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Anyone else sick of "open world" RPGs?
BadSpock
Member UncommonPosts: 7,979
I'm really quite over this whole "open world" RPG thing.
It just ends up being repetitive, grind heavy "quests" that are light on story and heavy on boring.
Dragon Age: Inquisition. Borderlands. Witcher 3 looks like it is going to suffer from the same mess. Dozens of little blah all over the map/screen pointing you towards more useless garbage.Bleh.
The last one I really enjoyed was Skyrim - but Skyrim had (I think) a good main story that kept you engaged and you didn't feel bad skipping out on most of the side stuff - as most of it wasn't thrown in your face like it is in DA:I.
OPEN WORLD DOES NOT = BETTER.
You know what were good Bioware RPGs? KOTOR, Mass Effect 1-3.
Story. Characters. Plot. Start to finish. Repeatable.
Hell, I think DIABLO 3 is a better RPG than DA:I because it doesn't bog itself down with pointless side garbage - even if the story is predictable and very standard-fair fantasy - it is focused.
In the MMO space, I think GW2 made a HUGE mistake, for example, by putting the vistas and heart quests on the map, and then making them required for world completion %.
Just leave them out there, in the wild, to FIND as we EXPLORE, and focus your directed gameplay on the main plot lines, characters, and events.
If your core gameplay is fun, as it is in like Destiny, Diablo, or the Mass Effect series, I'll play the same missions/levels over and over again as different characters/builds/moral choices etc.
Don't bog me down with useless side content that means absolutely nothing - it is NOT satisfying gameplay to me.
I don't know, maybe I'm the only one.
Comments
So.. Minecraft and... ?
Don't get me wrong, I love Minecraft - and I loved Ultima Online - my favorite MMORPG of all time - but these quest heavy story filler garbage RPG's / MMO's that label themselves "open world" but then give you goddamn pointers to 10,000 useless bits of so-called "content" - no thanks.
I'd rather have a cohesive, well delivered story, characters, locales, etc. like the good RPG's of old.
Filling up an open world with trash boring tasks is indeed a problem that should not exist. However, this is not set in stone. Having an open world does not mean it must be filled with crappy boring tasks and pass them as content. Mmo companies try to take the easy way out and put their game at risk by making beautiful worlds flooded with boring chores. Thats on their head, its not a rule of mmos.
GW2 did manage to at least make those mmo boring chores feel bearable at least for longer than other mmos. Its far from perfect and theres plenty of room to improve that, but they tried a different approach compared to all the same old same old same old we keep getting. I cant think of other recent mmorpgs that have tried to improve quests and world filler content. And the vistas and all that are part of map exploration so it makes total sense to do them to get 100% world exploration. You cant get 100% on anything without going over everything.
I want to play DA:I but everyone keep saying that its full of generic mmo tasks so im concerned about that in a single player rpg. But saying that D3 is a better RPG is strictly your opinion. The amount of repetitive content that D3 has on the same maps over and over is beyond consideration for me after beating the campaign and did some rifts a few times. But i dont know how rewarding exploration in DA:I is so i cant talk about that part.
Destiny not only is beyond repetitive, it doesnt have content, thats even worse. I was excited about that game and couldnt take it anymore 2 weeks after launch. I didnt have anything to do but grind until my soul burst into flames and on top of that have an awful RNG that rarely gave me any rewards. And the two 20 bucks expansions only add more of the same grind so im not wasting money on those.
I dislike boring world filler tasks but those are not mandatory in an open world. If the majority of people show the devs they dont care about those tasks then the devs will keep them coming. Dont blame open world for that.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
Give the player too much control, too much freedom, well the story usually suffers because the developer doesn't have the control to deliver on a great story.
I mean, I get the whole open world RPG thing - great, it's the new "hip" way to make an RPG.
But EVERY damn game?
While I'll agree that the world in Dragon Age Inquisition is kind of horrible because of their lackluster quests, the thing about "open world' is the exploration.
That's why the elder scrolls games do so well. It's not about the quests.
You haven't played Witcher 3 so how can you judge?
I've never played Borderlands so I can't offer an opinion.
An open world with the same type of content as Morrowind or Skyrim (heck even Oblvion) but with Bioware's story telling chops would be optimum for me.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Played:SWG(pre NGE/CU sucked)Yep its true, anyone who quit SWG because of the NGE/CU missed out on a much better combat system. DCUO, Fallen Earth, STO, The Secret World. Battlefield series. Planetside 2. Still playing SWG.
