The Biggest Problem with Triple-A, Open-World Games: "They're Boring as Hell"

i bought farcry 5 because of all the moaning SJW's... one of my favorites of all time. the only time i got bored was when the game was over, so not much to complain about.
 
lcpiper said:
So I can understand what you are talking about, and I can see how a developer can take a title and convert it's base missions and turn it into Open World and the Open World be mostly empty. But I do wonder if perhaps your experiences with Skyrim and Fallout, (discounting Fallout 76), aren't doing it for you because you are very "linear" in how you approach playing the game? I can see where some gamers may be looking for a strong story, a "tale" that drives them through a series of missions or events that culminate in an ending, (fun story, next game). I think some people must be more like me, and want to "live" in the game. For instance, my current Fallout 4 character just hit level 40 and I have only "liberated" 4 settlements, two don't have a single settler yet, just a couple of generators and water pumps making nice purified water with a workshop that lets me drop off gear when I need to empty my inventory and a convenient place to leave suites a Power Armor as I find them. The game's quests and missions only drive my actions when there is something I want from them, For instance, I'm not doing the Arc Jet quest with Paladin Danse because I don't want encounters with Legion of Steel guys. I prefer my encounters to be with enemies. Same way I haven't accepted to be the Leader of the Minutemen so they don't show up all over taking the place of Mutants and Raiders and Gunners. I'm not trying to "finish" the game or to get anywhere at all really. I just play and improve my character and enjoy what I am doing in the moment and I am more than content that the game allows me to do that. When I played Diablo 2 it was almost the same, I farmed items over and over again constantly seeking 7 player games to join where the odds for good loot were best. While they were doing Baal or the Diablo runs, I was sweeping through Flayer Jungle or the Areat Highlands killing fast and dropping mid level bosses for farming Uniques.

So I can well understand that different kinds of gamers look for different kinds of game play. That's why Bethesda fans were upset that Fallout 76 didn't bring them that experience, fresh ones don't come along that often. And since I have never seen such a thing from a small time Indie developer I'll continue to bet on the AAA guys because they are the only ones who have ever delivered the game experience I enjoy.
Click to expand...

There is something to what your saying. I'm very methodical about games and completing objectives. Admittedly, that's not always the most fun way to do things. This behavior exposes the pacing issues that big open world games often have as a consequence of their design. Basically, I don't like open world games because their design is generic and overly repetitive. The lack of focused story and characters often leaves me feeling like the game is more of a chore than anything. When I'd rather update group policy on a 2016 server, there's a problem. From what I remember in side quests from Oblivion, most of them have nothing to do with anything. They are busy work and make no difference in the grand scheme of things. You have fetch quests in Mass Effect, which I fucking hate, but at least they often tell a story on their own even if it isn't connected to the overall narrative. Some of them are better than others of course and some of them even connect to the larger narrative in subsequent sequels.

I tried Dragon Age Inquisition and I couldn't make it out of the Hinterlands because of how boring it was. I lost interest in the game after just a few hours. I nearly quit playing Mass Effect 1 at the Citadel for the same reasons. I didn't play that game until ME2 was already out and I had been through allot of it. I was invested in ME2 and getting a proper ME1 import save, so I pushed through the bad parts of ME1. Once I was past the busy work I came to really enjoy the game, but that first run through the Citadel is boring as hell. FarCry 2 was overly repetitive junk. I never made it very far in that one either. It lacked a focused story and while the game was pretty at the time, neither the combat, nor the missions I had done kept my interest.
 
Darth Ender said:
There are lots of these types of games where people are more than happy to play for hundreds of hours while the traditional directed narrative game is usually limited to a few dozen. If they were objectively boring or bad, we wouldn't see so many huge game times to the point where it becomes the average.
Click to expand...

Yes, there are people that do this. However, I think you have to look at the mentality and behavior of the people that either enjoy these games or prefer them. Icpiper's comment is a good example of this. He indicates having done very little of the game, and that it doesn't generally drive his actions. There are lots of people who are content to interact with the sandbox and do relatively unimportant or repetitive things and are happy with that. I don't understand that. I want to see everything the game has to offer, and for me, that means progressing through its narrative. However, if that narrative isn't gripping, then I really won't care enough to finish it. A game has to have some substance to it, or it has to do something special in terms of gameplay. I used to enjoy some games based on their game play alone, but we haven't seen anything revolutionary on that front in well over a decade.

