I'm sick of Open-World games.

[Noo]

Seems like every game is open world now. I'm sure they're great games but I just can't stand playing them. I don't know what is it about them that I just find horrendously boring and just can't commit the time to play it through. Every open world game i've try feels like a virtual walking simulator where you're wasting most of your time getting from place to another. In between the time wasted from A to B, you're getting sidetracked with stupid mini quests.

By the time I got through some stupid side quest, I'm like WTF am I supposed to do again (main objective wise)?

So far I've try playing:
Far Cry 4
Metal Gear Solid 5
Witcher 3
Firewatch

EVERY single freaking game is Open World now and I have 0 interest in them.

GTA 5
Far Cry Primal
The Division
Fall out 4
Skyrim

I don't mind playing games like Tomb Raider and I've sunk 100+ hours into Bloodborne and loves it so...it's not because i'm not patience or don't have the time to play.

 

[BoberFett]

Thank you for your opinion. I happen to hate games on rails, where there's only one path to the goal. So fortunately for me, lots of people like open world games, and they'll continue to be made.

 

[Markbnj]

No mystery here. Some people derive enjoyment from passive immersion in a story, while others seem to get it primarily from being put into a world with no actual consequences, and being left to do more or less what they will. I'm one of the latter, but I don't find the former weird or mysterious. Movies, books, plays, they are all the same thing.

 

[motsm]

I agree, nearly every open world game I have played is quantity over quality. They focus on stretching out the game world to such an absurd degree, that missions devolve into nothing but filler and environments end up cloned from a minuscule grab bag of prefabricated pieces. I put Bethesda at the forefront of this issue, as they popularized it in the 90's. Back then however, things actually moved forward, as Morrowind shrunk things down in order to really define the world. The Gothic series as well, had some amazingly varied and obviously thought out environments. We have seen things devolved back to the Daggerfall mentality however, and everyone is just seeing how much copy pasta they can get away with, in a race to the biggest and least interesting land mass that can be digitized.

There are a few exceptions I'm sure, the GTA series for one, while I haven't played the latest entry, seems to get past some of these issues. I guess that's a benefit of their massive budget.

Thank you for your opinion. I happen to hate games on rails, where there's only one path to the goal. So fortunately for me, lots of people like open world games, and they'll continue to be made.

On rails isn't the only alternative to an open world, that would just be a straw man argument.

 

[Midwayman]

Open world seems to be an excuse for having a weak plot these days. "Lets just give them so much trivial crap they won't notice there isn't a story!"

 

[BoberFett]

On rails isn't the only alternative to an open world, that would just be a straw man argument.

And what would that alternative be? If it's not open, then aren't you forced down a specific path?

 

[balloonshark]

Open world seems to be an excuse for having a weak plot these days. "Lets just give them so much trivial crap they won't notice there isn't a story!"

I thought that was the point of multi-player games.

 

[Midwayman]

I thought that was the point of multi-player games.

Open world games are basically MMOs, without the MMO part. Seriously you could drop in multiplayer like that and they would hardly have to change a thing.

 

[magomago]

Seems like every game is open world now. I'm sure they're great games but I just can't stand playing them. I don't know what is it about them that I just find horrendously boring and just can't commit the time to play it through. Every open world game i've try feels like a virtual walking simulator where you're wasting most of your time getting from place to another. In between the time wasted from A to B, you're getting sidetracked with stupid mini quests.

By the time I got through some stupid side quest, I'm like WTF am I supposed to do again (main objective wise)?

So far I've try playing:
Far Cry 4
Metal Gear Solid 5
Witcher 3
Firewatch

EVERY single freaking game is Open World now and I have 0 interest in them.

GTA 5
Far Cry Primal
The Division
Fall out 4
Skyrim

I don't mind playing games like Tomb Raider and I've sunk 100+ hours into Bloodborne and loves it so...it's not because i'm not patience or don't have the time to play.

(1) GTA/Skyrim have very clear stories to follow - you can deviate to your desire, but the story is there. GTA moreso than Skyrim, but I have not got lost yet in Skyrim thinking "What do I need to do next".

(2) Never played rest, but I agree with the sentiment that overdoing it is bad.

It comes down to how tightly a story is weaved, and how well a world is created. I like both styles, but I hate both of them done poorly.
If a linear game relies on a bad story and poor design, its too obvious that you are walking down a hallway.
At the same time if the open world is so generic that there very few elements of good design, then its also obvious that you are wasting your time.

