I think I am getting a bit tired of open world games....

[happyninja42]

-Snip-

Trust me, I love choosing my own path too, but you don't need to make an open world game to offer that kind of experience. Early examples of this can be found in Mega Man, where it was the players choice to determine how best to tackle the gauntlet of levels. Should you get the water powerup first and then fight the fire guy or get the fire powerup first and fight the ice guy?

Open world games are obviously an easy way to offer "freedom", but they're hardly the only way and not always the best way.

Yeah but what if you don't want to fight the fire or ice guy at all, and instead want to run around doing your own thing entirely? That's the kind of freedom I'm referring to. I had tons of fun in Skyrim, and I hardly ever bothered with the main plot stuff. I did my own little personal plotlines, and played them out how I wanted. That kind of "open world" experience is only possible in a sandbox type game. Sure games can give the freedom of options, like your above Mega Man, option, but those are still a limited list of options on how to play the game, namely just "which one do you want to do first?". And that's fine, but I don't think it's the same category as the open world discussion. Sure open world isn't the only type of game to offer someone freedom, but it is the only type that gives you total agency in whether or not you even bother to do what the game wants you to do at all.

I had loads of fun in Morrowind. Building a base, filling it with shit and running around doing whatever. I had even more fun with Oblivion doing the same thing but after a few hundred hours, the same thing gets boring and then it always falls back on the main quest. By the time Skyrim came out, I didn't care to build another base and fill it with shit. I found the main quest boring and I was annoyed by how poorly it ran on the PS3.

If you want to see an example of gamers hand waving quality, Skyrim is it. It ran like shit but to most gamers (and journalists) that didn't matter because it had....dragons. Fuckin' ridiculous.

As for GTA, it's just the same game over and over again too. How are people still buying them?

*shrugs* I didn't have any performance issues with Skyrim on PC. Xbox is a different story, damn game glitched out on me on the opening screen, had to hard reboot. I agree the main quest was boring, that's why I never bothered playing it after the first time. I just made up my own storylines and ran with those. Don't want dragons? No problem, just don't go get that stone and turn it into Whiterun, and you will never have to deal with dragons. Then you can go do whatever you want. Hell there is an entire site devoted to players coming up with independent storylines and campaigns, playing the game they liked. That's what I find fun about open world games. Sure the devs made their own story, but I don't have to mess with that at all. To me, that's the main difference in an "open world" game, compared to "a game that gives you some freedom of choices."

 

[The Raw Shark]

Yeah it's really turning in to a same-old same-old kind of deal to me now.
"What's this? ANOTHER OPEN WORLD ZOMBIE GAME?"
"What's that? THIS ONE HAS DINOSAURS?"
"OOH OOH, THIS ONE IS A SURVIVAL GAME!"
FFS
Honestly its the main reason I think DA: Inquisition was shite compared to the others. At least Origins and II had SOME semblance of focus. Inquisition just blew its load over everything and didn't know what to do afterwards.
Also there's only so much time a lot of us can give to a game. An Open World game? That takes a shit ton of time. And it better have something worth it.
I'm seeing a lot of hate for Dying Light but I'll be honest that was one of my favorites from last year. Does that mean I have it in me to go and play something like say, Witcher 3?
Hell frigging no. No matter how good it might be I just can't bring myself to it.
I'm planning on getting Phantom Pain in a bit but that's gonna be my last Open World game for several months now. I need time to get myself together and move on. For me its a matter of what is worth my time.
I'm seeing stuff like a new DOOM game and Shadow Warrior 2 coming out, I think that is awesome. I'd love to try out both, whether they're good or bad, as long as I have something else to play. It's why I've been binge playing Jedi Academy recently, just wanna slide back a bit and watch the lightning flow through the corridors. But oh well, to each their own in the end, some masochist must still have it in them to go through the effort.
P.S, yeah it is most likely Skyrim's fault alot of these have been coming around. Though I'd also blame DayZ. Neither game being bad of course (Yes Yes I know blah blah blah Morrowind Blah Blah Blah DayZ sucks, don't give a shit, never will, goodnight sweet princes and princesses)

