>If there is one thing that annoys me in games, it is when every NPC only has dialog that pertains to your story. Or when areas are walled off/boxed off/locked away because they are irrelevant to the player's goals. Maybe I have played too many games where the player is the center of the universe, but I am frankly extremely tired of it.
But I mean, oblivion, skyrim and most open world games have those. If you try to wander into any quest area before you've got the quest, either you break something or you just can't enter or finish the whole area. If you talk to any important NPC, they still treat you like the hero and talk about things only pertaining to you and your quest. Just because it's hidden behind a bunch of other pointless stuff doesn't mean that when it comes down to it, anything important in the game still revolves around you.
They also tend to have the opposite problem, where the world doesn't actually react to what you do.
In new Vegas, I decided I didn't like Caesar's legion, so I murdered them all with a flamethrower. I cleared the entire main legion encampment, all their leaders everything. Then, I went back and continued on my way to new Vegas. Any legion encampments or anything I found were exactly the same. No acknowledgment that I'd obliterated their entire leadership. It didn't matter in the end other than that I'd failed and completed a bunch of quests I didn't even know about. It didn't actually change anything in the game world.
For me, that kills the immersion. What's the point of a big open world where you can do anything if nothing you do actually has any effect or consequences?
Sure, NPC's might wander on a schedule, but they don't react at all to the fact that the slavers are completely wiped out from the area? The other side doesn't start moving in to take over their territory? Not a single thing actually changes or reflects my choices in the game.
In the end, they're still just static worlds with the illusion of giving you freedom.
>I want to see this minutia, it tells me that the game designers are detail-oriented
No it doesn't, it says designers know how to copy and paste $Generic_Useless_Item and reskin it in a variety of ways. It says they can't actually be bothered giving a world real useful detail so they fill it with meaningless padding.
> the exception of crafting,
That's the problem. What you can craft is better than anything you find in a dungeon. So when it comes down to it, you spend several hours messing around in your inventory or gathering mundane stuff so you can craft an item because you need it to go through the dungeon, but then when you go through the dungeon what you find is less good than what you crafted, so you might as well have just not even bothered.
Perhaps you should try a build that ignores crafting, then. In a lot of games it is a potentially broken mechanic.
As for immersion, there are games where behavior changes when you do things like slaughter an in-game faction's leadership. But it's going to be fairly rare, because it's expensive. You might want to check out Kenshi, as that game will appropriately react when you slaughter an entire town -- that factions enemies might move in to occupy it, and game conditions might change. But Kenshi was a one-man project that took something like a decade to complete, and I have even heard that those kinds of meta-interactions are scripted so you can't even take that sort of thing very far.
Also, what you described about Caesar's Legion sounds very plausible in a post-apocalyptic world without reliable long distance communication. In historic times wars sometimes lived on beyond their end as distant, far-flung generals had not yet received orders of a ceasefire. If there is one thing I hate, it is when an entire faction turns against you because you killed one of their dudes in an isolated fashion and yet, somehow, magically, now the whole faction knows? How does that even work plausibly?
Finally, I think that expecting video games to accurately model real life is a fool's errand. We will likely never reach this level of interaction, not without a massive budget and all the other terrible things that happen when you try to reach as large an audience as possible. If you frame your immersion to stick to the limits of the gameworld and the context that is was built under, you will experience far less disappointment.
My point wasn't that I expect those things in a game, it was that the goal of realism through minutae falls apart as soon as you consider anything meaningful.
>Also, what you described about Caesar's Legion sounds very plausible in a post-apocalyptic world without reliable long distance communication.
I'm not going to argue too much about the facts of life in a fictional world because it was just an example. But, the factions in fallout seem pretty organized. I imagine they have runners and messengers much like in times before long distance communication. Sure news might not spread immediately, but at some point, those legionaires hanging out are gonna wonder why they're not getting orders and supplies and the other factions are going to start to notice a lack of activity...
But anyway...it was an example. The overall point was, outside quests and other scripted events, your actions tend to not have any effect on the game world and to add to this, nothing you do in the game really changes the way you interact with the game world.
>If there is one thing I hate, it is when an entire faction turns against you because you killed one of their dudes in an isolated fashion and yet, somehow, magically, now the whole faction knows?
I agree with you there. I recall the soldiers in TES games being like this.
>Finally, I think that expecting video games to accurately model real life is a fool's errand.
But wasn't your whole point that open world games are enjoyable because they accurately model all these minute real world details that make the world interesting to explore?
My point wasn't that it needed to be accurate, my point was that for games that sell based on the concept of a 'large living fully realized world to explore' the game worlds are actually relatively static. In which case, I'd prefer less padding and more actual game. If you're going to get a static world either way, I'd rather less overall stuff in it, but each thing to have an actual purpose. Not necessarily in regards to 'you the hero' just a purpose.
