Am I Overthinking This? (Probally!) Open World vs. Missions

[Clarkejjfc]

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the random post, but I’ve been thinking about something that doesn’t make sense to me.

I always play open-world games - it’s just what I do. But for some reason, I’m really enjoying playing through missions one by one instead. I don’t know why!

It seems like an easy choice: keeping my base instead of rebuilding it every time should make open-world the better option. But I still keep choosing missions.

My own logic doesn’t make sense to me. Does anyone have any ideas why I might be thinking this way?

[Sintreme]

The challenge of seeing if/how quickly you can do something, kind of like a mini speed run perhaps?

[Clarkejjfc]

Originally posted by Sintreme:

The challenge of seeing if/how quickly you can do something, kind of like a mini speed run perhaps?

Humm perhaps - I do like a challenge!

[Rekal]

Building up the player skill to be really efficient and quick at the missions was what did it for me. The change in perspective that took effect is pretty refreshing as well - the whole use it or lose it mentality. I gave up the idea of hording resources and instead just embraced using everything left over before heading out for the objectives. So I ended up trying out some of less effective weapons just because and always had tons of steel arrows to plink away at everything that moved.

Anyway, back to the Open World vs Missions outlook. Part of it I think is that you're constantly updating your personal objectives in missions as you are accomplishing them. I don't mean the actual mission objective either. You know what needs to be done to build up your gear for the mission so you set yourself mental goals, you get them done, and you're on to the next thing. Having a personal game play loop that you enjoy and keeps you busy with different things every step of the way goes a long way.

That doesn't happen in Open World because you build your base once and you're done. There's not even any maintenance required after the fact if you build it out of the weather resistant pieces or inside a cave. All the fancy farm animals and cosmetic stuff you can build are just fluff that don't really add to the game play loop. Sure, you can upgrade your base and make it bigger... but why? There's no extra reward for having an extra fancy base beyond what you think of it.

Doing Operations in Open World versus doing the same Missions is a trade off. In Open World you'll be traveling a whole lot more and you likely have all the best crafted gear making any combat trivial. Maybe multiple trips back and forth.

In Missions you're dropped of closer to the objectives and instead of running you spend your time building up from nothing in a new unique location. Doesn't take much, you can hit steel gear in about 15 minutes so the build up time if you rush is not much longer than the 10-15 minutes of Open World extra travel time. Further any combat you get into may still be a challenge with only steel gear which when you succeed is also another nice confidence boost knowing you are skillful enough you didn't need the crutch of super gear to win.

Anyway, I think the mission extraction survival theme is great and could spice up a lot of other Open World games that are otherwise open ended.

[Clarkejjfc]

Originally posted by Rekal:

Building up the player skill to be really efficient and quick at the missions was what did it for me. The change in perspective that took effect is pretty refreshing as well - the whole use it or lose it mentality. I gave up the idea of hording resources and instead just embraced using everything left over before heading out for the objectives. So I ended up trying out some of less effective weapons just because and always had tons of steel arrows to plink away at everything that moved.

Anyway, back to the Open World vs Missions outlook. Part of it I think is that you're constantly updating your personal objectives in missions as you are accomplishing them. I don't mean the actual mission objective either. You know what needs to be done to build up your gear for the mission so you set yourself mental goals, you get them done, and you're on to the next thing. Having a personal game play loop that you enjoy and keeps you busy with different things every step of the way goes a long way.

That doesn't happen in Open World because you build your base once and you're done. There's not even any maintenance required after the fact if you build it out of the weather resistant pieces or inside a cave. All the fancy farm animals and cosmetic stuff you can build are just fluff that don't really add to the game play loop. Sure, you can upgrade your base and make it bigger... but why? There's no extra reward for having an extra fancy base beyond what you think of it.

Doing Operations in Open World versus doing the same Missions is a trade off. In Open World you'll be traveling a whole lot more and you likely have all the best crafted gear making any combat trivial. Maybe multiple trips back and forth.

In Missions you're dropped of closer to the objectives and instead of running you spend your time building up from nothing in a new unique location. Doesn't take much, you can hit steel gear in about 15 minutes so the build up time if you rush is not much longer than the 10-15 minutes of Open World extra travel time. Further any combat you get into may still be a challenge with only steel gear which when you succeed is also another nice confidence boost knowing you are skillful enough you didn't need the crutch of super gear to win.

Anyway, I think the mission extraction survival theme is great and could spice up a lot of other Open World games that are otherwise open ended.

Thank you for your comments... I definatley think you make a ton of sence, when I finished all the missions on Olympus thats when I eventually made an open world base, I spent hours on it - but once it was done, had every machine and every plant it was just "Done".

The only reason i use it now is for every now and then to fill a ton of water bottles / oxygen bottles so that I can send them back to the station to use on missions.

[william_es]

Yeah, as rekal said, it makes you a better player. After you can handle the missions, everything else the game throws at you is easy.

Also in my personal opinion, going directly into open world is a sort of (I hate this word) a noob trap. You don't have any of the cool blueprints unlocked, you don't have the tech base created to allow you to build any of them, and you're basically living in a hut made out of sticks.

You could be doing that in a mission, and have set goals to reach for each mission, while gaining exp and unlocked blueprints. Then you circle back around to an open world like the OP did.. but now you can actually build all the cool base stuff needed to make it worthwhile & fun.

[Clarkejjfc]

Thank you everyone, I much appreciate the comments :D

[tullaian]

The problem/issue/challenge is that the game was built to be played in Missions. So the tech tree, the difficulty etc are all assuming you are starting from scratch and leveraging the workshop items.

Playing Open World you bypass all of that you are very quickly in Tier 4 gear which makes the Workshop items irrelevant , which makes farming for exotics largely irrelevant as well. Disposable quickie bases is also quite different from all the other survival games where you generally turtle and make a mega base with everything as part of the core gameplay.

While people might get attached to their stuff, once you play a bit you realise how quickly you can get to steel /stone again it doesn't feel so bad to head back to the station each time.

[Clarkejjfc]

Originally posted by tullaian:

The problem/issue/challenge is that the game was built to be played in Missions. So the tech tree, the difficulty etc are all assuming you are starting from scratch and leveraging the workshop items.

Playing Open World you bypass all of that you are very quickly in Tier 4 gear which makes the Workshop items irrelevant , which makes farming for exotics largely irrelevant as well. Disposable quickie bases is also quite different from all the other survival games where you generally turtle and make a mega base with everything as part of the core gameplay.

While people might get attached to their stuff, once you play a bit you realise how quickly you can get to steel /stone again it doesn't feel so bad to head back to the station each time.

I like the comment on exotics being largely irrelevant - I had not thought of that before but you are right, once you have a full set of composite armour with all its attachments, and weapons then it kind of makes workshop pointless (there are a few exceptions).