Game conveniences we take for granted

Apropos of this, this list of the “Top 10 Current-Gen Conveniences We Take For Granted” from GameFAQs seems relevant.

For example:

#6: Objective Markers

Remember how in old RPGs, you would be told to find someone, only to search the whole dang town looking for him? The lack of direction in older games (particularly JRPGs) is staggering and makes the game feel drawn out. Fallout 3 is an absolutely huge game, but when you’re tired of messing around in abandoned warehouses killing zombies, it’s still easy to stay on track when you decide to take on a mission. Objectives are clearly marked, and all you have to do is go there. This also applies to games like Uncharted 2 telling you which ledge you need to climb (since it’s not always obvious), or Final Fantasy XIII keeping track of what enemies are weak to so you don’t have to keep a notepad by your console every time you want to play.

Isn’t that just what the kids were complaining about when their professor exposed them to Ultima 4?

We Dragons and Dragonettes could probably argue, not without merit, that the concept of objective markers does detract from RPG gaming in some way, precisely in that it cuts down on the need to explore the game world for what could well be hours on end. On the other hand, though, I’m led to believe that many people had…navigation problems in Ultima 9, which boasted a relatively modern 3D engine but did not employ the mechanic of objective markers (apart from in the opening sequence).

Especially when one crosses into the realm of 3D, the rules and demands of navigating the game world change, often dramatically. Navigating around a flat, 2D, tile-based world is easy enough, even if it is quite large; navigating around a 3D, multi-level warehouse with staircases, multiple intersecting hallways, switchbacks, and blocked routes is quite a bit more difficult. The addition of some kind of waypoint system or objective marking…sometimes serves to present what would otherwise be almost insurmountable frustration.

And honestly…do we really notice these things in the games that have them? I don’t, at least not consciously. Unconsciously, I can see that Mass Effect is telling me to proceed in a generally north-westerly direction, but practically speaking I’m going to just keep moving through the area as I had intended to anyhow, taking in the scenery as I go. (Although: if someone wants to complain about linear level design, you’ll have my full attention.)

It’s easy to look back with fondness on the early Ultima games — on early games in general — and think of them as being the pinnacle of the gaming experience. In some ways, they were (at the very least) trendsetting, if not groundbreaking. But game technology has advanced since then, and while it’s probably silly to bemoan the lack of complex in-game systems in the titles of yesteryear, it’s equally silly to dismiss such things in games of today…or the gamers who grew up with them.

16 Responses

  1. Severian says:

    Yeah, in that reason i stuck in first Final Fantasy once. In that reason every Ultima have a cloth map 🙂

  2. Sergorn says:

    I like objective markers.

    People complained how Oblivion had objective markers – but personally the simple idea of trying to find a NPC in the capital without one would drive me crazy. Especially since we’re talking about NPCs who constantly move around!

    Now if we are in a corridor kind of world desing like Mass Effect there is not much point in it but…

    Of course the sîmple way to handle would be simply for the developpers to give a choice to player. You don’t want a mini map, a compass or a marker? Turn them off. Problem solved (Gothic IV offers that actually and it’s nice)

  3. Dungy says:

    I think it’s a double-edged sword. Expecting the player to find a specific NPC in a giant world without markers is, simply put, not fun. On the other hand, a marker systems that tells you where to go is no good either. The secret is to make it interesting and sensible.
    I personally think the solution is to offer the player sufficient in-game hints as to where they are and where they’re going, but not necessarily drag them along. I’m supposed to go from town A to town B? Well, if there’s a fork in the road, or a place where I could clearly get lost, give me a road sign. That’s how the real world does it. If I’m entering a big city, give me a map, and put up some street signs, and maybe if I talk to some other NPCs, perhaps they could give me some directions. That’s how I find locations in real life.
    Also, logical level design helps. If I’m supposed to find “Bob the Blacksmith”, well, put him in the local blacksmith, don’t have him out wandering lost in a field somewhere. The mayor should be at townhall, and if he’s not, well, maybe someone could be so kind as to tell me where he is.

  4. Sergorn says:

    “maybe if I talk to some other NPCs, perhaps they could give me some directions. That’s how I find locations in real life.”

    Well… you see that’s how it worked in the Elder Scrolls pre-Oblivion : and it was terrible, making finding any NPC an exercive in frustration.

