Glad I watched this. The protagonist of my space game is going to have a limited teleportation ability, so keeping some abstracted travel required will help serve as contrast, I feel. I probably need to do whatever I can to prevent it from feeling like “quick travel.”
This is so helpful! I'm working on a game based sround old biplanes, and I was trying to think up a way for players to travel without running out of fuel, crashing, etc. It never occurred to me to just use a world map to travel between smaller, malped out areas where action occurs.
I'm quite fond of diegetic transportation methods, such as teleportation in Morrowind, which requires casting a spell with its own mechanics or visiting a local mage guild (or temple) commissioner and paying a fee. Since not all cities are connected in the transportation network, players need to have an intimate knowledge of the world to really optimize their journeys. Also in FFs, they often introduce a story bit the first time you use a new transportation method (Juno to Costa del Sol, the ferry, trains flashback in ff8 and so on) before you can use their abstracted faster version, making us more aware of their real life duration. Probably one of the best "fast travel" I encountered was in Kingdom Come : Deliverance, where you can be stopped and killed if the path is dangerous, or at night, and force you to take it seriously.
I appreciate your thoughts on this topic. I often think about this in relation to worlds like Ocarina of Time's Hyrule, which is small enough to be manually traversable but still narratively sells the idea that it's a kingdom capable of housing multiple races/cultures.
MMORPG’s have the opposite philosophy, keeping goals at a distance, forcing the player to travel for a length of time, so that the player has pay for play. This provides the publisher an opportunity to make money in providing ‘quality of life’ enhancements, eliminating travelling with teleportation or some sort of fast travel (such as selling mounts). Or, as you said, the player has to press W for 5 minutes.
Awesome video, I appreciate hearing these concepts from a narrative perspective. Really solid breakdown. I've been obsessing over this same problem from a gameplay / level design view point. Playing a ton of Helldivers 2 right now, which has a similar doctrine to Battle Royals in terms of its moment-to-moment movement through the space. To your point about perception, the way it breaks up playable maps into small implied chunks of different planets that your ship can jump to and shoot you down is very fun and tight game loop, but still paints a compelling and believable narrative.
I just gave a talk on open world games being bad (and how they can be better) and a big focus is on the characteristics and importance of travel! Good timing lol. Your open world map design video was really helpful in putting it together :) (if you're interested, i just uploaded the recording)
i think the main way to make traveling feel meaningfull is to spend players resources while traveling. could be fine to hold W for 200 days if there's some dynamism in it collective youtube mind prepares itself for a wave of daggerfall reapoffs 🙃
you do very good videos
Thanks!
Yea most open world games boil down to "fast travel simulator" as every sidequest forces you across the entire map for some reason.
I agree. That's a problem with the structure of the side quests!
Glad I watched this. The protagonist of my space game is going to have a limited teleportation ability, so keeping some abstracted travel required will help serve as contrast, I feel.
I probably need to do whatever I can to prevent it from feeling like “quick travel.”
This is so helpful! I'm working on a game based sround old biplanes, and I was trying to think up a way for players to travel without running out of fuel, crashing, etc. It never occurred to me to just use a world map to travel between smaller, malped out areas where action occurs.
I'm quite fond of diegetic transportation methods, such as teleportation in Morrowind, which requires casting a spell with its own mechanics or visiting a local mage guild (or temple) commissioner and paying a fee. Since not all cities are connected in the transportation network, players need to have an intimate knowledge of the world to really optimize their journeys.
Also in FFs, they often introduce a story bit the first time you use a new transportation method (Juno to Costa del Sol, the ferry, trains flashback in ff8 and so on) before you can use their abstracted faster version, making us more aware of their real life duration.
Probably one of the best "fast travel" I encountered was in Kingdom Come : Deliverance, where you can be stopped and killed if the path is dangerous, or at night, and force you to take it seriously.
I appreciate your thoughts on this topic.
I often think about this in relation to worlds like Ocarina of Time's Hyrule, which is small enough to be manually traversable but still narratively sells the idea that it's a kingdom capable of housing multiple races/cultures.
It's extremely delicate to set that up. I don't trust myself to be able to do it, I'd rather use a more flexible presentation.
MMORPG’s have the opposite philosophy, keeping goals at a distance, forcing the player to travel for a length of time, so that the player has pay for play. This provides the publisher an opportunity to make money in providing ‘quality of life’ enhancements, eliminating travelling with teleportation or some sort of fast travel (such as selling mounts). Or, as you said, the player has to press W for 5 minutes.
Awesome video, I appreciate hearing these concepts from a narrative perspective. Really solid breakdown.
I've been obsessing over this same problem from a gameplay / level design view point. Playing a ton of Helldivers 2 right now, which has a similar doctrine to Battle Royals in terms of its moment-to-moment movement through the space. To your point about perception, the way it breaks up playable maps into small implied chunks of different planets that your ship can jump to and shoot you down is very fun and tight game loop, but still paints a compelling and believable narrative.
Sounds great! I haven't played that one!
I just gave a talk on open world games being bad (and how they can be better) and a big focus is on the characteristics and importance of travel! Good timing lol. Your open world map design video was really helpful in putting it together :) (if you're interested, i just uploaded the recording)
Oh, an actual talk! Congrats! It'll take a while to watch it. XD
i think the main way to make traveling feel meaningfull is to spend players resources while traveling. could be fine to hold W for 200 days if there's some dynamism in it
collective youtube mind prepares itself for a wave of daggerfall reapoffs 🙃
That's a good way, for sure. I think using multiple methods is strongest.
Simulationist dream, not narrative, fall apart 😂