12-16-2015, 10:39 AM
My biggest problem with open world games: Lollygagging is a thing that can be done despite evidence to the contrary.
Many try too much to make everything urgent, either by going straight from quest to quest or just by making the plot feel very urgent.
It makes roleplaying at all very difficult when you have to come up with excuses for you to not immediately get the very important item so you can save the world from impending disaster. And if you do, the world will wait. Nothing will change. You can just keep neandering around doing literally nothing, and the plot will not progress on its own, the demonic armies will not invade, the "dragons" will not destroy the world, the father you're searching for won't end up dead or getting farther and farther out of your reach... The plot is too focused on the protagonist. Everything happens because the protagonist is there. The traitorous elven mage will not make his move until the player has joined the mage college, the thieves will not begin to make a comeback without the protag's intervention, the wedding of what'sherface in the capital city will not happen until, or rather if, the player ever decides to attend, at which point it happens right away.
Adding urgency to the plot causes problems. Instead, it should be more like this:
Between quests, your erudite buddies with knowledge on [plot details] have to do some more research, and it will take some time, so you should go make yourself useful around or something. An excuse, built in, for why you can go off and do sidequests for a while. Maybe if you take too long, they then send you a letter or text depending on the medium which directly states that they've almost finished their research and that's a reason for you to say "oh yes right that was happening and now it is definitely time I go back and check on this instead of just focusing solely on one questline until it's complete even if I'm halfway through three others."
Those demonic armies and deadly "DRAGONS!" don't appear until later in the story, and if enough time passes you can see the threat increase with more fights, more NPC acknowledgement, etc. If you go to another city far away, even if it's your first time there, if it's been a year since the [threat] first appeared, they will already know about it from word of other citizens and you won't have to explain it to them. That wedding? When you start on the relevant questline is when it starts being planned. Not right when the game starts. That way, it seems to take a lot less of a ridiculously long time to prepare. The random-encounter NPCs heading to said wedding will not appear at all until just before it, so it makes sense that they're heading there, instead of arriving a good 3 months before it happens, if ever.
Alternatively, plotlines could just be made more low-key and interesting rather than "OMG STUFF IS HAPPEN RUSH TO PLACE AND TALK TO PERSON AND RUSH TO OPPOSITE END OF MAP FOR REASON OMG URGENT URGENT EMERGENCY HURRY UP!!!1!" where it makes more sense. The protag joins a guild not just before something interesting happens, but instead there's a bunch of day-to-day stuff first, making it feel less contrived and urgent. The main plot is about the very powerful enemies doing a slow, "peaceful" invasion of the setting with a lot of politics and the like, which is why their presence doesn't seem to increase rapidly no matter how long you take, and why it isn't urgent that you stop them immediately!!!! because obstructive bureaucrats (and maybe a couple "DRAGONSSZ!!") are making it (hilariously) difficult for the enemies to get what they want, and the enemies won't launch a full-scale invasion because that would cause a war which would be stupid and a drain on resources. Instead it's like a Cold War of sorts, and maybe the player is who brings it out of the stalemate with their [plot aquired super ability or item or information or whatever] instead of there supposedly being a full-fledged war already going on despite not seeing any battles until you get directly involved.
I forget exactly where I was going to go with this next, but my point is made. Also most of my examples were from Elder Scrolls games, and most of those from Skyrim. That's why I liked the Thalmor, or rather what they could have been - they were an enemy that wasn't an immediate threat which had to (and could) be dealt with instantly. Unfortunately, they decided "DRAGONSZSZSSZZSSS!!1!" instead was a better idea, and left the Thalmor with literally no plot relevance asides from occasionally seeing them, apparently being a cause of the civil war, but that was also very unimportant, and we invaded one spot they were in because we wanted to... look at a couple journals to see if they had info on the "DRAGONSSSHSHSUSHOUDFUSRODAHLUWDHNWIHD!!!11!!2!"?
Seriously? We have a big, important, looming, and interesting threat there which we can make into an interesting enemy, and we could even intertwine them with other plotlines without it being contrived, and... they are the least-used faction in the game, with no way to join or undermine them. Heck, as far as I can tell, even if you kill their patrols, invade their stronghold to rescue a prisoner, infiltrate their embassy to steal information, etc. etc. they still do nothing to try to stop you, and are irrelevant to any other major plotline except the winterhold college because of a single guy. COME ON!! ARGHH!
On an unrelated note, I now have 850 TVTropes pages bookmarked.
