Watch_Dogs: Too Much Sandbox, Too Little Game

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I second this. The problem with his idea is that if a game has a strong story, said story tends to flow naturally, and putting in artificial breaks is just infuriating.

Take Fallout: New Vegas. Great open world, tons to explore. The thing is, you know what your next step is at any time; Go to the Strip, find Benny, get involved in politics, etc. If you put in breaks saying, "You need more XP to talk to that person," it feels artificial.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you need 2000 caps to get into New Vegas? Seems like a pretty spot-on example of exactly this trick.

Also, I think it's probably possible to pace the story around these breaks. For instance, Red Dead's narrative probably would have felt a lot less padded if you'd simply been forced to raise the money for the assault on Fort Mercer yourself instead of dicking around with Dickens for however many tedious missions.

You could also use this kind of design to add context to the player's actions. What if, once ////SPOILER//// John gets betrayed in Mexico and joins the rebels, the player was tasked with doing side missions to recruit people and help stir up the revolution around the province before any of the big cinematic battles can take place? Suddenly, you don't have to have as many filler missions, and the player feels more invested in the conflict.

Obviously there's the potential for irritation if you're using these kinds of breaks too often or without appropriate context, but used sparingly and thoughtfully I think they could add more to the pacing and immersion than they subtract.

I mentioned in my original post that there was a bribe (thank you for reminding me of specific context). However, that works for a couple reasons:
1) By that point, if you've been doing the regular Fallout thing of scavenging everything within reach, 2000 caps is not a massive price. It's trivial to pay it straight off or go and visit a single nearby location and gain that much (heck, there's probably enough jobs from the Followers, Gun Runners, etc. just there on the outskirts to pay the entire fee). It slows you down, but it doesn't stop you in your tracks, point you away from the story, and say, "Go find something to do until you have the money. Yes, I know the only thing given about your character is that you want revenge on Benny, but you'll have to wait for that story to pay off. Enjoy your vault-raiding while wondering whether a real person could have found another way in."

2)It happens once. If you needed to raise the money every time you had to get into New Vegas, or if there were multiple bribes, I would have started chafing at the yoke (and it sounds like you would too). The way Yahtzee phrases it (and with the example of No More Heroes) he wants regular breaks in the story to do this forced world-exploring, which would shoot the pacing to hell.

Your Red Dead recruitment idea sounds like a good game, but I'm not sure if that was what the article was arguing for. If that were to happen, you wouldn't be doing whatever to gather abstract resources to unlock the next part, you would be following the story mission structure to gain concrete rewards (X joins your cause).

Gathering the resources for attacking the Fort sounds more open, but there would need to be the freedom to attack it at any time, possibly failing because you didn't have enough bullets, friends, etc., then going to gather more stuff and trying again. The strategy that the article puts forth just continues the separation between "open-world messing around" and the narrative, rather than bringing them together in a holistic manner.

 

[Howling Din]

You mean that 'respect bar' thing Saint's Row 2 did? You know, the one that everybody complained about, including Yahtzee?

 

[The Random One]

You mean that 'respect bar' thing Saint's Row 2 did? You know, the one that everybody complained about, including Yahtzee?

That was what I was thinking too. The only difference is that it didn't have a big huge thing that happened when you finished everything... a big huge thing like the neighborhood-destroying Nuke upgrade in Saints' Row 4.

For the record, I never complained about the SR2 respect bar. I found it was wonderful. The strenght of SR2 are its side activities and the respect bar forced people to pay attention to them. If you didn't start an activity to try to play the first mission and then only returned to the missions five hours later, with enough respect for at least 2/3rds of the game, you are a heartless android and have been marked.

 

[SnakeTrousers]

I mentioned in my original post that there was a bribe (thank you for reminding me of specific context). However, that works for a couple reasons:
1) By that point, if you've been doing the regular Fallout thing of scavenging everything within reach, 2000 caps is not a massive price. It's trivial to pay it straight off or go and visit a single nearby location and gain that much (heck, there's probably enough jobs from the Followers, Gun Runners, etc. just there on the outskirts to pay the entire fee). It slows you down, but it doesn't stop you in your tracks, point you away from the story, and say, "Go find something to do until you have the money. Yes, I know the only thing given about your character is that you want revenge on Benny, but you'll have to wait for that story to pay off. Enjoy your vault-raiding while wondering whether a real person could have found another way in."

2)It happens once. If you needed to raise the money every time you had to get into New Vegas, or if there were multiple bribes, I would have started chafing at the yoke (and it sounds like you would too). The way Yahtzee phrases it (and with the example of No More Heroes) he wants regular breaks in the story to do this forced world-exploring, which would shoot the pacing to hell.

