>early 2010s began with people getting sick of so many RPGs railroading the player into linear hallways, like Xenosaga or FFXII
>now everyone's saying they're just plain exhausted with open worlds
So what's the best approach to level design for RPGs?
Dante Must Die mode: What's the best approach to level design for Indie RPGs?
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*or FFXIII
My bad. XII was the polar opposite.
Something inbetween Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring
FFXVI isn't an open world they said, but it's annoying they've not shown gameplay of how exploration works honestly.
I love both, but there are things like Xenoblade Chronicles that I don't want to go back and play, because although I loved it a lot, the MMO size and length of the gameplay is a b***h to go back to.
They showed some of it in the lore trailer, and also had footage of Chocobo riding in the last one.
what game is that in the screenshot? looks great
also, level design for rpgs should go the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. route, where the game itself actually takes you on a pretty linear path but the world you find in this path is extremely fun to walk through and you end up immersed in it.
It's FFXVI. Supposedly they're switching to open areas [not open world] with dedicated towns and dungeons.
Just do open world right, like Witcher 1 or Gothics did.
Wasn't Witcher 1 chapter-based, with no ability to backtrack after moving on?
Yes, which solves level scaling issues perfectly without any extra mechanics the devs will inevitably frick up.
I think you should be able to go back to early areas if there's a quest, [character from a small bumfrick village wants you to check on their sibling who moved to the big city] or to face a roaming superboss that two-shot you if you tried facing it, previously.
Maybe, but I don't trust modern devs to pull that off correctly.
So Star Ocean?
What about treating backtracking like some kind of new game plus and it kind of resets your progress in the area you came from so it's not free of consequence, I guess I am just assuming that new chapters have to be exclusively new areas
Yeah, something like that. And you can still have nice environments that way too.
this, but bit more in Gothic direction, where enemy's strength serves as natural barrier
frick it let's go back to dungeon crawling
just have actually interesting level design instead of walk down a hallway or isolated points of interest dotted over meaningless interstitial space
So what are some examples that other games can at least copy, if not use as inspiration?
souls games
any metroidvania type game
oracle of ages/time, probably other zelda games too but I haven't played many
That structure works for that particular setting, where literally everything went wrong, and you're just figuring out what happened, but what about ones with settings where everything hasn't gone to Hell yet, and can still have actual towns?
I mean, then you can have something like Dragon Age Origins, with hub areas, other areas you can travel too, some that unlock or disappear depending on what is happening in the story and your choices. Also, another point is that open world or not open, game needs to have something that interests you, like combat, environments, quests. And I think quests is harder to do in expansive open world games because there is just much more work to fill out all that world.
I would take less pointless exploration if the gameplay is fun, game is reactive to your choices and quests are good and aesthetics and areas are pretty to me.
I don't have time for open world shit these days especially when it's filled with boring quests. I guess just make semi open areas from time to time, not just corridors and that would be fine. That and multiple areas that you can skip and or they are optional depending on story choices you make.
Open world has always been a fricking meme. Yeah I love traversing a giant empty land and occasionally interacting with the environment every 5 minutes. Frick off.
I hated Xenoblade for this shit. So much of your time is spent just fricking running across an empty field.
So what should RPG level design look like?
>open worlds
I don't think it's been a problem with open worlds so much as empty worlds/pointlessly open worlds.
>So what's the best approach to level design for RPGs?
souls aka 3Dmetroidvania approach is the best, why don't more do it?
Wait, is that FF XVI? It's actually pretty good graphics-wise, I thought it looked like shit in the first trailer.
Is it actually going to have towns? Like, meaningful ones, not just two you can barely do anything in like XV.
Yup.
>now everyone's saying they're just plain exhausted with open worlds
Open worlds aren't the problem Ubishit open worlds are if I see a fricking tower to check something I uninstall
I still want open world single player games because I like them, I don’t fricking care about what the rest of you like. I hate playing with other people.
I mean, I like single player games too, but open vs not so open world is another matter.
Here’s the thing, open world games of the type you’re talking rendered in 4k at 60 fps requires exponential more assets and it’s just not possible for a game company to put that much man hours and money into a game people play once or twice, they need to have continual engagement (money) for it to make sense
Maybe, but there were games back then that filled this niche I'm talking about. That said, my problems with nu vidya goes deeper than open vs not so open world. I barely care to play most games in general. And in fact the same is true for most entertainment books and films/tv shows. I just listen to music, watch at art and make up my own fantasies. Somehow it tends to be more entertaining.
