Get Rid of the Dang Arrows

[742]

the arrows are necessary if the level/environment design isnt interesting and deliberate. i cant remember how many games ive seen where i literally wanted to give the fuck up and just go home because they told me where to go, but it all looked the fucking same.
but if the rooms look unique, the landscape is peppered with landmarks, the environment is interesting enough to draw the eye, and there are signs everywhere you can possibly justify putting signs? then the arrows distract from the game. they make it a lot worse. i dont remember if system shock two had arrows, but if it did i never used them, and i got lost in only two places (one of them engineering).

especially in sandbox games a lack of arrows (and the same could be said of no-fast-travel in just about every way, with the addition that there needs to be at least one fun way to move around more quickly) contribute to an ownership of the environment. again im using morrowind as an example because it did this so perfectly (even if it wasnt intentional): when you start everything looks foreign, you get lost constantly, and most directions lead to just walking up to every door and checking if its the right one. as you keep playing your familiarity and mastery of the environment grows, to the point where navigating it feels as natural and easy as getting around your own home/home town (+/- the occasional assassin), and suddenly everything is easy to find. it fits absurdly well with the main story of that particular game. and this post was just 'why morrowind was awesome', for which i am only mildly disappointed with myself.

 

[Rack]

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.

Nope, I'm old-school, been playing since Atari and if I ever had a chance to develop direction sense I would have done so playing Half Life, Morrowind, Duke Nukem and Deus Ex. I'm sorry you can't be happy if there is even an option to show quest arrows because that's as close to mainstream I can see this getting.

I would say your reaction seems a bit extreme though. If Dark Souls implemented an optional quest pointer you might not like it but I'd hardly say it would render the entire challenge defunct.

 

[DataSnake]

I've found that objective markers can actually HELP immersion. For about a week after I got Skyrim, I didn't know you could turn on objective markers for sidequests, and it was driving me INSANE trying to find the right houses for thieves' guild quests. Do you have any idea how many houses there are in Solitude? Enough that going door-to-door looking for Jala's house made me feel less like a dashing master thief and more like a travelling salesman. Part of the appeal of playing a game is that my character can easily do things I can't. I don't like having to really find my way around a new city any more than I'd like having to really walk 5 miles to get to the next objective.

 

[kibbitz2000]

Selective toggles to me are ideal. For one, like some, I have a poor sense of direction when gaming. Also, to me, markers and indicators are just a representation of what the character knows as feedback to me, the player. I may not be able to tell who You-Know-Who is via instructions relayed by an NPC, but I don't see why my character has to have the same problem.

 

[DataSnake]

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.

Oh I don't know, maybe for FUN? Sure, there's good times to be had in besting a challenging game, but that's not the ONLY kind of fun. Saints Row 2 and 3, for example, weren't exactly difficult, but they were still hugely enjoyable. Or maybe someone can only play for an hour or so a day and they'd rather spend that time FIGHTING the huge, epic battles the game has on offer instead of wasting it trying to FIND them. Also, have you ever gotten truly lost in a game? I have, and personally, I find turning on the "go this way" arrow to be less of an immersion breaker than stopping playing so I can Google it.

EDIT: also, this sums it up nicely:

To me, markers and indicators are just a representation of what the character knows as feedback to me, the player. I may not be able to tell who You-Know-Who is via instructions relayed by an NPC, but I don't see why my character has to have the same problem.

 

[Iron Criterion]

I don't think simply being able to turn them off is a viable option. Compare Morrowind to Skyrim for example, in the former you are given a description of the place and how to get there, whereas the latter simply gives you an objective and a marker; without that marker you'll have an incredibly difficult time finding where to go.

I think distinctive, memorable landscape is important; have a world you can figure out through exploration. There also needs to be more NPCs who give you directions.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Waypoints are fine. Metroid Prime uses Waypoints, and tells the player "Something happened here. Try to find a way to the location" and lets the player take over from there.

"Idiot Lights" are not. Fable sucked a hot one in part because of this. Combat carried no real risk or consequence because death is reserved only for your enemies, and exploration is of no concern when 80% of the game is linear and there are fucking lights leading you everywhere anyway!

As a counterpoint, consider Left4Dead. It's linear, yes, but each map is quite large, full of complex terrain, and contains at least a few points of semi-linearity (places you explore looking for weapons and supplies). It's also dark and fairly homogenous in its layout.

Yet it does not require the presence of those Idiot Lights one bit. Why? Because they are designed intelligently.

Color correction and lighting. Sections that fan and funnel between buildings/segments. Identifiable landmarks. These are all attributes that the brain recognizes subconsciously.
Not fucking ONCE do I have to whip out a minimap or press a "GO HERE, IDIOT" button.

