Proper map design in open world cRPGs

[Kliwer]

First you need to build a logical world, with farms, settlements and roads, because atleast to me a believable world adds much to immersion and atmosphere. The further you go from civilization the more consistently dangerous enemies should be, but always keeping some difficulty varied across the zones. Areas near settlements should be light on monsters and their difficulty (justified by military/adventurer patrols that get paid to keep that areas safe as possible) although you should place some high level monsters hidden here and there in order to keep player on his toes. I find it silly when there is a tomb of undead or a bandit lair sitting just by the busy road few hundred meters away from a major settlement. But you can always have some vampire hiding in a crypt, demon worshippers in a sewers or a minotaur wondering near a village etc.

That sounds like the description of Gothic 2.

 

[SmoothPimp]

I got a habit to explore as much as possible, so in DOS 1 I quickly ran into fiery high-level mobs of the first city and barely escaped the death of whole party. So really doesn't bother about mob level organization and directing to certain route in open-world.

Map should fit the game: historical period / speculative setting, lore, obstales etc. Of course maps should be well designed and painted.

By the way, in DOS 1 first city someone told me which regions outside the city are most dangerous. It's good game design, you usually get information which neighborrhod is dangerous fron other people / sources.

 

[mkultra]

One problem i have with many older games is how verticality is done, Morrowind was very lacking for example, e.g trees are perhaps twice as tall as the player, a mountain is typically perhaps 4x... This is obviously not a very "epic" or atmospheric scale and it's an odd thing to keep it that scaled down since this isn't something which impacts on performance, unless you also add tons of detail to it.

Another thing which i absolutely despise is when they remove the ability to fall down (like in Outward) since it's a good gameplay element that adds atmosphere and danger.
Same with diving and swimming, it's not truly open world if you can't dive or at the very least swim, you can't really "afford" to remove these elements in an open world game, it's not like they're known for being thick with stuff to do, this is much needed variety.

 

[whydoibother]

First you need to build a logical world, with farms, settlements and roads, because atleast to me a believable world adds much to immersion and atmosphere.

What do you mean, it ruins your immersion when a herb worth 2 months of food and lodging can be found under the bridge on the border of town, and literally glows at night?
How come it bothers you that riches and artefacts are just laying in a cave so close to town you could throw rocks at it from the inn window, and the enemies inside are weaker than the town's guards?

not todd

By the way, in DOS 1 first city someone told me which regions outside the city are most dangerous. It's good game design, you usually get information which neighborrhod is dangerous fron other people / sources.

The road to the city is a tutorial, the city is a hub, and the guards in the city tell you which gates lead to the harder "levels". The city as a level selection hub was well done, the issue is that the most fun and engaging quest, the murder mystery, starts immediately and the player wants to finish it. And its not really level appropriate to just do that quest, from start to finish, first. You should be doing it alongside others. That's my only issue with Act 1 of DOS1. Other than this problem, Act 1 is some of the best nu-CRPG level and world design.

Spoiler

And writing too, including the talking cat. Fuck the haters.

 

[Falksi]

Thought I'd chuck this into the mix. It's from a fairly linear game, and a JRPG too, so doesn't really meet the criteria.

However what it still does excellently, more-so than fuck loads of more modern CRPGs such as PoE, is convey the sense of adventure, journey & exploration.

And that's Shining Force 2's map.........

Areas like the Devil's Tail and the Nasca Ship really feel special and full of character.

It's a fantastic game, and shows that even simpler games can be just as engrossing if crafted well enough.

 

[mkultra]

Xenoblade Chronicles had a great map, good verticality, very hi quality art. What's not so good is how static and MMO-like it can feel.

My favorite is probably Witcher 3, good amount of detail, decent vertical design, you can swim/dive, good diverse game world with many different biomes. Enemies aren't totally static, e.g you can meet a party of bandits on horses (often missing in open world games, but this has gotten better in recent years, the more recent AssCreed games also has this).

 

[Zanzoken]

A couple of other things to chew on.

Breath of the Wild does some really cool things with its open world. One interesting mechanic is the use of climate zones... you can easily die of heat or cold exposure in certain parts of the world unless you have the proper protective items or equipment. Using environmental effects like this is another good way to restrict certain areas in a way that is consistent with good worldbuilding.

Elex does an awesome job with verticality, bolstered by the addition of the jetpack, which you get right at the beginning of the game. The world is uneven and often not easy to traverse but the jetpack is an incredible tool that makes something as simple as basic navigation feel interesting and fun.

