In last gen, linear games were hated, in this gen open world games are hated. why is that?

Hello friends,

So one thing i notice nowadays. whenever any open world games announced people are like "meh another open world game with crafting and vehicles, pass". it make me think of last gen the exact same reaction of people was "meh another linear FPS".

back then people praised open world games like best thing ever. even criticize games for going linear and call them dumbed down (see Crysis 2 which was dumbed down for different reason. not because going linear).

nowadays linear games are becoming best thing ever and open world games are getting hated. why the role are reversed so fast?

lets discuss

Over saturation..

The problem isn't the genre, it's how lazy and derivative they are.

BOTW highlighted how creatively bankrupt the competitors are, as Nintendo tend to do with everything they attempt.

Bethesda can't even be arsed putting ladders in games and release buggy shit and critics clap like happy little seals.

It's disgusting. Gamers are to blame also, having a spinal cord I stopped buying Bethesda titles simply because I was told "these games are good". Other gamers lack this dignity.

during last gen, skyrim was hailed as greatest thing ever due to "teh open worldz" but in this gen even highly praised games like RDR2 getting criticized.

thats how table turn. most people today want linear games and missing linear shooters.

Na, alot of gamers (heroes) called it shit. While the press gave it 96%.

Alot of what makes this game good comes from the community using it as a jump-pad for modding than the game itself.

Open world is plagued with monotonous busy work under guise of content. This can be found even in the highly praised ones. Couple this with inconsistent pacing and structure. This doesn't mean all open world games are trash just that the expectation of having to do stuff for stuff and time sake lingers in the back of gamers mind. I reach to a point when I hear "n times bigger than" I cringe.

Open worlds where hyped out of proportions and the people now finally realise that it takes more than empty worlds to make good games!!!

They also realise that "freedom" and "good stories" are not necessarily the ultimate combination.

And no one is missing shooters being it linear or not :p //Dullness & boredom, who wants these!!!

gamers now realized that most open world game are crap,

it was not case last gen. remember when AC2 praised as best thing ever. now AC games or far cry games are hated. RDR1 was so praised yet RDR2 which looks better in every way also criticized alot here.

thats why Doom and Doom Eternal saved gaming this gen.

lot of people missed games like Max Payne as every game nowadays is open world

Lol you were quick on this one, Not even the time to correct my post :/

Being open world means nothing quality wise...It's like a new fashion, seems to me, more than real progress.

I've always favoured good stories over the "freedom" of so called open worlds!!!!

Boy, you sure showed everyone else in the world.

Keep up the good work, internet person.

He is right though.

He is right.

zelda is chidlish game. and now becoming just another open world game.

It's just a matter of what we see more often. There were a lot of linear games last gen. There are a lot of open world games this gen.

I like the change though. I really enjoy the "open-linear" design that traditionally linear games are taking. It allows for more gameplay flexibility while maintaining the same benefits of linearity.

A game with a good story AND complete game-play freedom are indeed the ultimate combination. The problem isn't that ideal. The problem is that developers rarely get that mix anywhere close to right, and are more likely to fill an open world game with a bunch of redundant tasks (which I actually consider OK, just so long as you aren't forced to do them too much in order to finish the game the way you want).

I think Rockstar pretty much nails this now, polished games with tons of stuff to do. The only real legit complaint I see is that sometimes the travel and inane conversations can be a grind if you aren't into the story or are replaying the game. Ubisoft open worlds are mostly OK too, but they are probably the ones most guilty of creating this over-saturation.

That being said, quality well done linear games like Doom make me still appreciate that style of game too. Not absolutely everything has to be open world, but even if you are doing linear the path shouldn't just be 100% defined.

There's too many, shallow time wastes with padded cookie cutter content designed to draw a game out. I miss days when games could be beat in 5-10 or 10-20 hours, not these 40-100 hour commitments. I rarely replay these lengthy current gen titles that are big time commitments. Whereas shorter games I will replay again and again.

This was sparked by gamers complaining that games are too short as if every game needs to be 30-40hrs long on the first play through. Now, the market hours of play time in games which as you have state is nothing but shallow time wasting to pad the games length.

Mass production, industries tend to take the cheapest example as the norm and then milk it to death. Most open world games nowadays basically use the Ubisoft template of making a few generic missions and then copy paste them like 50 times all around the map, basically the collectathon concept but instead of finding objects/items you find and complete generic missions.

