Felipepepe's Videogame History Articles Thread

[V_K]

On a more relevant note, I think the debate on what is an RPG could be solved by applying the mathematical concepts of necessity and sufficiency.
"It has stats" is agruably a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a game to be considered an RPG - i.e. if it has stats, it may or may not be an RPG, but if it doesn't have stats it's definitely not an RPG. (I could probably be specified further to "It has stats that affect gameplay", but that's not the point).
There can be any number of sufficient, but not necessary, conditions. For example, CRPGAddict's criteria (character development, non-puzzle inventory and stat-based non-deteministic combat) - not all RPGs conform to that criteria, but if a game does it's highly likely that it's an RPG.
I don't think, given the diversity of the genre, that it would be possible to name one condition that is both necessary and sufficient.

 

[Neanderthal]

So let me get this right, cause i'm not smartest biscuit in bin, what you're sayin is that the mechanics can be a distraction from what is going down?

For instance when I say to me players: "You drop down into a stinking pit of filth and refuse, rotting matter covers the floor, insects crawl and flys buzz all around, but at the sound of your entrance something huge stirs across the room. Forgetting the stench you watch as a huge form rises from a wagon of rotting straw, rolls of fat wobbling, massive muscles writhing the Ogre rears up to its full gargantuan height and grabs a small tree trunk by its side. It glares at you with small angry, piggy eyes and says, "LUNCH LADS!" At this you hear several snorts and farts echoing from further off in the darkness."

What you're saying is that the computer game should show that an not worry so much about statistical representation of it, concentrate on matching gameplay to what is going down? If so yeah I agree in principle, but as a player and GM I wanna look under hood and see what tools and abilities are available to me, otherwise it'd seem too imprecise and I like precision, builds an exploits.

Is what you're sayin wi modes that the "bedtime story mode" game can just offer graphical representation, while the stats open up for strategy grog mode?

Anyway good article, though I can play Batman wi'out lookin at screen so I hardly thinks its good at owt, plays itsen too much.

 

[adrix89]

I THINK DIS:

People should stop arguing what is or isn't cRPGs or RPGs or whatever and instead find out what they really want.

For example what I want is challenging tactical or strategic combat and a dynamic living breathing world just like in the fictional books that goes on forever and I get to explore and experience it.
So I am all for Muh Combat! Muh Immersion!

I have absolutely no care about your old-skool or numbskull gameplay from a century ago.

Be honest with what the fuck you want.

 

[Xzylvador]

Yo, I did it again:
<spoilered wall of text>

Very fun and interesting read.



(Would give actual brofist, were I old enough or would be the moderators pulled their heads out of their asses and suddenly grant me such awesome power and responsibility.)

Also, kind of wondering whether you thought the lack of meaningful stats was PoE's only, or even its biggest, flaw.

 

[felipepepe]

Also, kind of wondering whether you thought the lack of meaningful stats was PoE's only, or even its biggest, flaw.

I wrote about this before: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...illars-of-eternity-very-minor-spoilers.98295/

In short, from the encounter design to the itemization, from the character creation to the dialog reputations, from the faction choices to the spell design, Pillars of Eternity is entirely designed with a similar philosophy: nothing you do can save nor condemn you. That's what makes it so dull.

 

[Xzylvador]

<Polite and quick reply.>

Thank you. I had read your review before and agreed on many things (but felt that your conclusion was perhaps too positive), only forgot you wrote it; quite possibly because Darth Roxxor's was, uhm, more memorable (no offense meant, not neccessarily a negative thing... I'm sure you understand what I'm getting at).

 

[felipepepe]

But that's the thing - PoE isn't a BAD game... just utterly mediocre, unambitious and underwhelming.

 

[Jaesun]

Excellent article felipepepe

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

Felipepe is always polite, has interesting thoughts to write, and his CRPG Handbook rules.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Cool article, I liked the fact that you dumbed it down in parts to make absolutely certain everyone were on the same page.

About the only thing I didn't like was how you took Batman's "role-play" evolutionary path as going from the DC Heroes tabletop RPG game, to jumping straight to one of the more recent Batman games and giving the impression that Batman hasn't been used in video games since the Arkham Asylum series kicked off. I can understand that decision though, the fewer words used the better...right?

 

[MicoSelva]

What a mess of an article. I liked it (enjoyed reading it and generally agree with it), but IMO it would benefit from being less chaotic, longer and a little more elaborate on some points. Definitely not your best written piece, felipepepe, even if one of the most interesting.

 

[Athelas]

I don't think the assumptions in that article are very accurate. For starters, non-RPG's are mostly deterministic. Guards in Thief will only start to hear you if you're within a certain space/distance when you move, it takes x amount of seconds to swing a sword, etc. Mario will always jump the same distance. Conversely, having RNG isn't a requirement for an RPG, or even something that's typical for the genre - most RPG's are jRPG's, and they're heavily deterministic (damage doesn't vary significantly or at all, hit rates are always close to a 100%). Technically speaking, every game has stats - the aforementioned range at wich guards start to hear you in Thief is a stat, and you can manipulate that stat by walking on a different surface.

Instead of their defining feature being that they're stat-driven, it might be more accurate to say that 'true' RPG's use abstract mechanics - that was presumably the reason for using dice rolls, as a means of simulating something like the flow of combat with hits and misses and critical hits. This also extends to the interface - in an action game you move your character around directly, which leaves room for player error, in a 'true' RPG you point the mouse where you want your character to go, and any error will be the result of the character's (like failing a detection check which causes you to overlook a trap).

Attaching value to how many different stats/skills/etc. there are for something to qualify as an RPG is also dubious for a number of reasons.

The Final Fantasy series by itself has explored more different RPG gameplay styles than about all the western RPGs in the last 20 years combined.

 

[felipepepe]

If you use abstract mechanics & indirect control as a measure, then strategy games & RTS games fit just as well.

What a mess of an article. I liked it (enjoyed reading it and generally agree with it), but IMO it would benefit from being less chaotic, longer and a little more elaborate on some points. Definitely not your best written piece, felipepepe, even if one of the most interesting.

I began writing that article months ago, when someone in that classic CRPG panel at PAX mentioned that he thinks the Batman games are RPGs.

I played with the idea around for weeks, but never got a satisfying text. After many rewrites I decided to just publish it as it is, as a kind of brainstorm experiment and to see what people replied. Most just say "I THINK DIS" without even acknowledging my points, but I'm glad I got it out there...

 

[Infinitron]

Felipe Pepe tackles the nature of the RPG
Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 9, 2016

Elitist Old Farts unite! Or… uh, not. Why should we start now?

Felipe Pepe has composed a not-short article describing the nature of role-playing games, which largely breaks down into a discussion of why they are getting so difficult to define, and why they are proving difficult to… *cough* evolve.

