Lessons in Open World Design: A Ghost Recon Story
By: Jean-Baptiste Oger
Tags: Game Design, UX, UX Design, Game Development, Gaming

We decided to go down the extrinsic route when it came to adding those map icons in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. Numbers, completion marks, and checklists are reassuring for our human brains (both for the creator and the player). It’s also easier to grasp visual incentive systems rather than abstract concepts like curiosity or creativity.

Although this shift did help to engage players in the short term exploration loop, and give them the sensation of a “fuller” game, it wasn’t sufficient to sustain longterm motivation.

Part 2 — Fueling the Motivation

On rewards desirability

In Part 1, I explained that while adding tangible rewards isn’t an efficient way to ignore the desire to explore, they are still essential to fuel motivation in the longer term — to keep it alive.

If you look at competitive multiplayer games these days, they all gift you with occasional cosmetic rewards. It’s a game loop designed to support and renew your interest over time. Remember, though, that the social connection, will to learn, and sense of achievement remain the primary intrinsic motivators; unlocking skins is the cherry on top.

Let’s return to exploration for a moment. Few players find appeal solely in visual stimuli alone. Most still need positive reinforcement to keep their interest from fading. In order to encourage curiosity in the longer term, designers usually incorporate tangible rewards, which may include narrative collectibles, extra times, or extra activities to perform. Importantly, the rewards must be desiriable throughout the player’s journey in order to be maximally efficient. But as you might have guessed, this wasn’t the case in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.

As I previously mentioned, we didn’t just signal content with map icons. We also added numerous loot chests to the world. The new RPG-esque equipment system we added this time around was disliked by many. But still, gaining a new weapon or armour piece should be an exciting reward in any game of the genre. So, why didn’t our chests attract players as we intended?

Without wading into the details of the entire loot system itself, there are three specific elements that reduce the appeal of these ‘exploration rewards’:

When you recon a location from afar, you know in advance which loot chests it contains. It kills the ‘what’s in the box’ curiosity, and if you don’t like the equipment, you won’t go out of your way for it. The equipment pieces you collect from chests are the same as the ones you can loot or buy to the merchants. The lack of exclusivity is another reason not to invest efforts into collecting a specific chest from a particular place. Unlike most RPGs, there is no minimum level to access missions or regions; you can complete the game while mostly ignoring the loot system. We didn’t want to implement level gating that would force players to grind — but that clearly has its trade-offs.

Although these exploration rewards exist, we didn’t rely on traditional layers (for valid reasons) and as a result, the rewards didn’t end up being particularly attractive. Most players enjoy the loot they get on the critical path already. Chests aren’t enough to encourage them to stray from the beaten path.

Rhythm and density

In addition to the desirability of the exploration rewards, it’s essential to be aware of their density within the play area. If the collectable items are attractive but too scarce, players will rarely encounter them and end up more frustrated than satisfied with exploration.

Game developers rarely discuss rhythm because most figure it out intuitively as they build the game. This often happens late in production when the experience is being tweaked and balanced. Finding the right pacing to accompany the flow of your game experience is a crucial aspect of the design, nonetheless. The analogy is to imagine listening to your favourite song at half or double speed.

There isn’t a once-size-fits-all design solution to nail the rhythm. Rockstar Games has an interesting approach to the problem. They try to stick to a golden rule: there’s never more than 45 seconds of travelling between two consecutive points of interest. In the absence of physical structures, their system spawns events on the road (such as the diligence assaults in Red Dead Redemption, which break up the monotony on long trips).

Finding the right pacing to accompany the flow of your game experience is a crucial aspect of the design, nonetheless. The analogy is to imagine listening to your favourite song at half or double speed.

Auroa is big. Too big. Even with hundreds of points of interest, the density feels too low. Prior to us putting icons on the map, players would rarely discover stuff on their own. Now you never do, but at least moving from one place to the next doesn’t take as long.

Map icons help games get around the density issue. Undiscovered places don’t remain undiscovered because they simply appear as ‘empty world’.

Part 3 — Indirect exploration factors

Designing for exploration goes beyond igniting intrinsic motivation and stuffing an area with enough attractive elements. Allow me to elaborate further on three key aspects of the bigger picture that all had a substantial impact on Ghost Recon: Breakpoint exploration.

Bear in mind that these factors typically wouldn’t be in the hands of the same group of people in a large team. And yet, they have the power to diminish — or to amplify — the enjoyment of exploration in the game.

How you move

Traversal gameplay (or just movement, if you prefer) refers to the mechanics used by characters to get from point A to B, be it running, driving, or paragliding. Fundamentally, exploration is about encouraging the player to experiment with different available methods for traversal. The eagerness to explore directly correlates to the pleasure of moving in the game.

Assassin’s Creed 3 concept art.

Travelling around the world of Breakpoint was painful for a long time. And it still was at the time of release, even after our tweaks. You can get injured, or become exhausted and fall while navigating slopes. Vehicles aren’t particularly fun to use due to the sloppy driving and uneven terrain.

Even when the player is fully aware of the existence of content and where it is located in the world, they are likely to weigh the potential gain of moving to those places of interest versus the additional effort required to get there.

Falling due to exhaustion on slopes is realistic but not particularly fun.

Conversely, if moving is pleasurable thanks to responsive, engaging, and thrilling character controls and animation, then exploration collectables can become a valid pretext to spend more time in the world. Traversal is arguably one of the most fun aspects of Assassin’s Creed, which may have lead people into thinking that open-world collectables are more fun (in and of themselves) than they actually are.

How you observe

Observation is another crucial aspect of exploration, one that is heavily impacted by adding map markers on the map. Challenging the player on their ability to scrutinise the environment and notice things on their own isn’t mandatory. As I explained in a previous article, it’s sometimes better to swap observation for something else. Providing helpers can be vital for the rhythm of the exploration.

Photo by Caleb Jones on Unsplash.

On a deeper level though, letting the player move on their own (but also spot points of interest on their own) is a powerful tool to reinforce the joy of discovery. You don’t find stuff because a developer included a bright red sign to attract your attention — rather, you found it because you were observant, and you were rewarded for your natural curiosity.

Observation is the difference between “exploring” and “travelling”.

Putting map icons everywhere introduces another problem: the implicit authorisation to not look at anything else. Without even consciously noticing, players subconsciously recognise that because all points of interest are explicitly marked on the map, there’s absolutely no reason to check on what’s in-between.

When you know all places of interest, you also figure out the rest of the map doesn’t have any.

Putting map icons everywhere introduces another problem: the implicit authorisation to not look at anything else.

You might spot a blossoming tree in the distance. Your natural instinct might be to go and investigate. But the in the absence of any map icons, you’ll probably move on unless you have some other serious reason to believe the location is an exception to the rule. There goes your curiosity, right out the window.

How you engage

This third external factor is more abstract. I’d call it your ‘gameplay goals’. That is, the goals you set for yourself within the overarching structure of the game, based on your expectations.