 

[mkultra]

Yeah, i like climate zones in games (actually FC Primal is kind of decent but it should be played on the very hardest difficulty which they added, it has cold zones.. really cool setting overall).
Open world games could need more survival simulator aspects like that. I hate how setting up a camp for the night is so rare in open world games, let me put up a small tent, please? Would take very little effort to include and it would add a bit of atmosphere / logic. The (later) Fallout games can be interesting with the hunger / thirst requirement.. I don't care the least for building shit though.

Breath of the Wild also does a few interesting things with physics, let's you play around with it a bit. This is something which open world games needs to get a LOT better at, can be really fun and makes the world feel less static and just overall more fun to be in. And yeah it can be more than rolling cheese wheels down a mountain, like doing traps etc.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

In terms of environmental design Oblivion surprisingly gets one fundamental thing right that a lot of other games struggle with which is having buffer zones between climates. In the area between the Colovian Highlands and Chorral you can see a very gradual change from one climate to another. Moorland becomes heathland and then shifts into forest.

Someone gave the example of WoW having abrupt area transitions between cold and desert and depending on climate that can be fine too but only in certain cases. If you're coming out of a range of snowy mountains and encounter a desert, that's fine. If it's a tundra though, that's less realistic, unless it's a cold desert. All these things need to be thought of by the devs and it pays to have some knowledge of history and geography as a guide. Understand what the desirable conditions are for humans to create settlements. What natural resources are they exploiting? What's their food source? Where do they get clean drinking water? Do they herd animals? Do they cultivate the earth? Are they occupying a hill for defense? Or are they in a well-ordered society that's abandoned hill forts in favor of being down in the valleys, out of the wind?

Also, understand that some climates go together and some don't. You're not going to have a marsh randomly next to a desert. The marsh is going to be at the end of a river delta or near a lake.

Does the game have a map? How old is it? How accurate is it? How accurate should it be? Is there a guild of cartographers autistically wandering the roads looking for washed out bridges and landslide blockages? Are there even bridges? Or are there only fords?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

How I felt after reading this thread

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

In what sense are the Ultimas not open world games?

It might be the case that all Open World games are non-linear, but the vast majority of non-linear games are not Open World.

Open World necessarily includes a seamless map at a constant scale where the player-character(s) directly traverses the overworld environment. Quite different from the many RPGs with an overworld map on which abstract movement occurs (e.g. Ultimas I through V) and from the much larger number of games, RPGs or otherwise, in which physically separate levels are selected from (e.g. Demon's Souls, Mega Man).

 

[Butter]

In what sense are the Ultimas not open world games?

It might be the case that all Open World games are non-linear, but the vast majority of non-linear games are not Open World.

Open World necessarily includes a seamless map at a constant scale where the player-character(s) directly traverses the overworld environment. Quite different from the many RPGs with an overworld map on which abstract movement occurs (e.g. Ultimas I through V) and from the much larger number of games, RPGs or otherwise, in which physically separate levels are selected from (e.g. Demon's Souls, Mega Man).

By this definition, Skyrim isn't an open world game, since its cities are walled off behind loading screens and its dungeons occupy an impossible amount of space. Maybe you should rethink it.

 

[Humanophage]

Good post, OP. I strongly agree that the "open world" where everything is subdivided linearly into level-based zones is no good.

Ultima Online has a good world map (no instances either, everything is seamless). The hubs are formed naturally by players who find some towns more palatable (e.g., more real estate space). Tougher monsters are centered in small areas, like e.g. remote ruins or the deeper levels of a dungeon. You can also see the relative decline in map design in the newer zone to the bottom right. In addition, something like a travel gate might attract player killers, so some of the busiest areas with lots of newbies can be also the most dangerous. All that water can be traversed on a ship, and indeed some of the islands are hard to reach without it (especially on smaller servers with no travel libraries).

(zoom in)

Gothic 1/2 is a classic example of good map design, and not so much because of verticality but rather because of difficulty distribution. If you see a cave with a huge trail of blood and bones in the local woods of the main trade hub, maybe it's best not to venture inside until you're a bit tougher. If you see a tough orc camp in the distance early on in the game, maybe you are not yet ready to slaughter everyone there. This all adds a sense of danger to exploration and makes it more interesting to sneak into the more dangerous areas in hopes of discovering rewards (perhaps sneak into the said orc camp without fighting for now). It also de-emphasises level progression, which is too often used as a limit - e.g., the jump from level 10 to level 12 in D:OS is huge, such that a regular crap item is stronger than a rare artifact from a lower level. And you can't use items from a higher level. So what's the point of going anywhere except the intended areas?