Why Are RPGs So Difficult to Classify and Evolve?

Now, Felipe is an awesome guy and a true-blue old-school (elitist fart) kinda guy, a categorization I like to include myself within. We both harbor a love of walls of stats. He may be a bit more open-minded than me for what might be a good approach in an RPG. And he has less of a hang-up about using the word “evolve” with respect to RPGs.

But I do believe that his very title suggests the answer. Categorization limits. Evolution – at least in the way I see it – is a broadening of the category, a pushing beyond the old limits.

The challenge we have now in defining an RPG is trying to draw lines separating the games that we generally acknowledge as being RPGs from those that we don’t consider RPGs – and no matter how we draw the lines, things get included and excluded that we don’t think belong on that side of the line.

What we want is to draw just a few lines and then point out in a 90-degree arc and say, “From here out past the horizon and beyond is RPG. Go forth and bring back samples of the wondrous variety to be found here!” And instead, we mostly just cross-pollinate with the other genres and come out with more hybrids and make the lines blurrier and blurrier and necessitate more lines.

But the truth is – and Felipe knows this maybe better than I do – that this has always been the case. When we talk about “old-school RPGs” we tend to talk about a handful of favorites. We forget all the stillborn attempted evolutionary branches that failed for any number of reasons, many of which had nothing to do with the quality of their ideas. The truth is, there were tons of games back in the 80s that could have been the template for future RPGs that do not represent our concept of “classic, old-school RPG,” and a new, updated version of the title wouldn’t be considered an RPG today… but back then, we didn’t care.

Or maybe we did. I don’t remember. I have to browse through ancient back issues of Computer Gaming World to recall the discussions back then. Go back far enough, and even the name “RPG” or “Role-playing game” didn’t exist, for tabletop or computer games. You just had games that simulated some aspects that people enjoyed from playing Dungeons & Dragons or similar games. What aspects scratched that itch varied from designer to designer.

That’s really where we still are today. Except now, we’ve had some styles of gaming that have become the template. As Felipe says, for the new generation of RPG fans, it’s not about whether a game captures the feeling of playing D&D around a table anymore, it’s about whether it captures the feeling of playing Dragon Age or Mass Effect.

As Felipe says, computer RPGs are weird.

I love the RPG label, like I love the “indie” label, too much to give it up. The answer to things becoming difficult to classify isn’t to throw ones hands in the air and eliminate classification. If scientists did that, where would the scientific world be today, anyway? The issue is really one where the label gets appropriated by everything under the sun because it has some level of marketability, and thus all meaning and value gets trampled out of it. But it still serves a purpose. Just like saying “The American Northwest” can get kind fuzzy on the exact borders, it’s still pretty clear that Florida, New York, and Texas do not belong, but Washington and Oregon do. Just like we can argue over whether or not Pluto ought to be a planet.

So… yeah. We can argue over the fuzzy boundaries. There may be different aspects of games that scratch the RPG itch for us. All I can say is thank heavens for the indies (however you want to define “indie”) who are not (usually) following on the mainstream “evolutionary branch” of RPGs and are instead experimenting with the genre in different ways, mixing and matching the different aspects, borrowing from the past as well as the modern.

We’ve still got a long way to get to that horizon of possibility, and along the way we’re going to have a lot of stillborn ideas and epic failures and really weird experiments. We’re gonna have some games that people might call RPGs or roguelikes or roguelike-likes that we really don’t consider part of our own definition of the genre.

But that’s okay. Hopefully we’ll have a lot of fun along the way.

 

[Neanderthal]

Whatever happened to Scars of War anyway?

 

[Jrpgfan]

Nice article.

You mentioned ultima's npcs with real time schedule and while reading your comments I saw you talking about japanese eroge games and romance in rpgs and that reminded me of something funny : when I was younger, I remember playing some japanese eroge game called "Kingdom"(the original name is "koisuru okouku" from the info I could gather but I'm not entirely sure) which featured both npcs with real time schedule and romance(obviously). Not only that but, from what I recall, it was a RPG/dating sim with branching storylines, multiple endings and everything happened in real-time. The in-game time would pass as you walked/did stuff with your character, and you could speed it up in a similar way you do on total war games. I think the most impressive thing in that game was the fact that some quests could be triggered only during specific days and times of those days, and some of the key npcs were not static(they would move across the map). For example, I remember there was this robot girl who would go to the bakery from time to time to buy bread and if you approached and talked to her at different times or during specific days, it would trigger different events which could lead to different outcomes(assuming you passed the checks which, from what I recall, involved some stats and the jobs you took).

It's been a while since I played it so I'm not sure if everything I said is accurate(my memory might be failing me here), but when I think about it, there's a chance that game could've been a hidden gem(or atleast a decent game, which is no small feat considering its genre).

 

[felipepepe]

Jrpgfan , you mean this game:

This whole schedule think isn't that rare in JRPGs, Harvest Moon had it back in 1996, and I'm sure there are other examples as well.

 

[Jrpgfan]

Jrpgfan , you mean this game:

This whole schedule think isn't that rare in JRPGs, Harvest Moon had it back in 1996, and I'm sure there are other examples as well.

You're probably right but I was still surprised to find it on an eroge game. Like I said, it's been a long time since I played it and my memory is not exactly the best out there. I would probably not enjoy that game today since my tastes have changed a lot over time, but back then I thought it was kinda new since my concept of eroge game was basically a slideshow with eroctic pictures, and this game had some real gameplay on it.

I think maybe you're misunderstanding what I said about the schedule though. I'm not talking about the job schedules if that's what you're meaning, which I know are pretty common(like in games like princess maker which you mentioned in one of your articles) but like scripts that allow npcs to walk freely and do stuff on the world. For example, you would be walking in real time with your character and then at some time of the night(let's say, 20:00 pm) this teacher would end her class, leave school and head to the bar and start drinking(all that in real-time). If you approached her late at night on the bar after she started drinking, when she's about to head home, you find her drunk, babbling about something, and you can carry her home. She doesn't do it everyday, only at specific days and you can only trigger these "events" at certain days. For example, after you find her drunk on the bar, she will probably get embarassed and stop going to the bar for a while, so you need to attend to her classes and start talking to her, pick some right dialogs until she goes again to the bar(you need to pay attention to the enviroment since it's all in real time). There's stuff like that for many of the girls in the game you can end up with from what I can remember.

Anyways, I'm still not sure if it's something common in this kind of game, I'm no expert(I'll take your word for it if you say otherwise), but I found it somewhat impressive at the time for an eroge game.

