Worse trend: 7th gen linear games or 8th gen open world games?

[stroopwafel]

I don't think there was anything worse than the avalanche of brown and drab last-gen 'me too' CoD clones. That game's influence even seeped into franchises I formerly enjoyed(RE, Dead Space). I would put the checklist driven busywork of most open world games still leagues above the brown military shooter.

 

[gsilver]

I'm pretty burnt out on sandbox games. It was the double-whammy of MGS V and Witcher 3 that made me officially sick of the design (both were good games, but were so long that I didn't finish either and they felt like a slog by the time I stopped), and have avoided open world games ever since, though I've made an exception for Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Any game that's a checklist of things to do begins to feel like work, and I've had enough of that stuff. Even BotW wore thin on me.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was the easiest 97%+ game to skip that I ever encountered. The more I heard about it, the more it sounded like a colossal waste of time.

Linear games are great, though "brown shooter" is not a type of game that I enjoy, either. There are *plenty* of linear games that aren't "brown shooters" though. Give me something fun, fast, colorful, and over in 10 hours or less.

 

[CaitSeith]

I'll take those over a collect-athon open world game because I only wasted 5 hours then.

Wasted...

...

If playing games is a waste of time, isn't the problem then that the games you chose to play weren't good? Haven't you ever played a game that you wanted to keep replaying over and over again?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I'll take those over a collect-athon open world game because I only wasted 5 hours then.

Wasted...

...

If playing games is a waste of time, isn't the problem then that the games you chose to play weren't good? Haven't you ever played a game that you wanted to keep replaying over and over again?

Most games don't respect the player's time nowadays. How much time over the course of an open world game is wasted in just traveling to content? It's probably longer than a MMS campaign. And, said campaign at least knows enough to only give me what it feels is the good stuff. And, RPGs are probably the worst at not respecting a player's time; "Xenoblade 2 consistently displays a frustrating lack of respect for the player's time." [https://kotaku.com/xenoblade-chronicles-2-the-kotaku-review-1820903229]

I avoid pretty much all open world games and RPGs nowadays unless they look to be something special. It's hard to make just 10-20 hours of great, engaging content let alone the 50+ hours most games want you to play for. Every publisher is trying to get everyone hooked on their "live services" that are more akin to work than they are fun and enjoyment.

I've played games over and over again, which are the ones with top-notch gameplay in their genre whether it was playing Bayonetta 3 straight times through when it launched, playing Mirror's Edge multiple times, or playing Metal Gear Online weekly for 4 years. Open world games rarely have top-notch gameplay because it's usually a jack-of-all-trades. I'd much rather replay through say BulletStorm or Vanquish than any FarCry game (outside of Blood Dragon) because of all the filler.

Board games are much more replayable than video games nowadays. I've played Terraforming Mars 50+ times (maybe 100 at this point) at 2.5-3 hours a pop.

 

[skywolfblue]

Which is fine and all, but there's really no need for the open world to exist. Rather then selecting missions to go visit that valley or ruin off a list or even off a map.


That is actually a fairly good litmus test for the validity of an open world. If fast travel can exist in the game and not be a terrible detriment, then the open world has failed to be relevant. When teleportation around the world doesn't strip away the games content (or worse, is the preferable means), it means that the journey in that open world is itself not living up to its design.


The best genre (at least so far) to make use of open world is Survival games. Because that resource management and en-route scavenging style is all part and parcel of the gameplay. The meat of the game is managing the journey from place to place. Most are far from a perfection of the concept (most are also indie level, so they probably don't have the tech for a more realized world). A runner of up of sorts might be the Dead Rising model, where events are occurring continuously, and the hows and whens of how you get around do factor into how the game plays out.

I don't know of any open world games that don't have fast travel. Even the best ones have fast travel of some sort. I would point to World of Warcraft or Horizon Zero Dawn as being exemplars of open world, but they both have fast travel mechanics. For people who need to get from point A to point B, taking the portal/griffin/campfire is there, but in doing so you miss out on all the scenery/story/events in between. WoW and Horizon pack their worlds to the brim with things to see, they give a compelling reason to visit off the beaten path.

...Whereas in Horizon, the travel and discovery was the content. I was actually somewhat sad when I saw there was no more "clouds" on the map, meaning that I saw everything. I can count on one-hand when an open world has done that for me. I really loved Horizon and it was one of the few games, open world or not, that I didn't want to be over when I finished it.

