http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1156274I'm playing Witcher 3 (super good game), but this is not only about Witcher 3. I'm tired of playing open world games or RPGs or any kind of game that gives you missions that are marked on a map. When I started playing Witcher 3 I decided to turn off the minimap because I hate playing with one eye on the minimap and one on the rest of the screen. But I find myself having to resort continously to the map in the menu. I talk to someone and says me: you need to go to this building. But he doesn't tell you where the building is, how to get to the building. In fact they never tell you how the building looks like. A mark appears in your map and that's is.
And I'm here wondering: Why you create such mesmerizing worlds where time flies, yet you're fucking reminding me AT ALL TIMES that I'm playing a game. I mean, I don't play games for escapism, I don't think that's the point. The point is: Why nobody comes with a solution? Why nobody cares that you need to navigate your games through marks in a map?
Like, how much effort would it be to add a system that allows you to question peasants for the place you're looking for? Like, instead of never telling you anything, everytime you talk with someone, he points in the general direction you need to go. Or tells you: it's in the next street. Or go south through the road, then turn left at the first house. Or people give you tips when they hire you. They don't say: go to the forest. Like... I'm not from here dude, I've never been here, how do I know where this forest is? Ah,right, it's magically marked in my map!
I hope sometime, not so far away, someone realises that, as much effort as you can put in your game world to look great, if you force your players to navigate it looking at a virtual map, you're doing them a diservice as big as your game world is.
Because more than half the time the npcs are there to build up the world around you, and their dialogue is supposed to hint at the wider world and climate and happenings and so forth. Replace that with just directional dialogue, and the living world gets a lot less impressive. And if you have both kinds of dialogue, then I imagine the workload for the devs would be even greater. Though a dynamic dialogue system like you suggest would be really cool.
Shenmue and Souls games. Souls games don't have a map and you have to figure it out. I like the style, but if you want gameplay to go much faster you will go with having things marked for you. The 'figure it out' approach is much slower.
A lot of games hold your hand, though, which is annoying. But in a huge game like Witcher, I wouldn't want to waste too much time.
I hope sometime, not so far away, someone realises that, as much effort as you can put in your game world to look great, if you force your players to navigate it looking at a virtual map, you're doing them a diservice as big as your game world is.
They aren't that far away, but you gotta look backward. Fact of the matter, we will never see another AAA openworld game that doesn't fool-proof getting lost in the game. Look at the people who complain about Morrowind for this exact same reason, 90 percent of gamers don't see adventuring/discovering the landmass by yourself as a virtue.
That seems like the most straight forward answer, but then the developers have to put in actual context for those players who don't want a map. So instead of saying "go to the arx factory" and then your map is updated, the quest givers have to say "go to the arx factory, its 3 miles west of the city and at the basin of a mountain".It seems simple enough, but that's takes more writing and foresight to properly implement.
There was an older game -- Shenmue on DC, maybe? -- that had signs posted on each street corner, and the city itself was fairly non-grid-like. I remember getting quests or directions from NPCs and navigating the town by memory.
In contrast, I can only remember major landmarks in inFamous series. I climbed all over that city top-to-bottom but it was less memorable. The minimap took away any need to pay attention to where I was.
And on top of that, it takes time to make an area look unique. The bigger the map, the harder that becomes.
The one thing that would fix all of this to me would be (goodness, PLEASE, you fools) is a map where I can mark and save notes. NO!!! NOT a single waypoint when I press Square and deletes my old waypoint. MGS5 was a step in the right direction by letting you tag all sorts of stuff, but lemme color-code my waypoints. Lemme add text to the waypoint, whether it's a common list of descriptors or raw text entry (or both, ideally). Give me the option to trace a footpath on the map (I forget which game does this, leading you using lines on the floor).
Being able to decide which glowing green arrow I'm gonna follow because I placed it in the map itself would be wonderful.
EDIT: thing is, PC games used to have maps like that to replicate a hand-drawn map. Baldur's Gate let you annotate the map in fair detail. Etrian Odyssey lets you do it but that's more of a central game mechanic than I would like map editing to be. Still...
The greatest game I've ever played, Asheron's Call, only had a massive world map, and just told you roughly where you were. No minimap, no routes, arrows, !'s, or any other guidance outside of the compass and coordinates.
So many great times.
I get what you're going for OP, but there would be too many people being upset about the lack of map. Maybe playing without it on should be an option, but then the dialogue of "Go south and turn left at the first house!" would be useless to anyone actually using the map with markers.
I can only imagine the frustrations that would cause with the majority of gamers.
Except you can have these alternative navigation methods while still having waypoints and minimap markers for those who want them? The problem is they don't even try and make the games playable without those things.
Much, much easier said than done. Maps actually have to be designed around Points of Interest enough to allow players to easily orient themselves. The Witcher 3 sort of has this, in some areas, but for the most part the map design and quest design are largely independent. Map designers basically have to be made aware of every possible waypoint and generate the geography in such a way that the player can find their bearings, without explicitly railroading them in a particular direction (Witcher 3 is, after all, an open-world game).