 

[mindx2]

Did the third part: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/FelipePe...s_that_brought_something_new_to_the_table.php

Spoiler

Last month I made a brief pause to talk about the impact of local cultures in games, but today I'm back to rant about obscure CRPGs! Check part I and part II here if you missed, and let's dive into it.

The Phantasie series (1985-1991)

One of the things I most enjoy about RPGs from the 70's and 80's is that "frontier" feeling, as no one had a blueprint on how to things, people just kept trying different things.

Douglas Wood's Phantasie, is one of those frontier series, with a very unique approach. Instead of first-person graphics like Wizardy or top-down like Ultima, it used various distinct views. Towns were animated side-view screens, the world map was Ultima-like and dungeons had a fascinating mini-map-like view. You didn't need graph paper or even a basic sense of direction - it was all there, filled with various traps, encounters and text-based interactions. Simple, yet elegant.

Besides the unique map system, death was also memorable. Upon defeat, your party was judged by Hades, who would resurrect some, kill others permanently and bring a few back as undead!

Combat had a unique look, with character laid side-by-side in the bottom and enemies displayed in various rows on top. But also because of the multitude of races players could play, from traditional elves and dwarves to fairies, minotaurs, trolls, gnolls, lizardmen and the aforementioned undead.

Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus, released in 1987, upgraded the visuals and added a new feature: locational damage. Now you could injure, break or remove specific body parts in battle, including the chance to decapitate an enemy with a luck blow.

Sadly, the Phantasie series failed to endure as much as the Ultima games. It did have more of an impact in Japan, where the first game received an remake by StarCraft Inc, with side-view battles:

The whole series made so much success in Japan that in 1991 Douglas Wood and StarCraft developed Phantasie IV: Birth of Heroes, which remains to this day a Japan-exclusive.

A few years ago Douglas Wood also mentioned in a RPG Codex interview that he was working on Phantasie V, but sadly the project was canceled since.

Hillsfar (1989)

Back in the late 80's, SSI was a giant publisher that dominated the Strategy and RPG markets. Its hen layed not golden eggs, but the fabled Gold Box AD&D RPGs. Like, a lot. From 1988 to 1992, SSI released no less than ELEVEN of those, plus some spin-offs. Suck on that, Assassin's Creed.

Somehow, someone thought that wasn't enough and so SSI reached to Westwood Studios to produce Hillsfar, a game best described as a stand-alone pack of side-quests.

Basically, you import a character from the Pool of Radiance or Curse of the Azure Bonds Gold Box games and take him to the city of Hillsfar, where he can engage in a series of mini-games, like fighting in an arena, robbing houses, competing in an archery contest, riding a horse and visiting the most amusing depiction of a fantasy tavern to ever be programmed.

After finishing a brief quest for one of the guilds in town (which depends on yout character class), you can then export your hero back to the main Gold Box games, along with some bonus XP and hit points. (I wonder how many power gamers played this just to buff their characters).

By itself the game isn't a bad idea, but while the mini games are interesting for the first time, they are extremely limited and get boring fast. The sole exception is the lock picking mini game.

Released 26 years ago, Hillsfar still has the best lock picking mini game I've seen. Basically you have a set of picks and must use the correct one to open each of the lock's tumblers, under a harsh time limit. It's tense, requires speed & good eyes, scales very well and even - shock - makes sense!

BTW, a big shout out to the unsung heroes at GOG.com, who managed to scavenge the Gold Box games from legal hell and just re-released them, Hillsfar included.

Snatcher SD (1990)

Since the talk of the week (and likely month) is Metal Gear Solid V, let's talk about a Hideo Kojima game, Snatcher. Released in 1988, it's a bizarre adventure game/visual novel hybrid where robots are taking the bodies of people and only JUNKER agent Gillian Seed can stop them!

Snatcher is a great game, full of ideas Kojima would later use in MGS, but it's an adventure game, so I have little to say about it here. If you're curious, try this extensive Hardcore Gaming 101 article.

What interests me is that two years after releasing Snatcher, Kojima decided to make a reboot of it. With cute super-deformed graphics and first-person turn-based RPG combat.

Yes, you read that right, combat is first-person AND turn-based.

Each turn you pick a gun and use the reticule to aim at a point on the screen - you can fire at the robot's body to deal damage, or at specific points to decrease its stats & eventually cripple it. For example, attacking its eyes/sensors will reduce its accuracy, and if you deal enough damage the eyes will be destroyed and he won't be able to hit you anymore (and will likely self-destruct).

The twist is that before you fire the enemy will likely move, meaning aiming for small areas is tricky - you'll have to anticipate his move or stop him from moving by destroying its legs. Different guns also have different speeds and damage area, so choosing your equipment is important.

It's an extremely original system, that suits the game perfectly. It even throws some curveballs, like enemies using hostages. Unfortunately, the game is very grindy and some battles take a long time to beat, requiring you to first weaken the enemy and then slowly damage it...

Still, I would love to see some modern iteration of this concept.

Shadowlands (1992)

I'll open this one with a cautionary tale on the dangers of second-hand information. Some websites & posts I read mentions the game has a locational damage, similar to Phantasie III, as seen here:

That's misinformation being repeated without any fact checking (I found quite a few while researching for the book). Those bodies on the left picture are actually the game's bizarre control scheme!

Click on the right leg to move a single character, click on the left leg to move the whole party. Meanwhile, the right hand uses items or attacks, while the left one picks up items or interacts. The head is used to read or eat held items. It's weird, but you get the hang of it after a few minutes.

You see, Shadowlands is the first real-time RPG to feature a party of characters that can be moved individually - thus this primitive, experimental control system - no one knew how to do this! You can tell how novel this was just by playing the game, you can feel how excited the developers where to feature puzzles that required you to split your party and make them operate various levers.

Another innovative feature was the lighting system, called Photoscope. The whole environment had real-time simulated lighting, that would acknowledge every single light source, from torches to magic spells and cast shadows accordingly. The game itself is named after this unique feature, and the designers also employed it on puzzles that required a certain level of light or darkness to solve.

Shadowlands was followed by Shadoworlds, which is basically the same game, but IN SPACE!

A nice detail I enjoy is the back story of the various characters you can pick. It's entirely cosmetic, but still fascinating. I would definitely play a game based on these guys.

The Maimed God's Saga (2010)

This brilliant Neverwinter Nights 2 mod more than deserve its place here, for it's a master class on how to do role-playing in a computer game and how to go beyond the usual tropes and cliches.

The module's creator, Russ Davis (who also worked on NWN2's Mysteries of Westgate), went in a bold direction: while NWN 2 is know for its extensive implementation of the D&D ruleset, with dozens of classes and prestige classes, the module is solely devoted to Clerics of Tyr.

