The reason why open world gaming sucks.

[Vault101]

ah god..the capitals...assulting me..

The PC's dad is trying to build a fucking water purifier, the water in the Capital Wasteland is radioactive, therefore anyone alive has to have access to purified water, or THEY WOULDN'T BE ALIVE, MAKING THE ENTIRE PURIFIER REDUNDANT.

well obviously they have access to water, its jsut one of those hard things to get..the Idea was free water for everyone

[quote/]And then there's the Enclave, the Enclave attack and take over the purifier when you've finished fixing it, but for what?

The purifier is never said to store the water and there is no evidence that it does, and everyone else has access to clean water anyway, what could the Enclave gain by controlling it? Nothing. [/quote]

they would controll the wasteland...I think I vaugley remember the enclave were actually tricking people into aproaching them so they could do tests or somthing..and the FEV thing

[quote/]Vampires, HOW THE FUCK ARE VAMPIRES SUPPOSED TO FIT IN THE SETTING?! Yes it's explained, but the explanation is retarded, [/quote]
they arent "actual" vampires...they are the creepy counter-culture people who think they are vampires and drink blood..they are essentially a cult and given the setting cults and crazy groups are pretty much par for the coarse

[quote/]The power of Atom: Burke offers you money to blow up Megaton, RIGHT IN FRONT OF EVERYONE.

And then the reason Tenpenny gives for wanting to destroy it is "it's ugly".[/quote]
I'm not seeing the problem here, Tenpenny is a rich nutcase and your not blowing up megaton in the presance of anyone who gives a shit (even thoug people find out via word of mouth technically theres no way to put the blame on you)

[quote/]The Superhuman Gambit:
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, people have more than enough time to dress up in silly costumes and fight each other.[/quote]
Fallout isnt a setting that plays the post apocalptic thing 100% straight...hence why there are super mutants and crazy robots

most of your problems here seem subjective

 

[Soluncreed]

Maybe open world games could just do what New Vegas did; make a hardcore mode. In that mode, there will be timelimits on many quests as well as the other obvious aspects that come with a more realistic mode. And if you don't want to deal with that, don't play that mode.

 

[Easton Dark]

The PC's dad is trying to build a fucking water purifier, the water in the Capital Wasteland is radioactive, therefore anyone alive has to have access to purified water, or THEY WOULDN'T BE ALIVE, MAKING THE ENTIRE PURIFIER REDUNDANT.

I'm willing to ignore plot holes on occasion, but when I AM CONSTANTLY SEEING HOLES IN THE MAIN PLOT POINTS, AND CONSTANTLY, I AM GOING TO HAVE A PROBLEM.

They have water purifiers. Megaton has one that you helped fix. They're going to break down eventually though.

I'm betting they're getting all of the water from the river and then purifying it in Megaton, in Rivet City, in Canterbury, what have you.

When those purifiers break down, shit's going to be bad. Plus, there's not that much clean water for crops if everyone has to drink (since every other drink is radioactive or alcoholic). Growing radioactive crops isn't good. You'll need a lot more fresh water that the purifiers can't churn out.

I dunno. It makes sense to me to want the purifier clean the entire Potomac.

 

[Starik20X6]

Time limits in games stress me out waaaay too much. It's the only reason I haven't finished Majora's Mask; I just find it way too stressful. The knowledge that one small mistake can mean hours of time lost, and the subsequent pressure to do everything perfectly on the first try, drives me mental. I've no time to stop and examine the world around me because I'm pushed to do everything as quickly as possible. It's also why I much prefer Pikmin 2 over 1, the removal of the time limit made it so much less nerve-wracking.

I know some people like that, but I'm just not one of them.

 

[Sandjube]

Because it isn't, /thread.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Right, and that makes linear storytelling SO MUCH better than open-world. That lack of urgency, by itself, renders open-world gaming inferior. *****, please. That's a tad unreasonable.

