How would you make an open world game that is actually fun?

Have interesting areas to explore instead of copy pasted dungeons randomly thrown around.

Trick question, you can't make full open world fun. You have to find ways to sneak in actual world progression that players don't notice.

Death Stranding had a literally empty open world and yet it was fun because the terrain itself was a core gameplay element.

fast travels everywhere

it's true, adhd-addled zoomers are the worst generation ever, of all time

If the world is nice to look at then the bottom is far superior.

No minimap or any bullshit like it

The fun of open world is exploration, so there needs to be something interesting to find and lots of it, but the rewards need to feel unique and worth the effort of going out of the way to find it. So going from the Elder Scrolls formula as a base, I'd make a more dynamic loot system with a gaussian distribution of rewards, centered over your level, but with chances of level 1 loot all the way to ridiculously broken loot. If there's a chance of finding a high level item with 4 or 5 enchantments on it at level one that immediately makes it worthwhile to check out every POI you see, rather than waiting until level 25 to find modest loot instead of a few gold or something.

Also the overworld needs to be varied and consistently interesting, with different restrictions and requirements. BOTW/TOTK is a perfect example of this, as it covers nearly a full range of climates and environments with player considerations for extreme hot and cold weather. It also prevents traversal form being too tedious with the glider, whereas in Skyrm especially you end up scaling down mountains instead if you choose to leave the path.

Dungeon generation should also be more dynamic rather than just a handful of themes that stay consistent through the whole dungeon. Mix and match styles, like in Minecraft when a mineshaft crosses a stronghold, or just make a spectrum of themes that at least change the color of the stone a little especially by region.

Finally combat needs to be engaging so that the player isn't bored as they hack through all these dungeons. Ideally something skill-based with a high ceiling such a the Smash Bros games, build-your-own physics based combos rather than just left click over and over and parry from time to time.

oh and along with the skill-based combat thing, the world should have varied difficulty zones that serve as guidance to new players but don't outright restrict skilled players from exploring out of order. The entire map being at one level makes it feel boring.

So there is nothing wrong with open world games and OP's image is pointless.

I shit on empty world games and I play mostly arcade and arcade-like titles.

Make games linear and you unlock open world after beating the game

Exactly, traversal speed alone can make a huge difference. That’s why games like Prototype or SR4 felt so fun—even if the world itself wasn't the most detailed, zooming around at super speed made getting from A to B enjoyable in itself. If your character's movement is satisfying, even an empty map becomes a playground.

Why don't more games just use connected but separate instanced areas?

If you just fast travel everywhere why have an open world at all

The 5% of the ADHD population can use fast travel. It's like a game reviewer mode where it makes the game way easier, but instead of making the game easier it makes the game more stimulating for those with mental disorders.

The rest of the population can enjoy the scale and scope of the open world gameplay.

Emergent gameplay.
Allows the player to approach combat encounters from multiple angles.
Encourages player creativity.

that door means he's in a dungeon, open world titles have dungeons littered all over the overworld. It should be multiple doors spaced out, not spacing out the enemies/rewards.

Having loading zones is a big turn off to a lot of normal cattle for some reason. Everything must be one big open expanse of nothingness.

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Cool bait

Interesting movement mechanics.
Either make movement just really fun to do, or have traversing the world itself be a challenge that requires thought and planning.
Basically or

so you can have more loading screens of course

Make it smaller and more dense.

there's no reason to think this whatsoever

You can go into any house and school and convenience store office bus stop public toilet restaurant live tv studio and just re0av0ywipu eveyrone

A good chunk of my favorite games are open world. I'm not an underage third world shitposter who thinks ubisoft invented open worlds in 2014 so I do that get offended at the concept and understand that some are good and some are bad.

huh. reipu.

Take a look at the levels from the first episode of Quake. They are expertly designed to be a puzzle but they flow, you don't feel stuck or wasting time. Procedural generated open areas are put in games purely to pad it out and waste your time.

oblivion

Death Stranding but with more mountains

wild life and factions need to have organic encounters RDR had something close to that but it wasn't organic, just random

make it a survival game, and add all the tedious survival mechanics because fuck you rpg fags who keep simplifying game design and reduce it to being a number go up game.

also make traversal dangerous and make it so that fast travel is either killed or that you still have to physically travel from one place to another and get encounters

My nigga you've never played outer wilds?

LOL!

Lots of good varied well placed content.
Also hidden things.
Being able to skip parts and getting multiple story branches with hidden endings.
Also a couple of timed events with NPCs having their own stories.

Nobody is trying to make bad games on purpose, open world is already at its "best" because it is what works for most people. It's like asking how to make junk food not junk food. There's no point undoing it because it is exactly what they're going for.

Just make it like vanilla wow, i'd go further though and remove a lot of flight points so you spend more time traveling to places you want to go.

An open world game is fun when I can zoom past all of its content at max speed

I'm so glad none of you make videogames. A lampshade has more creativity than you.

The only high IQ anon in here, except for me of course.

You're a lot dumber than you realize you are, and don't understand game design on any level.

Elden Ring sold bazillion copies because it also didn't "understand game design". I never said that open world is the best thing ever, just that it works for most people. You might as well ask "how to make racing games better" and then suggest them to remove racing.

why is the top so cramped?

rpg fags who keep simplifying game design and reduce it to being a number go up game

I think you've got your wires crossed buddy, anybody who actually likes rpgs hates the AAA streamlined bullshit

Traveling npcs

So exactly the person anon is describing?

ER sold well because of From's name and marketing hype.

Right. And had nothing to do with the whole huge open world thing where you can loot mushrooms from cloned caves.

Empty space is bad space, no matter how fast you move through it.
If the environment has hundreds of meters between points of interest, it better be because there are huge armies fighting (of which you have the option to join or sneak around), complex terrain to navigate in interesting ways, NPCs constantly spawning all over the place, and/or it has guns and you're making long range shots at distant enemies. The space itself needs to have purpose, otherwise you're just putting a band-aid over it by going faster across it.

More than simply speed, navigation should have player engagement and even strategic potential such as going through a tower dungeon and getting to the top so you can hang-glide and land somewhere useful (example: Enshrouded), or an alternative route that requires techniques like wall running to get somewhere faster and from a more opportune angle. Simply traversing over obstacles directly ala something like Assassin's Creed or scaling up walls ala BOTW is UNengaging because it's basically autopilot.

Empty space makes active space feel more active.