Your quest begins simple, as a woman writes to the church of Tyr begging for help, saying her family is cursed. You are then dispatched to the remote town where she lives to investigate the curse.

The twist is in how the game plays, not as a dungeon crawl or a epic power fantasy, but almost as a adventure game, controlled by your stats and choices.

It makes full use of the Cleric, in various was. For example, unlike other D&D CRPGs, your spells won't return when you sleep. You are required to find an altar and pray to Tyr. And sometimes Tyr will reply, showing you visions or warnings. However, when you first arrive at the village, you will naturally go after an altar to pray, and finding it in ruins you'll seek the means to rebuild it & purify it.

Similarly, your daily choice of spells will affect more than just combat. For example, the Bless spells give a +1 morale bonus on attack rolls and on saving throws against fear effects. That's all we see in RPGs, but this module reminds us that it's a blessing from a cleric in name of a God - it carries Tyr's power, it can be used to purify, to cleanse.

The whole module is full of these interactions, like casting Dispel Magic on a charmed guard, or Hold Person on a man trying to burn evidences:

The same thing happens with skill checks, that are used to solve issues and to help immerse players into the game's world and the sensibilities of the main character.

For example, the Lore skill means your character knows about the world around him. When someone talks about uncommon subjects, a successfully Lore check will present the player with a brief description of what they are talking about. Failing it means be left in the dark about what they said.

Even in combat the game shines. The original NWN2 campaign had horrible encounter design and pacing. Often your party of adventurers would enter a small house and then proceed to murder hordes of copypaste enemies inside massive rooms, in what felt like a clown car joke:

Maimed God's Saga expertly goes in the opposite direction, making encounters meaningful and short. You won't casually cut 50 mindless orcs during your stroll trough the wood - you'll encounter a small group of orcs that will talk to you, but also might attack and likely kick your ass. Similarly, the small keep in the mountains has only 4 guards and a handful of rooms, and the leader of a small pack of bandits is right next to the bandits, not at the end of a giant castle with 5 floors and 200 thugs.

These things matter. They make things have weight, purpose.

The Maimed God Saga is a reminder of how complex and enticing RPGs can be, of how the problem was never "Forgotten Realms / D&D is boring and cliche", but how it's often used in boring and cliche ways, as nothing more than a bunch of numbers to kill goblins and battle dragons.

Finally, I mentioned this before, but just so we keep this in mind: this mod and thousand others were originally hosted at IGN's NWN Vault, which was pulled down without any warning. We only have access to gems like these thanks to devoted fans that fought to backup everything.

My deepest thanks to them.

-------

Thanks for reading and, once again, if you enjoyed this list there's a 200-page preview of the upcoming CRPG Book right here for download, filled with this kind of content! And it's still free!

Finally got around to archiving the games from your last clickbait article felipepepe.



I love the artwork that went into these as it puts to shame what passes as box art today. The Shadoworlds box came with a interesting novella of the game world that was included to add "flavor" to the world. Also, have to love SSI's D&D boxes with their code wheel and poster thrown in.

I was also able to find the contents to Princess Maker 2 from your previous article but unfortunately no box or disk yet.

 

[felipepepe]

Wrote another one, this time on the quest compass - how it's evil incarnate and corrupted our youth: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/FelipePe...e_Quest_Compass__its_dreadful_convenience.php

Spoiler

Today, let's talk about the Quest Compass.

First, I'm an RPG fan, so this analysis will be mostly RPG-oriented.
Second, when I say "Quest Compass" I'm referring to a very specific UI item:

Its defining trait is that while the first three merely orient you or display your surroundings, the Quest Compass points you towards something. It directs you, tells you where to go.

It's omniscient, guiding you to places, object and people no one knows about. It replaces exploration.
But I'm getting ahead of myself...

The in-game GPS

I think it's safe to say that GTA III (2001) popularized the quest compass as we know it - a circle on the corner of the screen that serves as mini-map, displays nearby landmarks and guides you to your current quest objective:

The concept didn't came out of thin-air. Mini-maps in games date back to the mid 80's, with games likeMight & Magic II (1988) and Gates of Dawn (1985):

And even the first GTA (1997) already displayed a little "quest guide" arrow, directing the player towards the off-screen mission objective (the tiny yellow arrow bellow the taxi):

Other early open-world games of the time were also experimenting with the concept. In 1999 alone, we had the long-forgotten Urban Chaos, which had an enemy scanner / quest compass; Driver, with its street guide mini-map and Crazy Taxi, with its giant arrow pointing towards your next objective:

It's also interesting to consider the larger cultural scenario. By the time of GTA III's release, online map services like MapQuest, Yahoo! Maps and Zip2.com, where you could PRINT (or FAX!) a map with directions were booming - in 1999 AOL had bough MapQuest for 1.1 Billion dollars!

Ugh.

Anyway, GTA III came out and defined how we think about mini-maps and guiding players in open-world 3D games. Players could easily drive and take quests without getting lost, and there was much rejoicing.

This is important, because another game from the time was having problems with that...

Where the hell is Caius Cosades?!!

The very first quest in Morrowind (2002) is rather infamous. You're a prisoner (of course) released into service of the Empire, and must now report to your superior - Grand Spymaster Cauis Cosades:

It's pretty clear what you must do - it's the first quest in the game after all. Plus:

• You can ask for more detailed information from the quest giver.
• A paper with directions is added to your inventory.
• Your journal fully explains what you need to do.
• You can ask NPCs for directions along the way.
• You start with more than enough money to pay for transport to Balmora.

So you take a transport (or walk) to Balmora. The South Wall Cornerclub is right next to you - at the corner of the south wall (duh). Inside you ask for Caius and they tell you that he's in a house just outside the club. Here's the map:

Yet many many players couldn't find him. Like, A LOT of them.

There's a reason for that - Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game to be released on consoles. Quests in games like Baldur's Gate or Fallout were more complex than those in console JRPGs. PC players were used to trying to decipher cryptic NPCs, searching endlessly and even drawing maps. It was a cultural shock between an old PC series and the new 00's console audience.

So for their next Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda decided to offer a guiding hand. In Oblivion (2006), one of the often hyped features was a compass, located at the bottom of the screen, that also displayed nearby landmarks and the objectives of your current quest:

Of course, not everyone was pleased with this. While the journal and quest still gave detailed directions, you couldn't turn the quest compass off unless you used a mod.

This is extremely important. Not only Oblivion was the first RPG to use a quest compass (as far as I can tell), but it was a resounding success. It sold almost 10 million units, introducing a massive new audience to RPGs...and "teaching" them to quest by following a quest compass.

Keep this in mind.

A Brief World of Warcraft Retrospective

A decade ago, WoW was MUCH BETTER! a very different game. Leveling up was SLOOOOOOOOOOW.
It was common for people to spend weeks grinding in The Barrens.

