not meaningfully impact the game's reception, it doesn't need additional focus in the sequel.


But Skyrim had a massive upgrade in graphics and mechanics in comparison to Morrowind from what I hear. That doesn't mean that people wouldn't have preferred a better faction system, but that everything else Skyrim did more than made up for their relatively lackluster faction system.

Right, so a detailed and nuanced faction system likely wouldn't \matter.

[Cikomyr2]

But that just proves the point further. If the faction storylines/content were truly much weaker in Skyrim and it still ended up being the blockbuster it was, spending a whole bunch of time working out the internecine guild politics and the exclusivity between them is not the best use of development resources. Furthermore, I doubt anyone can realistically say Skyrim of all games has no replay value as a result, they've been reselling the game to largely the same core audience for literally a decade. It didn't get as successful as it was with everyone only buying it once, it just didn't.

In other words, TES6 should continue on with the factions mostly being a free-for-all, and focus on refining other systems instead. I would love it if custom spells and items made a bigger comeback for example.

I'll tell you what made Skyrim:

Primary gameplay loops

You explored. You fought. You looted.
Skills gained. Sell/Craft/Equip
Repeat


This is 100% of what Skyrim was so good about. Not the dialogue. Not the radiant quests. Not the plot.
All was the primary gameplay loop, and this 100% should never be compromised.

The secondary loop was about acquiring crafting material or new spells or whatever you wanted to gather. It's the medium-term objectives you give yourself. Skyrim's wasn't the best, but it was certainly a good quality product.

And then comes the long-term gameplay loop. Usually this is the plot/story, and I don't think anyone genuinely engaged with Skyrim as a roleplaying environment.

[warty goblin]

If you needed to be a mage to do the mages' guild quests in Oblivion/Skyrim, the bitching would have been endless. Lots of calls that the game was dictating your build, or biased towards full caster builds, or how BS it is that in order to do this one quest line you have to grind up to Destruction 25 or whatever and how boring and unfair that is to stealth/melee characters.

Narratively it makes no sense that you need (next to) no magic for those quests. But when narrative clashes with letting players do whatever they want, particularly in a game as built around player freedom as Skyrim, the narrative will nearly always lose. Like it or not, the dominant mode of singleplayer game design is constant player empowerment, not simulation or narrative coherence.

[Cikomyr2]

If you needed to be a mage to do the mages' guild quests in Oblivion/Skyrim, the bitching would have been endless. Lots of calls that the game was dictating your build, or biased towards full caster builds, or how BS it is that in order to do this one quest line you have to grind up to Destruction 25 or whatever and how boring and unfair that is to stealth/melee characters.

Narratively it makes no sense that you need (next to) no magic for those quests. But when narrative clashes with letting players do whatever they want, particularly in a game as built around player freedom as Skyrim, the narrative will nearly always lose. Like it or not, the dominant mode of singleplayer game design is constant player empowerment, not simulation or narrative coherence.

The counter-argument is then: why do you want to joint the Mage's guild if you don't practice magic?

Just because you want quests? In a vacuum?

[Psyren]

Technically all the Dragonborns have some form of magic.

But I'm not objecting to "you need X points in magic skill Y (or skills Y, Z, A etc) to rise sufficiently high in the mage's guild." Rather, what I'm objecting to is "We hate the fighter's guild so if you do too much stuff for them we hate you too" - despite being a battlemage or a nightblade etc.

[warty goblin]

The counter-argument is then: why do you want to joint the Mage's guild if you don't practice magic?

Just because you want quests? In a vacuum?

Pretty much that. I think the way to understand most open world games is as a buffet. It's generally not surprising, or even the best food you've had, but it's consistent quality stuff, and the real selling point is that there's a lot of it, and you can choose whatever you want without restrictions. Getting a hamburger doesn't lock you out of grabbing a corndog later.

Same thing here. The point is a lot of enjoyable and basically predictable stuff you can choose between at will. You feel like a dungeon, click on the map and go do a dungeon, which will be an awful lot like the last 10 dungeons. Feel like a quest with NPCs, click on the quest log and go do a quest where some NPCs will tell you what to do, just like the last 10 quests.

Gating quests is just removing options from your buffet; nobody wants to have to prove they're worthy of corndogs by needing to eat 3 hotdogs first. If they want a corndog they want to go get a corndog, and they want to do that now.

The big exception to this is unlocking new powers by leveling up. People find getting more powerful fun, and will therefore trade being able to do everything right now for the enjoyment of unlocking more power as they go. But in a game like Skyrim, there's very little level gating, so you can do almost anything you want right from the word go. Leveling up isn't framed as removing a restriction (although fundamentally that's what it is) but as getting more awesome from a starting place of already being awesome.

[Cikomyr2]

Pretty much that. I think the way to understand most open world games is as a buffet. It's generally not surprising, or even the best food you've had, but it's consistent quality stuff, and the real selling point is that there's a lot of it, and you can choose whatever you want without restrictions. Getting a hamburger doesn't lock you out of grabbing a corndog later.

Same thing here. The point is a lot of enjoyable and basically predictable stuff you can choose between at will. You feel like a dungeon, click on the map and go do a dungeon, which will be an awful lot like the last 10 dungeons. Feel like a quest with NPCs, click on the quest log and go do a quest where some NPCs will tell you what to do, just like the last 10 quests.

Gating quests is just removing options from your buffet; nobody wants to have to prove they're worthy of corndogs by needing to eat 3 hotdogs first. If they want a corndog they want to go get a corndog, and they want to do that now.

The big exception to this is unlocking new powers by leveling up. People find getting more powerful fun, and will therefore trade being able to do everything right now for the enjoyment of unlocking more power as they go. But in a game like Skyrim, there's very little level gating, so you can do almost anything you want right from the word go. Leveling up isn't framed as removing a restriction (although fundamentally that's what it is) but as getting more awesome from a starting place of already being awesome.

but not everyone here wants a buffet? I think that's the main takeaway

[Psyren]

Well, imagine a buffet where if you wanted to try everything it would require starting over at the back of the line every time you made a couple of selections. Most people would leave that buffet.

The buffet that just hands you a bigger plate and says go nuts is the one that would become more popular.

[warty goblin]

but not everyone here wants a buffet? I think that's the main takeaway

Then don't play this sort of game? Heaven knows I don't, I ran out of patience with Bethesda designs by Fallout 3, and that's fine, they just aren't for me. It's not even like all open world rpgs are built this way, Piranha Bytes games are full of stuff you can only get to by choosing particular, mutually exclusive options.

[LibraryOgre]

You know what would have helped FO4's urgency problem? Finding out how long it has been since your son was taken earlier in the game. By trying to keep that a secret, they screwed up their urgency.

So, let's try this: Game is normal up until you rescue Nick and get him on the case. Maybe until after you kill Kellog. But then you find out that Kellog was a synth, and that Shaun was taken 60 years ago. You go from "I have to find my baby" to "My baby is likely dead." Then, you get to the institute... and Shaun is there.

But between Kellog and finding Shaun... you can have that expansive part of the game. You're now REALLY a Sole Survivor. You have to make a life for yourself, even if you speed-ran the quest up to that point. You've met the Minutemen and the Brotherhood of Steel, and killing Kellog puts you on the Institute's radar, and getting the information from Kellog put you on the Railroad's... and, so, now, the factions start courting you. Now, if you haven't before, you start building and recruiting. You might not build a settlement so much as a FOB for the Brotherhood, or a synth outpost for the Institute.

Then, boom, we throw in Shaun. Whiplash back, and makes you question your relationship to everyone.

[Psyren]

^ I agree, "my baby was taken" is definitely the kind of quest that implies extreme urgency, and makes you feel bad for wasting time.

[PhoenixPhyre]

^ I agree, "my baby was taken" is definitely the kind of quest that implies extreme urgency, and makes you feel bad for wasting time.

I guess, for me, there wasn't the urgency because I've played enough other "open world" games (and RPGs, especially MMOs) that had these "really really urgent (in the fiction)" quests that could be indefinitely delayed. So kind of "genre savviness" meant that it didn't feel urgent, because I knew the urgency was a lie. Which, having said that, isn't a good thing. It's an established genre convention, but it's kinda...borked.

[Psyren]

I guess, for me, there wasn't the urgency because I've played enough other "open world" games (and RPGs, especially MMOs) that had these "really really urgent (in the fiction)" quests that could be indefinitely delayed. So kind of "genre savviness" meant that it didn't feel urgent, because I knew the urgency was a lie. Which, having said that, isn't a good thing. It's an established genre convention, but it's kinda...borked.

Sure, genre conventions et al. would convince me (the player) that there wasn't actually an issue with taking my sweet time. But it's still a source of ludonarrative dissonance that a different motivation (or reframing the one we got to remove the implied time pressure) would have avoided :smallsmile:

[veti]

Gonna disagree here; Morrowind did exactly that with the Great Houses, Thieves/Fighters Guild etc. and I keep hearing how more games should be like that. And I don’t disagree; replayability is a wonderful thing.

That was all so much easier to do before dialogue was fully voiced. Those great wall-of-text speeches that basically every NPC in Morrowind gives you on demand? - all of them stored in a text file, can be edited quickly and easily. Adding new dialogue takes literally minutes.

Nowadays, you have to mess about with voice actors, recordings, lip syncing... Adding new dialogue, even splicing together simple sentences from voices you've already recorded, takes days. And the resulting files are literally three or four orders of magnitude bigger.

If Skyrim contained as much dialogue as Morrowind, it would take another 50 Gb of disc space (and download time), and everyone would complain about the interminable speeches. I think that's the biggest task the Skywind project faces: rewriting and condensing the dialogue.

[GloatingSwine]

You know what would have helped FO4's urgency problem? Finding out how long it has been since your son was taken earlier in the game. By trying to keep that a secret, they screwed up their urgency.

I still contend that the original plan was for that to be a fakeout and the player was a new model synth the Institute was trying to test with the breadcrumb trail being supposed to lead you back to them, but the internet guessed the "you are a synth" twist because it was bleedin' obvious the second they put the idea of synth infiltrators into the game as we've all seen Blade Runner and so they panicked and changed it.

That also explains why, for instance, Kellogg hasn't aged a day and he has left a fresh trail for you to follow just now despite it being like 60 years.

[Psyren]

That was all so much easier to do before dialogue was fully voiced. Those great wall-of-text speeches that basically every NPC in Morrowind gives you on demand? - all of them stored in a text file, can be edited quickly and easily. Adding new dialogue takes literally minutes.

Nowadays, you have to mess about with voice actors, recordings, lip syncing... Adding new dialogue, even splicing together simple sentences from voices you've already recorded, takes days. And the resulting files are literally three or four orders of magnitude bigger.

If Skyrim contained as much dialogue as Morrowind, it would take another 50 Gb of disc space (and download time), and everyone would complain about the interminable speeches. I think that's the biggest task the Skywind project faces: rewriting and condensing the dialogue.

Is Skywind really trying to voice anything but the most major cutscenes (or anything at all really)? That seems like an extravagance, and definitely not part of the minimum viable product.

[Anteros]

I think some of the FO4 urgency dissonance comes down to whether or not you've had kids yourself. Of course not all of it. But if you're a parent with a child, putting yourself in the place of another parent who just watched their spouse get murdered and their child kidnapped, no amount of "oh this actually happened a long time ago" is going to make it less urgent.



Is Skywind really trying to voice anything but the most major cutscenes (or anything at all really)? That seems like an extravagance, and definitely not part of the minimum viable product.

If Skywind was concerned with actually putting out a minimum viable product it would have been out years ago. It's basically vaporware at this point. Nothing against them, because it was an absolutely massive undertaking, but we probably shouldn't expect it to ever release in any sort of finished form.

[veti]

Is Skywind really trying to voice anything but the most major cutscenes (or anything at all really)? That seems like an extravagance, and definitely not part of the minimum viable product.

Sadly, voicing is not optional with the Skyrim engine.

The very cheapest option would be not to actually record anything, but just to use blank voice files and subtitles. That would still run into the "interminable speeches" problem, and would be even more boring and less immersive than having the same words in speech. So even if you did that, you'd still need to drastically cut down the dialogue in the original.

[Rynjin]

Counterpoint - Skyrim let you join almost every faction simultaneously, and it was far and away the more popular title. I think you'd be hard-pressed to get Bethesda to go back to Morrowind-style exclusivity in TES6.

This has always been such a specious argument.

