Urgency in free roaming games, and/or lack thereof

[Triaxx]

I run Psijic Teleport which lets me break a few sequences. It's quite fun.

[Imbalance]

Because they're designed expressly on the basis that you can't. If you could, the designers would never have used that particular donut variant.

I did think about modding in a dragon shout that would let you jump vertically, but I chickened out when I thought about how much it would break in the game.

Recall that you're meddling in the fractured sands of devs that included Passwall and Rising Force in earlier series installments. Granted, Skyrim's difficulty in no way needs such effects, but that's no reason to not pulverize the code, and at least your idea remains true to theme.

[Cikomyr2]

give me an Ebony chisel and a hammer, and I can force my way through any wall

Bonus point if you can enchant it for extra piercing damage.

[warty goblin]

At the risk of necroing this topic back towards... this actual topic, I've been farting around in Assassin's Creed Valhalla again, which is about the least urgent open world I've ever encountered.

On the one hand, there's very little motivation to do any particular thing, but the flip side of that is there's no motivation to not do whatever. Most of the rewards are generic enough that checking off this map marker is about as valid as doing that map marker, or just meandering around harvesting stuff for upgrades. There is some structure; the really important upgrade stuff, and new gear pieces, are only found in specific spots, and you need to do monastery raids to upgrade your settlement, but the gear system is forgiving enough you don't need to rush these at all. I'm still using the starter axe with a couple upgrades, and it's fine.

All of which adds up to a game that's very relaxing. It's not easy (at least on hard) but the lack of consequence means I'm free to do what I find fun. It's actually kind of a weird feeling, just doing stuff in a game because that stuff is fun, and not because I need to collect 15 floozles for a quest, or worry that taking skill x or making choice y will result in a bad character build or me getting the bad ending or whatever. I suppose the lack of locked out content hurts some notion of replayability, but honestly screw that. The game is already a zillion hours long, the odds of me ever finishing it are low, and I generally am at a point in my life where playing a worse game now so I can maybe play it differently later is supremely unappealing.

[PhoenixPhyre]

At the risk of necroing this topic back towards... this actual topic, I've been farting around in Assassin's Creed Valhalla again, which is about the least urgent open world I've ever encountered.

On the one hand, there's very little motivation to do any particular thing, but the flip side of that is there's no motivation to not do whatever. Most of the rewards are generic enough that checking off this map marker is about as valid as doing that map marker, or just meandering around harvesting stuff for upgrades. There is some structure; the really important upgrade stuff, and new gear pieces, are only found in specific spots, and you need to do monastery raids to upgrade your settlement, but the gear system is forgiving enough you don't need to rush these at all. I'm still using the starter axe with a couple upgrades, and it's fine.

All of which adds up to a game that's very relaxing. It's not easy (at least on hard) but the lack of consequence means I'm free to do what I find fun. It's actually kind of a weird feeling, just doing stuff in a game because that stuff is fun, and not because I need to collect 15 floozles for a quest, or worry that taking skill x or making choice y will result in a bad character build or me getting the bad ending or whatever. I suppose the lack of locked out content hurts some notion of replayability, but honestly screw that. The game is already a zillion hours long, the odds of me ever finishing it are low, and I generally am at a point in my life where playing a worse game now so I can maybe play it differently later is supremely unappealing.

As I get older and have less time for gaming (and less patience for false challenge), this style becomes more and more appealing when I'm looking at an open-world game. Deadlines harsh my mellow. As do "build-defining" choices, where choosing wrongly means restarting. I hate trap options. I'd like it much more, for instance, if there was a way to respec perks/skills/etc in Fallout/Bethesda games generally. Because frequently it takes a few tries to find something that works and the linchpin talents are critical to making it actually work well.

[Anteros]

As I get older and have less time for gaming (and less patience for false challenge), this style becomes more and more appealing when I'm looking at an open-world game. Deadlines harsh my mellow. As do "build-defining" choices, where choosing wrongly means restarting. I hate trap options. I'd like it much more, for instance, if there was a way to respec perks/skills/etc in Fallout/Bethesda games generally. Because frequently it takes a few tries to find something that works and the linchpin talents are critical to making it actually work well.

I feel the same, which is why as I've gotten older I've gotten more into cheats and mods in single player games. A lot of the time spending 10 minutes researching and installing a mod can save hours on a restart.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I feel the same, which is why as I've gotten older I've gotten more into cheats and mods in single player games. A lot of the time spending 10 minutes researching and installing a mod can save hours on a restart.

As an aside,

I'll say that this issue is one reason I prefer FFXIV for my MMO needs--being able to see all classes on one character and not having strong FOMO pressure (by design) means that I can derp around on whatever I feel like playing as easy as pushing the "change gear" button. There's always something that can be done even though my different classes are at different gear levels, and there's little or no pressure to "keep up with the Joneses"--weekly caps on currency, plus being pretty easy to gear up for "normal" content (very little RNG in drops, most gear comes from crafting or tokens), with harder content being about challenge (something I don't care about) not story means I don't have to keep up on my dailies/weeklies/etc.