During last gen. people were criticizing short games because they are not worth full price and on and on. but they worth far more than 100 hours boring open world RPGs.

perfect length is 10-15 hour long. by that we replay those games over and over again. while we barely beat open world games or uninstalled them after some hours.

It's not the genre that's the problem; it's the bad games.

Last gen was full of generic millitary FPS. this gen is full of mediocre open world games.

Basic truth.

Its because adults usually like to play short games cause they usually don't have time to play open world games which is usually long winded. Because of work, kids, more responsibility etc. I guess short games is easier to focus than open world games, especially shooter games where its just simple.

its good that this gen taught people that not all short games are bad or not all long games are good that many people complain last gen.

case in point. Max Payne 1 is 6 hour long game but one of the most intense game ever made. Far cry/assassins creed are 30 hour boring copy paste games or 100 hour RPG games get boring so soon because how bad gameplay is.

People knew this from the 8-bit era where games were typically 20 minutes long.

As I like to say, a good game is always too short, and a bad game is always too long. Even with all the responsibilities of adulthood weighing me down, I don't mind a lengthy, open-ended game as long as it's well-made and fun to play. I have several games like that that I enjoy coming back to again and again.

Yup. Plus no real difference in how the story and mission structures are utilized in these open-world games. Games like Just Cause reign high because they have a loopy story that can be largely disjointed, and yet the fun aspect still remains absolutely.

People calling BOTW just another open world game are nuts. There is no way any of you played it. Or you’re trolling. There aren’t too many times where an opinion can be wrong. This is one of those times

The very first response in this thread was the right answer.

I have and its just like other open world games, filled with busy work and big for the sake of being big.

Best answer I seen all day and I agree.

Because people mistook shallow gameplay as a product of linear game structure that would be saved by a more open world structure. Reality is they still kept making shallow games. Devil May Cry is as linear as you can get in terms of structure, it's a far far far deeper game than the parade of triple A tripe over this past decade.

You can make exceptional games using any type of structure, linear is a problem when the gameplay itself is linear.

Map sizes are 10 times bigger than last gen which makes the open worlds seem even more of a barren wasteland.

Poor mission/quest design. Making players travel 10 minutes across the damn map to start a mission is stupid as hell.

It’s not that open world games are bad it’s the fact so many games try to be open world.

Plus most of the worlds feel lifeless and boring.

Games at the extremes of both spectrums can be good. The issue is it's harder to pull off such a hardcore design philosophy well, so games that offer more of a blend tend to feel more balanced. Also, it just feels overly saturated and that starts to bug people

IDK, last gen the only open world games I remember were amazing. All those games you couldn't go down allys, always dreaming what it'd be like to walk into every room and see real people in there, never considering how fragmented it makes the game.

I still prefer Open World Non-Linear games over Linear games.

Too much of a good thing.

Seems like for a spell there, almost every AAA games was open-world in some way. It gets old, and is not suitable; I love pinatas and I honestly would not object to seeing them at birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, weddings, and so forth...but not funerals. Likewise, I don't need shooters to be open-world most of the time. Or even RPGs.

I would love to see more semi-open-world design. Medium-sized "zones" with a lot of detail, but they play more like levels than just one big open world. I think Dragon Age: Inquisition, despite it's flaws, had an impeccably designed game world with diversity, detail, and size.

Yup.

Open-world design is not inherently bad, it just doesn't always need to be there.

I think it's the over saturation that annoys everyone.

Don't really get what peoples problems are. There are good and bad implementations of both.

Bad games are bad, good games are good, it has nothing to do whether it's open world or not.

I still love open world games it will never get old to me as long as the games are good.

A lot of people are saps and will mock a concept by doing it in a really aggressive extremely terrible way that

doesn't honor the spirit of the idea...

They are almost uniformly Grammer teachers...

Too many of the same is boring.

Too many mario clones was bad

Too many COD clones was bad (unless you are @ghosts4ever who claims COD is the best series ever and BLOPS IIII is the best game of the gen)

Too many PUBG clones are bad

Too many GAAS games is bad

Too many open world games are bad

This basically sums it up.

Sure, it takes time for a genre to mature, but nowadays every second game is open-world. It's getting tedious.

People follow trends and expect each and every open world game to sell like hotcakes just because it's open world. What they fail to realize is that they're not innovating or paying attention to detail. Most copy and paste open world games are lacking a soul and are merely poor imitations of much better games. They fail to stand out and give you a checklist of repetitive mundane tasks to serve as "content" which bore people to tears