Lessons in Open World Design: A Ghost Recon Story | Forums

[Steven527]

"...the vast island of Auroa features many diverse and beautiful landscapes, filled with one very empty city, well actually maybe a small town..without anything you'd expect in a small town. Okay it is a collection of unrelated structures in a big circle mostly devoid of people. Beyond that we just have a bunch of college dorms. Skell tech employees are essentially Foxconn iPhone slaves on an island...."

I'd sure love to see those...

Fixed that

Yeah the article shows the developer entirely missed the point. This isn't Myst. The terrain matters to me not as a place to wander in and go oooh aaaah at the designers effort to create a landscape. The terrain only matters in so far as it is something I have to include in a tactical plan. Can I approach unseen, is there cover approaching the target and allowing an exfil, Finding a tree with a box beneath it? Pointless. Finding a ravine that allows me to approach an objective under cover possibly allowing an access through a drain? Priceless.

It proves what we have known all along. The design team didn't understand what they were creating. The open world only matters to the sense it enhances the Ghost experience. Bolivia did. Auroa is a painting I wander in with a disjointed mish mash of locations and a civilian population that is barely part of the scenery.

[El_Cuervacho]

Breakpoint does not feature a diverse landscape in comparison to Wildlands, although it is attractive. Breakpoint mostly consists of forest, swamps, and jungles all of which are very similar to each other and lacks any meaningful desert areas and is short on transitional areas which Wildlands was enriched with.

There's something about Breakpoint's topography that's way off.
Surely we could theorize as what that "something" actually is, as well as the individual elements that contribute to this overwhelming sensation I get with this particular game world as compared to my experience with Wildlands' or, with Earth on a daily basis.

[TONY-NOVA]

There's something about Breakpoint's topography that's way off.
Surely we could theorize as what that "something" actually is, as well as the individual elements that contribute to this overwhelming sensation I get with this particular game world as compared to my experience with Wildlands' or, with Earth on a daily basis.

With Wildlands they used real life Bolivia as a reference, I believe they actually took a trip down there to get a hands on feel for the local atmosphere. Why Aurora seems off is because our minds are used to real life. It's the little subtitles. No shopping markets, no people driving, etc. Their choice of npc behavior also causes a cringe because we know normal people don't act like that.

[Capt.Dazzer]

Seal Team Six, on the night of Operation Neptune Spear, stopped when they were approaching the terrorist compound.

They noticed a nice tree and went to explore.

There was nothing there, but the fact that were was a wild discovery was rewarding enough.

They then continued on their mission.

True story.

[Ryo_Hazaki]

I'm not certain if this has been shared here. I did see it was shared on Reddit already.
Lessons in Open World Design: A Ghost Recon Story written by Jean-Baptiste Oger, one of the Lead Game designers for Breakpoint, is a reassuring read.

The piece focuses on the exploration design aspect of Breakpoint, and covers several points I've personally brought up in the earlier days of Breakpoint, and how they are, at least, recognized as problematic choices.

I encourage you to read it for yourself. Cutting through the faux of the article, to summarize:
The decision to skew the franchise into an RPG/looter-shooter, and their willingness to implement solutions based solely off of "minimal cost"/effort lead them to focus on reducing the experience to the point where all that was left was the transparent mechanics specifically designed to manipulate player behavior for the goal of squeezing every last moment of Ubi's coveted "Player Engagement" metrics.

Here's hoping that Ubisoft understands that the solution to the issues that Mr. Oger brings up is as simple as focusing your efforts into making a product with more than "minimal cost". (So far though, it doesn't seem like it.)

@ CrockfordCK: thank you for posting this. It's a great read, giving lots of insight. This definitely gives me inspiration for more suggestions

[Flaw3dGenius23]

"...the vast island of Auroa features many diverse and beautiful landscapes, filled with dozens of cities..."

I'd sure love to see those...

Wasnt a single city in Breakpoint or Wildlands... If they must stay on this open world path for the next game id love to see a couple of cities on the map.

[Steven527]

Seal Team Six, on the night of Operation Neptune Spear, stopped when they were approaching the terrorist compound.

They noticed a nice tree and went to explore.

There was nothing there, but the fact that were was a wild discovery was rewarding enough.

They then continued on their mission.

True story.

I think I read that too! One of the team started to write a book about teams, trust and leadership but instead went on to write a book about the joy of discovery and random sh1t.

[Steven527]

Wasnt a single city in Breakpoint or Wildlands... If they must stay on this open world path for the next game id love to see a couple of cities on the map.

Barachevo was a good size place unfortunately they didn't really take advantage of it.

[smilecry]

You know as I was listening to a family member talk about living in france and this actually goes into largely why this game is a failure, she said out there the french are very slow to most things mentally and she was not trying to be discouraging but just pointing out how they don't like to conform to most things like learning another language they prefer and want you to learn their language she stated the only time they concede to learning another language is when it is for work purposes and have no other choice but to learn (side note now I understand why ubiparis dev team members can't really speak english very well) She also said the mindset there is closed off just a one way thinking mentality; so now getting this bit of information from her as she was born there came here to the states and later moved back so I will take her view point on this as she is technically a native there whom has traveled as has seen both sides and she wants to leave and come back to the states basically france is lost now understand my harsh remarks of them.

EDITED: This is also why I looked up ubiparis development career overtime with Ghost Recon and pointed out no matter what the original dev team Red Storm has always been apart of Ghost Recon up until this iteration and got this end result of garbage.

[MikeWeeks]

Barachevo was a good size place unfortunately they didn't really take advantage of it.

As was Libertad City, especially when one considers the refinery, airport and other structures just across the river. Plus you had a couple of missions.

In any event, on the whole, Wildlands was not designed as a urban (high-rise or otherwise) combat game to begin with.