Originally posted by VengeSunsoar The real question is that a game with a smaller scope by necessity had a smaller budget. This means it can't have a great many things we have come to expect (no matter if its themepark or sandbox).
How many people would now be willing to play andpay for it abd is that enough?
Yeah, good question. We will have to wait and see I guess.
There is surely a big segment of people who expect full AAA mass market scope.
The smaller titles so far are quite niche oriented and target specific (currently underserved) segments so they will hopefully do well.
The positive thing is, smaller budget doesn't mean less quality if you adjust scope accordingly. The more specific your target audience is, the better you can focus on emphasizing the best parts of the game for them without having to compromise like in a broader scope game.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar A smaller budget means one of three things. Less quality, less features or genius devs who can do quality and features at a fraction of the cost.
Roughly true. I've been expecting for some time for technological advances and spreading of know-how to decrease development times and costs. Tech such as procedural content, easily available and cheap assets for affordable engines, and/or design that doesn't necessarily rely on expensive quality or quantity of features, graphics, voice acting etc
Yeah, it might take a long time until we see the scope we are used to get more common again. Regardless of mmo type. Never say never, though.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar A smaller budget means one of three things. Less quality, less features or genius devs who can do quality and features at a fraction of the cost.
Roughly true. I've been expecting for some time for technological advances and spreading of know-how to decrease development times and costs. Tech such as procedural content, easily available and cheap assets for affordable engines, and/or design that doesn't necessarily rely on expensive quality or quantity of features, graphics, voice acting etc
Yeah, it might take a long time until we see the scope we are used to get more common again. Regardless of mmo type. Never say never, though.
To me using someone elses game engine already heavily limits what you can and can't do. I believe it's why we see a lot of MMOs that are the same. The earlier MMOs engines were all developer in house I believe by the companies making the games. This allowed them to code in whatever game mechanics they could think of. Most MMO game engines now come as a package with x, y, and z feature. We might be able to include feature g with some creative modification of the engine, but generally you are going to get what you go in another MMO with a new skin for the by and large.
To me using someone elses game engine already heavily limits what you can and can't do. I believe it's why we see a lot of MMOs that are the same. The earlier MMOs engines were all developer in house I believe by the companies making the games. This allowed them to code in whatever game mechanics they could think of. Most MMO game engines now come as a package with x, y, and z feature. We might be able to include feature g with some creative modification of the engine, but generally you are going to get what you go in another MMO with a new skin for the by and large.
I'm no expert on the engines, but I think you are correct, if you mean art style: typically that does shine through. Traditionally it has also correlated with dev laziness in other areas too. Although engines like unreal's have come a long way (https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap), I'm not certain at all, how flexible they are with more complex gameplay features. For me, Unity's quite impressive too https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/
C++ sourcecodes (unreal), so I'd assume it's quite possible (though difficult and time consuming) to heavily customize it. As you said, mostly devs just add a bit, though. I'd still say they are getting better and are setting the bar higher for house engines. They do have a way to come before they are at the level of flexibility, where their use becomes a no-brainer: a bare bones version, which you expand/customize/etc and give some of your profits to save time and upfront costs.
To me using someone elses game engine already heavily limits what you can and can't do. I believe it's why we see a lot of MMOs that are the same. The earlier MMOs engines were all developer in house I believe by the companies making the games. This allowed them to code in whatever game mechanics they could think of. Most MMO game engines now come as a package with x, y, and z feature. We might be able to include feature g with some creative modification of the engine, but generally you are going to get what you go in another MMO with a new skin for the by and large.
I'm no expert on the engines, but I think you are correct, if you mean art style: typically that does shine through. Traditionally it has also correlated with dev laziness in other areas too. Although engines like unreal's have come a long way (https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap), I'm not certain at all, how flexible they are with more complex gameplay features. For me, Unity's quite impressive too https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/
C++ sourcecodes (unreal), so I'd assume it's quite possible (though difficult and time consuming) to heavily customize it. As you said, mostly devs just add a bit, though. I'd still say they are getting better and are setting the bar higher for house engines. They do have a way to come before they are at the level of flexibility, where their use becomes a no-brainer: a bare bones version, which you expand/customize/etc and give some of your profits to save time and upfront costs.
I believe it's more difficult to modify someone else's complex game engine to suit your needs then it is to make your own and code in what you want to happen. I might want specific interactions with the environment coded in. This would definitely be easier to do if you had your own programmers who built the engine and new exactly what they wanted out of it.
Originally posted by Kaledren I wish I had a dollar for everytime Axehilt uses the word gameplay. And Nari D3 as an MMORPG reference.
lol... whereas I would agree, and even go as far as to state that Axe is just annoying with dropping opinion backed by so-called evidence that can be interpreted in multiple ways, and Nari seems to just be annoying with his post count wanting opinions (which almost seems to point at trolling this site as his favorite game)... I still would not have randomly dropped what you stated without at least quoting a post of theirs attached.
Originally posted by Flyte27
Originally posted by phumbaba
Originally posted by Flyte27
To me using someone elses game engine already heavily limits what you can and can't do. I believe it's why we see a lot of MMOs that are the same. The earlier MMOs engines were all developer in house I believe by the companies making the games. This allowed them to code in whatever game mechanics they could think of. Most MMO game engines now come as a package with x, y, and z feature. We might be able to include feature g with some creative modification of the engine, but generally you are going to get what you go in another MMO with a new skin for the by and large.
I'm no expert on the engines, but I think you are correct, if you mean art style: typically that does shine through. Traditionally it has also correlated with dev laziness in other areas too. Although engines like unreal's have come a long way (https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap), I'm not certain at all, how flexible they are with more complex gameplay features. For me, Unity's quite impressive too https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/
C++ sourcecodes (unreal), so I'd assume it's quite possible (though difficult and time consuming) to heavily customize it. As you said, mostly devs just add a bit, though. I'd still say they are getting better and are setting the bar higher for house engines. They do have a way to come before they are at the level of flexibility, where their use becomes a no-brainer: a bare bones version, which you expand/customize/etc and give some of your profits to save time and upfront costs.