    Now for a 3D game of reasonnable size like Ultima IX (which was *not* small by Ultima standard) or Risen, I would agree: that would work – but not so much with Elder Scrolls games which have a CRAZY scale with gigantic towns and like a hundred of NPC in each.

  5. wtf_dragon says:

    All very good arguments.

    I suppose the point about a marker system is that it does tell you were to go…so the best thing to do with it is to not make it painfully obvious. If there’s a big flashing sign in the corner of the interface that’s impossible to ignore, that’s bad. Mass Effect had a slightly more muted way of doing it (radar pings on a small radar element on the in-game HUD), and Mass Effect 2 required you to pop up the combat HUD in order to see the direction indicator, for example. That’s not bad…it’s still telling you exactly where to go, but it’s not something you notice until and unless you want to.

    In other words, you’re basically free to do it yourself, but it’s there to give you a hint if you end up scratching your head.

    Logical level design helps a lot as well, but there’s one catch of course. This isn’t a huge issue in many modern games, since many (though not all) of them don’t implement NPC schedules, but think back to Ultima 6 or Ultima 7: there were times you needed to find someone to talk to (a town mayor, say), and he wasn’t in the town hall. He was at the pub, or maybe at his house…or maybe somewhere in between.

    Directionality indicators would point you in his direction no matter what. In a 2D map, in an Ultima town, you might not need that…but if you’re going after a guy in another town who is moving around on a schedule, and it’s a big, open 3D world, the indicator might be of greater utility.

  6. Sergorn says:

    I think that’s issue with some old schoold hardcore RPG – is that some of them don’t seem to grasps that some gaming convetion which worked well in 2D games twenty years ago don’t translate that well to 3D.

  7. wtf_dragon says:

    Interesting perspective from a commenter at the Facebook Ultima page:

    I like mini-maps and quest markers. To me, they simulate “character knowledge” that I (as a player) don’t have, but my in-game character would know.

    There’s a lot of truth there.

  8. Severian says:

    I think that asking NPC about right way is more realistic. Also, auto-mapping is some kind of simulation of character`s memory. Hiring guiding NPC, which lead you to right place, also will be very exciting and don`t ruin atmosphere. In some more or less modern RPG games(like Gothic), when i found right place for continuing quest without markers, i got much more pleasure, than with existence of helpful markers. So i think, that markers are more suitable for MMORPG. And by the way, how you like that idea, that main character just speak “I am going wrong” or “That is that place” through the quest mission ? To much possibilities for role playing. Yeah, in fantasy games, where no GPS, you will be guided by bird, that replace cursor in center of screen.

  9. Casual versus hardcore, no more. Auto anything outside the scope of the character/player’s senses is unrealistic. Game players are just used to the easy, guided way.

  10. Natreg says:

    I think it depends on what kind of game we are refering.

    The Elder Scrolls for instance have characters with not much of a personality, so in a way even if you meet them in game it’s hard to diferentiate between them. That makes remembering where a character was quite more difficult.

    Oblivion is not as random as the previous games, but characters still lack some personality, so even though it wouldn’t be that difficult to find someone in that game, it wouldn’t be easy either.

    In the old Ultimas everything had more logic, characters had very different personalities and you could remember them more easily, also they usually were in logical places: attending a fellowship meeting at certain hours, at the taverns or working at their jobs.

    If someone asked you to find a blacksmith in a town in that game, you will just look out for the blacksmith shop, and if the character was not there, you will check what time it was and know more or less where to look after that. It also helped that usually any other npc of the town did know about his/her neighbours.

    So, in my opinion, some games would become a bit tiresome without those markers, and some just don’t need them at all.

    I actually don’t see what’s the problem with 3D versus 2D in this matter.

  11. If you take a look at the direction of society in general, everything is getting easier. Books on tape, movies, semi-educational content on the History and Discovery channels, fast food, factory farming, cruise control, you name it; it exists now. We’re heavily dependent on technology, gadgets and corporations to provide and ease every necessity and indulgence in life and no longer have much in common with the realities of survival. I don’t think anything’s different with the gaming scene.

    In AAA titles generally a lot of feedback is taken from playtesting the game with a group fitting the target demographic (focus group type stuff) and ideas are also borrowed from previously successful titles that are similar in nature. That certainly influences, for better or worse, the interfaces and difficulty level of today’s games. What people find enjoyable, tedious or annoying in a game is influenced by the the types of activities they’d expect to encounter in their day to day existence and how easily they’re able to perform those activities.