I do agree, somewhat, with the need for some missions at least to have a sense of urgency to them. I would agree with not a time limit, but actually have events unfold in the game leading up to it that you can disrupt at any time. If someone's about to get assassinated, the assassin becomes an NPC and has to travel by foot or horse or whatever to the target. I think that'd be cool, but not every mission, or even most missions.

Another thing is, with my recent adoration of Dark Souls I have grown a distaste for fabled hero dragonborn prophesised saviour of humanity protagonist-driven stories. Dark Souls has no sense of urgency, and no real questline. Ring the bells, I guess. But it has such a compelling world and gameplay that it doesn't need one. Nobody gives you shit and says "Now go find the sword of Artorias so you can defeat the menace Gravelord Nito". In fact most NPCs are more like "Well, don't die, and buy more stuff when you come back."

And lastly, the most salient reason: No-one likes time limits. Especially arbitrary time limits. Like Assassin's Creed 3, there was a sequence at some battle or other and they gave you a 5 minute timer instead of actually having actions play out, and it was just so forced, unnecessary and stupid. I never want to see that again.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I AM VERY ANGRY ABOUT FALLOUT 3 ROWOWOWOWOWOWOW

I can see that! I may be able to help you.

There are several ways to add stress or significance to a word without resorting to the dreaded all-caps. While capitalizing a word does indeed add emphasis, too much and it just seems like you're screaming at the top of your lungs.

1. Add bold tagging!
2. Put *asterisks* on either side of the chosen word!
3. Sometimes you can drop stuff on to it's own line to call extra attention to it. Such as, FO3 was alright, I guess.

And then the ending happened.

...like that.
4. Even italics can give the impression of extra emphasis on a given word.
5. Simple punctuation can drive home how you feel. "It sucks!" implies passion, excitement, strong feeling. But even "It sucks." can imply droll, deadpan irritation.
6. Profanity can help spice up a piece, but you don't want to overdo it!

Let's try!

AND WHEN SOMETHING THAT DOES STAND OUT, IT'S A TOWN THAT ONLY STANDS OUT BECAUSE OF WHATEVER RETARDED QUEST THERE IS, MEANING I HAVE NO MOTIVATION OTHER THAN SEEING HOW FUCKING STUPID THE STORY GETS.

Could become...

When something does stand out, like a town, it only stands out because of whatever retarded quest there is, meaning I have *no* motivation other than seeing how fucking stupid the story gets.

See? By adding emphasis to "retarded" and "no", we call attention both to how retarded you think the quests are, and how little motivation you have to see the story. As opposed to the original, where every word has emphasis, which sounds like you're shouting in a loud, monotone air-raid siren tone.

Now you can berate Fallout 3 in a dry, sophisticated fashion that will leave its fans outraged and its detractors eager to hear more!

 

[legendp]

tl;dr Why don't more open world games have more time limits?

edit: tl;dr#2 Why don't more games have plots that fit open worlds without time limits?

well some games do it cleverly, take mass effect 2 for example (spoiler alert)
if you don't immediately go through the omega 4 relay your crew dies

 

[Murrdox]

[snip.

I actually liked fallout 3 because of the setting and story, NV was better sure but fallout 3 was playable unlike oblivion/skyrim

The setting and story were actually the WORST part of Fallout 3.

Pretty much agree with everything you said. The plot/quests of Fallout 3 were absolutely terrible for the most part. Hardly any of the quests had a story that made a lick of sense. The writing and characters in your average Final Fantasy game were much better than those found in Fallout 3.

I think you hit the nail on the head by pointing out the Megaton questline. You're either the savior of the town, because why? ... or you detonate a nuclear bomb because why? There's no genuine morality in any of your choices. Your "Bad" choices are as absurdly bad as your good choices and your character never really has much motivation for choosing one or the other beyond the fact that you want your character to get "Good" or "Bad" points. In the Fallout world, if I detonated the bomb in Megaton, anybody with an IQ over 10 would simply shoot me in the head as soon as they found out.

LegendP I think you provided a good example with Mass Effect 2.