Skyrim was not popular and successful because it was good. It was a happy coincidence that it was ALSO good, albeit flawed, but that's beside the point.

Skyrim was successful because Oblivion was successful.

Oblivion was successful because Morrowind was successful.

Morrowind was successful...because it was on Xbox.

The success and failure of these games is not tied to the individual quality of each title, but the success of the previous title. That is how franchises work. ES6 will be successful because Skyrim was successful, even if it sucks.

[Psyren]

The success and failure of these games is not tied to the individual quality of each title, but the success of the previous title. That is how franchises work. ES6 will be successful because Skyrim was successful, even if it sucks.



I'm not debating Skyrim's quality (up or down), rather I'm giving my opinion on where I think dev time is best spent. If a feature does not meaningfully impact the game's reception, it doesn't need additional focus in the sequel.

Covered that.

[Forum Explorer]

Did any of those complaints have an impact on the game's success though?

I'm not debating Skyrim's quality (up or down), rather I'm giving my opinion on where I think dev time is best spent. If a feature does not meaningfully impact the game's reception, it doesn't need additional focus in the sequel.



Right, so a detailed and nuanced faction system likely wouldn't \matter.

Well that's the question isn't it? Obviously the game can be successful with poor faction quests, but would it have done even better with better faction quests? I'd argue yes, just on the basis that people did complain about the faction quests, and therefore fixing it would be one less thing to complain about.

Though you could argue that it likely wouldn't make or break any sales. And that's a possibility too. But you should always try and do better, not just be content with staying at the same level.

[Psyren]

Well that's the question isn't it? Obviously the game can be successful with poor faction quests, but would it have done even better with better faction quests? I'd argue yes, just on the basis that people did complain about the faction quests, and therefore fixing it would be one less thing to complain about.

Though you could argue that it likely wouldn't make or break any sales. And that's a possibility too. But you should always try and do better, not just be content with staying at the same level.

I'm fine with continuously improving, but faction quests are one feature in a very, very long line of things they can do to make TES6 better than TES5. And very far down the line to boot.

Moreover, we weren't even debating the quality of the individual quests relative to those in Morrowind - this started by talking purely about the exclusivity/jealousy mechanic, e.g. where the Mage Guild and the Fighter Guild don't get along.

[Cikomyr2]

I'm fine with continuously improving, but faction quests are one feature in a very, very long line of things they can do to make TES6 better than TES5. And very far down the line to boot.

Moreover, we weren't even debating the quality of the individual quests relative to those in Morrowind - this started by talking purely about the exclusivity/jealousy mechanic, e.g. where the Mage Guild and the Fighter Guild don't get along.

New questline dlcs integrated in the base world is more interesting than the horse armor dlc

[Rynjin]

Covered that.

And this is the logic that ends up with the homogenous Ubisoft Game (TM) being the only AAA offerings for over a decade.

[Psyren]

And this is the logic that ends up with the homogenous Ubisoft Game (TM) being the only AAA offerings for over a decade.

Yeah, there have been no AAA rpgs in the last decade with great quests/narrative :smallconfused:

Moreover, good faction quests = factions must be mutually exclusive like they were in Morrowind. Sure.

[Anteros]

This has always been such a specious argument.

Skyrim was not popular and successful because it was good. It was a happy coincidence that it was ALSO good, albeit flawed, but that's beside the point.

Skyrim was successful because Oblivion was successful.

Oblivion was successful because Morrowind was successful.

Morrowind was successful...because it was on Xbox.

The success and failure of these games is not tied to the individual quality of each title, but the success of the previous title. That is how franchises work. ES6 will be successful because Skyrim was successful, even if it sucks.

In general I would agree, but they're still re-releasing Skyrim now 1000 years later. It's hard to argue it isn't successful on its own merit.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, there have been no AAA rpgs in the last decade with great quests/narrative :smallconfused:

Moreover, good faction quests = factions must be mutually exclusive like they were in Morrowind. Sure.

If you're referring to the Witcher 3, while I did love that game it's actually pretty indicative of my point. The Ubisoft Game (TM) elements of it were by far its worst aspects.

Chasing only The Most Lucrative Trends (C) in your game's design leads to a lot of homogenous bull**** that your game probably didn't need to begin with.


In general I would agree, but they're still re-releasing Skyrim now 1000 years later. It's hard to argue it isn't successful on its own merit.

To an extent I'd say yes, but I hope they're not shooting themselves in the foot with it. They get more and more backlash with each re-release, and it just builds frustration over there being no new offerings for a while.

I'm hoping Starfield doesn't flop just because people are mad about Skyrim being re-released a billion times instead of ES6.

[Forum Explorer]

I'm fine with continuously improving, but faction quests are one feature in a very, very long line of things they can do to make TES6 better than TES5. And very far down the line to boot.

Moreover, we weren't even debating the quality of the individual quests relative to those in Morrowind - this started by talking purely about the exclusivity/jealousy mechanic, e.g. where the Mage Guild and the Fighter Guild don't get along.

I'd disagree with that. Mostly because making a better faction quest system is relatively low effort compared to other fixes.


Yes, well I joined the conversation a little after that. The problem I hear about the various faction quests in Skyrim, but most particularly, about the Mage quests is you don't actually need to be a Mage. You can have basically no magic at all to complete that questline and become an archmage.

You don't need exclusivity, but you could have the quests skill gated. Like you need at least 20 Sneak for the first Thieves quest, 25 for the next one, and so forth. The questline is a reward for devoting some of your build to whatever skills that guild needs, and thus doing the quests is more fulfilling.

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah, there have been no AAA rpgs in the last decade with great quests/narrative :smallconfused:


Unfortunately I agree. its so bad the rerelease of Mass Effect was something oddly positive, and we're looking forward to a rerelease of KOTOR! Despite Outer Worlds existing and Outer Worlds 2 being something in the works! everyone either stopped making rpgs or only made Skyrim repeatedly.

[Psyren]

If you're referring to the Witcher 3, while I did love that game it's actually pretty indicative of my point. The Ubisoft Game (TM) elements of it were by far its worst aspects.

Chasing only The Most Lucrative Trends (C) in your game's design leads to a lot of homogenous bull**** that your game probably didn't need to begin with.

I disagree that any attempt to remove chaff features from your product leads it down an inevitable path of homogeneity and mediocrity, but let's put that notion aside for a moment and get specific.

How is removing mutually exclusive factions a one-way ticket to Ubisoft Sanbox-land? Is a main character in an Elder Scrolls game who can rise through both the Fighter's Guild and the Mage's Guild really emblematic of gaming's downfall?



Yes, well I joined the conversation a little after that. The problem I hear about the various faction quests in Skyrim, but most particularly, about the Mage quests is you don't actually need to be a Mage. You can have basically no magic at all to complete that questline and become an archmage.

You don't need exclusivity, but you could have the quests skill gated. Like you need at least 20 Sneak for the first Thieves quest, 25 for the next one, and so forth. The questline is a reward for devoting some of your build to whatever skills that guild needs, and thus doing the quests is more fulfilling.

See, that I'm fine with. It's not the kind of regressive design that forces you to do 5 playthroughs to see all the content.

[Rynjin]

I disagree that any attempt to remove chaff features from your product leads it down an inevitable path of homogeneity and mediocrity, but let's put that notion aside for a moment and get specific.

How is removing mutually exclusive factions a one-way ticket to Ubisoft Sanbox-land? Is a main character in an Elder Scrolls game who can rise through both the Fighter's Guild and the Mage's Guild really emblematic of gaming's downfall?

It's more a matter of the "theme park design" prevalent in both. The idea that one character should be able to do everything in one playthrough.

While I think there's a certain balance you can hit between one playthrough feeling too constrained or too open, the mutually exclusive factions are just a good example or worldbuilding feeding into the gameplay in an interesting way, and bringing something like it back would just make the game more interesting and be emblematic of a change in thought process.

Imagine if in Oblivion you could choose to join the Fighter's Guild OR the Blackwood Company, and the plot plays out from there. It takes the most boring faction and turns it into something potentially interesting.

For a Skyrim specific example, you're given a false choice during the Dark Brotherhood quest. Join or destroy it. Or "get a whole questline, a bunch of good loot, and some interesting setpeice moments...or like 500 gp and a pat on the back".

Imagine if the Penitus Oculatus was the "mutually exclusive faction" you could join instead of the Dark Brotherhood and/or maybe even the Thieves' Guild. Be a superspy or whatever.

Worldbuilding feeds gameplay increases player enjoyment.

[Psyren]

Whereas I think you can have "worldbuilding" without gating content behind dozens if not hundreds of hours of repeating stuff you already did once before. TES is always (and has always been) a series where you can master just about every way there is of killing someone or making money if you set your character to it, unintuitive leveling systems in earlier titles notwithstanding. Hell, even in Morrowind (the most constrained modern title) you're practically a god, or at least a mythic messianic figure, for whom mastering multiple disparate disciplines should make far more sense than most.

I've never understood using the phrase "theme park" as a pejorative. Theme Parks are a ton of fun (remember that? fun?) and make boatloads of money as a result. They are triumphs of design and engineering. I'll take a well-crafted theme park over a gritty sandbox any day.

[Rynjin]

Theme park is a pejorative because theme parks are entirely corporate and designed to keep you inside of them as long as humanly possible.

The average Ubisoft Game (TM) is designed the exact same way. It doesn't really have any particular care if you're actually enjoying your time, only that you're there. For a really long time.

Theme parks are fun but doing the same rides over and over and over gets old fairly quick. At the end of a day at the theme park I don't want to see one for at least a year afterward, if I'm being honest.

Theme park games make me feel the same way.

[Lord Raziere]

The average Ubisoft Game (TM) is designed the exact same way. It doesn't really have any particular care if you're actually enjoying your time, only that you're there. For a really long time.


*looks up what games Ubisoft makes*

ah, good I dodged those bullets then. I never was interested in things like Farcry or Assassins Creed because they didn't seem to have ways to customize my characters appearance so they never caught my interest.

[Anteros]

Ubisoft games are usually great fun for about 5 hours...with the exact same content then repeated for another 35 hours.

I always considered theme park to be more of an insult of the type of content though. Like Wow can be fun, but it's just a theme park where the player goes along for the ride, has fun, sees the sights,, but doesn't really interact meaningfully, or is never challenged.

[Psyren]

I genuinely don't know how anyone can look at Mythic (or Heroic for that matter) raiding, or Arena/RBGs, or Mythic+, and conclude that WoW has no challenge.

And a theme park is not inherently bad. It's a designer-driven experience. Yeah they want to keep you inside as long as possible, but they do that by making these things called "attractions" that you actually want to stick around for. Nobody is holding a gun to your head making you stay, so it's up to the designers to make the attractions fun.

And no, you're not supposed to go to the same one over and over, any more than I would go to the theater to watch the same movie over and over. I go to a different crafted experience when I want variety.

[Rynjin]

The "gun to your head" is the exorbitant price to entry that makes you stay longer than you might want to "get your money's worth" alongside not being able to leave and return without buying another ticket, allowing them to also gouge you out the ass for their overpriced food.

This is why the theme park comparison is so prevalent for these microtransaction laden open world games. They use the exact same psychological traps as real world theme parks.

[Anteros]

I genuinely don't know how anyone can look at Mythic (or Heroic for that matter) raiding, or Arena/RBGs, or Mythic+, and conclude that WoW has no challenge.

And a theme park is not inherently bad. It's a designer-driven experience. Yeah they want to keep you inside as long as possible, but they do that by making these things called "attractions" that you actually want to stick around for. Nobody is holding a gun to your head making you stay, so it's up to the designers to make the attractions fun.

And no, you're not supposed to go to the same one over and over, any more than I would go to the theater to watch the same movie over and over. I go to a different crafted experience when I want variety.

I'm sure those things have difficulty, but you're talking about things that are a tiny percentage of the game. Most people I know who play games like WoW do so for the exploration, the world building, and the quests. All of which are ocean wide and puddle deep in modern wow. Mythic raiding might be challenging, but if I have to go through 200 hours of non content to get there (or pay a fee to level and skip it) then it's not great design. That's what people are talking about with the theme park criticisms of wow.

[Psyren]

The "gun to your head" is the exorbitant price to entry that makes you stay longer than you might want to "get your money's worth" alongside not being able to leave and return without buying another ticket, allowing them to also gouge you out the ass for their overpriced food.

This is why the theme park comparison is so prevalent for these microtransaction laden open world games. They use the exact same psychological traps as real world theme parks.