This was in part due to extremely low XP rewards and those goddamn "Gather 10 fangs" quest, which had a0,001% 10% drop chance and would require you to murder like 300 tigers....but also thanks to quests that required you to find something, like this:

The thunderhawk, <name>, is a fierce beast. It is time for you to face them. You must find where it roams, and bring me its wings as proof of your successful hunt.

Yes, it's a "Kill X" quest, like so many bad quests are, but you must find the creature first. It added an element of exploration to it, of testing how familiar you are with your surroundings.

Plus, there was no global or even region chat back then - those were added only in late 2007 (Patch 2.2). To speak with another player, you had to get close to him (or /yell, but the range was limited).

This led to incredibly immersive experiences - when hunting a particularly difficult or hidden objective, I would stop passersby and ask them for directions. This simple interaction to me is still the fullest realization of an MMO - an RPG where the "NPCs" are actually other humans, which you can stop and chat with, join for a quest, become friends, etc...

It's a dream that dates back to the early 80's, when games like Ultima had NPCs you would awkwardly interact with by typing keywords - "name", "job", "bye". Through the decades there was advancement made in the AI & interactions, but who needs that when you have a fellow human behind every single character running around? All of them unique and interactive!

Of course, MMOs are still like this on the surface. Yet, deep down so many things changed - flying mounts which eliminate "social travel", instanced areas which isolate players, Raid/Dungeon Finders which remove the need for socialization, online wikis which turn any question into "JUST GOOGLE IT!"... it's an automatization of gaming, with convenience as king.

And spear-heading those changes was the Quest Compass.

The convinient Quest Compass

Not everyone enjoyed walking around for hours trying to find an item/enemy/NPC. Some where playing only for the PvP or Raids, while others were leveling up their second or third characters.

Back in 2006, these players relied on wikis, addons like AtlasQuest (which displayed in-game text hints for every quest) and level-up guides showing optimal questing routes:

Then, in January 2007, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade was released.

And with it came new UI customization options, which quickly gave birth to TomTom and Quest Helper - two addons that basically added a giant arrow pointing to your next objective:

Crazy Taxi RPG - Follow the arrow, collect / talk / kill whatever is at the end and onwards to the next quest.

Ok, cool. I guess those leveling up an alt or just playing for the PvP will download it, but surely most people will have no interest in th-

...oh.

That's a Wayback machine capture of Curse.com in 2009. Yes, those are 36 MILLION downloads, with an average of 40k downloads PER DAY! Of Quest Helper alone!

For reference, the most downloaded mod in all of NexusMods' history currently has 18M downloads. That's less than HALF of what Quest Helper got just from 2007 to 2009:

So... it was kinda popular.

More over, it appeared and grew popular right as WoW's audience increased... Note that I'm not implying correlation, but rather that millions of players got into MMO's guided by a giant arrow over their head, zip-lining from quest to quest.

"Follow the arrow" addons began in early 2007 and Blizzard resisted the pressure until December 2009, when it incorporated a quest tracking system into it's own UI (Patch 3.3.0). WoW was at its peak at the time, with 12 million players - all now following a quest compass.

(WoW's audience only declined since then - feel free to imagine a correlation here. I sure do.)

In the years since, WoW's quest tracking system was continuously expanded, and now it even automatically sort quests by proximity. All for the sake of convenience.

It's everywhere!

Oblivion was the most popular RPG in the mid/late 00's. WoW is the most popular MMO ever. Quest Helperhas over 40M downloads. Then came Assassin's Creed, more GTAs, FarCry 3, Fallout 3, Just Cause 2, Batman: Arkham City, Borderlands, Infamous, Mad Max, Shadows of Mordor, DA:I, The Witcher 3...

Suddenly, every single open-world game came with an omniscient quest-compass. It became the norm.

Even when it didn't make sense. The Gothic / Risen series was built on verisimilitude and a rewarding sense of exploration - there were hidden caves, paths and caches everywhere. Yet, both Gothic 4 and Risen 3introduce a quest-compass in a desperate (and failed) cry for public acclaim.

Hell, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011) default config has quest trackers in the middle of screen:

Not only it's distracting, but wasn't Deus Ex a game about investigating, sneaking, considering multiple paths & lateral approaches? And it only has a few big open areas! Did it really need those?

Even worse quest objectives

But Skyrim (2011) was the one that pushed things even further.

Not only the quest compass was there, larger than ever, but now it was MANDATORY. Since people were just going to follow the giant arrow, Bethesda didn't even bother to write actual directions. No one tells you where locations, people, monsters or items are. You just magically know.

"Find me the long lost mystic artifact of XXX!" - an arrow pointing towards it immediatly appears.

Not only this makes zero sense, but it made the quest compass impossible to ignore. Simply modding it out it made the game unplayable. Fans had to create a mod to rewrite the quests so that they actually tell players where to go!

How lazy and absurd is this?

The stagnant homogeny

Luckily, I'm not the only anti-quest compass protester around.

Besides excellent modders trying to restore sanity to RPGs, a quick search on the internet will reveal several forum posts and even editorials on how people suddenly find there's an actual game world lying behind the omnipresent compass! :shock:

They realize that games are much more exciting when you immerse yourself in them, watching your surrounding, using landmarks to navigate and growing to know the world around you.

Remenber that since 2006/2007, exploring open-world games aided by a quest compass is the norm. An entire generation was raised under this design homogeny.

Dark Souls is name-dropped a lot these days, but part of its novelty came precisely from abandoning all this hand-holding and convenience. "There are two bells somewhere, go ring them." It broke the status quo.
For a generation raised guided by the quest-compass, it was seductivly dangerous. For older player, it was a refreshing return to olden times.

Of course, not every game needs to be Dark Souls... - every article of the sorts points this out.
But we should also remember that not every game needs to be Skyrim or WoW.

 

[Space Insect]

Wrote another one, this time on the quest compass - how it's evil incarnate and corrupted our youth: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/FelipePe...e_Quest_Compass__its_dreadful_convenience.php

Spoiler

Today, let's talk about the Quest Compass.

First, I'm an RPG fan, so this analysis will be mostly RPG-oriented.
Second, when I say "Quest Compass" I'm referring to a very specific UI item:

Its defining trait is that while the first three merely orient you or display your surroundings, the Quest Compass points you towards something. It directs you, tells you where to go.

It's omniscient, guiding you to places, object and people no one knows about. It replaces exploration.
But I'm getting ahead of myself...