WOW does an open world well - only after hundreds of hours do you realize its not that fun killing kobloids. But their open world was so well designed that it was fun for the first hundred hours as you kept rerolling characters.

 

[TechBoyJK]

FC Primal is great, imho. I like their formula and hope they make 10 more.

A Far Cry based on American Indians would be great.

 

[JSt0rm]

deus ex series is a nice mix of rails/open world.

 

[videogames101]

I agree.

 

[Zenoth]

You don't have to do side quests. There are main story arcs in those open world games that you can focus on if you so desire. In Skyrim, nothing and nobody is forcing you to get lost in the open world only to end up forgetting what you were "supposed" to do, the exact same applies to all open world games. Obviously, if you don't explore them, you'll miss on a lot. If you think that the rest, beyond the main story quests, is a waste of time, then don't do it.

I'm just being honest, and maybe blunt, but it's the truth. Stop making it complicated for you, only to blame it on the open world nature of the game itself. If you want a straightforward game, it is there for you, follow the main missions, ignore the rest, complete the game, look at the credits, call it a night, uninstall, and voila, you finished the game. Simple huh?

 

[motsm]

And what would that alternative be? If it's not open, then aren't you forced down a specific path?

Many games feature exploration and multiple paths to objectives, optional or otherwise, without being fully open world. Games like Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout 1 & 2, Temple of Elemental Evil, Dark Souls, Shadow Man, Mass Effect, The Witcher 1 & 2, Jagged Alliance, and many more are based around large open levels that are connected through various travel systems. This offers free exploration of a game world, but with structured level design that is focused, content rich, and meaningful.

Then you have games that are more linear in level order, but the levels are large, freely explorable and may have multiple objectives like Thief 1 & 2, Hitman, Undying, Ghost Recon / Advanced Warfighter, Crysis, Splinter Cell, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Bioshock, Legend of Grimrock, etc.

As I said before though, there are a handful of open world games that don't fall into the trap of being vast fields of nothingness, it's just very rare, and getting rarer now that more and more game series are going open world. To me, it's a simple matter of developers being stretched too thin. It keeps working through, so I guess gamers are just all size queens.

You don't have to do side quests. There are main story arcs in those open world games that you can focus on if you so desire. In Skyrim, nothing and nobody is forcing you to get lost in the open world only to end up forgetting what you were "supposed" to do, the exact same applies to all open world games. Obviously, if you don't explore them, you'll miss on a lot. If you think that the rest, beyond the main story quests, is a waste of time, then don't do it.

I'm just being honest, and maybe blunt, but it's the truth. Stop making it complicated for you, only to blame it on the open world nature of the game itself. If you want a straightforward game, it is there for you, follow the main missions, ignore the rest, complete the game, look at the credits, call it a night, uninstall, and voila, you finished the game. Simple huh?

It's not that simple. The level design, balance, content, and care of item and enemy placement within the main levels of an open world game, are just a fraction of the games budget and the developers time. Games that forgo the open world on the other hand, have 100% of the budget and dev time going into the main missions, and if you ask me, it makes all the difference.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I prefer open world games. I dont need someone to hold my hand through the game.

 

[BoberFett]

Many games feature exploration and multiple paths to objectives, optional or otherwise, without being fully open world. Games like Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout 1 & 2, Temple of Elemental Evil, Dark Souls, Shadow Man, Mass Effect, The Witcher 1 & 2, Jagged Alliance, and many more are based around large open levels that are connected through various travel systems. This offers free exploration of a game world, but with structured level design that is focused, content rich, and meaningful.

Then you have games that are more linear in level order, but the levels are large, freely explorable and may have multiple objectives like Thief 1 & 2, Hitman, Undying, Ghost Recon / Advanced Warfighter, Crysis, Splinter Cell, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Bioshock, Legend of Grimrock, etc.

As I said before though, there are a handful of open world games that don't fall into the trap of being vast fields of nothingness, it's just very rare, and getting rarer now that more and more game series are going open world. To me, it's a simple matter of developers being stretched too thin. It keeps working through, so I guess gamers are just all size queens.