Look at the modern games of today that have no map, like the Souls series, and notice how they treat their own world geography. Much, much smaller-scale areas jam packed with points of interest and are all far more linear than your average open-world title. Or look at how Morrowind did theirs; it largely worked because world detail and geography was far less ambitious. Novigrad as a city is enormous in scale but it's a clusterfuck when you're told to find X building. Like...how? Streets are unnamed, most buildings are unlabeled, and the mini-map does not zoom in far enough for you to see what's where with much detail.
I personally hate GPS-simulator games and was saddened to know that at some point or another Witcher 3 relied on it too much, but I think it's much better about this than other games. Bethesda and Assassin's Creed games are way lazier about this sort of thing and quests eventually become "follow the marker forever". You stop even thinking about where you're going or what you're traversing because you're just following a dot.
But I've given it a ton of thought and have concluded that with the way most game worlds are developed, you can't just have the quest designers dump information about where to go. The entire game world has to be designed in such a way that you don't need that, and that requires building almost a completely different game.
My personal fantasy is going back to something like Ultima VII, where not only did you not have map markers, you also needed to keep track of a quest log. How awesome would it be if your NPC was talking and all the time there's an "open journal" button where it just dumps a blank page and you have to type shit in? "Bartender mentioned something about a cave in the northwest corner of town beyond the river", etc. It really immerses you I feel and makes you pay attention. Most of the time I don't even pay attention to the dialogue in modern games, knowing that the quest log is going to take me exactly where I need to go anyway.
But unfortunately, I feel that most gamers will find that too "tedious" and "too boring" if they're told to find their bearings and keep track of their own quests. It's not just that quest markers are easier for the devs, but it's also that people just don't want to bother to immerse themselves to that degree anymore.
Except you can have these alternative navigation methods while still having waypoints and minimap markers for those who want them? The problem is they don't even try and make the games playable without those things.
True, there should be an option but you have to weigh the cost of implementation versus how many actually care. Sure the enthusiasts would love it but are there enough to put in that kind of effort when the game is already immensely expensive and long as is?
Like, how much effort would it be to add a system that allows you to question peasants for the place you're looking for? Like, instead of never telling you anything, everytime you talk with someone, he points in the general direction you need to go. Or tells you: it's in the next street. Or go south through the road, then turn left at the first house. Or people give you tips when they hire you. They don't say: go to the forest. Like... I'm not from here dude, I've never been here, how do I know where this forest is? Ah,right, it's magically marked in my map!
It would take a HUGE amount of effort.
For what it's worth, though, I played all of Witcher III with the minimap disabled. There were one or two annoying moments I guess, but overall I found it extremely immersive and enjoyable. It makes sense that Geralt would have a physical map of the surroundings, and probably would know his way around somewhere like Novigrad. Navigation was really just a matter of looking at the map, then memorizing a route ("left at the first fork, pass a lake on the right, cross through the abandoned settlement, then take a right" for instance) and then following it. Eventually I learned to navigate by landmarks and it was EXTREMELY satisfying when I could get from A to B to C without opening the map once.
Seriously, go play Miasmata if you want the most hardcore no-map experience of all time.
Want a map? Better find two landmarks and a good vantage point and fill it in yourself.
Want some direction? Git gud pleb.
Morrowind is an on-rails shooter compared to it.
It's actually really good too if you're into that sort of thing
It's been a long time since I've played it, but didn't RuneScape have a similar approach years ago? It would tell you the town to go or person to speak to but you had to figure out where that was by yourself via sign posts, other players or getting up the external world map and plotting out a route, at least until you knew the map by heart. Could be wrong though, I miss old RuneScape
That was my first thought.
My second was to bookmark this thread in case anyone ever argues again that quest markers are fine as long as they are optional.
Yeah if a game has markers, 99% of the time they're not "optional".
I mean sure you can physically remove them. They may even give you that option in the game settings somewhere, but the minute some guy tells you "Oh yes, talk to (insert person), he's in (gigantic city). *CONVERSATION OVER*", you either go right back into the settings to enable markers or you wander for hours finding the ONE door they want you to go into.
This actually makes me miss cartography skills in older RPGs where a character in your party would map things out as you went. I'd much rather that than the GPS system of today in most cases.
I always assumed it is to avoid conflicts between the talent recording and continuous level redesigns. Maybe they changed the place at the lat moment, so they just decided to avoid implicit instructions given by an NPC because everyone talks in games nowadays.
Thief. You simply try and recognize landmarks to orient your direction. I love how the game treats you as if you are the actual avatar itself. The world around you give you clues, hints through eavesdropping, books and memborable lcocations that eventually you get to "understand" the layout despite having some of the most abstract levels in gaming history.
It's amazing that it isn't replicated 3 generarions later. I guess talent is truly lacking in the sense as more AAA developers get fresh grads or inexperienced modders to design their games.
I don't think games should have minimaps if it doesn't make sense for the setting. If the game isn't designed around finding things by memory then I prefer the dot+meters on the screen approach rather than the minimap GPS trail approach. Fuck the Fable 2 method altogether.
My favorite will always be Morrowind's system. Your map is only marked with places you've already been, and to get to places you've never been just look at the signs and landmarks. Now that games can get away with having a much bigger draw distance you can spot these landmarks from much farther away in the game, making it that much easier to navigate without a dotted line.
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