The in-game GPS

I think it's safe to say that GTA III (2001) popularized the quest compass as we know it - a circle on the corner of the screen that serves as mini-map, displays nearby landmarks and guides you to your current quest objective:

The concept didn't came out of thin-air. Mini-maps in games date back to the mid 80's, with games likeMight & Magic II (1988) and Gates of Dawn (1985):

And even the first GTA (1997) already displayed a little "quest guide" arrow, directing the player towards the off-screen mission objective (the tiny yellow arrow bellow the taxi):

Other early open-world games of the time were also experimenting with the concept. In 1999 alone, we had the long-forgotten Urban Chaos, which had an enemy scanner / quest compass; Driver, with its street guide mini-map and Crazy Taxi, with its giant arrow pointing towards your next objective:

It's also interesting to consider the larger cultural scenario. By the time of GTA III's release, online map services like MapQuest, Yahoo! Maps and Zip2.com, where you could PRINT (or FAX!) a map with directions were booming - in 1999 AOL had bough MapQuest for 1.1 Billion dollars!

Ugh.

Anyway, GTA III came out and defined how we think about mini-maps and guiding players in open-world 3D games. Players could easily drive and take quests without getting lost, and there was much rejoicing.

This is important, because another game from the time was having problems with that...

Where the hell is Caius Cosades?!!

The very first quest in Morrowind (2002) is rather infamous. You're a prisoner (of course) released into service of the Empire, and must now report to your superior - Grand Spymaster Cauis Cosades:

It's pretty clear what you must do - it's the first quest in the game after all. Plus:

• You can ask for more detailed information from the quest giver.
• A paper with directions is added to your inventory.
• Your journal fully explains what you need to do.
• You can ask NPCs for directions along the way.
• You start with more than enough money to pay for transport to Balmora.

So you take a transport (or walk) to Balmora. The South Wall Cornerclub is right next to you - at the corner of the south wall (duh). Inside you ask for Caius and they tell you that he's in a house just outside the club. Here's the map:

Yet many many players couldn't find him. Like, A LOT of them.

There's a reason for that - Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game to be released on consoles. Quests in games like Baldur's Gate or Fallout were more complex than those in console JRPGs. PC players were used to trying to decipher cryptic NPCs, searching endlessly and even drawing maps. It was a cultural shock between an old PC series and the new 00's console audience.

So for their next Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda decided to offer a guiding hand. In Oblivion (2006), one of the often hyped features was a compass, located at the bottom of the screen, that also displayed nearby landmarks and the objectives of your current quest:

Of course, not everyone was pleased with this. While the journal and quest still gave detailed directions, you couldn't turn the quest compass off unless you used a mod.

This is extremely important. Not only Oblivion was the first RPG to use a quest compass (as far as I can tell), but it was a resounding success. It sold almost 10 million units, introducing a massive new audience to RPGs...and "teaching" them to quest by following a quest compass.

Keep this in mind.

A Brief World of Warcraft Retrospective

A decade ago, WoW was MUCH BETTER! a very different game. Leveling up was SLOOOOOOOOOOW.
It was common for people to spend weeks grinding in The Barrens.

This was in part due to extremely low XP rewards and those goddamn "Gather 10 fangs" quest, which had a0,001% 10% drop chance and would require you to murder like 300 tigers....but also thanks to quests that required you to find something, like this:

The thunderhawk, <name>, is a fierce beast. It is time for you to face them. You must find where it roams, and bring me its wings as proof of your successful hunt.

Yes, it's a "Kill X" quest, like so many bad quests are, but you must find the creature first. It added an element of exploration to it, of testing how familiar you are with your surroundings.

Plus, there was no global or even region chat back then - those were added only in late 2007 (Patch 2.2). To speak with another player, you had to get close to him (or /yell, but the range was limited).

This led to incredibly immersive experiences - when hunting a particularly difficult or hidden objective, I would stop passersby and ask them for directions. This simple interaction to me is still the fullest realization of an MMO - an RPG where the "NPCs" are actually other humans, which you can stop and chat with, join for a quest, become friends, etc...

It's a dream that dates back to the early 80's, when games like Ultima had NPCs you would awkwardly interact with by typing keywords - "name", "job", "bye". Through the decades there was advancement made in the AI & interactions, but who needs that when you have a fellow human behind every single character running around? All of them unique and interactive!

Of course, MMOs are still like this on the surface. Yet, deep down so many things changed - flying mounts which eliminate "social travel", instanced areas which isolate players, Raid/Dungeon Finders which remove the need for socialization, online wikis which turn any question into "JUST GOOGLE IT!"... it's an automatization of gaming, with convenience as king.

And spear-heading those changes was the Quest Compass.

The convinient Quest Compass

Not everyone enjoyed walking around for hours trying to find an item/enemy/NPC. Some where playing only for the PvP or Raids, while others were leveling up their second or third characters.

Back in 2006, these players relied on wikis, addons like AtlasQuest (which displayed in-game text hints for every quest) and level-up guides showing optimal questing routes:

Then, in January 2007, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade was released.

And with it came new UI customization options, which quickly gave birth to TomTom and Quest Helper - two addons that basically added a giant arrow pointing to your next objective:

Crazy Taxi RPG - Follow the arrow, collect / talk / kill whatever is at the end and onwards to the next quest.

Ok, cool. I guess those leveling up an alt or just playing for the PvP will download it, but surely most people will have no interest in th-

...oh.

That's a Wayback machine capture of Curse.com in 2009. Yes, those are 36 MILLION downloads, with an average of 40k downloads PER DAY! Of Quest Helper alone!

For reference, the most downloaded mod in all of NexusMods' history currently has 18M downloads. That's less than HALF of what Quest Helper got just from 2007 to 2009:

So... it was kinda popular.

More over, it appeared and grew popular right as WoW's audience increased... Note that I'm not implying correlation, but rather that millions of players got into MMO's guided by a giant arrow over their head, zip-lining from quest to quest.

"Follow the arrow" addons began in early 2007 and Blizzard resisted the pressure until December 2009, when it incorporated a quest tracking system into it's own UI (Patch 3.3.0). WoW was at its peak at the time, with 12 million players - all now following a quest compass.

(WoW's audience only declined since then - feel free to imagine a correlation here. I sure do.)

In the years since, WoW's quest tracking system was continuously expanded, and now it even automatically sort quests by proximity. All for the sake of convenience.

It's everywhere!

Oblivion was the most popular RPG in the mid/late 00's. WoW is the most popular MMO ever. Quest Helperhas over 40M downloads. Then came Assassin's Creed, more GTAs, FarCry 3, Fallout 3, Just Cause 2, Batman: Arkham City, Borderlands, Infamous, Mad Max, Shadows of Mordor, DA:I, The Witcher 3...

Suddenly, every single open-world game came with an omniscient quest-compass. It became the norm.

