The Lost Art of Open Landscapes

donjn

Why do all the new releases seem to have designs where every square inch HAS to be occupied by something? Elder Scrolls Online had this issue and although Wildstar is better, it is still too busy. I know there is a ton of WoW hate but this is a good example of what I am talking about:

Where has this lost art gone of making a real world with large sections of emptiness gone? Now, I understand a lot of you might reply saying "whats the point"? I am talking about immersion. I might not climb that cliff in the distance, but man, seeing it as part of the barren landscape is exciting to me.

Of course, the undisputed king of this, is Lord of the Rings Online. You could walk for a long time and not see a thing:

So I ask you, is this a lost art? has the dynamic of MMO players changed and they need everything in their face to retain subscriptions? Are MMOs so mainstream now that you have to GRAB THEM! Now! No more take your time, enjoy the sights, everything is instant and in your face?

DamonVile

Probably because the people playing don't have the attention span to go more than a few feet at a time without killing something anymore.

VengeSunsoar

Because it would be interesting to see. .. once.

A waste of dev resources to make something no one will use.

Distopia

We can pretty much thank ourselves for this one, maybe not everyone individually but us as a whole for sure. WHen we rush through giving two shits for what's around us keeping our eyes only on a prize (be it xp or loot). Why would they bother?

Kuviski

I feel the OP managed to put into words what I've been struggling to realize: why zones feel so unorganic in some games.

Its interesting that in fact I thought LOTRO was a pretty bad game even when I played it, in some aspects at least, but I fondly look back at the design of it's world (most of it anyway), the way it looked and felt. Now thinking about it, I think you're right, it is openness, the fact every corner isn't filled with monsters or objects or buildings or whatever to the point of it all seeming very cramped, that makes the zones feel so alive and real.

Now, I don't know if its a lost art but certainly recent AAA games do seem to have lost it, seeing as I cannot really think of a good example of a zone designed in this way from any recent game - not one I would've liked at the very least.

Apraxis

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar
Because it would be interesting to see. .. once.

A waste of dev resources to make something no one will use.

That statement does have a point.. and on the other side it doesn't.

The problem is two fold, at least how i look at it.

1. Density of Areas. And more specific varying density. A World to feel alive, a World where you can easily immerse yourself have to have different Areas of density. Crowded City Areas, or Areas of Danger, cultivated land and so forth. But also Barren areas, huge forrests with low density.

2. Static game design.

If you combine both you get the problems we have today, and the problems a lot of games have.

Barren areas with static mob spawns are in most part huge part of useless, empty worlds and a few spots, where the mobs are. And therefore a lot of devs as VengeSunsoar suggested avoid it, and try to fill everything with content.. don't wasting time with space noone will use. But that leads to a overcrowded world, which really doesn't feel like one, and usally you have a hard time to immerse yourself.

Now if you change the static game design to a more dynamic game everything changes. What do i mean with it?

- Wandering Mobs, Hordes or herds of mobs(creatures, animals)

- Mobs with an Agenda. Animals looking for food. Creatures looking for Victims, or whatever creatures like to do

- Escalation cycle of Mobs. Untouched they become more and more and spread around. Attacked they may retreat to their homeland. Although Spawns bound on Groups of Mobs in some cases, or random spawns bound to a bigger area.

Then it becomes rather easy to design areas of varying density. And now all of the area becomes interesting, because Mobs are not always on the same place.. now you may have to hunt them, track them down. Or by passing by you get accidently in contact and danger. Now every space is useful, and with areas of varying density you can a lot easier immerse yourself into the world.

But that requires

a) more space overall

b) mob behavior AI. Storybricks comes to mind. Or anything like that.

c) better distribution of players. Not just one starting area. And even better a not linear progression path, or reduction of vertical progression, so there becomes more areas available for all players.

To reduce the problem of a) and make c) easier the following:

Example for reduction of vertical progression. You have basicly different difficult stages. Easy, Medium, Hard, Ultra Hard, etc.