Anybody remember the original System Shock? On higher difficulty, you had time-limits for your quests. When SHODAN arms the mining laser, you only have so much time to raise the shields on the station and enable the override to destroy it.

I think the main issue with time-limits in Open-World gameplay is that you are THE PLAYER.

If you were playing Lord of the Rings it would suck pretty bad if you showed up at the Battle of Helm's Deep... AFTER the battle. Why would that be "fun" for the player? The reason you're playing the game is so you can EXPERIENCE things. The best way to do this is via choice.

So in Skyrim for example, your character can choose to participate in either Battle A or Battle B. If he chooses Battle B, then afterwards you might hear about what happened with Battle A but you don't participate in it, and you start a quest sequence due to the fact that you participated in Battle B. BUT both Battle A and Battle B are waiting to be fought until you pick one of them. If there was a time limit on the game, and eventually the game decided how both Battles turned out, and you didn't get to do either one of them... well that would suck pretty bad unless that was part of a separate plotline.

Sometimes in games like Skyrim I do think it sort of breaks the immersion however when an NPC tells you "Meet me at the docks at midnight!" and you can choose not to show up for months at a time. SOMETIMES there should be consequences for simply betraying an NPC by not being where you said you would.

 

[Gecko clown]

The reason more games don't follow Dead Risings approach is as follows.

Dead Rising's system was shit.

Sure you get more immersion and a sense of urgency but you also get a terrible terrible game-play decision.

 

[unoleian]

If you need an open-ended role-playing game to force a time limit on you to motivate your character to act in a timely manner, you're playing role-playing games wrong.

That is all I have to say on that.

 

[DyranLK]

How the player chooses to tackle the open-world gameplay is their own choice. In order to mend a game that could adapt to that choice, however, developers with the right mind obviously need to form a certain layer of believability tied to the plot while also avoiding the possibility of extracting elements of freedom and, most importantly, the fun in playing with that freedom. Maybe it would be pretty sweet if a ringing urgency is evident throughout several missions in an open-world game and do have consequences if you don't tend to it in the most efficient way, but from what I could see, implementing that into many current games' formulas in a realistic, action-reaction way is not an easy thing to do, although it has been done before, just not to a great extent. Most of this, though, would probably stem from the fact that crafting an experience like so (that would actually end up being 'good') would simply be extremely demanding from whoever's developing; they'd have to account for every possibility and create a game so big and open-ended that the plot would have to practically be a constantly evolving entity, which, if depending on the consequences of your actions and whatnot, can also end up being a mess of a story and a frustrating gameplay experience for, say, people with much more easygoing playstyles, so to speak.

Basically, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's really that necessary. More often than not it's the quality of the implications and smoke-and-mirrors that is looked at, and whether or not there are enough distractions or instances of quality gameplay that will help prevent breaking the illusion rather than actually replacing it with a real consequence itself. Take The Sims, for example; if you want a game where everything you do is stripped bare and raw, you've got it in The Sims (the most efficient example of this now being The Sims 3). If you don't eat, you go hungry; if you're hungry, you can't work as well; if you can't work as well, you won't earn as much money; if you can't obtain enough money to buy food, then you go hungry, and so on and so forth. You actually work to prevent consequences from dragging you down too far and, if you plan on building a successful life for your Sim, will almost always have your eye on the current time and circumstances surrounding 'em. However, the reason this game could pull this off is because plot is non-existent; at its core, it's not impossible to produce urgency or failure because all of it ties in with the nature of the gameplay, which is rather low-concept and doesn't hinge to a single narrative.

Games like Skyrim or Mass Effect, on the other hand..

 

[Xdeser2]

Reason why games dont have time limits:

Because thats stupid

people would rush through the main quest, ignoring all side quests, exploring, ETC. (IE everything that makes an open world worth playing)

 

[Xdeser2]

[snip.

I actually liked fallout 3 because of the setting and story, NV was better sure but fallout 3 was playable unlike oblivion/skyrim

The setting and story were actually the WORST part of Fallout 3.

