You should be able to solve this
actually they just want to press M and then click on the location to teleport to it
Make three games
i only play games once, i do all the side quests and worthwhile loot locations and then im gone
>>739507308That's what's happening here
>>739507230restrict certain areas until NG+, or separate the game in chapters
>>739507230>>739507230>>739507230>>739507230I played Deus Ex 1 for the first time last year and did the same shit in the second part of your image. At some point I was like wait a minute I think these were supposed to be alternate routes and I wasn’t supposed to backtrack. But I just loved exploring OP. How can you discourage that or design around it?
>>739507230Don't make it open world then.
>>739507587Open world is a misnomer. You're still pinned in between the same corridors they're just wider.
Well you put invinsible walls to make it more linear if you want player to stay on path.
left implies the player will inherently miss contenteither you make it compelling for the player to decide to miss content, or your force them to miss it
>>739507515Think of it this way, in most FPS games you can kill everything you see and most players find it fun and expect every game in the genre to provide it However there are certain first person games that can also feature guns, whose goal isn't killing everything and in fact the designers might want the player to avoid killing as much as possible and encourage that behavior, such as Dishonored, what the image is asking for a Disohnored type game except for traversing an open world map, how do you encourage that specific behavior in that specific game, it doesn't have to apply to every open world game everHow do you design an open world game where players are encouraged to plot their journey without detouring to every single area they see, or wanting to fast travel everywhere
>>739507230I would prefer to play a different game than play the same game again a second time. I might come back to certain games after a few years but for the most part I'll move on. There are more games in exitance than I could beat in a decade's worth of free time. So when I do play a game that has a lot to see and explore, I'm going to be pretty thorough about it ad try to see as much as I can within reason.
>>739507230>make open world game>get angry that players don't go where you want them to go
>>739507308No fast travel for the first three quarters of the game.>but I don't wanna-Then you don't wanna play the game, take your zoomzoom ass back to Oblivion.
>>739507230No fast travel + middlegame time limit.
>>739507725>>739507774>>739507797Missing content is also a type of gameplay, for example branching path RPGs will show each player one of many story paths, their whole appeal is that every player gets to choose their own story and that they're locked out of other paths, now how do you translate that into open world traversal
>>739507734Add deadlines like with metaphor. Travelling takes time. You have to pick and choose your detours because you don't have enough time to do everything in a single run. Not sure how you would translate it to open world but I'm sure you could make it work.
>>739507825Based. Fast travel should be integrated in a way that it feels like a reward and only after playing for long enough that exploration on foot is no longer interesting.
>>739507875There's only like 1 game that actually has different story path and it takes 15 minutes to complete because of that.If what you want is the usual fake branching paths that all lead to the same place because you're railroaded constantly then just put the player on a rail and block off everything else
>>739507825>>739508039Name 5 games other than dark souls 1
>>739507734No fast travel and some sort of constraint that forces players to prioritise, such as time limits or scarce fuel if the game uses vehicles as the primary way of getting across the map in any reasonable time. But then you run into the issue of players being able to softlock themselves incredibly easily if they're not careful, and more generally your average player absolutely hates having those kinds of restrictions so you'd be stuck with a niche audience at best.
>>739508107Ocarina of Time
>>739507230tough enemies that are hard to beat if you're undergeared, quests that funnel you the way the game wants you to go, certain items make other areas easier (like night vision goggles for spooky dark place). Build cities or hubs that the player will return that connect to places you want the player to visit.
>>739507230Is that Asheron's Call map?
>>739507734>>739507875I know not everyone is like this but I am a diehard completionist. I want to do everything possible in a game. I think a lot of people have some kind of completionist tendency. You can force a player to prioritise with time or resource constraints like the other anons say but for me the only way I would really be satisfied with a game that you can only partially explore is something like The Binding of Isaac where it is a new game every time you play it anyway.
>>739507230Get rid of any in-game map that isn't diegetic, make the maps unreliable and rarely covering the whole world. UI was supposed to help people play a game, not become the game itself.
>>739508107>Name 5 games other than dark souls 1Maybe I shouldn't have to.Maybe the industry should have learned the right lessons from DS1 instead of just "maek gaem hurd lololol" and "keep rollinrollinrollin".Maybe what was most interesting about DS1 was exploring an actually dangerous world that rewarded you for engaging with it, only giving you the ability to fast travel once you had proven yourself willing to overcome the challenges put in front of you.