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Honestly its the main reason I think DA: Inquisition was shite compared to the others. At least Origins and II had SOME semblance of focus. Inquisition just blew its load over everything and didn't know what to do afterwards.
Also there's only so much time a lot of us can give to a game. An Open World game? That takes a shit ton of time. And it better have something worth it.
I'm seeing a lot of hate for Dying Light but I'll be honest that was one of my favorites from last year. Does that mean I have it in me to go and play something like say, Witcher 3?
Hell frigging no. No matter how good it might be I just can't bring myself to it.
I'm planning on getting Phantom Pain in a bit but that's gonna be my last Open World game for several months now. I need time to get myself together and move on. For me its a matter of what is worth my time.

Inquisition was poor for a whole bunch of reasons, but the open world design definitely did it no favours. It suffered from the problem that most open worlds do which is that its really hard to integrate a strong narrative with an open world because by going open world, you surrender control of story pacing to the player. Its hard to keep the narrative tension up when a big moment occurs, and then the player can go off and just potter around in the woods for 20 hours before coming back to the next plot point; it ruins any kind of tension or narrative urgency. Now in a game like Skyrim, where the story is kind of an afterthought and you mostly just go out and find stuff to do, that's not a problem. But when you have a plot like Inquisitions - stop the demonic wizard from becoming a god, ie. a race against time to defeat the foe before he triumphs, then having the player be able to spend tens of hours just stuffing around kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the story.

Your point about time is also an important one, as it definitely applies to me. I don't want to spend 200+ hours on one game, although I can see how people who don't have much money but have a lot of time on their hands might find that appealing, but as someone who has more free money than time, I like my games to be fairly concise. I generally feel that anything longer than about 60 hours max is getting into bloat territory, and that many of the best games are those that focus on quality over quantity. I'll take 10-12 of a Naughty Dog game over 100 hours of anything else every time.

 

[Foolery]

I think the biggest problems are nonsense and filler quests designed almost solely to pad out games. For example, Xenoblade Chronicles X. There's a quest where you find parts for a coffee machine (Who cares about coffee on an alien planet? Just let me kill stuff, dammit), quests where you have to wait for a certain weather condition and time of day, as well as quests which require specific components that can only be found randomly lying around in odd parts of the map or require higher mechanical/biological levels to pick up. Plus you need to complete affinity with team members to advance the main plot. Shit's annoying as all it ends being is a massive running simulator. I like open-world, but it needs focus and a lack of artificially imposed restrictions.

 

[sanquin]

Much denser and more survival based than GTA. Dense and vertical enough and with enough interiors for platforming. GTA V is another commuting game. My ideal game world wouldn't have any vehicles, and the streets would therefore be far narrower, the city far smaller. I'm also not a fan of grids. I think it's a boring (though logical) way to design a city, and American cities and those parodied by GTA are almost all about grids. I'd prefer more rounded architecture as well. When I say "hostile", I mean a place that's in chaos. Not just a few hoods and cops, but an environment so bad that the passages in the walls surrounding it have been demolished to contain it.

You'd like it here in the Netherlands then. In America, most cities are built around the roads. Here, it's mostly the other way around. The buildings came first, and the roads were put down in between later. It's rather messy when compared to the grid style you see in America.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Much denser and more survival based than GTA. Dense and vertical enough and with enough interiors for platforming. GTA V is another commuting game. My ideal game world wouldn't have any vehicles, and the streets would therefore be far narrower, the city far smaller. I'm also not a fan of grids. I think it's a boring (though logical) way to design a city, and American cities and those parodied by GTA are almost all about grids. I'd prefer more rounded architecture as well. When I say "hostile", I mean a place that's in chaos. Not just a few hoods and cops, but an environment so bad that the passages in the walls surrounding it have been demolished to contain it.

