Morrowind was massive decline and should be considered as such

[rusty_shackleford]

And another person

Oh you're talking about the minimap turn in, why? That's very different from quest markers

what do you think jarlfrank was discussing?
go back and read his post.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There were already several quests with incorrect instructions. And don't even try to pull that "unreliable quest giver" excuse. If you suspect someone in real life has given you bad directions, you can confront them about it or get a second opinion from someone else. Morrowind's quest journal was panned at release. That's why subsequent titles reworked the system. Hell, that's why Tribunal tweaked it.

no way, morrowind is a perfectly designed game that would never give you vague directions that cause you to wander around randomly until you stumble upon the location

 

[perfectslumbers]

what do you think jarlfrank was discussing?

I see a compass as different from the wow minimap cuz one has infinite range and one is pretty short, but I see what you mean, you were right in that case haha. Just a miscommunication

 

[Skinwalker]

I prefer video games where the map is an actual item within the game, drawn the way it would be by someone in that world.

 

[Jaedar]

While true, there is a deeper problem with C&C: their meaninglessness, which stems directly from the fact that every interaction is hand-crafted. With the emergent design much more is possible with much less direct effort towards organizing specific outcomes and this is the kind of actual C&C that respects player's choices and actions more.

Oh boy, this forum really isn't ready for my take on why C&C is the poor man's systemic gameplay.

Joined: Tuesday.

Systemic gameplay is lovely and all, but the technology is not yet there to systematize non-combat interactions with a single npc, let alone dozens or hundreds, or countries. Until then hardcoded C&C is what we've got, and it's better than nothing.

no way, morrowind is a perfectly designed game that would never give you vague directions that cause you to wander around randomly until you stumble upon the location

MW directions are a mixed bag. Some of them are great, some of them are unintentionally horrible, and some are intentionally bad. The examples in your post are the latter two categories. It's good fun when the descriptions aren't horribad, and considering how rushed mw development was, I'm willing to say it shows that directions are a good way of doing it, but it requires quality control.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'm not even going to research when quest markers first emerged (probably some MMO), this is the easiest to explain as I think I have in this thread already. Not only are they a convenience feature but large scale games with hundreds of quests have to have them. They're a developer convenience as much a player convenience. If playtesting reveals that you should change the location of an object, that requires tracking down every reference to that object at rewriting/rerecording/redoing art assets for it. This becomes unmanageable at scale. If a quest marker is bound to the item location, devs can freely move things around without that worry.

They don't have to. Case in point: Morrowind doesn't have them and is much better for it.

Changing a few lines of dialog or journal entries if you change an object's location shouldn't be a problem. I don't even see any situation where changing a quest item's location during the alpha or beta testing stage would be required, at least a change so radical it would require rewriting any written directions.

"The Dungeon of Horrors is west of Bumblesville."
Then you know it is west. A dungeon of such notability should have some visible features in the landscape, like a tower jutting out of the mountainside or something. So if you want to readjust its location, the directions will still be accurate as long as it remains west of Bumblesville. Since the dungeon has a visible feature you can spot from some distance away (especially with modern draw distances), no more detail is needed.
"The Cube of Woe can be found deep in the Dungeon of Horrors."
You know where the Dungeon of Horrors is (west of Bumblesville) and it's visible on the surface so it's easy to find. "Deep in the dungeon" is information enough for the location of the quest item. You have to explore the thing to find it, and it's likely to be in the treasure chamber, the boss enemy's room, or whatever you got down there. It's an ancient artifact and while scholars know where it is, they don't know exactly which room, which cabinet, which shelf it is on. You have to search for it yourself. That's the job of an adventurer - and the fun of dungeon crawling. Quest markers take away that fun. They completely destroy any sense of exploration because you're not actively exploring - you're just following some dot on the map.