>>739508248no, its a map created by some fag for pkanet minecraft. I think it's called "Drehmal v2: PRIMORDIAL" or something
>>739508107Any final fantasy before 13? (maybe after 13 too, I stopped playing them at 13). Airships were the form of fast travel for those games and far more interesting than click a place on a map
>>739507230>each playthrough implies a different class, which has different gear that is acquired in different areas, different quests, and has an easier/harder time with different enemies.This is the preferred method, but it's pretty difficult for an incompetent developer to balance correctly and even harder to get completionist ocd consoomers to accept it. The easier and more common option is to just not have an open world game at all.
>>739508537I agree with you but lets not pretend that das1 fast travel wasn't just a bandaid solution made to piece together the rushed 2nd half of the gamein an ideal world it wouldn't exist, at least not in the way it was implemented
I don't understand how autists can sit through the same story (which are riddled with dogshit cutscenes and other ways to take control away from the player for """cinematic""" purposes 90% of the time), same quests and same fights 3 times and not get bored.Barely any game out there makes choices impactful enough to substantially change the way you play the game on a 2nd playthrough.
>>739507734>>739507875can't eat your cake and have it tooIf you want to promote players to freely plot a journey, then there must be deviation from said journey. Otherwise you're just asking them to make a non-linear game linear by virtue of their own "decisions". Sure, you can always use resources limitation as a means to heavily encourage sticking to the path, but besides most players despising it, it again detracts from the "open world" promise. I can't go see the things I want to see because run A is forcing me to go ABC and run B is forcing me to go BDEC. If you want that routing, then you have to commit to the proper soft or hard gating and either provide the open world as an illusion or, as most people tend to prefer, lean into hard metroidvania interconnectedness. It's not 'go anywhere but I want you to walk here' its 'you can only go here here and there, its on you figure out the best means to do so'The latter provides the same sort of agency and sense of exploration for the player while providing the tight control and asset use for the dev
>>739508615 played through this not too long ago, and the map and locations are actually pretty cool. the "story" and "lore" is super lame. I just pumped it full of mods and explored the map, turned out to be pretty fun. Wish there was more custom loot and mobs.
>>739509909Generally speaking, we don'tThere is a reason alternate start mods exist
>>739507230looks like they cover most of the map on the right, whats the problem?
>>739507230The only way people don't scan the entire areas fully is because of the following:1. They already know there isn't anything useful there2. There is too much useful shit everywhere around them that they don't bother going over everythingAnything between these two states causes most players to just scan the entire area through unless they're feeling lazy or fed up with it, because they suspect there could be something useful there. After all there's a little more game there to tread over and they paid for the whole game.
>>739507230Throw the open world shit in the trash and make your game more linear.>b-but about playthroughs 2 and 3We already got that in non-open world games. It's called "levels"
>>739507230The problem with games is that the "big world ending threat" is always politely waiting for you until you have finished everything you wanted to do. No reason to choose one clear path and stick to it. If games had some kind of Doomsday clock, that would give your players an incentive to hurry up a bit and stop collecting all various forms of ass-shaped butterflies from every corner of the world.Imagine a lord of the rings game, where you have to take the ring to mount doom yourself, but with each passing day sauron becomes more powerful. Wait too long and your quest becomes impossible. Would that be fun? I don't know. Majora's Mask sort of went that direction with its 3 days cycle, but it wasn't too well received back then, even tho it gave you a cop out by turning back time. Also, the world was small compared to modern game worlds.
>>739509980Deviation is fine, in fact all the players in the first image are deviating in their own way, the point is designing an open world that the players understand they need to keep moving through to get to their goal instead of treating it as a checklist that's always waiting for them
>>739509909It's very easy when you don't have ADHD
>>739507230Add a timer
>>739507230reduce world size by several magnitudes.
>>739510480The problem is that it's a soulless way to design a game adventure, "covering the map" is a uniquely gamey concept that fails to replicate an actual real world feeling other than being a janitor For example turn based combat is a uniquely gamey concept that fails to replicate the dynamism of combat so action games were created to emulate it more closely, similarly this open world type would be more true to life and adventure than every open world game so far
>>739507230Make fast travel a late game unlock and stop being obsessed with amount of content, have the balls to lock 60% of the game away from the player based on their content choices. If you do quest X, Y and Z are now unavailable. End of story.
>>739507230what's wrong with moving like in the second pic? that's pretty much how I moved in Morrowind for my first playthrough and it was fun
>>739507230Make starting choices matter and lock you out of content. Didn't DA Origins do something similar? I don't think so, i'm pretty sure you still largely hit up the same areas.Anyways, games like that will hardly if ever be made. Devs are afraid of making content that players won't interact with. They see it as a inherent design failure becuase publishers want to focus on engagement. Less than 10% of your playersbase will ever replay your game. He'll, less than 30% will probably beat it.
