作者：Josh Bycer

羽毛、可卡因和颅骨的共同点是什么呢？这些东西都可以成为开放游戏世界的收集品。收集品是指玩家在探索世界的过程中寻找的东西。但是，设计优良的收集系统不只是将物品随机地散落在游戏世界中，也不只是驱动玩家前去寻找。

1、搜索的理由：首先，除了100%的完成度之外，收集行为应当能够实现某些目标。比如在《刺客信条2》中，回到玩家住所的羽毛能够增加其获得的金钱数。但是如果玩家已经购买了所有的东西的话，那么这种收集就变得毫无价值了。

《刺客信条2》羽毛地图（from gamersyndrome)

应当避免的是，只在玩家收集完整套物品时才给予奖励。在《侠盗猎车手4》中，收集的形式是射杀鸽子，玩家只有将它们全部杀掉才能够获得奖励。

如果你能够将收集融合到游戏玩法中，就更能够激励玩家去寻找这些物品。在《臭名昭著》中，找到足够数量的“爆炸碎片”能够增加玩家的能量供给，使得他们马上可以使用更多的特殊攻击。而在《正当防卫2》中，你需要寻找隐藏在各个地方的补给箱来升级生命、武器和座驾。将收集系统与游戏可玩性绑定的最佳范例便是《镇压》。

在《镇压》中，城市各处都布有敏捷球，收集它们能够获得短期和长期的好处。当玩家捡起敏捷球时，会增加最大跳跃高度。随着时间推移，获得的经验值能够提升玩家的敏捷水平，使他们跑得更快或者跳得更高。

2、引导玩家朝着正确的方向：在游戏中隐藏各种各样的东西，这种做法确实很棒，但是你要让玩家明白找到这些东西的方法。在《刺客信条2》中，玩家只能自己去寻找羽毛，这要求玩家在四处逛来寻找这些东西。同样地在《侠盗猎车手4》中，找到鸽子也很困难，而且没有任何暗示鸽子位于何处的线索。

《正当防卫2》中有两项帮助玩家找到所有隐藏东西的机制。其一是玩家在靠近箱子时出现的信号器，玩家离箱子越近，信号就越大。其二，游戏世界中每个主要区域都有以百分比显示的完成度，提示玩家是否还有未失去的东西。

在《镇压》中，除了可见的绿色光亮，球体在玩家靠近时会发出异乎寻常的声音，引导玩家找到敏捷球。

3、让玩家付出努力寻找收集物品：如果要让玩家在找到收集品时产生成就感，那么就应该在此过程中设置些挑战。在《镇压》中，挑战的形式是要求玩家寻找爬上建筑物、桥梁等以获得球体的最佳方法。再加上找到球体后的即时奖励，玩家便有动力继续去收集这些物品。《正当防卫2》中的主角非常敏捷，所以收集东西根本不会遇到任何挑战，除了寻找过程之外。

《蝙蝠侠：阿卡姆疯人院》中有个有趣的系统。在每个区域中都有个隐藏地图，上面显示该区域所有收集品的位置。即便地图会使得收集过程变得简单，但玩家依然需要付出在环境中寻找这份地图的精力。

让玩家在收集中投入精力和创造挑战之间有着明显的界限。《镇压2》中让玩家抱怨的是，敏捷球会逃离玩家，这迫使玩家前去追逐。寻找并与收集品互动已经足够形成挑战。寻找收集品的诱惑在于这个过程能够提供别样的感觉，玩家想要的不是专注于某个任务或者次要挑战。如果你想要设计某些能够挑战玩家的特别任务，那么就在游戏世界中添加一个副任务。

设计师获得成功的现象之一是，玩家决定先放弃任务去寻找收集品。就个人而言，我在《镇压》和《正当防卫2》中花了大量时间来做这种事情。我在《正当防卫2》中花了大量的时间来探索，我在开始进行游戏任务之前就解锁了游戏中所有的故事任务。

