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Chaosbahamut123
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CloseOkay, so I've been wondering about this for a while now. Whilst I'm waiting for a response from the dudes and dudettes at Extra Credits, I put this question to you, RMN forums!
How much freedom do you like in your games? Do you prefer linear narrative with set characters, or would you prefer it more if you could make your own character and your own story in a set world? Or do you enjoy something in between? Let's hear your opinions!
How much freedom do you like in your games? Do you prefer linear narrative with set characters, or would you prefer it more if you could make your own character and your own story in a set world? Or do you enjoy something in between? Let's hear your opinions!
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
There are times when I've enjoyed games that allow a large amount of roaming. But I think I enjoy them despite this quality, not because of it. Freedom holds no intrinsic value to me. Sandbox games aren't fun for me to play. A literal sandbox isn't even a game at all - it's a toy. There is no goal, no structure, so the only fun is what you can make on your own. Even if I hadn't graduated from toys to games when I was about 6, that's not a good model for a video game. If I'm playing a game I bought, or even downloaded, it had better create some fun for me, not tell me to come up with my own.
If open-endedness enhances your story, if it makes the challenges become more fun or more balanced, then go for it. But in many games it does the opposite. The story becomes necessarily less dramatic because the player can opt out of any part of it, and the player's progression of both strength and skill becomes extremely hard for the designer to predict.
There's a minimum amount of openness that is required to make your game feel like an RPG at all, I realize. When you play a game like Final Fantasy 13, where even exploration within each dungeon has been removed, it's so linear that there's almost no way to become more powerful. But to me that's actually okay. The ability to overpower all the challenges in the game by button mashing for hours beforehand until I'm invincible was never high on my list of my favorite aspects of RPGs. The linearity doesn't bother me at all, and from a challenge-designing perspective, it serves a very important role. It makes sure all the challenges actually match your strength. (You can do this with scaling enemies or a few other ways, but I don't see the point when linearity is so much easier and benefits the story too.)
If open-endedness enhances your story, if it makes the challenges become more fun or more balanced, then go for it. But in many games it does the opposite. The story becomes necessarily less dramatic because the player can opt out of any part of it, and the player's progression of both strength and skill becomes extremely hard for the designer to predict.
There's a minimum amount of openness that is required to make your game feel like an RPG at all, I realize. When you play a game like Final Fantasy 13, where even exploration within each dungeon has been removed, it's so linear that there's almost no way to become more powerful. But to me that's actually okay. The ability to overpower all the challenges in the game by button mashing for hours beforehand until I'm invincible was never high on my list of my favorite aspects of RPGs. The linearity doesn't bother me at all, and from a challenge-designing perspective, it serves a very important role. It makes sure all the challenges actually match your strength. (You can do this with scaling enemies or a few other ways, but I don't see the point when linearity is so much easier and benefits the story too.)
Shinan
4314
I enjoy openness a lot. Creating a narrative out of games that really don't have them built in. Especially in strategy games when you see your city/civilization/nation/dwarf fortree grow out of humble beginnings and survive invasions/famine/magma men and as you do that a kind of story grows out of it. I played Empire Total War and decided on a whim that "Catholics. Damn they suck" so I took my protestant country on a personal holy war converting countries left and right to the true faith and it was a lovely personal narrative that the game probably didn't really support.
Of course I don't have anything against linear storytelling either. Especially in action games where I basically go from one level to the next kicking ass then I don't really care if Gordon Freeman doesn't get to do this'n'that or that Max Payne just goes around a linear corridor in slow motion mowing down badguys.
Of course it helps if I enjoy the story.
Actually it's the combinations that generally are the ones I get annoyed at. Those that fake freedom but every choice is really the same. But even there there are those I rather like. I mean take GTA. That's a linear sandbox game. Faking freedom by allowing you to cruise around a town between missions but where the missions are painfully linear (often to a point where it is impossible to kill characters in missions you are supposed to assassinate characters in until the mission states it is possible)...
Wait... That's actually the combination I get annoyed at. Even though I rather like playing GTA the linearity of missions really are a pain in the ass. Similarily you take a game like Baldur's Gate that seemingly has plenty of options (a fairly open map at the start even) but nearly every encounter in the game leads to the same end result. And usually making it painfully obvious too.
I haven't finished it yet but a game like STALKER seems to do it pretty well. The story-missions are there and are probably fairly linear. But the everchanging nature of the game (where factions move in and out and things happen around you all the time) means that unlike GTA where a car is scripted to come out of that side road in STALKER it isn't really that scripted and you can prepare for a mission in a completely different way.
Of course I don't have anything against linear storytelling either. Especially in action games where I basically go from one level to the next kicking ass then I don't really care if Gordon Freeman doesn't get to do this'n'that or that Max Payne just goes around a linear corridor in slow motion mowing down badguys.
Of course it helps if I enjoy the story.
Actually it's the combinations that generally are the ones I get annoyed at. Those that fake freedom but every choice is really the same. But even there there are those I rather like. I mean take GTA. That's a linear sandbox game. Faking freedom by allowing you to cruise around a town between missions but where the missions are painfully linear (often to a point where it is impossible to kill characters in missions you are supposed to assassinate characters in until the mission states it is possible)...