Same here! Horizon really provides a unique "hunting" atmosphere. It is genuinely fun to sneak up on robots, plan your traps, etc. There are many types of robot that you won't meet on the main quest alone, and each is so different. It's a thrill to find new ones! Even though the game offers fast travel, I rarely use it, because I had more fun stumbling into packs of robots along the way.

 

[sXeth]

Which is fine and all, but there's really no need for the open world to exist. Rather then selecting missions to go visit that valley or ruin off a list or even off a map.


That is actually a fairly good litmus test for the validity of an open world. If fast travel can exist in the game and not be a terrible detriment, then the open world has failed to be relevant. When teleportation around the world doesn't strip away the games content (or worse, is the preferable means), it means that the journey in that open world is itself not living up to its design.


The best genre (at least so far) to make use of open world is Survival games. Because that resource management and en-route scavenging style is all part and parcel of the gameplay. The meat of the game is managing the journey from place to place. Most are far from a perfection of the concept (most are also indie level, so they probably don't have the tech for a more realized world). A runner of up of sorts might be the Dead Rising model, where events are occurring continuously, and the hows and whens of how you get around do factor into how the game plays out.

I don't know of any open world games that don't have fast travel. Even the best ones have fast travel of some sort. I would point to World of Warcraft or Horizon Zero Dawn as being exemplars of open world, but they both have fast travel mechanics. For people who need to get from point A to point B, taking the portal/griffin/campfire is there, but in doing so you miss out on all the scenery/story/events in between. WoW and Horizon pack their worlds to the brim with things to see, they give a compelling reason to visit off the beaten path.

Minecraft (and basically any survival game, as I pointed out. Teleporting kind of eats out the meat of the gameplay there). Fairly sure most of the Zeldas have had none, or very limited. Dying Light (to my recollection). All the Arkham games. Any of the myriad open world RPGs before Oblivion or so. You could make an argument for Morrowind.


Actually, the first game I recall "Fast Travel" as it were in was a fairly interesting case. It was Baldurs Gate. You had that big old map with those tiles you clicked on and whoosh, off you went. Being D&D you might get a random fight on the way, but its basically fast travel. But there's a good note to be made, that all those tiles had some kind of purpose to them. You had this sprawling wilderness to wander around in, but they didn't shove a dead tile in to pad out the space.

This came up a fair bit when I was playing/creating Neverwinter Nights modules too. Periodically you'd stumble across one where someone decided to litigious scale a map into tiles, and they'd usually be just awful dulling filler. I remember on my own Persistent World I drew the map and my build team was aghast that it'd be impossible to render, then the actual design layout was something more like a spider web and certainly not to scale, but with purpose to every location.

With Horizon, there's definitely "tiles" that are just filler. Either nothings in them but sticks and heal berries, or they double up dino encounters. Sometimes the freedom even bites the game in the back end when you stumble on and clear out a dino herd, only to stumble on the quest that was supposed to send you there afterwards and have to redo the entire thing. I got the quest to find the guy eaten by crocobots after having wandered through that spot a couple of times already. What is clearly meant to be the cinematic intro for the big Rex-stand in on the road to Meridian was spoiled because I trotted a bit too far north and found one already. I'd say the same of the big thunderbird too except that just seems like a miscommunication, because the one on the desert road and the one in a quest are both presented well in their own way.

Yeah they didn't go nuts with it. Its not a giant procedurally generated nothingscape. Or the equally empty but reality based desolate terrain of some Ubisoft's stuff (other then their obnoxious random spawns in some). And they didn't do the Mad Max/Far Cry thing where completing an area literally obliterates the core gameplay from it (Biggest sin of Mad Max really. Engaging with the open world just gets rid of *all* the enemy cars, which is the only unique point of the game).

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Which is fine and all, but there's really no need for the open world to exist. Rather then selecting missions to go visit that valley or ruin off a list or even off a map.


That is actually a fairly good litmus test for the validity of an open world. If fast travel can exist in the game and not be a terrible detriment, then the open world has failed to be relevant. When teleportation around the world doesn't strip away the games content (or worse, is the preferable means), it means that the journey in that open world is itself not living up to its design.


