It is better than a marker but the fact that it is so obvious it ruins immersion is an issue. Good game and map design naturally leads you to the ladder.
AAA slop is incredibly simplistic in terms of game design anyway. Both the marker and the yellow paint are there to make the slop assembly process more straightforward, neither of them is for the player's benefit. There's no good answer because the question is wrong.
>>32546this, my intuition (apart from 'it's good design') is that a playtester or two couldn't find how to progress so they added an unmissable hint
>>32555>>32556lmao @u
>>32569OP is the one saying any game with yellow ladders is 'slop', how is that not a false dichotomy.
Yes sure there is such a thing as good game design that leads you to the ladder naturally but that doesn't mean it's bad to have some extra reminders for people who missed whatever hints there were.
>>32579>GTABad example, most buildings cannot be entered, most objects can't be destroyed or interacted with, a lot of this gets patched by the modding community ofc.
>Deus ExFair enough.
>Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Dishonored, PreyNo idea why those are included.
I'm surprised nobody mentions Shenmue, Thief, The Elder Scrolls or Half-Life here. Or heck, THE SIMS, The Sims is basically made out of interactible objects. And I'm not even mentioning GMod because it doesn't even have any goals, it's just a sandbox.
>>32581This. I would even say that too much interaction would ruin the immersion, like killing
your own friends for literally no reason. That's why Gordon lowers his gun while looking at his allies in HL2.
It still shoots somehow. >>32576Fair but not comparable to linear story driven games.
>>32579Haven't played some of these but as the other anons said, the environments are littered with locked doors, buildings that have no interior, cars you can't interact with (other than GTA), street furniture you can't sit on or whatever, and so on.
>>32581Exactly.
>>32583True but I don't know if that's the case in RE4 remake, in the original game the only non-interactivity that annoyed me was this kind of stuff
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsurmountableWaistHeightFence >>32598Yeah I was always confused as to why Bethesda Fallouts have so much boarded up doors. It just does not make any sense and is frankly just plain lazy.
>I don't think open world games are inherently less 'slop' than linear ones.Open world is just a level design format. The quality of game experience still lies in variety and meaningfulness of interaction, and given that open world games tend to have the player return to locations there should be always some kind lf difference every time you do, like new NPCs, enemy types, new level elements, sidequests and so on. Make it more worth the player's time than just completing yet another errand to retrieve some peasant's jumbo potatoes from an ogre.
>>32610 (me)
Wait, but what about Thief 1-2? What about Hitman? Those aren't open world. Although their levels are hooge.
>>32600>Yeah I was always confused as to why Bethesda Fallouts have so much boarded up doors. It just does not make any sense and is frankly just plain lazy.It is but it's not even the most egregious thing in that arena for those games. The problem with a lot of this stuff is that they are simultaneously doing "hand crafted" design and making the world too big. This is still an issue with linear games like RE4 where they are just cramming more "content" (detail) into the game so it "looks better." When you have to manually set up everything instead of having the level design be more organic and procedural, you create more work for less consistency.
On the one hand you could design a handful of ladders that always work like ladders and plop them down in a level wherever you need them. On the other hand, you can hand-design every individual ladder, either functional or useless scenery. The former is more efficient for development and more intuitive to the player. The latter is more "immersive" in the sense that the assets feel more unique and "real" but it doesn't function as well as a game. When you start sacrificing the playability of the game for this kind of "realism," you not only make the game less predictable, but you also spread your resources thinner and make it more likely to cause confusing design or outright errors. The trend of painting up the interactable parts of the level is essentially a coping mechanism for this approach becoming more typical.
In the name of "realism" we are getting shittier games that have to then actively go out of their way to sabotage that "realism" to recover some of functionality as a game. There's a whole lot of art theory about conveyance, and it's especially relevant to video games. Unlike looking at paintings in a gallery, your engagement with a game is usually time-dependent. You need to be able to register what's happening in the game pretty quickly. The best case scenario is clever and unintrusive design that effectively highlights the meaningful parts of the game world. Unfortunately, that type of design requires good coordination and planning so that for example the special colors or textures look correct regardless of the environment (lighting, etc varying a lot). Gamedev is also a very iterative process, so you'd have to keep redesigning these elements to keep them fitting the game as its visuals change. It's much much easier to do something glaring and obvious (and also will ensure fewer players miss it).