I'm not sure which generation of those games you're talking about, but a bunch of the games you listed are very linear. Ghost Recon? Splinter Cell? Hitman? Mass Effect? I don't consider the choice to kill someone with a knife vs a gun, or moving through a building upstairs vs downstairs to be all that large of an option. They're still small levels, with relatively concrete goals designed to usher you from one level of the game to the next.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Not all the time, but sometimes I get distracted by so many side quests or random things to do that I get bored of the world before I even do the story. The are a few exceptions like GTA because of the satire. If it wasn't for that I'd be as bored as I get walking through the woods in Elder Scrolls for the millionth time. I suppose it's often why I ignore a lot of the side stuff in most open world games. I want to see the story before I get bored of it. A lot of it may depend on how much I like the characters and the variety. I did almost every side quest in The Witcher 3 (not smuggler caches but the actual quests from NPCs) because their story was always well done and well voiced. I also liked that there wasn't only one result for many of them and I could cause a negative outcome if I overlooked a detail. Or I had multiple ways to handle it and it made an impact on the world in some way at times. So I guess for me it depends on the world created by the game. In a game like Elder Scrolls where they use the same voice actor for a hundred different characters and the characters are stiff and boring I will probably get bored of it more quickly. I also got bored of the repetitious nature of Far Cry 3 & 4.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I know exactly where OP is coming from. I've commented on this before. I want to like open world games, and for a time the exploration is cool, but I get drug down in quests and lose my purpose, or might not come back to it for weeks and forget what I was doing, etc. I need a driving story and in most cases "good, driving purpose filling story" is not synonymous with "open world game".

I remember when Daggerfall first came out I was so anxious to get it. Really walking all that distance in a computer land! All those locations! Yea..it was cool for awhile because it was new but even then it was just too much work They've gotten better (and smaller).

 

[Igo69]

If you don't like open world don't play I think most of them are fun.

I bet Doom 5 will be open world lol.

 

[motsm]

I'm not sure which generation of those games you're talking about, but a bunch of the games you listed are very linear. Ghost Recon? Splinter Cell? Hitman? Mass Effect? I don't consider the choice to kill someone with a knife vs a gun, or moving through a building upstairs vs downstairs to be all that large of an option. They're still small levels, with relatively concrete goals designed to usher you from one level of the game to the next.

I described both lists in my post, so you can see how I described the second bunch.

Of course the levels aren't as open as a completely open world game, but my entire point was that open world games have basically non existent level design. Just computer generated height map terrain with procedural foliage arbitrarily spewed all over it. Maybe you have 15 different quests you can choose to complete, but when they all look and play the same, is that really adding options? The structures may have a handful of variations, but once you've seen each type, the rest are just clones. I don't care to argue about it, I just think the vast majority of open world games are complete garbage. The select few that put real thought into the game world and avoid filler, I have no problem with.

 

[Noo]

If you don't like open world don't play I think most of them are fun.

I bet Doom 5 will be open world lol.

I try them because they're all top rated games. And with all of them, I got tired of it after an hour or so. Can't say that I hate open world because I haven't try the games, I did try them.

It just feel like a walking simulator where developers waste so much time in making the game pretty. Players end up wasting so much time walking and being "immersed" in the environment/world. Almost every game that's coming out is open world including "kingdom comes" and final fantasy 15, ugh I love final fantasy 3, 7 & chrono triggers but I'm definitely not looking forward for ff15.

 

[Elixer]

It just feel like a walking simulator where developers waste so much time in making the game pretty. Players end up wasting so much time walking and being "immersed" in the environment/world.

Being hand-held on the path to go, and having invisible walls blocking your path is better?
Those are the most annoying things in any game.

It just sounds like that immersive FPS games aren't your thing.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Open world rpg's is probably my favourite genre so the more the merrier.

 

[biostud]

I don't like open world games either. Personally I would like more games to be driven like the x-com series (or the original syndicate). Have a main base where you can do research into new weapons/armor etc. and choose from a variety of missions that will advance the game in the order you prefer. Have a main story line and side quests, where you don't have to waste a lot of time running around in the wilderness picking up herbs.

 

[sweenish]

This thread is oddly hostile toward OP.

There are times where I want to wander, and times I want to be part of a great story. The two rarely mix.

And is there seriously someone who thinks if it's not open world, it's on rails? You're either working with skewed definitions, or just being a bit ignorant.

Diablo 3, Bastion, Dishonered, Deus Ex (new ones), Mass Effect, a lot of JRPGs, etc. don't clearly fit into either designation by most peoples' definitions.

I consider Telltale games to be on rails. I consider GTA and its ilk open world. There's lots of room in between that doesn't really fit into either category. Game classifications have become far less black and white, especially over the last decade or so.