I believe it's more difficult to modify someone else's complex game engine to suit your needs then it is to make your own and code in what you want to happen. I might want specific interactions with the environment coded in. This would definitely be easier to do if you had your own programmers who built the engine and new exactly what they wanted out of it.
Ah, so I was originally on a right track here. Given one knows what they envision for an MMORPG, it would be better to custom build an engine? Many people on various sites have stated otherwise, due to time and costs of building an engine. Personally I suspected building a custom engine would be better, as the engine would do what was wanted without needing to rewire it, as well as help toward security measures from the black market industry.
I have seen companies.....SOE is my latest example......that said they were going to build their own engine to handle thousands on the screen in massive battles. Yes they made their own engine. HECK NO I iT could not handle anything close to hundreds on the screen.
BUILDING YOUR OWN ENGINE DOESN'T GUARANTEE ANYTHING.
Originally posted by Kaledren I wish I had a dollar for everytime Axehilt uses the word gameplay. And Nari D3 as an MMORPG reference.
lol... whereas I would agree, and even go as far as to state that Axe is just annoying with dropping opinion backed by so-called evidence that can be interpreted in multiple ways, and Nari seems to just be annoying with his post count wanting opinions (which almost seems to point at trolling this site as his favorite game)... I still would not have randomly dropped what you stated without at least quoting a post of theirs attached.
Originally posted by Flyte27
Originally posted by phumbaba
Originally posted by Flyte27
To me using someone elses game engine already heavily limits what you can and can't do. I believe it's why we see a lot of MMOs that are the same. The earlier MMOs engines were all developer in house I believe by the companies making the games. This allowed them to code in whatever game mechanics they could think of. Most MMO game engines now come as a package with x, y, and z feature. We might be able to include feature g with some creative modification of the engine, but generally you are going to get what you go in another MMO with a new skin for the by and large.
I'm no expert on the engines, but I think you are correct, if you mean art style: typically that does shine through. Traditionally it has also correlated with dev laziness in other areas too. Although engines like unreal's have come a long way (https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap), I'm not certain at all, how flexible they are with more complex gameplay features. For me, Unity's quite impressive too https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/
C++ sourcecodes (unreal), so I'd assume it's quite possible (though difficult and time consuming) to heavily customize it. As you said, mostly devs just add a bit, though. I'd still say they are getting better and are setting the bar higher for house engines. They do have a way to come before they are at the level of flexibility, where their use becomes a no-brainer: a bare bones version, which you expand/customize/etc and give some of your profits to save time and upfront costs.
I believe it's more difficult to modify someone else's complex game engine to suit your needs then it is to make your own and code in what you want to happen. I might want specific interactions with the environment coded in. This would definitely be easier to do if you had your own programmers who built the engine and new exactly what they wanted out of it.
Ah, so I was originally on a right track here. Given one knows what they envision for an MMORPG, it would be better to custom build an engine? Many people on various sites have stated otherwise, due to time and costs of building an engine. Personally I suspected building a custom engine would be better, as the engine would do what was wanted without needing to rewire it, as well as help toward security measures from the black market industry.
I have seen companies.....SOE is my latest example......that said they were going to build their own engine to handle thousands on the screen in massive battles. Yes they made their own engine. HECK NO I iT could not handle anything close to hundreds on the screen.
BUILDING YOUR OWN ENGINE DOESN'T GUARANTEE ANYTHING.
There is never a guarantee that people are going to be smart enough, organized enough, and cooperative enough to pull off something so complex, but making your own engine allows you to break the mold if you can pull it off. Going with someone else's proven engine is basically playing it safe. The only point that was being made here is that making your own engine gives you the ability to innovate and put into the game what you want. You are no longer limited except by your own imagination of how to code it into the game engine. I believe Everquest Next is trying a lot of things that are different from the norm and require the use of a game engine built from the ground up. It may never see fruition, but at least they tried to do something different.
Originally posted by Kaledren I wish I had a dollar for everytime Axehilt uses the word gameplay. And Nari D3 as an MMORPG reference.
lol... whereas I would agree, and even go as far as to state that Axe is just annoying with dropping opinion backed by so-called evidence that can be interpreted in multiple ways, and Nari seems to just be annoying with his post count wanting opinions (which almost seems to point at trolling this site as his favorite game)... I still would not have randomly dropped what you stated without at least quoting a post of theirs attached.
Originally posted by Flyte27
Originally posted by phumbaba
Originally posted by Flyte27
To me using someone elses game engine already heavily limits what you can and can't do. I believe it's why we see a lot of MMOs that are the same. The earlier MMOs engines were all developer in house I believe by the companies making the games. This allowed them to code in whatever game mechanics they could think of. Most MMO game engines now come as a package with x, y, and z feature. We might be able to include feature g with some creative modification of the engine, but generally you are going to get what you go in another MMO with a new skin for the by and large.
I'm no expert on the engines, but I think you are correct, if you mean art style: typically that does shine through. Traditionally it has also correlated with dev laziness in other areas too. Although engines like unreal's have come a long way (https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap), I'm not certain at all, how flexible they are with more complex gameplay features. For me, Unity's quite impressive too https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/
C++ sourcecodes (unreal), so I'd assume it's quite possible (though difficult and time consuming) to heavily customize it. As you said, mostly devs just add a bit, though. I'd still say they are getting better and are setting the bar higher for house engines. They do have a way to come before they are at the level of flexibility, where their use becomes a no-brainer: a bare bones version, which you expand/customize/etc and give some of your profits to save time and upfront costs.
I believe it's more difficult to modify someone else's complex game engine to suit your needs then it is to make your own and code in what you want to happen. I might want specific interactions with the environment coded in. This would definitely be easier to do if you had your own programmers who built the engine and new exactly what they wanted out of it.
Ah, so I was originally on a right track here. Given one knows what they envision for an MMORPG, it would be better to custom build an engine? Many people on various sites have stated otherwise, due to time and costs of building an engine. Personally I suspected building a custom engine would be better, as the engine would do what was wanted without needing to rewire it, as well as help toward security measures from the black market industry.
I have seen companies.....SOE is my latest example......that said they were going to build their own engine to handle thousands on the screen in massive battles. Yes they made their own engine. HECK NO I iT could not handle anything close to hundreds on the screen.
