"Following the Little Dotted Line"

ArchivedUser

People should watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzOCkXsyIqo I think it can give a lot of good ideas when it comes to immersion and making the player "get lost" in the game. Implementing stuff like the guy mentions in the video, would make the game more interesting, at least for me.

ArchivedUser

I agree, partially.

I agree that there is no point in dots guiding you to every location, but there should be information available to the user so it can be pulled up when needed.

I can think of 2 situations: 
- a quest that asks you "Obtain mysterious gem", but no information in which area it can be found, which mobs drops it etc. As a unimportant side-quest it would be fine, but it it is a main quest required to advance further, this would be a serious problem
- imagine taking a few days break from the game while you're in a quest and you no longer remember the directions given in the quest dialog. What do you do?

ArchivedUser

@FliP
you could open a log in your questbook to reread the text?

ArchivedUser

Uao said:

@FliP
you could open a log in your questbook to reread the text?

His example was them specifically not giving you any information as to where to get it.

But yeah, i think having a quest log where you have "written down" all the quest giver's important details would be nice so we always a reference. Like in Vanilla WOW. Having to find the goal of a quest from listening to the npc and following his clues.

ArchivedUser

I could see a player start with a blank map and an icon loads on the screen every time they pass a location and then you can drag that icon to your current location on your blank map. Some ideas sound cool but I'm not sure how annoying it would get once the novelty wore off.  

ArchivedUser

@Zastro
The video was all about placing clues into the game world instead of spoiling the whole game through obvious signs on the map and elsewhere.
Beginning at about 6:30 he even mentioned that it doesn't really work to just turn off the map symbols etc because these games give to few immersive clues.
So his general idea of the video is basicaly to prevent situations like
" a quest that asks you "Obtain mysterious gem", but no information in which area it can be found, which mobs drops it etc. "
by designing the game without the severe intention to implement these 'questhelper' features that set deep integrated clues to low priority by default. To make clues important (again).

Clues in the game world could be dialogues, environmental hints, interactive objects and sound. + other stuff i didnt think about on the fly

My comment was towards his second concern for clues through dialogues.
Interactive objects could be carried(/collected in some lexicon) and its information is still there after some break.
Environmental hints and sound should either lead to relatively fast accessible goals,
or be part of some kind of hard to solve epic goals. These epic goals would be epic because you need to remember the puzzle piece clues and solve them and the developer has to make sure to make that hint memorable.

ArchivedUser

@Uao
Ohhh, okay. It all makes sense now. I agree completely. The more ways the devs can give us clues other than putting a huge marker on our maps, the better.

ArchivedUser

@Palinka59 you are a kindred spirit

I posted a link to this exact video back in July

https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/81235/#Comment_81235

ArchivedUser

lexmax Haha nice Well, the more people mention it, the more ideas the devs get. 

And if they(devs)  see it early, it is easier and they have more time to build the game around these kinds of quests(or at least put a few of them in the game.)

For example: You find a paper with a sketch of the surrounding area on it, what shows hidden treasure. (TESO). (simplest idea)

And a lot of other things.. But I am not too creative now, so I can't come up with them.

ArchivedUser

My bartle score is:  Explorer 87%; Socializer 73% ; Achiever 47%; Killer 0%
I find the premise of the vid in the OP to be very strange.
Sure, toggle off the waypoints if you wish.
But, because you only travel from waypoint to waypoint and ignore the rest of the environment?

Never happens in my gameplay.
First thing I do is explore as far as I can to uncover the fog of war.
And I take tons of screen shots as if I'm on vacation in an exotic locale.
Once I've explored as far as I can go without getting one-shotted by high level mobs, I start collecting quests.
And, since I normally solo, I stick around long enough to get to know the quest areas quite well.

Will I know areas well enough that it's easy to follow directions like "small pond near the village, path leads off from it, follow that til you come across a lone rock. Walk around that into the woods. Find the old cart."??
I have no clue. Depends on how easy it is to spot the rock, the path and the cart.
Immersion is what you make of it. 
Waypoints don;t break my immersion. What breaks my immersion is having a static world where Fippy Darkpaw respawns to repeat the same dialogue no matter how often people kill him.
Or seeing the despondent mother still standing forlornly outside her hut even after I've brought her the news of her lost son.

Especially when I'm looking for an active quest, I don't want to be wasting hours looking for an obscure path or rock or cart. The challenge should not be finding the quest.
Also, I'd probably prefer to have quests be in an easily understood context.
While exploring, I encounter a caravan and decide to defend it or attack it.
Or I encounter a village under attack and I decide to defend it or attack it.
Or discovering the old cart while I'm exploring begins a quest which eventually leads me back to an NPC in the village.

In an RPG, I should be able to make my character more wise or intelligent than I am.
So that if I, the player, suck at scavenger hunts, my Ranger or Rogue has the skills to find what I'm looking for.
Which is really a major difference between playing an RPG and playing an adventure puzzle game like Myst.

ArchivedUser

I do like minimalist intervention when it comes to finding things in the game world. I'm ok with seeing a circle on the map which shows the general area where you can find your quest target. I'm not necessarily against markers telling you exactly where things are, but I'd be happy to do without them. I've always really appreciated exploring a new world, and really appreciate it at least my first play through.