The best genre (at least so far) to make use of open world is Survival games. Because that resource management and en-route scavenging style is all part and parcel of the gameplay. The meat of the game is managing the journey from place to place. Most are far from a perfection of the concept (most are also indie level, so they probably don't have the tech for a more realized world). A runner of up of sorts might be the Dead Rising model, where events are occurring continuously, and the hows and whens of how you get around do factor into how the game plays out.

I don't know of any open world games that don't have fast travel. Even the best ones have fast travel of some sort. I would point to World of Warcraft or Horizon Zero Dawn as being exemplars of open world, but they both have fast travel mechanics. For people who need to get from point A to point B, taking the portal/griffin/campfire is there, but in doing so you miss out on all the scenery/story/events in between. WoW and Horizon pack their worlds to the brim with things to see, they give a compelling reason to visit off the beaten path.

Minecraft (and basically any survival game, as I pointed out. Teleporting kind of eats out the meat of the gameplay there). Fairly sure most of the Zeldas have had none, or very limited. Dying Light (to my recollection). All the Arkham games. Any of the myriad open world RPGs before Oblivion or so. You could make an argument for Morrowind.


Actually, the first game I recall "Fast Travel" as it were in was a fairly interesting case. It was Baldurs Gate. You had that big old map with those tiles you clicked on and whoosh, off you went. Being D&D you might get a random fight on the way, but its basically fast travel. But there's a good note to be made, that all those tiles had some kind of purpose to them. You had this sprawling wilderness to wander around in, but they didn't shove a dead tile in to pad out the space.

This came up a fair bit when I was playing/creating Neverwinter Nights modules too. Periodically you'd stumble across one where someone decided to litigious scale a map into tiles, and they'd usually be just awful dulling filler. I remember on my own Persistent World I drew the map and my build team was aghast that it'd be impossible to render, then the actual design layout was something more like a spider web and certainly not to scale, but with purpose to every location.

With Horizon, there's definitely "tiles" that are just filler. Either nothings in them but sticks and heal berries, or they double up dino encounters. Sometimes the freedom even bites the game in the back end when you stumble on and clear out a dino herd, only to stumble on the quest that was supposed to send you there afterwards and have to redo the entire thing. I got the quest to find the guy eaten by crocobots after having wandered through that spot a couple of times already. What is clearly meant to be the cinematic intro for the big Rex-stand in on the road to Meridian was spoiled because I trotted a bit too far north and found one already. I'd say the same of the big thunderbird too except that just seems like a miscommunication, because the one on the desert road and the one in a quest are both presented well in their own way.

Yeah they didn't go nuts with it. Its not a giant procedurally generated nothingscape. Or the equally empty but reality based desolate terrain of some Ubisoft's stuff (other then their obnoxious random spawns in some). And they didn't do the Mad Max/Far Cry thing where completing an area literally obliterates the core gameplay from it (Biggest sin of Mad Max really. Engaging with the open world just gets rid of *all* the enemy cars, which is the only unique point of the game).

Mad Max has some of the funnest open world mechanics I?ve played with, and they feel awesome if ultimately very repetitive. Whether it?s harpooning towers down, or ripping the guards themselves out sending them flying backwards over you, or pulling the wheels or back ends off of enemy cars before blowing them up or ramming them to hell, launching explosives at enemy gates, or even just uncovering a hidden area it?s a pretty satisfying loop. I haven?t finished it yet but sad to hear all that kind of disappears when you finish the story quests.

The sound design is also incredible with a home theater. Every impact feels like it should driving around a metallic beast of a vehicle and the melee feels tougher and crunchier than anything from the Arkham games.

 

[Squilookle]

Which is fine and all, but there's really no need for the open world to exist. Rather then selecting missions to go visit that valley or ruin off a list or even off a map.


That is actually a fairly good litmus test for the validity of an open world. If fast travel can exist in the game and not be a terrible detriment, then the open world has failed to be relevant. When teleportation around the world doesn't strip away the games content (or worse, is the preferable means), it means that the journey in that open world is itself not living up to its design.


The best genre (at least so far) to make use of open world is Survival games. Because that resource management and en-route scavenging style is all part and parcel of the gameplay. The meat of the game is managing the journey from place to place. Most are far from a perfection of the concept (most are also indie level, so they probably don't have the tech for a more realized world). A runner of up of sorts might be the Dead Rising model, where events are occurring continuously, and the hows and whens of how you get around do factor into how the game plays out.

