pukey brunster on 30/8/2016 at 15:12
LOL.. I LOVE that you actually remember or know who "Punky Brewster" is. As you see, my nickname is quite a strange spinoff of that name (pun intended). :cheeky:
And actually, to reply to demagogue above:
Yeah, I know what you mean. I think of myself when I played Thief 4. Visually, a stunning game. Just gorgeous. But after a while I became so dependent on the automap tools and "bling" of this sort, that it's almost like I stopped seeing it.
I agree.. not a totally lost art yet. Which again brings me back to why I am frequently lurking here in TTLG.. ;-)
Renzatic on 30/8/2016 at 15:44
Developers have become way too complacent with allowing automaps to become a crutch for them recently.
It fits somewhat with something like the DX series, where having a convenient marker floating around in your field of vision makes sense, since that world has GPS and AR tech readily available to the point it's being built into people's heads. But in something like Dishonored? If they're going to give you the option to not use waypoint markers, they need to make sure they better explain locations and goals in the dialog, so your next task doesn't devolve into a tedious where-exactly-am-I-supposed-to-be-going guessing game due to the fact the info you've been given is way too vague.
icemann on 30/8/2016 at 16:31
Quote Posted by pukey brunster
I'm a "she" not a he.. LOL ;-)
No worries.. I have a cryptic nickname.
Considering your forum nick, I'd have thought it'd be obvious. Then again it was a 80s TV show (under different spelling), but still.
catbarf on 30/8/2016 at 17:11
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Developers have become way too complacent with allowing automaps to become a crutch for them recently.
While I feel that Valve often gets way too much credit for their level design, I think their games are a great example of designing areas to naturally guide players through environmental cues, item positioning, and other relatively subtle effects. But most teams don't have the time and money to iteratively develop and test and develop and test and develop and test some more until they have that tightly crafted, polished-to-a-mirror-shine experience that Valve is known for, so they take the shortcuts. Why spend hours and hours engaging a level designer, artist, and testers to get it perfect when you can just throw in some waypoints and get it functionally correct with a fraction of the expense?
I think the handholding isn't necessarily complacency, but rather a prioritization of resources, especially with content being so expensive to develop that it can be prohibitively expensive to drastically alter level geometry when focus testing shows that it isn't working quite as intended. I agree that relying on maps and objective markers is not optimal, but I can understand why they approach it this way. In terms of ROI, more features and Stuff To Do is probably going to win out over intuitive level progression.
henke on 30/8/2016 at 17:41
Quote Posted by catbarf
While I feel that Valve often gets way too much credit for their level design, I think their games are a great example of designing areas to naturally guide players through environmental cues, item positioning, and other relatively subtle effects.
I'd say the lessons of Half-Life have been learned by most designers of modern linear actiongames, it's more in open-world/non-linear games that the minimap and objectivemarkers are used as a crutch.
Renzatic on 30/8/2016 at 17:45
The thing is, the work on the world is already done. It's their descriptions within the world, something that could be handled by dialog and description, that's lacking. It's something older games used to do before onscreen waypoints became so prevalent.
Like in Manky, you'd occasionally get instructions to meet someone at an apartment complex off Blah Street. The thing is, the ingame map doesn't show you where Blah Street is. If you're not using waypoint markers on the map, you won't know where to go. It's the same for ingame missions. I ended up getting lost in Golem City because, to meet Talos Rucker, it tells you to find the highest point in the area, and move on from there. So I sneak through multiple floors, get to what the highest point in the area, and find an elevator...that takes me all the way back down to the first floor. After wondering aimlessly for awhile, I turn on the waypoint marker out of desperation, and find that there's an elevator ON THE FIRST FLOOR that takes me up to Rucker. There weren't any hints or indications given me in the dialog to make me look for this elevator. It made me think I was supposed to go up, and I did just that, deciding to avoid the elevators and take the longer route because they were surrounded by cameras, laser tripwires, and tons of guards.
It was too vague, and I got lost, because the game was expecting me to use the damn waypoints.
Pyrian on 30/8/2016 at 23:52
Hilariously, I took the same route specifically to avoid the waypoint. =D
Renzatic on 31/8/2016 at 01:24
And you know what's even better? I left this part out for the sake of brevity, but apparently the whole waypoint system bugged out on me about that point. See, I started on the bottom, got to the second floor, then climbed the rest of the way up through what looked like a big service elevator shaft. When I explored that top floor, couldn't find a way to go even higher, and found out that the elevator there only takes me back down again, I got confused, and turned waypoints back on...
...only to find out it was pointing me to that big elevator shaft. Even worse, when I went there to check it out, it wouldn't update. I'd be standing there with this floating node a couple feet from my face, with no other hints on where to go from that point. There wasn't any way to go higher up from there, so I didn't know what the hell was going on. After another 45 minutes of aimless wandering throughout the entire level, I said screw it, and watched a walkthrough to find out what I was missing.
Oh, I get to the highest point by taking that hallway to that OTHER elevator on the FIRST floor that was off to the left of the staircase I decided to go up to take what I thought would be the more stealthy route, which I only later find out actually takes you to another area completely separate to where I was currently at so the place I NEEDED to go wouldn't show up on my map, only serving to further confuse me, because I couldn't plan out any approach.
Well fuck me with a goat. :mad:
Nameless Voice on 31/8/2016 at 02:08
Yeah, being able to see your objective on the map is fine, but it's gone too far when level designers rely on it so much that their levels are really hard to play without it.
I wouldn't want to play a really big RPG without it marking things at least roughly on your map (because you are often doing so many things that it becomes hard to keep track of them all), but they should still actually tell you where those locations are in-game and try to give you a chance to find the way yourself.
Elder Scrolls games are especially bad at this, with characters often just naming the place (if even that!) and making you rely on your map to find it. Skyrim, of course, one-ups that by randomising a lot of the quest locations, so the dialogue doesn't even mention where the place is.
Oddly enough, Bethesda could happily record hundreds of possible names for a robot in Fallout 4 to speak aloud, but don't want to actually record people giving directions to various dungeons.
Renzatic on 31/8/2016 at 02:28
Right. I don't have a problem with waypoints in general, I just don't think it's good design to, like you said, rely on it so much that the only way you can navigate through the game is with them.
Like say you're playing a game that has a city with a mile long canal. You talk to a character you're planning a bank heist with, and he tells you "meet me at the canal". With a waypoint system in place, he doesn't have to specifically say "meet me at the canal, on the plaza next to that little German restaurant off Hopkins Street", but it wouldn't hurt to throw it in there anyway, because that's the way people talk in real life. Even with waypoints floating boldly around your screen, it's better for designers to assume they're not there at all, because, at the very least, it gives you enough information to at least feel like you're doing things yourself, putting you deeper into the game, rather than, at their worst, feeling like you're just being guided from node to node without any real thought behind it on your part.
Not having them in there doesn't absolutely ruin the game, because one of my favorites, Dishonored, was really terribly grossly guilty of only giving you minimal information concerning your objectives, and letting the waypoints do the rest.