 

[JarlFrank]

There were already several quests with incorrect instructions. And don't even try to pull that "unreliable quest giver" excuse. If you suspect someone in real life has given you bad directions, you can confront them about it or get a second opinion from someone else. Morrowind's quest journal was panned at release. That's why subsequent titles reworked the system. Hell, that's why Tribunal tweaked it.

no way, morrowind is a perfectly designed game that would never give you vague directions that cause you to wander around randomly until you stumble upon the location

Yes, that location is west of both Caldera and Ald'Ruhn. The written directions explicitly state that he lives "in the middle of nowhere" so of course it wouldn't be the easiest place to find. It is somewhat northwest of Caldera, but way more west than north. It is pretty much straight southwest from Ald'Ruhn, but you could conclude that yourself from "west of Caldera" and "west of Ald'Ruhn".

If you follow the western road from Caldera pretty much straight ahead, you will walk straight into the hut. It's near a fucking road. Even someone who doesn't explore the wilderness and only follows roads will find it.

 

[Raskens]

This is false. Morrowind had more quests than Oblivion as far as I can see, and it handled it well without quest marks. In fact it seems MW had 483

Hence me listing the number of quests in Morrowind and Oblivion.

There were already several quests with incorrect instructions. And don't even try to pull that "unreliable quest giver" excuse. If you suspect someone in real life has given you bad directions, you can confront them about it or get a second opinion from someone else. Morrowind's quest journal was panned at release. That's why subsequent titles reworked the system. Hell, that's why Tribunal tweaked it.

You guys act like every convenience feature ruins a game. No, you're just comfortable with the ones you grew up with. I could just as easily claim an in-game map "dumbs down" challenge and immersion for the sake of convenience. Maps were actually pretty rare and difficult to obtain in preindustrial societies

I've completed around 100 quests or so in MW and I was probably able to complete 99 % out of those. Unless you provide evidence of a substantial amount of quests having incorrect directions I will disregard your argument.

Also, the problem with quest markers are that it removes gameplay, not that it's a convenience. Having a game without a map can work fine if the game world is small.

As I stated before I played Skyrim before Morrowind, and so did others. If anyone is showing signs of being biased towards your earlier rpgs it's you.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There were already several quests with incorrect instructions. And don't even try to pull that "unreliable quest giver" excuse. If you suspect someone in real life has given you bad directions, you can confront them about it or get a second opinion from someone else. Morrowind's quest journal was panned at release. That's why subsequent titles reworked the system. Hell, that's why Tribunal tweaked it.

no way, morrowind is a perfectly designed game that would never give you vague directions that cause you to wander around randomly until you stumble upon the location

Yes, that location is west of both Caldera and Ald'Ruhn. The written directions explicitly state that he lives "in the middle of nowhere" so of course it wouldn't be the easiest place to find. It is somewhat northwest of Caldera, but way more west than north. It is pretty much straight southwest from Ald'Ruhn, but you could conclude that yourself from "west of Caldera" and "west of Ald'Ruhn".

If you follow the western road from Caldera pretty much straight ahead, you will walk straight into the hut. It's near a fucking road. Even someone who doesn't explore the wilderness and only follows roads will find it.

If only there was a way to express something that is both south and west or both north and west.
It is truly a mystery.

 

[Butter]

Half a dozen quests out of the 400 or so in the game have vague or incorrect directions. Sounds like a good enough reason to remove directions entirely and instead lead players by the nose every step of the way.

 

[JarlFrank]

If quest markers are so necessary how did anyone complete Dark Souls?

 

[Skinwalker]

I'm still looking for Punabi and Sulipund, btw.

 

[Harthwain]

Systemic gameplay is lovely and all, but the technology is not yet there to systematize non-combat interactions with a single npc, let alone dozens or hundreds, or countries. Until then hardcoded C&C is what we've got, and it's better than nothing.

I don't think it's the technology that's the problem. The problem is people don't try to push in this direction, because they are so used to hand-crafted approach that they can't imagine more systemic approach (and/or aren't competent enough to pull it off). It takes one game/developer to come up with a novel idea and then suddenly the market explodes with copycats, because everyone and their mother want this kind of game. But it takes that one visionnaire to start the avalanche, otherwise it remains a wasteland.

If quest markers are so necessary how did anyone complete Dark Souls?

Dark Souls has landmarks and it isn't exactly an open world, where you can get lost and not progress. All you have to do is push forward and you will get somewhere eventually, because every road leads to the end. Also, NPCs drop hints.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Half a dozen quests out of the 400 or so in the game have vague or incorrect directions. Sounds like a good enough reason to remove directions entirely and instead lead players by the nose every step of the way.

