KickStarter Wellspring: Altar of Roots - tactical RPG inspired by JRPGs (formerly Bevontule)

[anvi]

Minimaps are shit.

 

[Ranarama]

Minimaps are shit.

Don't hate on them too much. While great games can do without, with enough attention to level design and landmarks, many a bad game has been made playable with the crutch of a minimap.

 

[anvi]

They should be hated though, it ruins exploration, ruins immersion, ruins navigating using landmarks and your brain. Instead you just stare at the minimap and watch your dot move towards whatever shit you need. I'm all for it in a MOBA or FPS or something but for an RPG it is one of the most terrible things. Even the super dumb Elder Scrolls games don't have a minimap.

 

[Reapa]

They should be hated though, it ruins exploration, ruins immersion, ruins navigating using landmarks and your brain. Instead you just stare at the minimap and watch your dot move towards whatever shit you need. I'm all for it in a MOBA or FPS or something but for an RPG it is one of the most terrible things. Even the super dumb Elder Scrolls games don't have a minimap.

morrowind has one.

 

[Iznaliu]

Even the super dumb Elder Scrolls games don't have a minimap.

Because quest compasses obsoleted them.

 

[anvi]

Quest compass is bad, but still better than a minimap.

 

[MTG_Derek]

They should be hated though, it ruins exploration, ruins immersion, ruins navigating using landmarks and your brain. Instead you just stare at the minimap and watch your dot move towards whatever shit you need. I'm all for it in a MOBA or FPS or something but for an RPG it is one of the most terrible things. Even the super dumb Elder Scrolls games don't have a minimap.

These are all valid points that I can get behind. We've actually been toying with the idea of only showing what has been explicitly revealed by the player (I know Star Ocean 3 did this well, offering rewards for full minimap completion) and hiding everything else in a 'fog of war'. That being said, toggling off the minimap is only a button press/click away and if a player doesn't want to use it, he or she doesn't have to. And if they do, they can.

 

[Iznaliu]

That being said, toggling off the minimap is only a button press/click away and if a player doesn't want to use it, he or she doesn't have to. And if they do, they can.

You should probably playtest the game without the minimap to see how it plays.

 

[Infinitron]

Worked on a new enemy over the past few days, lovingly referred to as the 'Ripricane'. He turned out a little more menacing than I had planned, but can you really have too much menace?

 

[anvi]

Graphics are so purdy. Not keen on the mob that "inflicts death" on people with on attack.

 

[JarlFrank]

Quest compass is bad, but still better than a minimap.

This one takes the cake for most retarded statement of the decade.

 

[anvi]

Quest compass is bad, but still better than a minimap.

This one takes the cake for most retarded statement of the decade.

How? What you are saying makes no sense. All the downvotes for that comment, I don't think any of you get it.

 

[JarlFrank]

Quest compass is the worst, most decline feature ever implemented in any game ever. It's not "better than" anything. Minimaps aren't that terrible - in Morrowind it was okay since you never saw much on that tiny minimap and, most importantly, the minimap never directly pointed you to your quest location. You still had to explore.

Quest compass is the worst thing to ever have been invented in gaming. No contest. To call a minimap, which in some genres is even a good feature, worse, is utterly and completely imbecilic and shows a lack of understanding about game design.

 

[Iznaliu]

You still had to explore.

The issue comes in when exploring is treated as a negative.

 

[anvi]

Quest compass is the worst, most decline feature ever implemented in any game ever. It's not "better than" anything. Minimaps aren't that terrible - in Morrowind it was okay since you never saw much on that tiny minimap and, most importantly, the minimap never directly pointed you to your quest location. You still had to explore.

Quest compass is the worst thing to ever have been invented in gaming. No contest. To call a minimap, which in some genres is even a good feature, worse, is utterly and completely imbecilic and shows a lack of understanding about game design.

I think to defend minimaps shows a lack of understanding. Have you ever played a huge open world RPG with no map at all? Because that is the best way. At least with the quest compass thing you are still focused on the screen, looking at landmarks, trying to get your bearings. It only really pops up nearby locations which are mostly visible anyway, it just tells you what they are. Minimap is worse because you see the entire area, which way you are heading, all the landscape nearby and all points of interest nearby. It is dumb, ruins exploration, and distracts from looking at the actual game world and being absorbed by it and figuring things out yourself. I think in your desperate need to defend all things Morrowind over all things that came after it, you failed to realise this one important and obvious thing, minimaps are shit.

