Who’s got time to upgrade their gear when there are adventures to be had?
I did a Sniper Build, than they get me a Rifle who reload faster and cause damage to all enemies near that one shooted.
It carried me almost the entire game until i got those very rare mineral ores and craft one with a siginificant increased damage and causr cold damage.
I got a lot of cool stuff as reward from quests, exploring and buying rare itens on vendors
But because the game is open-area, players who really wanted to explore were getting stopped in their tracks in ways we didn’t anticipate.
They didn’t expect players to want to explore in an open-world game? That feels like a huge oversight. It’s good they’ve at least tried to address it, but I’m definitely less inclined to pick this up and give it a try. Exploring is absolutely the core of my enjoyment in open-world games, to the extent that sometimes I even forget to go back and do the story. I just want to live in and experience the world of the game.
That’s one way to understand it but the full quote is:
We were trying to create a tight gameplay loop. The player completes content, upgrades their gear, and faces harder content. But because the game is open-area, players who really wanted to explore were getting stopped in their tracks in ways we didn’t anticipate.
I read it that their gear was simply not good enough to go to certain areas…?
That’s kinda how I took it. I prefer that in some open world games. I want areas that are harder. Give me a reason to bother getting better gear. And if I want to muscle through a tough area with underpowered shit, let me do that too.
Something like GTA, there doesn’t seem a point other than maybe there is difficulty because numbers of enemies or something like a military base where enemies are expected to be trained. But in a fantasy setting where there are different monsters in different regions it makes much more sense.
Honestly irritates me when I can walk my happy level 2 ass into the final boss area and easily fight dragons et cetera with little to no issues.
I don’t think the expanded quote really changes the meaning of the snippet I used. All it adds is a description of the expected gameplay loop, the details of which don’t really matter outside the context of not being designed to support different gameplay styles.
The gear being underpowered is a symptom of this design issue. If you stop to ask why their gear wasn’t good enough, you realize it’s because the game was designed in a way that punished players whose gameplay style didn’t conform to the devs’ assumption instead of allowing for player freedom. That freedom to approach to game in different ways is a fundamental concept in open-world game design.
Edit: clarified my point
The gear being underpowered is a symptom of this design issue. Why wasn’t their gear good enough? It’s because the game was designed for a gameplay loop that punished exploration
No.
In Fallout 2 I regularly used to wander South towards San Francisco straight after starting the game. Of course my gear wasn’t good enough for that. That is player’s choice.
Alternative to this is a cretinous system where enemies are scaling up with the player, like in Oblivion. Obsidian games I played are fortunately free of this idiocy.
Going direct to high-level areas is neither what I am talking about nor the design problem of the game, but go off I guess.
It’s entirely possible to design a game such that players aren’t forced to follow a specific gameplay loop. For example, in games like the Elder Scrolls and Witcher series, you can find better gear from exploration instead of being forced to craft. This is true in the Fallout series as well. The key here is that players can progress in a way that complements their play style.
Also, just because you dislike a different approach like enemy level scaling (which, to be clear, is not what I’ve been talking about), that doesn’t necessarily invalidate it. I personally dislike level-gated areas because I feel that it makes enemies in earlier areas far less engaging when I return to those areas, which is a problem in many MMOs. I still recognize that there are different pros and cons to each of these approaches despite my preferences.
Lol, guess I should have spent less time typing out a reply. Looks like I also misunderstood the scope of your previous point. With the additional context of this comment tho, I completely agree with your point. A lot more could have been done to provide players with various paths to progression in Avowed.
Edit: and doubly so now that you edited you previous comment to clarify your point.
Sorry, I tend to rewrite my comments a few times before leaving them alone, especially when I’m tired. Sometimes I find I have to let the words sit for a minute before I realize that they don’t match what I intended, but voyager also doesn’t have a drafts feature where I can do that in private lol
You and me both, so no apologies needed. Always hard for me to find the line between adequately explaining my thoughts, and keeping them brief enough to not just be walls of text. I’m forever making edits to try and find that balance.
You are moving your position. You said that gear being underpowered is a design issue. It is not - it is a matter of player’s choice.
Don’t put words in my mouth. My position has not moved- I have said from the beginning that the design of the game is such that it takes away player agency. The gear is a symptom of that.
Don’t put words in my mouth.
That you? :
The gear being underpowered is a symptom of this design issue.
Edit: In light of finalarbiter’s edit that clarified their point, my comment is kinda superfluous. I stand by the ideas, but they don’t really pertain to the comment I responded to anymore. Leaving my rant anyways, cuz why not.
allowing for player freedom… is a fundamental concept in open-world game design.
Well, yes, that’s one philosophy, and a popular one. It’s been central to Bethesda’s open-world games since Oblivion, which have found massive success. So I don’t mean to say that letting players tackle content in any order is “wrong” or inherently flawed.
