How should GTA VI's missions be designed?

[BakeWithMe1000]

I always see people complaining about Rockstars game design of going from point A to point B but no one actually suggests how missions should be. Im curious to know how you guys want missions to be in GTA6 (with examples to how other games did it?)

Edited March 18 by BakeWithMe1000

[Sword_of_Dusk]

I just want varied objectives. As long as it isn't always "shoot him" or "shoot them" for every mission, I'll be reasonably happy.

 

 

[Tez2]

I think the solution most people would purpose is giving more freedom. To be fair, I've played games that marketed this idea of having total freedom and the missions were as boring as dealing with "A to B" missions. Most certainly, total freedom shouldn't be applied to each and every mission of the game. Because the problem with that is as you give that level of freedom, you strip the game of elements that make linear designed missions cool. You end up feeling a main mission is no different from a side quest.

 

I am thinking maybe introducing the stealth aspect to more missions especially since the protagonists this time are more of companions as suggested by the leaked videos. And maybe linking some "A to B" missions to Heists or unique multi-approach missions down the road.

[GhettoJesus]

Rockstar needs to take inspiration from its 3D era mission design. GTA IV's biggest mistake was that 90% of the missions were "drive here, kill them" type of missions. GTA V had varied objectives once again, but it failed to give us any freedom. GTA V holds your hand way too much and any deviation is met with a mission failed screen. The missions feel like I am playing a movie where I have to follow a strict script. Now, I am not saying we need total freedom in everything, sometimes the game needs to be restrictive.

 

I have said this before but remember how you could pick up Curly Bob in GTA III in your own taxi and skip the tailing part? This is something that wouldn't be allowed in today's Rockstar's game design. But back then such creative measures were allowed and rewarded. Remember how you can actually get off your bike in San Andreas while chasing the train? You could just hop on the train and kill the Vagos on foot. With today's design you would either be glued onto the bike or the mission would fail as soon as you get off your bike. Or how about Drive-By in San Andreas? Ever wanted to pick up the money your enemies drop? You can actually do that. You will fail the mission eventually if you spend too much time outside the car, but the game gives you enough time to collect the enemies' money and weapons.

 

Bottom line is, not every mission should be "go here, kill someone" (some missions just have you driving, racing, stealing etc.) and give us more freedom. I want to play a game, not a movie. It's okay if you have mission failed conditions, but be more generous.

[Emmi]

The thing is Rockstar has perfected this already with the 3D era GTA games so why not just replay them and remember what made these missions fun and also allowed for the player to input some of ones' own imagination and creativity on how to tackle certain missions and eventually overcome them. I'm sure they can find a good balance between scripted stuff and freedom for the player but what I certainly don't want to see ever again when it comes to mission design is what they did with RDR2 and to a lesser extend GTAV but RDR2 is the most horrible Rockstar game when it comes to pure mission design and noone can convince me otherwise. The fact that you'd not progress in a mission when you park a coach just a millimeter away from the yellow dot shown on the mini-map is just laughable and inexcusable.

 

Let's give them an idea ... let the QA testers play through the missions WITHOUT the mini-map on screen and let's see if they have any chance of completing a mission ... in RDR2 that'd be literally impossible and that sucks because this way you never really have the chance to play without the mini-map except for when you do free-roaming stuff.

 

In my opinion you should always design missions with people in mind who don't want to use any markers or stuff shown on the mini-map and I guess this is what most developers or higher-ups who make the decisions overlook.

[Rajder]

This topic again

As we all know, Rockstar has been experimenting with mission design in GTAO, maybe they'll continue to do it in GTA VI but don't count on an almost 100 story missions with non-linear structure

 

 I can already see the reviewers and youtubers whining about the mission design

[Aquamaniac]

You can't change mission design without changing what the game is, GTA VI will be more of the same as most other franchises are. I liked Ghost Recon Wildlands a lot but I can't imagine how GTA could become more like Ghost Recon and staying GTA at the same time.

 

I hope for a good map, good characters, good story, nice cars but in the end it will be more of the same only at a different location.

[SM Grunge]

15 hours ago, Tez2 said:

I think the solution most people would purpose is giving more freedom. To be fair, I've played games that marketed this idea of having total freedom and the missions were as boring as dealing with "A to B" missions. Most certainly, total freedom shouldn't be applied to each and every mission of the game. Because the problem with that is as you give that level of freedom, you strip the game of elements that make linear designed missions cool. You end up feeling a main mission is no different from a side quest.

 

I am thinking maybe introducing the stealth aspect to more missions especially since the protagonists this time are more of companions as suggested by the leaked videos. And maybe linking some "A to B" missions to Heists or unique multi-approach missions down the road.

And if enemies detect you, you don't fail the mission. Compare the deliver emp mission from 2015 and the casino and cayo perico heists from later, the missions get harder but you don't fail them for getting caught.

[MaddenedGhost]

11 minutes ago, SM Grunge said:

And if enemies detect you, you don't fail the mission. Compare the deliver emp mission from 2015 and the casino and cayo perico heists from later, the missions get harder but you don't fail them for getting caught.

Just compare Human Labs raid (or any of the original heists) to Cayo Perico, it's a totally different concept.

 

I have always seen and understood this "GTAV doesn't allow freedom" complaint to an extent until I saw speedrunners play the game and abuse all kinds of stuff (normal mechanics and glitches) during missions to either skip big portions of them or the whole thing entirely, then this complaint became less weighty to me.