Even when it didn't make sense. The Gothic / Risen series was built on verisimilitude and a rewarding sense of exploration - there were hidden caves, paths and caches everywhere. Yet, both Gothic 4 and Risen 3introduce a quest-compass in a desperate (and failed) cry for public acclaim.

Hell, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011) default config has quest trackers in the middle of screen:

Not only it's distracting, but wasn't Deus Ex a game about investigating, sneaking, considering multiple paths & lateral approaches? And it only has a few big open areas! Did it really need those?

Even worse quest objectives

But Skyrim (2011) was the one that pushed things even further.

Not only the quest compass was there, larger than ever, but now it was MANDATORY. Since people were just going to follow the giant arrow, Bethesda didn't even bother to write actual directions. No one tells you where locations, people, monsters or items are. You just magically know.

"Find me the long lost mystic artifact of XXX!" - an arrow pointing towards it immediatly appears.

Not only this makes zero sense, but it made the quest compass impossible to ignore. Simply modding it out it made the game unplayable. Fans had to create a mod to rewrite the quests so that they actually tell players where to go!

How lazy and absurd is this?

The stagnant homogeny

Luckily, I'm not the only anti-quest compass protester around.

Besides excellent modders trying to restore sanity to RPGs, a quick search on the internet will reveal several forum posts and even editorials on how people suddenly find there's an actual game world lying behind the omnipresent compass! :shock:

They realize that games are much more exciting when you immerse yourself in them, watching your surrounding, using landmarks to navigate and growing to know the world around you.

Remenber that since 2006/2007, exploring open-world games aided by a quest compass is the norm. An entire generation was raised under this design homogeny.

Dark Souls is name-dropped a lot these days, but part of its novelty came precisely from abandoning all this hand-holding and convenience. "There are two bells somewhere, go ring them." It broke the status quo.
For a generation raised guided by the quest-compass, it was seductivly dangerous. For older player, it was a refreshing return to olden times.

Of course, not every game needs to be Dark Souls... - every article of the sorts points this out.
But we should also remember that not every game needs to be Skyrim or WoW.

I thought that this one was better than the last. It was a lot more organized. Keep up the clickbait articles!

 

[Wayward Son]

Wrote another one, this time on the quest compass - how it's evil incarnate and corrupted our youth: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/FelipePe...e_Quest_Compass__its_dreadful_convenience.php

Spoiler

Today, let's talk about the Quest Compass.

First, I'm an RPG fan, so this analysis will be mostly RPG-oriented.
Second, when I say "Quest Compass" I'm referring to a very specific UI item:

Its defining trait is that while the first three merely orient you or display your surroundings, the Quest Compass points you towards something. It directs you, tells you where to go.

It's omniscient, guiding you to places, object and people no one knows about. It replaces exploration.
But I'm getting ahead of myself...

The in-game GPS

I think it's safe to say that GTA III (2001) popularized the quest compass as we know it - a circle on the corner of the screen that serves as mini-map, displays nearby landmarks and guides you to your current quest objective:

The concept didn't came out of thin-air. Mini-maps in games date back to the mid 80's, with games likeMight & Magic II (1988) and Gates of Dawn (1985):

And even the first GTA (1997) already displayed a little "quest guide" arrow, directing the player towards the off-screen mission objective (the tiny yellow arrow bellow the taxi):

Other early open-world games of the time were also experimenting with the concept. In 1999 alone, we had the long-forgotten Urban Chaos, which had an enemy scanner / quest compass; Driver, with its street guide mini-map and Crazy Taxi, with its giant arrow pointing towards your next objective:

It's also interesting to consider the larger cultural scenario. By the time of GTA III's release, online map services like MapQuest, Yahoo! Maps and Zip2.com, where you could PRINT (or FAX!) a map with directions were booming - in 1999 AOL had bough MapQuest for 1.1 Billion dollars!

Ugh.

Anyway, GTA III came out and defined how we think about mini-maps and guiding players in open-world 3D games. Players could easily drive and take quests without getting lost, and there was much rejoicing.

This is important, because another game from the time was having problems with that...

Where the hell is Caius Cosades?!!

The very first quest in Morrowind (2002) is rather infamous. You're a prisoner (of course) released into service of the Empire, and must now report to your superior - Grand Spymaster Cauis Cosades:

It's pretty clear what you must do - it's the first quest in the game after all. Plus:

• You can ask for more detailed information from the quest giver.
• A paper with directions is added to your inventory.
• Your journal fully explains what you need to do.
• You can ask NPCs for directions along the way.
• You start with more than enough money to pay for transport to Balmora.

So you take a transport (or walk) to Balmora. The South Wall Cornerclub is right next to you - at the corner of the south wall (duh). Inside you ask for Caius and they tell you that he's in a house just outside the club. Here's the map:

Yet many many players couldn't find him. Like, A LOT of them.

There's a reason for that - Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game to be released on consoles. Quests in games like Baldur's Gate or Fallout were more complex than those in console JRPGs. PC players were used to trying to decipher cryptic NPCs, searching endlessly and even drawing maps. It was a cultural shock between an old PC series and the new 00's console audience.

So for their next Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda decided to offer a guiding hand. In Oblivion (2006), one of the often hyped features was a compass, located at the bottom of the screen, that also displayed nearby landmarks and the objectives of your current quest:

Of course, not everyone was pleased with this. While the journal and quest still gave detailed directions, you couldn't turn the quest compass off unless you used a mod.

This is extremely important. Not only Oblivion was the first RPG to use a quest compass (as far as I can tell), but it was a resounding success. It sold almost 10 million units, introducing a massive new audience to RPGs...and "teaching" them to quest by following a quest compass.

Keep this in mind.

A Brief World of Warcraft Retrospective

A decade ago, WoW was MUCH BETTER! a very different game. Leveling up was SLOOOOOOOOOOW.
It was common for people to spend weeks grinding in The Barrens.

This was in part due to extremely low XP rewards and those goddamn "Gather 10 fangs" quest, which had a0,001% 10% drop chance and would require you to murder like 300 tigers....but also thanks to quests that required you to find something, like this:

The thunderhawk, <name>, is a fierce beast. It is time for you to face them. You must find where it roams, and bring me its wings as proof of your successful hunt.

Yes, it's a "Kill X" quest, like so many bad quests are, but you must find the creature first. It added an element of exploration to it, of testing how familiar you are with your surroundings.

Plus, there was no global or even region chat back then - those were added only in late 2007 (Patch 2.2). To speak with another player, you had to get close to him (or /yell, but the range was limited).

This led to incredibly immersive experiences - when hunting a particularly difficult or hidden objective, I would stop passersby and ask them for directions. This simple interaction to me is still the fullest realization of an MMO - an RPG where the "NPCs" are actually other humans, which you can stop and chat with, join for a quest, become friends, etc...