I don't know of any open world games that don't have fast travel. Even the best ones have fast travel of some sort. I would point to World of Warcraft or Horizon Zero Dawn as being exemplars of open world, but they both have fast travel mechanics. For people who need to get from point A to point B, taking the portal/griffin/campfire is there, but in doing so you miss out on all the scenery/story/events in between. WoW and Horizon pack their worlds to the brim with things to see, they give a compelling reason to visit off the beaten path.

Minecraft (and basically any survival game, as I pointed out. Teleporting kind of eats out the meat of the gameplay there). Fairly sure most of the Zeldas have had none, or very limited. Dying Light (to my recollection). All the Arkham games. Any of the myriad open world RPGs before Oblivion or so. You could make an argument for Morrowind.


Actually, the first game I recall "Fast Travel" as it were in was a fairly interesting case. It was Baldurs Gate. You had that big old map with those tiles you clicked on and whoosh, off you went. Being D&D you might get a random fight on the way, but its basically fast travel. But there's a good note to be made, that all those tiles had some kind of purpose to them. You had this sprawling wilderness to wander around in, but they didn't shove a dead tile in to pad out the space.

Hmm I dunno- it can go too far the other way as well. Far Cry 2 had abysmally sparse fast travel options, and as a result just getting to a mission could take 10 minutes or more of hard slogging through endlessly respawning checkpoints, losing half your ammo along the way. So if a sandbox has insufficient fast travel options and going cross country is either too boring or too frustrating to be worthwhile, then that's another failure state.

 

[sXeth]

Mad Max has some of the funnest open world mechanics I?ve played with, and they feel awesome if ultimately very repetitive. Whether it?s harpooning towers down, or ripping the guards themselves out sending them flying backwards over you, or pulling the wheels or back ends off of enemy cars before blowing them up or ramming them to hell, launching explosives at enemy gates, or even just uncovering a hidden area it?s a pretty satisfying loop. I haven?t finished it yet but sad to hear all that kind of disappears when you finish the story quests.

The sound design is also incredible with a home theater. Every impact feels like it should driving around a metallic beast of a vehicle and the melee feels tougher and crunchier than anything from the Arkham games.

The story quests don't do anything. Its actually the open world stuff that decreases the enemies in the open world. It makes for a weird paradox in that engaging with the content starts removing that content from the game entirely.

Its not uncommon in the "regional takeover" mechanism in general. Whether its Mad Max, Saints Row (3 at least, I forget about 4), or Far Cry. As you do the stuff to liberate or takeover a region, the enemies all just vanish away until you're left with a big patch of peaceful nothing. Which might be a satisfying conclusion narratively speaking, but makes the continued sandbox become ever more lifeless.

So yeah, if you want to keep car fighting in Mad Max. Stop pulling down the towers and other such checklist items.

 

[CaitSeith]

How much time over the course of an open world game is wasted in just traveling to content?

Traveling is part of the content. Lots of people appreciate it when done right, and, yeah, it's wise to stay away from it when it doesn't seem worth of your attention.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Mad Max has some of the funnest open world mechanics I?ve played with, and they feel awesome if ultimately very repetitive. Whether it?s harpooning towers down, or ripping the guards themselves out sending them flying backwards over you, or pulling the wheels or back ends off of enemy cars before blowing them up or ramming them to hell, launching explosives at enemy gates, or even just uncovering a hidden area it?s a pretty satisfying loop. I haven?t finished it yet but sad to hear all that kind of disappears when you finish the story quests.

The sound design is also incredible with a home theater. Every impact feels like it should driving around a metallic beast of a vehicle and the melee feels tougher and crunchier than anything from the Arkham games.

The story quests don't do anything. Its actually the open world stuff that decreases the enemies in the open world. It makes for a weird paradox in that engaging with the content starts removing that content from the game entirely.

Its not uncommon in the "regional takeover" mechanism in general. Whether its Mad Max, Saints Row (3 at least, I forget about 4), or Far Cry. As you do the stuff to liberate or takeover a region, the enemies all just vanish away until you're left with a big patch of peaceful nothing. Which might be a satisfying conclusion narratively speaking, but makes the continued sandbox become ever more lifeless.

So yeah, if you want to keep car fighting in Mad Max. Stop pulling down the towers and other such checklist items.