>>739508107Fly HM in pokemon games before the nu gens
>>739507230You don't. You give players agency to play the game as they see fit. You can make the most optimal route that way for each playthrough, but ultimately, you let them play as they wish.
>>739512745see >>739512682
>>739512884You would never have made a Souls game, don't go into game design
>>739507230i know the answer but you wont like it opmake it a roguelite and guide the player to take different routes each time, via quests and stuff
>>739511286>Majora's Mask sort of went that direction with its 3 days cycle, but it wasn't too well received back thenBecause Ocarina of Time is considered the greatest video game of all time and Majora's Mask is considered the second worst Zelda game (after Zelda II) nobody will ever dare try such a thing again. Clearly gamers want more content and bigger open world's and less narrative driven gameplay.
>>739512682You're just bitching that it's open world
>>739507374haha it's smiling =D
>>739513217>Because Ocarina of Time is considered the greatest video game of all timeThis is uniquely a phenomenon borne out of American brand worship, not any actual measurable game values
>>739513073Maybe I wouldn't want to make a souls game? There are more options than the one you think would disqualify me from this.Player agency is a good thing otherwise you're on a rollercoaster. Not everyone wants their game on rails telling them what to do and where to go all the time.
Get rid of maps filled to brim with "points of interest".The map should only contain information that is convenient to the player.Let the player mark stuff on the map themselves.Basically completely abandoned the current type of open-world game design and return to early 2000s.You can still fill the map with interesting stuff and side-content, just don't put a massive "?" mark over them.
>>739513253I'm bitching that open world games all somehow miss the actual appeal of traversing a huge land and instead substitute it with their own unique idea of what the open world should play likeImagine if every single game had turn based combat, I'd be asking why no one is trying to make a game with dynamic action combat since that's completely achievable and even desirable given the technology
>>739513414You mean like BOTW?
>>739511286Blood of the Dawnwalker or whatever it's called is going in this direction too. You have a month to save your family, everything you do that would count as progression advances time by a bit. Walking around and exploring doesn't, but doing a quest, using your levels to learn a skill from the skill tree, anything that counts as "content" moves time forward.I'm really interested in it because of that, Witcher 3's biggest flaw to me was endless bloat, so it seems like the devs agree too if they're going this direction with their next game.
>>739513456I was thinking Morrowind or Gothic
>>739513456BOTW was explicitly designed to push players to the right type of playstyle in the OP image
>>739507230To encourage organized player movement like the left image rather than chaotic movement like the right, you can implement the following strategies:Restrict Mobility: Limit fast travel options or implement constraints that require players to plan routes, such as scarce resources (e.g., fuel) for vehicles.Use Visual Waypoints: Implement clear markers, beacons, or trail mapping systems (such as Xaero's Minimap or JourneyMap) that guide players toward specific objectives rather than allowing aimless wandering.Enforce Goal-Oriented Design: Design map objectives that are spread out, compelling players to choose efficient paths to reach them rather than backtracking repeatedly.
>>739507230Make each color their own campaign/story
>>739512357>open world>not a checklistthis is like making a racing game but 90% of the game requires you to run through parking lots to get to your car. the genre is intrinsically tied to checklist design because that is the appeal. If you intentionally avoid checklist content, then you are just making a big, empty world with nothing to do but waste your time on needless traversal when the game world could have been significantly smaller. I think what you might be looking for is hub-world style progression. The ONLY other solution is as other anons have stated, metroidvania-style gating. In an open world/sandbox sort of map, there will always be players who purposefully make it their mission to completely ignore any sort of direction and intentionally wander where the game clearly doesn't want them to yet. It is unavoidable and retarded to try and devise a design to specifically prevent this because like I said, it is intrinsic to the genre.
>>739513670>this is like making a racing game but 90% of the game requires you to run through parking lots to get to your car. the genre is intrinsically tied to checklist design because that is the appeal.It isn't, that's like saying the appeal of the tabletop RPG is the turn-based aspect, when that's just one way of tackling it due to medium limitations, those limitations don't exist in games so we have games that are both action based and have RPG elements
>>739507230Some people play like that, but the "hardcore" gamers want to 100% the game and/or not miss out on content so they will comb the entire map if allowed to. It's an inherent flaw of open world games, the only way to avoid it is forcefully restricting player movement based on their decisions, essentially locking them into one of several potential routes, at which point the game is arguably not open world anymore.>what about time limitsWon't do much, it'll have to be forgiving enough to account for the wildly varying amounts of time people might take to get to the end, otherwise getting hit with an unavoidable game over 100 hours in and having to start over from scratch is just terrible design.