每个玩家在开放世界游戏中都有着不同的目标，有些玩家想要迅速地打通每个任务和副任务，而有些玩家的目标在于探索游戏场景。理解这两个目标间的不同并围绕他们来设计内容是创造优秀开放世界游戏的必要条件。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Collectible Conundrum

Josh Bycer

What do feathers, cocaine, orbs and skulls have in common? Each one was a collectible in a popular open world title. Collectibles act as something the player can look for while exploring the world and a reason to go off the beaten track. However, designing a good collectible system is more than just plopping objects randomly in the world, and more about motivating the player to find them.

1. A Reason To Search: First, there has to be some game-play purpose for collecting them, above going for 100% completion. In Assassin’s Creed 2, feathers once returned to the player’s mansion will increase the amount of money earned, however at some point this becomes worthless, once the player has bought everything.

One area that should be avoided, is only giving awards after a group of collectibles has been found. In Grand Theft Auto 4, the collectibles were in the form of shooting pigeons, in which the player will only receive an award for killing them all.

If you can tie the collectible into the gameplay that will motivate the player more to seek it out. In Infamous, finding enough “blast shards” will increase the player’s energy supply allowing them to use more special attacks at once. While in Just Cause 2, to upgrade your health, weapons and vehicles, you need to find supply crates hidden all over the place. The best example of tying collectibles to gameplay would be from Crackdown.

In Crackdown, there are agility orbs scattered around the city and collecting them gives both a short and long term bonus. Each orb picked up, will increase the player’s maximum jumping height and over time, the experience earned will improve the player’s agility level, allowing them to run faster and jump even higher.

2. Push The Player In The Right Direction: Hiding miscellaneous doodads is all well and good, but you have to give the player some way to find them. In Assassin’s Creed 2, feathers can only be detected by looking at them, requiring the player to scour around for them. Likewise in GTA 4, picking out a pigeon is very hard to do and there aren’t a lot of indicators as to where they are.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Just Cause 2 has two mechanics in place to help the player find everything. First, is a signal reader that appears when the player is in the general vicinity of a crate and grows bigger the closer the player is to them. Second, every major area in the world has a % completion that tells the player if there are any more items nearby or if they can move on.

With Crackdown, besides the visible green glow, orbs make a distinctive hum when the player is close, cluing them in as to where to find them.

3. Make The Player Work For It: In order to give a sense of accomplishment with finding collectibles, there should be some sense of challenge to get to them. In Crackdown, this was in the form of requiring the player to find the best way up buildings, bridges and more to reach the orbs. Coupled with the immediate reward for finding the orbs did a lot to motivate people to continue collecting. As opposed to Just Cause 2, due to how agile the main character is, there really isn’t any challenge in collecting them, other than finding them in the first place.

Batman: Arkham Asylum had an interesting system. In each area there was a map hidden that would reveal the general location of all collectibles in the area. Even though it made things easier, the player still had to find the map in the environment.

There is a fine line between making the player work for the collectible and creating an outright challenge. One of the complaints in Crackdown 2 was with agility orbs would run away from the player forcing them to give chase. The purpose of finding and interacting with the collectible should be enough of a challenge. The lure of finding collectibles is that it’s a way to “zone out” in a sense, instead of focusing on missions or side challenges. If you want to design something to challenge the player with a specific task, make it a side mission in the world.

The best indicator that the designer has succeeded is when players decide to blow off missions in lieu of wandering around looking for collectibles. Personally, I’ve done this in Crackdown and Just Cause 2 plenty of times. I spent so much time exploring in Just Cause 2, that I unlocked every story mission in the game, before I started doing them.

There are different mindsets for participating in the different activities of an open world game, some players will want to go through every mission and side quest immediately, while others will want to explore around and take in the scenery. Understanding the differences between the two and designing content around them is a must for creating an excellent open world game. (Source: Gamasutra)