 

Either way, I had no issues with IV, V or RDR2's mission designs, my take on it is that when I walk into the checkpoint to start a mission, I am basically locking myself to the narrative and the script of said mission until I get out of it, I do get having freedom in some of them can be fun, but still, it doesn't bother me too much (it actually doesn't bother me at all in RDR2 because that game's entire story is -in my opinion- best experienced the way the makers wanted it to be, but I understand where the freedom complaint rises from, especially for GTA).

 

 

 

 

Edited March 18 by MaddenedGhost

[boomboom5950]

I like linear mission design, it makes for more unique and interesting missions. Most of the GTA online missions are free to do any way you want, but end up being boring because of it. They end up just being fly to a place with a mk2, spam rockets, collect something and deliver it. So linear mission design should stay.

 

But what i want is more interesting side ways to approach missions, as some have mentionned maybe give us a stealth option or secondary ways to do missions. Kind of like the Cayo Perico heist where you have multiple ways to do an objective with different dialogues and slightly different ways to replay the missions once your done with it, but providing the same linear cutscenes and outcomes. 

[Aquamaniac]

1 hour ago, boomboom5950 said:

I like linear mission design, it makes for more unique and interesting missions. Most of the GTA online missions are free to do any way you want, but end up being boring because of it. They end up just being fly to a place with a mk2, spam rockets, collect something and deliver it. So linear mission design should stay.

 

But what i want is more interesting side ways to approach missions, as some have mentionned maybe give us a stealth option or secondary ways to do missions. Kind of like the Cayo Perico heist where you have multiple ways to do an objective with different dialogues and slightly different ways to replay the missions once your done with it, but providing the same linear cutscenes and outcomes. 

 

For single player I hope for more scripted events during main missions and maybe two or three choices during important missions that will have permanent effects how the story continues (that will multiply with further choices) and thus increases replay value.

 

In online it would end up in a grind anyways using the most economic approach, personally I think I won't invest so much time in future online than I did with current GTAO and so I'm looking forwards to a good single player experience.

[Ser_Salty]

5 hours ago, boomboom5950 said:

But what i want is more interesting side ways to approach missions, as some have mentionned maybe give us a stealth option or secondary ways to do missions. Kind of like the Cayo Perico heist where you have multiple ways to do an objective with different dialogues and slightly different ways to replay the missions once your done with it, but providing the same linear cutscenes and outcomes. 

The easiest way to do that is to just remove all of the weird fail conditions. A character dies that's not supposed to or something, sure, that's a fail. But not for abandoning routes or characters, or vehicles being destroyed. You can keep the missions just as linear as before, but by not failing the player for not sticking to the script 100%, it opens up a ton of avenues. Then on top of that you can account for things a player might try to do. Somebody mentioned the Curly Bob mission earlier and that's a perfect example. Just anticipate 2-3 things, big or small, that a player might try and have the mission adapt to it. Another great example from GTA3 is Farewell Chunky Lee Chong, where you can take Chunky Lee's car and arm it with a bomb at 8-balls to kill him. The game never tells you this is an option and you bet your ass in GTAV it would've failed you with a message like "Chunky Lee Chong was alerted" when you get into his car.

You don't need to make open ended missions, you just need to not restrict them with arbitrary fail conditions. Many of the missions in the 3D era were just as linear in their base design as V, they just didn't have the sheer amount of fail conditions.

[Kid Named Finger]

On 3/18/2023 at 5:41 AM, BakeWithMe1000 said:

 Im curious to know how you guys want missions to be in GTA6 (with examples to how other games did it?)

Well there was this little known game called GTA 3 that did this pretty well : 

 

Missions in GTA III :

Target is here on the map, kill target in 3 mins. 

 

Same mission in GTA V : 

Target is here on the map. But you need to kill the target specifically in this one way the game scripted it to be. Also you need to go there with your friend specifically in his car.  If you take any other car you fail the mission. Also you need to specifically use this one gun given to you. 

 

Remember the killing Diaz mission in vice City? If you're too lazy to kill all of Diaz's body guards you could just get a helicopter, land on top of his mansion thus avoiding all the unnecessary shooting and get right to the point and kill him directly. 

 

Remember all the assassination missions in III, you could save yourself a lot of time if you just destroyed the target's vehicles so they couldn't escape from you and had to run on foot instead.

 

Remember the Vertical bird mission in sanandreas? If you think destroying the ships from the plane is too hard, you can just get down the plane, get an RPG and blow up the boats manually. 

 

 

If you tried this approach for any GTA V missions you'd get " mission abandoned" or "vehicle abandoned" . What's the point of an open world game if you can't be creative with what you can do with the open world?

 

More elaboration:

https://youtu.be/MvJPKOLDSos

Edited Sunday at 06:31 PM by Kid Named Finger

[Homicidal Hipster]

Non linear with several different ways to complete a mission. I'd like to choose who to play as in most missions.. experiencing either Lucia or Jason's POV. Similar to the way you can experience Michael or Trevor's perspective in bury the hatchet but on a larger scale. 

[Ser_Salty]

1 hour ago, Homicidal Hipster said:

Non linear with several different ways to complete a mission. I'd like to choose who to play as in most missions.. experiencing either Lucia or Jason's POV. Similar to the way you can experience Michael or Trevor's perspective in bury the hatchet but on a larger scale. 

I think it'd be cool if some missions could be done with either, but without both being present, know what I mean? Like, single character mission, but you can pick which character.

[Homicidal Hipster]

2 hours ago, Ser_Salty said:

I think it'd be cool if some missions could be done with either, but without both being present, know what I mean? Like, single character mission, but you can pick which character.

Yeah. Similar to some of the random events in 5. Just with subtle changes in dialogue depending on who you're playing as.