I don’t remember Fallout 4’s gameplay super well (I know I hated how they changed Luck/Critical Hits as well as the base/crafting building being something that was fun for the first play through and it kept me from enjoying future play throughs) but that sounds right, I think the gunplay was at least solid there. That’s all I really need, solid and enjoyable. I think Outer Worlds had some jank feeling shooting, as a counter point, but I could honestly be mis-remembering. That game was a good example of a “7 out of 10” game that I really wanted to like but boy was it really trying hard to be unlikable.
I’d suggest someone create an action CRPG without trash encounters. I’d love to see a game lean more into realism, where weather and hunger are bigger threats than random mobs. I’m not looking for a survival game–I don’t want base building or a huge crafting tree–but in any realistic real-life exploration, you’re just not going to have to fight very often. If you’re a small party transiting through hostile territory occupied by aggressive and armed enemies, you’ll either stay under the radar or die. There’s no realistic way to battle your way through a scenario like that.
The souls games provide an interesting approach to this, where there are no random encounters, every enemy is placed by hand, and any enemy that is killed stays dead permanently (until the player dies), so there’s not really any trash (though there are a ludicrous number of mobs.) But I could see having a game where exploration is the focus and combat is rare. A Plague Tale kind of does this, though it’s linear and not an open-world game, and it has more combat than you’d expect for protags who are a teenage girl and her younger brother walking through battlefields in Medieval France.
I really, really liked Miasmata’s approach to maps and orienteering, and I think something like that could be imported into a bigger budget game and polished up. Maps are an area where open-world games could really exercise creativity. Elden Ring has a hand-drawn map with very few icons. I’ve always wondered why more games didn’t use the approach of the original Thief game. All of the maps were sketches, i.e. bought intelligence, and were generally not totally reliable. Not having a map marker for the player’s location and requiring use of a compass and/or landmarks to navigate. I’m always surprised that climbing equipment has never been an exploration system in open-world games, and I could see mining/sapping equipment, snow travel, and pack animal equipment being viable equip/upgrade/crafting systems along with the more typical boat building and/or horse riding equipment.
The problem is a lack of verbs.
If you aren’t fighting monsters, talking to NPCs, or exploring, what are you doing? Tower of Hanoi puzzles? Yeah they got those, but they get old after zero Tower of Hanoi puzzles.
I just think “exploring” has a bunch of (ahem) unexplored subverbs: climbing, riding, pathfinding, orienteering, spelunking, taming, trailblazing, trespassing, mapmaking. If the problem is making a big world that is actually not terribly big so you have to slow down the player to make it seem bigger (which is what endless random combat achieves), why not just make exploration harder and more rewarding. Rewards could be better exploration equipment, great vistas, interesting lore, new locations, etc.
Do I want a climbing game in my Elder Scrolls? Meaning there’s actual gameplay in how you climb, your approach to a cliff face, or whatever? I don’t think I do, unless it’s completely optional like fishing in the new patch. Optional, I’m fine with it.
Same with all that other stuff. Do I want a pokemon-style collection/taming game in my Elder Scrolls? Not so much, but if they added it on the side like in World of Warcraft, I guess I wouldn’t be upset about it.
This is a problem common to lots of games, where the only verbs are “shoot” and “progress”. It’s hard to come up with stuff to do that people actually want. That’s why every goddamn game seems to have tower of hanoi, mirror lasers, or block pushing puzzles.
Sure, it wouldn’t be for everyone. But there are about 1000 open world games populated by random trash mobs, with a map stuffed with icons, and quests that all involve some combination of kill, fetch, and deliver. They mostly distinguish themselves by their visual and historical worldbuilding, characters, and/or combat. There’s been very little innovation in this space since GTA3.
GTA is the indisputed market leader in open-world side activities. You can drive an ambulance, taxi, (infamously) go bowling, etc. Question is how many people actually enjoy all that stuff versus the core gameplay loop. And I guess we can answer it-- anyone playing GTA online? How many people play it to go bowling?
I think attention paid to other kinds of systems than combat could be just as compelling as combat. It’s not an option that exists. There is no game with a deep climbing-based exploration system (though there are plenty with shallow ones.) There are very few games where navigation is forced on the player. It’s as if the only kind of difficulty that is acceptable in game design is combat difficulty. If you want the game to be harder, make combat harder. But damn, Kerbal Space Program is a hard game. It took me dozens of hours to be able to construct a rocket that could make it to the Mun. But there’s no combat in it. That kind of simulationism, which only exhibits itself in RPGs through combat systems, could be made to apply to other ones.
Actually GTA is probably a bad example. No one plays GTA games for the combat. There’s more satisfying activity variety in GTAV than in any other game in existence.
That’s why I picked it, if anything can be a walking advertisement for optional gameplay it’s GTA.
Well played ;)
The question is simply how do you make something like that interesting?
I thought the alchemy in Kingdom Come: Deliverance was interesting, for example. But a lot of people hated it, and it was definitely time consuming. Seems safe to say people don’t want alchemy like that in their Elder Scrolls. But could it be more interesting than it is now? Perhaps.
I liked “making” spells in Morrowind, but even that mechanic was pretty shallow.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some systems built in for magic and alchemy, but gotta make them interesting, and I don’t know how to do that.
Also, the thieves guild wasn’t bad in Skyrim, but that’s something I basically always think could be better.
Non-fighters should have systems to explore besides combat, is what I guess I’m saying.
Stealth is definitely a second pillar. My favorite parts of both Oblivion and Skyrim were the thieves’ guild and dark brotherhood questlines by far. But that wasn’t due to the stealthy gameplay, it was the writing.
GTA’s side quests, if I recall, were very varied. GTA 5 anyway. You might be racing dirt bikes, robbing banks, stealing helicopters, sky diving, running a weed business, etc. And, GTA has some of the best characters and writing in all of gaming. The entire series is nearly perfect satire of American culture. It’s simultaneously hilarious and thought provoking.
I literally do not remember the plots or any characters from a single Bethesda game. Except Patrick Stewart was the king in Oblivion. But, what his name was or why he mattered or how he played into the story I’ve totally forgotten. The most memorable Elder Scrolls character is the arrow in the knee meme.
GTA in a RPG thread. You fuckers!
Oh, I very much disagree. The Thieves’ Guild in Oblivion, with the artifact mask? In Skyrim you steal an Elder Scroll. Dark Bros in Skyrim, you assassinate the Emperor.
I like going to the “Role Playing” category in the Xbox app or Steam and roll my eyes at what they consider to be “role playing.”
It’s an open world game with various quest-lines featuring characters who have a variety of upgradable stats and skills. What makes Skyrim an RPG and not GTA?
GTA is absolutely a RPG. I think he was making a funny.
It’s more how the player character vs player interacts with the world.
GTA is, very obviously and overtly, an action game.