What makes Open World games work

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

Open World sandbox games were all the craze, but it wasn't just because they had huge beautiful areas to run around in. A huge reason why they became so popular was because they featured meaningful discovery. You could take a break from the main story, wander into a forest, and find a dungeon or a sidequest that then lead into another sidequest, that rabbit-holed into a whole branch of the game. You might accidentally get lost in Deathclaw Cave (while underleveled) and have some wild emergent gameplay as you desperately fight tooth and nail to get out. You might find another cave that happens to have some special loot guarded by a unique miniboss. You might find a little settlement of some nice NPCs who offer interesting world-building and, you guessed it, another string of sidequests. 

Warframe's open worlds have none of this. The resources that you mine right outside of Fortuna are the exact same ones that you find in the furthest cave. The enemies here are exactly the same as the enemies there. Heck, even the Fortuna bounties just send you to the same five places despite the fact that the Vallis has way more named locations, but I digress. 

The Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis are beautiful, well-crafted areas, but the levels themselves don't have much to offer outside of sight-seeing. Exploration in Warframe has no real reward other than finding cool things to look at. 

I really hope that the Planes of Duviri take the idea in a new direction, and that the current open areas get full overhauls. 

[taiiat]

in addition, open regions also usually represent being able to do whatever you want - though with so many things on the Earth and Venus Landscapes having Daylight cycles or restricted to traditional Timers, that's only half true at best.

[Gabbynaru]

No, generally what makes open world games work is the players' imaginations. If you're not good at coming up with your own stories, like I am, then every single open world game is just a dead boring empty desert. And yeah, that includes PoE and Orb Vallis, but at least I can kill a giant spider and there's a story attached to that. (I mean Exploiter, Profit-Taker is terrible).

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

3 minutes ago, Gabbynaru said:

No, generally what makes open world games work is the players' imaginations. If you're not good at coming up with your own stories, like I am, then every single open world game is just a dead boring empty desert. And yeah, that includes PoE and Orb Vallis, but at least I can kill a giant spider and there's a story attached to that. (I mean Exploiter, Profit-Taker is terrible).

Are you arguing in favor of literally imaginary content?

[Gabbynaru]

Just now, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

Are you arguing in favor of literally imaginary content?

That's what open world games are relying on, aren't they? You walk around, you stumble onto something or something happens, things escalate, you get barely get through it, then you tell your friends the story and attribute that unscripted, totally random encounter to the things that make the game enjoyable. Even though it will never happen again or to anyone else.

But no, I'm not in favor of that. I'm way too dumb to make stories out of random events. I think I literally have only one, and I've been gaming for over 18 years. I want proper content fed to me.

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

Just now, Gabbynaru said:

That's what open world games are relying on, aren't they? 

No. And what you describe right after that is emergent gameplay, not imaginary, because it actually happens. There's nothing to stumble upon in Warframe's open worlds, no crazy unscripted events. 

[Gabbynaru]

1 minute ago, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

No. And what you describe right after that is emergent gameplay, not imaginary, because it actually happens. There's nothing to stumble upon in Warframe's open worlds, no crazy unscripted events. 

Emergent or imaginary, same thing. To you, this emergent gameplay might be a great story to tell your friends, to me it's just another random encounter that I have no attachment to, just like all before and all after. So, you saying "There's nothing to stumble upon in Warframe's open worlds, no crazy unscripted events"... yeah, that's me and every single open world game. Nothing happens in them, because my imagination doesn't assign them to anything other than "another random encounter".

Freelancer spoiled me too much and now everything else just pales in comparison.

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

Just now, Gabbynaru said:

Emergent or imaginary, same thing

One thing actually happens, one is just a daydream fantasy, so no. 

[Gabbynaru]

1 minute ago, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

One thing actually happens, one is just a daydream fantasy, so no. 

There's more to imagination than that. You also use it to embellish the truth, events that actually happened, to give them a greater meaning to you. As I said, you use it to make just another random encounter into an epic tale you tell your friends. What happened in reality is that you clicked your mouse and keys a few times, but using your imagination, you shot lightning out of your hands and fought a dragon. You. Not the game. Not this digital amalgam of vectors and lines. Not this interactive movie. You did that. Because you used your imagination.

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

I literally cannot understand what point you're trying to make anymore. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with my topic, so let's agree to disagree. 

[TaylorsContraction]

I agree with OP more than the guy who imagines all the missing features and is okay with them being missing. There have been many suggestions on how to make dynamic missions. Bounties follow that pattern but they are rather repetitive (same bounties combinations), and half the missions are of a defense type.

