The difference between passable and raising the bar in a modern open world game

Actual good criticism? Am I really browsing the SoT forums?

My only wish is for this thread to hit 1k posts, but we will have to deal with the brainlet threats of "hurr pvp ded game", unfortunantely.

@spyderhat said in The difference between passable and raising the bar in a modern open world game:

Someone correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t the two studios vastly different in the amount of developers working on each title? SOT is 100-200 vs maybe close to 1000, if not more, for RDR2? My understanding is that Rare is a relatively small studio and this is their first “big” title in a long time and so you can’t rightly expect them to deliver on the level of the devs for GTA and RDR. Hopefully one day but it’s very early in their “return to more serious development”. Personally I would love for SOT to get the royal treatment of course, but perhaps that’s only possible if a different dev team took up the task. “Asked if it took 1,000 people to develop GTAV, Benzies said, "It's probably more. Much more." Basically comparing Rare to Rockstar is simply unfair.

I don't expect Rare to be putting out the same quality of content as Rockstar, that would be unfair to expect. But the game feels fairly empty and shallow, the NPCs and AI seem generations behind like something out of a N64 game. There are major thematic elements missing from the game that would fit fantastically and flush out the world with variety and interactivity that are instead absent. The grind to reaching pirate legend is long and repetitive, the rewards hollow and lacking. The variety of ships and weapons and cosmetics are extremely limited. The sword/gun combat leaves a lot to be desired. Et cetera, et cetera.

@soulless-rager A better perspective would be that SoT doesn't need 300 types of animals that each behave differently and interact with the world and have some advanced ai, but it could use some more variety in the fauna of the islands allowing for the birds to interact beyond just being environmental decoration. SoT doesn't need 20 huge sprawling towns populated by hundreds of npcs, but it could use a couple of more organic npcs that feel like they are part of the world and not just some attraction, along with some retouching on the outposts to make them feel more alive and unique. SoT doesn't need several sytems of combat and damage, but it could use some variety in the tools we got for pvp/pve besides 4 weapons 1 healing item 1 repair item and 1 type of damage cannonball. SoT doesn't need huge island clusters full of vegetation and topography, but it could have some more islands with environmental challenges that allow players to adapt to different scenarios depending on the region of the world they're in.

In short, SoT doesn't need to be RDR2, it needs to be a better complete version of itself.

@urihamrayne very well said.

If rare has one fifth the staff the game should have 1/5th the content as RDR2 if competence of both companies is similar for creating their chosen genre/game vision.

Hard to make a comparison as people said this may not be fair to do from some perspectives such as number of employees etc, but if you read the above post it is 100% valid to make this comparison.

@urihamrayne said in The difference between passable and raising the bar in a modern open world game:

@soulless-rager A better perspective would be that SoT doesn't need 300 types of animals that each behave differently and interact with the world and have some advanced ai, but it could use some more variety in the fauna of the islands allowing for the birds to interact beyond just being environmental decoration. SoT doesn't need 20 huge sprawling towns populated by hundreds of npcs, but it could use a couple of more organic npcs that feel like they are part of the world and not just some attraction, along with some retouching on the outposts to make them feel more alive and unique. SoT doesn't need several sytems of combat and damage, but it could use some variety in the tools we got for pvp/pve besides 4 weapons 1 healing item 1 repair item and 1 type of damage cannonball. SoT doesn't need huge island clusters full of vegetation and topography, but it could have some more islands with environmental challenges that allow players to adapt to different scenarios depending on the region of the world they're in.

In short, SoT doesn't need to be RDR2, it needs to be a better complete version of itself.

Better perspective? I don't agree. The rest is agreeable, but I don't accept aiming so low. SoT doesn't need to be RDR2, but it can aim to be as good if not better (in its own way). Better to try for excellence and fall a little short into great, than to limit their potential by just trying for better.

@soulless-rager i didn't mean to imply that it was aiming low, only that the systems in sot are incomplete, they are below the low.

@treefittymonsta said in The difference between passable and raising the bar in a modern open world game:

Wait r2r is going to have an online mode?

Of course. The online is starting with a beta the following month after RDR2 releases.

While i do agree that RDR2 is the high bar that all open world games should strive for, I'm still on the fence if S.O.T should strive for that and be an openworld pirate game with the same goal. Don't get me wrong cause that would be awesome, but S.O.T and Rare has to figureout what they can offer cause they cannot directly compete on Rockstars level. S.O.T still has alot of potential but they should offer soilded gameplay not thru complexity but simplicity. Cause they as a small and rebuilt dev house needs to find their footing. Rare studios were known for putting their unique spin on established game genre and that were not always well polised but provided a unqiue experience and captivates us with their immersive worlds. They need to take risk and try new things. In other word Rare has some soul searching to do as it's seems kind of lost.With S.O.T having a bit of an identy crisis at times of what it wants to be. There a of things that are working agians't the openworld theme that has been pointed out over and over agian.We as the players can only offer them options. We can disscuss what we want from a priate game all we want, and we already have given a very long list to Rare but all these suggestion take this game in opposing directions. I think it would just be best if Rare just picked a direction and made it absolutly clear where they want to go and get the approiate feedback from players. I want this game to be the best it can but everthing they added thus far is a big departure from where they started. I expect them to stumble around and fall a couple of times. What they need is the support and encoragement from us to push foward as well as contructive feedback like this post of what they did right and what they wrong. They were and are still a studio who listens to it's playerbase but it can't please everyone. I already Think they tried shooting for the stars as this was a very ambitious goal to start with but it as if they mange so far to scrape the moon as to me this game is so far from their vision most of the playerbase has lost sight of it. They did however mange to deliver an experiance that i fell in love with as it brought both a feeling of nostalgia and thrill of adventure with a constant hint of dread.