I read on YouTube comments that what some people did was make a save that left most/all the convoys in place to keep replaying. I might do this for a few areas, especially around Gas Town.

 

[Dalisclock]

Mad Max has some of the funnest open world mechanics I?ve played with, and they feel awesome if ultimately very repetitive. Whether it?s harpooning towers down, or ripping the guards themselves out sending them flying backwards over you, or pulling the wheels or back ends off of enemy cars before blowing them up or ramming them to hell, launching explosives at enemy gates, or even just uncovering a hidden area it?s a pretty satisfying loop. I haven?t finished it yet but sad to hear all that kind of disappears when you finish the story quests.

The sound design is also incredible with a home theater. Every impact feels like it should driving around a metallic beast of a vehicle and the melee feels tougher and crunchier than anything from the Arkham games.

The story quests don't do anything. Its actually the open world stuff that decreases the enemies in the open world. It makes for a weird paradox in that engaging with the content starts removing that content from the game entirely.

Its not uncommon in the "regional takeover" mechanism in general. Whether its Mad Max, Saints Row (3 at least, I forget about 4), or Far Cry. As you do the stuff to liberate or takeover a region, the enemies all just vanish away until you're left with a big patch of peaceful nothing. Which might be a satisfying conclusion narratively speaking, but makes the continued sandbox become ever more lifeless.

So yeah, if you want to keep car fighting in Mad Max. Stop pulling down the towers and other such checklist items.

Though sometimes you get bits where clearing forts and camps doesn't mean much other then getting the xp and loot. AC:Odyessy/Origins will have enemies repopulate the forts at some point even if you clear them(granted, clearing is just finishing whatever checklist is attached) and even in early AC games, liberating a region, destorying a fort or taking down the towers just meant you had less hassle to deal with in that area and unlocked some kind of bonus for you(such as being able to recruit more assassins to train and call upon).

And of course, there's MGSV where clearing outposts didn't mean much of anything because they'd alway repopulate some time later and half the time you'd end up going to the same damn places over and over again in missions or free roam. The only real reason to clear them was so you could kidna....er, recruit more minions for your pirate ga.....,er private army.

 

[sXeth]

Though sometimes you get bits where clearing forts and camps doesn't mean much other then getting the xp and loot. AC:Odyessy/Origins will have enemies repopulate the forts at some point even if you clear them(granted, clearing is just finishing whatever checklist is attached) and even in early AC games, liberating a region, destorying a fort or taking down the towers just meant you had less hassle to deal with in that area and unlocked some kind of bonus for you(such as being able to recruit more assassins to train and call upon).

And of course, there's MGSV where clearing outposts didn't mean much of anything because they'd alway repopulate some time later and half the time you'd end up going to the same damn places over and over again in missions or free roam. The only real reason to clear them was so you could kidna....er, recruit more minions for your pirate ga.....,er private army.

Its probably some of a distinction of where they draw their influence.

Region control/territory wars/what have you tend to stem from a sourcepoint in GTA. Games that were large scale and sandboxy, but meant to actually be completed.


On the other side, you had MMOs where the player is 1 dude amongst thousands, and clearing a zone permanently would be both nonensical and actually break the game (there's actually a funny Youtube interview with the Ultima Online guys where they mention how their original realistic wildlife system was basically just made extinct within days by players).


The specific mechanics and terminology shift of course, but those bandit camps and forts respawning in Origins and Odyssey are just world events or dungeon dives from an MMO re-purposed to single player.


Its kind of wobbly which style suits the narrative. Some work. Some don't.

The Boss in Saints Row is a conquering near demigod, so crushing all rivals into nothingness is basically part of their characterization. It dulls the game out certainly, as you get ever increasing skills (or outright superpowers) with ever less to wield them upon, but it makes sense given the characterization involved. Similarly the AC protagonist never being able to make a definitive conquest also flows into the narrative, because we know they never truly defeat the Templars and the battle continues on into the present day.


Far Cry gets a little weird, because while you could clean out the opposing side with the aid of the guerillas you're inspiring, you're generally capable of doing so well before you eliminate Vaas, German Dude, Pagan Min, or other figureheads. The clears can come before they really make sense, and your opponents are mostly content to just sit their as you push them back. Mad Max for his part, seems decidedly unlikely to singlehandedly tame vast stretches of the Waste, particularly given that few of your allies in that game are invested in taking the field to help him. Delsin in Second Son becomes a folk hero (in the good path anyways) and rallies public opinion against the DUP, but we don't really see any logic as to how this ousts the DUP, or why they can't just restock from Curden Cay or call in additional military aid.