You'd like it here in the Netherlands then. In America, most cities are built around the roads. Here, it's mostly the other way around. The buildings came first, and the roads were put down in between later. It's rather messy when compared to the grid style you see in America.

I think its pretty similar across a lot of Europe really. At least for older major cities. I know I love the way roads are sort of moulded by the landscape and where buildings are already rather than the other way around.

I tried to do elegant, non-grid designs in Cities:Skylines actually. But its not very space efficient and takes a lot more time than just drawing straight roads on a grid. Also it makes it harder to prevent traffic congestion.

 

[FakeSympathy]

OP here.

One more thing I would like to add is how most of the open-world games feels dead other than the plants and the wild animals. As much as I find GTA V to be mediocre, I can't deny how alive the game feels. There are people working out and enjoying sun down at the beach. There are people waiting in line to get into the night club. There are people enjoying the view at the piers. There are hikers climbing the mountain. Hell, even the simple pedestrians walking around the streets of the city makes the entire game full of life. Other games though, all they do is have cities here and there and make the rest of the game the great out doors. Witcher 3, for example, have lots of cities and villages. And while those places definitely feels alive with npcs going about their days, those areas are usually outnumbered by all the forests, caves, plains, and large body of water. Other than the occasional bandits, wild lives, and of course monsters, players are forced to repeatedly travel through these lands.

 

[WeepingAngels]

-Snip-

Trust me, I love choosing my own path too, but you don't need to make an open world game to offer that kind of experience. Early examples of this can be found in Mega Man, where it was the players choice to determine how best to tackle the gauntlet of levels. Should you get the water powerup first and then fight the fire guy or get the fire powerup first and fight the ice guy?

Open world games are obviously an easy way to offer "freedom", but they're hardly the only way and not always the best way.

Yeah but what if you don't want to fight the fire or ice guy at all, and instead want to run around doing your own thing entirely? That's the kind of freedom I'm referring to. I had tons of fun in Skyrim, and I hardly ever bothered with the main plot stuff. I did my own little personal plotlines, and played them out how I wanted. That kind of "open world" experience is only possible in a sandbox type game. Sure games can give the freedom of options, like your above Mega Man, option, but those are still a limited list of options on how to play the game, namely just "which one do you want to do first?". And that's fine, but I don't think it's the same category as the open world discussion. Sure open world isn't the only type of game to offer someone freedom, but it is the only type that gives you total agency in whether or not you even bother to do what the game wants you to do at all.

I had loads of fun in Morrowind. Building a base, filling it with shit and running around doing whatever. I had even more fun with Oblivion doing the same thing but after a few hundred hours, the same thing gets boring and then it always falls back on the main quest. By the time Skyrim came out, I didn't care to build another base and fill it with shit. I found the main quest boring and I was annoyed by how poorly it ran on the PS3.

If you want to see an example of gamers hand waving quality, Skyrim is it. It ran like shit but to most gamers (and journalists) that didn't matter because it had....dragons. Fuckin' ridiculous.

As for GTA, it's just the same game over and over again too. How are people still buying them?

*shrugs* I didn't have any performance issues with Skyrim on PC. Xbox is a different story, damn game glitched out on me on the opening screen, had to hard reboot. I agree the main quest was boring, that's why I never bothered playing it after the first time. I just made up my own storylines and ran with those. Don't want dragons? No problem, just don't go get that stone and turn it into Whiterun, and you will never have to deal with dragons. Then you can go do whatever you want. Hell there is an entire site devoted to players coming up with independent storylines and campaigns, playing the game they liked. That's what I find fun about open world games. Sure the devs made their own story, but I don't have to mess with that at all. To me, that's the main difference in an "open world" game, compared to "a game that gives you some freedom of choices."

