On 14-1-2018 at 8:53 AM, Levi Lohman said:

Instead of a discovery being just an achievement or new gameplay element, it should also offer the possibility to unlock more achievements and elements depending on how the player matches up or arranges the discovery with others.

Not realy,

All you do is obfuscate the achievements that are unlockable, these achievements still need to be made up, and these achievements will not be available from the start of the game.

you are right in the sense that, for a game that already has plenty of content, such a structuring of the content could increase the longevity of the gameplay by a percentage without getting grindy.

A good structuring of the content is something that gets forgotten in many games, but in design it comes chronologically just before playtesting.

Btw, the more common reason to make content unavailable to new players is to decrease the learning-curve.

Hi, hello

Designing a game to please everyone I think is probably too high a goal to acheive and likely unacheivable in fact so it really comes down to getting the gameplay right and keeping it interesting to maximise the number of people that would play it.

No Mans Sky whilst ridiculous in size, really had nothing in it once you break it down and who really cares if it had 15 quadrillion planets because it's impossible to see them all and there are other massive issues with the game.

Each planet was essentilally the same but a different color. The flora never changed and the fauna was laughable in a lot of places. When you break down the gameplay elements of the original release, it was mine stuff to repair your ship to fly to another planet and do the same trillions of times. People will get bored of that after a while as it's pointless.

Elite Dangerous suffers much of the same with it's bland gameplay relying far too much on RNG to generate content of shallow AI engagements.

Minecraft is different however OP but it depends on what you like. This is the key here and whilst you say it didn't appeal to you, it certainly does to others, especially kids it seems (Ask my 2 nephews and niece who over Christmas had me watching them for 6 hours making sure they swapped around every 15 minutes so they all got a turn LOL).

The Forest gives you goals which makes it engaging. There's also challenge and possible loss. The environment and sound is spot on, you can build and you need to hunt as well as defend yourself and there's also a story to follow.

DayZ was an open world game that millions loved and was the mother of all these open world survival games we see now. Look at a similar game, The Division by Ubisoft which lost something like 93% of it's player base in 3 months. Essentially the same game but didn't keep people long enough because after the story was done, there isn't really anything to do but play the same end story's over and over and over and over..... They added in more stuff however and the Underground is good. These games of course are not endless and if they were, it wouldn't make any difference. Humans are great at seeing patterns and if you keep seeing the same old thing, over and over, that's going to be an issue ala No Mans Sky - why did Hello Games think repetitive, simplistic gameplay was going to be a "thing"?

So I think what a lot of games miss out on when they are designed is something that compels the player to come back. That being said, some games have a finite life and that's it. Open world games though need good game mechanics that keep the player interested. So they need to offer complexity, challenge, risk, reward, creativity and unique experiences (off the top of my head). The mechanics also need to be down so that means movement, shooting, building, sounds architecture and of course the art design. All of these parts are critical and are what make great games great.

That being said, I'm not sure you can make an endless open world game and keep people playing it. After a while, people are going to move on because every game will feel samey at somepoint.

I don't think it's really my place to reply in this thread, as 1. my answer just barely touches the subject and 2. I can do the same thing over and over for such a long time that I have psychologists lining up at the door to redefine madness.

However, I've played my fair share of open world games, including No Man's Sky, and the ones I've played the longest had this one thing in common: I could make them about me.

Minecraft didn't hold my interest for long as I was a square fellow, apparently named Steve and not much else (for me at least, I can see why the game is so popular). No Man's Sky tricked me into the hype, but while I could rename everything (if you come across a galaxy themed around latin terms for intercourse... sorry, I was running out of bands), it just stung that I couldn't rename my ship. Then Rebel Galaxy let me rename my ship and nothing else and it still did better for me.

Now, the reason I've clocked about five years on GTA is that my online character is me. Even though I am not a gun toting ginger with a seven figure bank account. But "me" enjoyed hanging in empty sessions collecting muscle cars, being a CEO, weapons dealer, collecting more muscle cars. Up to the point that I was explaining to friends I played with that doing a particular thing wasn't something "me" would do. And if anything was a repetition of moves it was GTA Online.

I know Los Santos isn't exactly and endless open universe, but it is an open world and I believe it also holds up for an open universe. Personal interest. 

I don't know if I added to the conversation with this, or just enjoyed talking about myself, but that's my idea on it.