Non-open-world games have the same price tag though. Unless you mean indie titles, and don't get me wrong I love a good indie, but at some point you get what you pay for.

[Rynjin]

Non-open-world games have the same price tag though. Unless you mean indie titles, and don't get me wrong I love a good indie, but at some point you get what you pay for.

Same price tag, wildly differing amounts of meaningful content.

[Forum Explorer]

Non-open-world games have the same price tag though. Unless you mean indie titles, and don't get me wrong I love a good indie, but at some point you get what you pay for.

Sure, but you get so much more gameplay from a non open world game. Using WoW as an example since it was brought up. There is a lot of tedious, go to zone, kill X monsters, return to collect gold, mats, weapon ect. Most of which are just chaff to be used to help you through the next zone where the process repeats. Yes, there are raids and dungeons and those are really really fun and cool content. But you have to spend dozens if not hundreds of hours to get there.

vs X-Com where each mission is meaningful, even non plotline missions. Both in the sense of the resources gained are needed, but also any losses are brutal. It puts a level of tension on even simple missions.

[warty goblin]

Sure, but you get so much more gameplay from a non open world game. Using WoW as an example since it was brought up. There is a lot of tedious, go to zone, kill X monsters, return to collect gold, mats, weapon ect. Most of which are just chaff to be used to help you through the next zone where the process repeats. Yes, there are raids and dungeons and those are really really fun and cool content. But you have to spend dozens if not hundreds of hours to get there.

vs X-Com where each mission is meaningful, even non plotline missions. Both in the sense of the resources gained are needed, but also any losses are brutal. It puts a level of tension on even simple missions.

I don't really find most XCOM missions any more meaningful than missions in most Ubisoft games. Some of the side activities in a Ubisoft game are pretty pointless sure, but XCOM (or at least XCOM 2 with WotC) has plenty of borderline meaningless side stuff as well. The central loop of do the standard thing, get a step closer to an incremental power increase is pretty much identical between, it's just that XCOM does it with turn based tactics and a Ubisoft game does it with third or first person action, so we think of the first as smart and the second as dumb. And both XCOM and most Ubisoft titles will grind me down with their repetition far, far before I beat them. I don't even think of this as a flaw anymore, I think of them as offering as much game as I want, and I just happen to want less than the vast amount of time it takes to actually beat them.

(Also, if you want a hard game with meaningful losses, Watch Dogs Legion with permadeath can be downright brutal. Arguably more so than XCOM because getting a new Dedsec operative in Legion takes quite a bit of work; you need to find a useful candidate, and generally go on a mission just to recruit them - where you could easily lose another operative. XCOM after a while just starts handing you high veterancy dudes)

[Psyren]

Sure, but you get so much more gameplay from a non open world game. Using WoW as an example since it was brought up. There is a lot of tedious, go to zone, kill X monsters, return to collect gold, mats, weapon ect. Most of which are just chaff to be used to help you through the next zone where the process repeats. Yes, there are raids and dungeons and those are really really fun and cool content. But you have to spend dozens if not hundreds of hours to get there.

Nah, not anymore. With WoW, you get the latest expansion, use your included boost, you'll be at endgame in no time. And then if you want to level something else, Chromie Time has sped up the leveling process considerably.

There are definitely other reasons to give WoW space at the moment, but time to endgame isn't one of them.


vs X-Com where each mission is meaningful, even non plotline missions. Both in the sense of the resources gained are needed, but also any losses are brutal. It puts a level of tension on even simple missions.

I did enjoy X-Com. Back in 2013 when I played it.

That's the problem with these contained experiences, they tend to stay that way. I do revisit some of them (I'm replaying the Dead Space trilogy as we speak, in preparation for the remake and its two spiritual successors Callisto Protocol and Negative Atmosphere). But there's also something to be said for a more perpetual and continually updated one too.


Same price tag, wildly differing amounts of meaningful content.

Now there's a subjective qualifier!

[Anteros]

If you have to pay extra or go out of your way to skip the vast majority of a game's content, what does that say about the game? When the nicest thing you can say about most of it is "well, you can avoid it"

Especially for players like me who enjoy questing and such and don't enjoy arena or raids. The whole point of a mmo like wow to me is to get lost in another world. They haven't bothered to actually make that world interesting in quite some time though.

[veti]

The problem I hear about the various faction quests in Skyrim, but most particularly, about the Mage quests is you don't actually need to be a Mage. You can have basically no magic at all to complete that questline and become an archmage.

That is mildly annoying, but the bigger problem, I think, is the idiot balls that get distributed to basically everyone in every faction during those questlines.

(I mean, you'd think someone would have thought to keep an eye on Ancano, wouldn't you? Why have the thieves not bothered to inventory their treasury in the past 25 years? How does the Silver Hand, basically a troop of bandits, get to assault Jorrvaskr? - and given that they do, how do they come to fight their way through all the companions - without seriously harming any of them, mind - to kill the old man who spends his days sitting at the farthest end of the hall?)

Let's face it, no one in Skyrim looks likely to win any prizes for perspicacity. But the faction quests really bring the stupid to the foreground and make it harder to ignore.

[Vinyadan]

I think FO4 would have had more urgency if it started out with you thawing, with no memories and just a PDA on you, bearing a simple instruction: KILL THE BABY. And as you look for answers you find out... that YOU are the Baby!


If Skyrim contained as much dialogue as Morrowind, it would take another 50 Gb of disc space (and download time), and everyone would complain about the interminable speeches. I think that's the biggest task the Skywind project faces: rewriting and condensing the dialogue.

There's a mod for Skyrim that adds an enchantment altar and to get it you must do a quest that features this sort of long speeches (and then a surprisingly good new location and a battle map that feels like it came from an FPS from 2004). People did complain about the speeches.



To an extent I'd say yes, but I hope they're not shooting themselves in the foot with it. They get more and more backlash with each re-release, and it just builds frustration over there being no new offerings for a while.

In general, I think that backlash in the videogames world is worth nothing. It's probably the most whiny community out there. Even Cyberpunk 2077 ended up grossing over 550 million dollars in its first month, even accounting for refunds. However, it can scare off investors. 550 million or not, the botched launch permanently tanked the stock value of CD Project Red (unless it was a bubble waiting to burst once the CP2077 launch dividends had been distributed).


Gonna disagree here; Morrowind did exactly that with the Great Houses, Thieves/Fighters Guild etc. and I keep hearing how more games should be like that. And I don’t disagree; replayability is a wonderful thing.

I remember a magazine discussing this, back in the day (2008, maybe?). I don't remember which major game designer said "for us, if only 10% of players see a certain content, that's a loss". The journalist commented that it was true for the publisher, but certainly not for the players, and I agree. It's not just about replayability, from my point of view: I think that a game is more fun if you have a say in what happens next, or if you are allowed to really take sides. Adding areas that you can miss also gives more value to exploration, although that does have mostly to do with replayability, and I think it can feel tiresome, as it does require a certain effort from the player that not everyone is going to enjoy.

It's also true that Deus Ex games, which are constantly lauded as very good and which are built around these principles, have never sold particularly well, compared to their production costs.

[Winthur]

It's also true that Deus Ex games, which are constantly lauded as very good and which are built around these principles, have never sold particularly well, compared to their production costs.

Every single Deus Ex game released to date, except possibly The Fall, has been cited as a "fiscal success" or a "net-profit increase", including the much-maligned Invisible War (which outsold the first game, which was deemed a "blockbuster" in multiple regions) and Mankind Divided.

[Vinyadan]

Every single Deus Ex game released to date, except possibly The Fall, has been cited as a "fiscal success" or a "net-profit increase", including the much-maligned Invisible War (which outsold the first game, which was deemed a "blockbuster" in multiple regions) and Mankind Divided.

I didn't say that they were a loss, just that they don't sell as much as other big titles with a wider audience. The whole Deus Ex series sold "over 5 million copies". By comparison, a more mainstream title like Oblivion sold 9.5 million copies alone. Mainstream series like FIFA or Call of Duty also routinely sell much better than contemporary Deus Ex titles.

It's not just Deus Ex, the whole "immersive sim" family generally isn't considered too lucrative*. Bioshock barely got made because System Shock 2 had had low sales. SS1 also wasn't a blockbuster. Prey 2017 grossed about as much as Prey 2006, in a larger market with larger production costs.

*unless one includes The Elder Scrolls, which I can see in some ways (it is immersive), but I don't in others (the famous 1km wide, 1 cm deep problem).

[Psyren]

If you have to pay extra or go out of your way to skip the vast majority of a game's content, what does that say about the game? When the nicest thing you can say about most of it is "well, you can avoid it"

You're not paying "extra", the expansion is what you're buying anyway and the boost is included with it.


Especially for players like me who enjoy questing and such and don't enjoy arena or raids.

This one is fair, if you don't enjoy the endgame pillars then WoW is definitely not for you.

For me, "getting lost in another world" holds little appeal, 99% of MMO worlds feel like the same generic fantasy, so I'll take the one with the most expertly-crafted group endgame challenges. (And the one whose settings, e.g. Azeroth or Tyria, I'm already invested in.)



I remember a magazine discussing this, back in the day (2008, maybe?). I don't remember which major game designer said "for us, if only 10% of players see a certain content, that's a loss". The journalist commented that it was true for the publisher, but certainly not for the players, and I agree. It's not just about replayability, from my point of view: I think that a game is more fun if you have a say in what happens next, or if you are allowed to really take sides. Adding areas that you can miss also gives more value to exploration, although that does have mostly to do with replayability, and I think it can feel tiresome, as it does require a certain effort from the player that not everyone is going to enjoy.

It's also true that Deus Ex games, which are constantly lauded as very good and which are built around these principles, have never sold particularly well, compared to their production costs.

To be clear, I don't think games need to let you see absolutely all the content in a single playthrough. But those kinds of Fated Choice moments should be used exceedingly sparingly, because nowadays, you'll be lucky if people do two playthroughs much less three or more. For major factions like Imperials vs. Stormcloaks, this kind of split makes sense, but not for something like Mage's Guild vs. Fighter's Guild that has little to no bearing on the main plot.

[Amechra]

It's also true that Deus Ex games, which are constantly lauded as very good and which are built around these principles, have never sold particularly well, compared to their production costs.

Let's be honest here — "how well did this product sell" isn't a very good measurement of creative merit. And the principles behind immersive sims are only really desirable to a pretty niche audience.

[Mechalich]

To be clear, I don't think games need to let you see absolutely all the content in a single playthrough. But those kinds of Fated Choice moments should be used exceedingly sparingly, because nowadays, you'll be lucky if people do two playthroughs much less three or more. For major factions like Imperials vs. Stormcloaks, this kind of split makes sense, but not for something like Mage's Guild vs. Fighter's Guild that has little to no bearing on the main plot.

This is especially true in gigantic open world games, like Skyrim, where a playthrough may take dozens of hours and any additional playthrough impose significant time sinks in essential tasks that a player needs to complete to even reach hidden content on a new playthrough.

[warty goblin]

This is especially true in gigantic open world games, like Skyrim, where a playthrough may take dozens of hours and any additional playthrough impose significant time sinks in essential tasks that a player needs to complete to even reach hidden content on a new playthrough.

Yeah, I'm really not enthused by the prospect of having to do 90% of the same stuff in order to see 10% new content. Particularly if that requires playing a substantially different sort of character, because odds are I chose to play the sort of character I enjoy playing the most the first time. So it's not just the same 90%, but the same stuff, played less enjoyably. Since the Elder Scrolls games don't front-load character build, odds are pretty much everybody will fall into the type of character they enjoy playing, so adding a magic requirement to the mage's guild is just a tedium tax on people who don't like magic.


I also think there's a real virtue to a game designed around just letting you do whatever stuff you want to do pretty much without limits. I couldn't get into Skyrim's horribly clunky gameplay, but I sank a lot of hours into Ghost Recon: Wildlands, which has very much this ethos. I like not having to worry about meeting whatever inane requirements the designers put in for this or that mission. As Dan Olsen points out here (https://youtu.be/0RxQRswLAmI?t=2159), if nothing you do matters, everything is equally valid, and therefore self direction is unfettered. It may not mean anything in the formal structure of the game that I went to this province instead of that province, but it matters to me; I did it because I wanted to do that one. It had nice mountains.

[Rynjin]

Why would you give a **** about doing the Mage's Guild if you don't enjoy magic in the first place? That's such a weird complaint.