With Skyrim, the console versions had problems. I was speaking of the PS3 version which was the worst. After Morrowind and Oblivion, I simply had no interest in building another base and filling it with shit and with the main quest being boring...there was nothing left. I still put many hours into it but I feel like open world games were a fascination for me that has now passed.

 

[Dr.Awkward]

I'm still interested in open-world games, but maybe not ones being as open as having access to all the areas as soon as you start the game - Maybe ones where areas are segmented off and you have to progress the story to access them, similar to what Deus Ex and several FFs have done in the past. As for accessing previous areas? Well that depends on the story and how much content the developer is willing to put into those areas; it'd be disappointing if after going through 3/4ths of a game, you regain access to your starting area, but it doesn't add opportunities for new sidequests and rewards.

 

[babinro]

Two games made me come to the same realization.

1) Dragon Age Inquisition - This game has gorgeous landscapes and a history of games I've personally loved. Yet I was never able to play past the Hinterlands and even get to the meat of this game. It's open world felt like there was too much going on and there was no cohesion in story telling. The experience was too muddy even though all the elements of the game were technically good to great.

2) Final Fantasy 13 - The infamous hallway RPG that the internet loves to hate. While I'll be the first to agree that the story wasn't well told I personally LOVED the format. Here's a game that tells you a story and forgos the bullshit illusions of choice and time sinks. Most RPG I've played are essentially linear to begin with just with larger zones to roam around in. You'll still end up doing just about all the story beats in the intended order. I really liked the focused storytelling of FF13 and would have no issue with it being in more games. It doesn't have to be an endless hallway obviously but the idea is to keep the player moving forward without distractions taking away from the main quest. Don't give the player a chance to forget what's actually important to the characters.

This is also why I love Dragon Age 2. This is an RPG that uses the open world elements but tells a cohesive story by keeping everything in one city and giving the player a chance to see the consequences of their choices over time. While it's not perfect in it's execution you do gain a whole lot more attachment to NPC's then you would a typical Fallout or Skyrim side quest.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Also there's only so much time a lot of us can give to a game. An Open World game? That takes a shit ton of time. And it better have something worth it.

This statement is becoming more and more relevant to my life. I guess that's what happens when you grow up?

I'm burnt out on open-world games too. I don't need 7 bajillion hours of content. What I want is an interesting story with good writing and solid gameplay. The notable exception I played recently was the Witcher 3. It had compelling content everywhere I looked and it was an open world game that played like a single player game. At least, that's how it felt to me. Even then, after 70 hours of the main game and the expansion I was quite comfortable with saying "okay I'm done". Then I went online where basically everyone says that 100 hours for the base game is the minimum and I just can't help but wonder where everyone gets the time (and interest).

 

[Danbo Jambo]

The problem isn't the idea of open worlds, it's that the open worlds feel lifeless for the most part. They feel the same, like there's nothing under the surface (and there isn't), providing quantity at the expense of quality. Very few open world games try for a real sandbox, settling only for an illusion. And so on and so forth...

The problem isn't the open world as a concept, it's the fact that it's become a safe, easy bet. The open worlds we have today are not that more advanced than the open worlds of 5 or 10 years ago. They look nicer and the physics engines are better, but for the most part that's it. And while those kinds of worlds were innovative at that time, nowadays they are just par for course.

Personally, I wish they'd scale it back, stop trying to outdo each other in square mileage and focus instead on making smaller but more involved and interconnected game worlds. Less filler content and all that. And you know what, I'm pretty sure we're going to start getting exactly that soon enough.

Great summary.

Combat aside, Morrowind is the best open world game I've played and i loved it. You can really tell that they hand crafted a lot of the game, and that depth, alongside the unfamiliar alien feel, kept everything feeling fresh and interesting. It really felt magical and immersive beyond belief.

Fast forward to modern day, and personally i'd like to see a similar things to Jandau - a tighter, more absorbing focus (Christ I spent ages just in Seyda Need itself).