Which is why they're shit.
Tight well designed game experience > bloated ubishit grinding game with XP packs in a single player game
Hell, even Elden Ring fails to get people to do New Game+ whereas the same people went to New Game +9 in Dark Souls etc.
Open world games are still the most popular genre by far, because they appeal to our innate need for freedom and autonomy. They also play to the unique strengths of video games (as opposed to movies). People complaining about open worlds on message boards are the vocal minority. They're either contrarians or small brains.
Open world is good in theory but in practice they'll often railroad you just as hard in one way or another
only 3 games managed to make open world right.
fallout 1/2 and witcher 3.
>fallout 1/2
Those were more so almost like a SNES/PSX JRPG, with a world map and points of interest modeled to-scale.
I know most of you are too young but when Fallout 3 was released it was like a bomb dropped on gaming, it was really the first open world fps rpg and it was a big deal.
f3 was fun for the first 1-2 hours.
the moment i figured out 99% of the game is just walking in copy pasted mouse-maze corridors i almost alt+f4'd.
New Vegas, overall, at least for me. Not perfect, but still. Witcher 3 and 2 I can't stand because of the combat and I feel like all that random exploration is just bloat in 3, even if world is nice to look at. Witcher 1 was better.
What open world games can do well if they try is make nice environments and you can just walk around in them to relax, Skyrim is kind of that for me.
>millennial gamers want actual roleplay in their RPG
>zoomer gamers just like ‘number go up’
That’s all it says.
I prefer the hub design with fewer, more immersive-sim like levels instead of huge worlds nowadays. It makes it easier to sell the idea of a huge world when you don't actually need to make every since square meter of it.
That said, I don't think open world or linear games are necessarily bad, the problem is genre exhaustion due to every company wanting to cash in on a popular fad.
I think Witcher 1, and other games of the period with similar technical limitations, is indicative of the sweet spot between hallway simulators and open world garbage. A few densely packed, bespoke areas beats copy paste design with empty space everywhere. Both linear and open designs were a response to inflated AAA budgets and hardware of the time, no one has just made a good game with the tech now that it's matured.
Open world isn't a bad design, but to do it right, you have to put a lot more resources into the game than most developers have. It's easier to create a more satisfying experience without a open world. imo BotW and ER are some of the WORST games the Zelda games and Miyazaki's Fromsoft has put out and its due to the open world. GI is also trash outside of its model animations which are top-fricking-tier.
>Genshin fan outside of /gig/ who's not a complete shill or bootlicker
Surprising to see.
Halo CE figured this out over 2 decades ago.
Open room into linear hall into set piece into open room into linear hall into set piece into open hall into linear hall into set piece.
It is the perfect set up. Everyone likes it.
That's basically what Xenoblade does, but:
>fps
My friend keeps trying to get me to play this. Should I give in? I've basically ignored nintendo since the gamecube and now finally got a switch.
The solution isn't to remove, just to stop doing more of the same
For large-scale rpgs back in the day that had world maps, I'd say the XII/XVI approach is the best method. You cannot feasibly make an entire open world globe or country with modern visuals in a reasonable amount of time because of all of the optimization you would have to do, so having open zone areas that you can run around in would allow for much more varied environments that run a lot smoother, and the story can be fully realized more easily and quickly. XV really showed that you cannot have the best of both worlds without making severe compromises, so I would say the XVI devs made the right call.
I think Elden Ring does a pretty good job of bringing the retro JRPG world map into full-scale, but obviously at the cost of heavy asset reuse from their previous games and itself, as well as the typical FromSoft approach to storytelling which is that all the cool stuff already happened, and you only get to read about it.
Pretty hard to go wrong with, if you like super-long RPGs and can at least tolerate tab-target combat.
Set pieces that are self contained but offer a lot to explore
Nioh did it well
i can only tolerate open world games like subnautica that have handcrafted maps instead of procedurally generated ones
I like open worlds. I just feel like many games trivilize the open world component of by making travel too easy (whether its fast travel, or simply just making movement mechanics way too fast).
Like look at Morrowind. Very small world that felt huge because you were slow to travel, there were intraversable regions, and many areas had enemies simply too hard for you to fight. Now compare it with Forspoken. Much larger world, but your character moves around at Sonic speeds, and can climb anything. So right from the start the world just feels like an empty sandbox for you to zip around from collectable to collectable icon.