I think what the game needs is new mission types altogether at their core. That is, don't defend something and don't kill everything. Wel what else is ther you may ask? We have spy and rescue but those are rather short, I have ideas but this isn't the thread to share them.

[Xzorn]

Were? Open world games have always been a popular concept in gaming at least PC gaming. Single player games like the Ultima series then online games like MUDs and later Ultima Online, EverQuest, Runescape and so on. They're hardly a fad is my point. Wasn't until Morrowind / Oblivion / WoW they gained mainstream popularity.

In many ways that popularity hurt the genre more than help it. While everything involving exploration is correct there's more we've lost over the years like a functioning game economy involving tradeskills and layers of player interactions. ie, Miner sells to Blacksmiths, Blacksmiths sell to Adventurers who lose their gear at times and have to come back to a Blacksmith. Other non-item services like buffing, resurrection, transportation. Player reputations were built because of these interactions and much of this is gone leaving an important function in creating a living world people could play within untapped and all the more hollow for it.

For me PoE / Vallis is just another step in the de-evolution of the genre. I can still remember the names of players I hated or had friendships with from games over 20 years ago where as I can't even remember the name anyone in the last year I grouped with in Warframe because they don't matter. Plain and simple. Players don't need each other for anything and the game doesn't require players to be good at it so no one really stands out and if they did; you've no reason to call on them.

Of course NPCs help to fill in the gaps but in an online open world sandbox; it's the players who shape the experience. Exploration and stumbling into an adventure is an important part that mostly remains but that experience is a lot better with other people esp when you couldn't do it without them.

[Teridax68]

I agree with the OP; the main problem with the Plains of Eidolon and the Vallis is that both "open worlds" are mostly just really big tiles with a slightly different set of things to do, and ultimately both levels are dead areas on their own: nothing really goes on in those places, nor does there seem to be any coherent activity with cause or consequence. Part of this is because those levels are instanced and disappear/reset the moment we leave: our actions cannot possibly have any enduring consequences within those levels, because those levels reset when we leave them (unlike most open worlds, which are persistent and are affected by the player's actions). Because of the game's multiplayer mission structure, the only two options as well are to either go in and play a mission with a squad, which prevents exploration, or go solo to fish, mine, or grind K-Drives, which quickly stops offering exploration potential due to the relatively short size and static nature of those levels. As such, I don't think the Plains or Vallis in their current state could ever credibly be called "open worlds".

Beyond that, though, I feel it's a mistake to focus only on those levels to treat them as open worlds: ultimately, these are just two levels in a far larger game, and trying to make them individual open worlds may in fact be counter-productive. Putting aside how even AAA game developers working full-time on a single open world struggle to make it work (let alone two or three within the same game), I feel even attempting to do so with Warframe's current large levels would likely worsen the existing problem of those levels being isolated from the rest of the game, leading to a fragmented and disconnected experience. What I'd much rather have instead, and what I think would have much more potential, would be to try to turn the entire System into one big open world: with Railjack/Empyrean, the entire in-game world is getting connected, including the Plains and Vallis, and that I think offers a much more solid foundation for a larger world in which we do get to explore, and where our actions have lasting consequences. We already have plenty of systems in place to record our progress across missions and planets, and with the Kingpin system entering the game, there will be even more. Thus, in this context I think it would make more sense to focus on making the entire game itself feel like a coherent space, instead of risking yet another content drought on stuff that will only improve what is ultimately just a small part of our world. 

[Xzorn]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

I agree with the OP; the main problem with the Plains of Eidolon and the Vallis is that both "open worlds" are mostly just really big tiles with a slightly different set of things to do, and ultimately both levels are dead areas on their own: nothing really goes on in those places, nor does there seem to be any coherent activity with cause or consequence. Part of this is because those levels are instanced and disappear/reset the moment we leave: our actions cannot possibly have any enduring consequences within those levels, because those levels reset when we leave them (unlike most open worlds, which are persistent and are affected by the player's actions).

 

This actually reminded me of another thing we've lost in multiplayer open worlds, Ecology.

Thankfully we still see it to a small degree in single player games but even that's a bit low-end compared to some of the early incarnations. Wolves hunt (attack) Deer. If players kill all the Deer; Wolves hunt players more. If you kill all Wolves; more Deer are int he area and less herbs spawn. If you kill both then herbs spawn more.

