While I generally agree with your points, and I have no strong opinion on the matter, when you say "you choose what buttons you press" and imply that giving more options to players cannot be a bad thing, I feel like you ignore the fact that even when they do everything they want the way they want, players will not necessarily pick the most fun options for themselves. Of course, each person finds fun in various ways that might be different from what the developers envisioned, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the fact that they themselves could have more fun if they played a different way from what they initially wanted. A player choosing to fast travel everywhere because it's more convenient may not realize that they could have more fun if they tried exploring more. They're not dumb for doing this, they just can't *actually* know how much fun they'll have by doing something before they actually do it. And that goes for everyone: you can't know how much a decision impacts your fun until you're looking back on it, and even then, you may be inclined to blame the game instead of your own choices. This isn't just the issue of a few people who "lack self-control", it's just how the mind works. Not sure where I'm going with this to be honest. I guess simply: While giving options to players is generally a good thing, designers should, well, design fun ways to play, and instead of offloading the game design to the players, designers should strongly incentivize them to play the way(s) that they intend to be the most fun, because players aren't necessarily going to find out by themselves, even if they think they can. Sometimes designers can be clumsy and design mechanics that seemingly punish the player or restrict their freedom arbitrarily, and while that is not ideal, it is good to remind yourself that their goal is to guide you towards a certain kind of fun that you may enjoy more than what you initially intended to do. And yes, this is important for everyone including you, every game guides their player to play a certain way, and restricts their freedom at times, it's just more or less obvious depending on how well it's implemented. Good video BTW!
I usually don't use fast travel if I can help it. I completed 4 full playthroughs of Cyberpunk 2077 and 3 of them were without using fast travel at all and somehow I enjoyed the game more. Night City is absolutely stunning and you would miss a lot skipping the driving portion. Plus the cars interiors and incredibly detailed that further adds to immersion if you drive in first person. Night City is probably the best looking and realistic (design wise) city in all of gaming.
I like how the Gothic games handle it, where later on you unlock teleportation stones to certain locations and you have to find them in order to unlock the right to fast travel. Rewarding exploration with the ability to fast travel is fun and helps give me that choice of how to explore. Great video!
They also make it worth your while to revisit areas you've already been to by adding quests and enemies at later stages of the game. It feels natural to backtrack because the world is reliably changing once you have reached a new story chapter. I think the system back then was far from perfect, but the general idea is great.
IMO Morrowind is still the best argument against the "you can just ignore it, lol" argument. Because... you get fast travel. But by resisting the urge to reduce it to "open the menu and go" the game instead developed a lot of interesting choices around travel. Want to fast travel everywhere? OK, if you can't make your own scrolls, you're gonna rely on public transportation and teleportation methods, all of which cost money. Not a ton of money, just enough to sting a little bit. If you generally choose not to fast travel you're in luck because you're probably faster and stronger than those wimpy mages (and need to stop to rest less often). As a mage, you can make your own teleportation scrolls for cheap, and use mark / recall spells to warp between places you normally couldn't (mirroring the usual "walk to your destination but fast-travel back" thing). Not fast-traveling somehow is actually more dangerous for you because you just can't sustain yourself long-distance the same way. Either way, where your allegiances lie will often affect exactly where you're fast-traveling to. The point being, if you want to just fast-travel everywhere, you can just throw money at the problem until it goes away, but for anyone who isn't as enthusiastic travel becomes a more interesting puzzle.
I'm fine with fast travel, I just don't like overly generous fast travel. I prefer fast travel being from one pre-set location to another. But from anywhere to pre-set locations is also ok.
This mirrors exactly how I feel about Skyrim. Let the player choose. Sometimes I gotta get things done and want to jump around from city to city. Other times I just want to wander and let things happen. Same with Xenoblade 3.
For me, I'll explore every nook and cranny there is on offer, but only if they are stuck in a set of mostly linear levels. Dark Souls games I'm happy to explore, Symphony of the Night and other Metriodvanias of the like I'm happy to explore. The moment you show me an open world I become quickly overwhelmed. I was, for example, enjoying Elden Ring right up until I finished the tutorial, stepped outside and realized that it was an open world game... I sat there for 20 minutes just trying to figure out how I wanted to proceed and eventually realized I was stuck in a state of paralysis I couldn't get out of so I turned the game off, thinking I might find a guide and come back when I had a way to properly focus through and have not been able to bring myself back in. If Elden Ring had been able to keep me focused on the task at hand without making me feel like I needed to explore I might have been able to finish with a guide and would have used fast travel plenty, but the game itself left me overwhelmed and every guide I found also made the game just simply feel too overwhelming to try. I did eventually make it to the first boss, but I was clearly under leveled and there was no reasonable way to grind without also wandering the world and just hoping I'd find something good at random and also be able to figure out where that boss was when I'm finally ready.