>>32624>If something looks like it has utility like you would expect but does not really provide it without explanation it is bad game design, especially in a realistic setting.I agree, that's kind of what my point was. It's also unrealistic, because duh obviously IRL a thing is a thing and can function as that thing. It's both bad game design and unrealistic. They keep doing it because it
looks realistic and makes things
look better which is what they're really after. Video games are often treated much more like a haunted house or theme park ride than some kind of simulated space you can mess around in. It's largely reduced to a series of spectacles with some basic interactivity to get you from one point to the next.
>>32541>Good game and map design naturally leads you to the ladder.What's an example of this?
Because the design you're annoyed at seems like something that is perfect for those who don't play games alot.
>>32657That's cool.
I'd agree, but there's a limitation for me.
Like I've played and got lost in both fall out new vegas and 4, and I just got burnt from playing those games.
(I know there's a marker, but I still explore and aim to power up my character).
>>33609stealing from some rando
> The problem with really obvious signposting, backseating NPCs, hand-holding etc… is that it robs the experience of a sense of discovery, surprise and mystery. It's disengaging when you never have to look or think or guess.> I know people are probably sick of hearing about dark souls but I think the reason it resonated was that it's "old school" design elements created that sense of discovery - it was a game you learned through experience, surprise, rumour, conversations with friends, research> And this, just as much as it's art design, level design and elliptical storytelling, keep it intriguing and surprising - it's a game where you don't feel like you already know everything and have seen everything after a half hour of playing> The moment where you realize, after ten minutes of thinking and exploring, you need to look up - or the moment you talk to a friend - of even break down and hit a walkthrough and go "oh, duhhh" - is more powerful, memorable and engaging than a big sign saying "look up, dummy" >>32729>>Good game and map design naturally leads you to the ladder.>What's an example of this?Ladders in real life are constructed and placed by humans for a purpose. In real life, you can increase your ladder-finding odds by asking where you would put the ladder if you lived there. This should also work in a game.
Likewise with other stuff. Consider a plant that works as health-restoring item in the game. Plants also have their preferences (sun light, water, not too much wind, right soil), and these should limit where the item can appear. Hollow structures with secret rooms inside should not have heavy stuff on top of them.
>>33611I don't know whether people are supposed to live in that area. If I were designing that game I wouldn't mark
every stone you can climb, but it's normal that people modify their environment, so… (Would be more cool if you could take hints from animals moving around though.)
>>32541Why do we let autistic people have access to the internet?
The fact that low iq fucks get annoyed at paint covered surfaces that quickly and visually tell you where to go while masking it as "criticism" is just pathetic
>>33625Well yes that's what most games were 'back then'. Not only platformers but beatemups and shooters and shootemups too.
I'm not gonna say there's absolutely been no 'casualisation' but I don't get why people would be mad at something totally innocuous like marked ledges and not the million other worse things like bad generic plots characters and dialog, lack of gameplay variety, and so on
>>33626>beatemups and shootersDon't be silly, all the posts complaining about location markers are clearly meant to be specific to games that promise to players an element of exploration. And what players want is environmental hints or hints by NPCs that make sense within the game world, nudges instead of being lead by the nose. Even the word nudge might be too strong here for some.
As for myself, I'm not
that nostalgic about getting lost in old games and knocking on walls for hours, I just want something a bit less crude than some of the "modern solutions" shown ITT.
>>33628>Don't be silly, all the posts complaining about location markers are clearly meant to be specific to games that promise to players an element of exploration. And what players want is environmental hints or hints by NPCs that make sense within the game world, nudges instead of being lead by the nose. Even the word nudge might be too strong here for some.I don't want any of my games to be Morrowind. People talk about how cool that game was but have you ever really tried to play it? I play games for fun not to be constantly just lost and having to look things up anyway.