I don't think the system ever quite worked perfectly but it was important to have consequences and results of the player's interaction with the world. I think a lot of online games took this out because there were most definitely inconveniences involved like other players killing NPCs in a town you might have needed for a quest so you have to wait till they're replaced but those were real consequences as result of player interactions regardless. Even far as being able to attack that player for making it inconvenient.

There are so many working parts and I don't think any game has gotten it perfect but they sure made better attempts back in the day.

[Ham_Grenabe]

4 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I agree with the OP; the main problem with the Plains of Eidolon and the Vallis is that both "open worlds" are mostly just really big tiles with a slightly different set of things to do, and ultimately both levels are dead areas on their own: nothing really goes on in those places, nor does there seem to be any coherent activity with cause or consequence. Part of this is because those levels are instanced and disappear/reset the moment we leave: our actions cannot possibly have any enduring consequences within those levels, because those levels reset when we leave them (unlike most open worlds, which are persistent and are affected by the player's actions). Because of the game's multiplayer mission structure, the only two options as well are to either go in and play a mission with a squad, which prevents exploration, or go solo to fish, mine, or grind K-Drives, which quickly stops offering exploration potential due to the relatively short size and static nature of those levels. As such, I don't think the Plains or Vallis in their current state could ever credibly be called "open worlds".

Yes, totally agreed. They’re not “open worlds,” they’re just “outdoor mission tiles.”

Big tiles, sure, but just mission tiles. Like every other environment in the game. “Open world” means a lot more than “you can see the sky and do some mining.”

[5H4DE]

3 hours ago, Xzorn said:

 

This actually reminded me of another thing we've lost in multiplayer open worlds, Ecology.

Thankfully we still see it to a small degree in single player games but even that's a bit low-end compared to some of the early incarnations. Wolves hunt (attack) Deer. If players kill all the Deer; Wolves hunt players more. If you kill all Wolves; more Deer are int he area and less herbs spawn. If you kill both then herbs spawn more.

I don't think the system ever quite worked perfectly but it was important to have consequences and results of the player's interaction with the world. I think a lot of online games took this out because there were most definitely inconveniences involved like other players killing NPCs in a town you might have needed for a quest so you have to wait till they're replaced but those were real consequences as result of player interactions regardless. Even far as being able to attack that player for making it inconvenient.

There are so many working parts and I don't think any game has gotten it perfect but they sure made better attempts back in the day.

Ah yes, good ol' Gadgetzan, sometimes I miss playing WoW for these kind of interactions.

I guess the closest thing to that in WF right now is players luring enemies into fishing spots or killing conservation pets to mess around with each other.

[Xzorn]

27 minutes ago, TheRealShade said:

Ah yes, good ol' Gadgetzan, sometimes I miss playing WoW for these kind of interactions.

I guess the closest thing to that in WF right now is players luring enemies into fishing spots or killing conservation pets to mess around with each other.

 

Yea the Griffon / Wyvern NPC came to mind as I was writing that actually. Though WoW was more PvP situated than some. I've seen better and more in-depth interactions. WoW just had town guards who were easy to exploit and the Honorable / Dishonorable kills which didn't do enough to counter griefing.

In other games a player who killed many others without provocation would eventually earn PK tags which made them free game in the more scrupulous towns or town guards would attack them on sight in the more "good" aligned areas. Add  that Players themselves could set bounties for specific PK tagged players that others could invest in and whoever killed that player would get the bounty reward. This worked out not just as a PvP mechanic but an economic one as well. You could play the game as a bounty hunter.

I've also seen players pay others for a group of guarded escorts to other places to prevent their good from being taken from them.

Some don't like PvP and I get it but it's a great example of how players can shape an open world when the tools are there.

[Showerwalker]

Good point. From what I know DE isn't releasing Duviri in at least another 2 years, and to be honest I'm more excited about the story it brings than the gameplay, I'm sure it'll be a better "open world" than OV, but it won't really be an openworld simply because it takes too much work to make one, sure exploration is what makes openworld so fun, and I gotta say it's exactly what makes me like openworld so much, but there's more to it than exploration, especially for an online game where 90% of the time spent playing is past the exploration stage, but I digress, WF "openworlds" lacks more than just that, and I think just by looking at other openworld games explains it better than me writing it all down. POE took around 8 month of development according to Noclip's extended interview, they were pushing it a bit with Fortuna and people started to complain about the content drought, so in short, I think (imo) what DE is interested in realistically is not how to make an actual openworld, because they can't, but rather how to disguise it as one as best as they could.

