How to counter the "dumbing down": Advice for Warhorse Studios to deliver a true Hardcore RPG

if the landmark is beyond your line of sigh an arrow would still point to it, though if you highlight the landmark then it’d have to be visible to see it. It works better for immersive purposes.

The journal wouldn’t be something the blacksmith makes. More like his memories. Since we cannot merge our minds and bodies with the character we must rely on the resources available to us. Some manner of transferring knowledge. This is the reason you were advocating for a magic arrow. Also as a means of translating the character knowledge of his surroundings to the player. I advocate there are better less immersion breaking ways of doing so.

The two ideas I advocate are

Journal: To transfer knowledge and memories.
Recall: Ability to highlight landmarks know to the character

2 Likes

This sounds overly complicated. I certainly don’t want houses and rock formations highlighting while I play just to say, “Gee I know that rock! I must be going the right way!” I think a general compass that doesn’t pinpoint your destination, but fades out when you are in the vicinity of your goal is a simple compromise. Of course give the option to turn everything off and customize your HUD for hardcore players. But I think a system like this would appeal to hardcore and regular users alike.

1 Like

Oh Gods, a quest marker. No! Just, no. They have their uses, but in a realistic medieval game like this one, no.
Now go too far the other way, and remove the compass and the marker on the world map that tells you where you are.
A computer gameworld is not like the real world. Unless you have a fantastically expensive total immersion rig, you have no direct interaction with it, your only interaction is via a screen. You cannot tell how far you have moved, you do not know exactly where you are in relation to landmarks, unless you have some feedback telling you. In the real world, I always know where I am in relation to certain landmarks, how long it will take to get there, the best route to go, and so on. This is largely because I have been to those places before, I know where North is, and I’m good at map-reading.
A gameworld removes the first of those - direct experience of where you are and where you’ve been. You have to remember a completely new set of reference points with no direct physical connection between them. To some people, this won’t matter, but to others it removes a key component of the learning process.
If you remove the compass, you only know for certain where you are going if you look at the map after thirty seconds of walking straight forward and see which way your marker moves. I expect that 600 years ago (Hell, even 80 years ago) almost everyone would know where North is, so removing the compass would not be particularly realistic.
If you remove the map marker showing where you are, you cannot find out where you are unless you are told by the game. If you start in Prague (for example), where in Prague are you? Unless it’s somewhere obvious (like outside the cathedral), the game will need to flash up a message on screen. If you start in the countryside and there’s no map marker, you’re screwed. With real-world paper maps, you don’t get a marker, and you either need to work out or be told where you are, but working out tends to rely on knowing where you came from, how far you came, and in which direction, and being told means the system flashes you a message, or you have to stop random NPCS and hope they a) don’t lie and b) are not lost themselves.
The bare essentials are a compass, and a map with a marker to show where on it you are. A marker on the map to show where you need to be might be nice, but not essential. A marker in the main screen or minimap to show where you need to go is not appropriate to the genre.

1 Like

I would agree I wouldn’t want anything highlighted everywhere either. That’s why I suggested it as an “ability” something that could be activate. Much the same with humans though we don’t call it activating we do have to actively access portions of our brain in order to recall information. Especially when traveling when you’re “trying not to get lost” you might notice a landmark while trying to gain your bareings or in the terms I used for our character in gain using their recall ability. That bit of noticing is why it would be highlighted. Though if the information is store in your brains “RAM” you wouldn’t need to recall. In other words you wouldn’t need to use your recall ability you’ll (your character) just notice instinctively the landmarks It’d be your choice to use it or not since it would be an ability. Also it’d be a logical ability that makes sense within the context of the game. Sure you could use a compass though I would not expect it to be a magic compass with all of the locations of the world marked on it. Leading you.

Whenever you don’t know where something is, you usually do one of three things: ask people for directions, wander aimlessly around looking for recognisable landmarks, or pulling out a map and trying to locate your position on it, and the position of your destination. In-game it should be no different. Imperial City guards in Oblivion would tell you points of interest in the city, what shops were where etc. It worked.

