demagogue on 4/11/2025 at 17:04

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I haven't played it or watched any lets plays, so I may have misspoken, sorry. But what I was referring to was someone saying, in a "What do you think about yellow paint in games?" thread, that even TOW2 has subtle yellow objects strewn around to quietly guide the player if they're looking for it, and I was possibly interpreting that to mean more than it is. I was just taking their word for it.

Since I haven't played it, I'll shut up about it. Since I had just read that thread, I guess I was more interested in continuing to think about the stuff it was bringing up here than talk about that game per se.

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Edit: @Sulph, you are bringing up good points, like that thread I read also was, and I was trying to boil some stuff down. Generally I was still falling back on the conclusion I made then, which is you let the game tell you what it needs.

I think the general punchline that other thread ended up coming to, which I also tend to, is that people come into games with different levels of patience to get into the whole flow state between the boring vs. frustrating poles, and there are techniques games can use, like visual guidance, that can help manage those poles to get a player into that flow state.

Yes, it makes particular sense when there's visual information overload in modern games. And then I think most if not all games that have it have the option to turn it off. So I think the idea is the poles for flow states for different players might be a little different, or they might expect or be turned off by certain mechanics just on principle (which is more where I land), so that's the argument for having the option on by default but turn-offable.

As I was saying, if I were on the actual team, I'd probably vote along with them to have that mechanic, even if I typically want to turn it off for myself. Especially if anything like exploration is part of a game's concept, feeling a little lost early in, and resolving that by exploration, is part of what's important to being in that world for that concept, and why I like to play games like that. Sable is a good example for me of that working well, although because it has a certain level of minimalism--it's a desert world so anything you see on the horizon is probably something worth investigating--it doesn't have the problem Sulphur was talking about.

I was actually thinking about it for some other games I played recently--Herdling, AMs Alice 2: MR, and Dishonored 2--all of which were railroaded (well Dishonored 2 tries to be a bit open, but there are railroadish parts that I'm referring to here anyway), but I noticed places in all of them of trying to hide their railroadism by making the world feel a little bigger and more tangled than they actually were (short stretches of red herring hallways or alleyways that either eventually met up with the main path or quickly turned the player back around, etc.), to evoke a bit of a brief lost feeling, which is I think one of the main alternatives to visual guidance that Sulphur was asking about.

Malf on 5/11/2025 at 15:53

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Guild Wars 2 is an interesting game to study when it comes to guiding the player.

There's 12 years of jumping puzzles in the game, designed by numerous different developers, resulting in a huge variety of quality and visual cues.

The most recent expansion, which dropped last week, has a nice one on the second map where you have to carry a baby bird back to its nest, and it's a great example of how refined their puzzle design has become.
Instead of paint, it's yellow flowering vines that guide the player up through the branches, but at certain points, the flowers end, and you're left peering around for your next potential route up.
Of course, repeat attempts make it easier over time as the route becomes muscle memory (like the notorious Halloween Mad King's Clocktower), but it's still an enjoyable distraction.

In comparison, there's Ember Bay's Chalice of Tears, the most evil, player-hating jumping puzzle in the game, which features precisely zero indicators as to where you're supposed to go next, along with numerous, almost pixel-perfect blind leaps of faith. The last time I had the impulse to do it, it took me two hours.
It's a horrendous experience... while you're doing it.
But completing it feels great, if for no other reason than you can finally leave this godforsaken volcano behind and never go back.

Until a friend asks you for help completing it >:E
Yeah, that same day I last did it, it turned out a friend was also doing it for the first time, and plaintively messaged me asking for help. So that's how I ended up doing the damn thing twice in one day.

There's Mesmer players who have memorised the whole thing and can make a decent amount of gold from escorting players up the precipice, thanks to their ability to drop portals.

ANYWAY, to get back on track, while I understand the whole kickback against yellow paint, I still think it's a useful tool when not overdone, along with creative use of lighting.
To that last point, I found that Alyx was particularly notable in that respect, with clever use of light and dark to keep you on the desired path.

And I also agree with Sulphur; when your game's art-style is particularly busy, a handy visual shortcut to help players pick their way through the visual overload is welcome.

Tomi on 5/11/2025 at 22:09

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Yep, I almost hit the install button for Dead Static Drive too, because "Grand Theft Cthulhu" sounded quite fun... but then I checked out some reviews that said that it's currently a bit of a mess indeed. So I went back to playing Avowed for now. Hopefully the DSD devs will be able to fix that mess of theirs though - maybe then I'll reconsider hitting that install button.