Also things are often highly illogical in games where levels play too much of a role, like a late-game rat would be stronger than an early-game demon.

 

[thesecret1]

First you need to build a logical world, with farms, settlements and roads, because atleast to me a believable world adds much to immersion and atmosphere.

To add on this, you should consider at least a little bit the enemies themselves in this aspect. It's always silly when you have a "village" of 20 getting terrorized by around 200 bandits :D Magical creatures tend to get a pass with this, nobody really wonders how could that big magical monster possibly sustain itself when it's hidden in some shitty cave it never leaves (the answer is always "magic" anyway), but if you start doing humanoids (orcs, goblins, etc.) or even other humans, some manner of infrastructure is usually expected.

 

[Cugel]

Open World necessarily includes a seamless map at a constant scale where the player-character(s) directly traverses the overworld environment.

Does Daggerfall fit you description then? The player technically can directly traverse the overworld enviroment but no one would do it since it is mostly just procedurally generated garbage.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Does Daggerfall fit you description then? The player technically can directly traverse the overworld enviroment but no one would do it since it is mostly just procedurally generated garbage.

Correct, Daggerfall is technically Open World, but it relied on procedural generation to create and fill a game-world the same size as the setting it represents, rather than using some measure of scaling down that is necessary for any handcrafted Open World RPG, such as Faery Tale Adventure or Morrowind. The result is a game-world larger than England, where even on horseback the amount of time required to directly traverse the world between two relatively close locations is prohibitive, and therefore the player is forced to rely on fast travel options from a world/province/region map. Thus, it cannot feasibly be played as an Open World game despite technically being one.

 

[Zanzoken]

I love all the classic maps posted in this thread. Being able to build a vast and believable world from scratch is an incredible talent.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I think the ideal open world games should strive for are games like Pirates, Sword of the Samurai and Covert Action. Where there's technically an objective you're striving for, but what you're really doing is just wandering around. Subtle level scaling, like Morrowind, so that trash mobs aren't completely pointless, but there are still plenty of encounters around that will absolutely wreck you if you're not prepared, and the big encounters, the really big ones, are fairly obvious to avoid when you're just starting out and don't know what you're doing. Shame nobody outside of Microprose ever really continued on that track.

 

[Zeriel]

I don't think level scaling is good. Maybe tiered level lists of encounters--BG2 did that without most people noticing. For example, one of the encounters in Firkraag's castle would, instead of spawning mid-level, super-easy enemies, spawn a lich and other undead if you were too high level for the original content. Morrowind also technically did this--but it was a lot less organic and creative about the level lists, which just made it come across as straight-up level scaling.

Might & Magic worlds are still to me the ideal expression of a large game world (not sure whether to call it "open world"): interesting environments to explore, believably connected, but each being their own environment rather than just one bland plateau of obligatory yet unimportant tasks that only exist to be done as a checklist.

It's interesting how the last games of that 90s era all seem to be providing a singleplayer, more-scripted or believable version of the early MMO experience. And I remember playing at that time with that sort of intention--you lost yourself in Daggerfall playing as a person in that setting, not following the main quest religiously.

 

[Zanzoken]

I think the ideal open world games should strive for are games like Pirates, Sword of the Samurai and Covert Action. Where there's technically an objective you're striving for, but what you're really doing is just wandering around. Subtle level scaling, like Morrowind, so that trash mobs aren't completely pointless, but there are still plenty of encounters around that will absolutely wreck you if you're not prepared, and the big encounters, the really big ones, are fairly obvious to avoid when you're just starting out and don't know what you're doing. Shame nobody outside of Microprose ever really continued on that track.

I love Pirates and SotS (haven't played Covert Action) but what's great about those games is that they are games. Not an interactive movie with a script like so many others are... just gameplay systems working together to create the desired player experience. The story takes shape from the game responding to things you do. Linear and even branching narrative tracks are so restricting in contrast, even when they are well done.

I think that's a big part of why I liked Breath of the Wild so much. They went light on scripted narrative, and instead left plenty of room for you to just play around and approach the game in a way that feels right to you.