I'd also like to see the world evolve through player choices, and restrictions being part of that, so that you can take different "paths" in later playthroughs. Skyrim attempted this, but essentially played out the same whichever option you chose. (Stormcloak? Go invade a load of forts. Imperial? Go invade a load of forts) It shouldn't be that hard to implement either. A few extras dialogue options, quest lines which get cut off, aesthetic changes etc.

In general RPGs need to worry less about giving the player everything all in one go, and focus more on giving them something awesome which has more awesomeness the deeper they dig.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I dunno, if you ignore Ubisoft, it doesn't seem that bad to me. I love open world games because they often come with fantastic modding support. Are Bethesda games particularly amazing at launch? No, but give them a couple months and you'll already be seeing some excellent content generated by the community.

I don't really care for the GTA franchise either, but that has less to do with it being open world and more to do with it trying to be too many things while doing none of them well.

Though, looking again at Zhukov's list, that may seem like a lot, but when you compare it to other genres of games, it's really not bad at all. I've played 9 of the games on that list and the only one I was lukwarm on was Farcry 4 which I got for free with my GTX 970.

Skyrim -mods!
Fallout 4 -mods along with some shooting that's actually pretty decent
Farcry 3 -I hadn't played that many AC games, so despite this very clearly borrowing a lot, I wasn't worn out yet. Farcry 4 is when that happened.
Arkham City -I admit, the open world didn't add anything to this series for me. Gliding around didn't stay fresh for very long, but the world was small enough for it to not detract for the game IMO.
Shadow of Mordor -I loved this game. The world wasn't all that interesting, for me, it was more about having a playground to use all of my crazy abilities while messing around with my own orcs.
Saints Row 4 -the first Saints game I played, so that's probably a big reason for why some things about it didn't annoy me. Best super hero game ever and it was pretty funny too.
Just Cause 3 -mods as well as simply being good, explosive fun.
Black Flag -the open world is part of what made this game great for me. I loved sailing around and being a pirate. Didn't care about the assassin stuff, but feeling like I was the top dog on the ocean was something special. It was the first AC game I played since II.

So ya, I think with a lot of lesser open worlds, them being open world isn't the issue, it's that the devs are lazy about making the gameplay within those world compelling, or in the case with Ubisoft, each new game is way too familiar.

Edit: I somehow missed the Witcher 3 from that list. For me, it has the greatest open world ever, and it's really not even close.

 

[kekkres]

Half of games zhukov posted are made by ubisoft and all are just lazy copy paste design where you climb tower and mark enemies.

I count one third. But yeah, I don't like Ubisoft. They're dead to me. They've become too big to make anything that's isn't bland or soulless copypasta.

Ubisoft main franchises are pretty dull but i am Consistently in love with everything UbiArt produces

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I dunno, if you ignore Ubisoft, it doesn't seem that bad to me. I love open world games because they often come with fantastic modding support. Are Bethesda games particularly amazing at launch? No, but give them a couple months and you'll already be seeing some excellent content generated by the community.

I don't really care for the GTA franchise either, but that has less to do with it being open world and more to do with it trying to be too many things while doing none of them well.

Though, looking again at Zhukov's list, that may seem like a lot, but when you compare it to other genres of games, it's really not bad at all. I've played 9 of the games on that list and the only one I was lukwarm on was Farcry 4 which I got for free with my GTX 970.

Skyrim -mods!
Fallout 4 -mods along with some shooting that's actually pretty decent
Farcry 3 -I hadn't played that many AC games, so despite this very clearly borrowing a lot, I wasn't worn out yet. Farcry 4 is when that happened.
Arkham City -I admit, the open world didn't add anything to this series for me. Gliding around didn't stay fresh for very long, but the world was small enough for it to not detract for the game IMO.
Shadow of Mordor -I loved this game. The world wasn't all that interesting, for me, it was more about having a playground to use all of my crazy abilities while messing around with my own orcs.
Saints Row 4 -the first Saints game I played, so that's probably a big reason for why some things about it didn't annoy me. Best super hero game ever and it was pretty funny too.
Just Cause 3 -mods as well as simply being good, explosive fun.
Black Flag -the open world is part of what made this game great for me. I loved sailing around and being a pirate. Didn't care about the assassin stuff, but feeling like I was the top dog on the ocean was something special. It was the first AC game I played since II.