Good post, I don't like quest compasses but I like to see anti-morrowind opinions

 

[Raskens]

Half a dozen quests out of the 400 or so in the game have vague or incorrect directions. Sounds like a good enough reason to remove directions entirely and instead lead players by the nose every step of the way.

Good post, I don't like quest compasses but I like to see anti-morrowind opinions

Either you are autistic or you're trolling.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Half a dozen quests out of the 400 or so in the game have vague or incorrect directions. Sounds like a good enough reason to remove directions entirely and instead lead players by the nose every step of the way.

Good post, I don't like quest compasses but I like to see anti-morrowind opinions

Either you are autistic or you're trolling.

Imagine entering a thread specifically for shitting on Morrowind and getting upset that people are doing just that.
You guys are the autistic ones. You could have went to any other thread on this entire site, but you chose this one.

 

[JarlFrank]

Systemic gameplay is lovely and all, but the technology is not yet there to systematize non-combat interactions with a single npc, let alone dozens or hundreds, or countries. Until then hardcoded C&C is what we've got, and it's better than nothing.

I don't think it's the technology that's the problem. The problem is people don't try to push in this direction, because they are so used to hand-crafted approach that they can't imagine more systemic approach (and/or aren't competent enough to pull it off). It takes one game/developer to come up with a novel idea and then suddenly the market explodes with copycats, because everyone and their mother want this kind of game. But it takes that one visionnaire to start the avalanche, otherwise it remains a wasteland.

Considering how lame your average procedurally generated game is (look at the massive flood of roguelikes and roguelikes where all levels feel the same because they're randomly generated) I don't have much hope in procedural generation as a whole.

 

[Robotigan]

Changing a few lines of dialog or journal entries if you change an object's location shouldn't be a problem.

...clearly it is? Morrowind got directions wrong at least a few times and its overall development was far more chaotic than later games. This just demonstrates to me that you don't have much experience with large collaborative projects. At my job, if I want to refactor a function signature or change a variable type, I have to track down every usage of that function/variable and change it with possible cascading implications. If someone else imports my code that I don't know about, the problem gets even worse. Even if I manage to track down and fix everything, that stole a lot of development time I could have spent working on other features.

I don't even see any situation where changing a quest item's location during the alpha or beta testing stage would be required

...this explains so many of Codex's strange opinions on game design. Every game out there worth a damn changes and tweaks things during the alpha/beta. That's the whole point of an alpha/beta. You don't know if a feature or level will feel satisfying until you've played it. You don't know if the mechanics are communicated clearly or if the challenge is calibrated correctly unless you have someone else play it. Like say you put an early quest item at the end of a dungeon that turns out to be one of the most elaborate ones in the entire game once the level designers are through with it. You decide you'd like to save that dungeon for a more climactic moment later on. So you decide you need to move the item to a completely different dungeon somewhere else on the map. Or maybe you actually like the location of the quest item is close to the starting town and you want to swap two entire dungeons. Point is, yes games change during development and its vital there be some flexibility to work with.

If quest markers are so necessary how did anyone complete Dark Souls?

Because Dark Souls doesn't attempt to be a simulated open world. It's a Metroidvania. The search horizon is much narrower and the leading indicators are inherently baked into the level design. As mentioned, the devs will tweak levels based on playtesting feedback often adding in environmental clues to subtly guide the player. Can't really do that in an open world (although BotW attempts) because the player might approach from any direction and run through encounters in any order.

 

[Raskens]

Dark Souls is not a metroidvania

 

[Robotigan]

Considering how lame your average procedurally generated game is (look at the massive flood of roguelikes and roguelikes where all levels feel the same because they're randomly generated) I don't have much hope in procedural generation as a whole.

This is just a hack for indies to create a larger game than they have the budget for. It can actually work if the base systems are intriguing enough. Minecraft took the world by storm. Practically every building sim and strategy game out there is built around systems that create fun emergent moments. But designing intriguing systems that produce dozens of hours of engaging content is arguably even trickier than writing a compelling narrative.