Lets start off with main story:

The PC's dad is trying to build a fucking water purifier, the water in the Capital Wasteland is radioactive, therefore anyone alive has to have access to purified water, or THEY WOULDN'T BE ALIVE, MAKING THE ENTIRE PURIFIER REDUNDANT.

I'm willing to ignore plot holes on occasion, but when I AM CONSTANTLY SEEING HOLES IN THE MAIN PLOT POINTS, AND CONSTANTLY, I AM GOING TO HAVE A PROBLEM.

And then there's the Enclave, the Enclave attack and take over the purifier when you've finished fixing it, but for what?

The purifier is never said to store the water and there is no evidence that it does, and everyone else has access to clean water anyway, what could the Enclave gain by controlling it? Nothing. If they hit the on button, people get clean water anyway, and there's nothing to stop caravans collecting water and taking it to towns further inland. If the Enclave is trying to prevent people getting clean water, why not JUST DESTROY THE FUCKING THING. And then later Colonel Liquidsnakeripoff and President idiot have a civil war in the Enclave, and President R374RD gives you a modified FEV canister because Fallout 2 had the Enclave try to use virus to kill all mutants in the wasteland (including normal humans) and Bethesda only know how to write bad fan fiction. What could I gain from this? Evil points, AND NOTHING ELSE. Since R374RD's kill all non-Enclave with a virus plan seems to be what the Colonel Girlyname is rebelling against, then WHAT IS THE ENCLAVE STILL DOING AT THE PURIFIER?! WHY DON'T THEY DESTROY IT OR JUST FUCKING LEAVE?! And that's NOT EVEN MENTIONING LITTLE LAMPLIGHT. And the side quests ARE JUST AS BAD. I'm not expecting the GREATIST STORY EVAR, I just want SOMETHING THAT ISN'T LITERALLY SHITTY FAN FICTION.

Side Quests:

Most of the Side quests are just boring, but some are VERY, VERY, VERY retarded. Let's start off with Blood ties...

Vampires, HOW THE FUCK ARE VAMPIRES SUPPOSED TO FIT IN THE SETTING?! Yes it's explained, but the explanation is retarded, also...

The power of Atom: Burke offers you money to blow up Megaton, RIGHT IN FRONT OF EVERYONE.

And then the reason Tenpenny gives for wanting to destroy it is "it's ugly".

The Superhuman Gambit:
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, people have more than enough time to dress up in silly costumes and fight each other.

They were the worst part of Fallout 3- To You

You forget games are a subjective medium, not objective lol

 

[chadachada123]

So my question is this: why don't more open world games have some form of time limit? A good example of an open world with a time limit is the dead rising games. You are given 72 hours in-game to do whatever the hell you want. If you want to do the questline, you have to do it at appropriate times and if you are late for even one quest, you fail it all and are left to just do whatever you want for the remaining time.

That was one of the largest complaints about Dead Rising: No ability to just run around and kill stuff in a mode separate from the story mode. "Infinity" mode doesn't count because it did, in fact, have a pretty strict time limit.

I'd be fine if a game forced urgency and story for the first part of it, and THEN opened up and allowed you to do whatever the hell you wanted, or at least provided a separate mode for it. The issue is that this rarely happens.

 

[Fat Hippo]

The reason this "open world" approach works in games like Fallout 1 (or 2, or 3) comes from the narrative. It actually has a great justification for the all the fucking around and doing quests, unlike Oblivions, which is completely nonsensical.

In Fallout 1 you are searching for something, but you have no idea where it is. Which means you are going to talk to absolutely everyone in search of leads. Right in the beginning of the game, this leads you to Vault 15, which ends up being a dud in you search for the Water Chip, but is a great dungeon for beginning players. At the same time, its no wonder you're doing all the other odd jobs, since you are clearly a fish out of water in this hostile world you have only just come into contact with. You need to learn from experiences with the wasteland and desperately require better equipment. After all, if you die, your vault is doomed.