Wait... That's actually the combination I get annoyed at. Even though I rather like playing GTA the linearity of missions really are a pain in the ass. Similarily you take a game like Baldur's Gate that seemingly has plenty of options (a fairly open map at the start even) but nearly every encounter in the game leads to the same end result. And usually making it painfully obvious too.
I haven't finished it yet but a game like STALKER seems to do it pretty well. The story-missions are there and are probably fairly linear. But the everchanging nature of the game (where factions move in and out and things happen around you all the time) means that unlike GTA where a car is scripted to come out of that side road in STALKER it isn't really that scripted and you can prepare for a mission in a completely different way.
Freedom is good if there is a point to it. Having a giant world with little to do is pointless. Generally I like a linear story with plenty of sidequests and treasures to do/find.
Hoddmimir
200
author=Peaceful_Chaos
Freedom is good if there is a point to it. Having a giant world with little to do is pointless. Generally I like a linear story with plenty of sidequests and treasures to do/find.
Agree. With the addition that I like multi-path linear. Give me the occasional choice and I'm happy.
Emanzi
168
I love sandbox games like Fallout, G.T.A:SanAndreas, Yume Nikki e.t.c where you can basically explore a large world already open to you with a simple goal like vengeance or to collect 24 effects, the rest is up to you how you reach your goal. It would be more interesting if also you can choose which quests to take ( e.g one forgoes the other like if its contradictory ) thus who's side to pick, what you look like ( full customization ) your class/stats e.t.c all in the free roam sandbox where the illusion of limitless possibilities seem real.
I also don't mind linear plots as long as their is some degree of customization and an interesting plot.
Note: Sandbox games take the longest to play and make.
I also don't mind linear plots as long as their is some degree of customization and an interesting plot.
Note: Sandbox games take the longest to play and make.
Radnen
1806
author=Emanzi
Note: Sandbox games take the longest to play and make.
True that. Skyrim took several years, but will be a very epic open ended game. They finally have some memorable (geological) features in it, which I think most Sandbox games lack like GTA, or Fallout.
Many other linear games always had memorable characters and places. So heres hoping we see more of this in sandbox games.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=EmanziAren't those two things mutually exclusive? Either the gameplay-hours-to-development-hours ratio is highest, or it's lowest. It can't be both.
Sandbox games take the longest to play and make.
I would definitely say it's lowest. Which is to say, you get less gameplay time for the same amount of development time. Making an hour of gameplay takes several times as much development time if you have to include lots of options instead of just one. You have to create hundreds of hours worth of gameplay but the player will only experience a miniscule fraction of that. It always seemed like a waste of development time, considering how many people actually dislike open-endedness.
It's not like if you did something, you couldn't do some thing. Take yume nikki as he cited, for example. You'll eventually have to take all the... The thingies of wich the name I had forgotten. anyways, you eventually had to complete about ~80% of the game (not quite sure, so ling since I last played it) to finish it. The sandboxness lies in that you can do stuff in the order you want, but not necessarily take only the paths you want. I mean, not like "you have 5 places to go wich can help on the progress, once you cross one of them, you can't cross the others.". Of course, this kind of thing helps on the replay value, tough.
As an internet discussion carries on, the probability that a reference to Hitler, the Nazis, or the Third Reich approaches 1. Once that threshold has been reached, the discussion is deemed over and the thread is abandoned.
author=Chaosbahamut123
As an internet discussion carries on, the probability that a reference to Hitler, the Nazis, or the Third Reich approaches 1. Once that threshold has been reached, the discussion is deemed over and the thread is abandoned.
DANG I just referenced it in the other thread right there. >3>;
Drakonais
2787
I don't know if someone having Hitler in their name counts as a reference. It's like he's a walking thread-derailer.
Perhaps people like choices less than freedom. A choice of what to do. Where as freedom... you don't have to do anything.
ariedonus
41
author=LockeZauthor=EmanziAren't those two things mutually exclusive? Either the gameplay-hours-to-development-hours ratio is highest, or it's lowest. It can't be both.
Sandbox games take the longest to play and make.
I would definitely say it's lowest. Which is to say, you get less gameplay time for the same amount of development time. Making an hour of gameplay takes several times as much development time if you have to include lots of options instead of just one.
Notch and his gem Minecraft would like to have a talk to you, good sir. :]
I know you are probably referring to more "traditional" sandbox games that others have stated, but it does show that a game made in a (relatively) short development time can create a lot of gameplay time. Although Notch has seemed to start being lazy and not updating the game as frequently as he could, the framework of what is there already provides endless gameplay that won't easily bore you.
To respond to the OP's prompt, I have to be in a certain mood for the types of games where you have a ridiculous amount of freedom. Although I have probably explored every corner of the D.C. Wasteland in Fallout 3, sometimes those types of games are really daunting due to the sheer amount of stuff you can do. When you're somewhat of a completionist, this effect is multiplied (at least for me). When I get back from a long day at work, trying to juggle 20 different sidequests can be a bother.
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