Are you an autist who needs to complete every shrine and collect every korok seed? You can.
Want to head straight for the final boss with only 3 hearts and a stick? You can do that too.
Or you can hunt animals, catch fish, cook food, break wild horses, collect herbs and bugs, climb mountains, shield-surf, raft, hang-glide, practice parrying guardian lasers... etc etc etc

You can tell the game was built to emphasize freedom and the feeling of being on this grand adventure. And all those little elements of reactivity working together elevate the experience so much.

Edit: I meant to add, going back to the original thought. My biggest wish in gaming is that someone would take the old Pirates / SotS / Microprose formula and see what could be done with it today. The closest we have is Mount & Blade, which is great but also likely just a fraction of the formula's potential, because the developers are dumbfucks (especially true now that Bannerlord is out).

 

[deuxhero]

Morrowind did it mostly right (leveled list for enemy spawns aside). You could go anywhere on Vvardenfell, except maybe Red Mountain/deep Ashlands/the Grazelands, from the start. It was points of interest (bandit caves, ancestor tombs, dwarven ruins, daedric ruins, strongholds, sixth house bases) and quest relevant humanoids who were threats to underpowered characters. This was further augmented by more powerful characters (and more experienced players) having methods to travel faster so they could quickly reach areas far from civilization without blowing all their resources along the way. Morrowind's horrible balance and broken level curve did a lot to ruin this, but the overall concept was still solid.

 

[Rincewind]

Gothic 1/2 is a classic example of good map design, and not so much because of verticality but rather because of difficulty distribution. If you see a cave with a huge trail of blood and bones in the local woods of the main trade hub, maybe it's best not to venture inside until you're a bit tougher. If you see a tough orc camp in the distance early on in the game, maybe you are not yet ready to slaughter everyone there. This all adds a sense of danger to exploration and makes it more interesting to sneak into the more dangerous areas in hopes of discovering rewards (perhaps sneak into the said orc camp without fighting for now). It also de-emphasises level progression, which is too often used as a limit - e.g., the jump from level 10 to level 12 in D:OS is huge, such that a regular crap item is stronger than a rare artifact from a lower level. And you can't use items from a higher level. So what's the point of going anywhere except the intended areas?

As a Gothic fan, I completely agree with the above. I would just like to add that ELEX continues the exact same tradition and the map design in ELEX is similarly excellent. Some people think verticality in ELEX is just a gimmick; I completely disagree with that sentiment. I think it adds a lot of gameplay variety as well as adding literally another dimension to the exploration, which is one of the main (if not the most important) aspects of the game. Some areas are admittedly a bit underdeveloped (Ignadonu, the volcanic are where the Cleric HQ resides), which is probably due to budgetary constraints. But it can be explained away by saying that you would expect a volcanic region to be quite desolate anyway... In any case, at least 60-70% of the total map area ranges from great to excellent in terms of design.

 

[Storyfag]

If you're coming out of a range of snowy mountains and encounter a desert, that's fine.

Only as long as you get at least *some* jungle/greenery in between.

 

[markec]

First you need to build a logical world, with farms, settlements and roads, because atleast to me a believable world adds much to immersion and atmosphere.

To add on this, you should consider at least a little bit the enemies themselves in this aspect. It's always silly when you have a "village" of 20 getting terrorized by around 200 bandits :D Magical creatures tend to get a pass with this, nobody really wonders how could that big magical monster possibly sustain itself when it's hidden in some shitty cave it never leaves (the answer is always "magic" anyway), but if you start doing humanoids (orcs, goblins, etc.) or even other humans, some manner of infrastructure is usually expected.

Large group of humanoids could be explained as a raiding party that consumes what is steals, although I agree that enemies should also have some kind of infrastructure since it would be cool to have large elaborate monster bases where you can witness how their society operates.

Personally I have a bigger issue with settlements which are located in a hostile territory and have no mean of protection. NuBethesda is infamous with having a "settlement" that consist of several houses and no protection beside whole 5 villagers armed with lowest grade weapons, located throwing distance of all kind of enemies that any could easily wipe them out. I also remember playing Sacred (a old Diablo clone with open world) that had many settlements you could freely enter even with dozens of monster chasing you, while everyone just ignores them. Those things just instantly throw me out of the game.

 

[fantadomat]

Island maps are show of poor imagination lol,i hate fucking island game world. Morrowind did a good island because it was not just isolated world in itself and existed in a vast world with different cultures and lore. Every time i see a game with world set on an island i roll me eyes.