BUILDING YOUR OWN ENGINE DOESN'T GUARANTEE ANYTHING.
There is never a guarantee that people are going to be smart enough, organized enough, and cooperative enough to pull off something so complex, but making your own engine allows you to break the mold if you can pull it off. Going with someone else's proven engine is basically playing it safe. The only point that was being made here is that making your own engine gives you the ability to innovate and put into the game what you want. You are no longer limited except by your own imagination of how to code it into the game engine. I believe Everquest Next is trying a lot of things that are different from the norm and require the use of a game engine built from the ground up. It may never see fruition, but at least they tried to do something different.
Turbine, ANet, Blizzard all built their own engines.
I dont really see whats so "different" about soe (except that it may not even see a launch)
Originally posted by Kaledren I wish I had a dollar for everytime Axehilt uses the word gameplay. And Nari D3 as an MMORPG reference.
lol... whereas I would agree, and even go as far as to state that Axe is just annoying with dropping opinion backed by so-called evidence that can be interpreted in multiple ways, and Nari seems to just be annoying with his post count wanting opinions (which almost seems to point at trolling this site as his favorite game)... I still would not have randomly dropped what you stated without at least quoting a post of theirs attached.
Originally posted by Flyte27
Originally posted by phumbaba
Originally posted by Flyte27
To me using someone elses game engine already heavily limits what you can and can't do. I believe it's why we see a lot of MMOs that are the same. The earlier MMOs engines were all developer in house I believe by the companies making the games. This allowed them to code in whatever game mechanics they could think of. Most MMO game engines now come as a package with x, y, and z feature. We might be able to include feature g with some creative modification of the engine, but generally you are going to get what you go in another MMO with a new skin for the by and large.
I'm no expert on the engines, but I think you are correct, if you mean art style: typically that does shine through. Traditionally it has also correlated with dev laziness in other areas too. Although engines like unreal's have come a long way (https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap), I'm not certain at all, how flexible they are with more complex gameplay features. For me, Unity's quite impressive too https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/
C++ sourcecodes (unreal), so I'd assume it's quite possible (though difficult and time consuming) to heavily customize it. As you said, mostly devs just add a bit, though. I'd still say they are getting better and are setting the bar higher for house engines. They do have a way to come before they are at the level of flexibility, where their use becomes a no-brainer: a bare bones version, which you expand/customize/etc and give some of your profits to save time and upfront costs.
I believe it's more difficult to modify someone else's complex game engine to suit your needs then it is to make your own and code in what you want to happen. I might want specific interactions with the environment coded in. This would definitely be easier to do if you had your own programmers who built the engine and new exactly what they wanted out of it.
Ah, so I was originally on a right track here. Given one knows what they envision for an MMORPG, it would be better to custom build an engine? Many people on various sites have stated otherwise, due to time and costs of building an engine. Personally I suspected building a custom engine would be better, as the engine would do what was wanted without needing to rewire it, as well as help toward security measures from the black market industry.
I have seen companies.....SOE is my latest example......that said they were going to build their own engine to handle thousands on the screen in massive battles. Yes they made their own engine. HECK NO I iT could not handle anything close to hundreds on the screen.
BUILDING YOUR OWN ENGINE DOESN'T GUARANTEE ANYTHING.
There is never a guarantee that people are going to be smart enough, organized enough, and cooperative enough to pull off something so complex, but making your own engine allows you to break the mold if you can pull it off. Going with someone else's proven engine is basically playing it safe. The only point that was being made here is that making your own engine gives you the ability to innovate and put into the game what you want. You are no longer limited except by your own imagination of how to code it into the game engine. I believe Everquest Next is trying a lot of things that are different from the norm and require the use of a game engine built from the ground up. It may never see fruition, but at least they tried to do something different.
Turbine, ANet, Blizzard all built their own engines.
I dont really see whats so "different" about soe (except that it may not even see a launch)
You could say that all those games stand apart from others.
WoW was unique when it came out. It had instances, easy solo play, quests, rested experience, etc on top of the normal MMO experience. It make MMOs accessible to people who wanted to play for only a small amount of time per session and didn't always want a great challenge to overcome.
I played LOTRO and it did feel a fair amount different at release. I didn't like the game much honestly even though I'm a fan of the Hobbit and LOTR. Something about it just didn't feel quite right to me. The classes really bored me to death after playing games that had so many neat abilities like being able to increase movement speed, shrink, grow, levitate, water breathing, etc.
I haven't played Guild Wars 2, but it does sound like a different experience from the standard MMO in the way it is structured and played.
I guess what we can draw from this is that you need a new game engine create new ideas generally, but not all new ideas are going to be fun to everyone.
Directly gameplay related things will generally be developed in-house anyway, engine or not.
Unless we are talking specific middleware for gameplay elements (like what StoryBricks was). But those will specifically be bought to fit the basic gameplay design. (some tweaking is always necessary ofcourse)
Generally speaking, tech should not dictate gameplay design decisions. It will ofcourse have an influence, you have to take into account what is possible and doable (budget and team wise), but good gameplay for the target audience needs to be the primary focus and the less outside restrictions you put on it the better the result will be.
I believe it's possible to design someone to design a game with exploration, questing, and discovery in mind.
You would need to remove the compass, GPS, and exclamation marks so that people have to actually discover something.
Another concept would be to have a forest that is actually like a real forest or desert.
There would be no zone point to give you an idea what direction you would be going in. As you traverse deeper inside you see a lot of trees that look fairly similar. There might be some landmarks to help you along, but much of the area would look fairly similar. This is the effect where people get lost in large places due to the mind being tricked by similar looking surroundings and large areas.
Have night actually be night so that it's difficult to see. There might be moonlight to provide some light or a torch/spell that provides some light, but that's it. You can only see a certain distance in the dark. This would add to the ability to get lost. It would also add to the atmospheric creepy feeling like something is going to jump out and get you. The night has always been more dangerous for humans then the day time when out in the wild. Have dangerous creatures and bandits traverse the lands/roads at night waiting to ambush people and steal their money.
Have sandstorms, rain, blizzards, and fog to occasionally impede vision.
Have food and water supplies so that if you run out you start to lose health. You can replenish the water and food supply by hunting and finding water, but in the desert you would lose health much quicker. In a cold climate you might have to worry about freezing.