It's a dream that dates back to the early 80's, when games like Ultima had NPCs you would awkwardly interact with by typing keywords - "name", "job", "bye". Through the decades there was advancement made in the AI & interactions, but who needs that when you have a fellow human behind every single character running around? All of them unique and interactive!

Of course, MMOs are still like this on the surface. Yet, deep down so many things changed - flying mounts which eliminate "social travel", instanced areas which isolate players, Raid/Dungeon Finders which remove the need for socialization, online wikis which turn any question into "JUST GOOGLE IT!"... it's an automatization of gaming, with convenience as king.

And spear-heading those changes was the Quest Compass.

The convinient Quest Compass

Not everyone enjoyed walking around for hours trying to find an item/enemy/NPC. Some where playing only for the PvP or Raids, while others were leveling up their second or third characters.

Back in 2006, these players relied on wikis, addons like AtlasQuest (which displayed in-game text hints for every quest) and level-up guides showing optimal questing routes:

Then, in January 2007, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade was released.

And with it came new UI customization options, which quickly gave birth to TomTom and Quest Helper - two addons that basically added a giant arrow pointing to your next objective:

Crazy Taxi RPG - Follow the arrow, collect / talk / kill whatever is at the end and onwards to the next quest.

Ok, cool. I guess those leveling up an alt or just playing for the PvP will download it, but surely most people will have no interest in th-

...oh.

That's a Wayback machine capture of Curse.com in 2009. Yes, those are 36 MILLION downloads, with an average of 40k downloads PER DAY! Of Quest Helper alone!

For reference, the most downloaded mod in all of NexusMods' history currently has 18M downloads. That's less than HALF of what Quest Helper got just from 2007 to 2009:

So... it was kinda popular.

More over, it appeared and grew popular right as WoW's audience increased... Note that I'm not implying correlation, but rather that millions of players got into MMO's guided by a giant arrow over their head, zip-lining from quest to quest.

"Follow the arrow" addons began in early 2007 and Blizzard resisted the pressure until December 2009, when it incorporated a quest tracking system into it's own UI (Patch 3.3.0). WoW was at its peak at the time, with 12 million players - all now following a quest compass.

(WoW's audience only declined since then - feel free to imagine a correlation here. I sure do.)

In the years since, WoW's quest tracking system was continuously expanded, and now it even automatically sort quests by proximity. All for the sake of convenience.

It's everywhere!

Oblivion was the most popular RPG in the mid/late 00's. WoW is the most popular MMO ever. Quest Helperhas over 40M downloads. Then came Assassin's Creed, more GTAs, FarCry 3, Fallout 3, Just Cause 2, Batman: Arkham City, Borderlands, Infamous, Mad Max, Shadows of Mordor, DA:I, The Witcher 3...

Suddenly, every single open-world game came with an omniscient quest-compass. It became the norm.

Even when it didn't make sense. The Gothic / Risen series was built on verisimilitude and a rewarding sense of exploration - there were hidden caves, paths and caches everywhere. Yet, both Gothic 4 and Risen 3introduce a quest-compass in a desperate (and failed) cry for public acclaim.

Hell, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011) default config has quest trackers in the middle of screen:

Not only it's distracting, but wasn't Deus Ex a game about investigating, sneaking, considering multiple paths & lateral approaches? And it only has a few big open areas! Did it really need those?

Even worse quest objectives

But Skyrim (2011) was the one that pushed things even further.

Not only the quest compass was there, larger than ever, but now it was MANDATORY. Since people were just going to follow the giant arrow, Bethesda didn't even bother to write actual directions. No one tells you where locations, people, monsters or items are. You just magically know.

"Find me the long lost mystic artifact of XXX!" - an arrow pointing towards it immediatly appears.

Not only this makes zero sense, but it made the quest compass impossible to ignore. Simply modding it out it made the game unplayable. Fans had to create a mod to rewrite the quests so that they actually tell players where to go!

How lazy and absurd is this?

The stagnant homogeny

Luckily, I'm not the only anti-quest compass protester around.

Besides excellent modders trying to restore sanity to RPGs, a quick search on the internet will reveal several forum posts and even editorials on how people suddenly find there's an actual game world lying behind the omnipresent compass! :shock:

They realize that games are much more exciting when you immerse yourself in them, watching your surrounding, using landmarks to navigate and growing to know the world around you.

Remenber that since 2006/2007, exploring open-world games aided by a quest compass is the norm. An entire generation was raised under this design homogeny.

Dark Souls is name-dropped a lot these days, but part of its novelty came precisely from abandoning all this hand-holding and convenience. "There are two bells somewhere, go ring them." It broke the status quo.
For a generation raised guided by the quest-compass, it was seductivly dangerous. For older player, it was a refreshing return to olden times.

Of course, not every game needs to be Dark Souls... - every article of the sorts points this out.
But we should also remember that not every game needs to be Skyrim or WoW.

Great job click baiting, felipepepe! Agreed completely!
Edit: Damn, this makes me want to play Morrowind again. ( searches frantically for disc)

 

[pippin]

I will always be amazed and confused at those who insist in playing games for their "exploration" yet refuse to play games without quest compasses.

 

[MicoSelva]

A decade ago, WoW was MUCH BETTER! a very different game. Leveling up was SLOOOOOOOOOOW.
It was common for people to spend weeks grinding in The Barrens.

This was in part due to extremely low XP rewards and those goddamn "Gather 10 fangs" quest, which had a0,001% 10% drop chance and would require you to murder like 300 tigers....but also thanks to quests that required you to find something, like this:

The thunderhawk, <name>, is a fierce beast. It is time for you to face them. You must find where it roams, and bring me its wings as proof of your successful hunt.

Yes, it's a "Kill X" quest, like so many bad quests are, but you must find the creature first. It added an element of exploration to it, of testing how familiar you are with your surroundings.

Plus, there was no global or even region chat back then - those were added only in late 2007 (Patch 2.2). To speak with another player, you had to get close to him (or /yell, but the range was limited).

This led to incredibly immersive experiences - when hunting a particularly difficult or hidden objective, I would stop passersby and ask them for directions. This simple interaction to me is still the fullest realization of an MMO - an RPG where the "NPCs" are actually other humans, which you can stop and chat with, join for a quest, become friends, etc...

Fuck, vanilla WoW sure looked ugly.

Good article, by the way. For some reason (maybe it's the short paragraphs). every time I read one of your pieces I imagine this guy showing a PowerPoint presentation (where the article images are the slides):

 

[felipepepe]

Well, Stan and I are both trained in the evils of Marketing-speech... so there's that.