Either through game mechanics or simply world building. I don't need to be able to fill my inventory with every rock, random household item or scrap of animal part and I don't need to hear about Gertrude the milk maid's worries about the health of her calfs or the story about how little Billy fell down the well again for the world to feel complete and fully realized.
The thing is, I don't think it would take all that much to improve at least some of these issues.
For the Elder Scrolls games in particular. A few things I think honestly would have made the games far more fun
Hide the main quest from the player. Make them find it. Both the later two games start off with scripted areas that pretty much tell you, you're the hero, here's the quest. Then lets you loose. You know what you're supposed to do, but it's up to you if you do it or not.
You've basically got two games at that point. The on rails, story driven main quest and the random exploration. Make finding the main quest part of the exploration. Let the players slowly unravel the world and figure out what's going on.
Maybe little Billy falling down the well is actually important? You don't know because you don't actually know what's happening. It gives more meaning to all the meaningless stuff lying around.
Don't be afraid to challenge players. Make them work to figure out what's meaningful or not. Throw some surprises at them. Stick a tough dungeon near somewhere easy to find with the intention of making players come back later. Put some kind of cool treasure just out of reach and make players figure it out themselves. Make it require something obscure or something. Stick a big shiny, unique looking locked door in the middle of a dungeon and hide the key elsewhere in the world.
Let players make their own quests and give them something rewarding when they 'complete' it. Break up the structure of travelling from place to place and just doing the sidequests of the area or wandering around until you find a cave, kill the monsters, walk through the tunnel, open the chest, then waltz back out.
Even side quests, make them impactful. Make how you complete quests, or not complete quests actually have an impact. Like, if you don't save little Billy from the well, expect the townspeople to not be very nice to you. Even just little things like that.
Overall, I've found it's more satisfying when players are left on their own to discover both the meaningful and meaningless things in the game. When there's consequences for the things they do and when they're challenged unexpectedly or forced to be creative.
In the end, the elder scrolls games still want to tell you their stories. They want you to explore the world, find the sidequests, follow the main quest and hear all the cool narratives they've concocted for you.
Instead, they should take that world they've got and do their best to make it as fun as possible for players to play their own stories through the game.
Whether it's the joy of figuring out that strange idol you found in that one dungeon will let you get past that big ass door or those tough monsters that have been nagging at you since you found them earlier, or discovering for yourself, little Billy was actually the heir to the throne in hiding because of some interpersonal struggles in the Royal family you only learn about after journeying there. Learning about some hidden artifact weapon or armour or something and finding out it's actually pretty awesome when you get it.
I think there's a missed opportunity for open world games. It would be cool to see one that unravels like a giant puzzle, rather than simply being a stage for the developers set pieces.
But I mean, oblivion, skyrim and most open world games have those. If you try to wander into any quest area before you've got the quest, either you break something or you just can't enter or finish the whole area. If you talk to any important NPC, they still treat you like the hero and talk about things only pertaining to you and your quest. Just because it's hidden behind a bunch of other pointless stuff doesn't mean that when it comes down to it, anything important in the game still revolves around you.
They also tend to have the opposite problem, where the world doesn't actually react to what you do.
In new Vegas, I decided I didn't like Caesar's legion, so I murdered them all with a flamethrower. I cleared the entire main legion encampment, all their leaders everything. Then, I went back and continued on my way to new Vegas. Any legion encampments or anything I found were exactly the same. No acknowledgment that I'd obliterated their entire leadership. It didn't matter in the end other than that I'd failed and completed a bunch of quests I didn't even know about. It didn't actually change anything in the game world.
For me, that kills the immersion. What's the point of a big open world where you can do anything if nothing you do actually has any effect or consequences?
Sure, NPC's might wander on a schedule, but they don't react at all to the fact that the slavers are completely wiped out from the area? The other side doesn't start moving in to take over their territory? Not a single thing actually changes or reflects my choices in the game.
In the end, they're still just static worlds with the illusion of giving you freedom.
>I want to see this minutia, it tells me that the game designers are detail-oriented
No it doesn't, it says designers know how to copy and paste $Generic_Useless_Item and reskin it in a variety of ways. It says they can't actually be bothered giving a world real useful detail so they fill it with meaningless padding.
> the exception of crafting,
That's the problem. What you can craft is better than anything you find in a dungeon. So when it comes down to it, you spend several hours messing around in your inventory or gathering mundane stuff so you can craft an item because you need it to go through the dungeon, but then when you go through the dungeon what you find is less good than what you crafted, so you might as well have just not even bothered.