Egregoros

@smugumin There’s multitudes of complaints about open worlds, but I think the better way to look at it is what constitutes a good open world. Which is a problem, seeing as there is no such thing as a “universally good” open world.

In my eyes though, open worlds are best when full of jank but also love. This metric is a mess seeing as every single game studio wants to obliterate any jank and make money over passion projects. So instead of lovingly crafted projects made with a specific goal, we get either “genre but what if open world” or crime sandbox based off GTA. Means there’s a lot more trash than I’d like.

A notable example of that poor decision making is Metroid Prime 4, because the idiots who pushed the open world forgot something. Metroid is open world. The entire genre is predicated on backtracking and exploring through a vast world. By adding an area that is artificially called the open world area, it just fucked up the entire flow of what was already an open game. As for the other issue, see any Ubisoft game, or more specifically Watch Dogs.

@smugumin @suquili >the pic of the left has challenges of varying difficulties and you decide what to tackle

This part is actually a problem, mainly because so many developers are adverse to any form of real challenge. Instead of handling things by making later game shit beat your ass if not well prepared, most games just use a cheap level system that doesn't have synergy well with the open world. This leads to either nothing being able to be done in a high level area, or the areas scaling directly to you.

This also leads to situations that, while it is the player's fault, many end up blaming the devs for. Getting high level or rarity shit early from a high level zone, dipping out, then cheesing everything. If equipment is one of the only metrics of power, then this can get especially bad (which is a common complaint for BoTW and ToTK).

Honestly the solution to these problems is very simple, but it's one that scares developers and turns away quite a few players. Just make everyone have equally high lethality. Make the areas distinct and interesting while making them all dangerous no matter what you've got. Let the player find solutions to problems rather than making the solution "just grind." Then again, that's me talking from the angle of a guy who likes when guns function as guns even in an RPG. I want bullets to be almost always lethal, whether hitting me or an enemy.

@hfaust I can't argue with that, but I will argue this man is below even that threshold. At least the average Nintendo consumer only buys one of each game.

This guy instead throws away money on genuinely nothing for no real purpose. It's not even physical or anything to justify buying different regional versions. Now, realistically the image is probably a bait image intended to invoke this reaction but I really don't think doing the most retarded thing possible and wasting hundreds counts as being above others or making good bait.

@hfaust The longer I look the worse it gets. This man could justify buying $200 worth of GBA roms in a very basic emulator shell with no special functionality, a Cars licensed game, one of limited run’s collections of awful licensed kids games from the 90s, and both Sword and Shield, but somehow not Legends Arceus or Legends Z-A. I could understand Z-A for its quality (well, actually I can’t considering this man clearly has no financial self-control or care for quality anyways), but Arceus is a genuinely good game. I feel like I’m looking at the system of a strawman. This is not a real person.