I think it was one of the Dead Risings that actually took it to the logical extremes and actually had a zombie count that you could (with difficulty, and not accomplishing much else) clear out.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

If you asked me years ago I would probably lean towards preferring open-world stuff but as it is now I generally prefer linear experiences and stories. Which probably makes sense considering my preferences lean towards things like JRPGs and such. Or CRPGs. The regular formula for popular open-world games just became exceedingly stale to me. Which isn't to say that you can't absolutely fuck up a linear experience to the point it's awful both to play and follow as a story.

I'd probably take a middling but still fun open-world game at this point over something like, say, FFXIII, which screams and bleeds linearity to ridiculous extremes. All while basically being a notably shittier version of FFX which preceded it by nearly a decade. Yikes.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I don't think either is bad in and of themselves, but when the games industry focuses on doing one thing and nothing else, that thing get tiresome and dull.
Besides can we just all agree that lootboxes are the worst thing to happen to video games ever?

 

[sXeth]

I don't think either is bad in and of themselves, but when the games industry focuses on doing one thing and nothing else, that thing get tiresome and dull.
Besides can we just all agree that lootboxes are the worst thing to happen to video games ever?

Nah, I'll 100% fight you on that and say "Early Access" is.

The utter normalization of
a)Paying for a game before its actually out
b)Paying for an unfinished game
c)Letting a game take a year (or more) to "fix" itself
d)Definitely a big contributor to the obnoxious hype train to releases. That one's more of a mixed bag, because it can help expose a terrible products.
e)Helped to kill the actual demo. Now its just "Well go watch the youtubers playing the early access or whatever".


Lootboxes comparatively are a minor annoyance. Basically already on their deathbeds. And mostly absolutely bypassable in all but a small handful of titles.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I don't think either is bad in and of themselves, but when the games industry focuses on doing one thing and nothing else, that thing get tiresome and dull.
Besides can we just all agree that lootboxes are the worst thing to happen to video games ever?

Nah, I'll 100% fight you on that and say "Early Access" is.

The utter normalization of
a)Paying for a game before its actually out
b)Paying for an unfinished game
c)Letting a game take a year (or more) to "fix" itself
d)Definitely a big contributor to the obnoxious hype train to releases. That one's more of a mixed bag, because it can help expose a terrible products.
e)Helped to kill the actual demo. Now its just "Well go watch the youtubers playing the early access or whatever".


Lootboxes comparatively are a minor annoyance. Basically already on their deathbeds. And mostly absolutely bypassable in all but a small handful of titles.

Ok you've got some pretty good points there. Although I wouldn't say that lootboxes are on their deathbed and many times they are only bypassable if you have a metric fucktonne of patience.

 

[wings012]

Your generic linear game is at least to the point. Your generic open world game is in fact a linear game cut up, scattered across an unnecessarily huge world and mixed up with random collectibles and lots of unnecessary travel time.

I always prefer games that offer a bit of a middle ground. Games like Deus Ex or Hitman or even Crysis which offer some degree of freedom as to how you move forward, give a bit of exploration but are ultimately linear in terms of objectives without too much chaff in between.

Linear games don't even necessarily have to be short. RPGs like Dragon Age or Mass Effect(at least 2/3) are ultimately linear in execution - there's just a few central hubs to chat up before you move onto your next main task. JRPGs are ultimately mostly linear, pushing you forward across a fairly linear path before as kind of a bonus towards the end - allows for open world exploration. Which is really more optional than anything and mostly exists to revisit places where you might have missed stuff or for bonus content.

And honestly, play hours is hardly the best gauge of value these days for games. A lot of the hours of longer playtime games are indeed spent twatting about rather than y'know, actually playing the bloody game. A Call of Duty campaign might be short, but I'm at least doing stuff throughout it. I probably spend the duration of a CoD campaign just driving between destinations and finding upgrades in a GTAesque game. And collecting stuff isn't even real gameplay ultimately - they are all marked on the bloody map so it's just... twatting about.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

How much time over the course of an open world game is wasted in just traveling to content?

Traveling is part of the content. Lots of people appreciate it when done right, and, yeah, it's wise to stay away from it when it doesn't seem worth of your attention.