[warty goblin]

Why would you give a **** about doing the Mage's Guild if you don't enjoy magic in the first place? That's such a weird complaint.

Because it's stuff in the game I bought, and I want to go solve some moron NPC's problem by smashing fools in the face with a hammer. What (hypothetical) I don't want to do is use magic because I don't enjoy magic in the game; this has pretty much nothing with my desire to do quests. And if the mage's guild stuff doesn't interest me but is on offer, not doing it costs me nothing. Having it gated however is just annoying.

[Rynjin]

Because it's stuff in the game I bought, and I want to go solve some moron NPC's problem by smashing fools in the face with a hammer. What (hypothetical) I don't want to do is use magic because I don't enjoy magic in the game; this has pretty much nothing with my desire to do quests. And if the mage's guild stuff doesn't interest me but is on offer, not doing it costs me nothing. Having it gated however is just annoying.

Having it "gated" is typically what's going to make it actually interesting. It'd be like if the Thieves' Guild never actually had you steal anything.

Is that a complaint you'd have? "They should remove the gating from the quest so my goody-goody Paladin character can do it?"

[Forum Explorer]

Because it's stuff in the game I bought, and I want to go solve some moron NPC's problem by smashing fools in the face with a hammer. What (hypothetical) I don't want to do is use magic because I don't enjoy magic in the game; this has pretty much nothing with my desire to do quests. And if the mage's guild stuff doesn't interest me but is on offer, not doing it costs me nothing. Having it gated however is just annoying.

And I want my quest to become the greatest mage in the land to actually have me be the greatest mage in the land.

If I punch everything to death in the mage quests and they are like 'truly you are the greatest mage we have ever seen' it just feels stupid.

[veti]

Is that a complaint you'd have? "They should remove the gating from the quest so my goody-goody Paladin character can do it?"

That's absolutely a complaint I've seen several times in the context of "destroy the Dark Brotherhood". Don't underestimate people's sense of entitlement.

[factotum]

That's absolutely a complaint I've seen several times in the context of "destroy the Dark Brotherhood". Don't underestimate people's sense of entitlement.

My problem with destroying the Dark Brotherhood is that you can't actually do it without starting the "Join the Dark Brotherhood" questline, which makes the whole thing feel a bit hypocritical--so it's OK for me to murder Grelod in cold blood, but as soon as the Dark Brotherhood say I'm trespassing on their territory, I feel a righteous need to destroy them? There needed to be some other way of getting into that.

[Vinyadan]

And I want my quest to become the greatest mage in the land to actually have me be the greatest mage in the land.

If I punch everything to death in the mage quests and they are like 'truly you are the greatest mage we have ever seen' it just feels stupid.

You probably opened them a new glorious horizon

"Sometimes I am frightened but I'm ready to learn/
Of the magic of fists"

[Cikomyr2]

My problem with destroying the Dark Brotherhood is that you can't actually do it without starting the "Join the Dark Brotherhood" questline, which makes the whole thing feel a bit hypocritical--so it's OK for me to murder Grelod in cold blood, but as soon as the Dark Brotherhood say I'm trespassing on their territory, I feel a righteous need to destroy them? There needed to be some other way of getting into that.

Also, the Dark Brotherhood clearly established the precedent that you can have dual resolution for guild questlines. Why not also allow the destruction of the Thieves guild? There was an NPC just for that Damnit.

[LibraryOgre]

I think gating is another thing New Vegas did pretty well, and would have done better if they had a robust save naming convention instead of console-friendly.

Pretty much the only stuff gated in New Vegas is endgame material. Who are you supporting? That will lead to a few quests that go different ways, but, for the most part, you're not locked out of anything until you take a final step.

[Artanis]

Having it "gated" is typically what's going to make it actually interesting. It'd be like if the Thieves' Guild never actually had you steal anything.

Is that a complaint you'd have? "They should remove the gating from the quest so my goody-goody Paladin character can do it?"


And I want my quest to become the greatest mage in the land to actually have me be the greatest mage in the land.

If I punch everything to death in the mage quests and they are like 'truly you are the greatest mage we have ever seen' it just feels stupid.

QFT. If you just want to solve some quests for dumb NPCs, there's bajillions of them in the rest of the gigantic game world. Then you go to the Mage's College in Skyrim and become Dumbledore by casting three spells literally ever, and it just makes you wonder why the designers bothered with all the wizard-y trappings in the first place.

[BloodSquirrel]

Same price tag, wildly differing amounts of meaningful content.

"Meaningful" is incredibly subjective.

Minecraft is as open-world as you can get, and building a base in that game is more meaningful to me than any number of highly-scripted, set-piece laden, linear action sequences in CoD or a pre-rendered cutscene in some JRPG.

[LibraryOgre]

QFT. If you just want to solve some quests for dumb NPCs, there's bajillions of them in the rest of the gigantic game world. Then you go to the Mage's College in Skyrim and become Dumbledore by casting three spells literally ever, and it just makes you wonder why the designers bothered with all the wizard-y trappings in the first place.

To an extent, Morrowind did this by skill-locking different ranks, and different quest stages. To get access X quests, you needed Y rank in the guild, which meant you needed Z in a few skills.

It might not work for every group, but it would definitely be a nice thing to see in others.

[Cikomyr2]

To an extent, Morrowind did this by skill-locking different ranks, and different quest stages. To get access X quests, you needed Y rank in the guild, which meant you needed Z in a few skills.

It might not work for every group, but it would definitely be a nice thing to see in others.

Now, skill-gating would not be a problem if the designers had a bit more originality in their implementation.

Especially since I just figured the solution. People are upset at not being provided a quest because they are skill-gated. They come out of the situation frustrated and feel they are missing out.

What if the skill-gated mission would instead send you on an alternative "training" mission that guarantees you leveling up your skill to the required level?

What if, when you reach the end of the Mage Guild and you are barely a journeyman, the NPCs award you with a title like "Defender of Hogwart", while lamenting there being no obvious suitable candidate to take on as Archmage.

And all quests you are given while being "Defender of Hogwart" would lead you to train specific magic skills. When you finally master one of the magic tree, you are offered the position of Archmage.

There. Skill gating just became a way to naturally develop your skills.

[BloodSquirrel]

Pretty much that. I think the way to understand most open world games is as a buffet. It's generally not surprising, or even the best food you've had, but it's consistent quality stuff, and the real selling point is that there's a lot of it, and you can choose whatever you want without restrictions. Getting a hamburger doesn't lock you out of grabbing a corndog later.

Same thing here. The point is a lot of enjoyable and basically predictable stuff you can choose between at will. You feel like a dungeon, click on the map and go do a dungeon, which will be an awful lot like the last 10 dungeons. Feel like a quest with NPCs, click on the quest log and go do a quest where some NPCs will tell you what to do, just like the last 10 quests.

Gating quests is just removing options from your buffet; nobody wants to have to prove they're worthy of corndogs by needing to eat 3 hotdogs first. If they want a corndog they want to go get a corndog, and they want to do that now.


I disagree.

The appeal of an open world game to me isn't just that it's a fancy menu for [content]. Immersion, exploration, and responsiveness of the world to my actions are important factors too. I also like having the freedom to choose what I do based on my mood or how I feel the game is best paced- but that doesn't require every door in the game being open to me, even when it would be nonsensical.

The "buffet" approach also has the serious drawback that you're strictly limited in what kind of content can be produced. As someone else noted, the Mage Guild quest can't actually have that much to do with magic if you're supposed to be able to beat it by punching things. Skyrim in general devolved very much into every quest being "run around in this dungeon until everything is dead". There's almost no flavor to anything, because they're can't be, because it's all designed to be as agnostic to the player's style as possible. The conversations are never important. They don't mean anything. Nothing means anything. Kill stuff, loot stuff, sell stuff, repeat. World of Warcraft has more immersive storytelling.

Putting gates around the existing content in Skyrim wouldn't make it a better game, but being able to build content that could be gated if it's what made sense would have made better content possible.

[veti]

My problem with destroying the Dark Brotherhood is that you can't actually do it without starting the "Join the Dark Brotherhood" questline, which makes the whole thing feel a bit hypocritical--so it's OK for me to murder Grelod in cold blood, but as soon as the Dark Brotherhood say I'm trespassing on their territory, I feel a righteous need to destroy them? There needed to be some other way of getting into that.

Why? There's nothing to say the destroyer of the DB has to be motivated by righteousness. You get well paid, you get to collect several sets of DB armour (and Astrid's dagger), you get payback on those random thugs who keep running up to you for no reason that ever gets adequately explained, and for the rest of the game you get to laugh at people who brag about their DB connection.

But if you do want righteousness, consider the reasons you're given for killing Grelod. Then compare that with the reasons you're given for killing one of the three stooges in Astrid's hut. There's a difference.

The thing about the DB - and this has been consistent in lore for a long time, and it's also one of the few rules that actually makes sense - is that they'll only approach you if they think you might be compatible with them. If you go around like a righteous paladin type, they'll stay well away from you (except when trying to kill you, natch). It's when you show yourself to be a bit more morally flexible that they start to take an interest.


Putting gates around the existing content in Skyrim wouldn't make it a better game, but being able to build content that could be gated if it's what made sense would have made better content possible.

I disagree that putting gates around existing content wouldn't help. Also, as a modder myself, I can assure you the capacity is certainly there to build content that way.

It seems to have escaped all our notice, but there is actually at least one more content gate in Skyrim, and it's implemented in just about the most annoying way possible. When you first visit the Greybeards, Klimmek warns you about "the occasional wolf pack or stray", but says nothing about the freaking huge frost troll . It's perfectly feasible to reach this point in the main quest at no more than level 5 or so, at which point a frost troll in the face is no joke. It's the game's way of stopping you going too far too fast - but everything and everyone up to that point has been pushing you to go just as fast as you can.

[Vinyadan]

I think that a sufficient reason for destroying the Dark Brotherhood is "You kidnapped me, and I am pissed."

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Why would you give a **** about doing the Mage's Guild if you don't enjoy magic in the first place? That's such a weird complaint.

Gotta agree here, especially with the radiant quest system - it’s not like you’re going to run out of quests to do. (Though I do hope that ES6 makes those a little more interesting.)


My problem with destroying the Dark Brotherhood is that you can't actually do it without starting the "Join the Dark Brotherhood" questline, which makes the whole thing feel a bit hypocritical--so it's OK for me to murder Grelod in cold blood, but as soon as the Dark Brotherhood say I'm trespassing on their territory, I feel a righteous need to destroy them? There needed to be some other way of getting into that.

Generally agree here; my first play through I purposely avoided it until I found out online that there was a ‘destroy’ option. It wasn’t the most intuitive thing. :/


Now, skill-gating would not be a problem if the designers had a bit more originality in their implementation.

Especially since I just figured the solution. People are upset at not being provided a quest because they are skill-gated. They come out of the situation frustrated and feel they are missing out.

What if the skill-gated mission would instead send you on an alternative "training" mission that guarantees you leveling up your skill to the required level?

What if, when you reach the end of the Mage Guild and you are barely a journeyman, the NPCs award you with a title like "Defender of Hogwart", while lamenting there being no obvious suitable candidate to take on as Archmage.

And all quests you are given while being "Defender of Hogwart" would lead you to train specific magic skills. When you finally master one of the magic tree, you are offered the position of Archmage.

There. Skill gating just became a way to naturally develop your skills.

I like this idea. They even have skill leveling as a reward for some quests already, so there’s precedent.

[Rynjin]

"Meaningful" is incredibly subjective.

Minecraft is as open-world as you can get, and building a base in that game is more meaningful to me than any number of highly-scripted, set-piece laden, linear action sequences in CoD or a pre-rendered cutscene in some JRPG.

Minecraft is a really good example of a game with a lot of meaningful content, actually, and serves to illustrate my point well.

Minecraft is an extremely mechanics heavy game that doesn't weigh you down with meaningless tasks to complete. Everything you do is by its own nature intrinsically motivated. You play the game because you think it'll be fun, and you stop playing when you're no longer having fun.

If the average Ubisoft Game(TM) with its hundreds of question marks to explore (all of the exact same copy-pasted bull**** that's entirely meaningless) is a theme park, designed to keep you in the game as long as possible so you "get your money's worth", then Minecraft is just...a park. Or even a forest.

You can go there and just do whatever the hell you want. You wanna just relax and chill? The park is great for that. Wanna build sandcastles? We got you covered fam. And when you're done...you can go home. And you can come back whenever you want, always with something completely new to do.

