Making open-world exploration feel more meaningful?

[MammothBlade]

Here's the thing. I think that exploration in open-world games can feel a little... cheap. I want that sense of distance, and adventure, and it's kind of reduced when travel is so easy.

Wouldn't exploration be more fun if it were more of a task than just following a map marker?


I wish there were more games taking exploration seriously. And what bugs me the most is when vehicles seem to run on unlimited power with perfect reliability. It needs to be more of a risk, more of an adventure. Just having a game element where exploration is limited by your fuel tank would be a start, combined with a map big enough to make it count. The absence of quick-travel would go without saying.

Now maybe it shouldn't be too long and tedious. Perhaps fuel capacity and distances can be compressed, so that you don't have to play for hours to run out of fuel or reach your destination.

Sadly, the ability to simulate large, explorable maps is limited. So a lot of the map has to be barren, empty space, randomly generated, or copy and pasted. However, in a map which is all about exploration, a lot of barren, empty space can be a plus. It adds to the importance of rationing your fuel and supplies. If you're in a game which hinges on travelling large distances into the wilderness, running out of fuel can be a nightmare, as can getting a flat tyre. You'll want to consider the right vehicle for the adventure.


Taking it to the next level, food, medicine, and shelter for the player character could also be considerations. So when you drive 300 miles to the middle of nowhere, you really need to think about where you're going to sleep, what you're going to eat, and how long it's going to take to travel.

Sadly, details like this seem to be the preserve of overly specific and underpolished simulations. Is it too much to ask for a real adventure?

 

[Windcaler]

For me I always found fallout 3 to hit the sweet spot between distance and exploration. Theres always something interesting to find and one of my favorite things to do is step outside a town, pick a direction, and start walking till I find something cool. You may give that game a look, although IMO New vegas did a worse job on the exploration aspect of the game.

It sounds like what you want is a very authentic open world survival game rather then an adventure game and the good ones are hard to find. The DayZ mod actually has the closest resemblance to that IMO and it can be modded for single player too. I've heard state of decay does something similar but I havnt played the game so I dont know how true that is. Every other game that comes to mind is a buggy mess thats not worth any money at this time.

That said, I agree it would be nice to see a more authentic open world survival game but making one requires a lot of time and resources for a small audience and when you do them badly well you get games like Day One: Garry's incident

 

[dyre]

I think survival games like DayZ and Rust do a pretty good job at creating the feeling of distance. A constant sense of danger (death is permanent, you lose all your stuff) and the lack of a minimap adds to the sense of distance, since you have to move slowly to avoid getting shot by players / attacked by zombies as well as paying close attention to your surroundings and making a mental note of them so you don't get lost. So traveling is no longer just moving from x to y, but has a sense of tension of its own.

I think not having a minimap plays a HUGE role in making the world seem bigger...when you have a minimap and a directional arrow telling you where to go, you just make a beeline towards your destination and pay no attention to your surroundings.

And of course both of those games have food/water/medical considerations.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

i honestly think procedural generation is the way to go BUT im talking about a level of generation not normally found.. where each NPC is persistant, has likes and dislikes, a family history, personality traits. so when you murder a bandit his brother just doesnt pop up and attack you for instance, no he hears about a bandit lair cleaned out, starts visiting inns to search for info, finds out about the player, weighs up how to attack the player, whether its hiring a group of mercs, or a single assassin.

That's all well and good, but there's no point to doing something like that because the player would never see it in action. It would just waste processing power for calculations that make no difference to the player's experience. Whether the player just gets randomly attacked by the bandit's brother for no apparent reason, or the bandit's brother goes on a long drawn out quest to find you, in the end the player will still get attacked by the bandit's brother and the player will have no knowledge of the brother's search to find him. The end result is exactly the same regardless of whether the bandit's brother is programmed with his own quest, family history, personality, etc since from the player's perspective the player is being attacked out of the blue.

 

[default]

I know what you mean. Exploration is one of my favourite things within games but for the most part it just feels like I'm walking around a theme park to the predetermined attractions, ala Skyrim. I want to feel utterly alone in a vast, empty and deadly wilderness, having to conserve my supplies and guide myself via the sun, with no clue what this place will have in store for me. One of the main reasons I love random gen so much. I want that mind blowing distance with nothing between tiny mining towns that may have a few little houses to sift through and a can of fuel or a box of biscuits to scrounge.