Add a means to examine things. Even old MMOs didn't really have this, but a lot of old RPGs that descended from muds did. You had to examine things to discover if they provided anything useful or not.
Have people and NPCs scattered around the world. There might be a big city on top of a mountain in the middle of the jungle or a NPC that lives alone in the middle of a desert. You have to find them and talk to them to get clues about what's going on. This would be a similar approach to Dark Souls and older RPG games, but the world would be much larger aside form the 2D games which almost always had fairly large world as it was easier to design it quickly.
I doubt maps would help much in terms of killing discovery if you had situations like this in place. Having to find your way in these situations with possible vision impediments and nasty unexpected creatures would go a long way to stopping that.
To be honest I think this would be a lot more fun then the current quest design where you complete a lot of short and easy quests rapidly just to level up and hit max level as quickly as possible. It may not be entirely old school. I think it would in fact be old school if you are talking about muds/RPGs that took place in the beginning, but not in terms of old school MMORPGs entirely. It would take a lot more work to make exploration/questing/discovery viable in this day and age then it did in the past, but I'd rather they concentrate on that then on the current model with everything segregated into mini games like questing PvE, PvP, Group, and Raid.
Of course a game can be designed that way. Whether it should is another question.
We understand intellectually that we live in a society with google maps, GPSes, and wowhead, and so being lost is a solved problem. This means we know intellectually that without randomized constantly changing maps players will just look up the map online to find where they are, and we understand that's a much worse experience than these aids simply being part of the game so we don't have to alt-tab.
A little harder to understand is that at the point where you've created a game with randomized maps, you've invested pretty heavily down the path of Being Lost being a primary form of gameplay in your game. While that doesn't automatically make a game bad, it's not the typical gameplay of an RPG either and starts to blend into other genres like survival games. (And if it's what you really want then you'd go play the better survival games like Don't Starve where exploring the landscape is crucial to your advancement.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I believe it's possible to design someone to design a game with exploration, questing, and discovery in mind.
You would need to remove the compass, GPS, and exclamation marks so that people have to actually discover something.
Of course a game can be designed that way. Whether it should is another question.
We understand intellectually that we live in a society with google maps, GPSes, and wowhead, and so being lost is a solved problem. This means we know intellectually that without randomized constantly changing maps players will just look up the map online to find where they are, and we understand that's a much worse experience than these aids simply being part of the game so we don't have to alt-tab.
I suppose they could have an ingame map without a marker telling you where you are.
But yeah, either way, I'd have 0 interest in playing a game in which getting lost is "gameplay". For one, you'd eventually get familiar with the map and that "gameplay" would no longer exist. What's more, I'd say that the more possible it is for a player to get lost, the less likely they'll risk going of the beaten path to explore.
And so, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept that having a map, GPS, and quest hubs prevents you from exploring. With the exceptions of maybe Neverwinter or early DDO, I've yet to play a game that prevents me from pressing A or D and heading off somewhere else before going to my next quest point. And I'm often rewarded for it via sidequests, titles, deeds, or other tidbits of content.
GW2 has those sorts of things here and there and everywhere; things you'd never have caught if you were just running from one waypoint to another. Things just sitting out in a field somewhere that you can manipulate if you use the right emote.
TL;DR There are tons of ways for a game to encourage exploring, and many of them do so. Removing GPS/maps from a game will pretty much do the opposite for most gamers. The best thing devs can do IMO is have cool things to see and do in those hard to find spots, and make sure their players know there's more out there than just stock art.
I believe it's possible to design someone to design a game with exploration, questing, and discovery in mind.
You would need to remove the compass, GPS, and exclamation marks so that people have to actually discover something.
Another concept would be to have a forest that is actually like a real forest or desert.
There would be no zone point to give you an idea what direction you would be going in. As you traverse deeper inside you see a lot of trees that look fairly similar. There might be some landmarks to help you along, but much of the area would look fairly similar. This is the effect where people get lost in large places due to the mind being tricked by similar looking surroundings and large areas.
Have night actually be night so that it's difficult to see. There might be moonlight to provide some light or a torch/spell that provides some light, but that's it. You can only see a certain distance in the dark. This would add to the ability to get lost. It would also add to the atmospheric creepy feeling like something is going to jump out and get you. The night has always been more dangerous for humans then the day time when out in the wild. Have dangerous creatures and bandits traverse the lands/roads at night waiting to ambush people and steal their money.
Have sandstorms, rain, blizzards, and fog to occasionally impede vision.
Have food and water supplies so that if you run out you start to lose health. You can replenish the water and food supply by hunting and finding water, but in the desert you would lose health much quicker. In a cold climate you might have to worry about freezing.
Add a means to examine things. Even old MMOs didn't really have this, but a lot of old RPGs that descended from muds did. You had to examine things to discover if they provided anything useful or not.
Have people and NPCs scattered around the world. There might be a big city on top of a mountain in the middle of the jungle or a NPC that lives alone in the middle of a desert. You have to find them and talk to them to get clues about what's going on. This would be a similar approach to Dark Souls and older RPG games, but the world would be much larger aside form the 2D games which almost always had fairly large world as it was easier to design it quickly.
I doubt maps would help much in terms of killing discovery if you had situations like this in place. Having to find your way in these situations with possible vision impediments and nasty unexpected creatures would go a long way to stopping that.
To be honest I think this would be a lot more fun then the current quest design where you complete a lot of short and easy quests rapidly just to level up and hit max level as quickly as possible. It may not be entirely old school. I think it would in fact be old school if you are talking about muds/RPGs that took place in the beginning, but not in terms of old school MMORPGs entirely. It would take a lot more work to make exploration/questing/discovery viable in this day and age then it did in the past, but I'd rather they concentrate on that then on the current model with everything segregated into mini games like questing PvE, PvP, Group, and Raid.
Of course a game can be designed that way. Whether it should is another question.
We understand intellectually that we live in a society with google maps, GPSes, and wowhead, and so being lost is a solved problem. This means we know intellectually that without randomized constantly changing maps players will just look up the map online to find where they are, and we understand that's a much worse experience than these aids simply being part of the game so we don't have to alt-tab.
