Get Rid of the Dang Arrows

BehattedWanderer

Fell off the Alligator.
Jun 24, 2009
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Zhukov said:
Eh, I actually rather like the markers. They let me know where to go last after I've explored everywhere else. Few things irritate me like accidentally stumbling into the next level/area/cutscene before I've explored to my heart's content.

I do find their presence in linear games a bit puzzling though. I'd prefer that they simply make the path clear through the level layout, Valve-style. Then again, that's much easier said than done.
I was gonna say that there's a counter argument to this philosophy, but bam, you got it in the first post, well done man. Infamous and Infamous 2 come to mind for this one. Large, open map with a point on the map (but not the minimap, I think) marked with a special color to indicate main objective versus side ones, and plenty of ways to get from here to there. But, there is a problem. If they say "head towards the tower, then over to the wharfs", and you don't know where either of those are situated, then you have to spend time learning your way around a fictional city before you can start to really enjoy the game. I have enough "fun" getting lost in my own city, using a sense of direction and some rudimentary knowledge of a a few major streets to construct a mental map of where I might be. I don't always have the time or desire to do that in a game, as well.
 

Elexia

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Dec 24, 2008
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I play Star Trek Online and I enjoy the fact that if I read the quest and comprehend the information, like we're taught to do in school, I don't need directions.

I think it should be optional for the gamer to turn on or off directional help. Or make it part of the 'Easy' setting whereas Normal and Hard modes won't have it. There needs to be a challenge for me to enjoy the game and most of the games I like, at the heart of the mission is finding the objective.
 

Olas

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Dec 24, 2011
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As long as they don't get in the way or annoy me I can do with or without them. It's not like I'm automatically drawn to those things like a fly to a lamp. If there's something else more interesting in front of me to explore I'll happily do that first.
 

jollybarracuda

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Oct 7, 2011
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I love when games, especially the open world ones, give you written directions like "go north from here until you hit a small house, then turn right into the cave" or something. It feels much more natural and it gives me reason to explore, also, it extends the time a player spends playing the game, which is a plus. Far Cry 2 also handled markers in an interesting way that I enjoyed. It's map still had the markers on it to tell you where you needed to go, but the only map in the game was one that needed to be brought up to your eyes to actually see it, like a real map. So you would end up bringing up the map, looking where you need to go, and actually plotting the course and attempt to remember where to turn once the map is away. Even though a magically updating map is unrealistic, it's more in-place in a video game than a HUD ever will be, and it's one of my favorite ways that a game has implemented a map in a video game.
 

crimson sickle2

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Sep 30, 2009
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Highlighting the destination should be at least a toggle if only so if someone is in a hurry they can experience the relevant story quickly or be able to know where to avoid it. I personally would rather have a game where the need for such a cursor is vacant and it dumps you in a filled world with plentiful AI life, and isn't developed by Bethesda(I'm one of those people repulsed by their games for one reason or the other, probably the stare or glitches).
 

scorptatious

The Resident Team ICO Fanboy
May 14, 2009
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I don't mind markers myself. Especially in big open world games like Fallout NV or the Elder Scrolls games. Plus even with those markers, there's nothing stopping you from exploring the area around you.

I can see why it would annoy people if it were in a much more linear game however.
 

disgruntledgamer

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Mar 6, 2012
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I think the markers serve a purpose at the beginning of a game, or if you shove it on easy. If you're playing on easy you're pretty much saying "show me the way".
 

12th_milkshake

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Nov 20, 2008
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i blame fable, ever since i was that sparkly line leading me about... I stopped playing it after 30mins, never played fable again. It's Peters fault. Get him Yathzee!

Akalabeth said:
Interesting article but Yahtzee misses something blindingly obvious (or doesn't address it)

If the player gets lost, they might get frustrated, if they frustrated, they might quit playing.

And if the player quits playing the game, that's a LOT of artwork that wont get seen.
And these people wont check on line guides? god... Metroid would have be a little different if it just told you how to explore it and play it then patted you on the head if you got stuck.

Why should the game cater to these obtuse people? I remember that there used to be a sense of completion when playing a game. You ever beat silkworm on 2 player? I thought not...
 

Pebkio

The Purple Mage
Nov 9, 2009
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I'm backwards on this matter. See... I like those damnable arrows and the river of lucky charms because I can't help but go the right way every time.

It never fails: In a more open RPG like Dark Souls or a big exploration world like Morrowind I try so very hard to find the out-of-the-way goodies but somehow manage to march my silly, under-leveled, ass right into the boss' room. I can't go the wrong way even if the wrong way smelled like fresh muffins.

So... I need those map markers to tell me where I'm supposed to go so I could then go everywhere else besides there.
 

KnThrak

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Jan 11, 2009
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One thing I often wonder is *why* the arrows and markers and lines got so prevalent. A portion of it is probably WoW's wildspread success with it's ubiquitous quest log always telling you what to do next.

But the problem is larger than that.
It is a game-integrated Walkthrough, but the problem is that it's merged straight into the game design. In a certain way it is the *ultimate* easiest-difficulty-mode (as it is equivalent to playing the game exactly along a Walkthrough).