I want to get a flat tyre or run out of gas and be forced to march as far as I can on foot before trying to survive the creatures of the night in a shallow depression with my last 20 rifle rounds. And I want death to be permanent so every action I make holds the proper amount of weight and consequence.

DayZ sounds a lot like what I'm after in that respect, so I'll be certain to pick it up once it's a little further along and polished.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I'm not certain how exploration is improved in any way by making it take longer to get somewhere and find something. I mean, for my money, the best improvement is to put interesting things to find out in the world.

 

[Zhukov]

Make the world smaller.

No, seriously.

Giant, big open worlds have to spread their content wafer thin in order to be giant and big. So you end up exploring and all you find is that same modular set piece that is the same or very similar to the three you've already seen, inhabited by a bunch of dead-eyed, poorly animated NPCs who look and behave indistinguishable from every other NPC and bark cookie-cutter dialogue at you. Or just try to kill you.

Make the world smaller and you can put a ton more effort and detail to everything that is in the world. That way the player finds something and it actually feels unique. It feels like That Thing I Found, rather than Thing Type #09 Number 15.

 

[Windcaler]

Make the world smaller.

No, seriously.

Giant, big open worlds have to spread their content wafer thin in order to be giant and big. So you end up exploring and all you find is that same modular set piece that is the same or very similar to the three you've already seen, inhabited by a bunch of dead-eyed, poorly animated NPCs who look and behave indistinguishable from every other NPC and bark cookie-cutter dialogue at you. Or just try to kill you.

Make the world smaller and you can put a ton more effort and detail to everything that is in the world. That way the player finds something and it actually feels unique. It feels like That Thing I Found, rather than Thing Type #09 Number 15.

I have to disagree with making the world smaller to make it feel bigger. You get the fallout new vegas feel by doing that where there are always invisible unpassable walls, clear lanes of travel, and nothing really feels unique or special. You have to have a healthy amount of empty space so you can also have the feeling of "awesome" when you do find something cool.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

I have an idea. You get shipwrecked on some unknown part of the universe. You will not get a world map or map markers. I have no idea what you'll do for a story or motivation, but you will be utterly alone to begin with. Exploration should always have a degree of loneliness.

 

[skywolfblue]

Make the world smaller.

No, seriously.

Giant, big open worlds have to spread their content wafer thin in order to be giant and big. So you end up exploring and all you find is that same modular set piece that is the same or very similar to the three you've already seen, inhabited by a bunch of dead-eyed, poorly animated NPCs who look and behave indistinguishable from every other NPC and bark cookie-cutter dialogue at you. Or just try to kill you.

Make the world smaller and you can put a ton more effort and detail to everything that is in the world. That way the player finds something and it actually feels unique. It feels like That Thing I Found, rather than Thing Type #09 Number 15.

I agree with this.

Make it smaller, or if you want to focus the game around driving fast vehicles or loneliness, and thus need a large world. reduce the content (quests, dungeons/unique locations) etc so that even though there is more space between towns, the towns themselves are unique in every way. Rather then have 10 fetch quests in 6 very similar-looking zones, have 2 interactive multi-stage quests in 2 very unique zones.

 

[kilenem]

Pokemon Gold was my favorite open world game. I didn't pick up fly by accident so I found a lot more stuff. So not using quick travel in that game was worth it. I told my friends where to get the fishing rods, a free Tyrogue, How to battle lapras, and where to catch particular pokemon. Even though pokemon is usually about grinding Gold exploration seemed bigger and you got rewarded with random battles with legendary dogs.

 

[Zhukov]

Make the world smaller.

No, seriously.

Giant, big open worlds have to spread their content wafer thin in order to be giant and big. So you end up exploring and all you find is that same modular set piece that is the same or very similar to the three you've already seen, inhabited by a bunch of dead-eyed, poorly animated NPCs who look and behave indistinguishable from every other NPC and bark cookie-cutter dialogue at you. Or just try to kill you.

Make the world smaller and you can put a ton more effort and detail to everything that is in the world. That way the player finds something and it actually feels unique. It feels like That Thing I Found, rather than Thing Type #09 Number 15.

I have to disagree with making the world smaller to make it feel bigger. You get the fallout new vegas feel by doing that where there are always invisible unpassable walls, clear lanes of travel, and nothing really feels unique or special. You have to have a healthy amount of empty space so you can also have the feeling of "awesome" when you do find something cool.

