Urgency in free roaming games, and/or lack thereof

[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.