For people like me, I need something much more engaging or I'm out. I think most people fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum where the narrative can or often does drive their actions but other things may keep them coming back. Mods are probably the biggest reason why Bethesda games do so well. Its a sandbox of boredom, but when there are thousands of mods to change up the game, it can hold your interest for far longer than it otherwise would. I probably spent considerably more time in Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda than I would have normally just because of the mods I found which improved many aspects of the game. This ranges from quality of life improvements all the way to substantially changing the story elements of the game.

Other elements that help are Co-Op, multiplayer interactions and so on. This can help keep open world games feeling much more fresh and dynamic. The nature of single-player, story focused games often prevents that type of interaction. MMO's are really good examples of this. They often feature large, expansive worlds with overly generic content and repetitive gameplay. However, the social interactions can drive people to play these games for years. I played SW:TOR for the better part of 7 years with regularity primarily for that reason. I think the article is right in that most AAA open world games are boring and I think that the trend towards making games that way is based on the success of the few games that have done that with great success. The Witcher 3, GTA:V and so on are examples of how to do it right. Sales wise, I think the Bethesda games are other good successes that other studios want to copy. But again, I think the mod support is really what drives the success of those games.
 
Megalith said:
“I don’t wanna do my video game chores”: the alleged monotony of Red Dead Redemption 2 has driven The Outline to publish an opinion piece arguing that many of the latest big-budget, open-world video games are technically impressive, but their scale and grandeur is merely a ruse to hide their shallow, dull gameplay. The author admits repetition is fundamental in gaming but claims RDR2 and other “Real World Games” have taken tediousness to a whole new level, in which players are forced to perform tasks implemented merely to inflate the length of a game.

This is the standard experience of playing a so-called Real World Game, which other than RDR2 includes games like Horizon Zero Dawn (2017), and No Man’s Sky (2016) before the developers actually made it interesting. It’s a genre that prizes size over depth. It’s usually open-world, pretty easy to play, has a medium-length main quest that’s typically bolstered by an endless series of pointless side quests and collecti-quests (Collect every trophy! Capture every animal! Step on every plant!) to bolster its total playtime. A Real World Game also prizes supposed verisimilitude at the expense of fun.
Click to expand...

I absolutely agree. I think one game that was epically blended between openworld and linear was Control. They did a great thing by giving you the option to travel around whilst still having a defined linear mission progression.

More games should take note.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Dan_D
like this
Meh,

I have certainly been bored by open world games before, but generally they are my favorite type of game.

I'm going to go ahead and be a little controversial here and state that Fallout New Vegas started boring the hell out of me about 60 hours in. I was tired of being a desert errand boy. At that point I just rushed through the main story missions just to get it over with.

On the flip side, I put 120 hours into Fallout 4 and never got bored. Was a little disappointed when the main story ended.

I think the key is to include many varied side missions so that they don't get repetitive.

Make every side mission completely different from the others.

I just finished Far Cry Primal, and while I liked it in general, the repetitiveness of the "Save Wenja", "Kill Invading Leader" etc. missions really got old, especially when I maxed out my XP.

I would suggest that spending the extra time making each side mission unique, and making sure that XP and learned skills trees never cap or become completed during even a 150 hour long game would be a start.

Of course, this would cost more to develop. The formulaic side missions make everything easier to develop.

One of the things Far Cry does wrong IMHO is that they set it up so that once you reach the end of the story arc you have probably maxed out all of your characters abilities.

I prefer a different approach. Create so many different abilities in the skill tree that they cannot be maxed out in anything but some sort of extreme case, and make the user choose which skills they think will suit them the best.

This can even result in some replay value as different skills may result in different solutions to various problems in the game.
 
Last edited:
Zarathustra[H] said:
I would suggest that spending the extra time making each side mission unique, and making sure that XP and learned skills trees never cap or become cometed during even a 150 he long game would be a start.
Click to expand...

Until people start demanding this with their wallets... not gonna happen. Basically every open world game side mission is one of five, and repeat 300 times.
 
Dan_D said:
................... Icpiper's comment is a good example of this. He indicates having done very little of the game, and that it doesn't generally drive his actions................................
Click to expand...