So going back to OP, having geography and location take a more significant role in Duviri would certainly help, similar to DE's idea of randomized tilesets to reduce burnout from repetition, but I want to build on top of that idea and add different sub-factions around the map so exterminate etc taking place in one location could mean dealing with heavy tank units or elite glass cannons or even hordes of native creatures in another, and varied objectives where defense or excavation taking place in the cave or out in the wild plays out differently compared to inside enemy base, anything to break up the repetition really, but as I said, it's lacking too much to be an openworld. It'd be a good idea to start improving from the grindiest part, and hopefully this time they can solve the traversal problem too, and if not, then I'd rather have a smaller and denser map that's more interesting than a large and empty one.

[Steel_Rook]

23 hours ago, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

Open World sandbox games were all the craze, but it wasn't just because they had huge beautiful areas to run around in. A huge reason why they became so popular was because they featured meaningful discovery. You could take a break from the main story, wander into a forest, and find a dungeon or a sidequest that then lead into another sidequest, that rabbit-holed into a whole branch of the game. You might accidentally get lost in Deathclaw Cave (while underleveled) and have some wild emergent gameplay as you desperately fight tooth and nail to get out. You might find another cave that happens to have some special loot guarded by a unique miniboss. You might find a little settlement of some nice NPCs who offer interesting world-building and, you guessed it, another string of sidequests. 

That's not "open world sandbox" games, though - what you're describing is Bethesda games. Plenty of open-world games have grown popular without any of these things. GTA 5, for example, has none of the emergent gameplay you mentioned because there's nothing to discover - everything's accessed through your phone. Ghost Recon: Wildlands is similar (being Military GTA), in that you find the equivalent of an UbiSoft radio tower and every point of interest is marked on the map for you. The Division 2, similarly, uses its open world to procedurally generate content despite having very little in the way of exploration. And then you have the various Early Access Crafting Survival games with no stories to partake in at all.

The problem with Warframe's Free Roam maps isn't having nothing to discover, but rather that Warframe isn't a game about discovery. The Plains of Eidolon and Orb Valis are functionally identical to every other tileset, just larger and not randomly generated. There's no gameplay added by the additional size, other than perhaps a greater reliance on sniper rifles. It's simply standard gameplay, punctuated by a commute. And not an interesting commute, either - just riding a hoverboard or a jetpack through mostly barren terrain.

If you want to improve Free Roam maps, I'd argue that they need procedural generation. XCOM 2 figured this out years ago, DE can figure it out as well. Some system of outdoor tiles which can snap together and form a new map with every visit would help keep those game modes fresh visit after visit. In fact, just having more locations where Bounties send you would help a lot. Right now, especially in Orb Vallis, there are probably a dozen locations where anything happens. The rest of the map is never used and thus players are never given a reason to explore those locations. There's a giant crashed Orokin satellite, a meteorite crater, lots of cool caves, but the game never takes us there. I didn't even know that the Spaceport and the Temple of Profit even HAD interiors because the game never introduced me to them.

Long story short, most open-world games don't really NEED to be open-world. If you're going to go that route, you need to bring something more to the table than just a large map.

[Xzorn]

29 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's not "open world sandbox" games, though - what you're describing is Bethesda games. Plenty of open-world games have grown popular without any of these things. GTA 5, for example, has none of the emergent gameplay you mentioned because there's nothing to discover - everything's accessed through your phone. Ghost Recon: Wildlands is similar (being Military GTA), in that you find the equivalent of an UbiSoft radio tower and every point of interest is marked on the map for you. The Division 2, similarly, uses its open world to procedurally generate content despite having very little in the way of exploration. And then you have the various Early Access Crafting Survival games with no stories to partake in at all.

 

GTA created a sub genre standard of open world games. They aren't defining examples themselves.

The first free roam / open world games were text based adventurers that very much encompassed discovery as a primary appeal. After that point many standards have been added like the economic elements, living cities, seamless play, procedural generation, ect. I used an example of MUDs for the early online multiplayer open world experience as those encompassed many of these elements added over the years. It was like the genre being reborn over the internet. It started in text both times.

GTA is an open world game but it's not wrong of OP to want exploration in an open world either. It was after all born that way.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

I'll tell you what will work in Warframe and with DE...I was playing with my brother in the plains and we came across a Eidolon walking around in the day time...this happens every once in awhile..you can attack it and it will respond with those annoying bolts from the sky, but no other animations usually fire off....

We also came across a Bull Thumper and then proceeded to lead it all the way to the Eidolon and much amusement and HELL YEAH took place as the thumper proceeded to land on top of the eidolon hoping to push it back into the ground since it's day time...So back in your hole...