One important element is of course the time limit, enforcing urgency on the player, but I find this unessential to the overall approach, since Fallout 2 had a similar scenario (Find this macguffin to save your vault/village) and worked just as well in this area.

Games like Oblivion, on the other hand, are just absurd, because the story doesn't mesh with the mechanics of the game, which encourage exploration. You are constantly told that the fate of the world rests on your shoulders. Yet the player likely doesn't give a shit about any of this, and is going to do whatever the hell he wants, and possibly forget the main storyline entirely, while time, for all intents and purposes, stands still. The designers were probably perfectly aware of this, but didn't consider important enough to warrant their intention over other areas of the game.

A better solution might have been to tell you: "We (The Blades) don't know where Martin is, and we need you to help us look for him." Now, the game is actively telling you to explore the world, and by placing him in a not all to obscure place, he will eventually be discovered by most players, at which point they will probably also pursue the main storyline. But if someone starts a new game, they are perfectly justified within the confines of the narrative to ignore the area of the game where Martin could be found entirely, and could do whatever the hell they want. After all, their ingame persona DOESN'T know where Martin is.

The one pitfall of this solution could be the few players who get frustrated, as they through dumb chance happen to not make this discovery, and eventually get frustrated when they can't find anything resembling a main quest. But I would still find this a far more elegant way of making gameplay and narrative work together, rather than the one that was used.

 

[FalloutJack]

SNIP

The short answer here is "I don't LIKE time limits in games.". I have never liked them. I don't want to see more of them. I want to have FUN.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Unless it is some kind of quick platformer like Mario, or fighting games, or racing, or puzzle, there is absolutely no reason for some arbitrary timer that makes me rush through the game and not be able to experience it.

Every game I've played that hasn't been one of those types, but still was timed, has been ruined because it was timed.

Examples:
LoZ: Majora's Mask : I understand that it was built around the three day time mechanic, but it still ruined it for me. LoZ games have always been about adventurous exploration while saving the world. I for one can't be adventurous and explore with a timer hanging over my head.

LoZ: Phantom Hourglass : Screw that timed temple. I stopped playing before I beat the game, because I got so damn sick of having go back to that timed temple every time I beat one of the other temples. Of course I got more time added to the clock each time I came back, but that meant jack squat since it would add a new level to the temple or some new challenge that made the extra time meaningless.

Dead Rising : My explanation is below the quote.

Ever played Dead Rising? That was annoying as hell. It was fun to run around and it was a bloody amazing game (I played 2) but you end up unable to do shit because of timers. You know I was unable to get the best ending because I was, and I am not kidding, about 10 seconds off the timer, and all my saves didn't let me get back their in time. I was at the FUCKING door, and it just said GAME OVER! LOLOLOLOLOL.

I never finished that game.

I'm assuming that the "I played 2" means that you only played the second game?

I agree about the arbitrary timed crap.

Now I only played the first Dead Rising, and I only played it for about an hour or so. I called bullshit with the timer when I got to the first boss battle, because I could barely do shit because I kept missing because of the terrible third person zoomed to first person shooting. Of course on top of that, the rest of the game is a bunch more clunky boss battles and escort missions, along with the point of being a photographer and having to take awesome pictures.

All that together is a nightmare to do timed.

I remember when somebody on here tried to counter my complaints by saying that if you beat the game the first time, you unlock an unlimited time mode. That doesn't do anything for me since I will never beat the game with the timer. Plus it aggravates me even more that I would have to do such a thing, because that means the game developers got the order of modes "bass ackwards", because in a properly put together game, timed modes are challenge modes that are for players that want a harder challenge after the beat the game with no timer.

Proper games have challenge modes as the reward for beating the game. As a game developer, it is a big no-no to lock normal play behind having to beat the hard mode. Either take the old route of design and make hard mode unlockable after beating normal mode, or go the modern route and have all modes unlocked from the start. Normal mode should never be locked when I first play a game, because if not, I'll end up quitting about two hours after, because of the obvious bad controls when it comes to having to play hard mode.