A little harder to understand is that at the point where you've created a game with randomized maps, you've invested pretty heavily down the path of Being Lost being a primary form of gameplay in your game. While that doesn't automatically make a game bad, it's not the typical gameplay of an RPG either and starts to blend into other genres like survival games. (And if it's what you really want then you'd go play the better survival games like Don't Starve where exploring the landscape is crucial to your advancement.)
It seemed to be a staple in a lot of old books I read and movies I watched. Even the games I played tried to implement this in some cases. One example everyone knows is the Lord of the Rings. Frodo got lost on his way to Mordor at times. If you read the Chronicles (Dragonlance) the travelers got lost a few times on their way (not that they always even had a direct goal in mind). They also entered an unexpected dark forest with a random encounter of undead.
In terms of Don't Starve it's not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something that is like it, but has more old school RPG like Ultima Online.
I already posted why maps won't help that much. You could provide the player with a map, but if there is no marker on the map where they are they can still get lost if the game is designed correctly.
As to the poster below I've already explained in the post above and other comments why getting lost is a crucial part of an adventure. If you read most stories of exploration, adventure, and discovery the person doesn't know where they are going. Having a GPS means you are not exploring. You already know where you are going exactly. This takes all the mystery out of it and also the atmosphere. It's like ho hum that's where I need to go. Lets start our leisurely stroll along the easy path with no impediments. It doesn't sound like much of an adventure.
The newer Bethesda RPGs all have GPS and exploration both.
I love Skyrim, but it doesn't have exploration. You generally follow the GPS around and often quick travel. If you diverge from this path and just explore you will end up redoing most content as it already has a quest associated with it. When you go back often times the cave will now be empty and you might even have gotten rid of the quest item not knowing it was for a quest. One thing I will say about Skyrim is at least it doesn't force you down a specific path, but that is different from exploration. Exploration requires the unknown. Once you have a GPS to show you where to go it is no longer unknown. That is like saying if Christopher Columbus used a GPS to find America he was exploring. GPS is the opposite of exploration. It is marking a known territory. To explore you need territory that is unknown IMO.
There is no set behavior for it:) The impetus is money and naturally many are closely watching trends: what currently sells and how to replicate it. Of course there are other goals for developers. If you reduce entertainment market to simply a money machine, you pretty much insult many a true artist with truly impressive work.
For gaming industry, there is a lot of pent up demand for something different. If you can't see this, I feel for you:) Simply because you do not understand or support any ideas to move the genre forward, doesn't mean there is no room for it or that it shouldn't be done. Is there any mmorpg you would describe as a work of art? Why?
There are certain fundamental truths to entertainment though, like how people don't enjoy having their time wasted. Nobody ever enjoys significant success in the entertainment industry -- of any type -- while just wasting their viewers' time. And that relates directly to the gameplay focus of successful MMORPGs vs. the timesink focus of mediocre ones. And commenting on that fundamental truth is what spun off this portion of the conversation.
It's safe to say nobody wants a real-time version of Lord of the Rings movies that takes an entire year to watch (and 99% of that time is uneventful travel, sleeping, eating of the fellowship's members.) Even if someone can't explain specifically why that's a bad idea, they know it's a bad idea. I'm describing the reason it's a bad idea, in the context of games.
So this is mostly about entertainment quality. While quality is related to being a better money machine, money isn't the focus only quality.
Even with hard guidelines like "don't waste the viewers' time", a lot of variety exists. So the demand for something different is not only recognized, but is actively being serviced.
I support moving the genre forward. I don't support repeating mistakes (ie moving backwards.) Those mistakes shouldn't have been repeated the first time, since at the time early MMORPGs came out the game industry already knew what made good games and what didn't. If we're talking artists vs. money-grubbers, we need to keep in mind that timesink-intensive games were in no way a higher artform and were undeniably a money-grab (subscription model + timesink heavy gameplay = profit!)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by Kaledren I wish I had a dollar for everytime Axehilt uses the word gameplay. And Nari D3 as an MMORPG reference.
It's a word like synergy. Both words have very specific meanings, and no other words adequately cover the concepts. But there's this mysterious discomfort people express when either word (especially synergy) is used, perhaps stemming from their lack of understanding of the word.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There is no set behavior for it:) The impetus is money and naturally many are closely watching trends: what currently sells and how to replicate it. Of course there are other goals for developers. If you reduce entertainment market to simply a money machine, you pretty much insult many a true artist with truly impressive work.
For gaming industry, there is a lot of pent up demand for something different. If you can't see this, I feel for you:) Simply because you do not understand or support any ideas to move the genre forward, doesn't mean there is no room for it or that it shouldn't be done. Is there any mmorpg you would describe as a work of art? Why?
There are certain fundamental truths to entertainment though, like how people don't enjoy having their time wasted. Nobody ever enjoys significant success in the entertainment industry -- of any type -- while just wasting their viewers' time. And that relates directly to the gameplay focus of successful MMORPGs vs. the timesink focus of mediocre ones. And commenting on that fundamental truth is what spun off this portion of the conversation.
It's safe to say nobody wants a real-time version of Lord of the Rings movies that takes an entire year to watch (and 99% of that time is uneventful travel, sleeping, eating of the fellowship's members.) Even if someone can't explain specifically why that's a bad idea, they know it's a bad idea. I'm describing the reason it's a bad idea, in the context of games.
So this is mostly about entertainment quality. While quality is related to being a better money machine, money isn't the focus only quality.
Even with hard guidelines like "don't waste the viewers' time", a lot of variety exists. So the demand for something different is not only recognized, but is actively being serviced.
I support moving the genre forward. I don't support repeating mistakes (ie moving backwards.) Those mistakes shouldn't have been repeated the first time, since at the time early MMORPGs came out the game industry already knew what made good games and what didn't. If we're talking artists vs. money-grubbers, we need to keep in mind that timesink-intensive games were in no way a higher artform and were undeniably a money-grab (subscription model + timesink heavy gameplay = profit!)
First of I believe there is plenty of room to expand even on old idea's that for some might be seen as mediocre/timesinks still can be seen by others differently. There for there is a market for it.