Re: Destroy the Dark Brotherhood: No, having to kill Grelod first is dumb. Remember you first get the quest from Aventus. Somebody had to have taught that poor boy the ritual. Make some tweaks so it makes more sense that this is a contract-in-progress rather than him just being confused.

Maybe you take it to the guard. It's above their paygrade. They direct you to the Penitus Oculatus, or probably more accurately if we're rewriting the game from the ground up for this, some specific intelligence agency with a bit of a broader focus than them. Cyrodil's CIA or FBI equivalent, rather than the Secret Service. The Cyrodil Intelligence Association.

They set you up on a sting operation. Kill Grelod as a necessary evil and see what happens. If this is a legit contract, then this could be the first chance the agency has to have an inside man in the Brotherhood. If not...well Grelod is no big loss to society. The CIA has done worse.

Then once you know their location, you could have a few options. Maybe you're encouraged to stay in a little longer, make sure you know who all the members are and what their MOs include in case any escape or just are out on mission when you first arrive. Introduce a second pivot that lets you make your cover real by actually joining in the Brotherhood, or wipe them out.

Or just kill 'em all the second you're inducted. Your choice.

By its nature still a shorter, less involved storyline but an infinitely more satisfying quest regardless, and opens the way for more quests from the CIA as well.

[Psyren]

Minecraft is a sandbox. In many ways it's THE sandbox.

And for those who like sandboxes, that's great. You can amuse yourself to no end, make your own objectives, that sort of thing.

Some of us though want structured challenges and objectives. Or a narrative. Or sense-pleasure from beautiful art and sound. You can build all those things into Minecraft, sure, but for many it's a lot more work than just getting a game that was designed around that stuff from the start.

[Rynjin]

Minecraft is a sandbox. In many ways it's THE sandbox.

And for those who like sandboxes, that's great. You can amuse yourself to no end, make your own objectives, that sort of thing.

Some of us though want structured challenges and objectives. Or a narrative. Or sense-pleasure from beautiful art and sound. You can build all those things into Minecraft, sure, but for many it's a lot more work than just getting a game that was designed around that stuff from the start.

Structured challenges and whatnot are great.

But you, as a player, deserve better than "grab this dumb collectible that doesn't do anything" or "climb this tower" repeated dozens of times. To a lesser extent "wipe out this bandit base", because hey, having dumb walls of meat to test your powers on is neat. Just don't call each individual bandit camp "unique content".

I've hated this design from the beginning, and so did a lot of people. Crackdown was a critical and commercial FAILURE (I think the only reason they made ANY profit is because the game included the Halo 3 demo) in every conceivable way...but apparently it was just ahead of its time, I guess, because it was exactly the same in terms of design as the average Ubisoft Game(TM).

[Psyren]

Structured challenges and whatnot are great.

But you, as a player, deserve better than "grab this dumb collectible that doesn't do anything" or "climb this tower" repeated dozens of times. To a lesser extent "wipe out this bandit base", because hey, having dumb walls of meat to test your powers on is neat. Just don't call each individual bandit camp "unique content".

Abnegation is as valid an aesthetic of play as all the others. However distasteful you might find gaming you don't like, you don't get to decide what other people deserve from their games.

Crackdown might have been a commercial failure, but you can't say the same for Ghost Recon Wildlands or Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which clocked in at over 10 million units. Each. Clearly there are people who want this sort of play. I don't understand it either, but then, I also don't see the appeal of spending hours playing Minecraft.

[factotum]

Re: Destroy the Dark Brotherhood: No, having to kill Grelod first is dumb. Remember you first get the quest from Aventus. Somebody had to have taught that poor boy the ritual. Make some tweaks so it makes more sense that this is a contract-in-progress rather than him just being confused.

Maybe you take it to the guard. It's above their paygrade. They direct you to the Penitus Oculatus, or probably more accurately if we're rewriting the game from the ground up for this, some specific intelligence agency with a bit of a broader focus than them. Cyrodil's CIA or FBI equivalent, rather than the Secret Service. The Cyrodil Intelligence Association.

They set you up on a sting operation. Kill Grelod as a necessary evil and see what happens. If this is a legit contract, then this could be the first chance the agency has to have an inside man in the Brotherhood. If not...well Grelod is no big loss to society. The CIA has done worse.


Yeah, this makes a whole lot more sense--you can still be mostly working for the side of good but still join the Brotherhood. I like your thinking.

[veti]

Re: Destroy the Dark Brotherhood: No, having to kill Grelod first is dumb. Remember you first get the quest from Aventus. Somebody had to have taught that poor boy the ritual. Make some tweaks so it makes more sense that this is a contract-in-progress rather than him just being confused.

Aventus has a copy of "A Kiss, Sweet Mother", which describes the ritual in some detail. A bigger mystery is why the real DB doesn't respond, even though he's apparently been doing it for days.


They set you up on a sting operation. Kill Grelod as a necessary evil and see what happens. If this is a legit contract, then this could be the first chance the agency has to have an inside man in the Brotherhood. If not...well Grelod is no big loss to society. The CIA has done worse.

So... You still murder Grelod, but now it's A-OK and paladin-friendly because you're working for... something that for want of a better word I'll call "the government"? (What is your objection to the Penitus Whatchamacallit handling this anyway? How many secret-ish agencies do you think the Empire or Skyrim have?)

Yeah, no thanks. I'm more comfortable with making my own decision about murdering her, at the request of one of her victims. Seems a lot cleaner to me.


Then once you know their location, you could have a few options.

When does any questline in Skyrim give you "options"? Options are expensive. Whenever the project starts to go off track, which happens at least a dozen times during development, options are the first thing to be cut.

As for getting to know the members and their MOs: how do you imagine that working, and how do you imagine being able to use that knowledge later? Try to draw parallels with other quests or factions in Skyrim in your answer.

[Rynjin]

Aventus has a copy of "A Kiss, Sweet Mother", which describes the ritual in some detail. A bigger mystery is why the real DB doesn't respond, even though he's apparently been doing it for days.

It's because their intel network is ripped to shreds after they were run out of Cyrodiil. They basically rely on word of mouth/rumors about when people are performing the ritual and word hadn't made it across the country about Aventus yet.

And while yes, it's in a book...how he got his hands on a copy is a bit of a mystery. I would imagine it's some kind of banned text, and hard to come by for any random person, much less a child.


So... You still murder Grelod, but now it's A-OK and paladin-friendly because you're working for... something that for want of a better word I'll call "the government"? (What is your objection to the Penitus Whatchamacallit handling this anyway? How many secret-ish agencies do you think the Empire or Skyrim have?)

Yeah, no thanks. I'm more comfortable with making my own decision about murdering her, at the request of one of her victims. Seems a lot cleaner to me.

Yeah, that second option would...still be there, fam. And the point isn't to make it "Paladin friendly", it's to make it slightly less ****ing stupid and arbitrary how you go from "Murder for profit and fun is great!" to "let's kill the Brotherhood, they're evil".

Re: Penitus Oculatus: They could be the group, but I'm not sure how much their role would need to be expanded to make that work and whether that would be a good thing or not. They're billed as the Emperor's bodyguards but also spies...sometimes. It's unclear if they do any spywork outside of infiltrating the Thalmor. So they can work but might not based on Bethesda's plans for them. The Oculatus work particularly well if you can find a way to work in the plot to assassinate the Emperor a bit earlier somehow.



When does any questline in Skyrim give you "options"? Options are expensive. Whenever the project starts to go off track, which happens at least a dozen times during development, options are the first thing to be cut.

As for getting to know the members and their MOs: how do you imagine that working, and how do you imagine being able to use that knowledge later? Try to draw parallels with other quests or factions in Skyrim in your answer.

Why would I draw parallels to other quests or factions in Skyrim? They all suck, that's the entire point of this quick thought exercise. I genuinely can't think of any non-mod singular quest or questline in Skyrim that I really, really enjoy (unlike Oblivion). I will say the entire idea for this "branching path option" thing DOES come from a Skyrim questline: the Dawnguard questline. If you join the Dawnguard you have several opportunities to abandon them and join the Volkihar instead. Not sure if it works vice versa or not if you get cured.

As for how you'd use it later, it would depend on how long you'd want the questline to be. If it's a one and done (but a more elaborate one than currently) you wouldn't bother. If you wanted to extend it out a bit and make a full line of it, maybe when you raid the Sanctuary you only get a few low ranking members and then need to track down everyone else and...well, assassinate them. Basically the Dark Brotherhood quest in reverse, where your targets are the named Brotherhood members. Culminating at Cicero in the Dawnstar Sanctuary, most likely.

[Vinyadan]

Re: Penitus Oculatus: They could be the group, but I'm not sure how much their role would need to be expanded to make that work and whether that would be a good thing or not. They're billed as the Emperor's bodyguards but also spies...sometimes. It's unclear if they do any spywork outside of infiltrating the Thalmor. So they can work but might not based on Bethesda's plans for them. The Oculatus work particularly well if you can find a way to work in the plot to assassinate the Emperor a bit earlier somehow.

I think that the Blades would be a nice fit, a way to give them some substance and a more positive veneer. Even a way to meet Delphine before the main quest and have her there with you when destroying the Brotherhood.
And you shouldn't be forced to do Aventinus's quest -- you should be able to talk him out of it, which would make the Brotherhood angry and/or win (Delphine's?) respect. It's easier with Delphine, she's a spy that must stay in hiding so she can't just waltz in and act, but she could be keeping dibs on both Aventinus to kill Brotherhood members that contact him and on you as the Dragonborn. And, if you accept Aventinus's quest, well, you're still the Dragonborn, and she'll have to swallow it.

I assume that the ritual is a real ritual, and the Night Mother normally notifies the Listener of the contracts (as she does in Oblivion). That the Brotherhood doesn't act, I thought it implied that the Night Mother is ushering you in as a new assassin. But, as it turns out, there simply wasn't a Listener, as Cicero says. (here I'm relying on the wiki, as I didn't do the Skyrim Dark Brotherhood quests beyond destroying them).

[Rynjin]

Yeah, the ritual is real but there is no Listener when you start the questline, and hasn't been for a while. The Brotherhood has been relying on a network of contacts to inform them of rituals bring performed, but their netwirk seems to be spotty.

[factotum]

I will say the entire idea for this "branching path option" thing DOES come from a Skyrim questline: the Dawnguard questline. If you join the Dawnguard you have several opportunities to abandon them and join the Volkihar instead. Not sure if it works vice versa or not if you get cured.


It has to be said, that particular questline is pretty much predicated that you *will* join the Volkihar, because you get awesome vampire abilities fior doing that while the Dawnguard give you...a crossbow? If you stay loyal to the Dawnguard throughout the quest has to jump through quite a few hoops to make things like doing quests with an actual vampire any sort of reasonable!

[Imbalance]

I assume that the ritual is a real ritual, and the Night Mother normally notifies the Listener of the contracts (as she does in Oblivion). That the Brotherhood doesn't act, I thought it implied that the Night Mother is ushering you in as a new assassin. But, as it turns out, there simply wasn't a Listener, as Cicero says. (here I'm relying on the wiki, as I didn't do the Skyrim Dark Brotherhood quests beyond destroying them).

Real enough for Serana to get down on the floor and perform the Sacriment with her mimicry AI.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Aventus has a copy of "A Kiss, Sweet Mother", which describes the ritual in some detail. A bigger mystery is why the real DB doesn't respond, even though he's apparently been doing it for days.

Possibly money - a random orphan isn’t going to be paying that well, and isn’t going to be high-profile enough to get them influence or prestige to bring in business later.

Sithis wants that soul, but since the Night Mother doesn’t have a Listener in place at the time there isn’t a way to pass the word on.



Re: Penitus Oculatus: They could be the group, but I'm not sure how much their role would need to be expanded to make that work and whether that would be a good thing or not. They're billed as the Emperor's bodyguards but also spies...sometimes. It's unclear if they do any spywork outside of infiltrating the Thalmor. So they can work but might not based on Bethesda's plans for them. The Oculatus work particularly well if you can find a way to work in the plot to assassinate the Emperor a bit earlier somehow.

Penitus Oculatus should be fine; they do some assassination in the Keyes books. Also one of their agents in said book mentioned dealing with a necromancer in the sewers.


It has to be said, that particular questline is pretty much predicated that you *will* join the Volkihar, because you get awesome vampire abilities fior doing that while the Dawnguard give you...a crossbow? If you stay loyal to the Dawnguard throughout the quest has to jump through quite a few hoops to make things like doing quests with an actual vampire any sort of reasonable!