I think a lot of people on this forum need to be enlightened to the truth, that Morrowind was not a classic RPG. It was a dumb console action game that played like an MMO but with no other players and much shitter combat. It might be better than Oblivion and Skyrim, but that doesn't make it good.

 

[JarlFrank]

Depends on the size of the minimap. Morrowind's is so tiny, all it really does is show you the direction you're facing, like a compass:

That kind of minimap is absolutely acceptable. You can't use it as a crutch for exploration. You have to actually look around in the 3D view to see anything. I never used the thing as anything other than a compass because it's useless as anything else.

So when we're just talking about this kind of minimap, there's nothing wrong with it. Additionally, the larger map you get inside your inventory screen:

only shows you those parts of the map that you have already discovered. It only shows you a black fog where you haven't been yet. You can't use that as a crutch for exploration, either.

Morrowind is a game that greatly encourages exploration in several ways. Pretty much all of its features are designed to be conductive towards exploration. The minimap and even the larger map you have in your inventory screen are just tools for orientation within an area you have already explored. They don't offer you an easy way to find your way through the world, like a quest compass would... or a minimap combined with quest compass elements, which is probably the thing you're talking about.

See, by saying that a minimap allows you to "see the entire area, which way you are heading, all the landscape nearby and all points of interest nearby" you show that you're thinking about a very specific kind of minimap. The kind of minimap most MMOs have, or that utterly mediocre Kingdoms of Amalur game (which was supposed to be an MMO anyway). A minimap with a too high range that allows you to see way too much of your surroundings by glancing at it,a minimap that marks every point of interest including questgivers and enemy locations instead of just giving you a rough overview of the landscape, that kind of minimap is utterly terrible, I completely agree with you. But it shares some features with the quest compass. It's not just a pure minimap like Morrowind's, it's a cheating tool just like the quest compass is.

But I don't consider Morrowind's way of handling maps to be ideal either, don't get me wrong. It's just six million times better than the quest compass shit we get in later games, and it's a great exploration-focused game overall. Gothic 2 has a much better map system, although it would be even better if it didn't show your position on the map and just had you figure it out by looking at nearby landmarks and comparing them to what's drawn on the map. Morrowind would have been the perfect exploration game if it replaced its in-game map with the hand-drawn paper map that came in its box, just like Gothic 2 used a hand-drawn map as the in-game map.

The truly perfect exploration in a first or third person RPG would marry elements of Gothic 2 with elements of Morrowind and take out in-game tracking of the player's map position altogether, instead forcing him to guess his location based on a detailed hand-drawn map and the landmarks he can see around him. Morrowind's beautiful hand-drawn paper map, combined with the almost infinite view distance of the Morrowind Graphics Extender, combined with Gothic 2's very distinctive layout and landmarks that would make determining your map position completely without markers relatively easy.

 

[anvi]

Depends on the size of the minimap. Morrowind's is so tiny, all it really does is show you the direction you're facing, like a compass:
I never used the thing as anything other than a compass because it's useless as anything else.

So why not just have a compass...?

So when we're just talking about this kind of minimap, there's nothing wrong with it.

Being so small that it is mostly useless does not make it ok. If you can't see much on it then there is no point having it. And if you can see mobs, locations, and landscape, then it is dumb and is ruining exploration. There is really no legitimate argument for having a minimap in an RPG.

Additionally, the larger map you get inside your inventory screen: only shows you those parts of the map that you have already discovered. It only shows you a black fog where you haven't been yet. You can't use that as a crutch for exploration, either.

It is a crutch because running through an area once and revealing everything does not mean you know it well. It should take time and maybe multiple visits to explore an area and get to know it. The minimap ruins the value in learning your surroundings. You shouldn't need this explaining to you, especially if you played Gothic.

Morrowind is a game that greatly encourages exploration in several ways. They don't offer you an easy way to find your way through the world, like a quest compass would...

Bullshit, the map and minimap you just showed me harms exploration and offers an easy way to navigate. And the quest compass just shows the direction to nearby locations. It is basically the same as a minimap only it doesn't show any landscape.

See, by saying that a minimap allows you to "see the entire area, which way you are heading, all the landscape nearby and all points of interest nearby" you show that you're thinking about a very specific kind of minimap. The kind of minimap most MMOs have, or that utterly mediocre Kingdoms of Amalur game (which was supposed to be an MMO anyway).