Thats how I am feeling about Action combat with no tab targeting in MMOs. Seems most MMOs coming out follow this path.
I think this ^ is the biggest thing - Nanfoodle is right - a lot of developers really just can't pull it off.
Bethesda is very good at it, as is Rockstar in their own way...
Everyone else?
Please, Bioware, Square Enix, etc. - stick to what you are good at - characters, story, setting, cinematic presentation.
And Witcher 3, from all the previews, appears to suffer from DA:I syndrome of 10,000 pointers to useless "content."
Maybe it's also that the core gameplay, the actual act of fighting and leveling and building a character is so bad in DA:I that it makes it impossible to enjoy the so called "content."
I mean, I still love Diablo and Destiny, despite their heavy repetition and relatively small(er) quantity and variety of content - the gameplay is so solid and so well presented, I never get sick of it.
this sums it all.
There is a reason this is in the "general gaming" category - mostly talking about RPGs not necessarily MMORPGs.
Trove is from Trion right? I'm always a bit iffy on their stuff, but I was interested in checking Trove out as it seemed like a Minecraft but more focused on the adventure and exploration than the building.
The one thing the witcher has going for it over dragon age is the combat. The combat in the witcher is a joy in comparison to dragon age combat where you just want the fight to be over so you can progress. Bioware tell the world "we have a new gay character", whereas CDproject they have gay character but they don't sing and dance about it from the roof tops to gain publicity. One game is art the other is just pop culture entertainment
I like open world content but you still have to make a good job with it, and a lot of things that might work in a MMO doesn't work in single player games.
In Biowares case was my favorite games Neverwinter nights and Baldurs gate. BG had plenty of open world content but was still very fun.
I do agree with you about side garrbage though, whenever you make sidequests you need to make it fun so the players care about it. Baldurs gate made that far better than the Dragon age series did. DA2 BTW had far less open world than DA:I and is still not better.
As for GW2 I like the Vistas. And I had a fun time back when I did world completion. The hearts should never had been in the game at all, they were added because people who tried the game didn't know what to do without quests, I hope they skip them for the expansion. Most of them are just boring menial tasks like any pest control quest in most other MMOs.
I think that tieng everything in the game to the main story would feel a bit odd, it is nice to have optional side content. The real problem starts when you must do the content to progress in the game. And of course the content still needs to be good and fun in any case.
But instanced small games still tend to have plenty of trash content as well, it is not the open world in itself that is the problem here.
Yeh. It's fine and all, but it's not new. ME:3 had it. Big deal. Really it's cashing in on exploitation of lifestyles or just being shocking, and I'm not impressed. I look at that author in the video and think, "snoreville". Maybe they thought every gay bar across the country would buy consoles and have it playing in the background behind booming techno music, or the characters could be on floats in pride parades. Not many people care, and the people who do care, rail against the game for it.
Dont get me wrong I still like some of them but i just done have the time these days.. as you said its very repetitive.. its like that because they want to advertise the games as having a million playing hours.. for some reason some people associate how losg the game last to quality.
I find myself enjoy shorter games that have great stories.. currently playing Ryse: Son of rome.. ok its not really a full on rpg I guess and has a few other issues but i am enjoying the story so far..
I find with games like the latest dragon age I really enjoy it to start with and then just get bored
This is where my thoughts went immidiately after reading a few lines...
A good story works very well in single player games, but MMOs are designed to be played for a long time. Even a good story ends at some point, and what are the players going to do then? Quit? Do something over and over again (read: end game)?
In MMO there are thousands of players doing their stuff, and not every single one of them can be the center of some 'main story'. There can be some lore, there can be something going on which the players will be aware of, but not everyone should experience the game the same as the others.
Even if there is some main villain that has to be killed, it should take a long time before players are even able to try to get rid of the evil badass, and even then the game should go on. There has to be someone who makes armors, cook food, go fishing, sell goods, smelt ore and forge weapons.
If there's no open world these games last until the big bad boss has conquered, and not a one second longer. Of course you can keep playing and do something like kill mobs, collect pets or whatever, but the game is over when the story ends.
Mass Effects and Dragon Ages could very well be e-books, or interactive cartoons. Baldur's Gates and Fallouts were RPG's.