Gotta second this, and add the careful needle-threading you need to do not to block off Serana from being willing to cure her vampirism.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, the Dawnguard line definitely has issues, but it is nice that they tried to make it a choice, even if one route ends up with considerably less cool toys and the game constantly needles you to abandon those lameoids and join the kewl kidz.

[Beeftank]

I’m not, totally opposed to a good character killing Gerold. Obviously if you are roleplaying a Paladin-type it’s off the table, but I can see a chaotic good type checking out the orphanage, hearing her threaten kids with “extra beatings” if they aren’t good and deciding “ok this lady is getting a serving of Fus with a side of Ro Dah”

[Anteros]

I’m not, totally opposed to a good character killing Gerold. Obviously if you are roleplaying a Paladin-type it’s off the table, but I can see a chaotic good type checking out the orphanage, hearing her threaten kids with “extra beatings” if they aren’t good and deciding “ok this lady is getting a serving of Fus with a side of Ro Dah”

And then leave the orphans to starve! So righteous.

[Vinyadan]

And then leave the orphans to starve! So righteous.

Just bring them some cheese wheels.

[Beeftank]

There’s a nice assistant there who takes over.

[Psyren]

Getting back to the main topic - I understand where the desire for Urgency comes from. It is one of the three key pillars of plot (the other two being Goal, i.e. what the protagonist needs to make happen or stop from happening, and Stakes, what happens if they don't.) Urgency explains why they can't just sit around.

But games, especially sandbox games, do need to strike a balance there. Unlike a movie, the pacing of a game is driven by the player, and the designer having a death grip on that will just lead to pissing off some portion of their audience. For games that are aiming for broad appeal this is a very bad idea.

Speaking for myself personally, it's enough that there is a sense of urgency, even if it never actually gets realized. Take Breath of the Wild's plot - the Goal is clear (get strong and stop Calamity Ganon) and the Stakes are easy to explain (he'll overrun the world with monsters if not stopped.) The Urgency however is vague - Zelda is using all her power to hold him in check while you get stronger. How long can she do this? Weeks? Months? Years? Probably not indefinitely, so there is some urgency, but the game is purposely unclear so you don't feel any guilt at hunting down rare cooking recipes or hang-gliding off cliffs,

Or take Skyrim since we're talking about that. Goal: Stop Alduin from regaining his full power and taking over the world. Stakes: he'll enslave everyone like he did in the past if we don't. Urgency: He's re-gathering his powers and raising his former subordinates from their graves, but how long does he need to do this? It's left vague so that sandboxy fun can happen in the periphery. So long as you know it's not forever (even if you can take as long as you want in practical terms) that's enough for a game to be successful and immersive.

[Cikomyr2]

Well, it's even worse for Skyrim because for a solid 60% of the plot you don't even know the world is at stake

[warty goblin]

Well, it's even worse for Skyrim because for a solid 60% of the plot you don't even know the world is at stake

There being dragons all over the place all of a sudden isn't exactly world stakes, but it is definitely some stakes. And anybody who has so much as glanced at the back cover of a paperback novel with a dragon on the front is gonna be like 98% sure the world is at stake by the end of the intro sequence.

[Rynjin]

Or anyone with a grasp of the lore; Alduin had already been explained as "the World Eater" in previous games' optional content IIRC.

[Anteros]

Or anyone with a grasp of the lore; Alduin had already been explained as "the World Eater" in previous games' optional content IIRC.

So....like 0.0001% of players? I'm a pretty enormous nerd, but TES lore is a step too far even for me. I'm completely sure the vast majority of players for a mainstream game like Skyrim don't know the lore at all.

[Rynjin]

So....like 0.0001% of players? I'm a pretty enormous nerd, but TES lore is a step too far even for me. I'm completely sure the vast majority of players for a mainstream game like Skyrim don't know the lore at all.

Fair, I'm just pointing out that the end of the world stakes don't exactly come from nowhere.

Arguably, they're there from the time you meet with Delphine and see how Alduin is resurrecting all the dead dragons.

Even if they're trivial for you to kill...you can't be everywhere at once, and he can just keep doing it forever if he wants.

[Triaxx]

So the odd thing about the troll on the road. If Klimmek was making regular trips up and down be was probably making enough noise and disturbance to keep the troll away. When he stopped for a period of time the troll moved in. Since he hadn't been there in a while he likely didn't know.

From a gameplay perspective it's likely they were operating on the assumption you had melee'd down the dragon. After that a Frost Troll which you'd you now have a companion with you for, should be no issue. Sword and Board can stun it with their shield. Mages probably are boned unless they've grabbed Journeyman spells. Stealth Archers? Maybe if they get lucky with a crit.

[Anteros]

From a gameplay perspective it's likely they were operating on the assumption you had melee'd down the dragon. After that a Frost Troll which you'd you now have a companion with you for, should be no issue. Sword and Board can stun it with their shield. Mages probably are boned unless they've grabbed Journeyman spells. Stealth Archers? Maybe if they get lucky with a crit.

Surely they have to know that the vast majority of players in their games don't melee. Stealth archer is an entire meme.

[Rynjin]

Surely they have to know that the vast majority of players in their games don't melee. Stealth archer is an entire meme.

It kinda sucked in Oblivion though, because HP was so inflated. They couldn't have gone into the future and predicted that lol.

[veti]

From a gameplay perspective it's likely they were operating on the assumption you had melee'd down the dragon. After that a Frost Troll which you'd you now have a companion with you for, should be no issue. Sword and Board can stun it with their shield. Mages probably are boned unless they've grabbed Journeyman spells. Stealth Archers? Maybe if they get lucky with a crit.

There was an entire squad of guards whaling on that dragon. It was way, way easier than the troll, if only because its attention was divided so many ways.

The troll tears through Lydia, who's a reasonable sword-and-board merchant, in about two swings. A stealth archer would need to get four or five lucky crits in succession even to seriously dent it. A mage, even with journeyman spells, would be torn apart because he's had no opportunity to collect enough fortify destruction effects to keep spamming dual casts.

No, if you've hurried to get to this point, that troll is death. And there's absolutely no warning of it.

[Rynjin]

I don't remember having too much issue on my first playthrough, as a Mage. Remember trolls have a brutal weakness to Fire.

Even just with Flames you're likely doing about 15 DPS to it, so you can whittle it down after a while (though it's dicey considering how close you have to be). If you've got Firebolt you're pretty much set since you can kite it and drink a few mana potions to keep up.

[Rodin]

There was an entire squad of guards whaling on that dragon. It was way, way easier than the troll, if only because its attention was divided so many ways.

The troll tears through Lydia, who's a reasonable sword-and-board merchant, in about two swings. A stealth archer would need to get four or five lucky crits in succession even to seriously dent it. A mage, even with journeyman spells, would be torn apart because he's had no opportunity to collect enough fortify destruction effects to keep spamming dual casts.

No, if you've hurried to get to this point, that troll is death. And there's absolutely no warning of it.

Isn't that the point though? The troll is a beef gate. If you can't handle the troll, you shouldn't be proceeding with the main plot. Reload your save and go fight a bunch of random encounters, maybe an adventure path or two. Then come back and have a good tussle, Hollywood style.

[Anteros]

There was an entire squad of guards whaling on that dragon. It was way, way easier than the troll, if only because its attention was divided so many ways.

The troll tears through Lydia, who's a reasonable sword-and-board merchant, in about two swings. A stealth archer would need to get four or five lucky crits in succession even to seriously dent it. A mage, even with journeyman spells, would be torn apart because he's had no opportunity to collect enough fortify destruction effects to keep spamming dual casts.

No, if you've hurried to get to this point, that troll is death. And there's absolutely no warning of it.

Not really? You just have to like....slowly walk backwards and cast flames. Which you were guaranteed to have. Even failing that, you can just go around him and up to the greybeards and they'll deal with him.

[Forum Explorer]

Not really? You just have to like....slowly walk backwards and cast flames. Which you were guaranteed to have. Even failing that, you can just go around him and up to the greybeards and they'll deal with him.

Yeah, can't a stealth archer just, you know, stealth past him and never fight him at all?

[factotum]

Which you were guaranteed to have. Even failing that, you can just go around him and up to the greybeards and they'll deal with him.

Will they? I don't recall ever seeing them outside High Hrothgar except when they're doing Shout training for you round the back, although I'd certainly be fascinated to see the doddering old farts actually fighting something for a change...

[Anteros]

Will they? I don't recall ever seeing them outside High Hrothgar except when they're doing Shout training for you round the back, although I'd certainly be fascinated to see the doddering old farts actually fighting something for a change...

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/fakkjj/frost_troll_meets_the_grey_beards/

[veti]

Isn't that the point though? The troll is a beef gate. If you can't handle the troll, you shouldn't be proceeding with the main plot. Reload your save and go fight a bunch of random encounters, maybe an adventure path or two. Then come back and have a good tussle, Hollywood style.

My point exactly. The troll is there specifically to stop you from doing... exactly what every plot-relevant NPC has been urging you to do since you started.

You've been pushed to hurry, hurry, hurry to get to this point, and suddenly you find yourself at level 5-6, without warning, thrown against a level 20 encounter. Previously you've beaten draugr and dragon fairly effortlessly, because they've been scaled to your level - so that's the player's reasonable expectation at this point. Assuming you came here by road, this is probably the first encounter you've had that that isn't scaled.

It's the "without warning" bit that makes it particularly offensive. If Klimmek (or one of the two pilgrims you meet on the way up) were to say "watch out, there's a troll that guards the path sometimes", that would be something. But even if you go to the trouble of asking them all, none of them say anything about it.


Not really? You just have to like....slowly walk backwards and cast flames. Which you were guaranteed to have.

At level 5? Good luck with that.

Edit: crunching the numbers, Flames does 8 HP per second in damage, and the frost troll has 50% weakness to it, so 12 HP per second there. The frost troll has 460 HP, which means you'll need to keep flaming it for at least 38 seconds continuously to kill it. If you've taken the first-level Destruction perk, trained your Destruction up to level 30, got -15% casting cost, and you've got +30 Magicka from something else, and put all your level up stat increases into Magicka, and you don't fall into the trap of casting some sort of armour spell on yourself... then you can keep up the flames for maybe 25 seconds before you have to start quaffing potions. I must admit I haven't actually tried this myself, but it doesn't sound a lot of fun to me.

Edit 2: Meanwhile, if the troll manages to come within reach of you, it will kill you in two hits. Or one power attack. Depending how angry you've made it I guess.


Yeah, can't a stealth archer just, you know, stealth past him and never fight him at all?

That too.

Look, I get it. The game expects you to mess around and do sidequests, or possibly entire faction questlines, before coming here, in which case you'll be level 10, 12, whatever and it'll be manageable (though still hard, at that level). But what you're told is to "get up to High Hrothgar straight away, there's no ignoring the summons". There's a mismatch there, and if you choose to take the instructions (rather than the distractions) seriously, it feeds you without warning into this meat grinder.

[Anteros]

At level 5? Good luck with that.

Edit: crunching the numbers, Flames does 8 HP per second in damage, and the frost troll has 50% weakness to it, so 12 HP per second there. The frost troll has 460 HP, which means you'll need to keep flaming it for at least 38 seconds continuously to kill it. If you've taken the first-level Destruction perk, trained your Destruction up to level 30, got -15% casting cost, and you've got +30 Magicka from something else, and put all your level up stat increases into Magicka, and you don't fall into the trap of casting some sort of armour spell on yourself... then you can keep up the flames for maybe 25 seconds before you have to start quaffing potions. I must admit I haven't actually tried this myself, but it doesn't sound a lot of fun to me.

Edit 2: Meanwhile, if the troll manages to come within reach of you, it will kill you in two hits. Or one power attack. Depending how angry you've made it I guess.



I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I've definitely done it. It wasn't that difficult. Sure, you have to stagger your damage a bit to regen your mana while keeping him from regenning health, but you have plenty of room to kite.

[Triaxx]

Yup the troll rewards clever gameplay such as leaving and coming back later. It's amazing game design.

Seriously though, guards or no guards of you attempt to melee down the dragon you get et. Repeatedly. Heck if you're paying attention you see the same happen to one of the guards.

If you're a proper stealth archer you're constantly in sneak mode and are probably around 50 by the time you get there so you shoot him then back off and repeat.