What Axehilt said is also something I can fully understand from a commercial game perspective as that's how the majority of people look at games. And as a gamecompany it's the most obvious to target the largest group.
The main difference here is that each person experianced the past differently. Enjoy many things differently.
And when looking at the past expecially when I look at my most favorite MMORPG of all time SWG, the forums showed me that what I enjoyed was definitly not what most enjoyed. But that still doesn't mean there isn't a market for it. Just look how small in comparison with today's game community the amount of online gamers where 10/15/20 years ago. So I do believe while the mass target audience has grown I am sure those who seek just something different then what MMO's mostly offer today has also grown.
But I have to fully disagree with subs being a money grab. But again that just because of the difference of experiance for both of us.
There is no set behavior for it:) The impetus is money and naturally many are closely watching trends: what currently sells and how to replicate it. Of course there are other goals for developers. If you reduce entertainment market to simply a money machine, you pretty much insult many a true artist with truly impressive work.
For gaming industry, there is a lot of pent up demand for something different. If you can't see this, I feel for you:) Simply because you do not understand or support any ideas to move the genre forward, doesn't mean there is no room for it or that it shouldn't be done. Is there any mmorpg you would describe as a work of art? Why?
There are certain fundamental truths to entertainment though, like how people don't enjoy having their time wasted. Nobody ever enjoys significant success in the entertainment industry -- of any type -- while just wasting their viewers' time. And that relates directly to the gameplay focus of successful MMORPGs vs. the timesink focus of mediocre ones. And commenting on that fundamental truth is what spun off this portion of the conversation.
It's safe to say nobody wants a real-time version of Lord of the Rings movies that takes an entire year to watch (and 99% of that time is uneventful travel, sleeping, eating of the fellowship's members.) Even if someone can't explain specifically why that's a bad idea, they know it's a bad idea. I'm describing the reason it's a bad idea, in the context of games.
So this is mostly about entertainment quality. While quality is related to being a better money machine, money isn't the focus only quality.
Even with hard guidelines like "don't waste the viewers' time", a lot of variety exists. So the demand for something different is not only recognized, but is actively being serviced.
I support moving the genre forward. I don't support repeating mistakes (ie moving backwards.) Those mistakes shouldn't have been repeated the first time, since at the time early MMORPGs came out the game industry already knew what made good games and what didn't. If we're talking artists vs. money-grubbers, we need to keep in mind that timesink-intensive games were in no way a higher artform and were undeniably a money-grab (subscription model + timesink heavy gameplay = profit!)
You might as well just get rid of entertainment then. It's all a waste of time. You get nothing for playing games these day either even if they take less time to play.
Getting back to exploration, discovery, and adventure (which are crucial points in my opinion) even old single player RPGs had more of all of the above. The Legend of Zelda. The 2D Final Fantasy games. The Dragon Quest games. They probably took a week or two to play through if you didn't know where to go and you were a kid. As an adult they probably took you a few days at most to figure out. The largest time sink was the grinding to gain experience and money. The exploration of the world was a matter for finding the right places to go, where they were, and what you needed to get to the other points in the world. Most of that experience was far more worthwhile to me then playing through a much longer set of GPS quests with more or less no freedom of choice and a very boring way to portray what is supposed to be content (story IMO).
It seemed to be a staple in a lot of old books I read and movies I watched. Even the games I played tried to implement this in some cases. One example everyone knows is the Lord of the Rings. Frodo got lost on his way to Mordor at times. If you read the Chronicles (Dragonlance) the travelers got lost a few times on their way (not that they always even had a direct goal in mind). They also entered an unexpected dark forest with a random encounter of undead.
In terms of Don't Starve it's not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something that is like it, but has more old school RPG like Ultima Online.
I already posted why maps won't help that much. You could provide the player with a map, but if there is no marker on the map where they are they can still get lost if the game is designed correctly.
Right it did happen in stories. But that's not the problem in this case. The problem is games exist in real life, which has internet, which has maps. By extension this turns the game into a constant alt-tab to check the map, rather than simply providing this in-game. Characters in a story don't have the luxury of wowhead, while players in a videogame do have that capability, so the same sorts of constraints don't work in the same ways. (constraint being the lack of knowledge of where you are.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It seemed to be a staple in a lot of old books I read and movies I watched. Even the games I played tried to implement this in some cases. One example everyone knows is the Lord of the Rings. Frodo got lost on his way to Mordor at times. If you read the Chronicles (Dragonlance) the travelers got lost a few times on their way (not that they always even had a direct goal in mind). They also entered an unexpected dark forest with a random encounter of undead.
In terms of Don't Starve it's not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something that is like it, but has more old school RPG like Ultima Online.
I already posted why maps won't help that much. You could provide the player with a map, but if there is no marker on the map where they are they can still get lost if the game is designed correctly.
Right it did happen in stories. But that's not the problem in this case. The problem is games exist in real life, which has internet, which has maps. By extension this turns the game into a constant alt-tab to check the map, rather than simply providing this in-game. Characters in a story don't have the luxury of wowhead, while players in a videogame do have that capability, so the same sorts of constraints don't work in the same ways. (constraint being the lack of knowledge of where you are.)
Except you can put a map in the game that doesn't have a marker. People drew maps of EQ and it's dungeons, but you could still get lost unless you had been to the different places and new them insides out. EQ wasn't even what I would call greatly challenging in terms of exploration because of the zone walls. That made things a lot easier. If you took out zone walls, focused on making it more difficult to explore, and provide maps without markers people would have trouble figuring things out. I guarantee it. The main problem would be that most people would rage quit like they did in older games. That is another problem unto itself. Most people don't seem to see the intrinsic value of actually exploring, discovering, adventuring, and getting lost or appreciate the value of it.
Except you can put a map in the game that doesn't have a marker. People drew maps of EQ and it's dungeons, but you could still get lost unless you had been to the different places and new them insides out. EQ wasn't even what I would call greatly challenging in terms of exploration because of the zone walls. That made things a lot easier. If you took out zone walls, focused on making it more difficult to explore, and provide maps without markers people would have trouble figuring things out. I guarantee it. The main problem would be that most people would rage quit like they did in older games. That is another problem unto itself. Most people don't seem to see the intrinsic value of actually exploring, discovering, adventuring, and getting lost or appreciate the value of it.