I can't see the whole Skyrim dungeon crawl and NPC encounters..but I can see them going Monster Hunter World and dropping about five more giants that wander around trying to kill us in both the day and night cycle...

[Xzorn]

2 hours ago, (PS4)FriendSharkey said:

I can't see the whole Skyrim dungeon crawl and NPC encounters..but I can see them going Monster Hunter World and dropping about five more giants that wander around trying to kill us in both the day and night cycle...

 

Maybe not Skyrim. Those dungeons were manually crafted but this game is here thanks to the simple tech of randomized tilesets.

Daggerfall (TES2) used to have similar tech. It would create randomize quests, link them to randomized NPCs with random appearance which would lead you to randomized tileset dungeons. Even the dialog was seeded from random scripts. It was a little too random for the game's own good and you'd end up with some monstrously complex dungeons but in Warframe we've kinda been doing similar this whole time. What doesn't work is Warframe has become a farming game set on turbo speed.

There's no incentive for exploring or trekking deep into a place you might not belong. The game can no longer create that atmosphere where the player might actually be cautious of what lies just around the corner. Warframe doesn't even reward us for fighting harder enemies. The concept works. Warframe just doesn't.

[Autongnosis]

Il y a 6 heures, Xzorn a dit :

There's no incentive for exploring or trekking deep into a place you might not belong. The game can no longer create that atmosphere where the player might actually be cautious of what lies just around the corner.

I was positively surprised tho by how the new jupiter tileset promotes and sorta rewards exploration. I've spent a long time exploring every nook and cranny and there's a lot of fun stuff to run into, or puzzle rooms that do random things. 

The lab hunts particularly i was very satisfied with, incorporating both exploration, simon says style memory puzzles and high speed parkour. And if you're in a sortie 2-3 or a flood, the combat encounters inside are even interesting enough wjth all the amalgams charging at you together with actual sentients. 

[Steel_Rook]

15 hours ago, Xzorn said:

GTA is an open world game but it's not wrong of OP to want exploration in an open world either. It was after all born that way.

I'm not saying it's wrong to want exploration. Was more pointing out that it's not an inherent requirement for a modern open-world game. I was also arguing that Warframe's mechanics don't lend themselves to it very well. This is, simply put, not an open-world game. What Free Roam maps we have are using variations on instance mechanics. The world isn't persistent, our ability to interact with it is limited, our objectives system is fairly simple, all of this leading to "exploration" boiling down to speeding through a location scanning the minimap for blips, finding a thing and speeding off. I don't think Elder Scrolls and Fallout games are a good model to go off of, because they rely on an entirely different set of mechanics, not to mention pace of gameplay.

At its heart, Warframe is not an RPG. It has RPG elements, but it really is a horde shooter. The game simply doesn't have a lot of mechanical complexity outside of combat, which is what makes these big maps so impractical - the time spent between battles feels like a commute, rather than legitimate gameplay. Standard indoor tilesets manage to obscure this limitation through procedural generation. While we know all of the individual rooms, we still have to find our way across their current random arrangement in order to get to our objective. In both the Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis, the map is static and largely unused. It takes only a few hours to learn the small handful of locations that Bounties will use and to realise that Archwinging straight up and over any interesting terrain is more practical than hoofing it on foot.

That's why I argue that Free Roam maps don't so much need "more exploration" but rather need procedural generation, instead. There isn't a lot that Warframe can do with exploration that isn't going to boil down to "I can't farm X because it spawns randomly around the map!" the same way Cetus Wisps and Toroids in caves do. Additionally, stop relying on mission objectives for everything and generate events straight on the map. A Corpus outpost is under attack by Solaris United, help them! Base A is sending a patrol to Base B, intercept them for supplies! Corpus are drilling for something somewhere, stop them! Old-school Plains of Eidolon tried to do this, but only a single one of these would pop up and players would be locked into doing it by mission objective. Why can't these spawn on their own and be marked on the Big Map for players to pursue at their discretion?

I challenge the OP's example of Bethesda games, because I don't feel they're a good fit for Warframe. This sort of high production value single-player content doesn't lend itself to a repetitive live service. It's why I propose learning from open-world live service games, instead. The Division 2 has the problem of world activities predominantly cracked by a combination of outposts to take, random activities to engage in (and put outposts on high alert) and random patrols either roaming around, attacking outposts themselves, scavenging for supplies, etc. If you want to do something in the open world, you pull up the map and boom! Activities all around you! Take your pick. Or don't, and just ignore them as you go towards a specific mission.

Warframe's Free Roam environments can work, but they need randomised terrain and randomised activities.