I will say though that I enjoyed Star Control II where I had to physically make notes about stuff. Maybe if games tried to reintroduce those kind of skills it wouldn't be so bad. But nowadays the game would have to literally tell the player at the start 'hey you need a notepad and pen to play this game'.
>>33656Stop talking about the fucking yellow paint then.
>>33655In my opinion, just being lost and wondering around areas you've already been trying to find where to go isn't 'gameplay' in a meaningful sense.
>>33657>just being lost and wondering around areas you've already been trying to find where to go isn't 'gameplay' in a meaningful sense.Slander misrepresenting the APF (anti-paint faction). We don't ask for totally hidden things to be found only by headbutting all the walls, we ask for subtle cues in environment and storytelling.
The cues can even be painting, it just should not be something ruining the vibes of the game world. Some gang in the game's world might use invisible ink and UV light to signal things to each other. You just can't put me into a jungle where I'm the only human and then there is paint bukkake everywhere (did the snakes do that?) and expect me to not roll my eyes.
>>33665Yellow paint is just an example.
Of course this is about some broader pattern.
Universal design principles are not so universal…
After all, industrial UI design is for speed and simplicity on the job.
Real world matters.
Environments in games are supposed to offer challenge.
Design that simplifies takes away challenge.
Ultimate simplification would be turning the game into a movie.
Make it possible to fail or you don't have a game.
But of course we want hints, they have to be subtle though (more subtle than this post).
>>33666What I personally want from games are:
>no untraversible waist-high fences or boxes>no pointers>no paintIf you need me to feel confined, I want to feel REALLY confined. Not just feel confined because my character is on a wheelchair apparently. Invisible walls are also sus but you can just make it so every time you want to exit an open location the character will be like "Where tbe fuck am I going?"
>>33668>instead of contriving blockagesIt's not just blockages. It's """blockages."""
At least doors in Stanley Parable are unopenable because they're locked. At least there's a logical explanation.
>>33612The thing with that example (FF7) is that you also have a non-world marker already telling you you can climb the cliff.
In fact, I'm going to say it, the best markers and so on are, indeed, those that just sign you that there's a thing there in a non-world way. As in, a literal translucent arrow pointing towards a place, to put an example, there's:
>>32633 . That's a non world sign, it's clearly obvious that that sign isn't there on the world of the game, but put there by the devs in order to communicate with the player, if you have problems with such non-world communication, the HUD in of itself is also a non-world communicator, like the minimap is as well; text-boxes are also non-world communicators, in reality there shouldn't be any text-boxes (or subtitles) and you would only listen and attend whatever the NPC is telling you verbally in their own language (english, japanese, spanish…); your HP and MP are also non-world communicators, people don't say "I'm low on health points, -5 points and I'm dead", they might say "I'm feeling weak right now" but that isn't a direct reference to the HP, how many HP points do
YOU have right now?
You don't know, and the character you're playing doesn't know either. Do objects that matter to you/MC shine brightly like a lightbulb? No, and in that world they do not as well, but the devs let that object shine in order for you to get it. It isn't part of the world.
Non-world communicators are communicators that display only for the player and not for the characters of the game, and thus are probably the best non-world communicators, easy to understand, and completely realistic because the player inherently knows that that sign isn't in the world itself, but a non-world communicator left by the devs to make the players life easier.