Your Red Dead recruitment idea sounds like a good game, but I'm not sure if that was what the article was arguing for. If that were to happen, you wouldn't be doing whatever to gather abstract resources to unlock the next part, you would be following the story mission structure to gain concrete rewards (X joins your cause).

Gathering the resources for attacking the Fort sounds more open, but there would need to be the freedom to attack it at any time, possibly failing because you didn't have enough bullets, friends, etc., then going to gather more stuff and trying again. The strategy that the article puts forth just continues the separation between "open-world messing around" and the narrative, rather than bringing them together in a holistic manner.

For point 1) I don't think that makes it different from what Yahtzee's suggesting, it's just an example of this mechanic being well implemented. If you've done enough adventuring up to that point to make 2000 caps, awesome, in you go. If not, do some jobs for the guys hanging around outside. It's giving you a reason to interact with the world and build up your character before you jump into the story.

Point 2) well, I think a better example would be if the NCR or Legion required you to gain some status within the faction before missions become available. It doesn't necessarily have to be money as long as there's some sort of stat requirement that needs to be fulfilled, and again the effectiveness of this method depends upon how frequently it's done and how well it's worked into the story. If you're being asked to prove yourself before every task then yes, obviously, it's going to get tiresome. If it's just for important shit like assassinating someone, though, it seems fairly reasonable for them to need to trust you more first.

Oh and RDR. For the revolution thing, people would be the resource. Stop an execution, take a bounty on a corrupt official, do some side mission etc. and more people join the rebels. For the fort, I don't think it needs to be quite that open. John needs the marshal to round up a posse, Nigel for the plan and the wagon, Seth to get them in and Irish to supply the machine gun. Nigel and Irish are both broke so they need you to get money for armor and ammo, and the marshal maybe just needs you to clean up the county by means that'd be up to the player (doing bounties, clearing hideouts, stopping roadside robberies, so on and so forth.)

 

[j4c0b1]

I mentioned in my original post that there was a bribe (thank you for reminding me of specific context). However, that works for a couple reasons:
1) By that point, if you've been doing the regular Fallout thing of scavenging everything within reach, 2000 caps is not a massive price. It's trivial to pay it straight off or go and visit a single nearby location and gain that much (heck, there's probably enough jobs from the Followers, Gun Runners, etc. just there on the outskirts to pay the entire fee). It slows you down, but it doesn't stop you in your tracks, point you away from the story, and say, "Go find something to do until you have the money. Yes, I know the only thing given about your character is that you want revenge on Benny, but you'll have to wait for that story to pay off. Enjoy your vault-raiding while wondering whether a real person could have found another way in."

You could also buy a pass for 500 caps to get into Vegas, or be friends with the NCR and use the monorail so there was other ways in.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Read as "Here's another thing Saints' Row did right". By the time I got bored and wanted to see through the rest of the story, I was nearing the respect cap and easily had half to two thirds of the plot left, and even then that got broken up a few times by finding something new en route to the next story mission.

This reminds me of the kind of ongoing discussion right now about skill barriers in modern gaming, and how apart from titles like Dark Souls, this trend kind of died off. If you weren't or didn't become good enough, then the rest of the game remained behind a barrier. The idea that the rest of the game is "held hostage" or whatever the hell people moan about is countered by the idea that you can have it all right off the bat, but none of it means anything. There's no achievement or catharsis to getting everything you want as you want it, it's the setup, expectation, challenge, and fulfillment that make these activities rewarding, not some arbitrary imaginary dollar amount or similar metric popping up on screen.

 

[thehorror2]

Does Yahzee realize this was one of his COMPLAINTS with Saint's Row 2, back in the day? My, how the times have changed...

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

All sandbox games get boring after main game is complete. I loved GTA5 for the writing and banter with the 3 main characters. But once you completed the game it was just a boring game world with the usual pointless mini games to catch up with that became a chore. They can be fun to do while your completing the main mission, but on there own, they are boring.

The Sabatour was a great game in that after completing the game their was still work still to do to kick the germans out of France. Same as i like Mercenaries and Just Cause as well they are a part of the world and not mini games.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Extra Punctuation: talking about problems in video game designs and coming up with solutions since 2009.
Assassin's Creed !V's DLC Expansion, Freedom Cry (or as I've read some fans call it, Adewale Unchained) had it so you couldn't start a story mission unless you did some of the side activities, like liberating X slaves, infiltrate a plantation, or attack & board a slave ship. Doing those liberating slave side activities unlocked upgrades to Adewale's weapons, ammo pouches, and ship.