Open World Issues

[darkknightkryta]

So I was playing through Nier for the past few months.  Now I probably would have finished it sooner, but time's becoming limited.  So I finished ending A.  In the process I finished roughly 70% of the side quests.  It took me like 20ish hours to do.  Then I had to play ending B's which was a bit tedious.  I think I was 24 hours in and I felt like I was playing for 50.  I put it down to play a bit of Horizon's DLC since I haven't touched it.  It was a bit better, but it was still a bit of a drag, since I was doing some side quests that were in front of me.  Doing the main part of the quest was great though and it was involving.  Once I was done a story mission I was analyzing the new area and I realized everything was so samey.  Every area in Horizon had the same useless quests.  Kill this bandit hideout.  Find this Giraffe (Can't remember what the robot was called with the saucer).  Do this dungeon.  Etc.  So I was pondering over whey I was feeling this fatigue and I was thinking, I never had this issue with older JRPGs, and it occurred to me.  There wasn't this checklist of non-sense in the older games.  I never had to spend every waking moment clicking on whatever herb, wood, rock, or whatever was lying around since I would need it to craft something.  There wasn't cut and paste side quests that were all the same in every new area.  Nier has this same issue.  Spider-man has this same issue.  Horizon has this same issue.  Though with Nier my bigger issue was the item finding.  I'm honestly starting to think it was better killing things in random battles and getting spoils rather than running around collecting things I may or may not need.  This is honestly my number 2 issue  in Breath of the Wild.  I want to ride around with my horses and explore (Breath of the Wild quite possibly has the best designed overworld for exploring), but then I'm missing out on a bunch of items I need to craft with.  Now you may say "Skip the side quests.  Don't collect everything" and well yes, but if I didn't grab everything on the ground I wouldn't have been well stocked to take on the DLC in Horizon.  I think developers need to rethink open world designs.  Side quests need to be more meaningful (Which apparently Witcher 3 did).  The checkbox (Kill these 5 enemy spawns) and stuff need to and item scavenging needs to be rethought, hell I'd take the farming back with reasonable drop rates than the press 'x' on everything.

P.S. When I went on to do ending C/D in Nier it was a lot better since most quests are gone by that point.

[kitler53]

i agree.

side quests are by definition something you don't have to do so i suppose is does not make sense for developers to invest too heavily in them.  things might be better if they just abandon side quests entirely and instead make the main quest like 3 times bigger.  but gamers would probably complain.

my current games are horizon and divinity original sin.  i'm probably being influenced here by my current gaming choices but I had a thought of a way the side quests could be integrated into the main game in a "fun" way....

let's just say for arguments sake you just finished a main quest.  instead of the game saying "go to sunfall and talk to XXX" to continue the main quest like it should say something vague like "i've heard rumors of someone/thing that can aid your journey to the north".  with this vague information you'd just explore northward until you stumble upon people/villages.  as an open world game if would be up to you so talk/trade/help/slaughter these people but with each interaction clues can be found to help you find the next true main quest.  aka helping people (via side quests) would be rewarded with information or in the ruins of a slaughtered village would be an artifact/book with information.

functionally horizon would more or less be the exact same game it's just the main quest lines are broken up by side quest lines that give clues instead of xp as their reward.  i would have enjoyed the game more at least because as is i just did ever side quest i could until i became so leveled the main quest line felt like trash to play.

[darkknightkryta]

i agree.

side quests are by definition something you don't have to do so i suppose is does not make sense for developers to invest too heavily in them.  things might be better if they just abandon side quests entirely and instead make the main quest like 3 times bigger.  but gamers would probably complain.

my current games are horizon and divinity original sin.  i'm probably being influenced here by my current gaming choices but I had a thought of a way the side quests could be integrated into the main game in a "fun" way....

let's just say for arguments sake you just finished a main quest.  instead of the game saying "go to sunfall and talk to XXX" to continue the main quest like it should say something vague like "i've heard rumors of someone/thing that can aid your journey to the north".  with this vague information you'd just explore northward until you stumble upon people/villages.  as an open world game if would be up to you so talk/trade/help/slaughter these people but with each interaction clues can be found to help you find the next true main quest.  aka helping people (via side quests) would be rewarded with information or in the ruins of a slaughtered village would be an artifact/book with information.

functionally horizon would more or less be the exact same game it's just the main quest lines are broken up by side quest lines that give clues instead of xp as their reward.  i would have enjoyed the game more at least because as is i just did ever side quest i could until i became so leveled the main quest line felt like trash to play.