    For example, a generation who grew up with handheld GPS navigation probably would think creating maps on graph paper was insane. Likewise in a country where it is expected that everyone speaks English and use the Roman alphabet, why would they want to translate a runic alphabet? If you can save incoming cell phone calls in a contact list with caller ID already knowing their name, why should you really write anything down at all? Why look at the stars or sun when you have a compass? While a lot of old-school activities may seem fun, unless you’re part of an elite that actually enjoys challenge and self-sufficiency you’re probably just going to go to your mini-map.

    I think games are really just following the current culture’s dependence on technology and subsequent removal from nature. In other words, they’re getting easier, becoming more about pushing buttons than thinking and enabling us to live our lives (or fantasy lives in gaming) with as little actual living as possible.

    The down side is I don’t think there’s much anyone can do about any of that, and ultimately I don’t even know if it’s a good or bad thing. It doesn’t bode well, however, for old dogs who like Ultima games. I think the next generation of students made that pretty plain and are not the exception. I can see a time in the future when people become so bored with technology that they seek a “reawakening” and get back to basics, but I don’t know that it would every apply to mainstream gaming.

  12. wtf_dragon says:

    Are you a fan of Idiocracy, Kevin?

  13. Wow, I just read the Wikipedia article on it and will be downloading it shortly. Kinda funny that Mike Judge and I apparently share that vision of the future. Hopefully we’re wrong, but so far so bad.

  14. Gheralf says:

    One thing I think needs to be taken into consideration here as well, is how often exactly is the player supposed to find certain wandering NPCs or places in a game? Oblivion’s quest marker wasn’t a big flashy thing, but it was still pretty much at your face -all- the time, pointing where to go. For a game that almost consists of running from marker point to another it’s a really handy and even more so, a necessary feature if you want to avoid frustration.

    As flawed as Ultima IX may have been, I always thought that the overworld exploration was rather enjoyable. An NPC would tell you pretty simplified what to do (just exit the city south and follow the road) and usually, that was enough to find where you wanted to go, even if the road proved to be surprisingly long (like from Yew to Dungeon Wrong). The problemsome part for me was when you were suggested to go a certain house or find a certain person since too many NPCs and buildings looked alike. Maps didn’t tell which buildings were supposed to be used for which things and some times even the building itself had no name plate. While this was a problem, I don’t remember it being a problem all too often since the game was more based on actually exploring the place, be it dungeon or city, you come by and its surroundings, instead of just being lead from one important person to another in an endless series of quests. Of course, this is possible because the towns and cities didn’t consist of an insane amount of NPCs – actually talking to the whole town wasn’t just possible, it was what you were supposed to do.

    To me Ultima IX mostly had the same charm of exploration as previous Ultimas. When I would come by a roadside house or Inn in Oblivion, my mind would flash “Ooh, I wonder if anybody in there has quests for me”. I would go in, quick talk with NPCs and go on my merry way. In the case of a cavern or dungeon I would think “Gah, another one of those places”. In Ultimas VII to IX, finding practically anything was always noteworthy and interesting. All the caves, broken bridges, fortresses, out-of-place NPCs, shipwrecks and other things and places gave the feeling that I had stumbled on something interesting.

  15. Sergorn says:

    I think your post basically a point which I feel is not conveyed enough: Bigger is NOT better.

    You know one of the thing that is most critized by Ultima IX’s basher is that the game is “ridiculously” small. Outside the fact that it’s a lie (the size of a world is not gauged by how many buildings a city has), to me it shows some people don’t get what Ultima is all about.

    Ultima never was about crafting the biggest possible existing world – compared to an Elder Scroll, even the allmighty Ultima VII would feel ridiculously small. The point is about crafting a world that feels alive and unique and handcrafted.

    Quality over quantity.

    Which is one of achievement of Ultima IX – sure it’s not as big as say.. Morrowwind, but it’s a big world on a the world, there is a lot of exploration to do but most importantly: each place has personality. It never feels generic. Which is of course the main issue of the Elder Scroll series (altough I would say that random dungeon excluded, Oblivion did do a great job with world design compared to previouses Elder Scroll in terme of not makign it generic).

    I could also point the Gothic series really: Gothic II consisted of a single isle with a single city, but it had personality and felt alive. Gothic 3 took a huge world approach… so it ended with many city all awfully generic.

    Bigger is not better.

    And if a day should come were a new AAA Ultima is to be produced, I hope whoever is in charge keep that mind.