But the question was not how to make it feel big. That's piss easy. Just make it cover a lot of space and make traveling relatively slow. DayZ has proven that.

The question was how to make exploration feel meaningful. That's the question I addressed. I think that for exploration to matter there has to be things to find. And those things have to feel like something worth finding rather than just another cookie cutter modular product. And in order to avoid cookie cutter products you need to be able to concentrate your efforts rather than spreading it thin. And for that you need a smaller space. Which brings me back to my original point.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I liked the exploration in Dragon's Dogma. You had to really plan for your journey, and pray that you could make it before nightfall. Because when night-time hit shit got serious.

 

[Windcaler]

Make the world smaller.

No, seriously.

Giant, big open worlds have to spread their content wafer thin in order to be giant and big. So you end up exploring and all you find is that same modular set piece that is the same or very similar to the three you've already seen, inhabited by a bunch of dead-eyed, poorly animated NPCs who look and behave indistinguishable from every other NPC and bark cookie-cutter dialogue at you. Or just try to kill you.

Make the world smaller and you can put a ton more effort and detail to everything that is in the world. That way the player finds something and it actually feels unique. It feels like That Thing I Found, rather than Thing Type #09 Number 15.

I have to disagree with making the world smaller to make it feel bigger. You get the fallout new vegas feel by doing that where there are always invisible unpassable walls, clear lanes of travel, and nothing really feels unique or special. You have to have a healthy amount of empty space so you can also have the feeling of "awesome" when you do find something cool.

But the question was not how to make it feel big. That's piss easy. Just make it cover a lot of space and make traveling relatively slow. DayZ has proven that.

The question was how to make exploration feel meaningful. That's the question I addressed. I think that for exploration to matter there has to be things to find. And those things have to feel like something worth finding rather than just another cookie cutter modular product. And in order to avoid cookie cutter products you need to be able to concentrate your efforts rather than spreading it thin. And for that you need a smaller space. Which brings me back to my original point.

I think were on the same page for the most part. You have to have things to find to make exploration meaningful. However its the scope I disagree with. If you have a cool places/things to find tightly fit into a small map I think it removes the sense of exploration. There needs to be some amount of empty space to give the sense that exploration is worthwhile. If you're going to make 20 different places to find and put them in an area the size of say Whiterun it looses that meaning of exploration. However if you put the same 20 places in a much larger area like the entirety of skyrim it makes the world seem more more vast and exploration much more unique, for me at least. Empty space doesnt need a ton of work to reinforce the feeling of a large open world, it just needs to exist and make a bit of sense

 

[Pink Gregory]

I can't help but believe that minimal directions could be an improvement over map markers; that and the ability to mark your own map.

When they get really specific it's not all that helpful, Morrowind had that difficulty in places, but at least it gives the illusion of true exploration - creating the map, rather than following it.

 

[MammothBlade]

Make the world smaller.

No, seriously.

Giant, big open worlds have to spread their content wafer thin in order to be giant and big. So you end up exploring and all you find is that same modular set piece that is the same or very similar to the three you've already seen, inhabited by a bunch of dead-eyed, poorly animated NPCs who look and behave indistinguishable from every other NPC and bark cookie-cutter dialogue at you. Or just try to kill you.

Make the world smaller and you can put a ton more effort and detail to everything that is in the world. That way the player finds something and it actually feels unique. It feels like That Thing I Found, rather than Thing Type #09 Number 15.

No, it needs to have a sense of distance. And who says you need to have a bunch of sameish NPCs anyway? There could be a few, in isolated towns and villages, petrol stations, and farms, and maybe each of them would be important in some way. But the key thing is, there are gems, there is plenty of interesting content, and you will be relieved as heck to find it, because much of the world is uninhabited wilderness, possibly with dangerous fauna which might not attack you right away, but will get a drop on you if you're out after dark. That adds to your sense of desperation and emergent gameplay potential.

I think survival games like DayZ and Rust do a pretty good job at creating the feeling of distance. A constant sense of danger (death is permanent, you lose all your stuff) and the lack of a minimap adds to the sense of distance, since you have to move slowly to avoid getting shot by players / attacked by zombies as well as paying close attention to your surroundings and making a mental note of them so you don't get lost. So traveling is no longer just moving from x to y, but has a sense of tension of its own.

