The State of Open World Games, Your Thoughts?

^What this guy said. A stronger A.I. and if they can figure a way to get us away from character controlling and back "Role" playing our RPGs then an open world can be more immersive.

They are advancing.

Open World games are games I kind of love and hate, it would require a ton of ai to make an open World also feel "alive" enough to be what I would consider worthwhile.

And they have flaws. The advantage of an open World game, should be that you as the player decides where to go, how to tackle problems and in what order to do what you set out to do.

But most of the time, the missions are quite linier, making it all a big hub for mission selection, and then a jerky transition to a very confined Space with a very direct and guided way of solving what you came to do. Often restarting if you go out of bounds, and often only with a single solution. This is a no no. It undermines all pretense of freedom.

Story also takes a disjointed hit, with something aperrently being urgent in the game, but allowing you to slug around for hours on end before the story continues.

So that disjointed nature would have to go.

in adition to the before mentioned improved ai, NPCs inhabiting the World, needs to have a wider moveset, and instruction table, instead of a game like I:SS where everyone and thier dog walks around drinking coffe, and having Little else to do. It would also have to be reactive, and not with the same result, if a carcrash happens, some people should run, some take out thier phones and record (or investigate) some come poking with a stick and such.

In most open World games having an ai that acts and reacts even if you are not there, would be beneficial, so you could make ripples throughout the gameworld, and have the World react to the story and state, if food becomes in short supply, the people should begin to riot or worse.

As of now none of the above is truely there, but they have advanced a great deal from the GTA 3 days. Open World games main issue is the lack of reaction to th eplayer, making them feel Cold and void. Empty.

@jasonredemption: my thoughts on the state of open world games? They need more explosions, more explosives(handfrags, c4, and 1 airstrike if you're lucky... Pffft!), and more skyscrapers exploding in more dynamic ways.

Mercenaries 3, I'm still waiting patiently for you.

Open-world games, which are done right, can be an amazing experience... but I often find that a lot of them are filled with mundane tasks such as fetch-quests, which totally ruin them for me.

So you want more destruction? You want the ability to change the landscape based on your actions? (aka blow up building or blow up mountain)

@jasonredemption: cratering would be nice, but isn't wholly necessary. In talking about the kind of destruction where I can carpet bomb four city blocks and watch as the buildings that make up those blocks all collapse in a unique fashion, completely independently of one another based on where the bombs hit and the resulting damage to the support structure of each independent building.

I want to watch as half of a building sloughs off and crashes to the ground, followed by the remaining half doing over flatly and smashing apart when it claps down onto the asphalt below.

PICK UP THE PACE. Why are all these games so slow? Got GTAV and so far it is like watching paint dry.

@Heirren

Its probably all the padding... The fact is many games don't actually know how to utilize all that space. They think just because the map is really big then the game should be longer, so yeah, it can drag on for quite a while

I haven't given up on gta quite yet. I thought the opening mission/lesson had a great vibe to it. What I will say is that AT THIS POINT of a few missions in on GTA, Watchdogs has more interesting concepts/play--it does stealth quite well.

I have expressed my disappointment with the lack of real progression being present the mechanics in GTA V. In terms of the console installments, IV's cover system felt like a breath of fresh air to me. Hell, I expressed a lot of ideas similar to yours, and while I know everyone will probably disagree with me, I think that a serious story like 4's would move the franchise along.

Also, I really hate to say it, and I do not blame anyone for lashing out at me, but I do not even believe that Rockstar really cares about adding a lot of depth to the gameplay right now. It appears to me that GTA is designed to be something that most people can pick up and play just to have fun. Granted, I know that fun is the whole point, especially due to its open world design that lets the player do almost anything, but.....there has to be more to it

@Jimmy_Russell

"I think developers could imagine and build new tools for the players to create their own fun ways of playing their game."

Or they can let them create their own games entirely.

@Jimmy_Russell

I wouldn't encourage that.... Players are more like to exploit the game. Probing it from every angle until they find an exploit. I prefer they create their own games than to let them create their own way to play.