But traveling in open world games almost always is just a time waster and is rarely done right because almost no devs understand how to make an open world game. Most of the time when traveling is fun is only due to the core mechanic just lending itself to travel like Spiderman's web-slinging or Just Cause's grappling hook/parachute. Traveling was just a time waster in an open world platformer Mirror's Edge Catalyst.

I played the beta of Ghost Recon Wildlands and deleted it after an hour because of all the wasted time in that game. I infiltrated a camp and secured a VIP and that should be mission complete. But what did the game have me do? Fly a freaking helicopter to bring the VIP back to our base with shitty ass controls and just wasting minutes of time for no reason. Flying helicopters adds nothing to the core of what a Ghost Recon game is, which is infiltrating and securing that VIP, that's your job. In any other Ghost Recon game, you get a cutscene of the helicopter ride with some after mission chatter because that's all you need. It would be like a Hitman game making you drive a boat for 5 minutes or so when you "escape" after a successful hit, you're not playing the game to drive a boat.

Your generic linear game is at least to the point. Your generic open world game is in fact a linear game cut up, scattered across an unnecessarily huge world and mixed up with random collectibles and lots of unnecessary travel time.

I always prefer games that offer a bit of a middle ground. Games like Deus Ex or Hitman or even Crysis which offer some degree of freedom as to how you move forward, give a bit of exploration but are ultimately linear in terms of objectives without too much chaff in between.

Linear games don't even necessarily have to be short. RPGs like Dragon Age or Mass Effect(at least 2/3) are ultimately linear in execution - there's just a few central hubs to chat up before you move onto your next main task. JRPGs are ultimately mostly linear, pushing you forward across a fairly linear path before as kind of a bonus towards the end - allows for open world exploration. Which is really more optional than anything and mostly exists to revisit places where you might have missed stuff or for bonus content.

And honestly, play hours is hardly the best gauge of value these days for games. A lot of the hours of longer playtime games are indeed spent twatting about rather than y'know, actually playing the bloody game. A Call of Duty campaign might be short, but I'm at least doing stuff throughout it. I probably spend the duration of a CoD campaign just driving between destinations and finding upgrades in a GTAesque game. And collecting stuff isn't even real gameplay ultimately - they are all marked on the bloody map so it's just... twatting about.

Pretty much completely echos my feelings on it. At least linear gives me what it thinks is the "good stuff" and doesn't care about keeping me occupied with copy-pasted low-quality content.

 

[Squilookle]

How much time over the course of an open world game is wasted in just traveling to content?

Traveling is part of the content. Lots of people appreciate it when done right, and, yeah, it's wise to stay away from it when it doesn't seem worth of your attention.

But traveling in open world games almost always is just a time waster and is rarely done right because almost no devs understand how to make an open world game. Most of the time when traveling is fun is only due to the core mechanic just lending itself to travel like Spiderman's web-slinging or Just Cause's grappling hook/parachute. Traveling was just a time waster in an open world platformer Mirror's Edge Catalyst.

I played the beta of Ghost Recon Wildlands and deleted it after an hour because of all the wasted time in that game. I infiltrated a camp and secured a VIP and that should be mission complete. But what did the game have me do? Fly a freaking helicopter to bring the VIP back to our base with shitty ass controls and just wasting minutes of time for no reason. Flying helicopters adds nothing to the core of what a Ghost Recon game is, which is infiltrating and securing that VIP, that's your job. In any other Ghost Recon game, you get a cutscene of the helicopter ride with some after mission chatter because that's all you need. It would be like a Hitman game making you drive a boat for 5 minutes or so when you "escape" after a successful hit, you're not playing the game to drive a boat.

Says who? I quite like it when a game charges you with getting important item X from base Y to extraction zone Z, and leaving it up to you how that gets done. And nothing accommodates player choice as well as a good sandbox. I say 'good', because as you've pointed out there are many quite rubbish ones out there. But exploration and traversing can be done in a compelling way, and that's a job all sandboxes are supposed to perform. Hell, the first Driver and Crazy Taxi were nothing but the traversing, and they were smash hits. Just because some handle that aspect poorly, doesn't mean none of them do it well period.

And lets face it, something like Shadow of the Colossus would have been garbage if you just selected each Colossi from a menu and just got spawned into the arena right in front of it each time.