Removing Waypoints During Questing: A More Immersive Exploration?

Hello everyone,

I wonder if it would be interesting to remove these automatic waypoints to encourage players to truly explore and pay attention to the details of the surrounding environment. This could make quests more challenging and strengthen the connection with the game's world.

any thought on this ?

This is how mmorpgs worked before and it was much better.

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Arya_Yeshe

Not having waypoints is fine, but you need ok level of description of the place you have to go to or at least have some reasonable landmarks

This would have a vibe of the rpgs from the 90s, before Blizzard ruined everything with their yellow exclamation marks etc

Aszkalon

Caeryl wrote: »

This is actually something you definitely couldn’t do, because Ashes is a competitive game, even with some of the questing. If only X people can complete a quest (such as with particular gathering tasks) then the people using the UI pointers is going to get it done faster.

... ... ... i still don't see any Reason why dear Intrepid should deny People this good and nice Choice to either give themselves a bit of a Handicap,

or if they want to leave the Option for a bit of U.I. Assistance on the Minimap on to see -> in Case they might need a bit help and are a bit disadvantaged compared to other Players.

Why should it interfere with the competitive Nature of the Game at all when the competitive Part is completely voluntarily ?

You can play as whatever you like.

You can be an innocent, honest and hard-working Plant-gatherer in the Forests and Woods,
you can be a savage Pirate on the Seas,
you can be a LITERAL Murder-Hobo outside the Nodes, (lol)

there is no need to compete with anyone if You choose not do so so.

TopWombat

I get that exploration is fun but you've got to remember the big limitation on everyone in mmos is time. If you didn't have waypoints, the first thing everyone would do is look up the quest on the wiki or wherever to find out exactly where to go.

rollox

It would be interesting to see this. It does go back to old school games. I can think of times in Forgotten Realms games trying to find places. Or as mentioned Morrowind. It is great exploration.

Then came the yellow exclamation point. It somehow changed games in a way, where now it gets extremely frustrating when you cannot find something within a couple minutes.

I wouldn't be against not having quest markers, or as also mentioned an indicator that may flash or sparkle once you are close by.

What I would not want this to become.

1). The go help the villagers to the West escape from behind the wall. Please make finding the villagers easy to find. As in, they are not tucked away in some secret garden nearby the west wall. That has a single corridor to the secret garden that can only be found by facing one specific direction. It is bad enough to admit you failed and need to go consult the world wide web. It's a whole other thing when the zone chat is a constant spam or yells "LF Villagers" "Can someone tell me WTF to find the villagers" "looking for help with finding villagers."

2). Sending me off on a wild goose chase. Going back to the forgotten realms reference. Being told to go east towards the mountains. And you have traveled east to the edge of the map. Went all the way back west in a grid pattern to the start. Then back east again in the grid pattern. You finally decide forget it and start going north up the edge of the map, run into some mountains, follow those around and whoa... There it is. Why couldn't the quest just say go Northeast until you find some mountains.

So I agree that not having obvious quest markers and waypoints on the map would be good for interesting gameplay. It takes a time balance and lots of development work in the details of each quest to make sure that it doesn't actually create a massive frustration factor for gameplay.

While immersive, it's very counter productive, anti immersive, and frustrating to need to tab back and forth between your web browser and the game just to figure out where in the hell is the green slime that dude wanted me to collect.

MajorGeraldX

rollox wrote: »

While immersive, it's very counter productive, anti immersive, and frustrating to need to tab back and forth between your web browser and the game just to figure out where in the hell is the green slime that dude wanted me to collect.

Wiki's should be banned but that another topic

Otr

MajorGeraldX wrote: »

rollox wrote: »

While immersive, it's very counter productive, anti immersive, and frustrating to need to tab back and forth between your web browser and the game just to figure out where in the hell is the green slime that dude wanted me to collect.

Wiki's should be banned but that another topic

The days when players made maps on paper are gone.
Today players want to progress fast.

Wki should be made by developers so they can control how much they spoil.
Who want very detailed hints, can find other sources, probably youtube videos.
Who want no help at all, can avoid looking.
Example of general directions given in the wiki:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skyscale_Scales

With the points marked like that it was fun to find the exact location on the map, as it involved a lot of climbing

MajorGeraldX

rollox wrote: »

Today players want to progress fast.

I don't really think it's a generality. It's true that if the content between levels isn't relevant, players want to get to the top level as quickly as possible. But if players take pleasure in discovering relevant zones and have access to content at each level, that would surely be different. If it's too quick to go from one level to the next, players won't be able to regroup between levels or look for gear stuff & so .

On the other hand, instead of using the wiki all the time, it might be a good idea for the developers to incorporate a channel /help with a connected AI to help with quests if no one answers on the channel. This would give an impression of communication rather than a simple alt+tab.

Aszkalon

TopWombat wrote: »

I get that exploration is fun but you've got to remember the big limitation on everyone in mmos is time. If you didn't have waypoints, the first thing everyone would do is look up the quest on the wiki or wherever to find out exactly where to go.

IF - there is the Quest written - on the Wiki.

Or maaaybe - People just look attentively at the Questdescription for Ten to Twenty Seconds.

Laetitian

TopWombat wrote: »

I get that exploration is fun but you've got to remember the big limitation on everyone in mmos is time.

@TopWombat Wouldn't you say the suggestion in my comment addressed that? If the quests take longer for the average player, you make them that much more rewarding.

TopWombat wrote: »

If you didn't have waypoints, the first thing everyone would do is look up the quest on the wiki or wherever to find out exactly where to go

1) Wikis will fill a lot slower in a game with quests of the same level spread across the whole world, because a lower percentage of people will be doing the same quests.
2) I think that's fine. The lack of 3d markers ingame will still mean you spend more time actually thinking about what you're doing, even if you use the Wiki to tell you what it is. It's just still substantially less automation.
It's just not true that because we some games decided "the players will just use the Wiki, so we can just give them quest markers," the experience of running the quest with the help of a Wiki would be the same as running the quest by following exclamation marks and map markers.

In a game where the quest tasks are handheld, it's absolutely true that people will get impatient when a quest requires finding the correct next task yourself because there's a subtask that doesn't point you to the thing you have to do (usually because it's in your inventory, or some sort of riddle.)
But in a game where that's the norm with every task, people are going to be more willing to think along the steps all the way, because that's the expectation, and all other players have to do the same thing.

Laetitian

I could also see specifically having no quest markers for unique quests, but full task instructions and 3d markers for Commissions and repeatable side quests.

That way you could make the big quests where you need to keep track of where you have to go and what you need to do long and rewarding, while the handheld quests grant very low rewards and mostly serve as incentive to go out and kill things.

Might sound obvious, but most games have no distinction in the amount of handholding, or worse, inconsistent handholding, guaranteeing that players will get impatient with the low-handholding story quests.
If it's a consistent design philosophy, players know the effort and reward associated with unique versus repeatable quests.

MajorGeraldX

Laetitian wrote: »

If it's a consistent design philosophy, players know the effort and reward associated with unique versus repeatable quests.

True story

Caeryl

Aszkalon wrote: »

Caeryl wrote: »

This is actually something you definitely couldn’t do, because Ashes is a competitive game, even with some of the questing. If only X people can complete a quest (such as with particular gathering tasks) then the people using the UI pointers is going to get it done faster.

Why should it interfere with the competitive Nature of the Game at all when the competitive Part is completely voluntarily ?

there is no need to compete with anyone if You choose not do so so.

You have some fundamental misunderstanding of what ‘competitive’ means (and a misunderstanding of Ashes of Creation’s design pillars) if you genuinely think either of these statements are true

MajorGeraldX

Also removing waypoints will prevent of player doing exactly the same exp pattern and skipping half of the map/content

Heljy

I personally enjoy games without GPS. In my opinion, quests should be written so that they can be completed without the help of a goal marker. I remember that in the early days, this was the case for WoW and I remember the scenario of the most part of the quests that I did so.

In fact, I consider that the assistance in quests destroys immersion in the universe, and prevents from telling stories that create common among players.

What’s more, I think it would be wise to replace objectives like "kill 5 goblins" by "exterminate the goblins". the objective would be the same, but it would give a different identity to the quests, and break the routine side.

Example for "kill 5 goblins":
- Attack the goblin camp
- Avenge the captain who
- eradicate the goblins
- ...

eruiluvatar

I agree, If the game is designed in a certain way, not having GPS could be an amazing gameplay mechanic.

I kind of doubt that Ashes is gunning for the kind of audience that would enjoy this exclusively though.

IMO it would make the most sense to implement several quests with that kind of design (and perhaps also have a more interesting story), while also having , perhaps "more generic" quests as well (that will probably not be read properly).

Personally I do prefer all quests being well written stories that have to be navigated in world by carefully reading the quests and asking nearby npcs etc.

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