Captcha: I think this is the first non-ad captcha I filled out in nearly a month.

 

[Silk_Sk]

I agree about having too many markers like AssC 3. But I'd rather they didn't get rid of main objective markers. It lets me know what part of the game I need to avoid for as long as possible until I have explored every possible other area.

 

[Tono Makt]

But Yahtzee, every game has to have them, because previous games that have done well had them!! How can we ever make progress as people if we dont carry over every popular feature whether or not its necessary or appropriate?

Seriously though, I think, as with basically all elements of a HUD, it should be a toggle option in the menu. Those that want to explore the environment to find out where to go can do so unmolested, and those that arent able to think for themselves can be led by the nose by a flashing arrow.

Or those of us who would rather spend 6 hours playing through the story of a game than trying to find that one little hidden place that has something in it which is useful to the story.

So yeah - have it be a toggle setting or even part of a difficulty setting, so those people who want to enjoy the story can enjoy the story, and those people who want to masturbate game designers can masturbate game designers. We all win!

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

If I want hand holding I'll go to kindergarten, if I want to watch a film I will download a video. If I want to play a game I put it in this thing called a game system and play it via a controller...and hope I am not back in kindergarten being forced to watch a shity film.

 

[cerebus23]

make it on/off.

heck steal the compass from the pirates movies, there is something you could work into a game, have it point at your selected quest in your quest long so when you consort the compass it points towards it, can make it go haywire, send you off on something it finds interesting, or when your hurt it insists on pointing you towards the nearest doctor, or hungry resturant. etc all sorts of mini game you could build into something like that, and still give direction when the player had to have it.

And yea open world exploration is tricky in most games because the main quests tend to have game changing or game ending triggers, until games work past that, truely open explore and do wth ever you want will be broken in these games.

 

[Darmani]

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.

Back in the day it used to be done with smart level design, colour palettes and or lighting. Not only did you know where you needed to go, but you had a sense you were going somewhere, and you knew where you were. These days no effort is put in. /EndCrankyKongRant

Having said that, Left 4 Dead 2 is a pretty good example of using good level design to guide a player - letting them explore while not holding their hand (in the context of the pacing of that game).

Back in the day it was 2d you generally advanced left to right or up or had the literal screen scroll and force you a direction or cut you off from going back on one.

I'm slightly unhappy with the legacy of the playstation and even I am not going to not call the golden age or just the past on its faults. The issue, mainly is, in general, we've got no established way to explore and handle 3d environments well and the ways we do have are the result of spamming what worked on a popularly praised or just profitable title the once and is run into the ground even when the indepth mechanics aren't grokked.

 

[PrototypeC]

How about having those ridiculous things off by default? That adds to the whole, "turn on Baby's First Video Game mode" setting.

I have to admit, watching Let's Plays and Playthroughs of popular games often leaves me baffled (and screaming at the screen) when players run around an environment for ten minutes before they find the door that I saw as soon as they entered the room. That this happens so often (or trying to figure out what to do) caused me to consider starting my own Let's Play series.

 

[DRTJR]

Markers serve a propose in The Elderscrolls/ Fallout type games were you have a massive map and you need a marker of were to go. but CoD just sucks so there.

 

[floppylobster]

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.

Back in the day it used to be done with smart level design, colour palettes and or lighting. Not only did you know where you needed to go, but you had a sense you were going somewhere, and you knew where you were. These days no effort is put in. /EndCrankyKongRant

Oh no it bloody didn't.

The level design in older games sucked donkeys. The layouts made no sense, they were structured like a maze rather than a real-world environment. A significant amount of gameplay time was spent wandering about trying to figure out exactly which bullshit obscure path I was meant to take or which random button would open a door on the other side of the level.

Say what you will about arrows and objective markers, I'll take them any day over the obtuse bullshit of the old days.

You're talking about the old, old days. I'm talking about um, say... Yeah, you're right, they did suck. But the light of that can't penetrate my rose-tinted glasses.

(Banjo Kazooie had nice level design.)

 

[Scottgun]

Amen. Sleeping Dogs got traded pretty fast because missions were embarrassingly linear. It was like watching Rumble in the Bronx and having it pause and ask, "Send Jackie to gang hideout? Press X."

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Firstly, I feel I'm obligated to repost this classic and depressingly true image:

With regard to open world games, markers are only necessary when the game requires you to find something that would not otherwise be obvious if you look for it. In Grand Theft Auto games, for example, you're often sent to a perfectly generic location in the middle of a bunch of equally generic locations -one city apartment block looks more or less like another one- to carry out your missions. On the other hand, in a game like The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (still my favourite of the 2D Zelda games) you have to discover the locations of the game's 8 dungeons simply by exploring, but it's not phenomenally difficult (unlike in the original Legend of Zelda where finding some of the dungeons could drive you insane).