Great topic for a video! Ive been conflicted on this over the last few years as open world has long been one of my favorite game designs. In the last year or two I started to feel like some open worlds are now designed to waste your time. Maybe I have less time to play so I cant really make significant progress if I take my time in the worlds like before. Far Cry 6 I ended up just fast traveling when I could & flying the planes because traversing the jungles felt like I just burned time. Considering exploring meaningfully designed open worlds is one of my favorite things, I hated my time with Far Cry 6 by the end and that sucked...
I love Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but it is maybe the worst offender for awkward Fast Travel mechanics. Narratively the major areas are all isolated and constantly moving so having fast travel between them seems pretty needed, but as far as i can tell there is no point on any map that actually connects these major areas together, which is doubly baffling as most of these areas have ports built into them that you use during the story, but can't ACTUALLY use them outside those story events. So while the areas themselves are fantastic and fun to run around in and explore, fast travel is all but inevitable. There is also a very large stretch near the end of the game where it makes basically zero sense for you to even be allowed to use the mechanic, yet you can AND the game EXPECTS you to drop what you're doing during the main plot and go do side quests, one of which has one of the best characters in the game available in it. This is probably the situation you'd want to avoid. Awquardly splicing in side content at times it makes no sense to, and forcing interactions with Fast Travel with no other method of accessing other areas just by running around.
for me, the best open world games avoid making gameplay feel like a visit to the carnival, where the whole game is built around running back and forth to brightly lit destinations where prizes await. games like eden ring and RDR2 lead the player to get lost in the world, to immerse themselves and obverse and investigate without specific expectations, following the horizon to adventure, instead of following map icons to activities.
I wish having cheat menus were base Much better to have a world without fast travel and just use cheats rather then impose a limit on what mechanics your going to use Morrowind im not going to cookie clicker in a room for 24 real hours and the only way some of the levels are going up is if i do that or cheat or use late game gold to pay trainers I cheat for 100 level and no regrets
For me it's simple: no fast travel, no money. I have limited free time and I'm not about to WASTE it running around in a video game when I could do plenty of other stuff like... I don't know, running around IRL, for instance 😅 That'd be the basics. You need a fast travel option. Once that's there, we can talk about how to implement it. A good example is the Xenoblade series. Imagine having to run back to previous maps... it'd take you hours. Instead, you explore the map and discover fast travel point you can go to for free at any time. Something else would be unacceptable in a game with a world the size of the darn USA
Complaining that a mechanic's existence that can be ignored being bad game design is the same as saying subtitles is bad because not everyone needs it. You either fast travel, or you don't. As long as you're having fun, and as long as the developers aren't shooting themself in the foot, then why complain? Just play the game how you want, no one is gonna kill you if you don't. That being said, one complaint i do have, is developers thinking I'm a child and being way too hand holdy. Probably the opposite of player freedom, and doesn't allow me to play how I want. So that sucks. Unless it's an extremely linear game of course, but that's not part of the discussion.
Yh but i dont want to have to think of ways, strategies that are outside of the box to complete a mission, thats just a bit too much work imo. i just want to play the story/game and enjoy it and quickly accompish something. The downside of what ur saying is that missions in the story might turn into a thinking exercise almost like a puzzle, and story mode single player games are just meant to be stressless, chill experiences. The Online mode can be a place where the game doesnt hold ur hand to much and allow u to play missions how u want. Rockstar does that so well in Gta Online for example with heists, u can plan them whatever way u like and that works very well with friends and other people.
@@Extreme2SwaggerHD uhm, that's not what I was saying. And I literally said linear story based games are excluded from the discussion because it's designed to be experienced a certain way. You know what you're getting with those, and I enjoy them for what they are. I'm specifically referring to games where the entire point is to explore and have freedom, and the game not allowing you to. And the idea that every level has to be puzzle is just not what I'm saying at all. I've been playing SMT V and that game doesn't hold your hand at all. It says "here's the main goal, try and get here." And you can explore and grind and side quests as much as you want before continuing. The game never interrupts you, and the main goal is very clear. It's just a matter of how much you want to do by yourself. That's all I'm asking for, not puzzles needed, or elaborate level design. Just trust from devs that i know what I'm doing.