[factotum]

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/fakkjj/frost_troll_meets_the_grey_beards/

Oh! Didn't realise the troll would actually follow you inside High Hrothgar...that really didn't go well for him.

[veti]

Yup the troll rewards clever gameplay such as leaving and coming back later. It's amazing game design.

Seriously though, guards or no guards of you attempt to melee down the dragon you get et. Repeatedly. Heck if you're paying attention you see the same happen to one of the guards.

If you're a proper stealth archer you're constantly in sneak mode and are probably around 50 by the time you get there so you shoot him then back off and repeat.

If your sneak is level 50, you're not a level 6 character. That skill alone is enough to get you to level 8 (if you're playing a Bosmer - Khajiit could manage it by level 7). And that's assuming they haven't raised any other skills at all. More likely you're at least level 10-12 before that skill level, which suggests you've done some other sidequests.

All the realistic ways to get past that troll are predicated on being significantly higher level than someone who's gone hell-for-leather through the main quest and not been diverted.

As for the dragon, if you're fool enough to stand in front of it and hit it, of course it eats you. Wouldn't you, in its place? A bit of running around is in order. That's where all the guards come in handy: the dragon won't follow you exclusively but is distracted by all those other targets, giving you every chance to run up and hit it on the flank.

[Anteros]

If your sneak is level 50, you're not a level 6 character. That skill alone is enough to get you to level 8 (if you're playing a Bosmer - Khajiit could manage it by level 7). And that's assuming they haven't raised any other skills at all. More likely you're at least level 10-12 before that skill level, which suggests you've done some other sidequests.

All the realistic ways to get past that troll are predicated on being significantly higher level than someone who's gone hell-for-leather through the main quest and not been diverted.

As for the dragon, if you're fool enough to stand in front of it and hit it, of course it eats you. Wouldn't you, in its place? A bit of running around is in order. That's where all the guards come in handy: the dragon won't follow you exclusively but is distracted by all those other targets, giving you every chance to run up and hit it on the flank.

Ok. So we've established that it might be difficult if you ignore literally everything else in the game and head straight for the troll, and also if you're a completely terrible player who is incapable of using even the most basic of tactics besides stand still and let things hit you....what was your point again?

At most, players are going to die once, then learn not to stand still and let the thing hit them. Yes, if you're stubbornly insistent on pushing your face into a blender then the troll might be a wall. I'll give you that.

[Rynjin]

Now, if we ignore the initial premise (that it's hard for a Stealth Archer [?] or a Mage [???]) to kill it, the troll does present a problem to the
"canon" Dragonborn: Heavy Armor Two-Handed Man.

Your damage output is **** compared to the troll's HP, and hat Iron Armor ain't gonna do jack against its claws.

If you're that guy...yeah good luck killing it, since hit and running in melee isn't really viable in Oblivion with the wonky hitboxes and perfect enemy tracking.

Mortal Enemies is a good mod, yeesh.

[Cikomyr2]

There being dragons all over the place all of a sudden isn't exactly world stakes, but it is definitely some stakes. And anybody who has so much as glanced at the back cover of a paperback novel with a dragon on the front is gonna be like 98% sure the world is at stake by the end of the intro sequence.

Not really, it's not a stake. Because I know no matter what I do, the dragons won't actually cause damage to the countryside, ever. There is never any consequences for Dragons.

And I kind of get it, because it's meant to be a free-roaming game. But there are simply no stake to the main plot of Skyrim. It's there, but it's part of the theme park.


Now, if we ignore the initial premise (that it's hard for a Stealth Archer [?] or a Mage [???]) to kill it, the troll does present a problem to the
"canon" Dragonborn: Heavy Armor Two-Handed Man.

Your damage output is **** compared to the troll's HP, and hat Iron Armor ain't gonna do jack against its claws.

If you're that guy...yeah good luck killing it, since hit and running in melee isn't really viable in Oblivion with the wonky hitboxes and perfect enemy tracking.

Mortal Enemies is a good mod, yeesh.

I wished someone made a Mount & Blade mod for Skyrim..

[Yora]

As I see it, story games are story games. Open world games are open world games. You can't do both and get a good game.

CDProject Red comes close, but all their games would be so much better if they were not open world.

[warty goblin]

Not really, it's not a stake. Because I know no matter what I do, the dragons won't actually cause damage to the countryside, ever. There is never any consequences for Dragons.

And I kind of get it, because it's meant to be a free-roaming game. But there are simply no stake to the main plot of Skyrim. It's there, but it's part of the theme park.



I wished someone made a Mount & Blade mod for Skyrim..

That's kind of true of pretty much every RPG-ish game with a main plot and sidequests that doesn't run on an explicit timer; you're pretty much always free to ignore the MQ as long as you feel like it. Skyrim just gives you vastly more latitude to do this than a more linear game. That might give you some scripted devastation, but that's no more mechanical stake than Skyrim's lack of devastation, since you're equally powerless to actually interact with it. If you want something with some mechanical bite to it, RPGs, open world or otherwise, are simply not the genre for it. They don't generally do that sort of high level systems driven world.

[BloodSquirrel]

That's kind of true of pretty much every RPG-ish game with a main plot and sidequests that doesn't run on an explicit timer; you're pretty much always free to ignore the MQ as long as you feel like it. Skyrim just gives you vastly more latitude to do this than a more linear game. That might give you some scripted devastation, but that's no more mechanical stake than Skyrim's lack of devastation, since you're equally powerless to actually interact with it. If you want something with some mechanical bite to it, RPGs, open world or otherwise, are simply not the genre for it. They don't generally do that sort of high level systems driven world.

This isn't really true. First off, in most non-open world RPGs, access to the side content is gated by (and tied to) progress in the main quest. Second, a "high level systems driven world" isn't necessary to have consequences for things. You can do that with some pretty simple branching. And it doesn't even take much- if you screw up on Manaan in KotOR, you get kicked off the planet and aren't allowed to return. And it's pretty much standard for an RPG to end with an epilogue with better or worse endings for characters based on your actions (or inactions) during the game.

Usually the developers are more interested in pushing players toward sidequests rather than away from them, so it's usually the side quests that are on timers (hard or soft), but it's perfectly within the scope and character of your average RPG to have there be player choice-driven world-scale effects. Fable II had entire areas that would be completely different after the time skip depending on what you did in part 1.

[BloodSquirrel]

As I see it, story games are story games. Open world games are open world games. You can't do both and get a good game.

CDProject Red comes close, but all their games would be so much better if they were not open world.

You can absolutely have open-world storytelling. It just means being more on the diffuse/environmental side rather than the structured side. You build a world where a Big Thing has happened, or is happening, and you fill the world with characters/events/areas that say something about it. You tell a thousand little stories than all add up to the big story.

Not only is that possible, but I've found it to be, by far, the most interesting aspect of reading real-world history. Every real even is made up of a million nuanced smaller events. I think there was even a quote to that effect in Storm of Steel- that the real story of the front line in WW1 wasn't about big, grand battles, it was about a bunch of tiny, isolated little encounters.

[Anteros]

Agreed. The original Subnautica did this and it's my favorite game ever by a wide margin. The sequel tried cramming the story down your throat and it's a vastly inferior product (for lots of reasons, but story is one)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

After thinking about it, I think Subnautica actually did an amazing job about pacing and Urgency.

To start with, of course, you have your intro cutscene to get your blood pumping. Then it deliberately kind of slows you down, gives you a beautiful if alien view with the crashed ship in the distance. It is made quite clear in the early game that you are *not* going to get rescued by your company any time soon, so naturally you turn Swiss Family Robinson. With the help of your PDA, which sounds and acts like GLaDOS programmed at the behest of Vault-Tec, your initial goals are simply: survive. The hierarchy of needs becomes your initial drive, needing food and potable water in an alien world.

At this point, you aren't on any sort of clock that the game acknowledges (there actually is one, but it's not shown to the player). You're given hints here and there, other pods have crashed and you are encouraged to go check them out, but it's purely in sidequest and screw around mode. This is actually really good, because it gives you a chance to familiarize yourself with the game's controls and conventions before the biological waste product hits the rotating propeller blades. The only urgency is the rumbling of your tummy.

The two plot points that disrupt this and provide a sense of urgency are: 1) The Aurora's nuclear drive is going bad and is only going to get worse, and 2) A ship is coming to rescue you.

For the first point, it doesn't explicitly state an explosion is imminent, but it does point out that radiation will continue to leak out until the entire area (including where you are) becomes uninhabitable. So it's a slow burn urgency, and for the loot-mongers, reminds you that you have a whole ship of future-tech to loot and scavenge that might have useful things on it. If you don't encounter the Captain's room on your first dive (missable since you are only directed to fix the reactor breech), there are other pointers that will point you back to it. This gives a sense of urgency (radiation poisoning is a nasty way to go), but not an emergency 'you must do this now or game over' sense of urgency like, say, stealing your infant son. It also gives a sense of scale to the problem. The 'helpful' AI informs you that you'll need a radiation suit if you want to approach the wreck, meaning it is something you WILL have to take care of, but it is something you can't do immediately (unless you've played the game before and already have your lead). This recipe, for the new player, requires a new resource, which actually encourages the player to go further out and explore to find it, further increasing the chance of finding other points of interest along the way.

The rescue is actually done in an incredibly clever way. We all know, going in, that it will have to be up to the player to rescue themselves, so somewhere in the back of your mind, you KNOW this rescue is going to either going to get called off (maybe due to political or bureaucratic reasons, 'not cost effective' being a term likely used) or it will be unsuccessful for some reason. However, it's also gearing itself up to be a major plot beat, and as a survivor of a major crash, getting rescued is the ultimate priority. This starts off as a slow burn as well. Initially the responding ship is taking its own sweet time, not really believing there to be an actual emergency until it gets close enough to see the wreckage with its scanners. The buildup to this urgency point is gradual, but the game makes it very clear that they are going to try and find a way to get to you, but you may have to get to a rendezvous point. Basically, the game signals 'hey, you're gonna need to stop what you are doing and do this thing pretty soon'. So when they do give you the location and a timer, you were expecting it, so it didn't just drop out of nowhere. It is also strictly *temporary*. Yes, there is a high urgency involved, but when you arrive on the island and see what happens next, the urgency plummets. Your only hope of rescue... gone. This is good use of urgency in an otherwise free roaming and open game because it's a *spike* of urgency, not an ongoing one. Unlike FO4's use of SHAWWWWWN throughout two thirds of the entire damn game, the overriding priority urgency factor is limited, and quickly ends.

From there, since you already see the alien building that just blew your ride to hell, and have a very helpful key to open the door to said facility that just so happens to be lying on the beach at your feet, you naturally explore the next key point... there was a plague at some point and the entire place is quarantined and you have said plague. This is a slow-burn urgency, it's not like you are immediately going to die, there's no timer, but you now have another sense of purpose beyond 'survive'. If you want to leave this watery grave, you're going to have to find a cure for this plague and find a way to build yourself a way offworld.

This is a big goal, and large parts are still undefined. Which still gives you plenty of room to explore, hoping to find clues about how to achieve your goals. You know it will take lots of resources, and it will take lots of effort. So while, yes, you need to get cured and get home, around any given corner could either be a clue to the cure or resources needed to facilitate your departure. Rather than discouraging you from exploring, it is actively encouraging you to do so. Moreso since you still have the basic bare necessities of life (yea, man!) to cover. Food and potable water are still going to be a thing. Having enough oxygen to explore deeper is also a key gatekeeping challenge. So you are always incentivized to explore and see what is around, and especially check out anything that looks modern or alien. You know that you're going to need a vessel capable of handling extreme depths to get to where you ultimately need to go, so you are encouraged to check out debris from the ship to find things to scan.

In other words, the main plot doesn't detract from exploration, it encourages it.

Also, I think I've figured out why FO4's drive rubs me so wrong... it misrepresents the scale of the problem. When you go through the initial scene, and regain control over your character, it is presented as a brutally simple task: Find dude who took kid, shoot dude enough times to ensure he won't be doing it again, and take kid back. For a military veteran (or JAG, depending on gender), this is a brutally simple and relatively easy task. As former military, you've killed before. You've been trained in how to kill. This is entirely within your skillset. Find a gun and some ammo along the way, not hard to do in a world full of bandits that possess them and attempt to mug you, track down the SOB, apply lead at high velocity to target and recover son. Simple. So all the derails, side-BS, hoops, and hurdles thrown in your way, at least for me, detract from the experience rather than add to it. You're actively discouraged from exploring the world you are in for two thirds of the game. As long as Shawn is out there, the rest of the world can go screw it self. I don't need to gather an army to take out one guy, after all.