Right, and that's why such a game would struggle to get made. Wandering aimlessly offers few compelling choices for the player. I don't think it's unsolvable, but in solving it you would create a game very different from what players expect out of an RPG. (Which is ironically mirrored in your own dissatisfaction with Don't Starve.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
Yeah, good question. We will have to wait and see I guess.
There is surely a big segment of people who expect full AAA mass market scope.
The smaller titles so far are quite niche oriented and target specific (currently underserved) segments so they will hopefully do well.
The positive thing is, smaller budget doesn't mean less quality if you adjust scope accordingly. The more specific your target audience is, the better you can focus on emphasizing the best parts of the game for them without having to compromise like in a broader scope game.
Roughly true. I've been expecting for some time for technological advances and spreading of know-how to decrease development times and costs. Tech such as procedural content, easily available and cheap assets for affordable engines, and/or design that doesn't necessarily rely on expensive quality or quantity of features, graphics, voice acting etc
Yeah, it might take a long time until we see the scope we are used to get more common again. Regardless of mmo type. Never say never, though.
To me using someone elses game engine already heavily limits what you can and can't do. I believe it's why we see a lot of MMOs that are the same. The earlier MMOs engines were all developer in house I believe by the companies making the games. This allowed them to code in whatever game mechanics they could think of. Most MMO game engines now come as a package with x, y, and z feature. We might be able to include feature g with some creative modification of the engine, but generally you are going to get what you go in another MMO with a new skin for the by and large.
I'm no expert on the engines, but I think you are correct, if you mean art style: typically that does shine through. Traditionally it has also correlated with dev laziness in other areas too. Although engines like unreal's have come a long way (https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap), I'm not certain at all, how flexible they are with more complex gameplay features. For me, Unity's quite impressive too https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/
C++ sourcecodes (unreal), so I'd assume it's quite possible (though difficult and time consuming) to heavily customize it. As you said, mostly devs just add a bit, though. I'd still say they are getting better and are setting the bar higher for house engines. They do have a way to come before they are at the level of flexibility, where their use becomes a no-brainer: a bare bones version, which you expand/customize/etc and give some of your profits to save time and upfront costs.
I believe it's more difficult to modify someone else's complex game engine to suit your needs then it is to make your own and code in what you want to happen. I might want specific interactions with the environment coded in. This would definitely be easier to do if you had your own programmers who built the engine and new exactly what they wanted out of it.
I have seen companies.....SOE is my latest example......that said they were going to build their own engine to handle thousands on the screen in massive battles. Yes they made their own engine. HECK NO I iT could not handle anything close to hundreds on the screen.
BUILDING YOUR OWN ENGINE DOESN'T GUARANTEE ANYTHING.
There is never a guarantee that people are going to be smart enough, organized enough, and cooperative enough to pull off something so complex, but making your own engine allows you to break the mold if you can pull it off. Going with someone else's proven engine is basically playing it safe. The only point that was being made here is that making your own engine gives you the ability to innovate and put into the game what you want. You are no longer limited except by your own imagination of how to code it into the game engine. I believe Everquest Next is trying a lot of things that are different from the norm and require the use of a game engine built from the ground up. It may never see fruition, but at least they tried to do something different.
Turbine, ANet, Blizzard all built their own engines.
I dont really see whats so "different" about soe (except that it may not even see a launch)
You could say that all those games stand apart from others.
WoW was unique when it came out. It had instances, easy solo play, quests, rested experience, etc on top of the normal MMO experience. It make MMOs accessible to people who wanted to play for only a small amount of time per session and didn't always want a great challenge to overcome.
I played LOTRO and it did feel a fair amount different at release. I didn't like the game much honestly even though I'm a fan of the Hobbit and LOTR. Something about it just didn't feel quite right to me. The classes really bored me to death after playing games that had so many neat abilities like being able to increase movement speed, shrink, grow, levitate, water breathing, etc.
I haven't played Guild Wars 2, but it does sound like a different experience from the standard MMO in the way it is structured and played.
I guess what we can draw from this is that you need a new game engine create new ideas generally, but not all new ideas are going to be fun to everyone.
Directly gameplay related things will generally be developed in-house anyway, engine or not.
Unless we are talking specific middleware for gameplay elements (like what StoryBricks was). But those will specifically be bought to fit the basic gameplay design. (some tweaking is always necessary ofcourse)
Generally speaking, tech should not dictate gameplay design decisions. It will ofcourse have an influence, you have to take into account what is possible and doable (budget and team wise), but good gameplay for the target audience needs to be the primary focus and the less outside restrictions you put on it the better the result will be.
Of course a game can be designed that way. Whether it should is another question.
We understand intellectually that we live in a society with google maps, GPSes, and wowhead, and so being lost is a solved problem. This means we know intellectually that without randomized constantly changing maps players will just look up the map online to find where they are, and we understand that's a much worse experience than these aids simply being part of the game so we don't have to alt-tab.
A little harder to understand is that at the point where you've created a game with randomized maps, you've invested pretty heavily down the path of Being Lost being a primary form of gameplay in your game. While that doesn't automatically make a game bad, it's not the typical gameplay of an RPG either and starts to blend into other genres like survival games. (And if it's what you really want then you'd go play the better survival games like Don't Starve where exploring the landscape is crucial to your advancement.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I suppose they could have an ingame map without a marker telling you where you are.
But yeah, either way, I'd have 0 interest in playing a game in which getting lost is "gameplay". For one, you'd eventually get familiar with the map and that "gameplay" would no longer exist. What's more, I'd say that the more possible it is for a player to get lost, the less likely they'll risk going of the beaten path to explore.
And so, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept that having a map, GPS, and quest hubs prevents you from exploring. With the exceptions of maybe Neverwinter or early DDO, I've yet to play a game that prevents me from pressing A or D and heading off somewhere else before going to my next quest point. And I'm often rewarded for it via sidequests, titles, deeds, or other tidbits of content.
GW2 has those sorts of things here and there and everywhere; things you'd never have caught if you were just running from one waypoint to another. Things just sitting out in a field somewhere that you can manipulate if you use the right emote.