For Noobs everything is at least Medium and above.

You level up, the medium areas become easy, hard becomes medium and so on.

At end level the lowest level should be still somewhat useful, but easy.. not a huge challenge. And you should still have medium, hard and ultra hard(group only) areas. If you reduce the power gap, the ascent of vertical progression it could be easily done.. and then more areas are available at any given time, and then it is easier to distribute players over those areas and are able to make varying degrees of density without rising the requirement of space extremely.

Some games in development try this, and we will see how it turns out. And some older games actually did it, though with some technical limitations it did not always worked out that well.

Just my 2 cent to the topic.

Dihoru

In a non-sandbox it is a waste of resources and often a player time trap.

 

What we need to really discuss in this thread: The Lost Art of Gamer critical thinking and reasoning.

Jemcrystal

Walking long distances and not running into jack shiz but trees is very very boring.  Copy and paste scenery makes it a kind of hell.  I hate the invisible wall.  Zones I don't mind so much if they help reduce lag.  Being able to fly is good it makes a world seem bigger.  For example I'm going to a non mmo.  Oblivion was boring because around the next corner there was... another tree.  Skyrim was not boring because around the next corner, between the trees, was something or someone you hadn't seen yet.  It's when the landscape becomes predictable and is easy to guess what's ahead that the world shrinks.  And for games with zones there needs to be a lot of zones or the world feels small.  If I can pass thru six zones and that covered the entire game you made your game to small.  The ability to fly so you can distance yourself and look at everything at once and never let the player bump into the invisible wall (esp while ocean swimming).  And yes the mob.  Always being at the same spot standing around chewing grass or bobbing is just yuck  - a bunch of animated pixels.  I have to work at pretending they're "real."  It would be nice to play a game for once where the mob seemed so real it scared me.  But a field of twenty creatures all performing the same repeat animations...

ShavaKa

Great point: Also, I would like to add that the MMO has been shaped into a market niche. The MMO today has to be a certain way in order to make a profit. MMO's are like a living social commercial. It isn't really about being a game anymore, but how much information you can grab from a player and at the same time offer them sparkly things that feed their greed maws.

The problem is: People can't stop buying crap content. So you get more crap content, you get more console gaming limited type features. Why? Because it's easier to be the same rather than be a game where you can do anything and potentially cripple other MMOs. This sort of looks to me as if these companies are all holding each others hands, one MMO goes down in subs but doesn't really loose any money because they are essentially the same company making money for each others content.

It's just easier to have 3 elements to an MMO: Raid, PVP,  Monotony. The rest is just sparklies that make money from being sparkly... Yeah.

I would love to see a real immersive MMO that includes the environment, politics, cultures and dynamic AI. Here's to hoping EQN will be that game.

Quizzical

Originally posted by Jemcrystal

And for games with zones there needs to be a lot of zones or the world feels small.  If I can pass thru six zones and that covered the entire game you made your game to small.

In order to have more zones, you need either:

a)  a larger budget, or

b)  each zone to be cheaper to make.

You can make zones more cheaply by making them smaller or by making them more similar to each other.  It's easy to have a million zones if they're all exactly identical to each other.  But that's not what you want, either.

TheQuietGamer

I agree; GW2 was the worst for this- you could not move an inch without being confronted with some trivial and tedious task.  It was irritating beyond belief.  

Sometimes I just want to go out and explore and see some pretty art, a nice landscape just for the sake of seeing it.  

Developers have become so preoccupied with distracting players with a constant onslaught of flashy 'challenges', that they forgot that we do not all suffer from ADHD and some people enjoy immersion.  

That said, I am enjoying Wildstar.  

 

Vermillion_Raventhal

It's because exploration is a dead aspect of the genre.  Its all about achievements every two steps.  New weapons and armor every 5 seconds.  New generic task popping all over.   

Loktofeit

Originally posted by donjn

Where has this lost art gone of making a real world with large sections of emptiness gone? 