Just joined the forum to express this very same thing.
I love what they’re trying to achieve with this game. The compass however goes against all of it. Making the compass and the map handheld items (like real maps and compasses are) would fix everything. Oh, and for the love of Odin; no floating markers please.

Absolutely agree -markers should be banned from games. That may sound a little heavy handed but are a particularly nasty relatively new affliction to games as a whole. Someone here mentioned Pirates! _ i remember so many hours of wonder in that low res world in my teens some decades ago, alongside with Seven Cities of Gold -back when EA were artists…

Back OT, the marker has the opposite effect on the gamers mind - as it tells them which direction to line up their mouse and then continuie to hold W for long period of times in which they then complain about the long walk times and “why cant we just skip to the action…” A well designed game will offer rich clues with memorable landscapes to guide the player on a quest and often leave one or more surprises along the way. This leads the player to actual start to explore and feel immersion in this exploration as opposed to “just getting there”.

This marker madness is a big problem from shooters like BFx to space games - it kills the ancient art of orienteering with a sense of wonder to ‘just getting there’.

Hit the nail on the head.

I’m fine with a game that has a compass (as in, a real compass, showing N, S, E, W) and then along the way you can acquire crude maps with landmarks, etc., and that’s how you guide yourself through the world. That seems more interesting to me.

Eventually you’ll LEARN the world, as you would the city you live in.

1 Like

if a guy says something is too hard, please ignore it. if a whole bunch of people say it, then it might mean something.

but even then, i think it’s better to be cautious and make it an option.

metal gear solid 5 i think was an example of dumbing down. ground zeroes was so well designed and the ai was challenging, then tpp came and everyone could tell they gimped the ai probably because qa testers cried about dying all the time.

really needs to be a move in the industry away from handholding and listening to crybabies scrubs.

1 Like

I am playing Skyrim right now, I have maybe 15 quests in progress, do you mean I should disable all of the arrows and instead stroll around and look for places?.. or Im not sure how you mean to play Skyrim without the quest markers.
I agree with you that it becomes a shopping-list of just making it to the arrow then slay whatever monster is there… It’s to the point of me not even caring what the quest is, all that matters is “make it to the arrow” and then whatever cutscene/fight or dialogue there just becomes gateways to new arrows…

I feel like quests should be harder to find, and presented with more urgency. The problem with Skyrim is that you could do any quest whenever you wanted.

Witcher3 was a little bit better where if you put off a quest for too long, it’d fail, etc.

I think that you should have crude maps (that you can buy from shops, etc., get from roadside merchants) and you can scribble on your own “notes” or markers, etc. You have physical compass, etc., to guide you, and you basically navigate by pulling out your map, looking for landmarks, etc. to help guide you, etc.

So there’s no arrow on the screen. It’s all based on interpreting your environment and using your head. If you get lost, you go into a small town and ask for directions, etc., or purchase a new map. Maybe bigger towns have more detailed maps, etc.

This to me is a lot more interesting. There should be more emphasis on the path you take than just what’s at the end of it, meaning, you shouldn’t be blindly following arrows, but, rather, digesting the world around you and getting an understanding of what you really have to do and where you’re actually going, etc.

Couldn’t agree more. Words Seviteal!

Some very good points in this thread. Especially [quote=“rilzi, post:51, topic:14380”]
One of if not the greatest strength of the RPG genre has always been exploration. Cutting that out for the sake of gameplay? That is the gameplay.
[/quote]

There’s more to it as well. Without quest arrows, you get drawn much more into the game world. Out of necessity you’ll have to get aquainted with the locations and remember where things are located. It makes for much deeper gameplay.

Which in turn leads to the introduction of fast travel, another bit that ruins RPGs. Of course, FT can be done well, if it is integrated into the game world. Again, Morrowind is a good example for getting it right.

3 Likes

I don’t see why you couldn’t explore and ignore quest markers and compass.
You can tape a piece of paper over your monitor if you wish. Or just turn off tracking for quest you want to do and do it blind. Compass system shouldn’t be “eradicated” by any means!

I don’t think developers really want players to explore THAT much, they have a story to tell. So that’s why compass system was invented in the first place. So players would enjoy cinematic storytelling instead of trying to get stuck in map edges or whatever.