So ya, I think with a lot of lesser open worlds, them being open world isn't the issue, it's that the devs are lazy about making the gameplay within those world compelling, or in the case with Ubisoft, each new game is way too familiar.

Edit: I somehow missed the Witcher 3 from that list. For me, it has the greatest open world ever, and it's really not even close.

That highlights another issue for me right there - the reliance on mods.

I personally don't use mods much at all - I can't be doing with the faff - but in my age group (30-40) most my mates are either console gamers, or offline gamers. Either way they also have little or no interest in mods.

Mods may be a valid solution to various issues, but the mindset that they should be relied on alienates a lot of gamers from the experience. In turn a good chunk of my mates view open world games as fairly bland and crap because they can only judge the vanilla version, and thus potential future buyers are turned off.

To me, for the benefit of gaming, mods should always be viewed as "bonus" material, never essential. If the vanilla game is lacking without them, then you can scrap a decent amount of customers right off the bat, thus less revenue, thus less focus on future games etc. etc. It's a bit of a self-harming cycle.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I dunno, if you ignore Ubisoft, it doesn't seem that bad to me. I love open world games because they often come with fantastic modding support. Are Bethesda games particularly amazing at launch? No, but give them a couple months and you'll already be seeing some excellent content generated by the community.

I don't really care for the GTA franchise either, but that has less to do with it being open world and more to do with it trying to be too many things while doing none of them well.

Though, looking again at Zhukov's list, that may seem like a lot, but when you compare it to other genres of games, it's really not bad at all. I've played 9 of the games on that list and the only one I was lukwarm on was Farcry 4 which I got for free with my GTX 970.

Skyrim -mods!
Fallout 4 -mods along with some shooting that's actually pretty decent
Farcry 3 -I hadn't played that many AC games, so despite this very clearly borrowing a lot, I wasn't worn out yet. Farcry 4 is when that happened.
Arkham City -I admit, the open world didn't add anything to this series for me. Gliding around didn't stay fresh for very long, but the world was small enough for it to not detract for the game IMO.
Shadow of Mordor -I loved this game. The world wasn't all that interesting, for me, it was more about having a playground to use all of my crazy abilities while messing around with my own orcs.
Saints Row 4 -the first Saints game I played, so that's probably a big reason for why some things about it didn't annoy me. Best super hero game ever and it was pretty funny too.
Just Cause 3 -mods as well as simply being good, explosive fun.
Black Flag -the open world is part of what made this game great for me. I loved sailing around and being a pirate. Didn't care about the assassin stuff, but feeling like I was the top dog on the ocean was something special. It was the first AC game I played since II.

So ya, I think with a lot of lesser open worlds, them being open world isn't the issue, it's that the devs are lazy about making the gameplay within those world compelling, or in the case with Ubisoft, each new game is way too familiar.

Edit: I somehow missed the Witcher 3 from that list. For me, it has the greatest open world ever, and it's really not even close.

That highlights another issue for me right there - the reliance on mods.

I personally don't use mods much at all - I can't be doing with the faff - but in my age group (30-40) most my mates are either console gamers, or offline gamers. Either way they also have little or no interest in mods.

Mods may be a valid solution to various issues, but the mindset that they should be relied on alienates a lot of gamers from the experience. In turn a good chunk of my mates view open world games as fairly bland and crap because they can only judge the vanilla version, and thus potential future buyers are turned off.