It means I can pick it up, do an old raid, then quit for the day and not really miss much. Or I can burn heavy on new story content when it comes out.

On the other hand, things like Destiny 2, where they're constantly rotating things in and out and you have to constantly grind to upgrade your gear, or WoW where everything is gated behind dailies/weeklies/running endless mythics makes that much more painful. Which is why I don't play those games.

[warty goblin]

As I get older and have less time for gaming (and less patience for false challenge), this style becomes more and more appealing when I'm looking at an open-world game. Deadlines harsh my mellow. As do "build-defining" choices, where choosing wrongly means restarting. I hate trap options. I'd like it much more, for instance, if there was a way to respec perks/skills/etc in Fallout/Bethesda games generally. Because frequently it takes a few tries to find something that works and the linchpin talents are critical to making it actually work well.

I'm approaching a point where I sort of just hate specialized/restrictive character builds in singleplayer games, or at least long ones. Generally they result in a character that has like one way to solve every problem in the game. This gets boring since I've really only got one tool in the toolbox, and forces the game's combat to be built in this very bland way where any of a dozen builds need to be equally effective. I keep poking at Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, and I can build a ton of different characters, but the encounters are just horribly dull. Here's a room with four dudes in it. Here's a room with two dudes, followed by five dudes. Just endless mooks in these dull terrain-free rooms, all of which get pulverized in whatever way my build is specced for.

In Valhalla the other night, I had to steal some documents from a settlement, which had a really tough boss encounter in it. I did some parts in melee, some at range, and finally stealthed my way around the boss entirely, basically using my judgement moment to moment to figure out what would work best. It's been forever since I got to do that!

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm approaching a point where I sort of just hate specialized/restrictive character builds in singleplayer games, or at least long ones. Generally they result in a character that has like one way to solve every problem in the game. This gets boring since I've really only got one tool in the toolbox, and forces the game's combat to be built in this very bland way where any of a dozen builds need to be equally effective. I keep poking at Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, and I can build a ton of different characters, but the encounters are just horribly dull. Here's a room with four dudes in it. Here's a room with two dudes, followed by five dudes. Just endless mooks in these dull terrain-free rooms, all of which get pulverized in whatever way my build is specced for.

In Valhalla the other night, I had to steal some documents from a settlement, which had a really tough boss encounter in it. I did some parts in melee, some at range, and finally stealthed my way around the boss entirely, basically using my judgement moment to moment to figure out what would work best. It's been forever since I got to do that!

I basically agree, with caveats. I think.

I think that if the difference in performance between "fully specialized" and "unspecialized" in an area is very large, then either
a) the system has to assume you've specialized somewhere (ie you've taken one branch to the end and are good at <thing>) and use that level to determine difficulty
a.1) if they assume any limited subset of the available specialties, all the other ones fail. Which really mean that only the "approved" specialties are really options.
a.2) if they manage to cover the entire range, then any non-specialized character fails.
b) or the system has to assume you might have no specialization at all. Which makes the specialist able to steamroll any of the encounters that hit their specialty and be just as good at anything else.

Choice a) leads to either what you said or really could be better as a hard class system with few non-cosmetic build choices. Because that's really what you've done, just with traps for the unwary or inexperienced. Ie fake difficulty.
Choice b) leads to boring games for anyone who cares about challenge.

Instead, I think the right way is to make the differences about breadth, not depth. Your choices open up more ways of handling each individual issue, but don't necessarily make you better at any one of those paths that you've unlocked. Maybe. But I'm sure there are tradeoffs there as well.

Table-top games get around this to some degree by having more on-the-fly adaptation available from a living DM. But they suffer from some of the same issues.

[Forum Explorer]

As I get older and have less time for gaming (and less patience for false challenge), this style becomes more and more appealing when I'm looking at an open-world game. Deadlines harsh my mellow. As do "build-defining" choices, where choosing wrongly means restarting. I hate trap options. I'd like it much more, for instance, if there was a way to respec perks/skills/etc in Fallout/Bethesda games generally. Because frequently it takes a few tries to find something that works and the linchpin talents are critical to making it actually work well.

I'm the opposite. As I have less time for gaming, I find I hate chaff missions more and more. I don't have time for mediocre, time wasting missions that don't really matter. I want my choices to matter, and the plotline to progress. I'm fine with potentially losing content by not having the right build because I'm not going to see all the content anyways. Something that is more curated to whatever build I've made is perfectly fine by me.

[tomandtish]

At the risk of necroing this topic back towards... this actual topic, I've been farting around in Assassin's Creed Valhalla again, which is about the least urgent open world I've ever encountered.
....

I'll see your Assassin's Creed and raise you a Battletech. I have one game where I literally spent three years of game time leveling while ignoring the priority mission. It's amazing Kamea didn't choose to go without me.