Urgency in free roaming games, and/or lack thereof

[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/comm...e_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/comm...e_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.