Skyrim has a well-established compass system - has it seriously discouraged you to break physics or find a shorter route to High Hrothgar by climbing mountainside? Nah, players who like to explore will explore anyway. And compass is there to help out if they get too lost or need to run away from an ambush. So it’s actually a good thing.

An option to turn off compass and whatever for those who think playing games on most challenging ways somehow make their e-rep (or something else) bigger could exist, though - why not? Or modify quest marker precision - it could point towards entire village or area, not particular house or NPC. I could live with that, probably, if other hints were available, like journal entries or possible helpful dialogs.

But no-one will make AAA game catering just tiny proportion of players. And who would want this?

Next guy, a diehard Dwarf Fortress veteran will make a thread where he says 3D graphics suck and demand entire game in ASCII characters. Then what?

From my own experience with Skyrim, while the compass did not really hinder me to explore on my own, it took away the element of discovery and turned the experience into frantically collecting all the landmarks that would show up on the compass while hiking across the landscape.

That’s the problem though, with Skyrim. I would say it’d be easier to play with a black screen and just the compass than with normal graphics and no compass. To me, the compass turns a potentially complex and engaging game into a trivial follow the arrow affair.

Then perhaps an open world game is not the proper medium for cinematic storytelling. If developers want their players to closely follow along a certain narrative, then the game needs to be designed for that. An open world game is more suited for an emergent narrative that is fuelled by exploration.

But who says that the majority would not like more explorative gameplay, and a little less handholding? Especially when certain parts of KC:D, i.e. combat, already demand a certain amount of skill on the player side.

Heh! If somebody is playing DF for the graphics, I wouldn’t give anything to what they say :wink:

I still see no issue.
I’m pretty sure month or two after release you will get as many “hardcore” mods, ini-hacks and whatnot as your hard disk can fit.
But rest of the crowd can be "Ooh, it’s like Skyrim but I actually learned some history!"
And all’s good.

** It’s a PC game. **
And since multiplayer is out of the door at the moment, restrictions on content editing will be low, if any at all. I don’t know how mod-friendly cryengine is, but I imagine if there’s a will, there’s a way.
So there’ll be mods. Tons and tons of mods. Just see Skyrim, the game with so horrible reputation among KCD crowd… If there’s people making furry porn mods for Skyrim, removing a compass from KCD is no issue.

1 Like

No, it’s not. A simple mod to remove compass or quest markers is not going to work if the information is not present in another form, i.e. through conversation with NPCs and a quest log worth the name. In this regard, KC:D may already be doing better than Skyrim, but the game really needs to be designed from the ground up with alternative (or rather, primary) means of conveying the required information to the player in mind. If at all, a compass can be provided as an additional aid, but with good enough directions from quest givers and a log book where that information can be reviewed later it ought to be completely redundant.

I also need to emphasise that listening to what NPCs have to say and then following their directions is not “hardcore” in my view. But it does help to establish a living, breathing game world that is more than a picturesque backdrop to a neverending stream of randomly generated fetch quests. So I see this less under the aspect of “dumbing down” and more under ruining the atmosphere and spirit of a game. Because the more gameplay features get abstracted away under the guises of streamlining and accessibility (or perhaps rather lazyness and corner-cutting on the developer’s side), the more generic the remainig game becomes. Sure, it may still look great and be entertaining enough, but will it remain truly memorable? I think not.

It would be cool if you acquired a map of some sort, and through conversations, reading literature or whatnot, purchasing other maps, you could update your map to have more detail and more locations marked.

These would NOT have selectable quest markers, etc. The only thing on the map would be a cursor with your location.

Anyone remember FAR CRY 2? I thought it was genius
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/farcry/images/f/fc/Far-cry-2-map.png/revision/latest?cb=20111208064032

THIS!
I don’t want floaty arrows either, and enjoy getting lost and stumbling upon things off the beaten path. A good period-looking map (which the game has) and simple/general directions from NPC conversations “walk south east from here”, should be great for those looking for more immersion. It will require the player to communicate more with the NPCs as they go along, and that is a good thing. In short order players will become familiar with the in-game environment.

But bottom line, let there be options to turn on/off HUD choices, it is best to let the player who paid money for the game chose how to play.