>OP asks retarded question>entire thread is full objectively correct explanations of why it's retarded>OP "nope, you're wrong"alright bud, have fun being retarded.
>>739507230What's the point of an open world game if you want players to follow an specific route? Just make a linear game with meaningful decisions and branching paths
>>739514139Extremely funny how there's a dozen anons saying it's stupid it can't be done it's impossible no one would play it when Kojima sold 10M+ copies of Death Stranding
nobody here gets the point of OPs image. It's not about forbidding the player of something, it's about making the optimal path also the most fun one
>>739507230Three words: Fallout New Vegas
>>739513670Not OP but I don't agree with that. Open world has become synonymous with collectibles and mundane tasks because of Ubisoft slop and similar games, it isn't an intrinsic part of the genre. I prefer linear games myself but the ability to go wherever you want in a world is definitely a worthy feature in a game.
>>739514843There are three different paths in the left image, what are you talking about? The point of OP's image is treating an open world like an adventure through a land rather than a game where you hoover up all the game content in an area before you move to the next area.
What if you just remove any on-screen navigational aid and just have very clearly marked roads and put 90%+ of the content along it?
>>739508615Looks like Runescape
>>739514139He's been making this thread for years and well make it for years to come
>>739507875>not playing a game is also a type of playing a game
>>739507230Different starting classes that have different gear and curated bosses that spawn at distinct locations. You don't need a very huge world if you create an expectation in the player base that they're encouraged to do focused runs that hit certain locations and reach the finale in a very different way than others. Just make it so that individual runs don't take more than 10 hours or so. So class one is a storm mage that has to go to say, a rainy harbor, a high mountain, and a lightning shrine. Class 2 is a paladin that has to visit a monastery, a village in a valley, and a demon cave. Class 3 is a ninja that has a dark tavern in a larger urban area, a hidden cove by the ocean, and a large temple. Class 4 reuses some of the above locations, but different parts of them. Etc. This is really hard because people like being pseudo-completionists, so you have to lock a lot of gear to only be able to be used by certain classes in one or another way in a way that almost discourages exploration on any given playthrough. And the overall campaign has to be short enough that they wouldn't feel like it'd be too much of an investment to replay. So the exploration of the map would be spread out over several runs that don't overlap or only overlap in incidental ways, like needing to go to the same locations, but not needing to complete the same tasks there.
>>739507734>How do you design an open world game where players are encouraged to plot their journey without detouring to every single area they seeYou don't, you fucking retard. You want an open world game without the open world. Going wherever strikes your fancy is the entire point of open world
>>739509540It wasn't a bandaid, the world was just too big by that time. It is arguably already too big by the time you finish Blighttown, as the trek from there to Andre is ridiculous. Only the fairly flat difficulty curve redeems it at all.
>>739513552What is this, playtesters vs after they moved stuff around in the final version?
>>739507230You would have to put a hard timer on the game. Players would have to be given info at the start saying "okay, here are the different leads we have". The player would never have enough time to explore more than one in full. Then you could throw in some extra leads that a player wouldn't know about until New Game Plus.Everyone will hate you if you make this, and you will go bankrupt.
>>739507230The Convergence mod for Elden Ring basically tries to do that. When you spawn in, you're spawned at a unique themed location and have a list or two given to you. These lists have locations for gear and potentially lootboxes that you need to pop to get better spells for your class, if using them. And there is a teleporter network added to the game so that you can bypass roadblocks from vanilla to get to where you want to go early. They try to segregate the experience between classes by doing things like giving you a spell casting tool that is stronger for casting one type of spell, but weak at casting other types. Or giving you armor that gives you bonuses, but not if you're using a weapon of a certain other class that conflicts with that. The goal is to basically funnel you into a 'greatest hits' type exploration path for your specific class that only rarely intersects with that of another class. It isn't perfect but it usually works fairly well. Replayability with distinct pathways is successfully encouraged. The list method of just telling you where to go is obviously clunky, but a real game could have a more diegetic way of handling this.
>>739518169Example of some themed gear. For certain melee classes, this is something to seek out. But if you're a mage, you'd ignore it because there is another armor piece that is built for your class instead, somewhere. So the paths wouldn't intersect regarding an item like this.
>>739507230I wouldn't bother funneling. Just let them go where they want whenever they want. Morrowind does this, you can go straight to Dagoth Ur.
>>739518169Sounds interesting, but is that list accessible in-game or do I have to keep alt tabbing to check it like a randomizer hint list?
>>739517636Yep
>>739518391It is just a list you have in your inventory. Usually one for gear, one for spells, unless a class doesn't use spells.