But why? Spatial feedback can be given without markers, using clear and easily distinguished visual style to indicate direction and area. This is how open world games should handle it, too (Skyrim did this quite badly, as it's art style was the same nearly everywhere, and many important landmarkers weren't visible enough from a distance to help. Sure it fit the lore, but the gameplay suffered for it.

It seems to come back to this developer-fear that players will turn their game off after 2 minutes if not 101%-totally-no-break engaged. Present the plot twist as a teaser immediately, then jump back in time, otherwise you know, we'd turn it off at the menu. Markers everywhere, never leaving a doubt where to go. Player could get lost and throw their console out the window in frustration.

*sigh*
 

12th_milkshake

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Nov 20, 2008
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Rack said:
I need these markers because I have no sense of direction whatsoever. I can literally get lost in a straight line, I'll end up going backwards what feels like MORE than half the time. Options to turn them off? Sounds good to me.
Yeah but then you know there in the options and even that ruins the experience of discovery for me. Because ultimately it's there and you know the game is dying to show you. Some game are meant to be linear which is fine. If it's an open world then it's not fine at all. If you have problems with it perhaps its something you'd get better at without being led by the nose, you know learn a skill... It's junkfood gaming. Why bother if you have the bumpers up all the time.
 

Milanezi

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Mar 2, 2009
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First and foremost "boy scouting days" hahahahah Just imagine thise Yahtzee was a boy scout! He deserves some heavy bullying lol

Anyway, I do think it's avery useful to have markers and, at times, even "gps" in open world games. However, as Yahtzee said, I do feel that I spend more time appreciating a 2D mini-map than the carefully built environment around me. This happens particularly with games such as GTA and Sleeping Dogs...

When there are NO markers, like the GTA IV pigeons, I don't even bother hunting for the items (unless, obviously, it's something important), but then again, I usually hate collectibles, since they are no good for anything at all but grant a usually dumb achievement (I call them "wasted time achievement"). There are exceptions, like Bioshock's audio logs, in which case they gave a very nice backstory to the game, and even added context to everything, those are the only times I scavenge for collectibles EVEN if they don't have markers.
 

Milanezi

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Mar 2, 2009
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12th_milkshake said:
i blame fable, ever since i was that sparkly line leading me about... I stopped playing it after 30mins, never played fable again. It's Peters fault. Get him Yathzee!

Akalabeth said:
Interesting article but Yahtzee misses something blindingly obvious (or doesn't address it)

If the player gets lost, they might get frustrated, if they frustrated, they might quit playing.

And if the player quits playing the game, that's a LOT of artwork that wont get seen.
And these people wont check on line guides? god... Metroid would have be a little different if it just told you how to explore it and play it then patted you on the head if you got stuck.

Why should the game cater to these obtuse people? I remember that there used to be a sense of completion when playing a game. You ever beat silkworm on 2 player? I thought not...
I agree, but what happens when the gamer doesn't have enough time (due to work or anything else, other hobbies even) to submit himself to a "frustrating gameplay"? For one, imagine Fallout 3 WITHOUT that map system that would point which train station to get in in order to arrive, say, at the White House? There were many places there where one couldn't simply go straight ahead to, but it was also filled with subway tunnels leading to many different places, without the game's help a "busy" player will simply drop it in favor of another game, maybe an inferior one, but one he/she can get to the end of.

Plus, I firmly believe that a sense of completion is something "subjective", personally, i felt it at GTA IV, Sleeping Dogs, Deus Ex, and many other games that are considered "easy". However finishing, for instance, Dead Space 2 (which was easy, but harder than those other games), made me feel as frustrated at the game as while I was actually playing it, I felt like I had been cheated into buying not a survival horror, but a game that threw tons of alien/monsters to be destroyed by my weapons, and tried to get me "scared" by overwhelming me with enemies (well then, if that's survivor horror than Call of Duty and Gears of War are great horror titles!). In the end I realized that the sense of completion, TO ME, comes ou of fulfilling the character's tale, or at least the game's story.
 

Milanezi

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Mar 2, 2009
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marurder said:
Something I'd like to see in games would he a HUD powered by items. For example Halflife, there was no HUD until you put on the suit. Things like that. A tutorial level where you had a a HUD then the accident that destroys the suit - so the player has no HUD anymore and has to explore. Or alternatively, if it were an RPG, you could buy equipment for certain aspects of the HUD. Compass and map for direction, medical implant to show HP or whatever. This would allow the player to decide what is really useful for them.
Dead Space did that, even Dead Space 2 which I hate. ALL Hud is located on your suit, life signs are displayed on the suit's "spine", bullets are right on top of the weapon, oxygen levels are at your back and so on, and what's more they really make you feel like they are information given by the suit for the character's need, rather than simply informing the player. The "GPS" thing came in the form of a guiding light connected to your hand and (presumably) the information on an "inside map" (one of the few things you had to manually access by pausing the game), to see this light you'd press R3 or something and that would prompt Isaac to open his right palm towards the floor (Iron Man style lol) and a laser of sorts would point a trail. It was nice because the trail wouldn't "stick" to the scenario, but disappear as soon as you "closed Isaac's hands", which means you'd use it more in the event of coming upon a bifurcation or something, to point which way to go and all.
 