But it’s not the only approach. As Tim Cain, creator of Fallout, once said:
“We just decided to let players go wherever they wanted. If they went somewhere and got killed, well, they’d learn not to go there. And they’ll look forward to the challenge of being able to go back.”
Just because a game is open world (which fwiw, Avowed isn’t), doesn’t mean every area has to be conquerable at any time. The possibility of being underleveled is a natural part of RPG progression. And progression systems are fundamental to RPGs (which Avowed is). For many players, exploration and growth just aren’t as satisfying if everything scales to match them.
I did play Avowed, and in my view, the issue wasn’t that areas varied in difficulty. It was that the crafting system, the main way to improve gear, was dull and unengaging. I don’t blame players for skipping it, even if that meant showing up to a fight underpowered.
That said, I’m a bit surprised anyone got stuck, I personally felt overpowered most of the time. But according to the article, my experience wasn’t universal. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Crafting is tedious as a mechanic. Bad crafting is physically painful.
Yeah I think my edit clarified this, as you stated, but it’s worthwhile to respond and further clarify:
When I talk about player choice, I don’t mean games should necessarily just let you do whatever you want or go wherever you want a la Skyrim. I mean that progression systems in the game should complement play styles so that players aren’t forced into gameplay loops they don’t find engaging/enjoyable. Alternatively, the game should be clear about what the intended loop is so that players aren’t surprised when they don’t engage with it.
I think the recent monster hunter games (I haven’t played the earlier ones and can’t speak to them) do the clear gameplay loop thing pretty well- there’s a central hub that you return to for crafting and whatnot between each mission, then deploy again. It’s pretty explicit that you should be grinding for materials while on mission, then crafting/upgrading between them. The combat system is designed such that player skill can make up for non-optimal gear, though, so players who aren’t as interested in engaging with the crafting/upgrade can do so to a certain extent.
Absolutely agree, especially regarding your point that “the game should be clear about what the intended loop is so that players aren’t surprised when they don’t engage with it.” I’ve sometimes heard game designers call this “conveyance,” and Avowed, for all its streamlining, had pretty poor conveyance. Case in point, players feeling blindsided by how crucial crafting was.
After my long rant last night, I started thinking about how Avowed could’ve better encouraged players to engage with crafting. Things like stronger incentives to return to camp, companions commenting on worn gear, or maybe even a light repair mechanic to nudge players toward the crafting screen (though that might get annoying fast). Alternatively, as you said before, a more exploration focused alternative.
Honestly, the gear upgrade system felt a bit tacked on. So maybe just replace it with a gear leveling system? Weapons gain XP as you use them, fill up a progress bar, trigger a level-up animation, and maybe every couple levels unlock a perk for the weapon just for fun. Since gear already follows a linear upgrade path, the underlying progression wouldn’t change, but players would engage with it naturally, just by playing. But I digress.
Point is, I appreciate the clarification. And I agree, this was a design flaw, not just player oversight.
Ooh, yeah that bit about conveyance is exactly what I was trying to, well, convey (pun intended). I just didn’t know there was a term for it!
It kind of reminds of the yellow paint argument- Many recent games use yellow paint markings on objects as a shorthand to show that a player can climb on an object, but this can often break immersion and make little sense in the context of the world/environment.
How do you thread the needle as a game dev to make it clear that a player can interact with an object without totally pulling players out of the world? Do you make it less obvious and hope players will figure it out at the expense of some players getting stuck or missing something, or do you make it really obvious and cater to the lowest common denominator?
It’s definitely a challenge. Imho, Portal does it brilliantly. But then again, it’s also a game literally set in testing labs, so the heavy signposting feels natural in context.
Obviously there’s no perfect balance. Go too explicit, and players roll their eyes and say “Yeah, I get it.” Too vague, and they get lost and keep saying “What am I supposed to do?”, followed by “Oh, come on!” when they stumble into a solution by accident.
There’s a video series I like on classic game sequels that talks about this. They make a point that what’s cool about video games is how they can teach through gameplay. And then go on to give examples of how to do this well. Games that show each mechanic (an enemy, a hazard, whatever) in isolation first, and usually in a way that can’t negatively affect the player the first time. Then later, when they start to combine mechanics to ramp up the challenge, it feels fair.
I think for me, it’s that “fair feeling” that is most important. I want challenge, but challenge only matters if I have agency. And I can’t have agency if I don’t understand my choices. I sometimes laugh when a yellow line is telling me which ledge to grab… but if grabbable and non-grabbable ledges look identical, and I keep dying for no visible reason, I’m going to be really salty.
I got hung up on a difficult, optional fight for about an hour some hour or 2 outside of starter town. Im level 5 or so and they were about 9 or something, nothing major. In most open world RPGs, that level gap should not have been as much an issue as it was.