[factotum]

I think that comes back to something we've already discussed--Subnautica doesn't really have a sense of urgency because for most of the game you have no clear idea what to do next. Sure, you know your long-term objective is to get off the planet, but you don't even find out there are rocket blueprints available until several hours in, and once you've got those blueprints, it's pretty obvious you ain't building that thing without a lot of exotic materials you've probably never seen by that point in proceedings. So you have some solid objectives A to B to C to follow, but no real idea how to achieve them.

If FO4 had done the same thing--e.g. *not* given you direct instructions on how to find Shaun in probably the first place you'll visit after leaving Sanctuary Hills--then it would have been greatly improved.

[Psyren]

As I see it, story games are story games. Open world games are open world games. You can't do both and get a good game.

CDProject Red comes close, but all their games would be so much better if they were not open world.

As others have said, Subnautica is a very open game with a fantastic story. So is the Witcher 3. DAI has a rather basic main plot at first, but pursuing that one reveals a much deeper and more interesting one lurking right behind it dripping with lore and worldbuilding, and along the way, fantastic characters and set pieces. In short, weird take is very weird.

[BloodSquirrel]

If FO4 had done the same thing--e.g. *not* given you direct instructions on how to find Shaun in probably the first place you'll visit after leaving Sanctuary Hills--then it would have been greatly improved.

That was sort of my FO3 experience. I missed the prompt telling me where to go find my (jackass) dad, so instead I just had to explore the wasteland, and eventually found him on my own. It was a much more narratively interesting experience than anything FO3 or FO4 did on purpose.

[Lord Raziere]

As others have said, Subnautica is a very open game with a fantastic story. So is the Witcher 3. DAI has a rather basic main plot at first, but pursuing that one reveals a much deeper and more interesting one lurking right behind it dripping with lore and worldbuilding, and along the way, fantastic characters and set pieces. In short, weird take is very weird.

Indeed. Its very much a matter of execution. and something like New Vegas blurs the line between the two definitions by having so many endings to the story you can potentially achieve and ways the you can potentially get to them.

Just because most open world games have decided to go a "mile wide, inch deep" design where most quests and stories are linear and uninteresting while the world is incredibly big for no reason doesn't mean that is all that is possible. its perfectly possible to design better choices and get a better more interactive story for an open world game, its just that most open world games don't do that, because they're busy being meaninglessly large, or tacked onto a franchise with a set character for some reason, emulating minecraft, or is skyrim resold for the umpteenth time. At some point the industry will realize that the way its gone while providing content hasn't done anything to make the content meaningful and start innovating towards interacting more deeply with the worlds they create rather than creating more world to interact with.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Funny thing--I find Fallout: New Vegas to be mediocre because it's so much a smaller, more barren world than FO3 or FO4 and is so heavily railroaded at first. I don't play open-world games for the story. I play them for the exploration, the finding things to get involved with (and loot). The little tiny stories that go, meander along, and die. The fact that I can dink around over there, then go over yonder and there's something different.

To each their own. Taste is subjective, after all.

[Rynjin]

Funny thing--I find Fallout: New Vegas to be mediocre because it's so much a smaller, more barren world than FO3 or FO4 and is so heavily railroaded at first. I don't play open-world games for the story. I play them for the exploration, the finding things to get involved with (and loot). The little tiny stories that go, meander along, and die. The fact that I can dink around over there, then go over yonder and there's something different.

To each their own. Taste is subjective, after all.

The mistake, IMO, is classifying New Vegas as "an open world game" in the first place. It's an RPG, full stop. Mechanically meh, graphically hideous, and all the resources are focused on its excellent quests and stories.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The mistake, IMO, is classifying New Vegas as "an open world game" in the first place. It's an RPG, full stop. Mechanically meh, graphically hideous, and all the resources are focused on its excellent quests and stories.

But sandwiched in between FO3 and FO4 (which were open-world games) and sold/marketed as such, the mistake is, well, forgivable. If I do say so myself.

[Lord Raziere]

I disagree, New vegas is the least railroaded game out of those three Fallout games, particularly FO4's which are are incredibly linear, and FO4's world is more barren than New Vegas.

[Rynjin]

The game...SORT OF railroads you at the start, in that even though you can technically go straight to New Vegas, you actually can't since you have to know exactly what to avoid to get there.

But by the time you hit Nipton you can go wherever and you're fine.

[Lord Raziere]

The game...SORT OF railroads you at the start, in that even though you can technically go straight to New Vegas, you actually can't since you have to know exactly what to avoid to get there.

But by the time you hit Nipton you can go wherever and you're fine.

Easy path vs. hard path is still a choice though, not really railroading.

[Rynjin]

Easy path vs. hard path is still a choice though, not really railroading.

I'm pretty sure it's pretty much impossible on a first run, because you have to thread a VERY exact needle between Quarry Junction, Black Mountain, and Scorpion Valley(?) because all three of those can outrun you if you ever aggro one.

[Lord Raziere]

I'm pretty sure it's pretty much impossible on a first run, because you have to thread a VERY exact needle between Quarry Junction, Black Mountain, and Scorpion Valley(?) because all three of those can outrun you if you ever aggro one.

Yeah its a high cliff, which means whenever someone finishes climbing it they feel a sense of satisfaction that they've climbed a cliff most people weren't willing to climb in the first place and wouldn't have the will to keep climbing. sure it doesn't appeal to everyone, it probably isn't going to be something I do, but it doesn't need to. its another option that can technically be taken, and sure its probably going to be a later run kind of option, but its still there. just because the path you can possibly take is up an arduous trek up a cliff doesn't mean it isn't a path, because they truly meant it to be impossible, then they'd just make it flat out impossible making it so you can't walk there at all. sure you can argue that the difference between a cliff with effort you can climb to get over is not much different from a perfectly smooth wall that you can't climb at all is very little to most people, but its a difference that separates New Vegas from actually railroading. its not outright disallowing you, its just putting a lot of danger there because it would prefer that you wouldn't, but if you want to try and make it through anyways, and you want to do it because your up to it, that is fine.

[Triaxx]

New Vegas works better when you come at it as an adventure RPG. It's a game designed to give you the tools to choose your own path through. It's very much NOT an open world because well the world isn't. It's actually quite small as RPG maps go because it's very long top to bottom but not especially wide.

That said while it often says go here it rarely says no you can't without giving a reason.

[GloatingSwine]

Funny thing--I find Fallout: New Vegas to be mediocre because it's so much a smaller, more barren world than FO3 or FO4 and is so heavily railroaded at first. I don't play open-world games for the story. I play them for the exploration, the finding things to get involved with (and loot). The little tiny stories that go, meander along, and die. The fact that I can dink around over there, then go over yonder and there's something different.

To each their own. Taste is subjective, after all.

Yeah, but again there's a lot more to be involved with in New Vegas than with Bethesda's open worlds, but it's all centred around the towns and NPCs. There are something like twice as many named quests in New Vegas than there are in Fallout 3 or 4.

New Vegas is not "here's a map full of dots that nobody has ever seen before, go and be the first to loot them", it's "Here's an RPG that happens to be set in a mostly contiguous first person space".

(Which is also why it doesn't give the sense that everyone in the entire game world is lazy, stupid, or both because it's allegedly been 200 years since the war and literally nobody has done anything outside of their two or three poxy little towns).

[Eldan]

Especially since it's many decades after Fallout 2, where there were already working nations with infrastructure, printed currencies, manufacturing and so on.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That said while it often says go here it rarely says no you can't without giving a reason.

No, but it puts hazards you can't reasonably overcome unless you first go where it wants you to. For instance that really irradiated town where the guard actually stops you and says "No, you need to go to Novac first". Or the deathclaw+ alley forcing you to go the long way so you can interact with Nipton and the NCR, which forces you to...

Basically, it forces you at every turn to side with X or Y, and once you do, the course of the game is set for the next piece. It's branched linear, at least through the first part.

And it has to be--you can't actually get a fully adaptive game without a general AI. Any computer game has to have limited freedom if it wants a plot.

Side note: I killed the Legion group that had taken slaves from Nipton. And then I found the friendly leader (Recruit Decanis?) sleeping in a hut. After I'd killed him dead. He started wandering around and even attacking people who were attacking me relatively far away. Ah buggy games...

[GloatingSwine]

No, but it puts hazards you can't reasonably overcome unless you first go where it wants you to. For instance that really irradiated town where the guard actually stops you and says "No, you need to go to Novac first". Or the deathclaw+ alley forcing you to go the long way so you can interact with Nipton and the NCR, which forces you to...


But the game is quite happy to let you be unreasonable.

Whereas eg. Fallout 4 has loads of doors that are just non-interactively locked until a story mission makes them real.

As for forcing you to side with X or Y, New Vegas is a game where you can personally murder every single named character and still be able to progress the plot...

[Cikomyr2]

New Vegas give the impression that the world was moving before you got there, and will keep moving after you are gone.

Not so for Fallout 3 and 4. The world is at an eternal standstill. The apocalypse could have happened twenty years ago or three hundred, it doesn't make a difference. There is no oncoming crisis on the horizon.

Weirdly, Fallout 4 could have had an incoming crisis in the form of the Brotherhood invasion. That was one of the game 's best story moment, but hardly had any effect on the map except the occasional vertibird agressively looking to crash into you.

[Triaxx]

Except... I don't need to go to Novac. I can just do what I did the first time which is by just heading north through the Cazadores and slipping down a slot canyon.

Or while exploring and finding all those lovely powder charges I find lying around to blow the legs off of Deathclaws so they can't catch me.

The Legion in Nipton? I didn't know you could even talk to them for a long time. I'd just climb to the roofs and start hurling grenades down on them.

Beef gates have never stopped me.

F4? Even if you break into Kellogg's house there's no button. I was confused when we were taken back to Hagen because the door didn't exist. It occurs to me the MInuteman pipe might not exist before it's needed. Heck can't reach the top of Mass Fusion until the Bro's drop you off but even going in the front the basement door is just set dressing until you're allowed in.

30 minutes into NV you can be on your way to see the Boomers for House.

[factotum]

Yeah, I was a bit puzzled when PhoenixPyre said you *had* to go to Novac. You totally don't--NV is actually the easiest Fallout game to sequence break, since all you have to do is get to New Vegas to trigger the main plotline, and you can do that right at the start if you're good at avoiding Deathclaws. This is why people have been able to speedrun the game in less than quarter of an hour, whereas the absolute fastest speedruns for FO4 are four times as long!

[ShneekeyTheLost]

New Vegas can also start you out with the Caravan Shotgun which actually does a pretty good job on the Cazadores north of Goodsprings. From there, you go past Red Canyon, which isn't particularly aggressive at this point in the game, skirt west of the Fiends, loop back around when you hit the main east/west highway north of New Vegas and... you're in Vegas, baby!

Furthermore, there's also a mountain pass that lets you skip Nipton entirely and drops you off just south of the NCR encampment south of NOVAC. There's a single Blind Deathclaw in the pass which is sort of a meatwall, but if you didn't want to either head north of Goodsprings or try to skirt the Deathclaws along the 15, it's another way to dodge Nipton.

There's a difference between what the game tells you that you *should* do and what the game *prohibits* you from doing. You can get into New Vegas very early if you know what you are doing. Fallout 4, however, literally refuses to permit you to encounter Kellogg without first dealing with a series of events which leads to the Brotherhood showing up, because the door is literally non-interactable until a flag is set. For that matter, you cannot get the BoS to spawn without first heading to Diamond City and dealing with Valentine. Whereas if you show up in New Vegas with the dirt of your own grave still covering your shoes, a single conversation with Cowboy Securitron in front of the Lucky 38 and you pick up the plot seamlessly.

New Vegas suggests you do things in a certain order, but doesn't punish you for not doing it. FO4 does a pretty bad job of signposting where you need to go, and actively punishes you for not doing it in the right order by not functioning until you do.

[LibraryOgre]

New Vegas suggests you do things in a certain order, but doesn't punish you for not doing it. FO4 does a pretty bad job of signposting where you need to go, and actively punishes you for not doing it in the right order by not functioning until you do.

I disagree that it doesn't signpost, is all.

Codsworth: Go to Concord
Preston & Mama Murphy: Go to Diamond City
Diamond City: Find Nick
(problem as you go looking for Nick)
Nick: Follow your dog.

Oh, hey, look, you're outside Fort Hagen.