Yes and no, what I said was, with my current character. I played all the way through the main quest line with my main character long ago. Now, although I'm aware that there are different endings, I really have no great desire to play it through to see all of them. I am now content to "live" in the world creating new characters, and setting my own goals within the confines of the game world. But that's me, certainly not everyone, and I am very happy that there are game developers that understand this is produce content for all of us to enjoy. I am a little concerned that Fallout 76 was a step in the wrong direction but I am going o let them roll with it, they said that it was an experiment to set new boundries for their game worlds and I can see that. All they had to do was refresh a bunch of existing creative content and bundle into a modified framework with new game mechanics. They're off to a rough start. In the mean time, some modders started work on something more like what I had hoped Fallout 76 would have been, it's called Fallout Together and it's more like playing traditional Fallout 4 with a buddy or two, not random strangers. But if I am correct, Bethesda sort of shut them down, probably saw it as competition for '76 and didn't like that. I don't know if they are up and running, but I think Bethesda needs to understand that '76 just really didn't fly with the guys like me so Fallout Together was never going to hurt '76 and instead would have acted more like salve on an open wound for us and provide valuable and free R&D for their own multiplayer development. Yes, a multiplayer Fallout title that offers both modes?
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I would suggest that spending the extra time making each side mission unique, and making sure that XP and learned skills trees never cap or become completed during even a 150 hour long game would be a start.

Of course, this would cost more to develop. The formulaic side missions make everything easier to develop.

One of the things Far Cry does wrong IMHO is that they set it up so that once you reach the end of the story arc you have probably maxed out all of your characters abilities..
Click to expand...
I believe 99% of players never had problems with level caps as they don't spend that much time with games. It's a very small fraction of players who try to max out every ability and complete every errand boy quest.
 
Open world and add.... Easy to get side tracked.

I usually play all the side quests I can and do the main quest last. Hours add up
 
threehundredsixftw said:
i bought farcry 5 because of all the moaning SJW's... one of my favorites of all time. the only time i got bored was when the game was over, so not much to complain about.
Click to expand...

Moaning SJWs? Wasn't it SJWs in Canada software studios that made Americans in the northwest look like flesh eating hillbilly cultists in this game? I have family and have lived in Montana off and on and I can tell you 3 or 4 out of 5 Montanans have at least a bachelor degree. I went to Montana State U in Bozeman. Sure we were hyper excited at elk season but not at going out and killing people lmao. Still loved the game. Call me weird but I'm one of those "Keep your rifle by your side" Americans. Molon Labe and all!
 
Last edited:
M76 said:
I believe 99% of players never had problems with level caps as they don't spend that much time with games. It's a very small fraction of players who try to max out every ability and complete every errand boy quest.
Click to expand...


I don't try to max out the skills tree or hit an XP cap, but I do try to complete all side quests (I don't always succeed) but in that process I usually wind up hitting XP caps.
 
tangoseal said:
Moaning SJWs? Wasn't it SJWs in Canada software studios that made Americans in the northwest look like flesh eating hillbilly cultists in this game?
Click to expand...

I think they were trying to make the cultists look insane, which they were. Your actions in the game are to fight those people, on behalf of fairly normal Americans (with the caveat that it is a game, so they can't have 100% normal boring average people).

If it was really a SJW game, you wouldn't get to shoot anyone, and Mouse1 would ask to see a manager. ;)

To me, it felt much more of a Zombieland vibe where Things Have Hit The Fan, and when you find someone with a pile of guns to help you you say "thank god for rednecks..." There's actually a tacit acceptance that this is a situation where it just might be good to own a powerful gun.
 
tangoseal said:
This is so true hahaha
Click to expand...
there was an online magazine that flipped their lid because the everyday citizens were gun toting, normal, good people. also, they didnt like how it drew a line between cultists and small town church members (the later of which also being good people). the evil people were evil... the normal people werent evil.
 
seanreisk said:
I remember playing an old school game called 688 Attack Sub. Played properly, you could sit at your computer for 10 minutes or more without touching the controls, switching from station to station to see if the enemy fleet was going to find your sub as you drifted away under a thermal layer. I don't think you could make that game today.
Click to expand...
Was that the goal? My dad must have bought that game, because I spent hours figuring out what was going on and how to play it on an Intel 386. I liked how you could play as the Russians and all the text on the bridge was written with backward "R"s haha. It was a unique and interesting game.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top