It's not a lost art. It was bad design and wasted resources, so money went elsewhere. 

Of course, the undisputed king of this, is Lord of the Rings Online. You could walk for a long time and not see a thing:

Then the world-building tricks worked on you, as LOTRO was designed to make every inch worth visiting, avoiding large sections of emptiness.  

 

Apraxis

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Jemcrystal

And for games with zones there needs to be a lot of zones or the world feels small.  If I can pass thru six zones and that covered the entire game you made your game to small.

In order to have more zones, you need either:

a)  a larger budget, or

b)  each zone to be cheaper to make.

You can make zones more cheaply by making them smaller or by making them more similar to each other.  It's easy to have a million zones if they're all exactly identical to each other.  But that's not what you want, either.

It really depends. In the usual MMO, and MMO development that is exactly the case.

But with doing a lot of stuff prodecural generated, you can spare some time, and deliver with that a larger world. (it's some what your point b)). Though usually to deliver more quality and get rid of to much similarity or boring landscape you have to hand craft on top of the preset generated world.

Look at this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NWpdyQXzHw Interview + Trailer about No Man's Sky, which is basicly a complete universe prodecural generated.. though it is in development, and we don't know more about it than that trailer and a view interviews. I am personally really curious about that one.. even more about the technical, mathematical aspect of it. Because that project sound very ambitous, hell maybe even revolutionary.. though i like to hear more about it to base anything.. i am somewhat of a sceptic from time to time.

However, what i wanted to say.. you can have larger world with not really that much more work. BUT, you have to really want a very large world, because the work for making the engines to prodecural generate that stuff will take more time. The designing part of every map is just reduces. With other words it just worth if you actually go big. And if you go very big the handcrafted stuff on top of that can become very much work again. So it is maybe not the solution for everyone.. on the other side for basic terrain, or flora distribution (prodecural generation) it still helps a lot and reduces time a lot.

Sovrath

I agree with you OP.

I prefer a world where I can travel not have every square inch polluted with mobs and "stuff".

One of the reasons I really loved Vanguard. I would even say that Vanguard is better than LOTRO in that you can actually go into every building you see regardless of whether or not there is a quest associated with it.

Vermillion_Raventhal

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by donjn

Where has this lost art gone of making a real world with large sections of emptiness gone? 

It's not a lost art. It was bad design and wasted resources, so money went elsewhere. 

Of course, the undisputed king of this, is Lord of the Rings Online. You could walk for a long time and not see a thing:

Then the world-building tricks worked on you, as LOTRO was designed to make every inch worth visiting, avoiding large sections of emptiness.  

 

Depends on the game.  In a themepark maybe yes.  

Igguns

I like walking through the forest and hearing the leaves crunch under my feet.  This one time, in band camp, I stuck my flute in this hole in a tree and I got honey from it because there was a bee hive in it.

nariusseldon

Because most players don't want to walk 10 min before something interesting (to them) happens?

If i want to take a walk, i do it in the real world (and it is more healthy too). I don't play games to walk around.

 

Loktofeit

Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by donjn

Where has this lost art gone of making a real world with large sections of emptiness gone? 

It's not a lost art. It was bad design and wasted resources, so money went elsewhere. 

Of course, the undisputed king of this, is Lord of the Rings Online. You could walk for a long time and not see a thing:

Then the world-building tricks worked on you, as LOTRO was designed to make every inch worth visiting, avoiding large sections of emptiness.  

 

Depends on the game.  In a themepark maybe yes.  

Good point. 

Bladestrom

Where virtual worlds are concerned (themepark or sandbox) open landscapes are important in that they provide a sense of scale and opportunity for exploration. Also having conten crammed into every inch of a game simply becomes overwhelming, for e.g, how can you tell a story with great pacing if the player is dealing with a new activity every 10 steps.

Imagine exploring a beutiful unspoiled park with a great cafe placed with care in the grounds to avoid impacting the park - and then place a shop/cafe every 100 yards to serve every need. Your park just became a shopping mall.