I think my problem is the cut and paste of it all.  With Spider-man most of the side quests were "Take over this building in these 10 areas".  "Beat 5 members of 'X' gang" where each gang is in a different area of the map.  Horizon eventually got to that with the human camps where you had to wipe everyone out and find that same giraffe.  It's so monotonous.  I never had this problem with older JRPGs which is mind boggling.  At worst, you had to farm, which in itself wasn't as terrible.  I think my bigger issue is how cookie cutter all these open world games have become.  

I sort of like your idea, making the side quests more meaningful.  I just feel they were their own mini games back in the day compared to now.  Also picking stuff up from the ground needs to die.  Just let me farm and buy stuff.

[kitler53]

I think my problem is the cut and paste of it all.  With Spider-man most of the side quests were "Take over this building in these 10 areas".  "Beat 5 members of 'X' gang" where each gang is in a different area of the map.  Horizon eventually got to that with the human camps where you had to wipe everyone out and find that same giraffe.  It's so monotonous.  I never had this problem with older JRPGs which is mind boggling.  At worst, you had to farm, which in itself wasn't as terrible.  I think my bigger issue is how cookie cutter all these open world games have become.  

I sort of like your idea, making the side quests more meaningful.  I just feel they were their own mini games back in the day compared to now.  Also picking stuff up from the ground needs to die.  Just let me farm and buy stuff.

i don't mind the "pick stuff up" thing but it should function more like farming in my opinion.  

with horizon all of the "pick stuff up" was for extremely common items.   you needed ridge wood for basically everything and it could be found basically anywhere.  it was just a nuisance task.   if you are going to have to harvest things it should be something that can only rarely be found in specific areas and then used to craft something special.  i really like horizon but their crafting system was just not satisfying.

[Legend]

I'd argue this has spread to almost all games, not just open world rpgs.

Take Control. (no spoilers)

It is a great game but it still just has to have a whole bunch of repetitive content to please modern players. The game has a main quest and some good side quests, but a lot of side quests boil down to "return to this room and fight stuff again." By far the worst thing in the game is that it has procedural quests as well. At random times, even during important story moments, big "bureau alerts" pop up telling you to return to a room and fight stuff again over and over.

Single player games did not die but they evolved into bloated beasts mirroring gaas.


Death Stranding had particularly well side quests imo since even though they were super samey, they were a primary element of the game. You're playing as a delivery boy so fetch quests worked haha.


@kitler

Like with your idea, I think Zelda BOTW handled this well. It had many bad side quests, but the main quest was fragmented with optional parts. Before leaving the starting area you are given the objective "defeat ganon" and that's that. It's up to you to either run towards him directly or prepare for the fight with additional quests.



Inventory and crafting systems are mixed bags imo. I like having essentially infinite resources on the map to collect but the game needs to telegraph that you're not expected to collect them all. BOTW kinda handles this by having limited weapon space. You quickly get used to running past branches without picking them up so doing the same for apples becomes easy after a while. It's been a while since I played Horizon but I think the inventory cap goes against this. Instead of you learning to just ignore ridge wood unless you want it, you learn to always keep your ridge wood collection full.

Ideally I think any game with inventory needs to focus on the player's perceived value of items and not artificial limitations. Either let the player collect as much as they want so it is purely a question of time management or focus on the opportunity cost of carrying item A verse item B when space is limited. Death Stranding has both of these and manages them pretty well, especially the later.



With my open world RPG I'm developing, I'm leaning towards not even having quests. They're like modern mini maps imo. Instead of supplementing the experience they often replace it. Like Kitler's northern rumors concept, make it actually an element of the world. Trying to find a location? Actually talk to NPCs and explore on your own vs. having a glowing icon leading the way.

On that subject, here are three critical analyses of open world games that you all might find interesting.

[the-pi-guy]

I think the best side quests tend to almost feel like they could make a main story of themselves (if they were more fleshed out).  

And its something most games really suffer from.  Developers want to give the player stuff to do, but they dont have the resources to flesh out 20 quests with the same kind of quality as the main quests.  

Spoiler for Hidden:

<br>Dangit i really want to play more games... &nbsp;<br>