@lightning-yata said in The difference between passable and raising the bar in a modern open world game:

And one thing taught me by a teacher that I consider very wise was that the public never knows what they want and we have to be careful with it. So in part Rare is wrong to try to get us to design the game with our comments and feedback.

the type of feedback that needs to be avoided is the one that tries to dumb down the game and remove features rather than building upon the existing tools and improving them, i don't personally mind having people say that something is hard and it's giving them a bad time, not everyone is as good at the game as the top players, but realistically speaking this game is not a competitive multiplayer game, its pretty casual in nature.

@soulless-rager good to see you back. I feel like all of us can agree that the game is begging to feel more alive. More organic.

Aye you are right. Like RD and GTA, SoT has I very unique feel and game play loop.
I think everyone can see the massive potential Rare have given themselves with the game at its barebones, but it is also fundamentally lacking in a lot of departments.

I feel SoT will get there eventually, maybe not to the standard or size of a GTA Or RD but in a year or so I can really see SoT making its mark on the games industry. But it will take a bit of time, possibly like what NMS did.
That’s my hope anyway.
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@Soulless-Rager It was fun jumping on the Red Dead Redemption online with ya the over day. I missed black jack and liars dice! Shame my 360 progress didn’t carry over. I hope we get those games in SoT soon. (They have also been confirmed for RD2)————————————————————-
@treefittymonsta Thats exactly what I’m worrying about! To many good games coming out in November! I’m going to have no time xD
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Glad this thread is staying positive aswell! :)

@stiffrenagade87 said in The difference between passable and raising the bar in a modern open world game:

@spyderhat completely agree with that. Rockstar have that name for a reason. They continuously bring out best sellers. I might be ignorant but id never heard of Rare until SoT, and if i have played any of their games, i didnt realise it was made by them. But to make my point, whether you're Rockstar, EA, Ubisoft or 2K, none of these developers have had me playing a game for 6 months straight. Im still waiting to play State of Decay, A Way Out, Tomb Raider, and probably wont bother with the new Fifa as i cant seem to find interest in anything other than gold hoarding, soul searching and ship sinking piracy.

Rare hasn't been a big name for games recently, but if you played N64 you likely played some of their classics like Goldeneye, Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Jetforce Gemini, Donkey Kong 64, etc. They were a big name back then.

@spyderhat said in The difference between passable and raising the bar in a modern open world game:

@soulless-rager I completely agree with you. The game is definitely more of a skeleton with little meat here and there. The only explanation I believe is that this is the best they can do currently given their available manpower, timeframe and budget. I’ve mentioned this before - this game being so unique and also an “exclusive” AND being used as a selling point for game pass I simply cannot believe how casually Microsoft is treating its development. So much potential in this game it’s just incredible that Microsoft didn’t do everything in their power to make it a must have powerhouse. They seemed content to just ease into it and test the waters and gradually support it. And over time they’ll develop more and more. But of course the problem with that is that new games are coming out that will steal attention away the longer they drag their feet. The whole game feels like a missed opportunity. Much like the original Xbox. Now they went into overdrive with the Xbox X. Just wish they had gone into overdrive with Sea of Thieves. It’s a cool game yes, but not a must have can’t live without type of game.

Totally agree. Though I wish I were a fly on the wall for the meetings where they talked about the scope and gameplay loop and goals that drive the players. I can't help but feel that there was a severe error in the direction that was decided upon. Somehow it was agreed upon that only a small handful of varied cosmetics was enough to motivate players to grind for treasure, and a very limited range of activities in a relatively shallow world would be enough to entertain the average player repeatedly, or that the reward for reaching pirate legend only needed to be a set of cosmetics and the same exact missions but even more tedious, etc. A lot of poor decisions were made, or glaring oversights, to end up with the product we got at release.

i love the gta series n im hyped for the rdr2 story ,but when u look now on gta online the free mode map has not much to do ,just get crates sell crates or u can sell cars,the heists were great.so rdr2 online will not be a milestone,battle royal mode sounds pretty boring....sure rdr 2 will blast away cause the awesome designed world n rockstars storytelling

Well said. Thank you for using concrete examples and citations for comparison.

@spyderhat said in The difference between passable and raising the bar in a modern open world game:

Someone correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t the two studios vastly different in the amount of developers working on each title? SOT is 100-200 vs maybe close to 1000, if not more, for RDR2? My understanding is that Rare is a relatively small studio and this is their first “big” title in a long time and so you can’t rightly expect them to deliver on the level of the devs for GTA and RDR. Hopefully one day but it’s very early in their “return to more serious development”. Personally I would love for SOT to get the royal treatment of course, but perhaps that’s only possible if a different dev team took up the task. “Asked if it took 1,000 people to develop GTAV, Benzies said, "It's probably more. Much more." Basically comparing Rare to Rockstar is simply unfair.

CDProjectRed is a small studio and they’ve moved mountains. It comes down to good creative vision and focused management, neither of which Rare has in abundance (eg 2 years to finalize a single asset, drip fed shallow content, etc).