Yeah, I've heard of those, but I don't want it to be a zombie survival game. I want loads of deadly creatures which can hunt you. Human enemies might be your least concern, and when they are about, they won't mess around, they'll kill you with one or two shots. I like the cut-throat PvP element of Day Z, but there needs to be a solid single player game that can be a challenge on its own too.

i honestly think procedural generation is the way to go BUT im talking about a level of generation not normally found.. where each NPC is persistant, has likes and dislikes, a family history, personality traits. so when you murder a bandit his brother just doesnt pop up and attack you for instance, no he hears about a bandit lair cleaned out, starts visiting inns to search for info, finds out about the player, weighs up how to attack the player, whether its hiring a group of mercs, or a single assassin.

That's all well and good, but there's no point to doing something like that because the player would never see it in action. It would just waste processing power for calculations that make no difference to the player's experience. Whether the player just gets randomly attacked by the bandit's brother for no apparent reason, or the bandit's brother goes on a long drawn out quest to find you, in the end the player will still get attacked by the bandit's brother and the player will have no knowledge of the brother's search to find him. The end result is exactly the same regardless of whether the bandit's brother is programmed with his own quest, family history, personality, etc since from the player's perspective the player is being attacked out of the blue.

I agree. Instead, more effort should be spent on making enemies tactically smarter. Observant players will notice if an enemy has been hunting and stalking them, waiting patiently to get the drop. Oh, what's that, you think you're safe at your tent? Too bad a pack of wolves followed you all the way back to camp! And not as some random event, but as something those wolves are able to do if you leave too many tracks.

 

[Asian Lawyer]

I think that in order to make an open world game feel meaningful, you have to make it so that getting from point A to point B is a rewarding challenge. I use challenge loosely for as long as it isn't a walk in the park then the game has done its job. As suggested earlier, Fallout 3 is a solid example of an open world game which accomplishes this.

 

[dyre]

I think survival games like DayZ and Rust do a pretty good job at creating the feeling of distance. A constant sense of danger (death is permanent, you lose all your stuff) and the lack of a minimap adds to the sense of distance, since you have to move slowly to avoid getting shot by players / attacked by zombies as well as paying close attention to your surroundings and making a mental note of them so you don't get lost. So traveling is no longer just moving from x to y, but has a sense of tension of its own.

Yeah, I've heard of those, but I don't want it to be a zombie survival game. I want loads of deadly creatures which can hunt you. Human enemies might be your least concern, and when they are about, they won't mess around, they'll kill you with one or two shots. I like the cut-throat PvP element of Day Z, but there needs to be a solid single player game that can be a challenge on its own too.

Hmm, deadly creatures that can hunt you, human enemies as a lesser but still real concern, and solid single player?

Have you tried the STALKER series? STALKER Call of Pripyat with the MISERY mod might be perfect for you. Granted the map isn't THAT big, but it's still significant, and MISERY really makes every possible threat a serious concern (from food/water to weight to attacks of any kind). Unfortunately it doesn't have multiplayer (I think) but it has a very good and fairly lengthy singleplayer campaign.

Given the fact that you have to actively worry about food, weight (an often ignored consideration in other games, where you generally can carry 300 pounds or more), and even minor enemies, not to mention natural threats from the weather ("where was that last shelter? Will that sewer drain protect me from the coming emission?") travel seems a lot more...real. A lot more real than a more familiar game, Fallout 3, where even the hardest mods can't make that game truly difficult or scary.

Also, there's no feeling like cowering in a sewer drain and literally hearing the apocalypse around you as an emission hits.

 

[MammothBlade]

Have you tried the STALKER series? STALKER Call of Pripyat with the MISERY mod might be perfect for you. Granted the map isn't THAT big, but it's still significant, and MISERY really makes every possible threat a serious concern (from food/water to weight to attacks of any kind). Unfortunately it doesn't have multiplayer (I think) but it has a very good and fairly lengthy singleplayer campaign.

Given the fact that you have to actively worry about food, weight (an often ignored consideration in other games, where you generally can carry 300 pounds or more), and even minor enemies, not to mention natural threats from the weather ("where was that last shelter? Will that sewer drain protect me from the coming emission?") travel seems a lot more...real. A lot more real than a more familiar game, Fallout 3, where even the hardest mods can't make that game truly difficult or scary.

Also, there's no feeling like cowering in a sewer drain and literally hearing the apocalypse around you as an emission hits.

Yeah. played it ^^

Not heard of that mod, though.

I definitely like the idea of environmental hazards making it difficult and dangerous to travel through an area.