Unfortunately procgen gets associated with games that over use it to compensate for their lack of interesting design elsewhere. I liken it to CGI. It's a good tools for studios that know how to use it. The LotR movies created a fantastic sense of scale because they only casted actors for the front line of an army, knowing that's what the audience would pay most attention to, and backfilled everyone else with CGI simulations. And it worked incredibly. Likewise, most big projects today already use procgen for terrain and nature and we tend not to notice because that stuff is more or less random in reality. But one also has to know when to toss it out when it isn't working. Most dungeon crawlers moved away from randomly generated mazes towards hand-crafted levels (and triggered this entire thread in the process).

 

[Funposter]

If quest markers are so necessary how did anyone complete Dark Souls?

youtube tutorials

 

[Robotigan]

Systemic gameplay is lovely and all, but the technology is not yet there to systematize non-combat interactions with a single npc, let alone dozens or hundreds, or countries. Until then hardcoded C&C is what we've got, and it's better than nothing.

Games are cihpping away at it slowly. I'd say every great one will pick one or two areas to push systemic design and fallback on blunt C&C everywhere they need to abstract a system but don't have the budget/technology to accomplish. And appreciating these achievements is often one of the biggest wedges between Codex and general reception from other reviewers. Yes, it's often useful to have a sobering reminder that just because a game attempted an ambitious system doesn't mean it panned out. But often these systems do create novel and fun gameplay experiences and Codex gets curmudgeonly because you can't skip a set piece moment with a charisma check.

 

[JarlFrank]

I don't even see any situation where changing a quest item's location during the alpha or beta testing stage would be required

...this explains so many of Codex's strange opinions on game design. Every game out there worth a damn changes and tweaks things during the alpha/beta. That's the whole point of an alpha/beta. You don't know if a feature or level will feel satisfying until you've played it. You don't know if the mechanics are communicated clearly or if the challenge is calibrated correctly unless you have someone else play it. Like say you put an early quest item at the end of a dungeon that turns out to be one of the most elaborate ones in the entire game once the level designers are through with it. You decide you'd like to save that dungeon for a more climactic moment later on. So you decide you need to move the item to a completely different dungeon somewhere else on the map. Or maybe you actually like the location of the quest item is close to the starting town and you want to swap two entire dungeons. Point is, yes games change during development and its vital there be some flexibility to work with.

But those are all massive changes. Moving entire dungeons and quests around... you should have a solid plan for the intended structure of the game from the start, if you don't you're probably not a good game designer.

Like... obvious beginner mistakes like "the biggest dungeon isn't used at a climactic moment but for some generic quest, while the most climactic quest is set in a small and boring dungeon" shouldn't happen. If they happen, there's something wrong with your initial game design and making such massive changes during the alpha/beta testing stage should not be necessary if your game design was solid from the start.

As I said, basic directional instructions should be enough to send the player on the right way. As long as you know the general area you're supposed to go to, that's all you need. And towards the end of a game's development cycle, there is usually no time for major changes like moving entire dungeons. Depending on your engine and its level editor, that would be many hours of additional work just to move the location of already finished content. Time that could be better used for adding other planned content, polishing finished content, fixing bugs, etc etc.

You overestimate the problems that come with the lack of quest markers. The amount of additional work is minimal, but the amount of gameplay fun destroyed by the existence of these handholding signposts is massive.
They are never a good addition.

A better solution would be something like Daggerfall's dialogue system.
Any NPC can be asked for directions to a place. They will tell you "north", "south", "east", "west" based on their current position relative to the place's location.
So you go to an NPC, ask "Where's the Deepthroat Dungeon?" and he'll reply with "Several miles northeast of here."
This doesn't require any manual writing either.

 

[NerevarineKing]

I honestly don't remember many issues finding things with the directions they give. There are signposts everywhere and the world is logically designed.

 

[KateMicucci]

Since not knowing where you're going is so fun I assume you guys also never use GPS in real life, you ask a random hobo on the street for directions, write it down in your journal and then do your best to figure it out. And instead of driving, you walk there really slow with poopy pants.

That could be fun for a certain type of person, I guess. Me, I'd rather get where I'm going and start killing shit.