TL;DR There are tons of ways for a game to encourage exploring, and many of them do so. Removing GPS/maps from a game will pretty much do the opposite for most gamers. The best thing devs can do IMO is have cool things to see and do in those hard to find spots, and make sure their players know there's more out there than just stock art.
It seemed to be a staple in a lot of old books I read and movies I watched. Even the games I played tried to implement this in some cases. One example everyone knows is the Lord of the Rings. Frodo got lost on his way to Mordor at times. If you read the Chronicles (Dragonlance) the travelers got lost a few times on their way (not that they always even had a direct goal in mind). They also entered an unexpected dark forest with a random encounter of undead.
In terms of Don't Starve it's not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something that is like it, but has more old school RPG like Ultima Online.
I already posted why maps won't help that much. You could provide the player with a map, but if there is no marker on the map where they are they can still get lost if the game is designed correctly.
As to the poster below I've already explained in the post above and other comments why getting lost is a crucial part of an adventure. If you read most stories of exploration, adventure, and discovery the person doesn't know where they are going. Having a GPS means you are not exploring. You already know where you are going exactly. This takes all the mystery out of it and also the atmosphere. It's like ho hum that's where I need to go. Lets start our leisurely stroll along the easy path with no impediments. It doesn't sound like much of an adventure.
The newer Bethesda RPGs all have GPS and exploration both.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I love Skyrim, but it doesn't have exploration. You generally follow the GPS around and often quick travel. If you diverge from this path and just explore you will end up redoing most content as it already has a quest associated with it. When you go back often times the cave will now be empty and you might even have gotten rid of the quest item not knowing it was for a quest. One thing I will say about Skyrim is at least it doesn't force you down a specific path, but that is different from exploration. Exploration requires the unknown. Once you have a GPS to show you where to go it is no longer unknown. That is like saying if Christopher Columbus used a GPS to find America he was exploring. GPS is the opposite of exploration. It is marking a known territory. To explore you need territory that is unknown IMO.
There are certain fundamental truths to entertainment though, like how people don't enjoy having their time wasted. Nobody ever enjoys significant success in the entertainment industry -- of any type -- while just wasting their viewers' time. And that relates directly to the gameplay focus of successful MMORPGs vs. the timesink focus of mediocre ones. And commenting on that fundamental truth is what spun off this portion of the conversation.
It's safe to say nobody wants a real-time version of Lord of the Rings movies that takes an entire year to watch (and 99% of that time is uneventful travel, sleeping, eating of the fellowship's members.) Even if someone can't explain specifically why that's a bad idea, they know it's a bad idea. I'm describing the reason it's a bad idea, in the context of games.
So this is mostly about entertainment quality. While quality is related to being a better money machine, money isn't the focus only quality.
Even with hard guidelines like "don't waste the viewers' time", a lot of variety exists. So the demand for something different is not only recognized, but is actively being serviced.
I support moving the genre forward. I don't support repeating mistakes (ie moving backwards.) Those mistakes shouldn't have been repeated the first time, since at the time early MMORPGs came out the game industry already knew what made good games and what didn't. If we're talking artists vs. money-grubbers, we need to keep in mind that timesink-intensive games were in no way a higher artform and were undeniably a money-grab (subscription model + timesink heavy gameplay = profit!)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's a word like synergy. Both words have very specific meanings, and no other words adequately cover the concepts. But there's this mysterious discomfort people express when either word (especially synergy) is used, perhaps stemming from their lack of understanding of the word.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
First of I believe there is plenty of room to expand even on old idea's that for some might be seen as mediocre/timesinks still can be seen by others differently. There for there is a market for it.
What Axehilt said is also something I can fully understand from a commercial game perspective as that's how the majority of people look at games. And as a gamecompany it's the most obvious to target the largest group.
The main difference here is that each person experianced the past differently. Enjoy many things differently.
And when looking at the past expecially when I look at my most favorite MMORPG of all time SWG, the forums showed me that what I enjoyed was definitly not what most enjoyed. But that still doesn't mean there isn't a market for it. Just look how small in comparison with today's game community the amount of online gamers where 10/15/20 years ago. So I do believe while the mass target audience has grown I am sure those who seek just something different then what MMO's mostly offer today has also grown.
But I have to fully disagree with subs being a money grab. But again that just because of the difference of experiance for both of us.
You might as well just get rid of entertainment then. It's all a waste of time. You get nothing for playing games these day either even if they take less time to play.
Getting back to exploration, discovery, and adventure (which are crucial points in my opinion) even old single player RPGs had more of all of the above. The Legend of Zelda. The 2D Final Fantasy games. The Dragon Quest games. They probably took a week or two to play through if you didn't know where to go and you were a kid. As an adult they probably took you a few days at most to figure out. The largest time sink was the grinding to gain experience and money. The exploration of the world was a matter for finding the right places to go, where they were, and what you needed to get to the other points in the world. Most of that experience was far more worthwhile to me then playing through a much longer set of GPS quests with more or less no freedom of choice and a very boring way to portray what is supposed to be content (story IMO).
Right it did happen in stories. But that's not the problem in this case. The problem is games exist in real life, which has internet, which has maps. By extension this turns the game into a constant alt-tab to check the map, rather than simply providing this in-game. Characters in a story don't have the luxury of wowhead, while players in a videogame do have that capability, so the same sorts of constraints don't work in the same ways. (constraint being the lack of knowledge of where you are.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Except you can put a map in the game that doesn't have a marker. People drew maps of EQ and it's dungeons, but you could still get lost unless you had been to the different places and new them insides out. EQ wasn't even what I would call greatly challenging in terms of exploration because of the zone walls. That made things a lot easier. If you took out zone walls, focused on making it more difficult to explore, and provide maps without markers people would have trouble figuring things out. I guarantee it. The main problem would be that most people would rage quit like they did in older games. That is another problem unto itself. Most people don't seem to see the intrinsic value of actually exploring, discovering, adventuring, and getting lost or appreciate the value of it.
Right, and that's why such a game would struggle to get made. Wandering aimlessly offers few compelling choices for the player. I don't think it's unsolvable, but in solving it you would create a game very different from what players expect out of an RPG. (Which is ironically mirrored in your own dissatisfaction with Don't Starve.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver