Quest Compass: A Plea

[the truthseeker]

After reading about four more pages of the same thing people have with their for/against stances, i don't see why we can't have a quest compass toggle option?

f you want it, turn it on.

If you don't, turn if off.

Most HUD/UI have filter options that allow you to select the detail of what is revealed on these kind of maps or UI. 

[Lamppost in Winter]

Interesting video on the topic:

 

[SonicMage117]

After reading about four more pages of the same thing people have with their for/against stances, i don't see why we can't have a quest compass toggle option?

f you want it, turn it on.

If you don't, turn if off.

Most HUD/UI have filter options that allow you to select the detail of what is revealed on these kind of maps or UI.

Uhhh, that's literally what I've been saying all these pages but apparently it's not about that at all but how well the developer translates communication well with the player.

 

Perhaps the title of the thread would had been better off as so, something relevant to communication in story, instead of literally being called "Quest Compass".

Interesting video on the topic:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzOCkXsyIqo

Got it.

 

So, some moron complaining about Witcher 3 having a dotted line on a mini-map that he could have disabled from the start if he wasn't so lazy.

 

The quest literally told him all he needed to know step by step and he claims to have known where to look due to the fact but then claims is spoiled by the dotted line on the map as a distraction. It's crazy to think that some players could be this easily diswayed from an experience yet blaming the developer/game for them not going into the options which could solve the problem in less than 10 seconds.

 

"Mini-Map ruined the experience for me, I couldn't help but look at the dotted lines which spoiled the experience for me"

 

No, you ruined the experience for yourself. The solution was under your nose the whole time. It's not rocket science folks but imagine that you have to quit mid-mission so you save the game and come back a few days, weeks or months later due to work being busy, then that mini-map with dotted line is a awfully great time-saver. I wouldn't want to go through all that dialogue again, and let's be real because it's Witcher 3 - we know that it will be alot.

Edited December 19, 2018 by SonicMage117

[hiptanaka]

After reading about four more pages of the same thing people have with their for/against stances, i don't see why we can't have a quest compass toggle option?

f you want it, turn it on.

If you don't, turn if off.

Most HUD/UI have filter options that allow you to select the detail of what is revealed on these kind of maps or UI. 

Seems you skimmed rather than read those four pages. The problem, as repeated a few times in this thread, is when the game design doesn't support turning off the quest compass. (Even if there is an actual option for it, which yes, there usually is.)

 

 

The quest literally told him all he needed to know step by step and he claims to have known where to look due to the fact but then claims is spoiled by the dotted line on the map as a distraction.

You should've kept watching. Later in the video he brings up another quest in The Witcher 3 that doesn't give you any directions, and he also highlights the fact that there are no printed names on the map, no road signs to read, or any other means to navigate, except for, well, using the quest compass and/or the dotted line.

 

It's fine if you don't think of it as a problem, but please don't dismiss the arguments after ignoring half of what's being said.

[SonicMage117]

I watched the whole video, but he still only told half the story, that's usually how this type of discussion goes.

 

Not everything in the real world is mapped, pathed, or has signs to be personalized to locations so that's his problem and not a "quest directive" one.

[hiptanaka]

There's definitely no real world argument for navigating via GPS in a fantasy game, though.

 

The thing I don't get about this conversation is that there's literally nothing to lose for the people who like to use the quest compass. There's only something to gain for those who would rather turn it off. I don't see why anyone would be against that.

Edited December 20, 2018 by hiptanaka

[Keyrock]

I would definitely like it if Obs made the quest compass (as well as other hand holding features) options you can turn off in the settings. Figuring out things on your own without a giant arrow showing you exactly where to go is not for everyone, but it is for me.

[Gorgon]

The most important thing to me is to mix it up a bit. Make sure the information your quest markers give you is incomplete and sometimes misleading. Showing me where something is on the map is fine, constant hand holding gets boring after a while. 

Dark souls is the gold standard, but, it's a dungeon crawl, it doesn't have dialogue options to speak of, and you could never find half the secrets without looking them up on the net.

[Clawdius_Talonious]

Personally I'm in favor of areas constructed with what would have been adequate signage at some point, and landmarks and the like with logical clues in logical places. Waiting for a pizza was no sure thing pre-GPS, but much of the time at most a paper map, and reasonable knowledge of the town was able to guide a pizza straight to people's front doors. People can be reasonably expected to follow certain environmental clues, and overall that kind of design is good for everyone from the person who got momentarily turned around to immediately recognize "No, I'm not heading toward the yellow tower" or what have you and correct that kind of mistake.

 

In PoE2:Deadfire I set sail toward Neketaka after the first island in the game with very limited knowledge about the surroundings, but I gathered up a number of heads inside sacks. Don't know how I knew they had bounties, or that someone would want these heads. Mind you, Obsidian didn't want people backtracking or feeling forced to backtrack, they didn't want there to be a variable "how hard this area is with this bounty or without it" or any other number of potential variables so they drop their head quest item. It's not weirder than when I crack open Kellogg's head in Fallout 4 and take part of his brain (is the Sole Survivor constantly cracking open skulls to check for a synth component?) for sure, but it's still a little weird. To me, it would have been a nice bit of setup and payoff to have the mayor give the Watcher a miracle of animancy, a tablet that gives sensory clues to help watchers track down people in the Deadfire with a bounty on their head. Then at least I'd have had a reason for cutting off heads of people I just stumbled across in the wilderness and presumably the tablet would then give you an idea who to bring your new trophy to before it starts stinking up the joint, the only change this would make to the bounty system in Deadfire would be to make it where you could complete bounties in any order.

 

My point is that Obsidian designs their content with uniformity of experience in mind, they didn't want you to have to backtrack if you had killed them, or have an easier time of it when an encounter wasn't there or was replaced with generic NPCs, or get double the loot when you killed generic NPCs and went back for a bounty, etc. etc. etc. These problems all were uniformly fixed with the "let there be heads" solution, even if it isn't ideal for the logic of some situations. "You want me to kill who? Let me look in my bag of heads. Him? Yeah he's here, here you go? And who now? Ohhh, cool, yeah he's here too, here. She's in here already, there you are. That's it? We're done here? Cool you have a good one too." like what kind of impression would that make on someone? It's one thing for a sea captain to sail around from island to island coming back with what were clearly the clothes of a bunch of people who lived on that island, no one pays you to ask questions. But when the hold starts smelling like your captain's decapitated head collection, everyone is going to regret it. I actually like the idea in New Vegas that you needed to preserve head integrity (although I don't think they ever rot or anything if you do happen to collect heads before having ever realized this was a quest, and maybe a dog brain for another quest because why not?) so there were times when I certainly wasn't awarded full payment for those heads.

 

If designing with things that are easy to navigate by virtue of them being designed to be easy to navigate (not necessarily by them but a city planner or someone making sure their space station is up to ... vacuum code - fire code BUT IN SPACE!) or whatever that's a better design philosophy than "Just build cool looking stuff" because in real life form over function will drive people mental. I mean, say what you will about cities and buildings, they're pretty often laid out in a way that's easy to grasp. Personally what I would love to see them do is play with those norms a bit. Seeing a lot of Teal around town? You're in Auntie Cleo's turf, you might not want to look like you're in favor of some other corp if you want things to stay calm. If you've taught the player at the end of The Outer Worlds what Auntie Cleo's and Spacer's Choice™ graffifti look like by the end of the game, congratulations, you could well see that scrawled in public for the rest of your life.

 

TL;DR: I'm in favor of design that is easy to navigate by descriptions and landmarks, even if a navigation system in future tech is absolutely logical. I feel like Obsidian already likes to incorporate aesthetic and thematic changes in their level design, so we'll see.

Edited January 1, 2019 by Clawdius_Talonious

[Sven_]

Sorry for the bump, but is it true that you can only turn off the entire HUD or nothing? 

I have a pretty strong stance on markers (or witcher senses doing everything but the inevitable combat in between cutscenes) myself, in particular for games that aren't even huge open world spaces you can actually get lost in, but that'd be pretty puzzling/disappointing. So not only would the screen be absolutely cluttered with stuff and no much custom settings, constantly reminding that you're "just playing another video game" (it's as if Looking Glass and their progress towards Thief never existed) -- markers making you blindly follow the line would be tied to that binary UI on/off as well. 

Gladly at least a few (AAA) devs such as Arkane still get what was trying to be achieved back then, and make most of those things optional -- their level/map design acknowledges this to boot, as rather than having generic potato landscapes, you could actually find your bearings with landmarks / in-game maps, etc.

That said, with games such as Breath Of The Wild or Elden Ring reaching to a mainstream, and Kingdom Come Deliverance showing alternatives to the awfully convenient "go here, do that, pick up this, good boy" arrow, maybe we will see viable alternatives again in the future.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Sven_