To me, for the benefit of gaming, mods should always be viewed as "bonus" material, never essential. If the vanilla game is lacking without them, then you can scrap a decent amount of customers right off the bat, thus less revenue, thus less focus on future games etc. etc. It's a bit of a self-harming cycle.

I wouldn't say that the games rely on them. For me, they allow the games to transcend from being merely good to, easily topping my favourite games list. It's not that the games rely on the mods, it's that these types of games seem to attract the best modding communities. Bethesda games have gotten a huge modding community simply by supporting them with each and every game they develop. While I do like their games without mods (I only started playing mods when I got a good laptop a couple years after Skyirm came out), having them as an option for extra content makes it so the games never really get old. Devs can make a good game, but ultimately, their team size is going to be minuscule compared to a good modding community.

For what it's worth, I think the Witcher 3 is better than all of the other games on that list, so it's not like modding is the be all end all for this genre. The Witcher 3 has some mods, but they're mostly small tweaks or cosmetic things. I haven't downloaded any.

Even if they did rely heavily on mods, I honestly wouldn't say that's a big deal. For me, half the reason of getting a good PC was to play modded versions of the games I love most. However, I could see how that would be unfair for others so I do hope that never happens.

 

[Barbas]

It all reminds me of something Ben Croshaw said in a review for Spore: it seems like the developers spent so much time and effort on making the world very big that they forgot to add much in the way of furniture. You can only stare at a field or a mountain for so long before boredom sets in, especially when invisible barriers or other limitations prevent you from thoroughly investigating it at close range, or there's nothing really living there in the first place. Ubisoft's games are the model of mediocrity when it comes to open-world design, but they're sadly far from being the only ones jumping on the money train. I mention them because of the collectibles fetish.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I wouldn't say that the games rely on them. For me, they allow the games to transcend from being merely good to, easily topping my favourite games list. It's not that the games rely on the mods, it's that these types of games seem to attract the best modding communities. Bethesda games have gotten a huge modding community simply by supporting them with each and every game they develop. While I do like their games without mods (I only started playing mods when I got a good laptop a couple years after Skyirm came out), having them as an option for extra content makes it so the games never really get old. Devs can make a good game, but ultimately, their team size is going to be minuscule compared to a good modding community.

For what it's worth, I think the Witcher 3 is better than all of the other games on that list, so it's not like modding is the be all end all for this genre. The Witcher 3 has some mods, but they're mostly small tweaks or cosmetic things. I haven't downloaded any.

Even if they did rely heavily on mods, I honestly wouldn't say that's a big deal. For me, half the reason of getting a good PC was to play modded versions of the games I love most. However, I could see how that would be unfair for others so I do hope that never happens.

Fair point, maybe i'm being a bit harsh.

I do think the "mod/patch will sort it" excuse though is needed far more than it should be. And that vanilla games need to be released when nearer "completion" more often too (TW3 being a good example).

 

[Auron225]

I'll still love almost any open world games that come out... provided they have substance.

Too many open world games that come out are indeed vast and expansive, but if they have no depth then it's all just kinda there for the express purpose of being there. For me it's not enough to go traipsing through another cave if I don't feel I have enough reason to do so, and a quest marker at the end of the cave doesn't really cut it either. I'll feel like if I've seen one cave/forest/town, I've seen them all. If the point is so that I can see what a lovely cave/forest/town some developer spent a lot of time making and polishing, then it's going to be wasted on me. It's like having a movie full of beautiful landscapes/scenery but no characters/plot - it gets dull before long.

 

[meowchef]

What a lot of developers have in their head is that bigger = better. Or that MORE gameplay = better gameplay. What makes people like us want to play games more/longer... is just the fact that they're good. How many times have we beaten the Half Life games? Portal? The Mario games? Uncharted? Etc etc etc. These games don't stick around because they have a 97 hour playtime with 890345 hidden areas and secrets. They stick around because they're fucking good games.