Alders

My favorite zones in MMO's are always the desert zones that are wide open and typically flat.

The ones i hate the most are the ones where i'm surrounded by mountains that make me feel like i'm playing inside a miniature with artificial walls everywhere.

Saxx0n

No walls here, no zones. One vast open world. Vast qualifies as 5 to 6 hours to cross the world on foot.

 

edit - That's running not walking.

mogi67

Asheron's Call had the biggest area of any MMO i've played. So huge and spacious. 270 sq km of open world - no invisible walls - no loading - no nothing.  It's really easy to get around the world via portals but if you wanted to you could take an entire day to run across the continent..

 

I can't play most MMO's just because of the horrid world design and tiny zones. 

 

It's one of the things that made the game so alluring and mysterious, really. You would be out in a desert wasteland running for miles and then come across an ancient temple made of stone, or the ruined head of a giant statue half buried in the sand. It made the world feel so much more real

 

Loktofeit

Originally posted by mogi67

Asheron's Call had the biggest area of any MMO i've played. So huge and spacious. 270 sq km of open world - no invisible walls - no loading - no nothing.  It's really easy to get around the world via portals but if you wanted to you could take an entire day to run across the continent..

That worked in Asheron's Call because it was designed very differently from today's MMOs. The most significant difference was that mobs and player levels were no so locked together as they currently are. In most MMOs, from DAoC to today, if you try to fight something more than five levels above you, you're facing almost certain death. The way this plays into the terrain design is that such an open area would have to be very tiered in content, lending to a feeling of being multiple zones with within a zone. In the Direlands, you had no idea what you'd meet travelling between point A and point B. With such a zone in today's MMOs, you'd know that the minute you landed at the AB drop, there'd be mob X then mob Y then mob Z between you and town. Much of the vast world feel would get diluted in the predictability. 

While some might suggest that modern MMOs can easily solve that by having varied mob spawns... good luck with that. 

VengeSunsoar

I almost think we are talking about 2 different things here.

1.  A vast open place where there is very little in there.

2.  A place where there are little mobs.

and possible 3.  There is a huge entire world of difference between a place where not every single square inch has something to a vast open place with very little.

 

The first 2 are very different.  Someone talked about a vast forest with a little café.  The forest has trees, mountains, hills, animals, maybe some bandits.  I wouldn't call that vast open place, but it may not have a lot of mobs.  There is tons to explore

But in a vast open place where there is very little at all, there is very very little reason to go there.  No reason to explore, there is almost nothing there.  No mobs so no reason to fight, very little for crafting, so no reason to dig....

I absolutely do not agree with vast open places with very little there.  It's boring for the customer who may go there once, realize there is nothing there and never return and a waste of resources for the devs.

However a place with very little mobs to fight.  Sure, there are loads of other things to do.

Sovrath

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

I almost think we are talking about 2 different things here.

1.  A vast open place where there is very little in there.

2.  A place where there are little mobs.

and possible 3.  There is a huge entire world of difference between a place where not every single square inch has something to a vast open place with very little.

 

The first 2 are very different.  Someone talked about a vast forest with a little café.  The forest has trees, mountains, hills, animals, maybe some bandits.  I wouldn't call that vast open place, but it may not have a lot of mobs.  There is tons to explore

But in a vast open place where there is very little at all, there is very very little reason to go there.  No reason to explore, there is almost nothing there.  No mobs so no reason to fight, very little for crafting, so no reason to dig....

I absolutely do not agree with vast open places with very little there.  It's boring for the customer who may go there once, realize there is nothing there and never return and a waste of resources for the devs.

However a place with very little mobs to fight.  Sure, there are loads of other things to do.

What about a vast open place that, after traversing it, you find something to do at its end?

Or better yet, several somethings to do.

One explores to eventually find something, very true, but I feel it's ok to have those things to do more spread out yet each of those things be more meaningful. A large area could lead to a small area with several things to do and see and test and try.