So I was seriously considering making an open world hack for about a week now. I'm wondering what kind of features you'd like to see, what you think is good or bad for an open world hack.
The idea is you start in a neutral starting zone, from there you pick your favourite starter and you're kind of let loose to do whatever you want to do, whether that be Gyms, Pokedex filling, world exploring and joining certain factions, whatever.
The traditional game is very linear in terms of what to do. This is why you have natural barriers like HMs and people blocking places which force trainers away from exploring certain parts of the game until they're done an event in the main story. It's a forced exploration of the plot. That being said, what are good ways to make it open world, yet still support a solid story line?
I'm mostly aiming for a game where a main story line of running around getting badges or whatever exists, but it's not forced. I'm looking for suggestions to help make that happen, and perhaps your opinion on the whole openworld game idea.
I'm just going to run by you some game design tips about making open world games since these work in general rather than just with Pokemon.
...Well, actually, my first point is about the very idea. There's one very important thing to consider when making a game like this inside of a game that so very heavily relies on levels, and that's how you want levels to work. Put bluntly, if you start a person...let's say Pallet Town, but you have a boat service that can take you to Cinnabar, how will you create a choice for the player. Naturally if you let a player go either way, there wouldn't really be a choice- after all, they just got their starter and they can't beat trainers or the Leader in that direction, but if the game is truly open, then you would need to cater to that. Similarly, you would need to make it so that once a choice is chosen, to go to either Viridian (and, by extension, the Viridian Forest or Giovanni's Gym), once the player actually does go in the direction that they originally chose not to, they will be presented a similar challenge as if they'd gone their in the first place (and not simply overpower everything in their path).
Level-Scaling is the more obvious answer to this, though it requires some work to that trainers (and the wild) will also evolve to correspond with the level of the player. Alternatively, slow the leveling process, decrease the stat gain received when leveling (putting a larger emphasis on evolution, move learning, and type advantage). But my point is, for a open-world game to exist you need to allow for choice. Just giving the player a playground where they can go where they want but can't actually function in those areas doesn't really make them choices from a design perspective.
Second, you have to give a purpose to the game being open-world. A Pokemon game that's just open-world for the sake of being open-world doesn't really provide much for the player other than short-lived intrigue. For instance, you say that you want to have gyms, Pokedex filling, exploration, and factions to join, among other things. Conceptually, they sound fun, so all you have to do is grant them function and sanction. Function, being that they allow you to do something or do something themselves that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do. They grant you something, no matter how trivial. Fallout does this with quite well with its Brotherhood of Steel (the function- as well as the sanction- being the ability to use the cover advertised power armor), and Elder Scrolls' Skyrim does this well with its factions, particularly because they consistently give you something to do and reward you for it, giving function to other parts of the game that wouldn't really see practical use.
Of course, the function doesn't have to be big. Even the main Pokemon games do this by letting you use Pokemon of certain levels if you have a certain badge. Sanctions would be rewards- or punishments- for doing certain things. Simply put, by giving the player a reason to do these things or to choose to (or not to) do these things, you make a world filled with possibility. However, if these options are just around, the player probably won't care. They won't have a reason to- there's no pull. Sanction is a very powerful force in gaming, and when added to an experience, along with function, it makes the world feel larger.
...There's more, but I've thrown enough walls of text at you already, so that's really all I'll say on that.