While I generally agree with your points, and I have no strong opinion on the matter, when you say "you choose what buttons you press" and imply that giving more options to players cannot be a bad thing, I feel like you ignore the fact that even when they do everything they want the way they want, players will not necessarily pick the most fun options for themselves. Of course, each person finds fun in various ways that might be different from what the developers envisioned, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the fact that they themselves could have more fun if they played a different way from what they initially wanted.
A player choosing to fast travel everywhere because it's more convenient may not realize that they could have more fun if they tried exploring more. They're not dumb for doing this, they just can't *actually* know how much fun they'll have by doing something before they actually do it. And that goes for everyone: you can't know how much a decision impacts your fun until you're looking back on it, and even then, you may be inclined to blame the game instead of your own choices. This isn't just the issue of a few people who "lack self-control", it's just how the mind works.
Not sure where I'm going with this to be honest. I guess simply: While giving options to players is generally a good thing, designers should, well, design fun ways to play, and instead of offloading the game design to the players, designers should strongly incentivize them to play the way(s) that they intend to be the most fun, because players aren't necessarily going to find out by themselves, even if they think they can.
Sometimes designers can be clumsy and design mechanics that seemingly punish the player or restrict their freedom arbitrarily, and while that is not ideal, it is good to remind yourself that their goal is to guide you towards a certain kind of fun that you may enjoy more than what you initially intended to do. And yes, this is important for everyone including you, every game guides their player to play a certain way, and restricts their freedom at times, it's just more or less obvious depending on how well it's implemented.
Good video BTW!
I usually don't use fast travel if I can help it. I completed 4 full playthroughs of Cyberpunk 2077 and 3 of them were without using fast travel at all and somehow I enjoyed the game more. Night City is absolutely stunning and you would miss a lot skipping the driving portion. Plus the cars interiors and incredibly detailed that further adds to immersion if you drive in first person.
Night City is probably the best looking and realistic (design wise) city in all of gaming.
I like how the Gothic games handle it, where later on you unlock teleportation stones to certain locations and you have to find them in order to unlock the right to fast travel. Rewarding exploration with the ability to fast travel is fun and helps give me that choice of how to explore. Great video!
They also make it worth your while to revisit areas you've already been to by adding quests and enemies at later stages of the game. It feels natural to backtrack because the world is reliably changing once you have reached a new story chapter. I think the system back then was far from perfect, but the general idea is great.
IMO Morrowind is still the best argument against the "you can just ignore it, lol" argument.
Because... you get fast travel. But by resisting the urge to reduce it to "open the menu and go" the game instead developed a lot of interesting choices around travel.
Want to fast travel everywhere? OK, if you can't make your own scrolls, you're gonna rely on public transportation and teleportation methods, all of which cost money. Not a ton of money, just enough to sting a little bit. If you generally choose not to fast travel you're in luck because you're probably faster and stronger than those wimpy mages (and need to stop to rest less often).
As a mage, you can make your own teleportation scrolls for cheap, and use mark / recall spells to warp between places you normally couldn't (mirroring the usual "walk to your destination but fast-travel back" thing). Not fast-traveling somehow is actually more dangerous for you because you just can't sustain yourself long-distance the same way.
Either way, where your allegiances lie will often affect exactly where you're fast-traveling to.
The point being, if you want to just fast-travel everywhere, you can just throw money at the problem until it goes away, but for anyone who isn't as enthusiastic travel becomes a more interesting puzzle.
I'm fine with fast travel, I just don't like overly generous fast travel. I prefer fast travel being from one pre-set location to another. But from anywhere to pre-set locations is also ok.
This mirrors exactly how I feel about Skyrim. Let the player choose. Sometimes I gotta get things done and want to jump around from city to city. Other times I just want to wander and let things happen. Same with Xenoblade 3.
For me, I'll explore every nook and cranny there is on offer, but only if they are stuck in a set of mostly linear levels. Dark Souls games I'm happy to explore, Symphony of the Night and other Metriodvanias of the like I'm happy to explore. The moment you show me an open world I become quickly overwhelmed. I was, for example, enjoying Elden Ring right up until I finished the tutorial, stepped outside and realized that it was an open world game... I sat there for 20 minutes just trying to figure out how I wanted to proceed and eventually realized I was stuck in a state of paralysis I couldn't get out of so I turned the game off, thinking I might find a guide and come back when I had a way to properly focus through and have not been able to bring myself back in.
If Elden Ring had been able to keep me focused on the task at hand without making me feel like I needed to explore I might have been able to finish with a guide and would have used fast travel plenty, but the game itself left me overwhelmed and every guide I found also made the game just simply feel too overwhelming to try. I did eventually make it to the first boss, but I was clearly under leveled and there was no reasonable way to grind without also wandering the world and just hoping I'd find something good at random and also be able to figure out where that boss was when I'm finally ready.