This Essay-Length Rant brought to you by 2:00 AM Shaadaris.
Many try too much to make everything urgent, either by going straight from quest to quest or just by making the plot feel very urgent.
It makes roleplaying at all very difficult when you have to come up with excuses for you to not immediately get the very important item so you can save the world from impending disaster. And if you do, the world will wait. Nothing will change. You can just keep neandering around doing literally nothing, and the plot will not progress on its own, the demonic armies will not invade, the "dragons" will not destroy the world, the father you're searching for won't end up dead or getting farther and farther out of your reach... The plot is too focused on the protagonist. Everything happens because the protagonist is there. The traitorous elven mage will not make his move until the player has joined the mage college, the thieves will not begin to make a comeback without the protag's intervention, the wedding of what'sherface in the capital city will not happen until, or rather if, the player ever decides to attend, at which point it happens right away.
Adding urgency to the plot causes problems. Instead, it should be more like this:
Between quests, your erudite buddies with knowledge on [plot details] have to do some more research, and it will take some time, so you should go make yourself useful around or something. An excuse, built in, for why you can go off and do sidequests for a while. Maybe if you take too long, they then send you a letter or text depending on the medium which directly states that they've almost finished their research and that's a reason for you to say "oh yes right that was happening and now it is definitely time I go back and check on this instead of just focusing solely on one questline until it's complete even if I'm halfway through three others."
Those demonic armies and deadly "DRAGONS!" don't appear until later in the story, and if enough time passes you can see the threat increase with more fights, more NPC acknowledgement, etc. If you go to another city far away, even if it's your first time there, if it's been a year since the [threat] first appeared, they will already know about it from word of other citizens and you won't have to explain it to them. That wedding? When you start on the relevant questline is when it starts being planned. Not right when the game starts. That way, it seems to take a lot less of a ridiculously long time to prepare. The random-encounter NPCs heading to said wedding will not appear at all until just before it, so it makes sense that they're heading there, instead of arriving a good 3 months before it happens, if ever.
Alternatively, plotlines could just be made more low-key and interesting rather than "OMG STUFF IS HAPPEN RUSH TO PLACE AND TALK TO PERSON AND RUSH TO OPPOSITE END OF MAP FOR REASON OMG URGENT URGENT EMERGENCY HURRY UP!!!1!" where it makes more sense. The protag joins a guild not just before something interesting happens, but instead there's a bunch of day-to-day stuff first, making it feel less contrived and urgent. The main plot is about the very powerful enemies doing a slow, "peaceful" invasion of the setting with a lot of politics and the like, which is why their presence doesn't seem to increase rapidly no matter how long you take, and why it isn't urgent that you stop them immediately!!!! because obstructive bureaucrats (and maybe a couple "DRAGONSSZ!!") are making it (hilariously) difficult for the enemies to get what they want, and the enemies won't launch a full-scale invasion because that would cause a war which would be stupid and a drain on resources. Instead it's like a Cold War of sorts, and maybe the player is who brings it out of the stalemate with their [plot aquired super ability or item or information or whatever] instead of there supposedly being a full-fledged war already going on despite not seeing any battles until you get directly involved.
I forget exactly where I was going to go with this next, but my point is made. Also most of my examples were from Elder Scrolls games, and most of those from Skyrim. That's why I liked the Thalmor, or rather what they could have been - they were an enemy that wasn't an immediate threat which had to (and could) be dealt with instantly. Unfortunately, they decided "DRAGONSZSZSSZZSSS!!1!" instead was a better idea, and left the Thalmor with literally no plot relevance asides from occasionally seeing them, apparently being a cause of the civil war, but that was also very unimportant, and we invaded one spot they were in because we wanted to... look at a couple journals to see if they had info on the "DRAGONSSSHSHSUSHOUDFUSRODAHLUWDHNWIHD!!!11!!2!"?
Seriously? We have a big, important, looming, and interesting threat there which we can make into an interesting enemy, and we could even intertwine them with other plotlines without it being contrived, and... they are the least-used faction in the game, with no way to join or undermine them. Heck, as far as I can tell, even if you kill their patrols, invade their stronghold to rescue a prisoner, infiltrate their embassy to steal information, etc. etc. they still do nothing to try to stop you, and are irrelevant to any other major plotline except the winterhold college because of a single guy. COME ON!! ARGHH!
On an unrelated note, I now have 850 TVTropes pages bookmarked.
This Essay-Length Rant brought to you by 2:00 AM Shaadaris.