This is, in part, the problem I have with the games that apply the yellow (or any colour) treatment to important objects. In games like Mirror's Edge they're important because the game is, exactly, about going fast as fuck. The game's plot doesn't matter, gameplay does, and it benefits a lot thanks to the treatment of the red paint which also contributes to the art department of the game, in games like Uncharted, which try to go for maximum realism, I can somewhat understand it, and the devs also try to hide the fact they're using yellow, but in FF7 you have the yellow paint in a cliff, which also has a non-world marker, in a game which is really fucking blunt about where you have to go, and this cliff looks like it's on a habitated place, on the moment they're going to the lab and shit during the flashback. Are you telling me that the goverment has set up a lab in order to make weird mutants and shit in secrecy, and the scientist, in order to get there, have to go through a cliff everyday, so much that they have actually painted yellow the cliff? Or better yet, the scientist live in the lab, and thus they have actually gave away their location by unsubtlelly painting the parts of the cliff necessary to reach it? Wouldn't have it been better to just get some string ladder there that you can withdraw so people don't go climbing the cliff towards your secret lab (wasn't the lab also the energy plant of the town?)
Once you implement a "subtle" in-world communicator, such as the yellow paint, in an absolutely lazy and brute way, people start to ask questions about why is that in the world. If the answer isn't found in the game, then it takes the person out of the experience. Meanwhile, non-world communicators don't take the player out of the world because it's honest, it's just a help from the dev.
That's about it. In-world communicators depend on lying to the player meanwhile non-world communicators do not, and of course, if in-world communicators actually work if it is actually able to convince the player that it's part of the scenery and not put there by the developers. When it doesn't work because there's no actual reason for that to be painted yellow, the player will feel either cheated because the devs think they can deceive him and thus the devs think he's a fucking imbecile, or amused because the devs ridiculed themselves in their puny attempt at trickery.
It's all about the devs being honest or not, really. >>33830Yeah using UI is less annoying than trying to convey the game mechanics diegetically if they can't do better than yellow paint. I mean, not everything has to be diegetic. I think this comes from the attempt to be "cinematic" in AAA games, which they think means diegetic. But one of the hallmarks of cinema is the orchestral score, which is non-diegetic. The camera and lighting aren't usually diegetic either. Cinema frequently uses special lights on an actor's face to get the desired effect for a scene, and obviously the camera and everything associated with it isn't meant to actually be there in the world (unless it's a stylistic choice).
Tbh I feel like this is just growing pains for the medium figuring out what's too much or too little of something to work best.
>>33843jfc you're so close. 99% of commeercial games are this to a greater or lesser degree. They're designed to
>be as sticky as possible>give a sense of achievement>waste your most productive and energetic years>maintain studio or designer credibility to encourage future purchasesYou sound like you're expecting porky to include training, education or a challenge in the slop.
>>33857The thing is that the arrow isn't a manifestation of the character knowing where to go (although I can see that being a cool idea tbh) in of itself, but the devs telling you where to go.
The arrow in of itself is not in-game, it's not "real". It is a tool used by the developer to talk to the player.
What I can see, tho, is these arrows and non-world communicator (or non-diegetic) being taken out in a harder difficulty, meanwhile an easier difficulty featuring more signs and so on.
>>33858Honestly, I hate the non-immersive UI design and gameplay mechanics like all those insta-kills in Splinter Cell Conviction and Splinter Cell Blacklist (in the case of Red Dead Redemption this is justified ON CONSOLES since the camera controls on a gamepad are dogshit). I even hate the minimap (except for GTA where it is somewhat justified). The things I do not object to are the inventory (because implementing bag exteriors is a waste of time), HP and MP (because we can't really "feel" heavy injuries or tiredness) and other simplifications of regular things such as the map (duh), the objectives (notepad) and spells (memory/reading). The reason all of them are a part of the UI is that they're either a part of your character's mind or are simply too hard to implement with 3D objects.
Same with a third-person camera: it's not that it's third-person to make the game easier (in beat 'em ups/slashers and action-RPGs at least). It's to prevent your from having a vertigo due to all the camera spinning. Plus close-quarter fighters and battle mages turn their body and head seperately, they aren't cars.
Plus the animations look cool.Misunderstanding this is missing the point. Which the AAA game designers constantly do nowadays.
>>33859 (me)
Also, the insta-kills can be forgiven to Conviction since it's more of a third-person shooter like RDR than a stealth game. You can't feel like a pro marksman if you can't kill anyone with one bullet.
>>33860 (me)
Then again, not on PC. Not on PC.
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