You teach your pidgeon fly, and infinite fast travel unlocked. I don't think people ever thought twice of it.
Great topic for a video! Ive been conflicted on this over the last few years as open world has long been one of my favorite game designs. In the last year or two I started to feel like some open worlds are now designed to waste your time. Maybe I have less time to play so I cant really make significant progress if I take my time in the worlds like before. Far Cry 6 I ended up just fast traveling when I could & flying the planes because traversing the jungles felt like I just burned time. Considering exploring meaningfully designed open worlds is one of my favorite things, I hated my time with Far Cry 6 by the end and that sucked...
I love Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but it is maybe the worst offender for awkward Fast Travel mechanics. Narratively the major areas are all isolated and constantly moving so having fast travel between them seems pretty needed, but as far as i can tell there is no point on any map that actually connects these major areas together, which is doubly baffling as most of these areas have ports built into them that you use during the story, but can't ACTUALLY use them outside those story events. So while the areas themselves are fantastic and fun to run around in and explore, fast travel is all but inevitable. There is also a very large stretch near the end of the game where it makes basically zero sense for you to even be allowed to use the mechanic, yet you can AND the game EXPECTS you to drop what you're doing during the main plot and go do side quests, one of which has one of the best characters in the game available in it. This is probably the situation you'd want to avoid. Awquardly splicing in side content at times it makes no sense to, and forcing interactions with Fast Travel with no other method of accessing other areas just by running around.
for me, the best open world games avoid making gameplay feel like a visit to the carnival, where the whole game is built around running back and forth to brightly lit destinations where prizes await. games like eden ring and RDR2 lead the player to get lost in the world, to immerse themselves and obverse and investigate without specific expectations, following the horizon to adventure, instead of following map icons to activities.
I remember when it was like Chimera wings.
I wish having cheat menus were base
Much better to have a world without fast travel and just use cheats rather then impose a limit on what mechanics your going to use
Morrowind im not going to cookie clicker in a room for 24 real hours and the only way some of the levels are going up is if i do that or cheat or use late game gold to pay trainers
I cheat for 100 level and no regrets
For me it's simple: no fast travel, no money. I have limited free time and I'm not about to WASTE it running around in a video game when I could do plenty of other stuff like... I don't know, running around IRL, for instance 😅
That'd be the basics. You need a fast travel option. Once that's there, we can talk about how to implement it. A good example is the Xenoblade series. Imagine having to run back to previous maps... it'd take you hours. Instead, you explore the map and discover fast travel point you can go to for free at any time. Something else would be unacceptable in a game with a world the size of the darn USA
Why only 13 comments?!
16
Complaining that a mechanic's existence that can be ignored being bad game design is the same as saying subtitles is bad because not everyone needs it. You either fast travel, or you don't. As long as you're having fun, and as long as the developers aren't shooting themself in the foot, then why complain? Just play the game how you want, no one is gonna kill you if you don't.
That being said, one complaint i do have, is developers thinking I'm a child and being way too hand holdy. Probably the opposite of player freedom, and doesn't allow me to play how I want. So that sucks. Unless it's an extremely linear game of course, but that's not part of the discussion.
agreed. people for whatever reason blame the game for their own lack of self control
Yh but i dont want to have to think of ways, strategies that are outside of the box to complete a mission, thats just a bit too much work imo. i just want to play the story/game and enjoy it and quickly accompish something. The downside of what ur saying is that missions in the story might turn into a thinking exercise almost like a puzzle, and story mode single player games are just meant to be stressless, chill experiences.
The Online mode can be a place where the game doesnt hold ur hand to much and allow u to play missions how u want. Rockstar does that so well in Gta Online for example with heists, u can plan them whatever way u like and that works very well with friends and other people.
@@Extreme2SwaggerHD uhm, that's not what I was saying. And I literally said linear story based games are excluded from the discussion because it's designed to be experienced a certain way. You know what you're getting with those, and I enjoy them for what they are. I'm specifically referring to games where the entire point is to explore and have freedom, and the game not allowing you to. And the idea that every level has to be puzzle is just not what I'm saying at all. I've been playing SMT V and that game doesn't hold your hand at all. It says "here's the main goal, try and get here." And you can explore and grind and side quests as much as you want before continuing. The game never interrupts you, and the main goal is very clear. It's just a matter of how much you want to do by yourself. That's all I'm asking for, not puzzles needed, or elaborate level design. Just trust from devs that i know what I'm doing.