So you are trying make an argument that I was "retarded" to hate minimaps by saying yes all minmaps are shit except for one game? That makes you retarded. And that one game is just as bad as anything else because of what I said in the second paragraph.

The truly perfect exploration in a first or third person RPG would marry elements of Gothic 2 with elements of Morrowind and take out in-game tracking of the player's map position altogether, instead forcing him to guess his location based on a detailed hand-drawn map and the landmarks he can see around him.

Why does it need the minimap at all? Gothic 2 was easy to navigate....

Morrowind's beautiful hand-drawn paper map, combined with the almost infinite view distance of the Morrowind Graphics Extender, combined with Gothic 2's very distinctive layout and landmarks that would make determining your map position completely without markers relatively easy.

So you call me retarded yet you are the one desperate for things to be made easy. Gotcha.

 

[JarlFrank]

The truly perfect exploration in a first or third person RPG would marry elements of Gothic 2 with elements of Morrowind and take out in-game tracking of the player's map position altogether, instead forcing him to guess his location based on a detailed hand-drawn map and the landmarks he can see around him.

Why does it need the minimap at all? Gothic 2 was easy to navigate....

Morrowind's beautiful hand-drawn paper map, combined with the almost infinite view distance of the Morrowind Graphics Extender, combined with Gothic 2's very distinctive layout and landmarks that would make determining your map position completely without markers relatively easy.

So you call me retarded yet you are the one desperate for things to be made easy. Gotcha.

Where did I say I want a minimap?

The "map" I'm talking about here is the paper map of Morrowind which isn't even in-game (only a printed one in the game box), or the map that Gothic 2 uses. You know, this thing:

And you keep talking as if I defended minimaps as a good thing. I didn't and I don't. All I'm arguing is that a minimalist minimap like Morrowind's is less harmful towards exploration than quest compasses are, which is the truth.

The quest compass is the worst element ever introduced into exploration-focused games, and any negative elements of minimaps that you mentioned are essentially quest compass features implemented into a minimap.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

All the downvotes

 

[MTG_Derek]

So uh... how do you guys feel about fast traveling? Asking for a friend...

 

[vonAchdorf]

 

[Jinn]

So uh... how do you guys feel about fast traveling? Asking for a friend...

It generally is an extremely poor choice to implement. It takes away any sense of true exploration from a game, and therefor removes a huge appeal of playing RPGs in the first place.

There is a way to make it work, and that is unlocking checkpoints for fast travel once the exploration has already occurred. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a nice current example of a way in which it works well.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Minimaps are useful - here it nicely showed the consolish corridor-based level design, reminding me not to buy. Thanks minimap! :D

 

[JarlFrank]

So uh... how do you guys feel about fast traveling? Asking for a friend...

Depends on the implementation of it.

Gothic and Morrowind are again examples where most of the Codex is all right with the fast travel options available.

In Gothic, you use teleporter stones to travel between locations quickly. You find those throughout the game by exploring.
In Morrowind, you use taxi services to get around, or teleport spells (either to get to the nearest temple, or to go back to a location you habe marked with a spell before).

These are good fast travel options because they cut down on the tedium of having to walk from one edge of the world to the other, while still not trivializing travel. You have to pay for transport, or learn a spell, or find a teleporter stone in order to use these options. Instant "click button to fast travel to location" is bad because it circumvents travel entirely and breaks immersion. If you want fast travel that is independent of spells or paid services, the way to do it is to make it like Fallout (the original two games) or Arcanum: it takes time to travel from A to B, and you might chance upon random encounters on your way there.

 

[MTG_Derek]

Yeah, fast traveling would certainly require, as a prerequisite, the player having previously visited the area/landmark in question, regardless of whether you're fast traveling to a completely different location (from the world map only) or a location/landmark within an existing area. Not sure if we'll add a cost to it, or whether it'll be an item/'spell'. Probably. As for the minimap, I've enjoyed the back and forth--I think the best approach is to have one, but only 'reveal' it as you explore. And if you're someone that truly dislikes it, you can always disable it. At any rate, it definitely won't reveal 'everything' that a specific area may have to offer.

Minimaps are useful - here it nicely showed the consolish corridor-based level design, reminding me not to buy. Thanks minimap! :D

It's actually way more open than you might think (or that this 30 second video would otherwise trick you into believing! )