Milanezi

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nexus said:
This is actually a very serious problem that needs rectifying. I have always said the "Minimap" is ruining gaming, and it has.. and continues to do so. Mainly because, as Yahtzee said, you spend the majority of your time gluing your eyes to a 4-square inch circle instead of playing.

When it's not the "Minimap" it's the stupid arrows. The biggest offender for this, in my opinion, is Skyrim. Why Skyrim? Well, because Skyrim already has all the resources in place that would be necessary to guide the players through meta-exploration or adventure. I've known no other game that puts in so many useless world objects, or hundreds of readable books.

What happens when you read a book in Skyrim, detailing a lost treasure begging to be found? It puts a "quest marker" in your hud when you close that book. Ugh. Instead, the path should be explained in the story, by either simple instruction, all the way to a complex adventure that chains together a volume of books in a series to complete the journey for your reward. You know, adventure game stuff. It's not possible to just turn off the relevant hud features and quest by longhand, because there is no alternative. Lazy. I haven't decided if it's Bethesda being lazy, or development time constraints.. or they fear the average player will scoff at having to be an active player, thus less sales and such. I fear it is the latter...

Remember what Red Dead Redemption did with the treasure maps? Very simple. They showed you a small hand-drawn map displaying landmarks. Instead of looking at the hud, or stupid minimap, you spent the majority of that time scanning the beautiful horizon and countryside that was beautifully drawn and meticulously detailed. That was the only way to complete the treasure tasks, no waypoints. Unless of course you wiki'd it, you pussy.
I was gonna argue. Then you mentioned the RDR treasure hunting. I had so much fun hunting for those treasures. However, in a game like Skyrim, you WOULD need something similar to RDR, ok, no marker, but a reminder that there's treasure to be collect and a general idea of the location, because mixing up the books in Skyrim would be VERY easy given the amount of text.
 

CpT_x_Killsteal

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Jun 21, 2012
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[quote="Thyunda" post="6.393716.15923020"
THEY'RE BY THE DIRTY BASE!

WHICH WAY IS THAT?![/quote]

Fucking Lol'd. I just run around the map like a madman slay any fucker in my way. Just follow the explosions.

Also, the compass would make it seem too much like a Modern military shooter.

Wait, I've just come up with a proper reason. They never fight on earth. The planets they fight on might have severely different magnetic fields making compasses useless. And even then, the battles aren't always fought on actual planets.
 

Kahani

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May 25, 2011
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Yahtzee Croshaw said:
there's not a single slightly significant thing in that game that doesn't sport a massive indicator on the minimap, so everything in between the icons is so much faff that you needn't even glance at.
This has been one of my big complaints about Guild Wars 2. There's a lot of emphasis on exploring and making sure you find everything in an area, but none of it actually involves any exploration at all. All you do is visit the giant coloured markers that can't be stopped from appearing automatically on your map, often also marked with giant pillars of light in the main game just in case you have some kind of selective map blindness. Occasionally there's a bit of a puzzle in figuring out how to actually get to them, but that's still not actually exploring.

On the other hand, I'm not a fan of having no indications at all. I'm not great with directions or remembering where I've been. Exploring can be fun, but wasting hours running around in circles with no clue where I am or where I'm supposed to be going really isn't. That's often exacerbated by having poor, or even just plain wrong, directions. Early WoW was pretty bad at that, and Skyrim has already been mentioned as another example where there often just isn't enough information given to find things without the markers.

So there had to be a balance. Always marking everything little thing takes all the fun of exploration and discovery out of a game, but not marking anything can just make it incredibly boring and frustrating. I thought WAR had quite a good system - quests had the general area marked rather than a specific point, so you could be sure that you weren't wasting your time looking in the wrong place, but still actually had to search for your target rather than having it handed to you on a platter. It even works in-game reasonably well. When someone says they'll mark your map with a person's location, having a magic marker that pinpoints their exact position and follows them around when they move is a tad unrealistic, but having a big circle around a wood that says "They're in here somewhere" is fairly sensible.
 

moosemaimer

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Apr 14, 2011
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jollybarracuda said:
Far Cry 2 also handled markers in an interesting way that I enjoyed. It's map still had the markers on it to tell you where you needed to go, but the only map in the game was one that needed to be brought up to your eyes to actually see it, like a real map. So you would end up bringing up the map, looking where you need to go, and actually plotting the course and attempt to remember where to turn once the map is away. Even though a magically updating map is unrealistic, it's more in-place in a video game than a HUD ever will be, and it's one of my favorite ways that a game has implemented a map in a video game.
Another thing I liked about Far Cry 2 was instead of having huge floating arrows telling you where to go, when you drove up to an intersection the physical road signs would be automatically color-coded to tell you which way to go. You actually had to pay attention to the environment instead of staring at the HUD, and if you were driving off-road you'd never even see them.