 

[Polarity27]

A fair point. However, I've definitely lost enjoyment from games that don't have any kind of objective markers.

Discovery is usually only part of the "cake of fun" I'm trying to eat when playing a video game. Progression/advancement is another. The best games are when those two things go hand in hand. When you get rid of objective markers or maps entirely in an open-world game, you may (in effect) be killing any advancement or forcing players to Google an answer. Nothing breaks immersion more than having to look something up on Google just to continue the game.

This so very much, brought to you in flashing letters by Vanilla WoW. It's not that Thottbot wasn't *useful*, but it broke any sense of immersion to circle the same mountain six times and then go have to Thott the damn thing to find out where the 6 blue blunderbusses were to be found. Whichever expansion gave you a quest list with shaded areas on the mini-map was brilliant and I'd like to kiss it. Even better, it didn't get in the way of exploration at all, I could ignore the map shading as much as I wanted to, it was perfect.

I'll note, though, that I'm horribly navigationally challenged in general. I don't play new games on Easy because I can't handle the gameplay, I play them on Easy because I can't handle the combat while I'm trying that hard to stop getting lost! Once I know where I'm supposed to go, I bring it back up again. As you might imagine, I like waypoints. There can't be enough waypoints for me! So please, if you must get rid of them, let the perennially lost amongst you toggle the damn things on if we'd like to.

Actually... if you want to know what kills exploration for *me*, it's not the waypoint, it's your irritated buddy/commander in your ear constantly yelling at you to get a move on. (Jesus, shut UP, Cortana! I love you, but we really do need to talk about that...)

 

[Polarity27]

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.

Sort of like the tonics in Bioshock, then? Ooh. I LOVE this idea! I not only would pay in-game credits, in some games I'd be willing to part with $1 or $2 of real-world money just for a working in-game version of my phone's mapping app, with a little "find me" button. This would be the perfect solution, players like Yahtzee can get something better suited for their playstyle, and navigationally-challenged players like me could start on Normal or harder without having to artificially lower the difficulty to compensate for the greater degree of being hopelessly lost.

Developers, are you listening? That idea is genius!

 

[Rashkavar]

The problem, as with everything in game design, is balance. I can exemplify both extremes using a single game: Skyrim. When following a quest and trying to find, say, Kynesgrove. It makes sense for me to have a map that points out locations; heck, in many quest conversations, the NPC saying "I'm too lazy to do this so you should do it for me" mentions said map and adding a marker to it. So having a quest marker pointed at the town (cave, lake, fortress, whatever) makes sense - it's physically marked on the map and map reading is far simpler than, say, dragon hunting. On the other hand, how do I know that the Dragonstone is contained in that particular chest within the dungeon. (Most of the dungeons are pretty linear as it is, and major chests already stick out like a sore thumb.)

Similarly, a well briefed special ops soldier (the PC in your average shooter) could plausibly know what building the target is in, maybe even what floor or wing to look in, but exactly where in the room should be an unknown. (Modern Warfare 2 has an excellent example of this - in the Russian airbase where you and your ally get caught, the first time through, I had already grabbed the item that triggers McTavish being caught before he was finished explaining what I'm supposed to do.)

I remember the first game I played with HUD based "this way" cues (as in, those attached to the game interface rather than subtly built into the level design like it should be). It was Final Fantasy X, where a big red arrow on the map pointed the way to go through at least 90% of the game. The previous 9 games didn't even have area maps - they're not necessary for most jrpgs (and when they are, it's generally because the map designer is being a dick, like the Labs dungeon in Xenogears). One could almost write a walkthrough for the entire storyline of the game as "follow the red arrow, killing anything that tries to stop you." Given that most of the map designs in the game were pretty hallways with different monsters and scenery, the red arrow becomes even less necessary.

I had hoped then that game developers wouldn't adopt the trend of hamfistedly pointing out the way, even when it's so stupidly obvious. But no, video gamers aren't allowed to be confused anymore. Even when we're given areas to explore (a concept that seems to have dropped out of the shooter genre, at least), we know exactly where to go to progress through the game even if we weren't paying attention to the storyline, because we've got this giant arrow pasted on the screen screaming "This way be story events!"

At least puzzle games like Portal haven't started using arrows. That said, Myst IV did come with a walkthrough built into it, which is, for a puzzle game, even worse.