>>739507230nonconsensually pick the player up and put them somewhere else
Yellow paint
>>739507230There's an answer but you won't like it.You stop trying to plan out the player's grand journeys and instead turn everything into self contained islands of quest hubs with minimal interaction or overlap, so that players can be marched between themeparks easily and both autistic completionists and casuals can easily digest their content choices
>>739513424tendies are something else
>>739519089Oh that's really cool, then.
>>739507734Easy, add a day-night cycle where cities are safe havens. If you don't reach your destination by night time, you'll have to deal with strong, infinitely-respawning enemies or some other bullshit that makes nighttime travel not worth it.Ocarina of Time got this right almost 30 years ago.
>>739507230Sorry but what was the problem?
>>739519547ONE PIECE®: The Video Game™
>>739507230you stop trying to fight your playerbase and do cool shit everywhere so they want to continue to explore. if you didn't want to make an open world game you should have level gated shit or designed the terrain to funnel people in. its core design problem not a players bad problem you F A G G O T
>>739507230For me it's picrel
>>739507230Public transport. That's unironically the solution to open world games, just make people use trains and busses and give them no cars. They'll only be able to explore the areas around the bus/train stops and everything else would be a hassle to get to, but it'll still be there and they'll see it outside of the train/bus window.
>>739507230What is that? An Ark Survival map?
>>739521594You missed a spot on the mountain there
>>739507230Don't worry about it, and let them explore freely.
>>739507230you block places off and the player's actions determine what areas become available
>>739507875Don't make an open world game. The point of those games is freedom. If you want to lock them into something deeper from a narrative perspective then you need to pick a different format. You're asking how to fit a square peg in a circular hole.
>>739507875No, fuck missable content. It would ruin my entire Golden Sun experience when I would miss a single djinn, and even when closely following a guide it was very easy to miss them sometimes.
>>739524802Linear fixed narrative = linear levelsOpen narrative where players can choose their story path = open world gameYou got it the wrong way around
>>739507230Why are developers such control freaks? Create something compelling and fun and if people try to play a certain way, tailor the game around that instead of cutting off their options.This is why people don't respect developers anymore.
>>739509984Play Blightfall instead
>>739507230Ez
>>739512682its not a soulless way to design a map, you are just retarded.when you make the world available then you fill it with shit.if you dont want to do that make a linear game for the linear path you want the player to take.actual idiot.
>>739507230just make the world more open. like, offensively open. there's basically nothing of note in 99.99999% of the setting, so there's practically no chance of stumbling into something interesting.the only way to get to the actual content of the game is through breadcrumbs from npc dialogue and ingame texts.
>want players to move in a particular way through contentHMMM IF ONLY THERE WERE A WAY TO STRUCTURE CONTENT IN A LINEAR FASHION BY "DESIGNING" A "LEVEL" OF SOME SORTNO THAT'S CRAZYEVERYBODY KNOWS GAME DEVELOPMENT IS ABOUT CREATING BIG EMPTY MAPS
>>739518169>/v/ sucks off something that sounds neat>turns out its incredibly awful to play>then they do nothing but bend over for nintendoslopevery single time lmao
>>739508430Play the game again then, bitch nigga. Completionist mindset ruins games by making everything a checklist. Achievements have long been a pox on gaming
>>739508107XCX and Dragon's Dogma are two examples, anyway
>>739527081player now sensing being railroaded, pulling them out of the game world>WELL IT DOESNT BOTHER ME SO IT DOESN'T MATTER!yes, you must be over 18 to post here
>>739527195The Convergence mod lets you get OP too easily, but it is very high effort and clearly a passion project. Definitely worth playing with if you've already beat Elden Ring once or twice. But this is about the mod's layout and its effort to funnel the player down a scripted path, which it successfully pulls off.
>>739527910>But this is about the mod's layout and its effort to funnel the player down a scripted path, which it successfully pulls off.no it doesn't because i dropped it 2 hours in, its a horrible design decision and why its a MOD (with a dogshit reputation) for a popular game instead of a popular game
>>739527975Elaborate on why it is a horrible design decision on a fundamental level for a mod that is intentionally set up to encourage replayability?
>>739528078its boring>elaborateno, making a fun game is your job as a designer, not for me to explain to you
Draw lines and tell them to go.
>>739528284Why do you have to be so stupid but also feel entitled to waste my time?
>>739527901So why were we alright with being "railroaded" with, for instance, SNES games, such as ALTTP? You don't have to be railroaded to be sent through a linear game. The only sensing that's done is when people's immersion is ruined, usually through over-use of cutscenes, etc.So clearly you can make linear games without leading to people feeling railroaded, considering they've existed for decades.
>>739508107Jackie Chan
